House of Thieves (11 page)

Sitting in a rowboat in the East River across from Blackwell's Island at 2:00 a.m., Cross was surprised by how cool and refreshing the air was.

A strong wind swept up the river. In Manhattan, the August night had been unbearably hot and humid; to feel the wind was a sweet relief. All day, he'd dreaded this moment. He hadn't bothered to ask whether he would accompany Kent's men tonight. He knew his presence would be mandatory.

The three men sat in a long rowboat tied to an overhanging tree. They were hidden in the shadows on the banks of the river at Long Island City, less than a thousand feet from Blackwell's. To avoid detection by people on Manhattan's piers, it was safer to approach from the less-populated Queens County side in the east.

“Here they come,” Brady whispered, nodding to a passing guard boat. “It won't be back for another two hours.”

The steam-powered prison patrol boats continuously circled the twelve-mile-long, cigar-shaped island. As this one passed, a barrel-chested man named Wild Jimmy Coogan untied the line and began rowing them to the island. The prison, a forbidding stone fortress topped with castle-like crenellations, was located near the southern end of the island, just north of the smallpox and municipal hospitals. Coogan expertly guided them across, taking advantage of the speedy south current. Cross guessed he must have been a seaman before embarking on a career in crime. To Cross's relief, they encountered no other boats. No one said a word during the trip, and only the sound of the oars cutting softly through the water could be heard.

From the middle of the river, the men could see a few lights on in the prison.

Coogan continued rowing until they were fifty yards away from the sloping granite seawall that circled the island.

“What now, Mr. Engineer?” whispered Brady.

Cross took out his tracings. It was a moonless night and hard to read. He struck a match and looked up at the seawall.

“I'm an architect, not an engineer,” he whispered indignantly.

“Goddamn you, which way?” Brady snarled, punching Cross hard in the right arm.

“Head about twenty yards to the south,” Cross said, trying not to grimace from the pain. After a minute, he called out, “That's it.”

A circular opening in the seawall appeared before them, and Coogan steered toward it. If it had been high tide, they never would have seen the sewer tunnel, which sloped up almost 150 feet to the new addition at the prison's south end. When Kent told Cross about Hardenbergh's addition, Cross had remembered an article he'd seen in the trade journal
American
Architect
and
Building
News
. Back at his office, he'd looked it up. Instead of having a slop bucket in each cell for the prisoners to relieve themselves, the men had unenclosed toilets that dumped into waste lines between the two hundred back-to-back cells. During the day, a huge cistern on the roof of the addition periodically flushed the lines into a sewer tunnel, which dumped into the river. The addition had been designed according to the wishes of the Prison Reform Society, a do-gooder group that lobbied the state legislature for more humane prison conditions.

To Cross's surprise, Hardenbergh's drawings showed no iron gate over the opening. The state had skimped on money, he guessed, and never installed it. All the better. They wouldn't have to saw off a padlock.

About ten feet from the opening, Brady grabbed Coogan's arm and pointed along the top of the seawall. They saw a single light by the edge, coming toward them from about twenty feet away. It swung to and fro as it moved.

“It's a guard,” Brady hissed, and the men immediately crouched low in the boat. With several powerful stokes of the oars, Coogan slid the craft inside the opening as the guard stopped directly above them. They froze and waited, listening to the river lap against the walls of the tunnel. With an oar, Coogan steadied the boat, keeping it from drifting out of the tunnel.

After five minutes, Brady nodded, and the men started to gather their equipment. Without the gate, there was no place to tie up the boat. It took several minutes to concoct a mooring. The distinct sound of streaming water interrupted their work. Brady raised his hand as the signal to halt, and the men froze again, struggling to meet one another's eyes in the darkness.

Outside the tunnel, they saw a thin jet of liquid falling from above the opening. The stream began to taper off, and someone said, “Ah.” A minute later, a cigar butt was tossed into the water. Brady and Coogan exchanged smiles. Brady lit a lantern and ordered Cross to lead the way.

The diameter of the tunnel was only four feet, but it was big enough to bend over and walk through. Past the point at which high tide rinsed the tunnel clean, a powerful putrid odor hit them like a shovel to the face.

“Keep your mouths open and you won't smell it,” whispered Cross. Looking down, he realized he shouldn't have worn his good shoes.

The tunnel sloped at a very steep angle. Good for drainage but tiring for walking. About fifty feet from the prison, they heard a rumbling.

