City of Promise (26 page)

Down at the foundry Ebenezer Tickle stepped outside just as the bells of Trinity Church tolled three o’clock. Took his pipe with him. He
wasn’t slacking. They were making less steel these days so there was less to do all around, both work and the supervising of it. Besides, he was thinking on a problem that was, in some ways, more his employer’s lookout than his own.

Hard to figure what Trenton Clifford wanted from Joshua Turner. Far as he could see, there wasn’t—

Think of the devil and you’ll see the tip of his tail. That’s what his daddy used to say. Clifford was standing right there. Looking straight at him. “Good afternoon, Ebenezer.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Having a look. You cannot object to that, can you, my little friend?”

“A look at what? And I ain’t your friend.”

“In which case,” Clifford said, “I’ve no need to answer your question.” Clifford chuckled when he said it, then turned his back on Tickle and walked a few yards further along the wharf and stood looking at the Devrey Shipping building. No, Tickle decided. He was looking at the Devrey ships.

Three of ’em was tied up at the pier, with four more riding at anchor just beyond. Backed by the great tower of that damned bridge they was said to be building. It loomed on the horizon over on the Brooklyn side. Supposed to be another just like it over here in New York. Going to suspend a structure across. Folks building it said it would be tall enough so any mast could fit underneath. Tickle couldn’t see how that was going to prove out. Didn’t seem logical to him. Just like it wasn’t logical that Trenton Clifford was down here looking at boats as had nothing to do with him. It was the foundry he was interested in. The dwarf had no doubt about it.

Tickle stayed where he was. After three or four minutes Clifford moved off in the direction of Wall Street. Tickle watched him go, then went inside and summoned George Higgins. “You got to go find Mr. Turner. Tell him Trenton Clifford’s gunning for him.”

“Gunning for him how?”

“Like he was hunting possum. Waiting till he gets things lined up as suits him before he takes a shot. I seen Clifford just now. Outside looking at this place. He made like he was looking at Devrey’s ships, or that tower over in Brooklyn. But I think that was playacting.”

“That’s what you want me to tell Turner? Clifford was down here looking?”

“Ain’t the first time. You know that.”

Higgins didn’t say anything, just nodded.

“Go now,” Tickle said. “Go by the house first. If he ain’t there, go on up to Sixty-Third Street. Tell Mr. Turner he needs to look out for his interests. Maybe get some folks down here as can keep an eye on things.”

“Thought we was doing that,” Higgins said. “Sleeping here and all.”

“We’re no match for a bunch of thugs if Clifford decides to hire ’em. What Mr. Turner needs to do is hire some thugs of his own. Do it fast. Leastwise that’s what I think. Go find him and tell him.”

10

G
EORGE
H
IGGINS WAS
hurrying up Gold Street when the snow began. He increased his pace. Stupid of Ebenezer to have sent him on this errand. Obadiah would have done a better job. Longer legs were sometimes a big advantage. On the other hand, Obadiah didn’t know about Clifford. At least not the way he and Ebenezer did.

Most storms started slow and built themselves up. This one was a roaring monster in minutes. Seemed like the wind was forcing him back a step for each two he took forward. George hesitated, considering his situation, then decided he’d come too far to turn back. At this point the house on Grand Street was closer than the foundry. If Turner wasn’t home his wife would be. He could ask to wait out the snow. She’d never been particularly friendly, looked at him funny every time he showed up at the house with the accounts or such like. Still, unlikely she’d refuse him shelter in a storm. He turned up the collar of his thick woolen jacket and battled on.

Took him better than half an hour to get as far as Canal Street. By then some of the drifts were taller than he was. Never seen so much snow come down so fast. Leastwise there was no traffic. Just lots of
stalled and empty horsecars and streetcars and carriages. Higgins started across the road, head bent against the winds driving straight at him. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Hello, George. I’ve been looking for you.”

He looked up at Trenton Clifford’s walrus mustache. The twirled ends were frosted with snow. “What for?”

“I just wanted to say hello, George.” Clifford tightened his grip. “After all, we’re old friends, aren’t we?”

“I wouldn’t say exactly that. I got to go, Captain Clifford. We don’t have no business together anymore.”

“Quite so, George. Besides, snow like this could bury a midget altogether. He might not be found for weeks.”

Higgins pulled away and Clifford let him go, standing and watching him trudge doggedly on through the increasing fury of the sudden storm. Thought he’d best get out of the weather himself because, Christ Almighty, the north was a cursed place. Seemed like giant hands in the sky were emptying barrels of snow on the world below. Nonetheless, Trenton Clifford did not immediately move on. Not until he made out the man who stepped out of a nearby doorway, tipped his hat in Clifford’s direction, and followed the dwarf.

By the time Josh had ridden ten blocks he was fighting a howling blizzard. In other circumstances the occasional hints of life behind doors closed against the fierce storm might have tempted him to give it up and seek shelter in a hotel or even a private home. But however enticing the wink of gaslights and once even a few notes of music, he didn’t consider stopping. Mollie was sensible and unlikely to panic, but she was bound to be worried. About him if nothing else. And conditions like this encouraged the worst of the city’s villains to go on the prowl. He struggled on, encouraging Midnight with murmurs and whispers, his upper body bent nearly straight over the horse’s mane. The going was excruciatingly slow, the pair of them utterly alone in a white world deserted by civilization.

