Part 25 (2/2)
”I was speculating on whether,” Josh reached for his topper and cane, ”the Brooklyn Bridge will eventually cross the river the way this map has it.”
The Scot shook his head. ”Och, it dinna' seem likely, Mr. Turner. If a man gets so ill he might die going beneath the thing, what will he suffer from being a hundred and thirty-five feet in the air on top of it? It's some evil sickness coming out of the river. Has to be.”
June, Mollie thought, was her garden's moment. At least that's what she thought now when luscious purple and red roses twined among the lacy white blossoms of the clematis, and a drift of late-blooming tulips followed one of the garden's brick paths. The tulips shaded pale peach to deep pink, and s.h.i.+mmered with color despite the unseasonably cool and gray afternoon. Mind you, in a few weeks when the lilies and iris and peonies and hydrangeas of high summer were at their best in the perennial border, she would doubtless think that the perfect time in her private paradise.
Private was a relative term. Most days people of every size and sort stood peering through the bars of the iron fence that surrounded the property. They craned their necks to see around the artfully laid-out corners and curves, and inhaled the scents, and made appreciative sounds of pleasure and amazement at this thing of beauty crafted from an ordinary New York City building lot.
Mollie had little option but to tolerate the gawkers and gazers. Mr. McKim had suggested building a high stone wall, but that would create shadows and shade where she might not want it. Besides, she had long since admitted to herself that she rather enjoyed the attention.
She had become adept at looking toward the fence without seeming to do so, but a covert glance revealed no onlookers today. Instead Mollie saw a shabby van. It had a wooden sign that read DEANGELO BROTHERS hanging on its side and it was heading north on Fourth Avenue, pulled by two horses of the sort usually dismissed as nags.
She went back to her pruning, but when she looked up she saw that the driver had turned his horses onto the vacant ground next to the garden. Presumably he was taking advantage of the opportunity to turn around and head back downtown . . . no, perhaps that was not his intention. He had reined in beside the small gate she'd had cut so Ollie could conveniently carry plant tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs over to the empty lot for burning. ”Delivery,” the driver called out. Then he got down on the far side of his rig and busied himself with his horses.
Mollie made her way to the gate. She had no idea who these DeAngelo brothers might be or what they could be delivering, and at closer view the van was not just shabby, it was mud-spattered and dirty and the horses were in need of a good brus.h.i.+ng. ”Yes, can I help you?”
”You Mrs. Joshua Turner?” The man had moved around to the rear, and he was bending his head over some papers. His trousers, she noted, were torn and patched, he wore no coat, and his s.h.i.+rt was stained with sweat.
”I'm Mrs. Turner, but I'm not expecting a delivery and I've never heard of DeAngelo Brothers. What do you have there?”
He continued to riffle through his papers, as if she were one of a series of customers. ”Statue,” he said at last, apparently having found the information in his doc.u.ments.
”What statue?”
”Says here it's Venus.”
”Well, if that's what it says, I've no doubt it's true. But I did not order a statue of Venus or any other G.o.ddess, and I have no need of one. I'm afraid you'll have to take it back to wherever it came from.”
He turned to her. She saw that he wore an eyepatch, and that his face matched the rest of him. He was scruffy and unshaven and as much in need of grooming as his horses.
”According to these papers, Mr. Joshua Turner ordered the statue. Paid two hundred for it as well. So you may as well have it.”
”Are you quite sure,” Mollie demanded, ”your customer is Mr. Joshua Turner of 1060 Fourth Avenue? And that he has requested a statue of Venus to be delivered to our home?”
”That's what it says. Statue of Venus for the flower garden what's on lot number 1062.”
”How extraordinary.”
”You want to come around back and have a look 'fore I take it off? It's pretty heavy. Wouldn't want to unload it only to have you tell me to put it back on.”
Mollie looked around. Ollie had gone downtown to buy some new tack required for the horses. The other members of the household were women, and they were all inside. ”Perhaps I can get you some a.s.sistance, but-”
”Sure would like you to take a look yourself first,” the man insisted. ”See if you want it. I can take it back otherwise.”
”Yes, all right. That's sensible.” Mollie unlatched the gate and stepped through it. She was now near enough to the man to smell his body odor and a pervasive miasma of alcohol. She tried holding her breath during the few seconds it took him to unlatch the van's rear door. How extraordinary for Joshua to purchase a statue for the garden. Venus of all things. At such a huge cost and without saying a word about it to her. The only explanation she could think of was that her birthday was next month, but she could not remember the last time her husband had bought her a gift to mark the occasion.
