Seems Like We're Already in the Same Boat

The second-floor office of the twin buildings.

Leo and I put our heads together, trying to figure out what to do with the man who wanted to make contact with the Union.

"What he wants, why he's trying to meet the Union—there's no way to know without seeing him face-to-face."

That brought us up against a fundamental problem.

How do you make contact with an organization that stays ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠buried in the shadows?

Hiding underground is good for dodging police investigations. On the other hand, having no channel for contact is a real obstacle to expanding outward.

Why else would a gambling-house association from the LES, with no roots and no standing, go hunting through dance halls and gambling dens? It only happened because they had no idea where the Union actually was.

Around then, it was worth looking at how other gangs operated.

The Five Points and the Italian outfits worked through race and neighborhood communities. Inside those borders, they built networks by unspoken rules and grew their businesses that way.

The Union, by contrast, had absorbed the Marginals out of Hell's Kitchen and dug into the LES—but only recently. We had no local community to speak of. We were thoroughly cut off.

"Unless we go out looking for work ourselves, we've got no link to the outside right now."

"And building one isn't dangerous?"

"If we stay closed off, we lose a lot of opportunities."

If we were going to hide just because we were afraid of the cops, we never should have built a gang in the first place.

A way to expand without walking straight into the risk.

"We need a contact window."

"What if the cops come in undercover?"

"That's why we go ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠around them."

At first I'd thought of using the underwear shop as an information front. But the dance hall and the gambling den already sat in the basement of the same building. Putting all the eggs in one basket was asking for trouble. We needed a separate channel for contact.

"The era of running a gang by gut and guesswork is over. Sweep every unit. If any of them runs a street stall, find him for me."

The work didn't take long.

That evening we found a unit member operating a stand on Canal Street in the LES. I told Cale to turn that stall into our contact window, and for secrecy I only looped in a handful of members.

At the same time, I started building out ranks and posts—systematizing the gang's structure.

Three days later, Morris was handed that note by a dance-hall employee.

"They acted like they knew nothing. Figured the dance hall had a way after all."

With a route to the Union in hand, Morris went to the address on the scrap of paper.

The corner of Hester and Forsyth.

The crowded street was lined with every kind of stall. Morris passed the big newspaper stand and stopped at one that displayed Flea Market across the front.

Against all expectation, a woman in her sixties sat behind it.

"Do you know the Union?"

"Unicorn? Young man, are you right in the head?"

"…Not unicorn. The Union gang."

"Why would you look for a gang here? If you're not buying, move along."

Embarrassment was just starting to color Morris's face when the old woman slapped her knee and cried out.

"Lord, where is my mind."

She rummaged around inside the stall and shoved a yellowed envelope at him.

"Is this what you're looking for?"

An order form, out of nowhere.

He opened the envelope and pulled out the contents—a printed sheet. Nowhere did the word Union appear, but it was clearly a kind of crime commission form.

"Don't just stand there. Fill it out and come back."

"What does this have to do with the Union gang?"

"I don't know a thing. They gave it to me to sell."

"Sell it?"

"Filing fee's twenty cents. What, too dear for you?"

"…"

Morris tucked the form into his coat, left the stall, and stepped into a quiet café to study it properly.

What does the number thirteen mean?

Was it possible there were thirteen stalls across the LES that could put you in touch with the Union? If that were true, it suggested they'd been working the shadows this way for some time.

Morris took up a pen, thought for a long while, and slowly filled in the form. Roughly an hour later he went back to the stall.

When he handed over the envelope, the old woman didn't so much as glance at it—just shoved it into a corner.

"Oh, right. I mentioned the filing fee, didn't I?"

Morris passed her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠twenty cents and asked, "When does someone pick that envelope up? Who takes it?"

"Don't ask. I don't know either."

"But someone will take it today, correct?"

"I said I don't know. Just come back tomorrow at this hour."

He was starting to regret whether contacting the Union this way was worth it at all. Morris left the stall with a scowl on his face.

The second-floor office of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the twin buildings.

The first commission form landed in my hands.

Stall → unit member → second-tier member → Cale. Four steps before it reached me.

"Let's have a look."

"Is this guy a psycho? What makes him think he can just confess to being the killer on this thing?"

Leo, reading the form beside me, tilted his head.

"Imagine the cops get hold of this form. What does it actually tell them?"

"The snitch is probably Harry Cohen, who died not long ago. And the suspect is whoever filed this commission."

