City of Glory (54 page)

“Dropped it, did he, Mr. F. X. Gallagher? With the three coppers still inside?”

The leather-apron nodded again. “Absolutely,” F.X. said. “He’s a churchgoing man. Wouldn’t want no truck with money as might be stained with one sort o’ crime or another.”

Hays was leaning on his elbow and appeared to be trying hard to suppress a repeated series of yawns. “And Mr. Patrick Aloysius Burney, he’s nothing to do with the moneybag or anything else not entirely honest?”

“Nothing at all, Mr. Hays. In fact, if you wish, sir, I’d be pleased to have Mr. Burney bound over to me. I can use more help in my butcher shop, and I’m sure he’d be happy to learn a trade as would let him earn an honest living.”

Hays didn’t move his head, but the watchman and the bailiff were well within his view. Do ’em good to be smacked down a time or two, so’s whatever scheme they were using to earn a bit on the side didn’t get to be more important than the work they were supposed to be doing for Jacob Hays. He banged down the gavel. “Done, Mr. F. X. Gallagher. And you’re commended for being such a high-minded citizen o’ the city.”

“Don’t look so worried, friend Patrick. You weren’t relishing a stretch up the river on Amos Street, were you? The country air in the Village o’ Greenwich agrees with some, they tell me, but I don’t fancy it seems as pure when you’re bustin’ rocks in Newgate yard.”

“Air in Five Points is good enough for me. I have to get home, Mr. Gallagher, sir. Me little girl is—”

“I know, Patrick. Me and the boys here, we know all about your little Brigid Clare. Keep a close eye on her, we do. And far as I’m concerned, you could go back to her this very minute. Except there’s someone as wants to see you first.”

One of the leather-aprons had a tight hold on Burney’s arm and he steered him to the closed carriage parked a short distance away from the gaol’s door. Another opened the carriage door, and the pair of them shoved Burney inside. F. X. Gallagher climbed in behind him.

“Good morning, Mr. Burney.”

“Mr. Blakeman…Good morning to you, sir. I didn’t know you and—” Burney broke off, looking from Gallagher to Blakeman.

“Of course you didn’t know. Knowing is not what you’re about, Mr. Burney. You are about doing as you are told. Watching and reporting what you see back to me. Is that not so?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Blakeman. And sure it’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”

“No, Mr. Burney, not exactly. I, for instance, had to learn from one of the other watchmen about last night’s scuffle in Maiden Lane. Fortunately, he was among those who observed it. Otherwise, I might not have had that information in time to send Mr. Gallagher here to see that you were spared a spell in Newgate, leaving your poor little daughter completely alone. Unlikely she’d have been alive by the time you got out of prison, isn’t it, Mr. Burney? Or if she were, that you’d ever have seen her again.”

“That was me biggest fear, sir. Not for meself, the Blessed Mother bear witness. For me little girl.”

“Indeed. So you’d have been forced to tell them what you knew, wouldn’t you, Mr. Burney. Rather than be sent to prison, I mean.”

“Sure there’s nothing I
could
tell ’em, sir.”

“You’d have tried though, wouldn’t you, Mr. Burney? I was on Maiden Lane because Mr. Gornt Blakeman sent me there, and that’s what drew your watchman to within spitting distance of the very lady I’m supposed to be helping Mr. Blakeman to protect. Something like that, Mr. Burney? If you thought it might have kept you from spending long months at hard labor in the Village of Greenwich?”

“No, sir, I never—” Burney couldn’t stop himself from starting to shake, and his voice became hoarse with terror. “Mr. Blakeman, I swear it. I never told ’em nothing and I wouldn’t have done. Never! I swear.”

“We’re going to see to it that you remember that vow, Mr. Burney. Nothing too drastic, mind. You’re more use to me with both your arms and legs than you would be without. But you don’t particularly need the little finger of your left hand. Do your job, Mr. Gallagher.”

Gallagher took hold of Burney’s hand, yanked it up, and pressed it to the wooden wall of the carriage. He swung his cleaver before Burney had expelled the breath of his first scream.

The light wasn’t particularly good. Later F.X. told the others that was why he’d taken both the little finger and the one next to it. Turned them out of his pocket and threw them on the table to make the point.

The East River Docks, 10
A.M.

Whatever mischief Bastard and Peggety Jack had got up to yesterday had to be undone. Joyful retraced their route, but in reverse. The last yard they’d visited had been Walton’s just above Peck’s Slip; it was his first call.

Hiram Walton was a small man, long-nosed and narrow-jawed and with a squint in one eye. Looked like a ferret, but most said he was the finest shipwright in New York, though young Danny Parker was coming up close behind. “In the Revolution, weren’t you?” Joyful and Walton stood at the end of Rose’s Wharf, in full view of row upon row of naked masts, thrusting up from the ships the blockade had made prisoners.

