House of Thieves

by Charles Belfoure

  But to her credit, Caroline had opened doors to the advantages and privileges of society, to him and especially to George and John’s other two children, Julia and Charlie. Thanks to her connections, Cross’s architectural practice prospered. But Cross knew that if there were the tiniest hint of scandal about anyone in his family, she’d cut them off in a second and would have nothing to do with them again. These were the ironclad rules of their world. One malicious whisper could annihilate a family’s reputation and banish them from society forever. Completely shunned—people who were once your closest friends would never talk to you again, even to your children.

  “Aunt Caroline, thank you so much for coming,” said Helen, meeting her at the door, arms outstretched. Helen was one of the very few people Aunt Caroline ever publicly hugged. She gloried in the fact that such an incredibly beautiful woman was a Schermerhorn.

  “Tonight I must attend a tiresome charity performance at the Academy of Music,” said Aunt Caroline, “but I knew I had to stop by to see Georgie. Where is that handsome boy of yours?”

  “Aunt Caroline,” said George, stepping forward, taking her hand with both of his and kissing her cheek.

  “Here’s a little something for my class of ’86 man,” she said, handing him a small box wrapped in silver paper. George unwrapped the present in front of her, knowing she would want to see his reaction.

  Others had made their way to the foyer, eager to curry favor with Mrs. Astor. White, one of her architects, hovered about with Charles Crist Delmonico, the grandnephew of the founder who controlled the restaurant dynasty and had made it the best restaurant in the city.

  Nestled in a wad of cotton was a magnificent gold pocket watch and chain. George pulled it out, eyes wide in wonder. Instead of the usual incised decoration, the tiniest of diamonds and rubies formed a sinuous, vine-like design on the watch’s cover and sides. The inside cover featured a similar raised motif in a vortex swirl, with a large diamond at the center. The back of the watch was engraved: “To George, Harvard Class of 1886, From Aunt Caroline.” Helen’s and John’s eyes met; their first reaction was not pride but fear. What if George lost such a beautiful gift?

  Beside them, White let out a whistle. “That’s incredible.”

  “You know that workmanship, Mr. White. I had Louis Comfort Tiffany design it specifically for Georgie,” Mrs. Astor said.

  White had just completed a commission for the Tiffany family, constructing a huge mansion of golden-brown brick at the corner of Madison Avenue and Seventy-Second Street.

  “This is a work of art. Thank you so much.” George bent to hug his aunt, who bear-hugged him right back.

  “It’s a pleasure, my dear boy. And now I must be off.” Before anyone could bid her good-bye, Aunt Caroline turned, the train of her gown sweeping around, and marched triumphantly back to her carriage. Dozens of people were waiting to get a look at her and, more specifically, to see what she was wearing, for Caroline Astor also dictated New York fashion. If she decided to wear a Chinese coolie’s straw hat to dinner, Fifth Avenue’s shops would be flooded with them the next day.

  As John and Helen stood at the front door, waving good-bye, Charles Crist Delmonico said, beaming with delight, “Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served in the grand dining room.”

  • • •

  Only Caroline Astor could have persuaded Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University, to stop by to say a few words at George’s graduation party. Eliot had been traveling through New York from Boston the day after commencement and couldn’t say no, especially to such an immensely rich donor. Besides, George had been both an academic and athletic star at Harvard, so Eliot was pleased to visit.

  So that he might leave in time to catch his train to Washington, Eliot spoke briefly before the meal started. He rose to his feet at the end of the long dinner table, a slight and unassuming man in his fifties, with a long nose and bushy sideburns, the leader of America’s greatest university. The cacophony of the celebration was instantly silenced.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, George Cross exemplifies the kind of man Harvard produces. During my tenure at the university, I’ve seen a change in the Harvard man’s character. His sense of personal honor and self-respect has increased. Drunkenness has decreased. It still troubles me to see vices born of luxury and self-indulgence on the rise. But this doesn’t touch George Cross. Not only does George exemplify academic brilliance, but he’s also a man of great character and determination—as he showed last year at the Polo Grounds, when he drove in the winning run in the ninth inning against Yale.”

