31 Bond Street (29 page)

When the water became shallow, they used the oars to push against the bottom. The stream forked and bent, heading west, into the wetland. Clusters of firm ground appeared, here and there, where trees sprouted in clumps.

“I can see the railroad now,” said Samuel. Across the expanse, the tracks bisected the marsh, running north along a spine of dry land that the Passaic Indians had used as a roadway north and south. The raised ridge had iron rails running along the top and was widened with stone and earth, landfill hauled on barges from the city, by laboring gangs.

“This is a good spot,” said Samuel, when they were in full view of the railroad tracks.

“What should we do? Should we dump him?” asked Katuma, about Wicken’s limp body. Samuel did not answer but stepped off the raft, hopping to a tiny island of solid ground amid the high reeds, where some trees had died and fallen, their trunks in a pile. Samuel picked up a tree trunk that was weathered and smooth as a post. He pushed the post into the mud, where it sank then settled into the firmer sand at the bottom, standing it upright. “Do you want to kill him?” asked Katuma.

“Not kill him,” said Samuel. “You know that is not part of my teaching. God did not give me the power to do that.”

“I will kill him,” said Katuma. “I wasn’t bred with the same
teaching as you, and I wouldn’t feel dishonored to commit the act. This man was searching for you that afternoon, and he took the boy’s life to send you a message, and seal your lips. This man and this mud are the same, and I would be putting things back to their natural order by burying him here, alive.”

“I want to lash him up,” said Samuel, untying the burlap sack and pulling it off Wicken, who was curled, still unconscious, his fancy clothes wrinkled and twisted. Samuel took a rope that was coiled at the bottom of the boat. “Prop him against the post, and I’ll tie him on.”

Katuma pulled Wicken off the raft and heaved him upright, holding him against the piling. The limp body sagged heavily. Saliva fell from his drooping lips, though his heart was still beating. Samuel wrapped the rope round and round, so that Wicken hung tightly to the pole. In the distance, from the south, came the whistle of a locomotive.

“Leaving him here is the same as killing him,” said Katuma.

“Perhaps, but I’ll leave his punishment to God and the mosquitoes,” said Samuel.

Wicken hung, with his jacket fallen around his shoulders and his linen shirt torn open, revealing the fair skin of his chest. His head was slumped forward, and his flaxen hair matted with sweat covering his eyes.

Samuel and Katuma got into the rowboat, leaving the raft behind, bobbing in the marsh. They used the oars to turn the boat, and started to row, with small strokes, to the east. The train came upon them, coursing along the ridge in a thunderous roar of iron pistons and steam. The windows of the train flickered past with the silhouettes of passengers, some reading, some talking, ladies with large hats, and men in suits, dressed for travel. Some would certainly be gazing absently at the scenery and would spot a white
man, half naked, hanging in the middle of the marsh, tied to a tree. The flashing scene would be etched in their minds, perhaps dismissed as a mirage or a trick of the eye. In an instant the clattering train was gone.

“We all deserved to be saved,” said Samuel as the boat slid through deep reeds. “Every man stands a chance to be redeemed.”

November 12, 1857

A
flag snapped in the wind, just outside the window. A sign painter with a tiny brush was painting his name in gold, H
ENRY
L
AUREN
C
LINTON
, E
SQ
, on the milky glass of his office door. The new office on Astor Place smelled of new paint and shellac. The outer room had twenty desks for clerks, who were already grumbling under the caseload. He had two trial lawyers to keep him from having to appear downtown daily at the court. Despite Emma’s notorious arrest, which hit the papers like a firestorm in the doldrums of August, he and Thayer had successfully gotten her released, for she had not committed any crime. As for her actions that night, he had learned that she was enticed to a night of entertainment by a man she had met earlier. Snarky uncovered word that there had been a tip-off to the DA, for her presence at the gambling den had all the earmarks of a trap, and a sting set up by Oakey Hall.

The adverse outcome was that the Surrogate Judge delayed his decision on the estate. The incident had clearly prejudiced him, and he had reversed his thinking on the matter. His final decision gave everything to the family, so by the time Emma was freed again, she
was left with no money and few possessions, and was sent to a charity house for infirm women, where she was cared for by a group of Mission ladies. She regained some coherence, but at times her mind remained addled. She alternated between a docile belief that she was returning to 31 Bond Street and an angered understanding of her circumstances. The firm of Clinton and Thayer became busier and busier, attracting hordes of new clients.

