City of Promise (62 page)

The peg was covered in blood, but it was useless in any case; snapped in two from the force of his thrust into Clifford’s belly. The hole he’d put in the Southerner’s forehead seemed as if it might have been superfluous.

“This one’s dead as well,” the gunman said. “And I’m thinking it’s Tony Lupo.” He was standing over Lupo’s corpse, struggling to pull up his clothes, and he sounded morose.

“That’s who he is,” Josh agreed.

“Sweet Jesus. And I did it over here in the mayor’s territory. There’s going to be hell to pay.”

“Personally, I rather prefer this outcome to the alternative. What in God’s name took you so long?”

“I was in the crapper—Begging your pardon, Mr. Turner, in the outhouse. There’s a door from the outside as well as this one here and I broke in earlier. Truth is, I’ve been spending most of my day in there squirting out of both ends. Must have been the oysters I had for lunch. Should have known better. June . . . Like they say, never eat oysters in a month without an
R
. And there’s all the noise from that damned bridge overhead. I didn’t hear anything until one almighty shout from in here.”

“That was me.”

“Yeah, I figured that out now. But when I came through the door I didn’t know what to expect. Only thing I saw was Lupo going for the rifle, so I shot him. Couldn’t do nothing else, could I?”

“No, I don’t imagine you could. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? What’s your name?”

“Donovan, Mr. Turner. I been with Frankie up at your place a few times.”

“Right. Hand me that cane, would you, Donovan.”

The gunman went on speaking while he did as he was bid. “I think you better get out of here, Mr. Turner. I don’t expect no coppers, but you never know. Best thing is, I wait until somebody comes to relieve me. Once it’s dark and there’s two of us, we can get the bodies to the river.” Then, looking at the shattered peg, “There ain’t any hansoms come by here regular, but I could go get you one, Mr. Turner. Bring it back.”

“No, that’s not wise. As you point out, it will attract attention in this neighborhood. I can manage with just the cane for a few blocks.”

Fully four as it turned out, and they seemed particularly long. Josh was trembling with fatigue and covered in sweat by the time he saw a cab stand on Front Street. He made sure he was safely inside before he said, “Eleven-sixty Park Avenue over in New York.” The thought of getting out of the hansom and onto the ferry, then repeating the exercise
on the other side was daunting. “You can do that, can’t you? Now that you can take the bridge.”

“I can do it. Take a bit of time, though. And there’s a five-penny toll for carriages. Only a penny if you walk, but that’s not going to suit you, is it, sir?” Making it apparent he had observed the empty right trouser leg and the effort required to get into the cab.

“No, it doesn’t suit me,” Josh said. “I’ll pay the toll and I don’t care how long the journey takes.” Then, promising to make it worth the cabby’s while, he leaned back and closed his eyes.

Mollie had looked for him everywhere she could think of. Everywhere Ollie could think of as well. This was her second trip back to the St. Nicholas and Hamish still reported no sign of Joshua. “I’ve run out of ideas,” she said. “And I should let you go back to the stable, Ollie. It was good of you to drop everything to drive me about.”

“It’s no bother, Mrs. Turner. Mr. Turner’s always telling me a good manager knows how to delegate responsibility. The boy I left in charge will manage for a few hours.”

“Well, if you’re sure . . . Take me to Fifth Street and Avenue A, Ollie.”

It remained unclear if Mr. Ganz was her ally or her enemy, but Mollie was certain he was somehow in the middle of all that had happened.

He was not, however, in his shop. The door was locked and the curtain pulled across the window. Mollie tugged firmly on the bell, waited a few seconds, and rang it again. This time with obvious impatience. A second-story window opened and a woman leaned out. “He ain’t here. You can come back tomorrow.”

Mollie tipped back her head. The woman must be Mr. Ganz’s housekeeper. She wore an old-fashioned mobcap and had a duster in her hand. That the pawnbroker lived above his shop despite having access to apparently unlimited sums of money was at the heart of the
mystery surrounding him. “I’m Mrs. Joshua Turner,” she called up. “I’ve not come to pawn anything. Mr. Ganz is a business associate of my husband and it’s urgent that I speak with him. Can you tell where he might be found?”

“Not so’s it’ll do you any good. Only thing I know is he went to Brooklyn. Said he was going to take the new bridge and left a few hours ago. Didn’t say when he’d be back.”

Josh pulled out his pocket watch. It was approaching six. He’d so far spent two hours in the back of the hansom, traveling at a snail’s pace across the bridge. Plenty of time to contemplate the fact that he had killed a man.

He did not, he decided, feel remorse. Regret perhaps. But he could see no way he could have acted differently. And he could tick off a long line of men who had died at Clifford’s hands, starting with the prisoners he shot for sport and continuing to poor little George Higgins, whose death Clifford doubtless ordered, even if Jones was correct and the murder was actually done by Lupo. Not to forget Ebenezer Tickle’s story of the deadly chariot races in Kentucky. Good riddance then. If the preachers were correct, Clifford had to answer for his actions to a higher authority. In which case so would he someday. Shooting Trenton Clifford in what was, at the minimum, self-defense was unlikely to be his greatest sin. As for the death of Tony Lupo, he was the immediate cause of Mollie’s suffering and grief, and that of God knows how many others. He had no tears to waste on Lupo.

