House of Thieves (3 page)

Cross started sprinting up the front stoop but halted midway. What was he thinking? The thought of knocking on Caroline's door and telling her what had happened filled him with shame. George's dishonor would repulse her, and knowing Caroline, she'd slam the door on his family. If her son, Jack, had found himself in this kind of fix, it was merely a matter of writing a check and keeping the whole thing secret. But being poor, distantly related Schermerhorns and Livingstons only went so far. Society people walked on eggshells their whole lives to avoid the merest whiff of scandal. Cross had seen lives shattered by a mere whisper, no matter how untrue. And if it
was
true…

No, he couldn't go directly to Caroline. But perhaps he could reach out to someone in her circle of influence, a person he wasn't tied to by blood. Cross walked to the bottom of the stoop and thought for a while. Then he walked slowly downtown to Madison Square, oblivious to the scorching sun that beat down upon him. Continuing on Broadway, he stopped in front of the recently finished Lincoln Building at Fourteenth Street. The office of Thomas Griffith, the Astors' most trusted attorney, was located there. Griffith, the city's paragon of the legal profession, would tell Cross what to do, and he'd never breathe a word to the Astors.

Finally feeling a small measure of relief, Cross entered the towering, ten-story limestone building.

Even if it hadn't been a sweltering July night, Cross wouldn't have been able to sleep. He was still too shaken and frightened by the day's revelations.

After tossing and turning for hours, he finally gave up and rose. Thankfully, he and Helen had separate bedrooms. If they'd slept in the same bed, his wife would have known immediately that something was wrong. Cross usually slept like a rock.

Putting on his dark green silk dressing gown, Cross sat on the settee in the parlor and smoked until dawn's light streamed in through the gap in the heavy velvet drapes hanging over the tall windows. He couldn't get his mind off what George had done. It didn't seem possible that Kent was talking about his son. Did George really live in a secret world, one unfathomable to Cross?

Of course Cross knew what gentlemen of his class did when away from the prying eyes of their families. Stanford White was the supreme example of a gentleman's penchant for extracurricular activities, and Cross was no saint himself. But even those debaucheries followed class boundaries. You'd never see White on the Bowery or in a Chinatown gambling den.

President Eliot's words from George's graduation party rang in Cross's ears: “…
vices
born
of
luxury
and
self-indulgence on the rise
.” At the time, Cross had thought with self-righteous satisfaction that Eliot's words didn't apply to his boy. He'd seen high-society fathers destroy their sons with money, yachts, racehorses, and anything else they wanted—gifts that killed the boys' ambition. Despite his own past, Cross had avoided this path. Yes, he came from a society family with all the Knickerbocker advantages: elite private schools, summers in Newport and the Berkshires, riding, shooting, European tours, servants, balls. He'd gone to Harvard too. But then, defying the Knickerbocker business tradition, he went to Paris to train in architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. After apprenticing for one of America's greatest architects, Henry Hobson Richardson, he'd set up his own practice. Cross had had a real goal in life. In turn, he wanted to set an example for his son. To his delight, George had great dreams too—to become a mathematician and teach, perhaps as a professor at Harvard. What the hell had happened?

None
of
that
matters
, Cross told himself. What mattered was keeping George alive. Speaking to Thomas Griffith yesterday had set Cross's mind somewhat at ease, if only because it allowed Cross to share his desperate burden.

To Cross's surprise, Griffith, a taciturn, granite-faced man of seventy, had turned ashen when he'd heard Kent's name. Kent, he explained to Cross, was a well-bred, Princeton-educated man from a wealthy mercantile family in Baltimore. Rumor had it that he'd originally trained to be a doctor. His connections at the highest levels of business and government in New York made him a man of great influence and power. Even Tammany Hall, the political machine that ran the city, did what he told them to do.

Kent was a man to be feared. Although he was already so rich he didn't need the money, he ran an extensive crime organization that committed any kind of depravity that would turn a profit. His gang was nicknamed “Kent's Gents” because they dressed like society gentlemen, down to their gold-capped walking sticks, which were used more frequently for beating people to death than strolling about.