“Brace yourselves and don't let go of the bag,” Cross yelled.

A few seconds later, a wall of brown water crashed into them.

“Christ, I'm covered in shit,” Coogan screamed as the torrent swept around his waist.

“Goddamn you, Cross,” Brady hissed, clutching the bag of tools to his chest.

“How the hell should I know when they flush the lines?” Cross snapped, thinking he shouldn't have worn his Brooks Brothers trousers either.

Stinking and angry, the men kept walking until they reached the exterior prison wall. They climbed through a hatch into a plumbing cavity in the addition, a towering three-story space filled from top to bottom with waste lines from each cell. The space was barely four feet wide. Cross pulled the drawings from inside his soaking shirt. Brady raised the lantern.

“He's in cell twenty-four, second tier,” whispered Cross. He started pacing off a small distance to his right, trying to find the actual position of the cell as displayed on the drawing. “Right up there.”

Using the labyrinth of piping like a ladder, Brady began climbing up to the cell, his dirty canvas bag of tools bouncing against his side. When he grabbed for an upper piece of lead pipe, it pulled out of its joint and crashed to the cement floor. The sound reverberated through the space like a pistol shot. The men froze, waiting for a reaction.

The minutes passed like months. Cross's wet body was drenched in sweat. He tried to imagine how he would explain his presence. Nothing he thought of was very convincing. He could see the front-page article in the
Tribune
, imagine the ruin that would befall his family.

But there was nothing but silence. Brady, still above them, took another route to the second tier. Coogan followed. To provide ventilation, each cell had a two-foot-square grille made of wide bands of iron; it looked like the weave of a basket. Above them, in the roof over the cavity, ventilators drew in fresh air. Hardenbergh was no fool; he knew the grilles could be escape routes, and he took great care in detailing their anchorage to the massive stone walls. Huge bolts and iron plates secured them to the inside face of the cavity wall. There was no way a prisoner could unfasten them from inside the cell, but from the outside, it was a simple matter of unbolting—as Brady was about to do with the huge wrench he'd brought along.

“Sanders, we're here to get you out,” he whispered through the vent grille.

“I'll keep watch by the bars while you work,” a voice said.

Brady placed the spanner on the first bolt and threw his weight on the handle. The bolt loosened with a tiny squeak. He quickly attacked the other three. Once loosened, he unscrewed them, placed them in his bag, pulled out the vent, and handed it to Coogan, who was perched on the pipes. The shiny, round pate of Bald Jack appeared in the opening. Being skinny and small, he squirmed through without difficulty.

“Good evening, Mr. Brady,” whispered Bald Jack. He wore a gray-and-black-striped prison uniform of rough wool but otherwise looked much the same.

As Brady and Coogan helped Bald Jack keep his balance on the piping, a head of red hair appeared. “Who the fuck is this?” hissed Brady, watching the man wriggle his shoulders and arms through the opening.

“That's Gordon, my cell mate,” Bald Jack said. “This isn't the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I don't get my own goddamn room.”

“And I'm coming too. Ya ain't leaving me behind,” Gordon snarled. He bulled his way through to his waist, and then Bald Jack and Brady pulled him the rest of the way out.

Brady carefully inserted the vent into place and tightened the bolts.

“They'll think we vanished into thin air,” said Bald Jack with a smile.

“Let's move,” said Coogan, leading the way down.

“Who the hell is he?” asked Cross, who had been waiting for them at the bottom of the plumbing cavity.

“Never you mind,” said Brady, who took the lead as they moved back into the sewer tunnel.

“Holy shit, it stinks,” Gordon said.

“Shit smells like shit,” said Coogan with a smile.

The five men splashed through the tunnel to the boat. Brady scanned the seawall for guards. Satisfied, he gave Coogan the signal to shove off.

“You know, the grub wasn't bad in there. Ya got a pound of meat for dinner every day,” Bald Jack said, looking back at the prison as they rowed away.

“And a whole quart of vegetable soup,” added Gordon.

“We can turn around and take you back if you liked the place so much,” said Coogan.

“Shit no. You know the worst part of bein' in there? They
made
you go to evening school,” Bald Jack said.

Brady laughed. “Hell, let's take 'em back. You would've finally learned to read and write at the age of forty.”

The rowboat silently made its way back across the river. To Cross's relief, there wasn't a boat to be seen. Just a few hundred yards more, and they'd be safe on the Queens side.

