Getting the Building for Free
The core of getting a building for free was a scheme of division.
The targets were the landlord, Rosie Hertz, and her tenant, Jacob Reich.
The other axis of discord ran between Jacob Reich and the Italian gang that had been threatening him.
The first step toward making the plan succeed was to hit Jacob Reich’s brothel, stoke his fury, and leave him raw with fear. That was essential if his rage was going to point itself at Rosie Hertz. Tanner handled the job.
“The building’s been sold?!”
Jacob shot up from his seat in a flash of temper. The towel covering his essentials hit the floor.
“Bullshit. First I’ve heard of it.”
“You’re hearing it now. Sit down and stop flailing around.”
“Crazy bastard. Who the hell do you think you are?”
Tanner’s face twisted as he fixed Jacob with a hard stare. Killing intent rolled off him like heat; the words that followed could have cut glass.
“You’ve got some nerve. Even Monk Eastman never talked to me like that.”
“Living in the past, are we? How far back are you digging for that—”
“If you’ve forgotten, let’s make a new memory. Jacob butchered in a bathhouse. You won’t forget that one.”
Jacob’s eyelid twitched as he met Tanner’s cold stare.
Tanner Smith, boss of the Marginals.
But the Tanner Jacob remembered was from before that—the runaway locomotive who had torn through Hell’s Kitchen as a teenager like a man possessed.
Ten years earlier, Manhattan had known a famous pair.
Tanner Smith and Oney Madden.
They had run clubs together, beaten cops, and committed every crime under the sun as partners and brothers-in-arms. They had bounced in and out of prison, become the centers of their crews, and then, almost overnight—
Tanner Smith took the Marginals. Oney Madden took the Gopher Gang, which once numbered more than five hundred men before it fell apart.
Which meant that, strictly speaking, Jacob—once a man of the Eastman Gang—and Tanner had never been in the same league.
Even if the glory days were past, Tanner was still a dangerous man.
Jacob sat back down, pretending at calm.
“So why barge in here to spit that nonsense at me?”
“Pure chance. Saw you. Figured I might as well warn you.”
“Warn me? About what?”
Tanner dropped his voice to a conspiratorial hush.
“Rosie Hertz hired a gang. She came to the Marginals with an offer too. We turned her down. Why else would she drag herself all the way out to Hell’s Kitchen?”
No gang in the Lower East Side was going to lift a finger for a washed-up Rosie Hertz. So had she really gone all the way to Hell’s Kitchen?
Jacob’s face flushed dark red.
“That old hag doesn’t want to die quiet, does she.”
Murder was already gathering in his eyes when a fully dressed man burst into the bathhouse.
“The shop’s been hit!”
“What?!”
Jacob’s expression hardened. He scrambled into his clothes and shot a look at Tanner.
“The gang Rosie Hertz hired?”
“Probably. Or maybe she cut a deal over the building.”
“Fuck—”
Jacob glared daggers at Tanner and stormed out of the baths.
“Kid’s got fire in his eyes for a man who’s about to die.”
Tanner eased himself back into the water at his leisure.
At the same hour, across the street from the building Rosie Hertz owned at 137 Allen Street, two shoe-shine boys sat on the curb.
“Jacob just came out of the public baths.”
“He’s heading underground. All right—what happens next?”
The shoe-shine boys had no interest in customers. Their eyes never left one man. Leo and Marcus, watching the basement saloon and Jacob himself.
“The Italians are definitely going to hit him.”
“No, no. Jacob comes out first. He’ll be so worked up he’ll go straight after Rosie Hertz.”
If the first, Leo won. If the second, Marcus took the pot.
They kept the building under watch and settled the bet between them.
In the office of an Italian gang’s gambling den on Hester Street, Pacifico lifted an iron pipe and glared at the underlings who had been shaken down for protection money again that day.
But just as he was about to bring it down, unexpected words spilled out.
“137 Allen Street? You believe that? You think the bastards who stabbed us in the back are going to clap and welcome us if we stroll over to the address they so kindly handed us?”
“······.”
The men shut their mouths and hung their heads. Pacifico’s right hand cut in.
“We still need to check what’s at that address. Trap or not—we’ve got to see what kind of game they’re running.”
Pacifico thought it over, then pointed at one of them.
“You go. Find out which sons of bitches are playing with us and report back!”
Cautious Pacifico sent only a single man.
In the end, the bet went to Marcus.
The Italian gang never even registered whoever had come and gone, and Jacob did not storm out of the shop until evening, face twisted with fury.
“Pay up. One dollar.”
“Damn it. Here.”
Leo pouted and handed over the bill.
“Let’s follow Jacob for now.”
Jacob walked Hester Street until he flagged a cab.
“Gramercy Park.”
The neighborhood where Rosie Hertz lived.