  The dining room erupted into wild cheering and applause, and George shyly rose and waved to his admirers. President Eliot shook his hand, bowed to the crowd, and left the room, a signal that the eating and drinking could begin. Because Helen and many other ladies were present—and because Caroline Astor had paid for the dinner—it was not a wild male bacchanal that such an occasion might have prompted, but rather a luxurious society event. More than one hundred diners sat at a table that stretched the length of the room. Down its center ran a deep trough bordered by high banks of beautiful summer flowers. In the trough swam three white swans, which glided up and down its length, oblivious to the diners on either side. The eight courses, served on silver, included consommé à l’Impériale, Maryland terrapin soup, red snapper, canvasback duck, fillet of beef, cold asparagus vinaigrette, a dish of sherbet to cleanse the palate, and then a saddle of mutton, truffled capon, and fresh vegetables of all kinds, followed by desserts and candies. Claret, Burgundies, Madeira, and champagne flowed into the guests’ glasses as from a spigot; in the background, an eight-piece musical ensemble played on and on, light sounds to enliven but not disrupt the burble of conversation.

  The party came to an end at about 2:00 a.m., when Cross found his son saying good-bye to Stanford White, always the very last to leave.

  “George, your mother and I are going now,” Cross said, clapping his son on the shoulder. “It was a wonderful party. Please be in touch in a few days.”

  “Thank you so much for tonight, Father. I’ll never forget it.” George clasped his father’s hand, smiling.

  “Helluva party, Georgie old boy,” Stanny shouted as he left the restaurant with John and Helen. “The night’s still young, and I know a place on East Forty-Fifth that’s just beginning to heat up.”

  “We’re not going anywhere with that blackguard,” Helen hissed into Cross’s ear as they made their way to a carriage on Fifth Avenue.

  Cross just sighed. He had long since given up trying to change his wife’s stubborn opinion of Stanford White’s sybaritic character, especially his taste in women.

  • • •

  His guests gone, George walked downstairs to the restaurant’s open-air street café, settled into one of the carved wooden chairs, and lit a cigarette. After almost six hours in the dining room, the night air felt cool and refreshing. Fifth Avenue was deserted, and the pure silence soothed George after the hours of unending noise. He leaned back and closed his eyes, savoring the triumphant evening.

  “Beautiful night, isn’t it, George?”

  The voice came from directly behind him. George smiled and swiveled around, expecting to see an admiring classmate. Then his face turned pale, and the cigarette dropped from his lips.

  James T. Kent sat at a table a few yards away, dressed in elegant evening attire, smoking a cigar and sipping a glass of white wine.

  “Just dropped in for a nightcap before heading home after the theater. But now that I’m here, maybe I could have a word with you. It’s about a matter of some delicacy.”

  George rose from his seat and started toward the low wrought iron fence that enclosed the sidewalk cafe. But a short, broad-chested man stepped out of the shadows, moving to cut off his exit.

  “I think you remember my business associate, Mr. Culver.”

  Culver smiled at George bu
t said nothing.

  “Why don’t we take a little trip?” said Kent.

  3

  Oh, he floats through the air

  With the greatest of ease,

  This daring young man

  On the flying trapeze;

  His actions are graceful,

  All girls he does please,

  My love he has purloined away…

  Kent got such pleasure out of seeing his men enjoy themselves. He hadn’t realized Freddy Dugan had such a wonderful baritone voice. If he hadn’t become an extortionist, the man could’ve made it on the stage.