Occasionally he made out the carcass of an abandoned streetcar or carriage, their empty traces outlined by drifting snow. One bit of encouragement were the church bells that tolled along his route. He recognized their distinctive tones: Dutch Reformed at Twenty-First Street, sonorous and steady as they rang in six o’clock; Episcopal Church of the Ascension at Twelfth, chiming six-thirty in prettier, higher-pitched sounds with more flourishes. Soon after that Josh realized the going was getting easier as he traveled further downtown. The more densely packed city provided windbreaks and snowbreaks, and in a few cases the gusts had actually whipped a path along a narrow street, even to the extent of here and there exposing a few cobbles. His progress along Grand Street after he made the turn from the Bowery was achieved at a nearly normal pace, helped on by Midnight’s recognition that they were almost home.

The steps leading to the front door of the house were buried in snow, and Josh was glad to see Mollie hadn’t been foolish enough to try and shovel them clear. The only light appeared to come from the drawing room that was now his office, a dull glow behind drawn curtains, but just then he had no time to wonder why no light showed elsewhere. The mare was both fractious and determined. She required no urging to use her powerful forelegs to break through the drift in front of the alley that led to the small stable behind the house.

Josh dismounted quickly, grateful for the tight quarters that made it possible for him to bang on the back entrance to the house at the same time he began the job of getting the door to the stable open, cursing meanwhile the fact that he did not employ a live-in stable boy, only a part-time lad who came around to feed whichever horse he wasn’t using and muck out once a week. “Mollie! I’m here. Be right in. Soon as I see to Midnight. Got to get her cooled down before I can feed her. Take a good few minutes.”

The house was remarkably quiet, and black as pitch, the only light showing as a crack beneath the door of the office. Josh moved along
the hall calling Mollie’s name and not permitting himself to speculate on the silence that greeted his arrival, or the fact that the dining room where he’d have expected to find her was both dark and empty. “Mollie, where are you love? It’s been the devil’s own journey, and I’d be grateful for—” He pushed open the office door.

At first the gaslight, even at half power as it was, made him blink. He had to look twice to be sure he was seeing what he thought he saw. George Higgins, the dwarf who kept the foundry books, lay on his belly on the floor beside the desk, his face half-turned as if he’d lain down to go to sleep, so the glow of the wall sconce illumined him and allowed Josh to know at once exactly who he was. Had been, to be more precise. There was a dagger buried up to the hilt in George’s back and he was unquestionably dead.

What struck him first was not the unlikeliness of this victim in this particular place, but the stark evidence that something very terrible had happened under his roof.

Josh ran back to the hall, no longer shouting Mollie’s name, but searching for her frantically, expecting the worst wherever he looked. He pelted downstairs to the kitchen first. No one was there but he was able to light a taper from the damped coals of the kitchen stove and thereafter he lit the lamps wherever he passed. At the end the house was ablaze in light and Josh knew he and the dead dwarf were the only people in it.

He went again down to the kitchen and found a large white sheet in the linen cupboard next to the stove and carried it back to the office. This time he lowered himself beside Higgins’s body—not an easy task for a one-legged man—and felt for a pulse. The result was what he expected, but he learned as well that the dwarf had been dead for some hours. George’s body was cold and stiff. His jacket, soaked through like his trousers—indicating he had struggled through the snow to get here—was thick dark wool and it had absorbed nearly all the blood. There was only a small pool of it beside him on the carpet, and it was already congealed. Josh considered turning the corpse over but decided
against it. The police always wanted to do such things for themselves, and sooner or later they must certainly be informed. Given the weather they would understand that he could not summon them as soon as he discovered the body, but they were bound to be less forgiving if he’d trampled all over what they would see as evidence.

Josh spread the sheet over the small corpse, pulled himself up by using the corner of the desk for purchase, and for the first time took a look at the office itself. It was a wreck. The drawers of his filing cabinet had been turned out, the contents left strewn on the floor, and the top of his desk swept clean of ledgers and inkpots and notebooks. As if someone had pushed the entire detritus of his record keeping off the desk and onto the floor in what seemed a fit of pique at not finding what he wanted. Josh had, however, not a clue as to what that might be. Nor what had brought George Higgins up from the foundry in such weather as this, much less who had put a knife in his back or why.

All that registered in the back of his mind, as it were. The front was fighting a terrible and growing fear. He kept trying to convince himself Mollie might have gone to her aunt’s, left before the storm, and been prevented from returning because of its onslaught. But she hadn’t said anything about such plans, and wouldn’t she have left a note or—

His thoughts were interrupted by a series of loud thumps coming from the hall. Someone was banging on the door. Repeatedly and with considerable force.

Josh looked at the outline of the undersized body beneath the sheet and wished he had a pistol, or even a rifle of some sort, but there were no firearms in the house. It had never occurred to him he might require them. Anyway, it was likely all that business about criminals always returning to the scene of the crime was invented by the hacks who wrote the stories for the newspapers and magazines that promulgated the theory. He satisfied his wish to be prudent by picking up a heavy lead blotter and went to investigate.

The snow was blowing straight toward him when he opened the door. At first he couldn’t make out anything other than the sheets of white which he’d faced for so much of this day. Then he realized two women stood in front of him, and that one was his wife. Mollie was entirely covered in snow, even her eyelashes were crusted with it, and since she wore no hat it was as if, since he saw her that morning, her hair had turned white.