Is That Something to Be So Surprised About?
The Spanish flu’s spread was tied to poor sanitation and high population density.
Before it reached New York, the first thing I needed to do was move us somewhere more livable.
The Forsyth Street tenement house.
After dinner I quietly told Mother what I had in mind.
“Moving? Where to?”
“Somewhere close to your company and the store.”
“Sales have been good lately, but… not good enough for a move. I was thinking next year.”
“I’ve got a little money.”
“H-how much?”
“Enough for a place.”
Just the cash sitting in the safe right now was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Enough to go anywhere.
People slapped the “poor immigrant neighborhood” label on the Lower East Side, but not every corner of LES was a slum.
North of Grand Street you needed at least middle-class money to live.
When I mentioned that side of town, Mother’s eyes flickered with naked desire—the hope of finally escaping this sewer of a tenement.
“Want me to look into it?”
“Yeah. I’ll leave it to my son. Anywhere’s fine with me.”
“Oh, and the masks?”
“We’re barely keeping up with the brassiere orders. No capacity left for masks. We’ve still got plenty of stock, so I’ll decide after looking at that.”
Mother didn’t pin much hope on the masks. It was a production-scale problem; even if we hired more people, the current factory had limits.
It was time to expand the garment factory.
“Right, son. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
“Why?”
“Roa’s teacher asked for a family member to come in, but I’ve got a meeting with the manager at Macy’s at exactly that time. Would you mind?”
“Understood. I’ll go.”
A routine parent-teacher conference.
Brothers and sisters filling in for busy parents was common enough.
I looked at Roa playing with her teddy bear in the living room.
Admirably, the little girl who had known only Mrs. Mary’s house was adapting just fine to the wider world of school.
I was watching her with a fond expression when our eyes met. She suddenly bolted into her room.
What was that about?
“…Roa, the teacher conference is just something all the other kids have too, right?”
“Roa doesn’t know anything. You’re not supposed to ask hard questions like that.”
“If you don’t know, why is it hard?”
“Mm… Roa just wrote a poem because they told her to write one.”
“What poem? What’s the title?”
“Brother’s Secret Box.”
Somehow that gave me a very bad feeling.
The next day.
Wearing a mask, I visited Morris Realty near the house.
The moment I stepped inside, Morris flinched and backed up. Only after I pulled the mask down did he greet me with a broad, relieved smile.
“Whew—I thought you were here to shake me down for protection money again. What’s with the mask?”
“…Gotta watch out for colds.”
“You’re young and strong. Who catches a cold in March?”
“You don’t know the world, boss. You should wear one of these yourself.”
I always carried spare masks in my bag. I held one out to him.
Did charity only count if you founded a foundation like Rockefeller and threw money around? Handing out masks was charity as far as I was concerned.
Of course the masks weren’t about profit, and they certainly weren’t pure public service either. They were simply a tool for identity laundering—something to hide my double life behind.
Morris turned the mask over in his hands, then shoved it into his pocket.
“I’ll use it. So what brings you here? Not looking at another building, I hope?”
“I need a house. Somewhere more comfortable than where we live now.”
“Well now, must be making real money. Heard your mother’s company is doing well.”
He pulled out a notebook and flipped through it as he continued.
“That tenement of yours is pretty old. Let’s see… if you’re moving, a New Tenement House would be better.”
In 1901 New York State had passed the Tenement House Act to improve wretched living conditions.
From that year on, buildings were divided into “Old Tenement Houses” and “New Tenement Houses.”
The key requirements for a New Tenement House, as Morris explained, were these:
1. Every living space must have a window opening to the outside.
2. Every apartment must have running water and a flush toilet.
3. Fire escapes and firewalls were mandatory; staircases had to be iron, not wood.
4. Room size, ceiling height, and maximum occupancy were all regulated by law.
The law had been written to help the poor, but New Tenement rents were so high that the poor were simply pushed into even worse housing.
Our family had been one of those cases.
Without money we had been forced to live for nearly thirty years in an Old Tenement.
“Even the new ones are crowded, right?”
“Can’t help that. LES is packed. If you want quiet and space you have to go north of Grand Street, and that area’s expensive.”
