The Titans

by John Jakes

  “Then why did you call me down here? Why in hell did you let me help and think I was still part of it—?”

  He stopped. Gould smiled at his discomfort. He knew the answers.

  “You did it so you could build me up to this. You son of a bitch!”

  “I’ll overlook that,” Gould murmured as he tugged on leather driving gloves. His voice was so muted Louis had to strain to hear. “If there’s name-calling to be done, I’d say I deserve first crack. When you were approached to help guarantee a favorable vote on the freight rates, I believe Jim made it clear I’d tolerate no objections to my decisions. Nor would I think well of any man whose actions intentionally or inadvertently subjected me to personal embarrassment. You nearly cost me the love and respect of my wife and children, Louis. You nearly saw to it that an announcement was made from a pulpit, a public pulpit, that I frequent houses of ill repute.”

  Sweating, Louis exclaimed, “For Christ’s sake, it was Fisk who insisted we meet there!”

  “But it was you who led that cousin of yours to Mrs. Bell’s.”

  “How many times must I tell you, Jay? I had no idea he was following me!”

  “Carelessness is not a virtue in a businessman, Louis.”

  The dark eyes bit into him like augers. “Once we’re safely in New Jersey, there will be a vote to remove you from the board of directors. Danny, Jim and I are authorized to act as an executive committee and do that, you know. I trust you enjoyed your brief career with the Erie. You’ll never have a similar opportunity if my word means anything.”

  “You just used me for the freight vote, is that it?”

  “I use whoever it’s expedient to use. That’s how I stay on top. Some of the people I use remain my friends. Some don’t. You fall in the latter group. You can’t be trusted.”

  “Jay—” Louis groped at him.

  “Don’t touch me,” Gould whispered, and walked out.

  ii

  The hack careened through darkening streets. “I don’t like this,” Drew complained from his seat beside one of the guards. “I don’t like being carted off to Jersey, away from my church.”

  The guard tactfully ignored the outburst. He continued to stare out the window, his hand curled around the butt of a pistol.

  “You’ll find another over there,” Gould assured the old man. “Just remember there are no regular services in the Ludlow Street jail.”

  “Vanderbilt’s sure to send bullyboys after us,” Fisk said. He actually sounded pleased. “The hotel’s near the waterfront, y’know. I think we should have a shore patrol. Three or four lifeboats carrying men we can trust. We’ll call it the Erie Navy and Coast Guard. What do you think, Jay?”

  Gould pursed his lips in distaste. “Before you start playing admiral, I want you to attend to another piece of business. It pertains to that young man who milked me for forty thousand dollars.”

  He shifted his eyes quickly to indicate the suffering Dan Drew. “I needn’t go into it now, though.”

  “I’ll see to it whenever you’re ready,” Fisk promised.

  Soon the hack rattled up to the Cortlandt Street Ferry Terminal. A dozen slum roughnecks Fisk had recruited and sworn in as Erie detectives were already unloading the suitcases from the first cab. As Fisk hoisted the last two bags, Drew again complained about leaving New York. Fisk hustled him toward the entrance.

  “Listen, Danny, I plan to send for Miss Josie soon as I can. Say the word and I’ll have her bring a parson to keep you company.”

  Gould lingered in the windy March twilight. When the last of the suitcases disappeared inside the building, he approached the guard who’d been riding with him.

  “Biggs, I want you to do a chore after we’ve gone.”

  “Yes, sir?” The taller man smoothed an index finger along his mustache. He had to bend to hear the next.

  “I want Louis Kent hurt.”

  “Badly?”

  Gould nodded. His dark eyes looked almost benign. “I leave the means to you. But I don’t want to be connected. Ever.”

  Biggs smiled. “Got you.” He touched his derby.

  Jay Gould’s head lifted in response to the shriek of the ferry whistle. Smiling, he hurried into the terminal.

  iii

  Barely awake, Gideon scratched his nose. Not only had he forgotten to extinguish the lamp in the kitchen, but Margaret had forgotten to damp the stove and save the wood.

  He could have ignored the stove. But the light was a problem. He’d have to get up.