Once they knew where the enraged Jacob was headed, they had to report it. Leo and Marcus headed straight for a pharmacy that had a public telephone.
Ever since public phones had been introduced in the early 1880s, AT&T had installed more than thirty thousand of them across New York City. They were mostly in pharmacies, hotels, and subway stations, three minutes for a nickel.
A fair line of people waited for the phone outside the pharmacy. At last it was Marcus’s turn. He lifted the receiver and heard the operator’s voice.
“New York Bell Telephone Company. How may I help you?”
“Connect me to STUYVESANT-4789, please.”
He heard the soft clicks and faint electrical hiss as the operator’s hands moved cables across the big switchboard.
“The line at Union Square Station is busy. Please hold.”
Marcus grew suddenly restless and glanced over his shoulder. Only two people were waiting, but their stares were murderous.
Two minutes that felt like an hour crawled by before a voice came through the receiver again.
“You are connected to Union Square subway station. You have three minutes. A bell will ring when time is up.”
Union Square subway station.
Right after raising hell at the Allen Street brothel, three Union men had moved here. Their job was to wait for a call that might come at any moment. They were holding the phone with the meanest faces they could manage so ordinary people would stay away. And then—
“What the hell are these punks?”
“Oh, officers—we were just saving the phone for you fine gentlemen.”
“Funny guys.”
The cops took the phone for a while. The three men stared at the backs of their heads and waited for the call to end.
At last the officers hung up and walked off.
The metal bells on the phone began to ring as the twin hammers inside struck them one after the other.
Ding. Ding.
“That’s us! I got it!”
He snatched the receiver. Marcus’s voice came through.
“He left ten minutes ago.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. That’s all, then—”
“Hey now, a nickel’s a nickel. Let’s talk a little longer. You eat dinner yet?”
“Do I really have to with a guy—”
“Listen, you never know when the next call’s coming, so if you’ve got the receiver in your hand you might as well have a nice little chat—”
Click.
“Are you out of your mind? No time, idiot. Hang up.”
“Call me later~.”
The group hurried out of the transfer station.
Outside, a truck converted from a Ford Model T that Tanner had arranged was waiting with a driver. The driver was Drift, the only man in the Union who could actually operate a vehicle.
“Hold on tight!”
Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle.
Roughly two hours earlier.
I went to see Rosie Hertz with my mother, a real-estate man, and Corey in tow.
“Must be because it’s near the neighborhood where the upper crust lives. Quiet, and full of fancy mansions.”
“See the iron fence around Gramercy Park over there? If you don’t live there, you can’t even get in. Those brownstones are probably the most expensive houses in Manhattan.”
Gramercy Park had drawn a fence around its own people as if to mark the class line. Mother kept looking around, fascinated.
But as the sun went down and the light failed, there was less and less to see.
“Kieran, isn’t it getting a little late? The deal isn’t that urgent.”
“What if someone else buys it first?”
More importantly, putting the money in a bank would be a problem. At the very least, the price I was going to hand over had to stay in Rosie Hertz’s house tonight. Weekends were out—her family gathered then. Evening, when the banks were closed, suited every angle.
The realtor, who could not have known any of that, took my side.
“He’s right, Mrs. Graves. And a building’s something you buy when you’ve made up your mind. It means I get home late, but what’s that compared to a good sale?”
A touch of grievance colored his voice, but his face was bright with a genuine smile. Of course it was. The commission about to fall into his lap was nothing to sneeze at.
We crossed intersection after intersection and followed a road barely wide enough for one car until we stopped in front of a handsome two-story house.
“Mrs. Hertz! Morris Realty from Hester Street!”
A moment later an elderly woman appeared in a black velvet dress and white apron. Rosie Hertz, widowed two years earlier when the husband she had run the brothel with died.
“What brings you at this hour?”
“Good news. Mrs. Graves here wants to contract for the buildings on Allen Street. Both of them!”
“Oh?”
Rosie Hertz’s face lit up as she opened the door. Her fingers glittered with gold and diamond rings.
The interior was as lavish as her jewelry. Expensive furniture and leather sofas so fine you almost hesitated to sit. The living room alone looked as large as five tenement flats put together. Even Mother, trying hard to look unimpressed, seemed to shrink a little in the shoulders.
The moment we sat, the realtor shoved the contract forward.
“Number 138 is eight thousand. Number 137 is six. Fourteen thousand total—”
Each side would pay three hundred in commission. Rosie Hertz nodded without argument and urged them to sign already.
That was when I cut in.
“Could you come down a little on the left-hand building? It looked like it had problems.”
Her face said, And who are you to speak? Preferring not to waste words on me, she turned back to the papers.
Mother, needled by the slight, spoke up.
“My son said he liked them, so we came to sign. This is a little much, isn’t it?”
“Son?”
“My eldest. Tall and handsome, isn’t he?”