“Doesn’t matter. Look there. Prefer a low-rise brownstone townhouse if possible.”
“That’s pure rich-people territory. You really must be raking it in.”
While Morris wrote down my requirements I asked about factory space as well.
“Any suitable garment-factory listings?”
“A factory? Expanding already?”
“Business growth. Planning to run a second plant.”
“Oh, sure, we’ve got some.”
He snapped his fingers and gave me a meaningful look.
“There’s a garment factory right next to your mother’s place. They said they’ll vacate the moment someone wants it. A lot of shops are moving over to the Garment District these days.”
That, too, was connected to the Tenement House Act.
Sanitation and safety standards had forced small operators to shut down or relocate.
And the place they chose was the rising specialized manufacturing zone—the future mecca of garment makers that the Mafia would feast on once Prohibition ended: the Garment District.
“Looking to the future, building over there would be smarter. But for now we’ll push what we can here.”
The second factory came easily. Rent was no concern; once we bought a few more sewing machines we could be running within a week.
I was just finishing the long conversation with Morris and about to stand when the doorbell jingled.
A middle-aged gentleman walked in. Handlebar mustache, face I had seen before.
“Trump? What brings you here?”
“Just running an errand, dropped by on the way. Don’t mind me—keep talking to your client.”
Frederick Trump, grandfather of Donald Trump. Alive and well.
His appearance meant the flu hadn’t reached New York yet. He had been an early Spanish-flu victim.
I rose and greeted him.
“We’ve met before. Do you remember?”
“Hmm?”
Of course he didn’t.
I reminded him of the steamship deck from Coney Island back to Manhattan, when he had spoken with Roa.
“Ah, so you’re the big brother of that big-eyed little cutie.”
“I’m also a friend of Marcus Heinrich.”
“Heinrich?”
According to Marcus, the Trumps and the Heinrichs had crossed from Germany together on the Idaho in 1883.
They had settled as poor immigrants in LES; fortunes had diverged later, but the families still kept in touch.
“World’s a small place if you two know each other. Sit down, young man.”
Morris, Jewish himself and an LES settler of the same generation, was close to Trump.
At Morris’s invitation Trump naturally took a seat at the table.
Morris launched into an exaggerated introduction of me and Mother as “the new rich of LES.”
“This kid already owns two buildings. He even finds the properties and signs the contracts himself for his mother.”
“Ho. Got a sharp eye for real estate. Most boys your age are running around trying to join gangs.”
“Especially around LES. But this one’s nowhere near the gangs.”
“······.”
The future American real-estate dynasty. What could I extract from the Trumps?
Several ideas surfaced at once.
Money laundering through real-estate development and investment.
Expanding my network inside the German-American community.
Above all, the laundering. Park dirty money in big real-estate parcels and ride the appreciation as a bonus.
Plus a personal curiosity: how far could I change the future? Could I even save a life?
I spoke again to deepen the connection.
“There’s a reason I’m interested in real estate. I don’t trust things you can’t see—stocks, bonds. Who knows when a company will go under or when the boss will pull a scam?”
“I agree completely. Real estate is honest. Land and buildings don’t lie.”
Trump’s eyes lit up; he nodded, then tested me with a question.
“What do you think will happen to Manhattan?”
“No question the center of international finance will shift from the City of London to Wall Street.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The war. Britain and the Allies are floating war bonds and raising money through Wall Street houses. Where the money gathers becomes the center.”
The empire on which the sun never set was sinking under a mountain of debt.
After the war Britain would thrash about trying to hold the setting sun, but it would be futile.
A second world war was waiting.
“If you’re right, Manhattan will certainly grow.”
“Not just this city—the whole United States will develop at high speed. I put the starting line after the war, and I’m certain the war won’t last into next year.”
“······ Being that quick to certainty isn’t a good habit.”
“I’m not reading stars. It’s grounded certainty.”
I explained why Germany would have no choice but to surrender.
Neither Trump nor Morris looked convinced.
“Well, we’ll see when the time comes.”
“It won’t be long. Once the war ends a real-estate boom will hit Manhattan.”
“That a certainty too?”
“America, fat on war profits, will be swimming in capital. Where else is it going to go?”