“So what were you in for, Gordon?” Brady asked.

“Got caught robbing Saint Jerome's Rectory on East Forty-Seventh Street.”

“Tough break,” Brady said sympathetically. “Lotta silver in those places.”

“You bet. When I get back to Manhattan, I'll get set up, maybe go back to the same place and try again.”

“That's a real smart idea. They won't expect you to hit it twice in a row,” said Brady, nodding in approval.

They reached the bank of the river and tied up. As he stepped out of the boat, Gordon laid his hand on Bald Jack's shoulder. “It was real white of ya to let me come along, and I won't forget it. You should look me up at the Black and Tan on Bleecker. That's my joint.”

“Sure thing, Gordie,” said Bald Jack, extending his hand.

As Gordon reached out to take it, Coogan and Brady grabbed him from behind and flung him facedown into the river. They held him under, Cross watching in horror as the man struggled with all his might to free himself, arms and legs flailing, splashing against the dark water. After two agonizing minutes, his body went completely still. Bald Jack watched impassively as Brady tugged the floating body by the back of the collar, gently guiding it into the fast-moving current. The black-and-gray form was carried away silently into the night.

“You bastard,” screamed Cross, his voice shattering the silence.

In a second, his own head was underwater. Gulping down what seemed like a gallon of river water, he felt hands forcing him down, down. He flailed his arms in panic.

Suddenly, he was released. He stumbled to the river bank, coughing and gagging.

“It's late. Time to go home, Cross,” said Brady, watching him with impassive eyes.

“There's a fellow out front who wants to see you, Mr. Cross. Says he's your brother.”

Cross put down his pencil. He'd been working on a design for an office building on Broadway and Spring Street. Like his former master, H. H. Richardson, he would make a rough sketch of an idea and then hand it off to his assistants to refine and develop. But an avalanche of work had descended upon the office in the last month, and he was behind. He hadn't even started the design for the new orphan asylum up in Westchester.

When he did sit down to work, he couldn't keep his mind off of Gordon's body, floating away into the night. It wasn't so much the image of his corpse as the fact that Cross had watched him be murdered. Brady and Coogan had done it with such ease, such absolute lack of emotion. Still, Gordon's death had a positive side. It had almost completely erased his anxiety over getting caught for the Cook robbery—what was a little jail time when he could be dead?

Cross approached the office reception room slowly, trying to see if it really was his brother or one of Kent's men with a message. A week after the jailbreak, he'd received a call telling him he had a week to prepare the next job. Had Kent's men come early?

But no. Standing there was Robert, his older brother, someone he hadn't seen in years. Cross smiled when he saw how fit and well Robert looked. His full head of dark hair was showing some gray, but he still cut an imposing figure. Cross looked up to his older brother still, even though their father thought Robert a failure. He'd dropped out of Harvard after one year and drifted around the East Coast until the outbreak of the Civil War. He joined the Union Army, rising to the rank of captain and winning a medal at Gettysburg. His heroism had made Cross proud but at the same time ashamed for having sat out the war.

“Robert,” Cross cried, and every draftsman lifted his head and looked up. They embraced, and Cross found that he had tears in his eyes.

“You blackguard, I haven't seen you in three years,” Robert said. “Before you start jabbering on about your architecture, tell me how Helen and the children are.”

“Fine, just fine. George graduated, Charlie's ten and constantly in motion, and Julia's about to make her debut.”

“Already? She was so little when I last saw her.”

“All grown up. Though she can't stand wearing a corset.”

“I can't wait to see them all. How's the beautiful Helen?”

“Running around like mad, preparing for Julia's coming-out ball.”

Robert checked his pocket watch. “It's getting close to noon. Stop slaving away on those drawings and come out to lunch with me.”

“You're in luck. I'm meeting George at Delmonico's on Fourteenth Street for lunch. And you're coming too,” Cross said, almost giddy with happiness. “He'll be surprised as hell to see you.”

Seeing his brother was the best medicine he could have imagined. Growing up, Cross had adored his big brother, who always welcomed his company, unlike many older brothers who would tell their young siblings to get lost. Robert was a far bigger influence in his life than his aloof father, often giving him advice on how to play baseball or ride a horse, how to avoid getting bullied by classmates at prep school, and on the best methods to woo the opposite sex. Robert had the knack of knowing when something was troubling his brother and would immediately offer counsel on how to deal with sadness, disappointment, or anger over a particular problem. It bothered Cross that they had drifted apart over the last few years.