"Right. That's as far as it goes."

Of course the police could stake out the stall and track everyone who came and went, or arrest the proprietor and lean on her. But throngs of people moved through that stall every day, and the owner herself didn't even know the Union gang existed.

"Anyway, this is a pilot run. The stalls will rotate, and whatever's lacking, we fix as we go."

"So what about this commission?"

The man who killed Harry Cohen had come looking for the Union himself. And the purpose of the job was custody of his person. How that differed from straight bodyguard work, I wasn't sure.

"We'll know once we meet him."

Two days later.

I set the time and place myself and agreed to see the client.

Nine at night, a basement I'd leased short-term on the Bowery. I posted men along the approach in case anything went sideways. That wasn't all—he had to clear a body search at the basement entrance before he got anywhere near me.

The client who stepped into that narrow, grimy cellar looked surprisingly composed.

"Sit."

Across the table, he settled into the chair and stared straight at me. Fat lot of good it did him. I had a hat on, a mask, and a scarf wound tight around the rest. On top of that, the light above threw the brim's shadow clean across my face. He wasn't seeing anything.

"Are you the Union boss?"

"One of the enforcers. Anyway—your commission was interesting."

After receiving the form, I'd put our information network to work and looked into the case. I already knew who the murdered snitch Harry Cohen had been, and how far the NYPD had gotten. Separate from that, I wanted to hear it from the client's own mouth.

Harry Cohen had been the proprietor of a gambling house on Baxter Street, under investigation by the NYPD over certain matters.

"Somewhere in that process, Cohen cut a deal with the D.A. He agreed to hand over information on the gambling dens in the area—plus lists of the cops and officials tied to them."

"Is that why you sent out invitations under the GH Association's name?"

"That's right. We called a meeting to discuss what to do."

Nobody knew how far Cohen's secret material actually reached. Because of that, the GH Association figured the documents could put every gambling house in the LES at risk.

"During that, the association president wanted to pull the gambling den under the Pumpkin Dance Hall into the talks. Truth is, the meeting was a pretext. He was trying to use the Union gang."

"If you're playing us against each other and I catch you at it, you won't walk out of here easy."

I snorted. Morris rubbed his face with his palm and went on.

"I've got reason to suspect it. The president wanted the Union involved so you'd be the ones to remove Cohen."

I'd ignored the meeting and never shown up.

"So what did the conference decide? Assassinate Harry Cohen?"

Morris shook his head.

"Cohen and I were both Eastman Gang once. After it fell apart we started a gambling house together, so we were partners in everything but name."

Who's happy about assassinating a friend like that?

"The president, thinking of my history with Cohen, said he'd give one last chance. So I went to see Cohen myself, to bring the materials back."

When he arrived at the house, Cohen was already a cold corpse with a bullet in him. Panicked, Morris fled the scene as fast as he could.

"Then things took a strange turn. Someone reported me to the NYPD as the killer."

"So you're saying the association framed you?"

"If it wasn't them, who was it?"

Morris had suspected the association from the moment he saw Cohen's body. That was why, in the early hours of the same day, he'd shut down his gambling house and gotten his people out.

"And one more thing. I tried to contact the Union for protection."

"So 'custody of person' was protection after all."

"Well. Not simple protection."

Morris's face hardened. He put steel into his voice.

"I plan to walk into the NYPD tomorrow. If I stay on the street, I figure their people will get to me first."

After that, he said, he'd take his chances at trial and walk free.

"While that's going on, the Union becomes my backing."

"Doesn't sound like there's much in it for us."

The corner of Morris's mouth lifted. He looked like a man holding his trump card.

"The material Cohen was going to hand the D.A.—I worked on that with him. We put it together to torch some of those association bastards."

And Morris knew where it was.

"I'll turn the material over to the Union."

"Wow. You're really offering that?"

My words said one thing; my eyes narrowed on Morris.

"And what exactly do you expect us to do with it? The second we take it, we become targets too. You want us in the same boat?"

"…"

Morris hesitated, then finished.

"Honestly? Seems like we're already in the same boat. Who in the LES is happy to see the Union?"

The GH Association president was already thinking about wiping the Union out, he said. And so were the association's backers.

"Backers? Who?"

"The gambler from the Tenderloin—Arnold Rothstein."

And the new head of the Sicilian Union, Frankie Yale. All of them, he said, had plans to erase the Union.

"So where is this material?"