House of Thieves (15 page)

“Tell Mrs. O'Shea what a fine meal that was. No one does salmon à la reine better.”

As Cross would be away on Sunday, his family ate together that Saturday night. He looked around the dinner table at his family, a perfect portrait of warm domestic bliss. Only he knew the terrible danger they were in. Each of them had their own sword of Damocles, dangling by the thinnest of threads over their heads, and only he could prevent Kent from snapping them.

Despite the dread welling in his chest, Cross tried to put on a cheerful face.

“I bet you're looking forward to the Giants game, Charlie.”

“It's Tuesday afternoon. You said you'd be back on Monday,” Charlie said with a worried expression. “Uncle Robert is going.”

“I'll be back Monday afternoon at the latest. It's just a short trip to Albany to see about a museum project,” Cross said. He turned to his daughter and smiled. “I haven't read your novel in ages, Julia.” He was immensely proud of her love for literature and real talent for writing. To his relief, she wasn't growing up to be an empty-headed socialite.

“I'm afraid I haven't done much writing lately,” Julia said. “I haven't had the time.” She bit her lip and added, “And, in fact, I may have come across a new subject.”

“With all these preparations for the ball, of course she hasn't had the time,” Helen said, ignoring Julia's latter comment.

Cross smiled. He knew his wife thought her daughter's literary aspirations a serious impediment to a successful marriage.

“Well then, I'm off. Everyone come give the papa bear a kiss good-bye so I can catch my train.”

Julia and Charlie jumped up and ran to their father, hugging and kissing him. Helen sat where she was, hands folded in her lap.

In the entry foyer, Cross picked up his leather bag and went out to hail a carriage. But instead of telling the driver to take him to Grand Central, he asked for the Union League Club. He smoked and read the papers until Culver picked him up.

Preparations for the robbery had taken three long weeks. The robbers would tunnel twenty-five feet from the side of the underground tunnel to the basement wall of Fidelity National, break through, crack the vault, and loot the safe-deposit boxes. Cross was not expected to do any digging, but his presence would be required when they reached the basement wall.

The corner of Warren Street and Broadway was deserted when the carriage pulled up to the iron plate in the street. The whores had gone to wherever it was the poor wretches lived—in the cellars or alleys. There would be no prying eyes tonight.

Cross and Culver knelt on the floor of the carriage. Culver removed a false panel, took an iron bar with a hook at its end, reached down, and pulled up the plate.
A
clever
way
to
bring
the
digging
equipment
into
the
tunnel
without
being
noticed
, Cross thought.

“Down ya go, Mr. Cross,” Culver said.

Below the plate were stone steps. Cross descended slowly. To his amazement, he found himself in an opulent waiting room, fitted out like a luxury hotel lobby, with a cut-glass chandelier, wood paneling, and a marble floor. An empty stone fountain stood in its center. Except for a layer of dust, the room looked exactly as it must have when Beach opened his underground railway.

A rough man in an expensive suit and derby was waiting.

“I'm Dago Frank,” he said, not extending his hand.

Cross nodded and followed him to the far end of the waiting room, where the pneumatic tunnel began.

Frank held up his lantern. There stood the abandoned tubular train car, which had been pushed through the tunnel by the huge blower fan. They entered the car's front door, then walked down the ten-foot aisle flanked by plush leather bench seats and out the rear. Even in the swaying light of the lantern, Cross noted how well engineered the tunnel was. A perfect cylinder constructed of painted white brick, it showed no sign of deterioration or leaking water. Beach, he knew, had invented a flexible hydraulic shield that could cut through the earth without cave-ins. Kent would not have that luxury tonight. He'd have to tunnel through the sandy soil by hand and shore up the sides and top with planks. The whole job had been planned to the letter, only it still could be doomed by a cave-in.

After walking about forty yards, Cross saw light ahead. The men had broken through the brick wall of the Beach tunnel and begun excavating. He stopped by the opening and peered in. The tunnel was already twenty feet long. His first impression was that Kent had hired real coal miners to do the excavation, but then he recognized the regular gang, hard at work. Even Brady was there. The twelve-man team consisted of diggers with picks and shovels, haulers who took away the dirt in small wheelbarrows, and men who shored the tunnel. Instead of their customary suits, Kent's men were dressed in work clothes and covered with dirt. Their efficiency reminded Cross of an ant colony he'd had as a boy.

Kent emerged out of the shadows, dressed in his usual elegant attire, twirling his cane.

“Just a few more feet and we'll hit the basement wall, Mr. Cross.”

“Then you have four feet of solid brick foundation to get through,” Cross said.