As it was a beautiful August day, they decided to walk from Broadway and Grand Street up to the restaurant. Robert had always been a good listener, and now he asked his brother insightful questions about his business. Because they had time on their hands, he graciously asked if there were any of Cross's buildings nearby. There were, and the brothers took a detour toward a publishing company at Lafayette and Bond Streets.

“Damn, Johnny,” Robert said, staring up at the facade. “I wish I had talent like yours. To figure out all that decoration on those arches? That's really something.”

Ever since he was a boy, Cross had loved his older brother's praise. This time, the words gave him pause—the admiration suddenly reminded him of Kent's.

“Does Aunt Caroline ever throw you work?” Robert asked with a sly smile.

“Lots of referrals, but no real Astor work.”

“Always keep on the old girl's good side, Johnny,” Robert said. “Remember how she said I was acting common when she caught me smoking that cigar?”

“In her formal parlor! And you were ten,” Cross said, laughing.

They turned north on Fifth Avenue. Before Cross could ask about his brother's life, Robert said, “The thing I envy most about you is your family. Sometimes I wish I had one.”

“Nonsense. There's still time.”

“Not pushing fifty and in my line of work.”

“What are you doing now? Last I heard, you worked for the Remington Arms Company.”

“I'm a Pinkerton man.”

“Since when?”

“About two years ago. I ran into a man from my old regiment who was a Pinkerton. Said that with my military background, he could get me a job, and he did, in Buffalo. That's where I've been all this time. But they transferred me to New York last week.”

“Do you like the work?” To Cross, being a detective sounded exciting and romantic, though in recent years, the working classes had come to think of the Pinkertons as a ruthless mercenary army used to break strikes. But society people loved them, for they kept the commoners in their place.

“I've finally found my calling,” said Robert, nodding. He slapped his brother on the shoulder and resumed walking.

“And you're based in New York permanently?” Cross couldn't keep the excitement from his voice.

“Yes. I've been promoted to the main office. I'm staying at the Hotel Brunswick for now. Perhaps you can help me find an apartment?”

“Of course. That's wonderful, Rob. I can recommend a few places.”

“Wonderful. I've been assigned a very interesting case, you see. A rich fellow named Cook—of Cook Shoes, out of Saint Louis? Perhaps you heard of him. Had his place on Fifth Avenue completely cleaned out a few weeks ago. Never seen so thorough a job. The criminals strangled an unfortunate servant girl who happened to be there. The police found her body in the river.”

Robert looked to his side, but Cross wasn't there. He turned and saw his brother, standing still as a statue in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What's wrong, Johnny?” Robert asked, alarmed.

At first, Cross didn't answer. He just stared off into space. His head was swimming; he thought he was going to faint.

Concerned, Robert walked up to him.

“I never saw anything about it in the papers,” Cross whispered, trying to pull himself together.

“Cook was embarrassed. He didn't want any publicity. That's why they called us in.”

“Any leads?”

“Not a one. Come on, I'm starving. I could eat a bear.”

• • •

This would be the first time since the graduation party that he'd seen George—and the first time since he'd found out about his debt. Despite his anguish regarding his son's secret life, Cross had been looking forward to it. His anger toward his son had diminished, and he was slowly beginning to forgive him.
A
son's faults are the father's faults
, he kept reminding himself. And every time he thought of leaving Kent, he saw his son's corpse.

But Kent's warnings about his son's “weakness” haunted him. Although Cross was closer to his son than most society fathers, a wide gulf still yawned between them. Though he might wish it otherwise, and while he desperately wanted to believe George was staying out of trouble, he really had no idea if the boy had kept gambling.

Down deep, he didn't want to know. The thought terrified him. He pushed it away, viciously sublimating it.
Like
Aunt
Caroline
, he thought grimly.
Always
ignoring
anything
unpleasant.

So, after all these weeks, the sight of George did not brighten Cross's spirits. The news his brother had delivered crushed him; his mind reeled. While his son and brother chattered away, he kept thinking of the girl's body, floating in the water. Just like Gordon.