The attorney made Cross repeat the conversation they'd had at Saint Patrick's word for word. Then, with a terrified look on his face, Griffith told Cross that they had to move quickly or George would indeed be killed. Kent did not make idle threats.

At these words, Cross groaned as if he'd been punched in the stomach and dropped his head, tears welling up in his eyes. Griffith went to the telephone on his office wall and asked for police headquarters on Mulberry Street. He was immediately connected to Thomas Byrnes, chief inspector of the New York City Police Department. From his tone, they seemed to be good friends. Griffith explained that he was calling on a matter of great urgency, and Byrnes agreed to see him first thing the next morning.

Cross had breathed a great sigh of relief when he heard the policeman's name. Byrnes was a ruthlessly efficient Irish cop who had transformed the New York City police, weeding out corruption and modernizing investigations with innovations like mug shots, which created a photographic gallery of known criminals. Before Byrnes's arrival, the New York underworld had seen the city's police force as a joke. But all that had changed. Wall Street, for instance, had always been a rich hunting ground for criminals, who preyed on bank messengers, robbing them of the bonds, securities, and cash they carried from bank to bank. Byrnes declared that Fulton Street, the northern boundary of Wall Street, would be a “dead line,” below which all criminals would be arrested on sight. He was true to his word, and robberies on Wall Street soon dropped to zero.

Byrnes, Cross realized, was the only man who could save his son.

• • •

It was 6:00 a.m. He heard Colleen, their maid, moving about in the kitchen on the ground floor, lighting the fire in the cast-iron stove and getting ready to set the table for breakfast. Mrs. Johnston, the housekeeper, and Mrs. O'Shea, the cook, would be down soon. Cross hadn't eaten anything since yesterday's meeting with Kent. Now, he found that his appetite had returned.

As Cross walked into the center hall to the stairs, he heard the telephone ring. Odd to get a call so early in the morning.

“It's for you, sir,” said Colleen in her chipper Irish brogue as she passed him on the stair.

Cross picked up the receiver in the kitchen.

“Good morning, Mr. Cross,” a man's voice said. “We wanted to let you know that we just made an ice delivery.”

The phone clicked off. Cross turned to look at the icebox on the far wall of his kitchen, a thoroughly modern room with the latest in newfangled technology, befitting an architect. The icebox was clad in dark walnut and lined with cork insulation; it had extra shelves and a space at the top to hold a block of ice weighing about two hundred pounds. A little door in the back faced another matching door that Cross had cut into the outside brownstone wall on the Thirtieth Street side. The iceman could place the ice directly in the icebox without coming into the kitchen. But Mrs. O'Shea usually placed a card in the kitchen window to tell the iceman when ice was needed. It was odd that he would call the house.

Cross slowly walked to the icebox and opened it. He saw nothing unusual on the shelves, just the ordinary perishable foodstuffs. Cheese and lettuce. Puzzled, he opened the door of the top compartment—and stepped back with a gasp. Inside, encased in a block of ice, was the severed head of a man. After a few seconds, Cross recognized Thomas Griffith, the Astors' attorney. Griffith's eyes were wide with terror. His severed flesh was tinted bluish, the lips purple, his white hair floating above his skull like he was under water.

Heart pounding, Cross wheeled, made sure no one else was in the kitchen, and quickly pushed the door of the icebox shut. At that moment, the telephone rang again. He ran to it before Colleen could answer from upstairs.

“Mr. Cross? We must apologize. We delivered the wrong ice to you this morning. But don't worry. We'll replace it right away.”

Cross slammed the receiver against the wall box and fell to the slate floor like a building collapsing in on itself. Crumpled and hyperventilating, he stared at the icebox in horror. As if from very far away, he heard the doors at the back open and then the sound of blocks of ice being moved about. The telephone rang for the third time. Cross stared at the dark oak telephone box for a long moment. Then he slowly reached for the receiver.

“Good morning, Mr. Cross. Please meet me at the Dakota today at three p.m. Apartment 7G.” Cross recognized the voice of James Kent, who hung up abruptly.

Mrs. O'Shea, a gaunt Irish woman in a dark gray dress and white apron, came into the kitchen, humming to herself.

“Why, Mr. Cross, whatever are you doing down here this early?” Without waiting for his answer, she went right to the icebox and opened the top compartment to check the ice, as she did every morning.

