New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [267]
But before he walked in the door, he turned to Sean and said firmly: “Remember, O’Donnell, anything illegal, and I’m leaving.”
“It’s all right,” said Sean. “Trust me.”
Sean O’Donnell, these days, was a very elegant man. His face was clean-shaven; his hair was still thick, but silver. He was wearing a perfectly cut pearl-gray suit. The knot of his silk bow tie was tied to perfection, and the studs down his shirt front were neatly set diamonds. His shoes were so highly polished, it was hard to imagine their owner had ever stepped near a gutter in his life. He looked like a banker. True, he still owned the saloon, and looked in there from time to time, but he hadn’t lived there for almost twenty years. Since then he’d owned a house on lower Fifth Avenue—not a great mansion, but as big as Master’s house in Gramercy Park. Sean O’Donnell was a rich man.
How had he done it? Master had a pretty good idea. While Fernando Wood had known how to extort money from New York City, and his successor, the great Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, had turned the business into an art form, O’Donnell had managed to be close to both men in turn, and he’d benefited hugely. He’d been able to develop scores of properties in the ever growing city, renting and selling at huge profit. “I never had any of the padded contracts,” Sean had told him. Tweed had fleeced the city of millions with those. “But he did let me invest $10,000 in his printing company.” Tweed had then pushed all the city’s printing through the company, at inflated prices. “I got a dividend of $75,000 a year from a $10,000 investment,” Sean had confessed.
And when Tweed had been exposed, and his inner circle had been disgraced, O’Donnell had been one of many who, having profited discreetly in those years, had been able to cover their tracks and continue quietly with their business.
And then there had been the dealings with Wall Street.
That had been the province of men like Gabriel Love.
Gabriel Love was large. He sat opposite Frank Master, and his watery blue eyes rested mildly upon Frank’s face, while his big white beard flowed like a benign waterfall onto the broad expanse of his stomach, which caressed the edge of the table.
Everyone knew Mr. Gabriel Love. He looked like Santa Claus, and his gifts to local charities were legendary. He loved attending church, where he sang the hymns in a high, almost falsetto tenor. His pockets were always full of candies for children. “Daddy Love,” people often called him. Unless, of course, they had been the victim of one of his devastating financial operations. Then they called him “The Bear.”
Gabriel Love greeted Master politely. When the waiters brought the food, he announced that he would say grace, which he did in a voice of great reverence. Then he let Sean provide most of the conversation until he had finished eating an entire chicken. Only then did he turn to Frank and inquire of him: “Are you a betting man, Mr. Master?”
“Once in a while,” said Master, guardedly.
“The way I see it,” said Gabriel Love, “a Wall Street man is a betting man. I’ve seen men bet all afternoon on which raindrop on a window is goin’ to reach the bottom first.” He nodded thoughtfully. “A Wall Street man is greedy, too. No harm in that. Without greed, I always say, there’d be no civilization. But the Wall Street man doesn’t have the patience to till the soil or manufacture things. He’s clever, but he’s not deep. He invests in companies, but he doesn’t much care what they are, or what they do. What he wants is to bet on them. Wall Street will always be full of young men, betting.”
“Young men?” Sean said. “What about older men, Gabriel?”
“Ah. Well now, as a young man gets older, he raises a family, takes on responsibilities. And then he changes—it’s only human nature. You see it on the street all the time. The man with responsibilities does not bet in the same way. His operations are different.”
“How different?”
Gabriel Love gazed at them both,