Rosie Hertz’s expression turned odd—half mockery, half something else. She looked Mother up and down from crown to toe, then pursed her lips.
“Thirty dollars. That’d buy a few outfits like the one you’re wearing.”
Mother’s face tightened; she was ready to snap. I caught her hand.
“That’s fine by us.”
“Smarter than you look.”
“Honestly—”
From then on Mother crossed her arms, crossed her legs, and leaned back into the sofa as if the contract no longer interested her at all. Looking back, she had always been a proud woman. Or else she already knew exactly what kind of woman Rosie Hertz was.
After that Rosie Hertz seemed almost pleased and spoke only with the realtor.
“Cash, lump sum, right?”
“Of course. We’ll hand it over right now. I do things clean.”
“I’ll have to bring you other business, then.”
“Oh, I’d be grateful for that.”
The realtor’s grin stretched from ear to ear. He knew full well who Rosie Hertz was and how she had built her fortune, and still he smiled. I had no intention of judging him. Everyone had their own business.
Same for Corey.
“My head’s spinning all of a sudden. I’ll wait outside.”
No one paid any attention as he opened the front door and left.
A little later, just before the final signatures, I took the bundles of cash from a small bag. Even Mother’s eyes, which had been pretending indifference, followed the money then. When it passed into Rosie Hertz’s hands, a soft, reluctant sound escaped her. Considering how she had gasped and practically bounced the first time she learned the money existed, it was understandable. And she still had not even seen the buildings.
We settled cleanly. At last we were the owners.
Mother’s face remained sulky. Even when she offered the empty courtesies of farewell, she refused to look at Rosie Hertz.
Clank.
The door shut. The realtor turned and peered around.
“Where’d the friend who came with us go?”
“Probably found a good restaurant. He’ll turn up.”
He took it in stride and beamed at Mother.
“Congratulations on becoming a landlord.”
“Well. It doesn’t feel real yet.”
“Once the repairs are finished and you move in, you’ll feel it.”
He laughed easily and offered, as a courtesy, to hail a cab for her himself. I had been planning to put her in a carriage anyway, so it worked out. A man who had just pocketed hundreds in commission could at least do that much.
“I’m going to stop by Macy’s.”
“At this hour?”
“Things to buy. We’re already up this way—might as well.”
“Should I come with you?”
“It’s late. We’ll go together on the weekend.”
I gave her reluctant back a gentle push and sent her off in the cab with the realtor.
Streetlamp keepers began lighting the lamps to push back the dark. I had expected Jacob, the brothel owner, to show up while we were still signing. Still no word. How nice it would be if even the clock followed the plan.
I was about to turn back when a Ford Model T rattled to a stop in front of me. The men who had been waiting for the call at Union Square were inside.
“Jacob’s on his way.”
The converted truck was rougher than a police prisoner van, but it could hold four men easily enough. I climbed aboard and we moved to the spot I had already chosen.
Near Rosie Hertz’s house. A stretch the streetlamps did not reach. We parked the truck in an alley just wide enough for a car. Starting the engine was a nuisance, so we killed it to kill the noise.
The alley was dark enough that no one would even know a vehicle was there. We split up to our assigned positions and waited for Jacob.
A streetlamp flickered with a bad connection. A single shadow stretched long, then shrank again. Jacob.
I had chosen the upper-class neighborhood as the stage for a reason. Unlike the Lower East Side, Gramercy Park and its surroundings went quiet at night. At a certain hour the lights faded one by one, and the surrounding streets sank into deep silence. The flip side was that even a small disturbance carried clearly. If Jacob, drunk on rage, pounded on a door or raised his voice, people would hear him whether they wanted to or not. That would let us pin Rosie Hertz’s murder on him—but the man still had other options. He might, for instance, climb the fence and slip into the mansion to threaten her.
I had already closed off those possibilities.
As he passed the alley where the truck waited, I reached out of the dark, yanked him in, and drove the knife into his throat.
Thuck.
Gavin, right behind me, helped me catch Jacob’s limp weight. We loaded him into the back of the truck. Drift and Gavin quickly rolled the body up like a bolt of cloth.
Drift yanked the left-side lever on the driver’s seat, flipped the ignition switch to ON, and pulled the choke under the wheel to pump fuel. Then he went around to the front and began cranking the handle under the bumper like a madman, clockwise.
Rattle… rattle… rattle-rattle-rattle.
First time I had ever seen a Model T started. It was basically a farm tractor.
Once the engine caught, Drift and Gavin climbed in. At my signal the truck slipped out of the alley and vanished east along East 13th Street.
In case of witnesses I stayed in the alley more than ten minutes. I did not simply wait; I covered any blood that might have spilled with dirt and rubbed the traces away.
When enough time had passed, I approached Rosie Hertz’s house and climbed the fence.