Had she been like Colleen, the Cross's servant girl? Pretty and sweet-natured, straight off the boat from Ireland? Girls like that spent their entire lives bent over washtubs and ironing boards, but incredibly, they still had a cheerful outlook on life. They were happy just to be in America. Cross thought back to that night in the carriage, watching Brady play with the length of piano wire. It wasn't a nervous affectation.

Cross hadn't touched his terrapin soup or the lamb chops. He swallowed hard and looked over at George, laughing and happy.

“John…John. Are you still with us, old man?” Robert asked.

Cross snapped out of his trance. “Why yes, yes, of course. What were you talking about?”

“That it's incredible George played in the Polo Grounds in front of all those people.”

“He's too modest to tell you he hit the game-winning home run against Yale.”

“Damn, I wish I would've seen that. And against those bastards from Yale too!”

But as Cross watched them speak and exchange easy smiles, his whole feeling toward his son shifted with the abruptness of a switch being thrown. He'd been fooling himself all this time. His family's calamity was the result of George's foolishness. Cross stared at his son, the brilliant Harvard academic scholar. It was all a facade, shielding a terrible secret. At that moment, there was not a shred of fatherly love in him. He felt like reaching across the table and throttling George. A father wasn't supposed to hate his own son. Cross hated
himself
for feeling this way, but he couldn't help it. He averted his eyes.

“Now that I live in New York,” Robert was saying, “we can go to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants.”

“Charlie's going to love that,” said George.

“Robert,” said Cross. His voice was unusually loud and halted the conversation. “Please come to dinner tomorrow night to meet the rest of the family. George, I hope you can make it.”

“I'm sorry, Father. I've made plans.”

Cross glared at his son. An uneasy silence fell upon the table. A waiter came to take dessert orders and serve the coffee and brandy. Robert tried to resurrect the conversation, to no avail. After Cross saw his brother off in a carriage, he hailed one for himself.

“I'll drop you off uptown, George.”

“I wasn't heading that way, but…”

“Get in,” Cross snapped.

They sat in silence as the horses clip-clopped up Fifth Avenue. Progress through the morass of afternoon traffic was slow. As he stared at his son, anger built up within Cross like red-hot magma in the throat of a volcano. He took a deep breath and turned his head to look at the stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk. Not one of them, he thought, could have as great a burden as the one he shouldered at that moment.

“So you have plans for tomorrow. Do they involve numbers?”

“No, Father. I don't have to teach.”

“What about numbers on playing cards? The five of diamonds, the three of spades?”

Cross saw the puzzled look on George's face change to panic. His son shifted his body uncomfortably on the leather bench seat of the carriage.

“Even as a child, you had an affinity for numbers. You could do the most complicated puzzles, add large sums in your head. I was so damn proud of you. I knew you'd become a scholar—and you did.” Cross spoke without looking at George. His gaze was fixed on the passing storefronts along the street.

“Yes, I was always fascinated by numbers,” George said, his eyes full of worry and suspicion.

“I suppose there's one number that's of particular fascination—forty-eight thousand.”

For a second, Cross thought George would throw open the carriage door and bolt. But the boy froze in his seat and looked his father straight in the eye.

“I have a gambling debt of forty-eight thousand dollars,” he said in a loud, clear voice.

Instead of exploding in anger, Cross was actually pleased by his son's candor. He could tell George was shaken down to his boots, but he was fighting hard to put up a brave front. It was impressive.

“You
did
have a gambling debt of forty-eight thousand dollars. I paid it. Mr. Kent and I have reached an agreement that ensures no harm will come to you.”

George's brave facade crumbled. His hands covered his face. He bent over as though the shame had punched him in the stomach.

“No one in the family knows of this—and they never will.”

Still bent double, George began to sob. “I'm so sorry, Father. I—”

“I don't understand how you got mixed up in this. You're an adult, and I respect that. I would not attempt to meddle in your personal life. But you can never gamble again, George. It's over. It has to be!”

George looked up at his father. “Thank you so much,” he said in a trembling voice. “You don't know how grateful I am. I'm…so sorry for what I've done to you.”

Cross could see the shame and embarrassment breaking his son in two. It was painful to watch, but he had no intention of letting up. “It's what you've done to
yourself
. You don't know how close you came to destroying your life—and your family's. You have a brilliant academic career ahead of you, George. I won't allow you to throw that away. We'll put this behind us, but I
forbid
you to gamble again. You must promise me, son.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. I know what I did was foolish. I swear to you, it won't happen again. I swear.”