  Kent and ten of his employees were standing inside the new cable car power plant, currently under construction on the East Side. It was a huge brick and stone structure with tall, arched windows and a cavernous central room, where steam machinery would be installed to pull the coils of steel cables that wound and twisted beneath the city streets. Cable cars were the latest fad in New York, and the wise bet said they would soon replace the horse cars entirely. Kent saw it as a great investment. A cable car didn’t have to be fed. It could work all day, and most importantly, it didn’t deposit tons of shit and an ocean of piss onto the streets. When the Brooklyn Bridge had opened three years before, cable cars had been installed, and they’d been a great success.

  But cable cars were still the future. The present object of his men’s delight, George Cross’s body, was swinging like a giant clock pendulum above the cement floor, bound and suspended upside down at the end of a thick rope whose other end was looped over a steel roof truss twenty feet above the men’s heads. Culver held the end of the rope, and Tommy Flannigan pushed George’s body, sending him in a wide arc. Back and forth he went. Kent’s men sang and roared with laughter at each swing. Kent had never seen them have so much fun sober. When George threw up his banquet from Delmonico’s, they whooped and howled.

  Finally, Kent walked over to the swinging body and raised his hand, signaling for silence.

  “For a mathematician, George,” Kent said as the boy swung by, “I thought you’d have a better head for numbers.” He pulled out a cigar and lit it, drawing in and exhaling the smoke with great pleasure. “Figuring in compounded interest, what you owe me is forty-eight thousand dollars. Quite a bit of money. Let me put it another way. A master carpenter makes about a thousand dollars a year. You owe me forty-eight years of carpenter wages.”

  “For God’s sake, cut me down, Jim.”

  “I know you love to gamble, George. But if you lose, you have to pay up. I warned you about the interest that was accruing on your debt, but you ignored me. And you can’t say I haven’t been patient. Or generous. I gave you the opportunity to forgive the whole thing by putting the fix on the Harvard–Columbia baseball game…but you didn’t come through, my boy. I lost on that bet, and I lost handily. You’re lucky I didn’t add it to your total.”

  “I tried! I swear I did! But you can’t throw a game when no one else is in on it,” George cried.

  “I can’t have you stiff me, George. It’s bad for business. If people see that I let you slide, they won’t have any respect for me, and they’ll try to stiff me too.”

  “Give me one more chance, please,” pleaded George.

  Kent watched George swing. Then he signaled Flannigan to bring the body to a halt. Flannigan grabbed George on each pass to slow him down until the boy hung there, slowly turning around and around like a slab of beef on a hook. Kent motioned for Al Carney, a mountain of a man with broad shoulders and fists the size of hams, to come over.

  “George, Al here once fought John L. Sullivan and lasted almost five rounds. Five rounds against the great John L. Imagine that. There was an article about it in the Police Gazette.”

  Carney’s jowly face flushed red with embarrassment as he approached the hanging body. Then his fists let loose as if he was bashing a body bag in a gym. George cried out at each blow.

  “I’m most sorry to have to do this to a society gentleman,” Kent said, his tone sincerely apologetic. “But you have to understand, George, that I live in a world that also has a strict code of rules. Just like in New York society, when one breaks the rules, one must be punished. And as you may well imagine, that punishment can be…severe.” He gave a sly smile. “Let me introduce you to Abe Gibbons. In his former life, Abe was a butcher.”

  A lanky, gray-haired man of about fifty walked over and placed a long knife to George’s throat. Carney continued to punch, ignoring him; the ex-boxer was enjoying himself too much to stop.

  “They’ll find pieces of your body from the Bronx to Cape May, George.”

  “Please—no!” screamed George.

  “There’s no one you know who can pay off the debt?” Kent asked, more irritated than curious. “What about your family?”

  “My family doesn’t have that kind of money. My father’s just an architect.”

  Kent’s brow wrinkled, and he motioned for Carney to cease his pummeling.

  “I didn’t know your father was an architect. What does he design?”

  “Office buildings. Like the Chandler Building on East Fourth.”

  “Indeed? That’s a very handsome building. What else?” Kent sounded genuinely impressed.

  “Empire State Life Assurance on Nassau Street. Saint Mary’s Church. Lots of big houses up on Madison Avenue and Riverside Drive.”

