trustees the Hunts were practically outlaws.”
“Even with the Astor business connection?”
“Jasper Hunt the First started life shoeing horses for John Jacob Astor. You know the Astor quote about real estate?”
“No, I don’t.”
“‘If I could live all over again, I would buy every square inch of Manhattan,’” Jill said. “And Astor came pretty close to doing just that. He took a liking to young Hunt. Brought him into the real estate company before Hunt was twenty years old, funded his first acquisitions, and introduced him to extravagances like the rare books that gave Astor such pleasure. Hunt was smart enough to follow in his master’s footsteps.”
“Sounds brilliant for a kid who started by shoeing horses,” I said.
“Then Astor withdrew from the fur trade and most of his other ventures to concentrate on purchasing land in Manhattan, investing all the proceeds in pushing north of the city limits. His genius was in never selling anything he bought, insisting that others could pay rent to use the properties. Jasper Hunt went along with him, but the younger man’s greed tempted him to go a bit too far.”
“In what way?” Battaglia asked.
Gibson sat back in her chair. “John Jacob Astor’s fur business took him all over the Pacific Northwest, and then to China, where he and his partners traded skins, as well as teas and exotic woods. Then he began to purchase tons of Turkish opium, shipping the contraband to China to smuggle into this country.”
“I didn’t know Astor dealt in opium,” I said.
“Wisely, on his part, he didn’t do it for very long. But there was such a fortune to be made that Jasper Hunt couldn’t bring himself to cut those ties, as Astor had. Even Junior kept his hand in smuggling for a time.”
“And the book collection?” I asked.
“The New York Public Library was a stunning success from the moment its doors opened. People like the Hunts who’d been uncertain about participating began to change their minds.”
“Want to top off my coffee, Alex? It’s cold,” Battaglia said.
I got up and waved a hand at Gibson, who’d raised her eyebrows at the command. “It’s not personal. He’d make any of the guys on the legal staff do the same thing.”
“You’re good at this, Jill,” Battaglia said. “You probably know the first book a reader asked for opening day.”
“A young emigre came in to request a Russian-language study of Tolstoy. Not what anyone expected, but a sign of the changing culture of the community. This library is really the soul of the city,” Gibson said. “I just love it there.”
“I take it that Jasper Hunt Jr. rose to the occasion,” I said.
“Two things happened. Within a decade, the library had risen to the front ranks of research institutions, here and abroad. The collections grew in size to more than a million volumes.
“Then, in 1917, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie retired to embark on a massive philanthropic distribution-his ‘gospel of wealth.’ He wanted to give his money away in his lifetime, saw libraries as the best gift to any community, and in 1917 promised to build sixty-five branch libraries in New York, provided that the city would maintain them. Can you imagine?” Gibson asked. “Carnegie’s plan established more than twenty-five hundred libraries in the English-speaking world.”
“So then Junior kicked in,” Battaglia said.
“Yes, he did. With his father’s rare book collection as well as his own, which he continued to add to for the rest of his life. They’ve got good genes for longevity, those Hunts,” Jill said. “Junior died in 1958, well into his eighties. He hoped that his possessions would buy him a place on the board along the way. But that never happened.”
“Jasper the Third finally made it,” Battaglia said. “The old boy is still kicking around.”
“The family had divested themselves of the smuggling operation, contributed a few million dollars to the library, and become model citizens by the 1920s,” Jill said.
“And Tally?” Battaglia asked. “Do he and his father get along?”
“In the boardroom,” Jill said, “everyone’s on his best behavior. The real intrigue doesn’t happen inside the library walls.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the small color photograph on a document to the right of Battaglia’s hand as I refilled his mug. It was a copy of an employee identification tag from the New York Public Library, dated earlier in the year. The woman who’d posed for the camera to get her security clearance was the elusive Tina Barr.
TEN
“I’m going to step out and let you finish your business with Jill,” I said. “Why don’t you call me when she’s gone, Paul?”
I was reeling from seeing Barr’s face on a library document just moments after Gibson told me she didn’t know the girl.
“What’s the matter? You see a ghost?” Battaglia asked.
“Yes, I did. The one I’ve been trying to channel since you told me to find her.”
I was angry about being a pawn in the middle of their deal. Jill Gibson had lied to me, and the district attorney let her do it.
Jill leaned over and tapped her finger on the table. “You’ve tipped your hand, Paul. It’s the photograph.”
Battaglia wasn’t rattled. He had a reason for playing this the way he had chosen, and irking me was of no consequence to him.
“Sit down, Alexandra. Pouting doesn’t become you.” He waved at me with the lighter that he held to the tip of the cigar. “Jill’s in the middle of some professional difficulties and I’d just agreed to open an investigation when the Barr girl got herself tied up the other night.”
“
“We’ve spent so many decades dealing with the renovation and modernization of the building itself, Alex, that we’ve dropped the ball on most of the other problems,” Jill said. “They’ve festered and grown.”
“Tell her why you were brought in,” Battaglia said, puffing on the cigar that was plugged into the middle of his mouth.
“I spent the first twenty years of my career at the NYPL, so I know the collections-and the characters-quite well. In the century since we opened, there was never any relationship between the research library-this central building-and the branches. I’m heading the long-overdue consolidation of the two divisions. There are now ninety- three branches, so that’s a big enough undertaking of its own. But at the same time I’ve walked into a firestorm.”
“Why?” I took my seat across from Jill Gibson.
“There are personal issues involving some of our trustees that have spilled into the boardroom. Battles over family fortunes have us in and out of court. A century ago, Samuel Tilden’s nieces and nephews fought tooth and nail to break his testamentary trust so that the library would never be created, from the first day of probate. Brooke Astor’s estate wasn’t the first to be dragged through a court of law-by her own son, no less-and it won’t be the last.”
“That can’t be unusual for museums or any other institutional beneficiaries, can it?”
“Certainly not. But we aren’t a museum, Alex. That’s one of the things that makes our situation unique.”
“What do you mean?”
“Very often, when trustees or benefactors of the library die, we inherit not only their manuscripts and books. We get other works of art, too. But we’re a library and a research institute. We can’t care for great art, nor can we curate it. Most of the time, we can’t even hang it on our walls. And yet, if we violate the wishes of the dearly departed, we’re likely to lose everything else bequeathed to us.”
“So there’s been trouble in-house because you’ve been selling art that the library owns?”
Jill looked to Battaglia before she answered.
