House of Thieves

by Charles Belfoure

  • • •

  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.

  6

  “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?

  7

  “Mr. Cross, I want you to know that I’m not angry at you for what you did. But I will be less lenient if something like that should happen again.”

  Kent reminded Cross of a schoolmaster sitting in his wood-paneled office, reprimanding a recalcitrant student. Cross himself sat stiffly, balanced on the edge of the settee, watching Kent pour tea. Aunt Caroline would have envied the quality of the silver. In a multitiered stand on the tea table were a variety of pastries, but Cross had lost all appetite since the delivery of the ice that morning.

  The Dakota was like a huge European château, a riot of steep gables, turrets, finials, and dormers clad in olive-colored stone and salmon-colored brick. Its sheer enormity was amplified by its position on the Upper West Side, surrounded by vacant lots and shacks. It gave the impression of a mountain that had risen out of nowhere. From Central Park, it reminded one of a fortress in the middle of an enchanted forest, like in a fairy tale.

  Despite its far-flung location, it had quickly become a highly fashionable place to live. Kent’s apartment was magnificent. He and Cross sat in a beautiful library lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A vista of Central Park stretched across the tall windows behind them.

  “How many lumps do you take?”

  “Two, no milk.”

  Kent handed him his cup and settled back in his green overstuffed velvet armchair. He sipped his tea with a look of great pleasure.

  “Quite a place, Mr. Cross, hmm? Like living in a palace without having to own it.”

  Cross didn’t reply.

  At that moment, the front door to the apartment opened. A short, elegantly dressed woman with chestnut-colored hair followed by three small children walked past the open door of the library.

  “Mr. Cross, meet my wife and children,” Kent said in a jolly voice. “Hello, Millicent. How was the outing?”

  “Oh, wonderful. The children so loved the ponies.”

  Cross rose and smiled at the beautiful woman, who beamed back at him.

  “It’s such a pleasure, Mr. Cross,” Millicent said.

  “Mr. Cross is a new business associate. And these rascals are Bill, Henry, and Abigail.”

  The children, all of whom were well dressed and well mannered, bowed to Cross and then raced off in three different directions.

  “If you’ll excuse us, my dear, Mr. Cross and I have business to discuss. Tonight at dinner, you must tell me all about your day. I wish I’d been there.” Kent followed his wife out, closed the sliding doors, and returned to his seat. “I’m so glad we were able to come to an understanding, Mr. Cross,” he said. “I’m sure we can do business together.”

  “Nothing is to happen to my son,” Cross said.

  “Or Helen, Granny, Charlie, and Julia—as long as you keep our agreement.”

  Cross was visibly shaken. After that morning, he knew what this man was capable of. Kent would kill his entire family wi
thout batting an eye. He was sure of it.

  “I enjoy doing business with a family man,” Kent said amiably. “There’s so much collateral.”

  “Where is George?”

  “In very pleasant circumstances. I’ll notify him that his debt is forgiven, but I won’t tell him of our arrangement. Don’t worry—if you keep your end of the bargain, he’ll never know. George will be back in his apartment in a few days. I just hope he can deal with his ‘little weakness.’ You do know there are hundreds of gambling dens in New York City besides mine. But that’s your problem now.”

  Cross blinked. In all the confusion, he hadn’t thought about that.

  “Let me explain how our business arrangement will work,” Kent said, setting down his teacup. “You will choose buildings you’ve designed that contain articles of great value—cash, stock certificates, gold, merchandise such as expensive clothing, fine linen, silverware, and jewelry. You will help me plan each robbery by giving me drawings of these places and telling me where items worth stealing can be found. And after each robbery, the value of the goods will be deducted from George’s debt.”

  “Promise me that, once it’s paid back, I’m free of this.”

  “Why of course. I don’t think you’re cut out for a life of crime, Mr. Cross.” Kent gave him a wink. “But you are a talented architect. That Chandler Building—and those tall arches! I envy your talent. I wish I could do something like that.”

  Cross was silent. Coming from this merciless bastard, it hardly felt like a compliment.

  “The next step will be for you to take some time—one week, say—to choose a building. Then we will meet to discuss whether your plan is feasible. It takes a criminal eye to evaluate these things,” Kent said. “You’ll want to pay off the debt immediately, of course. But for our first effort, let’s choose something modest. And bring copies of the drawings. I understand that with the new blueprinting process, it will be easy for you.”

  Kent was sharp. Only a few years ago, copies of architectural drawings had to be traced over by hand, a long and tedious process. But with the introduction of blueprinting, all that had changed. Now, a photosensitive coating could be applied to a sheet of paper, which would be placed behind the original linen drawing. The contraption was put in a wood frame that sat out in the sun, developing a perfect image on the paper like a photograph.