Into the Whirlwind (38 page)

Glancing down at her smartly tailored navy suit, Mollie wished she hadn’t dressed like she was coming to see a banker. Caleb Magruder ran the best industrial mill in the city, but his office looked like a pigsty. She had been waiting there for thirty minutes and was about to give up hope when the mill operator finally arrived. He was grimy and sweat-streaked, but Mollie sprang to her feet and gamely extended her hand. “Mr. Magruder, I’m pleased you could make time to see me.”

Caleb Magruder wiped his hands on a canvas apron but made no move to shake her hand. “What can I do for you, ma’am?” His words were polite, but his tone reeked of annoyance. He kept glancing out the office window toward the immense forge where two boys were feeding coal into the furnace.

“I understand you can produce precision metalwork, suitable for a large-scale public clock.” She tried to keep the tremble from her voice. Caleb Magruder owned the
only
industrial mill left in the city that could produce this sort of work.

He leaned against the wall of his office, crossed his arms across his beefy chest, and scrutinized her through narrow eyes. It reminded her of the way a police officer would glare at a truant child. “Might,” he said. “What do you need?”

She described the specifications for a nine-foot center post, upon which all the internal wheels and gears of the clock would be mounted. It needed to be strong and faultlessly smooth lest the friction throw off the mechanisms.

“That sort of clock was always done by the Potter Clockworks in the past,” Mr. Magruder said. “Why didn’t they get the contract?”

Mollie refused to let the brusque question rattle her. “I gather nothing is quite the same after the fire, but I have the contract here in hand. My money is good, and the deal will go through. How much will such a center post cost?”

“If I can do it, and I stress
if
 . . . it will cost six hundred dollars.”

She gasped. “That’s robbery!”

“That’s what a nine-foot center post costs. Take it or leave it.”

She calculated the figure. It would result in a cost overrun, but perhaps it would be worth it for the first clock. The costs for her subsequent clocks would be able to ride on the steep development costs for this first clock. And the longer she delayed, the more the costs were mounting.

“When can you have the work completed for me?” she asked.

“Lady, I don’t know if I can do it at all. I need to check my production schedule.”

Mollie glanced at the blackboard directly behind him, the production schedule apparent for all to see. “Can’t you check right now?”

Mr. Magruder did not break eye contact with her, nor did
his expression change as he folded his arms across his chest and glared at her. “Nope.” He pushed away from the wall. “Come back in two days, and I’ll be able to tell you if I can do the work.”

Mollie’s hands began to shake. He was more than capable of handling her request, but there was a reason he was stalling. “Would it help if I sent a man to negotiate on my behalf?”

His gaze did not flicker. “It would help if you weren’t a woman. It would help if you weren’t a stranger. Frankly, it would help if doing business with you wasn’t likely to annoy people I’ve worked with for the past two decades. Come back in two days, lady.”

It was exasperating to walk away, but what choice did she have? As she returned to the workshop on East Street, the comforting sound of watch engravers tapping away at work greeted her.

Over the past few weeks, Alice had drawn more than a dozen designs for the bank clock to coordinate with the bold new lines of the building, and when Mollie walked in the workshop door, still tense with anger over Mr. Magruder’s treatment, Alice presented her with a new design. It was brilliant. The roman numerals were drawn in the neoclassical tradition, but with a slight Gothic twist in the lengthening of the letters.

“That’s it,”
Mollie whispered. Those classic numerals represented stability and tradition, but the Gothic tone injected a hint of energy and style. It was simple enough to read from a distance and captured the beauty that had made the 57th famous.

Two days later, she returned to Magruder’s Industrial Mill to finalize the center post, but the man wouldn’t even let her set foot in the building.

“You’ve managed to annoy half the builders in the city with
that deal you cut with Raymond Durant. Forget it, lady. Find someone else to make your center post.”

Mollie reclined in the dental chair at Dr. Buchanan’s office. She wasn’t there as a patient or a landlord, but merely as a friend. It felt a little odd to be tilted slightly backward, with her feet propped on a small stool, but there wasn’t enough room in the cramped office for a second chair. Dr. Buchanan had a steady stream of business at this compact office built alongside her watch factory. At the time she’d asked Richard to include it in the plans, she had considered it a favor to a man she pitied. Now she was grateful for the monthly revenue.

Dr. Buchanan sat at his desk with the chair swiveled to face her, concern on his face as Mollie poured out her frustrations. “If you could have seen the look on Mr. Magruder’s face—so smug, so . . .” She searched for the word. “I think he knew all along he wouldn’t do business with me, and that two-day delay was just to annoy me.”

“Or set you backwards,” Dr. Buchanan said. “If he has a long-standing relationship with the other clockmaker, he probably never had any intention of taking your job.”

Mollie vaulted upright. “That’s what is so frustrating! Potter Clockworks went out of business after the fire. They don’t even
want
those contracts.” There might be industrial mills in neighboring cities that could handle her job, but she didn’t know how to find such people. And time was growing short. Mr. Durant was coming at the end of the week to assess her progress, and she had nothing to show him. He had warned her of the old-boy network she was up against, but she had underestimated it. This sort of nastiness was simply alien to her.

Dr. Buchanan twirled a small hand drill between his fingers. “I
hate to say it, but I think Magruder may want his palm greased. Or some other favor.”

