The Empire of Shadows (8 page)

“Probably why he didn't want to come with us tonight. I bet he's on the prowl,” Tom said with a faint grin.

“So long as he's got 'Becca with him, he can prowl all he likes. But I'll bite his whole hand off if I find out different.” Mary said this with a smile, but it didn't conceal the hard edge to her words. Tom grunted, listening as the distant band launched into a polka.

“Don't trust him yet do you?” he asked, putting a hand on Mary's as they rested on the railing. “Not that I do either, really,” he hurried on before she had a chance to answer. “Suppose we have to give him some rope though. We try to keep him on too short a lead and we'll lose him. He's got too much spirit to stand that for long, even if he deserves it.”

Mike was not theirs. He was the son of Terence Bucklin, a man whose murder had started Tom on the Brooklyn Bridge conspiracy case six years before. Tom had grown close to the boy then, a wild but promising ten-year-old who ran with a pack of boys in his Lower East Side neighborhood. When his grandmother, his last living relative, came down with consumption, Tom asked if he could adopt Mike. That was before he and Mary had married. They made it official after the wedding. They had taken Mike into their lives in eighty-four and moved to Brooklyn Heights late that same year. Yet, despite the separation, Mike's ties to his old friends remained as strong as harness leather.

The gang became more daring as the boys got older; it got larger, too, including boys from other streets in the old neighborhood, according to reports Tom got from the local cops. With both he and Mary working the hours they did, it was close to impossible to stop Mike from running with them. The fact that Mary was a madam who ran two respectable houses in the West Twenty's didn't help. It was only natural for Mike to feel that the usual rules didn't apply to him.

Tom had hoped that so long as Mike did well in school the gap between him and the gang was bound to widen. Mike's grades put him near the top of his class, but they didn't do much to break his old ties. The pull of the gang and the old neighborhood around Norfolk, Suffolk, and Rivington Streets was too strong, the temptations too great.

They'd been his family, Mouse, Smokes, and the others, and they were on to bigger things, so big that Smokes boasted that he had to start paying the great Monk Eastman a percentage of everything they got.

Tom got the telegram early on a Sunday morning. Mike had been out all night, something he never did before. Tom had sent his own telegrams to all the station houses on the Lower East Side during the night, alerting them to keep an eye out for the boy.

The telegram was not good news. There had been a break-in at a warehouse, a watchman was bludgeoned and a fire set to cover the crime, the building badly burned. Mike and Mouse, whose real name was Moses Schein, were caught driving a wagon loaded with the stolen goods. Tom had been boiling when he got the telegram.

“There's only one way I can help you, Mike,” Tom told him. “You have to give up the rest of them. Mouse isn't talking now, but if he does and he spills it before you do—well, I can't help you. You understand?” Tom remembered pacing Mike's cell in the Fourth precinct; three steps, turn, three steps, turn, three steps.

“Who hit the watchman, who set the fire, who was on watch, who was fencing the stuff—everything, and no bullshit.” Mike sat silent as a stone. “I already talked to the prosecutor,” Tom told him. He knew the system and the players well enough to know what would get Mike off. “You do this and you're out. No record, no jail, nothing.”

Mike had taken some convincing. Not even the threat of what might happen if the watchman died could budge him at first. It took two more days to get him to bend. They were bad days for all of them.

Mike gave up the names at last. Tom knew it was an agony for him, a cutting away of a piece of himself. No matter what he or Mary might think of Mike's old gang from the Suffolk Street tenements, they had been like brothers, a street family with bonds fanning out like the tendons in the back of his hand. The cutting of those tendons had been done with a dull instrument, a tool of coercion and fear. An ax cuts more than a scalpel, even in the deftest of hands. Their own bonds were left hanging by a thread.

“He's a good boy, Tom, a good young man I should say,” Mary said. “I don't believe for a second he had anything to do with what happened to that night watchman.”

“No,” Tom said. “I don't believe that's in him.”

Mary watched his face from the corner of her eye. They both had their doubts.