The block of ice was crystal clear.

“When you present your calling card to the butler, Julia, you must wait to see if the lady of the house will receive you. If the butler tells you, ‘She's not at home to callers,' that's perfectly acceptable. Don't take it as a slight. Leaving your card fulfills your obligation. Now, if she does receive you, never stay for more than thirty minutes. And never pay a call before two or after four.”

Helen Cross delivered her lecture in a stern schoolteacher's voice. Her daughter wrinkled her brow, took the calling card from her mother, and examined it.

“No lady
ever
leaves just her own card on the first visit. She must always include her husband's,” Helen continued.

“This is so complicated, Mother. Why must I know all this absurd social arithmetic?” Julia asked, her tone a combination of scorn and amusement.

Her grandmother, a slender and graceful Knickerbocker matriarch who still retained her beauty after seventy years, took Julia by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “My child, calling cards are the alpha and omega of social intercourse. You
must
remember this.”

“You won't get your own cards in your first season, mind. Your name will be on mine,” Helen said. “It seems complicated, but you'll soon learn the rules. We all had to go through this.”

“The most important rule to remember is that an unmarried woman never receives a gentleman caller without her mother or a chaperone present.” Granny spoke with an earnestness that startled Julia. “A chaperone knows the world; a young girl doesn't.”

Aunt Caroline Astor placed her arm around Julia. “Remember, my dear, you're a Schermerhorn. We're held to a higher standard.”

“Why yes, of course, Aunt Caroline.”

“You'll have the most brilliant coming-out ball in the city. At my place, of course. I'll see to
everything
.” Aunt Caroline spoke confidentially to Helen, who beamed with delight. That meant that from now on, Caroline would pay for Julia's wardrobe. To Julia, she added, “You'll be the most beautiful debutante of the season.”

“So much work to be done. We must make the list of guests, and then I'll make a personal call on every one,” said Helen, who didn't consider this task work. She looked forward to seeing all two hundred people in advance of this, a truly special occasion in her life. A daughter's coming-out meant that the mother had decided she was ready to be accepted by the world as a fully mature woman—and more importantly, ready to receive homage from rich, eligible men.

“What about me? Where's my invitation?” asked Charlie Cross, Julia's ten-year-old blond brother, sliding down the black walnut banister of the front stair in the entrance hall of the Cross home, where the women stood.

“You, little boy, are not coming,” said Julia with a frown.

“I wouldn't want to come to your dumb party. I bet no one shows up,” Charlie said, dismounting before he collided with the ornate newel post. He leaped to the floor with the agility of an acrobat.

“Charlie, aren't you going to play in Madison Park?” his mother asked.

“On my way,” yelled Charlie as he crashed through the front doors.

Julia's mentors were content to stay in the entrance hall, a wide, graceful space that ran the length of the house to the back stairs used by the servants. Its ten-foot-high walls were adorned with flowered brocade wallpaper and dark walnut wainscoting. A heavy, carved walnut hallstand with coat hooks, a large mirror, and a built-in seat dominated the space.

Granny pointed at the silver calling card stand next to the seat. “The cards are left in the stand. You'll fill out this ledger stating when your visitors' cards were presented and by whom. It must
always
be up-to-date.”

“Remember that a guest
must
pay a personal call within two days of a dinner party. For all other entertainments, leaving a card with the butler will do,” Aunt Caroline added emphatically.

“I understand,” said a bewildered Julia. “May I go upstairs, please, Mother?”

“Yes, dear. We'll start the list tonight.” Helen spoke excitedly, like a child looking forward to her birthday party.

The women watched as Julia ran up the stairs.

“She's inherited your beauty, Helen, and that's important. A girl's beauty assures her brilliant future,” Aunt Caroline said. “It's the most important possession a girl can have.”

“But Julia, I think, has an independent streak,” Granny said. She spoke disapprovingly, as if her granddaughter had done something reprehensible. “A girl
has
to conform. She must. And she needs a good chaperone.”

“Hush, Mother. Julia would never do anything untoward. She's only seventeen.”