They both let out short sounds of appreciation.
Trump nodded in agreement, then asked seriously,
“I’d like to hear your investment method.”
“If capital allows, I’d buy up Old Tenement Houses and large parcels suitable for residential development. Develop them and the profits will be enormous.”
Picture postwar America:
Household incomes rise, consumption rises, the automobile becomes common.
Convenient transport sends people hunting for better housing in the suburbs; mortgage loans underwrite the demand.
Meanwhile companies, armed with steel-frame technology, start raising skyscrapers.
A real-estate development frenzy sweeps the booming nation, and the Trump family rides that wave to fortune.
The conversation stretched until it was nearly time for Roa’s school.
When I stood, Trump handed me his card.
“I’d like to talk more if the chance arises.”
It listed him as manager of the Medallion Hotel at Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street.
I gave him mine in return. Then:
“Wear these. Always.”
“?”
“Here he goes again.”
I pressed a thick wad of masks into Trump’s hands and added advice.
“Avoid crowds. Keep your hands clean with soap and disinfectant. Eat well, rest well, and if you get a cough or fever, go straight to a doctor.”
“······ Isn’t that a bit sudden?”
“This next part’s a little awkward.”
I leaned in and whispered into Trump’s ear.
I left him standing there stunned and walked out of the office.
“What did that kid say that shook you so bad?”
The moment Kieran left, Morris asked.
Trump muttered as if his soul had left his body.
“He said he saw my future in a dream…”
“Ha ha. And?”
“If I want to see my son grow up, I’d better take care of my health.”
“Is that something to be so surprised about? Sounds like ordinary advice.”
Morris shrugged. Trump stood frozen, staring out the door.
What the hell was that?
Kieran had known the name of his son, Fred. He had known about the hotel and saloon Trump once ran for the miners in Alaska.
Worse—he had known the secret no outsider should know: that the hotel saloon had also run a brothel and gambling dens.
Trump dropped heavily into a chair and stared at the masks on the table.
He reached out, took one, and put it on.
Kieran’s words circled in his head like a spell.
— See you in a year. Stay healthy until then, and there will be a great deal we can do together.
Maybe I should quit the hotel manager job while I’m at it.
Anti-German feeling was already high; German-born immigrants were under constant suspicion. That was why he had paused real-estate investing lately.
Maybe he should just hole up at home.
Trump’s worries deepened.
Intersection of Hester and Orchard Streets in LES: P.S. 42, the Benjamin Altman School.
The broad six-story building was one of the larger public schools in New York City.
Me, visiting an elementary school. Even in my previous life I had never done anything like it.
I passed through the three red arched doorways and was immediately stopped by the guard.
“What’s your business?”
I gave Roa’s name and class and said I was there for a teacher conference; he still insisted on checking.
Asians were rare—maybe nonexistent—in this school. His suspicion was natural, and I found it reassuring.
A short while later the guard, having confirmed with Roa herself, led me to the classroom.
The teacher was a young blonde woman.
She looked startled at the sight of me, then composed her face once the guard explained.
“Kieran Graves. Roa’s oldest brother. Mother had work, so I came in her place.”
“I’m Patty Curry, teacher of adorable little Roa.”
We sat facing each other across the desk.
After the formal greetings she slid a sheet of paper toward me.
On it, in Roa’s crooked handwriting, was the infamous poem.
We have a box at home.
A magical box only Brother can open.
When night comes he secretly opens it and takes out things that shine like twinkling stars.
A long stick with a handle.
Bang! Bang! it goes.
Then Brother smiles.
“All clean now,” he says.
Under the silver moonlight
Brother stands a shadow up
and makes little puffs of smoke.
“Hoo hoo,” he goes.
I don’t know what Brother is doing.
But I know
it is something very, very important.
I wonder what else is inside Brother’s box?
A long stick with a handle. Smoke.
And a box.
Guns, right?
The box had to be the vegetable crate I had kept in the corner for a while, the one full of weapons and trophies.
So that was why she had called for a conference.
I was screwed.
A sharp gaze hit me. I looked up at the teacher.
Our eyes met and she asked,
“What do you think?”
I think we need to transfer schools.
Let’s go, Roa.