”In here,” the man said, holding open the door.
The van's interior was in deep shadows, and appeared empty. ”I don't see any-”
There was a sense of movement, a whoos.h.i.+ng noise that lasted perhaps a second, then darkness as the cosh made contact with her skull and she crumpled.
”Caisson disease,” Simon said when Joshua reported Hamish's remark about something evil in the river holding up the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. ”There's a doctor named Andy Smith on the project, and that's what he calls it. Comes on after the workers have been some time in caissons below the water.”
”Why didn't it show up on the Brooklyn side?”
”They only had to go down forty-some feet to reach bedrock over in Brooklyn. This side of the river they're down nearly seventy and they're still digging through mud. Tell that to your clerk.”
”I shall, but I don't think it will convince him. Hamish prefers his evil river spirits.”
Simon shrugged. ”Even today people don't think of medicine as science.” He broke off because a tall and fleshy man with a red nose and a swallowtail coat s.h.i.+ny with age brought his hammer down with a sharp crack on a sort of lectern, on top of a dais erected in the middle of the s.p.a.cious foyer of the house Nick and Carolina had built in 1845 and named Suns.h.i.+ne Hill.
”Sold for fifty cents,” the auctioneer said, and a stranger claimed a box of old and rusty lanterns for which Nick and Carolina's children had no use.
A practical way to dispose of what was left, Josh knew. Necessary. Nonetheless, incredibly painful.
A new Avenue A had been pushed up from Fourteenth Street. The effect was to level the steep driveway and leave the house on a precipice. Both it and the land on which it stood were slated for the wrecking ball. So nothing to do but get rid of the furnis.h.i.+ngs and personal effects none of them wanted.
”Lot number three,” the auctioneer intoned. ”Two painted wooden chests. What am I bid, ladies and gentlemen? A dollar to my right. Can I have two? Excellent. Three fifty. Four. Four twenty-five behind you. Nothing more? Sold.” The hammer came down and a couple of porters hauled in two iron bedsteads that had been stored in the attic. ”Lot number four, ladies and gentlemen.”
They had buried Nick in the winter of 1875, on the same day the hand of the huge monument to be called the Statue of Liberty was installed in Madison Square, in a ploy meant to help raise the capital needed to erect the full statue on Bedloe's Island. Josh remembered thinking how much his father would have enjoyed seeing the thing. Not, however, this sad dispersal of the last of his possessions, however old and unloved.
The auctioneer was getting set to bring down the hammer on a carton of children's books. Josh wondered if Simon might be going to bid. He and Rachel had two sons and expected a third child any day. His brother, however, showed no sign of moving. Josh raised his hand.
”Pure drivel,” Simon murmured. ”I had a look. Not a proper mystery in-”
”Mr. Turner,” a boy's voice called from somewhere near the front door. ”Mr. Joshua Turner.”
”That's me.” Someone topped his bid for the books and Josh let them go and pushed through the crowd to where the lad who'd called his name waited. ”Yes,” quietly, so he wouldn't interrupt the auctioneer's spiel, ”I'm Joshua Turner. What do you have for me?”
”This note, sir.” The boy held out a small envelope.
There was no name written on the front. Nothing on the back side either. ”How am I to know this is meant for-” He broke off because when he raised his head he discovered the messenger had disappeared.
”You cannot,” Zac said, ”know that Trent Clifford is behind it.”
”My gut tells me he is.” Josh and both his brothers were in Josh's second-floor study at 1060. The note was the only thing on the desk. WE HAVE YOUR WIFE. YOU WILL BE CONTACTED. ”Using a defenseless woman is exactly the sort of thing he would do.”
”If it's him,” Zac said. ”And you've got no proof that it is, what do you think he wants? Look, I can talk to a few people. Find out which of the police is likely to be honest and-”
”No coppers,” Josh said firmly, repeating what he'd been saying all along. The unsolved murder of little George Higgins was as fresh in his mind as if it had happened yesterday not six years before. ”If you find any that are honest they'll probably be incompetent. And the others are all in Clifford's pocket. I've sent for-”
There was a tap on the door. Frankie Miller opened it, said something to the two men with him, then stepped inside. ”Evening, gents. Sorry to hear the bad news, Mr. Turner.”
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