  He yawned. He was exhausted. He’d spent the day working for a farmer out in the county west of Hoboken. Helping the farmer tend his hogs. For fifty cents. When he’d come home, he’d been too weary to do what he’d been meaning to do for days: drop down to the Diamond N, see who was there from the yards, speak to them—

  No, exhaustion wasn’t the only reason he hadn’t gone. He was sure they’d reject him, out of fear.

  But he’d already recognized that there’d be scores of rejections before he achieved even one success. Why was he letting potential defeat incapacitate him?

  He knew that too. The moment he stepped inside the Diamond N and uttered what was on his mind, he could never turn back—

  Hell. It was too taxing to think about right now.

  The coverlet rustled. He propped himself on his elbows; squinted. Eleanor peeped over the edge of the bed.

  “Papa? What’s burning?”

  He awoke instantly.

  Eleanor coughed. She began to whimper as Gideon prodded Margaret’s hip.

  “Margaret, get up. The place is on fire!”

  His lethargy was gone. The glow in the kitchen was brightening to a blaze. The smell he’d mistaken for stove wood grew heavier. Smoke began to drift in the bedroom.

  He heard a crackling in the parlor. Margaret was stirring, but slowly. God almighty! There were flames near the front door as well—

  “Eleanor, run to the window. Open it!”

  He rammed his hands under his wife’s body and lifted. Her eyes flew open.

  The flames shot around the frame of the kitchen door, eating the thin walls, the old paper. Margaret saw the fire as she hung in his arms.

  Gideon was having trouble breathing. Why was the cottage going up so quickly? Then he smelled a telltale odor mingled with the smoke. Eleanor struggled with the sash. “It’s stuck, Papa!”

  “The blasted snow and ice—let me at it.” He set Margaret on the floor. He could feel heat on his bare soles now. He fisted his hand and drove it through the curtain and the glass. A piece nicked his wrist. Blood sopped the cuff of his nightshirt.

  He picked up a chair, battered the most dangerous shards out of the window frame. “Come here, Eleanor. Hurry!” He had to shout above the mounting roar.

  Trembling, she let him lift her to the sill. She jerked suddenly, frightened. Glass slashed her instep. She screamed and fell back into Gideon’s arms.

  That cost them precious seconds. When he’d quieted the child, the fire was covering the wall by the window. It had spread the other way too, along the wall behind the bed. Red reflections glared in Margaret’s eyes.

  He hooked his bloodied hand around Eleanor’s waist and dragged her to his shoulder. “Hold tight to my neck.” Margaret clutched his other arm.

  “Why is it burning so fast, Gideon?”

  “Because it was set! We have to go out the front.” He dragged his wife to the parlor. Fire ran along the baseboard moldings. The smoke was so thick he could barely see the front door. Before they reached it, a barrier of flame confronted them.

  His eyes watered. The hem of his nightshirt began to smolder from stray sparks. “Hang on, Eleanor. Margaret, stay close to me. We’ll have to go through.”

  The fire glowed on the leather eye patch. There wasn’t even time to tell her he loved her. He lowered his head and ran at the rising wall of heat and flame.

  iv

  The wine from Delmonico’s blurred his sight, aroused him, too. Yet it did no
thing to ease the monstrous feeling of loss.

  He had come so close, cooperated, played the tame dog—and he’d been within reach of the very top rung of the ladder. Then, because his second cousin’s son had been clever and nervy enough to follow him to Mrs. Bell’s, it had all come undone.

  Financially, he wouldn’t suffer. He’d taken maximum advantage of his tenure as an insider, selling certain issues a day or two before a dump of new Erie stock depressed prices on the Street, and buying others advantageously when the prices bottomed out. He’d more than doubled the paper worth of his investments in only a couple of months.

  But the real cost of that profit had been the dismissal from the board. Never again would men at the highest levels of the financial community deal with him as an equal—or as a man worthy of confidence. He had been deemed unworthy by Jay Gould.

  He knew it was being talked about on the Street and in the clubs: Gould got thick with Louis Kent for a few weeks. But he dumped him. Gould’s a piratical son of a bitch, but there’s no shrewder man. Must be something wrong with that Kent fellow.