“We have the tools we need. Your drawings were very helpful. May I offer you some food and drink?”

In spite of himself, Cross was hungry. He followed Kent down the tunnel to a pile of wooden boxes containing sandwiches and bottles of sarsaparilla. “Clever not to provide alcohol on the job,” he said with a smile.

“Some of my men are too fond of it, and it can impair their judgment,” Kent said, picking out a sandwich for himself. He sat on the box and ate.

“Remember our discussion,” Cross said. “Tonight's proceeds should forgive my debt.”

“I certainly do. And as I said, it's a possibility.”

“I want to be present when you do the accounting.”

Kent did not answer.

They ate and drank in silence. More than an hour passed. Cross listened as the picks beat against the brick foundation wall. He looked to the right and saw a small wooden box with red Xs painted on the top and sides. His heart sank. Kent was going to try nitro again.

Without thinking, Cross asked, “Why does a man like you do this sort of thing? You certainly don't need the money.”

Kent smiled. He didn't seem at all offended by the question. “Mr. Cross, you can't imagine the feeling of exhilaration I get when committing a robbery. Whether it's cracking a bank vault or stealing valuables from a house, there's a sense of intense ecstasy, a sensation like no other.” He paused, grinning from ear to ear. “The excitement comes from the fact that at any second, I might be caught. I love that feeling more than any other. You're right; I don't need the money. But I
want
that feeling.”

Cross looked at him incredulously. He'd never met a man like this before. “Is it true that you studied to be a doctor?”

“I
am
a doctor. Graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.”

“But how—”

“Whether we like it or not, our lives are dictated by pure circumstance, Mr. Cross. One night, there was a knock on my office door. A man told me his friend was badly hurt. When I grabbed my bag and went with him, I found a man shot through the gut and bleeding to death. I saved his life. His name was Ben McGarrigle. At the time, he was one of the most feared underworld bosses in the city. In gratitude, he paid me ten times my usual fee, took me under his wing, and treated me like a son. He was more of a father to me than my real one in Baltimore. With his help, I descended into the underworld. It's a separate universe, Mr. Cross. It has its own rules and values, and it doesn't have to answer to anyone. I admired that. But I didn't give up my privileged life in society. I didn't have to. I simply took on a secret life. And after a time, I gave up my practice and went into a more lucrative line of work—crime. I've never regretted it. You see, there was another thing I found out about myself. Instead of saving life, I like taking it away.”

Culver approached, out of breath, but with a smile on his face.

“We've broken through.”

The gang gathered around the jagged opening in the brick wall, and the first two men passed through, holding lanterns. All the men were in a boisterous mood, laughing and talking among themselves.

While some banks housed their vaults in full view on the banking floor, most preferred to hide them in the lower bowels of the building, where they would be harder to rob. The safe itself was some forty feet into the basement in its own room, fronted by an ornate iron gate Cross had designed. Beside it was a room lined with safe-deposit boxes. There was no alarm system installed. Fidelity National hadn't thought they'd need one. They were too cheap to even hire a watchman. The police came by to check the front door while on their night rounds.

Two more men stepped inside the hole in the basement wall as Kent and Cross approached.

“Make way for Mr. Kent,” came the command.

As the men began to part, a voice from within the darkness of the basement yelled out, “Hands up. You're under arrest. Stay where you are.”

The voice hit them like a thunderbolt. Cross and Kent froze, as did the rest of the gang. In an instant, the basement was flooded by another source of light—the electric lights on the walls and ceiling, illuminating the space in stark tones.

“Pinkertons!” someone cried out in panic.

“That's right, gentlemen, and you're under arrest.”

The voice hit Cross in the stomach like a prizefighter's punch, almost knocking the wind out of him. Robert had a rich, deep baritone like that. Cross crouched and looked through the mass of men to see his brother, standing in the basement, holding a revolver. “Damn you. I said hands up!” Robert Cross roared.

Kent's men stood frozen in place. Cross felt like he was about to pass out. Staggering backward, he leaned against the tunnel wall to keep himself from falling. Then he began running like a madman. As he pumped his legs and struggled to breathe, he kept thinking about explaining the tawdry story to his brother from inside a jail cell.

Back in Beach's tunnel, he turned right and sped to the nitro box. He removed his handkerchief and tied it around his face. Carefully lifting the lid, he saw that the box was packed with cotton. Fishing his hand around in the stuff, he found the glass vial of nitro. Cradling it in the wad of cotton like a newborn, he ran back into the tunnel, toward the basement of the bank.