The cab was making progress but it was incredibly slow. Josh could hear the rumble of the trains on the tracks that connected the elevated railways of the two cities, and the tramping of the pedestrians on the wooden walkway raised a short distance over his head. All he could see of them from the cab’s window were their feet and legs, but it was obvious they moved with greater speed than anyone in the crush of private vehicles, his hansom included. Nonetheless, New York was getting closer.

The buildings of the great city were spread in front of him like a swathe of inky black against the brilliant blue of the sky.

Josh lowered the side window and leaned out for a better view. The spire of Trinity Church was immediately identifiable; on the Manhattan side it was the only thing higher than the bridge tower itself. If he moved to the other side of the cab he could distinguish as well the elaborate top of the ten-story Western Union Building. Apart from those two landmarks, the skyline of Manhattan was a solid phalanx of thrusting iron and stone. Some steel as well these days. And surely more of it to come. If it did nothing else this bridge would enhance the reputation of the strongest metal in the world, and . . . Jesus, God Almighty. What was happening?

It began as a thrumming, a kind of syncopated chant of terror. Josh heard it first from the pedestrians above his head. Then it echoed from carriages in front and behind.

The bridge is collapsing. Collapsing. Collapsing. Collapsing.

The panic descended in the blink of an eye. One moment Mollie was sitting up next to Ollie in the brougham—she’d left the interior of the carriage in favor of the view from the higher driver’s perch—scanning the crowd streaming off the bridge, looking for a glimpse of Sol Ganz. The next there were piercing screams and a terrified horde of men and women shoving and pushing and thrusting as they tried to get to the street. “What is it, Ollie? What’s happened?”

“I’m not sure, Mrs. Turner. Looks like a sort of stampede. I’d better get you out of harm’s—”

“Out of the way! Give ’em room!”

A couple of policemen were shouting, trying to turn the horses by yanking at their bridles, and screaming that all the nearby carriages on Chatham Street had to move off.

“Give ’em room. For the love of God, room’s what’s needed.”

Ollie concentrated on getting the carriage out of the traffic and controlling the chestnut, who was picking up the surrounding panic
and threatening to bolt. Mollie paid no attention to the horse or where they were going. She was twisted around, staring in horrified fascination at what was happening behind them. The crush appeared to have started on the stairway. It was a short double flight, no more than eight feet wide, with a landing between that was equally constricted. This was the only pathway for both ascending and descending foot traffic, and quite suddenly what had been an orderly if slow procession of people in both directions had become a pile of bodies collapsing one upon the other, piling up so there could be no question of those underneath surviving. While she watched, the deadly snarl on the stairs spread to the bridge itself in what seemed an inexorable wave.

Mollie saw a hand thrust out from a pile of bodies and knew that whoever was on the bottom must be pressed to death. Then someone kicked at the hand and it skidded away on its own. There was an iron fence either side of the stairs. The top was meant to be used as a handrail, but the whole thing served instead to make the horror worse and prevent escape. Meanwhile, the crowd on the bridge kept surging forward, screaming and crying that they must get off, while every thrust made that more of an impossibility.

Some people did manage to get away. Mollie saw a woman pull herself free of the melee and wander off. She still wore her hat and her gloves and the top of her frock, but she was totally naked from the waist down, her skirt and her petticoats and pantaloons apparently torn away in the crush. One man leaped onto the back of another and literally walked across the heads of those in front of him until finally he jumped off into the street and ran away. There was a shower of hats tumbling from the upper reaches of the bridge approach, falling onto the rooftops and railroad tracks below. While she watched, an infant was torn from its mother’s arms just as the woman was nearing ground level. The infant landed in the street and the woman somehow managed to clamber off the side of the bridge and climb down the framework using the struts for handholds. Mollie hurled herself out of the brougham and ran forward, ignoring Ollie’s shouts behind her.

She and the woman reached the baby at the same moment. “He’s mine!” the woman shouted, as if she thought Mollie meant to steal the child, and reached down and snatched up the tiny figure and ran off. Through it all the infant remained so still that Mollie feared the worst.

When she looked back to the bridge she saw that others had followed the woman’s lead and were climbing down by means of the supporting structure. Soon that escape route was also hideously overcrowded and she watched at least two people fall off and land on the road below. Another she was quite certain simply jumped to his death. “Oh, God! Oh, dear God,” she whispered.

The words were as much a prayer for those in the terrible situation unfolding before her eyes as an exclamation of shock. Indeed, they were the first sound she’d managed to make since the stampede started, and a way of shaking herself free of the sheer weight of the horror.

A copper shoved her with no apology for his rudeness. “Out of the way, miss. Out of the way!”