  The divorce from Julia had cost him his friendship with Vanderbilt. The Erie fiasco had cost him the friendship of Vanderbilt’s foremost peers. He was well aware of how the Street would describe his situation: Kent may still have his money. But for all practical purposes, he’s ruined.

  Clinging to the wrist strap of the victoria, Louis tried to fix his attention on the squalid street. An almost Stygian blackness enveloped it. The damp air smelled of garbage and the river. It was a filthy neighborhood, only a block from the Bowery. The victoria was proceeding slowly while Louis’ driver searched for an address.

  God, he hoped she was there. It was past midnight. It had taken him two days to locate the address through a theatrical agent. He didn’t know what he’d do if she were gone. He couldn’t stay by himself one more night.

  She still meant nothing to him. But it had become impossible to sleep or even think rationally in the mansion on Fifth Avenue. He was sick of going over and over his failure. What if? What if—

  To come after her this way was an admission of weakness. He didn’t care. The solitude of the mansion was unbearable. The solitude contained too many specters. Too many reminders of how close he’d come to absolute preeminence on the Street, in America—the world.

  “Believe this is it, sir.” The victoria swayed to a halt. “Not a very savory location. Do you wish me to wait?”

  “No. Pick me up at eight in the morning.”

  He stumbled to the curb, stepped across the corpse of a cat and climbed the steep steps as his carriage rattled off. He was peering at the tenant board when the hollow clop-clop of another carriage horse caught his attention.

  The hack was coming from the direction of the Bowery. His own vehicle was already out of sight. But he was too drunk to give the slowing cab more than a glance.

  He struck a match. Among the cluster of dirty cards he found one reading N. Chetwynd. He heard a door close softly as he noted the number on the card. The match went out.

  All at once he realized a man was coming up the steps. His responses were sluggish from the prolonged evening of drinking; he’d had virtually no food.

  “Hallo, Mr. Kent.”

  The voice was unfamiliar. A tic started in his right cheek. He was still facing the tenant’s board, slightly bent. Panic spread through him and he started to turn.

  “Wait. I’m not—”

  His grunt interrupted the sentence. Then he shrieked from the pain of the knife rammed into the lower quarter of his back.

  v

  Gideon could still smell the smoke: not the same kind of pungent tobacco smoke lying heavily in the Diamond N—the acrid smoke of charred siding, burned cloth, ruined upholstery.

  He spied Rory Bannock leaning on the mahogany bar.

  “Evening, Rory.”

  “Gid! Jesus, boy, we heard you got burned out last night.”

  Gideon noted the ornamental clock. A quarter past five.

  Soon Bannock would be leaving for the night shift. He slid a coin across the bar and signaled for lager.

  “Yes,” he said, “there’s nothing left of the cottage. It’s the landlord’s responsibility, but what little furniture we owned is gone. I barely got Margaret and Eleanor out soon enough.”

  “Heard the fire was set.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Coppers catch anyone?”

  He shook his head. “Whoever poured the kerosene ran away the moment it was lighted.”

  Bannock winced. “You got an idea who done it.?”

  “No,” Gideon lied. He knew very well. A man who had met his demands but who had not forgiven him. A man who was living down at Taylor’s Hotel right now, delighting the New York press with his armed guards and his cohort’s rowboat navy.

  It was impossible to prove, of course. But Jephtha’s warning about retaliation had been correct. Oddly, once Gideon’s loved ones were safe and the shock of the fire had passed, he was almost pleased that Gould had seen fit to respond as he did. The fire had finally given him the courage to make his commitment.

  “Anyone could have done it,” he said before he sipped from the stein. Bannock drained his. “There are a lot of hungry men wandering around these days. Hunger and failure can drive a fellow to crazy things.”

  “You’re out of a job, aren’t you, Gid? Cuthie said so.”

  “He’s right.”

  “The Erie giveth and the Erie taketh away,” the other man remarked with a sour smile. “Speakin’ of giving, has anyone learned who sent all that money to Flo Miller and Mr. Kolb?”