As he ran, he heard shots ring out. Kent and his gang were pressed against the wood shoring of the tunnel walls, guns drawn. One man was down, holding his leg and screaming in pain.

“Put your guns down or I'll give you this nitro!” Cross screamed in a raspy voice he prayed his brother wouldn't recognize.

His words were met by dead silence.

Cross dropped the wad of cotton and walked to the opening, holding the vial above his head.

“You men, get out of there,” he commanded the gang members already inside the basement.

The men obeyed. Robert, along with the other Pinkertons, lowered his gun and backed slowly away.

“Stay where you are or I'll throw this!” Cross shouted. The Pinkertons didn't move.

Cross stayed where he was too. Behind him, the entire gang inched out of the tunnel. Two men picked up the wounded robber and dragged him out.

Cross started backing down the tunnel. Under his voice, to no one in particular, he said, “Cave it in.”

As men on either side yanked out the wall shoring, Cross turned and ran. The ceiling came down hard; in an instant, tons of yellowish-brown earth filled the opening. Safely beyond the cave-in's range, Cross carefully set the nitro vial on the soft dirt, happy to leave it behind.

Kent met him at the intersection with Beach's tunnel. “They'll be waiting for us at Warren Street. Come this way,” he yelled.

Instead of going north, the gang ran to the south. Cross heard shouting from the railway tunnel; far in the distance, he saw men with lanterns running toward them. Brady and Coogan stopped running. As if reading each other's minds, each man grabbed handfuls of the dozens of canvas sacks meant to transport the money, piled them in the middle of the tunnel, and threw four lanterns onto the stack. There was the whoosh of spreading flames, and a wall of fire blocked the entire tunnel diameter.

At the Murray Street end of the tunnel, Dago Frank pulled open a heavy iron hatch on the right wall. Men flew into the opening like rats jumping into a ship's porthole. The passageway opened up into a tiny service alley. One by one, the men disappeared into the darkness.

• • •

“You tipped off the Pinkertons, you son of a bitch.”

Cross couldn't believe this was happening. As the gang had scattered into the night three hours earlier, Brady had collared him and dragged him into a carriage. Throughout the fifteen-minute trip to McGlory's, as Cross lay helpless on the floor of the carriage, Brady pummeled him with his fists.

Cross was standing on a chair, a wire noose around his neck. Instead of being hailed as a hero for his quick thinking, the gang seemed ready to kill him for being a traitor.

“Don't lie to us, you shit. You told them!” Brady screamed.

Kent wasn't watching. Calmly smoking a Havana, he was bandaging the leg of Bill Crabb. The white gauze was wrapped neatly and tied off with a sure hand. “Haven't lost my touch,” Kent said to himself, smiling.

“Who else have you told?” Brady had his foot on the rickety wooden chair. With each outburst, he shook the chair until it was about to topple over—and then stopped.

“Goddamn you, I didn't tell a soul!” Cross was red in the face with anger. “Why the hell would I do that? One of you betrayed us, can't you see that?”

“Bullshit. No one ever informs. Ever,” Brady hissed.

“The police could've picked up one of your men. Maybe he turned on you.”

“The men waiting for us were Pinkertons, not the police,” Kent said in a quiet voice.

“I'm telling you: I didn't say a word to anyone. Why would I do that?” Cross pleaded.

Brady began to shake the chair again.

Cross was breathing heavily, his heart pounding like a drum. At any second, Kent would announce that his brother, the Pinkerton, was one of the men waiting for them, and his fate would be sealed. Brady would yank out the chair with glee.

“They'd catch the gang in one shot, and you'd be in the clear,” said Coogan, looking up at Cross, his hands on his hips.

“And suppose just one of the gang wasn't down there. He'd find out I was the turncoat and kill my whole family in front of me,” Cross said.

Kent laughed. “Mr. Cross, you're beginning to understand how we think in this line of work.”

“Good God, man, you'd be sitting in the Tombs right now if it weren't for me. I saved you. Where's your goddamn gratitude?” A wall of silence met his question. “There's a traitor. Goddamn it, don't you see? All of us are at risk.”

“None of my men is a traitor—they know what the consequences would be,” Kent said. He circled the chair, smoking his cigar, deep in thought. “All right. I'll give you a second chance, Mr. Cross. We lost a good deal of money tonight, so you'll have to make it up to us. Find another house. No more banks, not for a while.”

“But there's a traitor. No matter what move we make, the Pinkertons will be on to us.”

“Then from now on, we will be more cautious. You'll only deal with me,” Kent said and nodded to Brady, who, with a disappointed expression, stepped up on the chair, removed the noose, and shoved Cross to the floor.