 

The trout had been superb, the venison steaks done to perfection, with just a touch of natural “gaminess” to remind the diners they weren't at Delmonico's William and his cousin, Frederick Durant, sat down to a late supper once the main dining hall had emptied and only a few guests still lingered over coffee and desserts.

“You're going to have to keep her happy somehow, Will,” Frederick said, his fork poised over a last morsel of trout. “Even if this Van Duzer fellow can't break down the walls you say you've erected, he can certainly make life inconvenient, expensive, too.”

William grunted. He had plenty of money for now, though, God knows, he was spending it fast enough between his projects up here and the new yacht. He considered for a moment what it might take to make his sister go away. He quickly concluded that either the bulk of his plans or the yacht would have to go. The truth was he wasn't willing to give up either, not for Ella.

“Van Duzer can end up costing you more in lawyer's fees than it would take to pay Ella off,” Frederick went on. He looked at his cousin as he cut into a last bit of venison. He wondered if William was even listening. “It's your money,” he finally said with a shrug. “Your sister, too.”

William looked across the table at his cousin. Fred owned the Prospect House and everything in it. He had built the place from lumber cut and milled on the spot, carving this fabulous place from the grip of the forest. He'd built a camp for himself way over on Forked Lake that he called The Cedars, a rival of the finest camps in the Adirondacks. He was the heir to a fortune of his father's making, a prosperous sugar business in New York, and was a wealthy man by any measure.

Between them they could turn this part of the world into the finest resort area in the East. The Adirondacks were protected now, at least on paper. The state legislature had seen to that with the Adirondack Preserve act of '85. It was the largest park in the country, bigger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined, and far closer to the money capitals of the East. If they were smart, he and Frederick and perhaps a small circle of investors would turn these forests into a fortune the likes of which had rarely been seen. His sister's clamoring for her “share” of the estate was a trifling matter against such plans.

“Morgan will be up in a couple of weeks,” William said after washing his venison down with an excellent burgundy.

“The nose himself?” Fred asked, surprise painting his usually placid features. Morgan's outsized strawberry nose was as huge as his reputation in business, and, if rumors were true, with the women as well. William enjoyed the moment, letting his handsome cousin dangle for a few seconds.

“In person,” William confirmed with a smug smile. “He's coming to look at the site on Mohegan Lake. He'll be staying at Pine Knot of course, and I'll be showing him the hunting lodges on Sumner and Shedd, too,” Will said. “Of course, the lodges are nothing compared to Pine Knot, but mainly I wanted to show him the sites and let him envision the possibilities.”

“Hmph!” Fred grunted. “You get Morgan for a client, it'll open up a world of possibilities, Will. You know the kind of friends he has? Of course you do. What the hell am I saying?”

His cousin was excited and Will was loving it. Morgan's interest would be good for both of them. Just his presence in the Adirondacks would give the region a caché beyond anything they could have done on their own. Will took another sip of wine.

“Collis helped,” Will said in as offhanded a manner as he could.

“Huntington's a good man. Your father thought very highly of him,” Fred said.

William nodded. “He's been a help and a fair man to deal with; loves the Adirondacks, too. He sees the future of this country. May be selling him a camp as well,” Will said, as if the deal was already done.

A waiter arrived and cleared the table, taking their orders for coffee and ice cream before scurrying back to the kitchen. William watched him go.

“You've managed to get good people in here, Fred. Must've been a problem.” There hadn't been enough people living in the vicinity to provide even half the staffing needs, not if every man, woman, and child had been put to work.

“Had to bring people in from all over. Some even from New York, but mostly from Glens Falls and Saratoga.

“Hiram! Over here!” he called as Hiram Duryea strode into the dining hall. Duryea craned to see where the hail had come from. It was a big room. “Come, join us,” Frederick said, waving him into a chair. “We were just about to have coffee.”