  “No. I suppose it was some charitable person in New York.”

  “Didn’t know there was any charitable persons in that town. Guess it doesn’t matter who’s responsible, though. The families are deserving.”

  “So are the families of men who are still alive, Rory. Your family. You deserve some things too. Better wages. Shorter hours. Things the Erie’ll never grant you unless you demand them.”

  “Ah, that Sylvis stuff again,” Bannock grumbled. “Spare me.”

  For the moment.

  “You’re the one I fret about,” Bannock went on. “I hate to see you down. I never said this before, but you’re a helluva good lad, Gideon.”

  “That’s quite a compliment.” He smiled. “Especially from a Yankee.”

  Bannock waved. “A witless Philadelphia mick, you mean. Let’s have no more of this Yankee business, eh? The war’s been over for three years.”

  That war. Another’s beginning.

  Bannock leaned on his forearms, boozily cordial. “Me and the missus, we talked about you being bounced out of the yards. Now there’s this fire—how will you get by?”

  “I don’t know. But we will.”

  Sheltered temporarily at the Miller cottage, he and Margaret had already discussed the future and agreed on what Gideon had to do. He planned to keep on working at whatever jobs he could find. But first he had a job here.

  “Anyway, Rory, that’s not what I came to discuss.”

  He still had an opportunity to retreat. He was pledging himself to a mission that would make him a—a pariah, that was it. Fine word.

  He’d be a pariah to a great many respectable people. Yet the work needed doing. Unless someone took the first step, it would go undone. Responsibility couldn’t be shrugged aside. Most of the Kents had believed that for generations. He would not be an exception.

  He dug his last coin out of his pocket. “Let me buy you another beer, Rory.” He grinned. “That way, maybe you’ll listen to what I have to say.”

  Standing straight and speaking calmly, he added, “I want to talk with you about the necessity of starting a union in the yards.”

  Epilogue at Kentland

  The Lifted Sword

  i

  THAT SPRING OF 1868 was a season of war. After almost forty-nine years on the planet, the Reverend Jephtha Kent was beginning to suspect there was no season
that was not.

  The fiercest struggle was being waged in Washington. The Congressional radicals had succeeded in charging President Johnson with violation of the Tenure of Office Act and other deeds of misconduct. Johnson’s impeachment trial had begun in mid-March. How it would end, no one could say. A close outcome was predicted.

  If the radicals won, they would have won it all. Under bills they’d sponsored, military governors enforced the law at bayonet point throughout the South. Jephtha had watched the steady and deliberate expansion of Republican power, and at the same time, seen his worst fears about manipulation of the black vote confirmed. His ardent Republicanism was waning.

  Closer to home, the so-called Erie War had diverted the public’s attention for months. For a time, Fort Taylor—Jim Fisk’s name for the Jersey City hotel serving as the line’s temporary headquarters—had received national attention. Daily press dispatches had provided thrilling accounts of bulls and bears locked in combat. No detail was ignored. Mr. Fisk’s mistress was interviewed. Members of his navy of thugs were interviewed as they rowed up and down keeping watch for a Vanderbilt flotilla. Anonymous “confidants” were interviewed, and they described everything from the breakfast served Mr. Gould in his suite to Dan Drew’s worsening tantrums; he feared affairs of his church were foundering without him.

  No Vanderbilt flotilla had appeared from Manhattan. The Erie directors had escaped the enemy’s wrath, but at a cost of exiling themselves from the nation’s financial center. Finally Gould had packed some valises, containing close to a million in cash, it was reliably stated. He’d hustled to Albany to end the stalemate by wooing the Black Horse Cavalry. The Cavalry was a group within the New York legislature which made no secret of its willingness to sponsor and support any desired piece of legislation—so long as the price was right.

  The Commodore’s men had rushed money to Albany to counterattack. But Gould’s ante was the highest. An act permanently legalizing conversion of bonds within the state passed both houses. Now Vanderbilt faced a threat of endless issues of Erie stock—and a skillful publicity campaign to which Gould had turned his attention.