“But what's this talk about her going to college? To Vassar?” Granny spoke incredulously, her tone bordering on panic. “A girl like her doesn't need college. She's already too educated. Men don't want a wife cleverer than they are.”

Colleen stepped out of the front parlor and curtsied. “Tea is served, madam,” she chirped.

“Thank you so much,” Helen said. Granny frowned. Helen knew what was bothering her—Granny would think that Helen should have left off the “so much” or not even said a thank-you. Her mother thought familiarity with servants was vulgar and unwarranted. While servants were indispensable to society people, they had to know their place. This was why Americans were largely held to make terrible servants—they were too independent, expecting to have all sorts of
rights
. Absolutely the best way to run a household, Granny always said, was with dumb and subservient Irish servants, a spinster English housekeeper, or—if the house was big enough—an English butler.

The women settled into their chairs in the parlor, and Helen poured tea from a gleaming silver tea set on a mahogany tea table. Smiling, she passed a plate stacked with iced lemon cakes. Her front parlor, accessible through paneled sliding doors off the entrance hall, was “the best room” and served as the stage for important family events, as well as for entertaining. There, the lady of the house demonstrated her family's cultural refinement through her selection of the paintings and lithographs that adorned the blue damask walls. Like all society ladies, Helen had a fear of empty space. She filled every square inch of wall and floor with bric-a-brac. The deep-purple Belter chairs with their round backs, the scarlet velvet settee, the flowered rug, the forest-green drapes on the tall front windows—even the design of the lace doilies on the backs of the chairs were an aesthetic choice. She was proud of her parlor. It had to be the height of fashion, for soon it would be Julia's courting arena.

“Did you read, Caroline, that forty thousand workers have gone on strike in Chicago? It seems they want an eight-hour workday.” Granny shook her head, appalled as ever by the changing times. “Fifteen thousand marched in Union Square to support them.”

“All the meat packers, cigar makers, and leather workers in Chicago on strike. It's unbelievable. They already have a ten-hour day. Those fools should be grateful. It used to be twelve. I suppose that next they'll want Saturdays off.” Caroline huffed. “William says the owners may call in Pinkertons to deal with them.” A private army of policemen, the Pinkertons were detectives hired by rich businessmen to solve crimes and especially to put down strikes and labor protests the local authorities could not deal with. Considered much smarter than the regular police, the Pinkertons used brute force and bullets to get results.

“I hope they do. They know how to handle anarchists,” Granny said with a smile.

“Then there's this talk of home rule for Ireland,” Caroline said. “Every day, the front page of the
Tribune
has an article about the debates in Parliament.”

“If the Irish we get as servants are any indication, it's madness to think they can rule themselves,” Granny said. “They're no better than children.”

“My Irish servants have gotten along rather well,” said Helen, smiling. She knew what her mother would say next.

“You let your help walk all over you, Helen. It's a disgrace.”

“I just happen to remember that they're human beings, Mother.”

“When his mistress enters the room, a servant is supposed to turn away and avert his eyes,” Granny said indignantly. “Yours speak to you without being spoken to first!”

“I'm glad to have the respect and loyalty of my servants,” Helen said, reminded again how lucky she was that her mother still lived in her own massive brownstone on East Twenty-Fifth Street.

Caroline gracefully changed the subject. “Ellen Thackeray was a guest at President Cleveland's wedding reception last month. She said his bride, Frances Folsom, looked absolutely radiant in white lace.”

“That man's old enough to be her father,” Granny said.

There was a noise in the hall.
John
coming
down
the
stairs
, Helen thought. She rose and intercepted him in the entry hall before he made it to the front door.

“John, I thought you were ill. You said you weren't going to the office today.”

She'd known something was wrong from the instant she'd laid eyes on her husband that morning. It was as though all the blood had drained from his face. Normally a robust man, he seemed listless and lethargic, unable to focus on her words.

“Helen, I must go out,” John said.

But she blocked his path. “You look terrible, John. Go back to bed. I'll have Colleen bring you some tea.”

“Goddamn it, I don't need any tea. I have an appointment, and I can't be late,” Cross shouted.

His harsh tone made her jump out of his way. She watched in alarm as her husband grabbed his hat and stormed out the door. What could possibly be wrong?