By the fall, New York had taken another turn. A flurry of bank failures had rippled through the city in October. In the short period of a single month, the city’s exuberant expansion had been reversed, and New Yorkers, many rich and more poor, had lost everything. The city was reeling from the panic as it settled in for a colorless period like the depression of ’37, when the hungry wandered down kitchen alleys, scavenging for scraps of food, and slept, burrowed under the stoops of private homes.

A wiry young clerk appeared at the door of Clinton’s office. “Someone is here to see you, sir. It’s curious—he’s an Indian. I thought he was begging, but he said he has a parcel to give you.”

“For me?”

“Yes, he says you will understand when you see it. I tried to take it from him, but he held on to it steady, like it was filled with gold.”

“You can send him in.”

“Are you sure? He hardly says a word.”

“Yes, go ahead and bring him to me.” The sign painter had paint buckets everywhere, disrupting his concentration. He saw the Indian being led through the maze of desks; he wasn’t wearing hard soles, so his steps padded softly. At closer view, Clinton could see that he was not a derelict. His clothes were worn but were not dirty. He had no sores; his skin was smooth and clean. His black hair was pulled back in a ponytail; he no more belonged in a law office than did a bobcat, muscular and sleek.

“How do you do, sir? How can I help you?” said Clinton. The
man ignored his question. He placed a packet on Clinton’s desk. It was a small parcel wrapped with waxy brown paper that didn’t fold neatly but crumpled into a boxy shape and was tied together with a fine string.

“For me?” he asked warily. The Indian only nodded. Clinton’s fingers fumbled with the tiny knots, and he wondered if perhaps he should have delegated such minutiae to a clerk. He felt foolish pulling at the tiny string when there were so many pressing things to be done. Finally, the string fell away and the paper opened to a small pile of trinkets, tiny bits of debris, jumbled together like the sweepings of a dustbin. There was an old penny, with a hole pierced above the flying eagle. Twine was threaded through the hole—at closer glance the thread was a jute fiber carefully braided together with a mosaic of delicate bits of ceramic beads. Next to the penny was a feather, downy and yellow, finch colored. When Clinton touched it, it fragmented, and he realized that it was a lock of hair, as silky as the finest filaments in nature. He lifted the golden tuft onto his palm, and he was suddenly stricken by the significance of the offering.

“It was the Negro that sent you?”

The man nodded. What Clinton’s instincts told him was too horrifying to fully acknowledge. As the summer had turned to fall, and he had become preoccupied with the new office, he had denied his suspicions and buried them in a deep trench, and once buried, he felt the constellation of his life flowing smoothly again along the surface. The enormity of his emotions now came welling up. His throat was tight, and it was difficult to talk.

“The boy’s death—was it painful?”

The man pointed to a scrap in the pile, a paper folded in half. Clinton opened it and saw a tiny inked script with a few lines, written by the hand of someone who had labored hard at the effort.
But he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open
fields, and make an atonement for the house: and it shall be clean. Leviticus 14:53

The tragedy stabbed him now with the full force of its invisible grief. Clinton had never voiced his fears about John’s absence to Elisabeth, and did not know if he could tell her now, for she would certainly hold him responsible for steering this boy closer to the cruelty that led to his death. Yet, if he kept a secret from her, it would be his only deception in all their years of marriage. And he thought back at the long trial, and the stresses and sacrifices, and he wondered, had this case advanced justice? Were all of his actions actually callous and vain? Were his own motives, as Armstrong had insisted, more about successfully winning a duel with Oakey Hall?

“Samuel, is he safe?” he asked.

“He is alive,” the man answered.

The trinkets glimmered before him, more precious than any gem. “Thank you,” said Clinton. He looked up—hoping to find a hint of absolution in the Indian’s coal black eyes, but the man had gone. He was already in the outer office, padding past the desks, and without the notice of a single clerk, he let himself out the door.

From the window, Clinton saw the man on the street below, heading through Astor Place, blending in with the crowd that was scattering in all directions. As a child, he had been told that Astor Place was the spot where several Indian highways came together, the center of a web of paths that forked across the continent. At this convergence, a tribe had buried their chief ’s heart beside an acorn, and an oak grew with twinned trunks, with ancestors’ spirits dangling from the boughs like silent totems.

Thayer came to the door, peering into the office. Seeing him distracted, he rapped on the glass, to get his attention. “Henry, you have a court session later this afternoon, do you remember?” He stepped in and leaned against the wall, folding his arms, waiting to catch him up on the docket.

