City of Promise (35 page)

“There was five of ’em,” Tickle said. His face was cut and bruised and one eye was swollen shut. “Stompers, with them black kerchiefs tied around their faces. Me and Obadiah and Israel, we weren’t no match for ’em.”

Stompers were one of the Five Points gangs. They were known for having steel blades fixed to the heels of their boots, and masking their faces when they went on a job. “I should think not,” Josh said. Then, to his wife, “I believe Mr. Tickle’s arm is broken. He’ll need a doctor to set it. Will you write a note to Simon, please. Perhaps Tess will take it to the hospital. If Simon’s not there she can leave it for when he arrives.”

He waited until Mollie had gone into the office, then turned back to the dwarf. “How are the others?”

“Obadiah got a mean crack on the head with one of the billies them thugs had. Put him straight out. That’s why I was the one as come to tell you. Otherwise I’d have sent him. Longer legs can be useful sometimes.”

“Is he still unconscious?”

“He was coming around when I left. Israel will look after him. I suppose I could’ve asked the new men to sleep at the foundry as well. Didn’t ’cause they both got families and—”

“You and your men are paid to make steel, not do guard duty,” Josh said grimly. “It’s my job to protect my business, and you can be sure that after this I shall.”

“That’ll be a good thing, Mr. Turner, but what I didn’t tell you . . .”

“Go on.” He steeled himself for what he knew was going to be worse news. “Tell me now.”

“It’s the Kelly converter, Mr. Turner. That’s what them thugs was aiming at. Smashed it up right proper and weren’t nothing we could do to stop ’em.”

“What’s the plan then, Josh?” Zac had a way of sitting back in his chair and folding his hands, rather like Solomon waiting to pass judgment Josh always thought. “Tell me what you need. If I can help I will.”

“Not money,” Josh said quickly. The Devrey Building was as impressive as ever, a white marble temple of commerce built in 1835 when the city’s oldest shipping company was at the height of its power, but these days there were half as many clerks in the various offices, no new vessels under construction, and at any given time fully a third of the fleet riding empty and at anchor. Josh reckoned his boardinghouses and building projects were probably showing a greater profit for the year than his brother’s fabled company; certainly he had more liquidity. “I’m not in a bad position as far as cash goes. I’ve taken deposits on all but six of the flats at the St. Nicholas, and ten percent of those at the new building are spoken for.”

“I thought you hadn’t broken ground for that one yet.”

“We’re supposed to get started in a couple of weeks. I think we can maintain that schedule. There’s a supply of steel at the foundry. Enough to begin building at any rate.”

“I take it then the inventory wasn’t damaged?”

“Pretty damned hard thing to do, damage steel beams with billies and sledgehammers. Time-consuming as well, since you’d have to go after them one at a time. According to Tickle, the Stompers went straight for the converter. Attack the means of production, a good strategy the generals tell us.”

“Tickle’s the dwarf, isn’t he? Your foreman.”

“That’s right. He and the others, there’s not much they don’t know about a steel converter. They can fix this one, but it will take time.” Josh got up and refilled his glass from the decanter of sherry on the table beside Zac’s office window. “And before you ask,” he turned back to face his brother, “I’m pretty sure I know whose idea it was, but I’ve no proof.”

“This isn’t a court of law. Who?”

“Man by the name of Trenton Clifford. Captain in the rebel army. He was commander of the prison on Belle Isle when I was there. I think he murdered George Higgins as well. As a way to get at me. Can’t prove that either.”

“I see. Josh, about Clifford, I . . .”

“Yes.” Josh waited.

After a few seconds Zac shook his head. “Nothing. Except I’m wondering what you might have done to cause Captain Clifford to hold such a potent grudge all these many years.”

“I concentrated on staying alive, nothing more. It can’t be about Belle Isle or anything that happened during the war because as far as Clifford and I are concerned, nothing did.”

“What then?” Zac rose and came to join him by the window.

“I’m not sure,” Josh said. “But I don’t think Clifford wants to beat his chest and sound the rebel yell. He’s done with all that. What he wants is to make a fortune, like everyone else in this town.”

“By somehow taking over your business? Constructing flats?”

Josh ignored the slightly disparaging tone and shook his head. “No, though mark my words, there’s a fortune to be made in real estate if one has sufficient capital. Clifford’s got a different idea, however.” He gestured with his drink to the hubbub below the window where the junction of Broadway and Canal Street was seething with traffic. “He came to me a few months ago with a scheme for building an underground railway. You were still in England at the time. He wanted me to write and suggest you sell all the Devrey ships and bankroll his plan. Lend it the Devrey prestige.”

“Did he now? And what did you tell him?”

“To go to hell.” Then, when his brother didn’t say anything, “Zac, he’s not just an ordinary bastard. Clifford’s wicked to the core. I’ve seen him do things that would chill your blood. I knew you wouldn’t have anything—”

His words were cut off by the chiming of the Carolina clock. Zac
had installed it before the war. The clock did more than toll the hours; it set up a moving display running along the top of the five-story building, models of the fabulous clipper ships Carolina Devrey Turner had commissioned in the 1840s. Reproduced on a scale of one to one hundred with meticulous accuracy, the clippers crossed a churning ocean under the full cloud of sail that had once transfixed onlookers standing on the New York docks. These days people made the journey to the Devrey building just to see the simulation.

“Five o’clock,” Zac said when the noise faded. “I’ve plans for later, Josh. Let’s get this sorted, shall we?” He moved back to his desk. “Tell me exactly what I can do.”

“I need to put guards at the foundry. Hoods as tough as any to be found in the city. A match for whomever Clifford sends.”

“Presuming you’re right and he’s the one sending them.”

“Presuming exactly that. Though it doesn’t really matter. I’ve no doubt that once we start producing again, we’ll get a second visit, whoever’s behind it. They made their intentions clear.”

“Have you thought of going to the police?”

Josh recalled his interviews with Captain Willis and Sergeant Hoyle, and their willingness to accept an alibi provided by the most notorious whoremistress in the city. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Zac nodded. “Point taken.”

“After all these years running the New York waterfront,” Josh said. “If you don’t know which toughs are the right ones for the job, no one does.”

“Happens I do.” Zac made a note on the pad on his desk. “I’ll send someone to see you at the house tomorrow evening. Name’s Frankie Miller. You’ll never meet him in church, but as long as you pay him what you’ve agreed, you can trust him absolutely. Anything else?”

“Yes. I want to move the inventory. I’m having a shed constructed on one of Mother’s lots. I’ll arrange to have that guarded as well, of course, but the easiest way to get the steel there is by boat. I need to transport it from Wall Street uptown to Ninety-First Street.”

“Done,” Zac said, making another note. “Is that it?”

“It is. I’ll be on my way and leave you to your evening’s plans.” Josh picked up his topper and his cane and started for the door, pausing before he opened it. “Zac . . .”

“Yes?”

“Clifford’s every bit as bad as I said. Worse maybe.”

“I’ve no doubt,” his brother said quietly. “None at all.”

“Not Stompers,” Frankie Miller said. “Word is it was one of the Italian gangs been taking over around Mulberry and Bayard and Hester. Mulberry Bend they call it, not that a gentleman like yourself would know much about the Bend or the Eye-ties. Anyways, they tied on them black kerchiefs to make it seem like they was Stompers, but according to my sources, they wasn’t.”

Josh was astounded. He’d never seen Frankie Miller until ten minutes earlier when the man showed up at his front door. Now they were sitting in his office on Grand Street and Miller was making it clear he’d already taken it on himself to investigate the source of Josh’s woes. “I presume my brother told you what happened.”

Miller nodded. He looked like a bank clerk, or perhaps an accountant. Certainly not a criminal. Medium height, thin, not particularly muscular, with pale skin and black hair parted on one side and carefully combed and oiled. He wore a tweed jacket and matching trousers, and the hat clutched in his hand was a bowler.

The hat sparked a train of thought. “Mr. Miller, if the men who attacked my foundry weren’t Stompers . . . Is it possible some gang from Brooklyn could be involved?” There wasn’t much logic to it, only his memory of having met DuVal Jones in an oyster bar near the Brooklyn ferry landing the day he leased a flat in the St. Nicholas. And his conviction at the time that Jones was some kind of thug. Though it made no particular sense that he should want to delay construction on another of Josh’s buildings.

Miller put paid to that idea. “No reason whatever to think so,” he said.

“Then who were they? And why pretend to be a gang they were not? According to the newspapers the whole point of the distinctive clothing is to brag about their violence.”

“That’s the Irish gangs.” Miller spoke softly, each word receiving equal emphasis. Rather like a judge pronouncing sentence, Josh thought. “They’re what you might call playing at being baddies. Oh, I know they kill folks and whatnot, but it’s not the same. With the Irish, mostly it’s because they love to fight. Bigger the dust-up, more it suits ’em. The Eye-ties, they’re professional criminals. Seems most of ’em are from some island. Sicily, I think it’s called. They do business in a regular way. Got a price list. Two dollars to punch somebody, four if both eyes is blacked. Twenty-five for a stabbing. Unless it’s to be fatal. Then they call it doing the big job and it costs a hundred.”

Josh glanced at the place on the rug where he’d found George Higgins’s body. If Miller noticed he didn’t say. “I take it you want guards down at the Wall Street docks, Mr. Turner. Near Mr. Devrey’s pier.”

“The old iron foundry next to it, yes.”

Miller nodded. “That’s what Mr. Devrey said. I’ll put four men on it. One inside, three out. You won’t see the three. Nobody will unless they’re needed.”

“Is that enough? According to my foreman they were attacked by five of these Stompers, or Sicilians, or whoever they were.”

“Four of my men’s enough,” Miller said quietly. “You can trust me.”

Exactly what Zac had assured him to be the case. “I need guards as well on Ninety-First Street. I’m going to store the finished steel in a shed up there. It’s closer to where we’ll be using it and perhaps it won’t be so obvious a target. My brother told you that’s the object of all this thuggery, interrupting the production of steel?”

“Nope, just said I was to guard your interests. Said they were the same as his. I’ll look over the uptown location, put as many on it as is called for. But it’s a far ways to go. I’ll have to charge you extra for that.”
Miller paused while he calculated his costs and profit. “A hundred and a half a week,” he said finally. “Four weeks in advance to start.”

Josh was prepared. He counted six hundred-dollar bills from a roll in his pocket and passed them over. “When will you start?”

Miller smiled. “We already started. I got my men in place down at the foundry right now. Mr. Devrey told me what was needed and that I was to do for you exactly like I would for him. When can I see the Ninety-First Street location?”

“Whenever you like,” Josh said. “We’re to move some steel up there a couple of nights from now.”

They spent another few minutes discussing how to find the shed Josh had built on his mother’s lot, and Miller’s suggestion that he also provide two guards on the boat that would carry the beams and girders upriver. “The numbers you’re talking about,” Josh said, “two to guard the shipment, four at the foundry. Two on the boat. It doesn’t sound like enough.”