Hiram Duryea was a prosperous man who owned a hugely successful starch business. In his late-middle years, he still had all the robust vigor of a much younger man. He'd been brevetted a brigadier general for distinguished conduct at the battle of Gains's Mill and still wore an air of command as naturally as some men wore a hat. He loved the Adirondacks, too, and had built a camp about six years before on a point about a half mile up the lake from the hotel.

“Evening, gentlemen,” he said, with a smile that took in both Will and Fred. “Not interrupting anything, am I?” he asked, hesitating just enough to be polite. He may have noticed the fleeting frown that passed across William's aristocratic features.

“'Course not, old man!” Will assured him. “By all means, join us.” He shot Fred a quick glance as the general sat. There'd be no more talk of Morgan and Huntington this night.

 

She had been off duty for some hours now, but she hadn't gone back to the maid's quarters like the rest. Instead, she had done a little detective work. She found out enough to keep her interested too.

Letitia Burman—“Lettie,” as everyone called her—knew what his name was, and what his father was, too. It was only prudent to check on these things after all. Mike was a beautiful boy, as handsome in a slightly dangerous sort of way as any she'd seen this summer. But handsome wasn't enough. There were plenty of handsome loggers and river drivers to choose from back in Warrensburg. They were fine if she was lonely enough, but she had yet to find one of them who could rub two dimes together.

So, she'd done her homework. New York City police captains could do very well, from what she heard, as good as a doctor or lawyer if the precinct was fat. That's just what she wanted, too, had come all the way to the middle of nowhere to find. Not that her motives were purely mercenary. She'd have to love the man she picked, not any police captain's son would do.

Lettie walked almost the entire hotel without luck. Maybe he was back in his room, she thought. That bite on his thumb looked nasty, though Mike had done his best to look rakish for her through the pain. Maybe if she didn't find him she'd think of some pretext to knock on his door. She dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came. If she wanted to keep her job there were proprieties she'd have to observe. This had to be a chance encounter, if she could arrange it. The rumble of bowling balls on maple drew her. The bowling alley was the only place she had yet to check.

Mike rolled another ball with his left hand. The last one had bounced into the gutter as 'Becca laughed and clapped. It was the first time she was beating her big brother at anything. She was enjoying every minute. Lettie watched from the corner near the door.

He really was beautiful, she thought. She took him in from ankles to ears, lingering on the best parts in between. Little butterflies swirled and fluttered in her middle. She almost lost her nerve, but she forced herself to stay. She watched as Mike rolled his ball at the pins with a frown of concentration. The ball stayed in the alley this time and toppled seven. The pin boy scrambled to clear them and set up for the next frame.

“Not bad for an injured man,” Mike heard from behind him. He turned to see the girl from the pharmacy watching him with a mischievous smile on her face. He stood stunned for a split second while his brain somehow ceased to function. He'd had almost the same reaction in the pharmacy, a sudden suspension of all rational thought. It didn't last long.

“I,” he said, pausing for an eternal second as his brain shifted gears, “I'm not much of a bowler, even with my good hand.” He held up his bandaged thumb like it was something she needed to see. He gritted his teeth through a ridiculous grin, knowing how incredibly stupid that sounded. Still, she smiled back as if they had some secret understanding.

“I'm Lettie,” she said, extending a white hand. Mike took it. It was small in his fist, soft on the back, but rough on the thumb and fingers, a working hand. He looked into Lettie's blue eyes, marveling at their light as if he'd never seen their like before.

“I'm Mike,” he replied at last. “I'm Mike. We're staying here, at the hotel,” he went on, knowing with instant horror how obvious and stupid and unsophisticated and bumptious he was, and how he could never hope that a dazzling gem of a girl like this could ever see past it and to the real boy who clutched her hand in his sweaty palm. Lettie just giggled. She loved what she could do to a boy, especially the beautiful ones.

 

“Tired?” Tom asked Mary as she stifled a yawn.

“That nap this afternoon wasn't long enough by half,” Mary said, her words slow and cottony. Tom put a strong hand around her waist, pulled her close enough to breathe in the scent of her.