Clinton looked up, not hearing anything. “It’s a strange thing, freedom. It doesn’t mean much when there is so much bondage and pain,” he said.

“I’m sorry…I don’t follow you,” said Thayer. “Are you speaking about the South? Slavery?” Thayer was perplexed by the direction of the conversation. “Henry,” he said, trying to bring his partner back on course. “You asked me to brief you on the Matthews case for the hearing with Judge Thomas this afternoon.”

“I’m sorry, I need you to take care of that for me, I am going home,” Clinton answered.

Thayer looked confused. “Are you well, Henry? Is everything all right?”

Clinton stared at the trinkets on his desk. “I will be. I just need to see my wife.”

T
his book is a work of fiction. It draws from accounts of the murder of Harvey Burdell as described in the newspapers and testimonies of the time. The characters who figured in the actual case and have lent their names to this tale are: Henry Clinton and Abraham Oakey Hall, who tried the case of Emma Cunningham; Doctor Burdell and his brothers; Edward Connery, who conducted the Coroner’s inquest; Hannah Conlon, the cook who testified on the stand; and John Burchell, the houseboy who discovered the body and ran to the precinct to fetch the police. Barnaby Thayer was the name of a lawyer whose name was borrowed. Elizabeth Clinton Clinton, (spelled with a z) was the granddaughter of New York politician DeWitt Clinton, but she met and married Henry Clinton after this case had ended. The Elisabeth Clinton in the book is an invention.

The story departs from the record by eliminating a number of real people: in fact, Augusta and Helen Cunningham figured prominently in the case, and captured the public’s attention, but they had
three siblings, two boys and an older girl. Also, Emma Cunningham rented rooms in the upper floor at 31 Bond Street to some boarders who were eliminated from this fictional drama, even though they played a role during the investigation and inquest.

The characters of Samuel, Katuma, Quietta, Ambrose Wicken, James Snarky, and Commodore Vanderkirk are figments of the imagination, as are the inner thoughts and personal dialogue of everyone in the book.

The
New York Times
, founded in 1851, was then called the
New-York Daily Times
. The common usage was to hyphenate New York, and although much of that earlier city has vanished, New York itself is a central character of the book, as vibrant and alive then, as it is today.

The following is a brief summary of the lives of the three main characters after the trial ended:

Abraham Oakey Hall:
Hall was elected mayor of New York in 1868. In 1871, the
New York Times
broke a story alleging massive corruption by members of the “Tweed Ring.” Over six million dollars were removed from city coffers under the direction of Tammany boss, William Marcy Tweed, and every check to city contractors for inflated charges was signed by Mayor A. Oakey Hall.

Mayor Hall was indicted for corrupt neglect of official duty and tried three times. The first case was declared a mistrial when a juror died before the verdict; the second ended with a hung jury; and in the third case, in 1873, Hall defended himself and was acquitted. He claimed no knowledge of the frauds perpetrated and that he never benefited financially from them. He resumed the practice of law in New York but encountered serious financial dif
ficulties. On March 21, 1877, the
New York Times
ran the front-page headline:

Hall vanished from the city, and after much conjecture was discovered to be living in London, where he took up another calling as a writer and a playwright for the stage. He spent his remaining career between London and New York, where he worked as a journalist, newspaper publisher, actor, playwright, and again returned to the law. He entered into a lawsuit for libel against him by an author that noted his role in the Tweed frauds. The case was dropped, but the pursuit was costly, and when he died, his wife turned to his friends for financial aid.

Henry Lauren Clinton:
Henry Clinton had an illustrious and prominent career in New York City, and his obituary in 1899 stated that he had earned the highest fees of any lawyer in the century. He wrote two books,
Extraordinary Cases
and
Celebrated Trials,
that became best sellers of their time. In them, he detailed his legal strategies in the Cunningham-Burdell murder case as well as his role in another celebrated case: in 1872 Henry Clinton was a prosecuting attorney in the trials against Mayor Abraham Oakey Hall. Henry Clinton made the opening statements:

When he died at his home on Park Avenue, his wife, Elizabeth Clinton Clinton, was at his side.

Emma Cunningham:
Emma Cunningham was listed in the 1860 city directory as working in a liquor store on Spring Street. Later newspaper items reported that she had left for the West Coast, presumed to be in San Francisco. In the post-Civil War decades, interest in Emma Cunningham or her whereabouts waned and the murder trial was long forgotten. In 1887, an obituary appeared in the
New York Times
: