"Time and Again" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finney Jack)

14

At twenty-four minutes past noon, standing at a first-floor rear window of the post office, I stood looking across the street to the north at the little wintertime park and the people moving along its crisscrossing paths, and the strangeness of what I was doing took hold of me. Staring out that soot-dirtied window, I was remembering the note I'd seen in Kate's apartment, the paper yellowing at the edges, its once-black ink rusted with time. And the meeting in this park, arranged by that note, became an ancient event, decades old and long since forgotten.

Could it really be about to happen? I wasn't able to believe that it would. People, strangers, continued to walk out of and into the park and along the walks all around it. Just ahead and across the street to my right, Park Row, stood the five-story New York Times Building I'd seen the night Kate and I walked to the El station, and again it was strange knowing it still stood in twentieth-century Manhattan. Now in daylight, I read the long narrow signs, suspended just below windowsill level, of other lower-floor tenants of the building: FOREST, STREAM, ROD GUN… LEGGO BROS…. The Times Building shared a common wall with another five-story stone building right behind it almost directly across the street to my right. It was nondescript, with tall narrow windows, its front — like the Times Building beside it and like most other such buildings in this area — hung with narrow gilt-on-black or black-on-white signs suspended just below the windows of the tenants. Then my eyes dropped to the street-level entrance, and Jake Pickering was standing in it.

I was inside the post office, across the street from the south end of City Hall Park. The doorway in which Jake Pickering stood was recessed, several yards back from the street and up two or three steps from street level; it was almost directly to my right so that I could see him, but from the park ahead I knew he couldn't be seen. And he took care not to be seen, standing on the steps close beside the stone wall of the recessed doorway. He was searching the park across the street from him and ahead. Then, satisfied, he stepped quickly out, moved across the walk, and dodging through the traffic, he crossed Park Row and walked swiftly into the park, and directly to the center, where most of the walks converged. There he stood, hat on the back of his head, outer coat unbuttoned, hands jammed into his pants pockets, his jaws clenched on a cigar, angling it upward, and he waited.

Five minutes passed. I could see Pickering's breath; it was cold out there, and he felt it and began strolling slowly back and forth, a dozen yards each way from the center of the park. But he didn't button his coat or take his hands from his pockets or his cigar from his mouth. From time to time he puffed the cigar, its blue smoke mingling with the white vapor of his breath, and I realized that he was posing, offering a picture of a man at ease. And succeeding: His posture and slow walk, everything about him, said that he was relaxed and content, that he didn't even notice the cold.

Five minutes more passed; the City Hall clock across the park said twelve thirty-five. And when I looked down from the clock the second man was well inside the park walking swiftly toward its center from the west. And I knew that the fleck of blue in his gloved hand (the event was no longer ancient; a chill moved along my spine at knowing that here I stood watching it begin) was the envelope I'd seen Pickering mail, held in the other man's hand now as a symbol of recognition.

Pickering had seen him and was walking toward him; my breath was clouding the dirty pane, I was leaning so close, and I stepped back a grudging inch or so. Now Pickering was smiling, and the two men stopped, facing each other. As the second man tucked the blue envelope into an inner coat pocket, Pickering removed the cigar from his mouth, and I saw his beard move as he spoke, then the slight waggle of the other man's beard as he answered. At this distance they might have been black-bearded twins standing there on the path, each in shiny silk hat, dressed virtually alike, each with the portly figure of the day. Their heads turned as they glanced around, searching the park, and I resisted an impulse to duck from sight. Then Pickering pointed, and they angled across the park, toward me and toward a bench protected from the wind by the high stone base of the statue against which it stood. They reached it, and sat down almost hidden from my view by the statue's base, only the left knee and shoulder of one of them in my line of sight.

I had to hear them, had to, and I walked swiftly out the rear doors, ran across the street behind the tail gate of a brewery wagon piled with wooden barrels, then walked into City Hall Park to the base of the statue. I turned around, and with my back nearly touching the base I stood frowning a little, occasionally glancing irritably along the path as though waiting for someone who was late."…don't understand why," one voice was saying reasonably. "It's below freezing, turning colder momentarily, and there is a wind besides; no one sits in a park on a day like this. If you have no office of your own, there's the Astor House lobby just across the street; I'll stand treat at the bar."

"Oh, I have an office of my own," Jake Pickering's voice said; there was a fat chuckle in it. "Not much of an office. Nothing like yours, I'll warrant. But still, you'd like to see it, wouldn't you? You won't, though. Not yet. No one sits in a park on a day like this; true. But that's why we're going to sit here; what I have to say is strictly between the two of us. The subject is Carrara marble; it brought you here. On the run. And it'll keep you here. In the cold. Andrew Carmody, the ever-so-eminent millionaire."

"It brought me here," the other man replied levelly. "But not to be played with. So keep your remarks about my eminence to yourself, and say what you want without further ado, or I'll stand up, walk off, and be damned to you."

"Good enough. You'll have to forgive me, but I have reached the culmination of several years' work and am enjoying my little triumph."

"What do you want?"

"Money."

"Assuredly. As who does not? Get to the point."

"All right. Cigar?"

"No, thank you; I'll smoke my own."

There was a silence, the strike of a match, the sound of cigars puffed into life; then Pickering spoke again. "I work in City Hall where I am a clerk, the lowest of the low. Yet I sought the job, sir! Leaving employment much more remunerative. Now, why? Why, you ask."

"I didn't" — I heard Carmody puff at his cigar — "but continue."

Pickering's voice lowered. "Tweed is my reason; are you surprised? He is dead in prison; the Tweed Ring is smashed and already half forgotten. Yet only a few years ago no day passed — remember? — that the Times did not speak of 'the slimy trail of the Tweed Ring.' Well, who stole more than thirty millions from the city? Was it only Tweed? Or Sweeny, Connolly, and A. Oakey Hall? No. Tweed had hundreds of willing helpers still undiscovered, each of whom took his share of the swag, large or small. So why have I spent two years at unsuitable employment, a filing clerk at City Hall?" Pickering's voice lowered even more, dramatically. "Because that's where the slimy trails are."

I was alert, intent, breathing shallowly, not missing a word. Yet something nagged at the back of my mind, and when I recognized it I had to smile. In the way Pickering used his voice, in the words and phrases he chose, there was just a little more than drama; it edged toward melodrama. I think all of us generally act as we think we're supposed to. I had not one but two professors at college who would lean back in their chairs, listening and fitting their hands together fingertip to fingertip, professorially. I had a friend, a compulsive gambler, who often stood casually flipping and catching a coin, his face expressionless. And now Pickering and Carmody were acting their roles in a time when the melodramatic conventions of the stage were largely accepted as representing reality. Deadly serious, meaning every word, each of them, I think, was also appreciating his own performance.

"The slimy trails," Pickering was saying, "wind through aisle after aisle of filing cases. I realized that!" he said proudly. "I understood that Tweed Ring corruption was so widespread and with so many ramifications that the evidence could never all be destroyed. It must exist still, I knew, buried among literally tons of old records, if only I were cute enough to recognize it when I came across it, and to fit its pieces together like a Christmas puzzle. So I became City Hall's most industrious clerk!"

"Commendable. If you're looking for work, see my head bookkeeper." I heard a sound I'd come to recognize: the metallic snap of the gold protective cover of a watch lifted to reveal the face, then the very slightly different sound of its being snapped shut.

Pickering said, "Yes, you're a busy man of affairs. But you have nothing more important, Mr. Carmody, nothing, than to listen to what I have to say. At whatever length I wish to say it!" There was a pause, then Pickering continued quietly, "I've spent endless hours during month after month in the file rooms, hunting those trails through the dust of the years. Discovering and following them as they emerged, losing them, rediscovering them days or weeks later among tens of thousands of false invoices, canceled bank drafts, padded receipts, incriminating messages, memoranda, and letters. The very best of those trails, sir, I have preserved; removed complete from City Hall! A paper or two at a time, you understand, slipped into my pocket and taken to my modest office during my half-hour lunchtime. Or simply mailed to it, to be added to my files during many and many a long evening I've spent there at my desk studying and assembling those files.

"Yet most of what I've learned proved useless! The evidence full and complete! Irrefutable proof of the most blatant corruption. And then I'd find the rascal had died a month or so before. Others I didn't find at all; probably moved to the territories or Canada. Others I found still alive, still here in New York. But no longer rich — broke! While in still other instances the evidence I had assembled, although clear enough, remains insufficient. And search though I did, I could never supply final proof. So all those slimy trails, Mr. Carmody, come down to a very few. And to one above all: the obscure contractor who was paid to supply and install nothing less than Carrara marble to adorn the corridors, rooms, and anterooms of our Court House. Tons of magnificent Carrara imported from Italy — at least that is what the invoices and properly stamped customs receipts I have found say. Along with paid labor bills for dozens of workmen, listing their very names and addresses, who are said to have spent weeks installing and finishing it. Would you like to see one? Here is an invoice."

I heard the crackle of paper, there was a silence of several seconds, then Carmody said, "So I see."

"No, keep it, sir! As a souvenir. I have many many more."

"I have no doubt of that, which is why I offer the return of this."

"I don't want it. Are you thinking I might return it to my files? While you follow, and discover where they are kept? I assure you, sir, I will not return to my office except for a final visit. That will be for the purpose of handing over his entire file to the contractor of whom I speak.''

There was a pause of a moment or so; then Pickering's voice dropped as he said, "For modest though they were by Tweed Ring standards, his profits made that contractor rich. Because he took them into New York real estate, and now only a few years later he has millions, millions. And a wife who, I am told, enjoys each dollar of those millions and the assistance they render her pretensions to society. Mr. Carmody, walk over to the Court House with me, if you care to." Pickering, I'm sure, had nodded toward the Court House just behind City Hall. "And we'll search it together, room by room. Just as I have searched it: sometimes sitting in court rooms as an apparent spectator at trials, my eyes roving the room for marble; or standing in bureau offices waiting my turn to ask a question, my gaze searching every surface of the room. I've examined it floor by floor, corridor by corridor; even the very janitors' closets and the accommodation rooms. And if you can point out to me one single square inch of that Court House which you covered with Carrara or any other marble, contractor Carmody, then I give you my word I'll trouble you no more."

The reply was an expressionless monotone. "What do you want?"

"One million dollars," Pickering said softly, his lips enjoying the feel of the words. "No more, no less; it is all I need to take the road you followed to far greater wealth."

"Not unreasonable, I suppose. When?"

"Now. Within twenty-four hours…. Don't shake your head, sir!" Pickering cried out angrily. "You have it, and more!"

"Not in cash, you idiot." Carmody's voice was quietly furious. "I have it, yes. And I'll pay it. If you can produce and hand over the evidence you claim. But my money is in property — all of it. I have no idle cash!"

"Of course you haven't. That is as I should expect. But the solution is simple: Sell some of that property."