“Aye. One o’ the few as is still alive and in one piece.”

“You were young when you served.”

“Turned ten the day after I marched off. A fifer, I was, with the General himself.”

“Washington believed in the Union,” Joyful said. “I’ve no doubt about that, have you?”

The shipwright turned wary. “The Union as it was when he was alive, aye.”

“Are you a married man, Mr. Walton?”

“I was. A widower these past thirteen years.”

“But while your wife was alive, was it always a peaceful union? One in which you both agreed on everything?”

“Mrs. Walton did as she was told. Not like the young women nowadays.”

The wrong tack apparently. “But do you not think—”

“Course, Mrs. Walton spoke her mind sometimes. Wouldn’t be natural otherwise. And we had a palaver or two in our years. I’ll tell you something.” The little man leaned in close and grinned, showing three teeth stained bright yellow from constantly sucking on a pipe, and stabbed at Joyful’s chest with a dirty finger. “Just between us men-folk, as it were. A woman who won’t tell you what she thinks ain’t worth havin’. Besides, ain’t never a time when bed’s better’n after a quarrel.” Walton stepped back, cocked his head, and fixed his caller with his one good eye. “And none o’ that’s what you came here to talk about, Joyful Turner. It’s Bastard Devrey’s on your mind.”

“In part,” Joyful admitted. “I’m not denying, I’ve a personal stake in all this.”

“Way I heard it, you’re going about saying you’re the owner o’ Devrey’s now.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“But not Bastard’s manner o’ speaking. He says him and Gornt Blakeman together got scrip enough to squeeze you out.”

“That’s true.”

“Well, you’re honest. I’ll say that for you.”

“And if I prevail, Mr. Walton, what do you reckon I’ll have won?”

The ferret turned and spat on the bleached boards of the wharf. “Have yourself a parcel o’ debts. Till the British blockade’s lifted and
China Princess
gets here from Canton, and them ships out there is all under sail”—he nodded toward the roads—“Devrey’s ain’t worth spit.”

“I mean to have Devrey Shipping all the same,” Joyful said. “And I’ll wait out this war until we have an honorable peace, and everything you and the General and all the others fought for is safe. That’s not what Gornt Blakeman intends. I expect you’ve heard that as well.”

“A separate country,” Walton said quietly. “Us and the New Englanders. Good for business that would be. Pull down the Stars ‘n’ Stripes, run a different flag up those masts and you can sail where you like.” He looked at his yard. Only one half-built hull in the ways and one carpenter working on her. “Make a damn sight’s difference to me, that would.”

“To all of us,” Joyful admitted.

Walton swung round and tipped back his head so he could meet Joyful’s gaze straight on, despite the difference in their heights. “Truth is, I been thinking all night on what Bastard and Peggety Jack said when they came round here yesterday. Made up me mind ’fore you got here.”

“To what, Mr. Walton?”

“’Tain’t worth it. Not after all the blood as has been spilled. I’m with Mr. Madison and the Union. And I suppose, Joyful Turner, that means I’m with you.”

It was a little after 1
P.M
. when Joyful left Walton’s, and nearly 4 when he returned to Danny Parker’s yard up north by Rutgers Slip. “Been making the rounds, I hear,” Danny said.

“How in the name of Hades can you know that?”

The other man laughed. “News follows the tide”—he nodded toward the river—“and she’s running this way at the moment.”

“And which way are you running, Danny Parker?”

“Same way I was yesterday. I’d have told you then if you’d asked me straight out. I don’t hold with cut and run and every man for himself. Say we form this new country. What’s going to happen if we fall out with Connecticut, or maybe Massachusetts? We going to splinter a second time and a third? I say argue out our differences and stay together. It’s the only way.”

“We hang together or we hang separately,” Joyful said. “That’s what Franklin said in ’76.”

“I expect he also said something about not blubbering every thought in your head soon as it arrived there.”

“No doubt. I take it you’re trying to tell me you didn’t send Bastard packing.”

“I’m not that stupid. I said I’d think about it. Same as all the rest.”

The Astor Mansion, 5
P.M.

Gott in Himmel,
why would a man want these strange, yellow-skinned creatures to wait on him? Henry Astor thought the same thing every time he came to the kitchen door of his brother’s elaborate home, but he had yet to find the answer. Little Johann, they had called Jacob when he was a child; so small and ordinary on the outside, with such big ideas on the inside. While he—Heinrich he’d been then—was a big boy and later a big man, physically imposing, but content to work beside Papa in the butchering business in Waldorf, near Heidelberg. So when it came time for Papa to pick one of his sons to go to America as victualer to the Hessians hired to fight with the British in ’76, Heinrich was the natural choice. Johann didn’t come to New York until the war was over, but look how it was now. Heinrich lived in rooms above his Bowery tavern, while little Johann had become the great Jacob Astor, living in a palace with strange yellow servants.