Mollie let out a huff and flopped back down into the dentist chair, staring at the ceiling. “I can’t afford to pay any more than his highway robbery price, and I don’t have pull with anyone who can grant him favors.”

“What about Zack Kazmarek?” Dr. Buchanan asked. “That man has ties all over the city. I expect he might be able to get things moving over at Magruder’s.”

At Zack’s name, Mollie stiffened. Even after the fire, Zack’s reputation for plowing through obstacles continued unabated. Rumor had it that when the city had slowed down reconstruction efforts in the Polish neighborhoods, Zack retaliated by encouraging a slowdown among the longshoremen unloading imported building materials at the docks. Within the week, the city ordered reconstruction work to begin again in the ethnic enclaves.

Mollie laced her fingers across her waist and tapped the toes of her boots together to relieve the nervous tension. Even thinking about putting herself back into Zack’s orbit sent a charge of nervous energy through her. “I’d rather not,” she said. She doubted he would even speak with her after the terrible things she had said to him that day in the cemetery.

Dr. Buchanan shifted in his chair, the skin on his cheeks going beet red behind his handlebar mustache. “Forgive me if this is a delicate topic, but I don’t think you need to fear Zack’s lingering attentions toward you. There is another young lady who has caught his fancy.”

Mollie’s feet stopped tapping, and her mouth went dry. “Yes?”

“Her name is Anka Jablonski. She and her family go to the Kazmareks’ almost every night for supper, as they don’t have a proper kitchen in their apartment. Miss Anka is quite the cook,
and I’ve noticed that Zack makes a special point of showing up for supper. Much more than he ever did in the past.”

Mollie stared at the ceiling. Miss Anka must be the blond girl she had seen him with that evening in the park. Why should this hurt so much? Wasn’t this what she wanted for him?

“Mollie, Zack sold the Monet painting of the girl in the garden,” Dr. Buchanan said softly. “The one of the girl holding the watch.”

She sat bolt upright. “He did?” It shouldn’t surprise her, but it did. It hurt too.

“Hartman’s is going to reopen within the month, and Zack has put the painting on the floor for sale. It will be one of the first things customers see when they walk through the doors.”

She felt a little light-headed, probably from sitting up so quickly, but Dr. Buchanan had not stopped speaking. “I’m telling you this because you’ve been a good friend to me. I want to make sure the 57th survives, and I think you might need Zack’s help. You need to know he isn’t harboring any irrational feelings for you. He’s not the sort to hold a grudge, and he might be able to help.”

Her fingers curled around the edge of the seat. On the other side of this brick wall, her factory was in danger of going under unless she could deliver on this clock contract. She would do whatever was necessary in order to make it happen.

Even if that meant reestablishing contact with Zack Kazmarek.

Mollie wore her smartest outfit, a coral rose suit with a cinched-in waist complemented by a little beret of the same fabric atop her head, for the meeting. She also wore the white cotton gloves Richard had given her for Christmas. It seemed silly to wear gloves at this time of year, but Richard told her a lady ought
to keep her hands covered whenever outdoors, and she had been trying to remember to do so. In any event, she thought the entire outfit looked very smart and lent her a much-needed confident air as she walked toward the new store Hartman was building.

Columbus Street was a hive of activity, with thousands of construction workers scrambling over five- and six-story buildings rising out of the newly elevated street. Chicago had always had a problem with mud in the past, but now, with the slate burned clean, they were rebuilding the city properly. The streets had been raised several inches, and mud would be a thing of the past. Most of the buildings were still mere shells, lacking window glass and with scaffolding outlining where the top floors would someday be, but Hartman’s was ahead of the rest. From the outside, the store looked complete. The palatial building was clad in white limestone, new window glass sparkled in the sunshine, and a glossy front door had already been set in place. It wasn’t until Mollie mounted the freshly poured concrete steps that she noticed the first startling change.

Instead of a doorman ready to hold the door for visitors, an armed guard blocked her passage. She drew up short, stunned by the stern expression on the guard’s implacable face.

“I would like to speak with Zack Kazmarek,” she said, glancing nervously at the rifle the man held loosely in his hands. Then she had to wait on the front stoop for twenty minutes while he sent a message upstairs.

Would Zack even see her? From her spot on the front stoop, she could hear the racket from hammers and workmen calling orders to one another. Surely Zack had better things to do than rush to her rescue, but what choice did she have? The 57th would fall into bankruptcy if she could not deliver these clocks.

The door opened and the guard emerged. “He’ll give you five minutes.”

The surge of relief made her dizzy as she scrambled to her feet. He couldn’t hate her too much if he was willing to see her.

It was dim inside, the vast space illuminated only by daylight as workers hung immense chandeliers that looked like they belonged at Versailles. Everything smelled of fresh plaster and varnish, but one end of the unfinished showroom was already stacked to the ceiling with crates of merchandise, handwoven rugs, and bolts of satin and silk. Two men were working to hang cables in a towering compartment that surely was going to be an elevator.

She was breathless by the time she climbed the five flights of stairs, but that couldn’t account for the shakiness of her legs. The shakiness was from the prospect of facing a man she had once loved and walked away from.

Zack’s office was at the end of the long corridor. After she knocked on the freshly painted door, Zack’s firm voice bid her to enter. She took a deep breath, twisted the knob, and stepped inside.