  Kent turned and walked slowly across the power plant. He made a wide arc, returned to George’s hanging body, and nodded at Gibbons, who lunged at George.

  “God help me!” George screamed.

  With a slash of the knife, the thick rope was severed. George fell hard and landed on his head with a groan that echoed throughout the empty plant. The men howled with laughter.

  Kent walked over to Culver, who, relieved of holding the rope, was leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette and enjoying the festivities.

  “You remember George Leslie, don’t you, Mr. Culver?”

  “Sure. The king of bank robbers. Planned the Manhattan Savings job on Bleecker in ’78. Got away with two million.”

  “Wasn’t he an architect?”

  “That’s what they say. I heard that he could read them building drawings of banks, could even draw ’em up himself.”

  “And didn’t they find him dead up in Yonkers?”

  “Yep, said he was fooling around with one of his men’s girls. The man was a genius. Shame to die because of a goddamned woman,” Culver said, shaking his head.

  Writhing in pain on the concrete floor, George yelled, “Just get it over with! Kill me and be done with it, you bastard.”

  “A Harvard man,” Kent murmured, smirking. He turned to Flannigan.

  “Mr. Flannigan, you’re going to take George on a little vacation.”

  Visibly disappointed, Gibbons sheathed his blade.

  “Yes, sir,” muttered Flannigan.

  “What are you going to do to me?” George shouted.

  Flannigan took hold of George’s feet.

  “Wait,” said Kent.

  Kent pulled out a handsome leather billfold from George’s inside pocket. He opened it, examined the contents, removed a card, and then returned the billfold. He nodded to Flannigan, who began dragging George out of the power plant.

  “Mr. Culver, first thing tomorrow morning, I want you to deliver a message.”

  4

  John Cross sat in the upper deck of the Fifth Avenue omnibus, the air already baked by the hot July sun. His eyes were vacant, his mind elsewhere as he mulled the strange events of the past two hours. He had never gotten new work in so peculiar a manner.

  At around 9:00 a.m., a rough-looking man came into the office, asking to see him. The fellow had very crooked teeth but was dressed better than Cross, who felt himself taken aback when the man entered his private office. The clothes and the man seemed entirely at odds; it
was like a pig wearing evening dress to the opera. The man explained that his boss admired Cross’s work and would like to talk to him about designing a building. Because he was going out of town, however, they had to meet that day, at 11:00 a.m.

  The economic boom of the 1880s had set off an enormous amount of construction in New York City. Cross had received his share of this new work entirely by word of mouth. Men he knew from the Union and Knickerbocker Clubs, the riding club, his Harvard classmates, gentlemen from Saint Thomas Episcopal and Newport—they all recommended him. But this fellow certainly didn’t belong to that set.

  The other requirement for the meeting was even odder. They were to meet in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. This intrigued Cross. Perhaps the project was work for the Archdiocese, which oversaw a lucrative group of churches, parochial schools, and convents. Though he was a society High Episcopalian, he didn’t mind designing for the Roman Papists, as his mother-in-law called them. Churches were a plum commission. Cross had designed just one, a Protestant church, early in his career, and he was eager for another opportunity.

  The man tipped his expensive top hat and left. Cross left at once, walking from his office on Broadway and Eighth Street to Fifth Avenue, where he caught the omnibus. He enjoyed the ride; from the top, he had a grandstand view of the city.

  Fifth Avenue was the backbone of his world. Its staid three- and four-story brownstones passed before his eyes, an unending line of high stoops, wrought iron railings, and striped canvas awnings extended out to block the summer sun. Cross watched as servants scurried in and out and families emerged from behind tall double doors of wood and glass. Broughams, hansoms, and victorias driven by men in top hats and black cutaway coats stood by the curbs, waiting for their owners. Dray carts carrying goods of all kinds slowly made their way up the avenue, making deliveries from house to house.