"It is not simple." He said it through his teeth. "To extract a million in cash from my holdings cannot be done just now. Whether you understand that or not. In every way this is the wrong time. My money is tied up. In a large, unfinished French flat, a bargain but upon which work is necessarily stopped for the winter; even the plastering must await warmer weather. And in nearly a dozen sites for commercial buildings, the old houses upon them to be pulled down in the spring. In mortgages good as gold, and some better, but not yet due. In empty lots up north of the Central Park, waiting for the city to reach them. In a word, sir, I am overextended! Spread dangerously thin! If I were to attempt to raise a million now, I couldn't get ten cents on the dollar. And now you know more of my affairs than any other living man." There was a silence of several seconds, and when Carmody spoke again his voice was different, quiet and contained, almost friendly, as though he'd welcomed the other man into his confidence and now they were very nearly partners. "I will tell you a secret, known to no other. My greatest fear has been that somehow I would die during the next few months; for if that melancholy event should occur, I believe my wife would quickly be penniless. They'd be onto my fortune like wolves, ripping it asunder, and off to the four corners with the fragments. She knows nothing of finance, nor can a woman legally act in such circumstances with the speed, ability, and fine judgment required. I shall profit by the risk, and soon. But at this moment my affairs are balanced on the point of a pin: I don't dare take a journey these days! I should be afraid to become ill for as long as a week! Do you understand me, sir? The structure would collapse if demands were forced on it. And then all would be lost, everything. Wait," he said in an actually friendly tone. "Contain your patience, as you have done thus far, for a little longer. And in the spring — Don't you shake your head at me, sir! — I'll pay it! I've said I would! I'll pay more; a million and a quarter in the spring! But you must give me —»

Pickering chuckled, a comfortable sound. "Nothing; I'll give you nothing. Oh, you are a wonder! You must have talked yourself into that fortune! But I know a bluff when I hear one, and I'll give you till Monday, no more. I can't wait for months, and you know it! Did you think I would not know that? Or did you suppose the friendship between Inspector Byrnes and the wealthy men of this city was a secret from the rest of us? I'd end up in Sing Sing! On what charge I don't know, but there I will surely be if I allow you the time to arrange it."

Carmody's voice was strained with rage. "You may end up there yet. I am acquainted with Inspector Byrnes!" There was a pause, while he almost literally swallowed his rage. "From time to time I've been able to render him some small service, and I warn you —»

"No doubt you have. Every wealthy man in the city knows him; he is said to be rich through the market tips of Jay Gould alone. But I know him, too; do you know I was once turned back at the Wall Street deadline?"

"Were you indeed!" Carmody burst into harsh angry laughter.

"Yes, I was," Pickering said quietly. "Several years ago when I was without employment, and perhaps a little shabby in consequence, I was walking down Broadway toward Wall Street where I hoped to find work as a clerk. But at the Fulton Street deadline a copper stopped me."

"As he should have if you looked like a pickpocket or beggar; everyone knows Byrnes won't have them in the Wall Street area. And quite properly."

"I was no pickpocket or beggar! And said so! It was a young copper and he listened. Then someone spoke from a carriage at the curb. We looked over, and it was Byrnes's head out the window. 'If he argues, jug him,' he called, and the young copper's hand went for his billy, and I swung round on my heel and turned back. Don't smile! That moment will cost you a million! I turned back, Mr. Carmody, and my face was white; I could feel it. I could hardly see through the mist before my eyes. But it was then I knew, knew, that someday I'd come walking back to the deadline and the coppers would touch their helmets to me! Because I belonged on the other side with the Fisks and the Goulds and the Sages and Astors. It was on that day, though I didn't know it then, that I began the search for you."

There was a sudden change in the location of Pickering's voice; he'd stood up, I realized, probably turning to face Carmody. "I am very far from ignorant of financial matters, whatever you may think. You will need, certainly, several business days to raise the required sum. This is Thursday, and I am giving you through Monday, two and a half business days. Three, counting Saturday morning. Come back Monday night. Here. To this very bench. At midnight, Mr. Carmody, when the park and the streets of this area are deserted; I intend to be certain no one follows us. Be here with the money in a satchel or I'll expose you. I won't wait even an hour. Within that time I will be in the offices of the Times" — there was a moment's pause and I imagined he was nodding toward the building across the street — "with my documents."

There was a silence of six, eight, ten, twelve seconds; then I knew they were gone, and I walked out, around the base of the statue, and onto the path before the bench. They were walking swiftly out of the park along the angled paths, one to the east, the other north toward the Court House, and I stood watching them go, certain that neither would look back.