The Most Meaningful Memory

Ida Goose—or Ida Burger.

A pretty-faced woman gangster who ran with Battle Annie of the Lady Gophers, a unit of the Irish Gophers gang.

It wasn't some lunatic who put a gun in a ten-year-old's hands. It was her.

I still don't know why she did it, but the milk was already spilled. I had no interest in making an issue of Hazel shooting her father.

She must have had her reasons. That was enough for me.

I'll keep the gun safe.

Back then I never dreamed we would end up living together. I had coldly sent Hazel away, after all—a girl with nowhere left to go.

If she hadn't come back again and again to pound on that iron door, if she hadn't shown me that bright smile one day and a face mottled with bruises the next, she would have remained nothing more than a chance encounter I walked past.

But those small fists of hers weren't knocking on iron. They were beating against a heart sealed shut.

The memories that flash past before death, like a magic lantern.

And only then do I understand.

The most meaningful memory of my life was the moment Hazel forced her way into my lonely, stubborn existence.

The office in the twin buildings on Allen Street.

After turning over everything Gunsmith and Hazel had said, I changed the plan.

Frankie Yale's power was unstable.

For all that he headed the Sicilian Union, he had never fully seized control of his own ranks. Even his home turf in Brooklyn was under pressure from Neapolitan outfits and Irish gangs.

And in that state I was supposed to open a second front?

Yale would use me as a rallying cry to pull his enemies together against a common target.

Fulton Fish Market worked the same way.

Yale's goal wasn't simply to plant Russo at the head of the Italian union. The real play was to drag Neapolitan, Sicilian, and Irish gangs into the market and scatter everyone's attention.

From my perspective, chaos at Fulton Fish Market was no bad thing.

The problem was the sheer number of districts I would have to answer for—LES, Fulton Fish Market, Little Italy—and three separate powers to manage at once. That was a heavy burden.

I also had no desire to be dragged along by Frankie Yale's script.

So better to go with a forceps strategy—hit only what needed hitting.

Anthony took the gear I handed him and looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Boss, why just two silencers?"

"We're changing the strategy. Hit the key points only."

Little Italy belonged to the president of the Gambling House Association. Fulton Fish Market was Donato Russo, the man leaning on the Romano brothers.

The push on Fulton Fish Market stayed the same. What actually changed was Little Italy.

"For now, we focus on removing those two. Quiet, and certain."

I gave Anthony the Gambling House Association president and put Cale in charge of the LES. To keep the units' grip on that territory, we needed to hit hard—cut out anyone who'd been turned or was dealing with the enemy, and strike first.

Then I gave Leo a new order.

"Find out where Frankie Yale is staying. Pin down his location."

The Harvard Inn on Coney Island was only one of his businesses. Yale had somewhere else he actually lived.

Once I was alone in the office, I went through the report Joseph Lanza had brought in.

It was packed with information on Russo—and none of it made him easy to kill.

Cardone's death had clearly put Russo on alert. There were no gaps in his schedule. Even if you managed to put down the bodyguards and Russo himself, getting out afterward was the real problem.

Worse, Russo was careful and cowardly. The kind of provocations that had worked on Cardone wouldn't touch him. Walking into the market in a wig and cutting him open with a knife wasn't going to fly this time.

So what then?

I went over the report again and again until I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠found the crack. Russo left the market on a regular cycle—whenever a particular fishing boat put into port.

Time: two in the morning.

Fulton Fish Market wasn't only about seafood. It ran deep into the smuggling trade—liquor, tobacco, guns, opium, moving in and out through that single choke point.

That was why the Italian gangs wanted it so badly. It was the hub for illegal freight and distribution.

"Two a.m. A fishing boat at the pier…"

I drummed my fingers on the desk and worked it through. Then I put a call through to Captain River Grey, who was sitting on the East River waterfront.

And at one in the morning that same night, I boarded River Grey's vessel, the O'Neill, at Pier 35.

"Been a while, Boss."

"You been keeping well?"

River Grey, the Navajo-Irish ship captain, and Carly Dustin, his Black crewman. Both were now registered under SCL—Silver Chain Logistics—as a small freight carrier.

"So what the hell are those?"

"Ain't that the kind of thing them painter fellas haul around?"

River Grey and Carly Dustin were pointing at the two long, round tubes slung across my back. They looked like cases for canvas easels. What was inside them was something else entirely.

"Take us toward the Fulton Fish Market docks."

From Pier 35 to the target was roughly eight-tenths of a mile. The O'Neill slipped under the Brooklyn Bridge and closed on Pier 15, the landing for Fulton Fish Market.

"Don't pull in. Hold us right here."

"What you gonna do from here?"

I cracked open one of the tubes and drew out a Springfield M1903. As I threaded the suppressor onto the barrel, River Grey swallowed hard.

"Y-you ain't planning to shoot from here, are you?"

"Why not? Conditions are perfect."

Clear weather, a still surface. Not a cloud in the sky, and the moon hung alone, flooding everything in pale light.

"It's sniper weather, isn't it?"

"One tube's the rifle. What's in the other one?"

"Curious?"

Carly Dustin nodded.

I set the rifle—suppressor and scope already mounted—down on the deck, then pulled a steel tripod from the second tube.

"Whoa. That's fine work!"

A sniper rest of my own design, built by Gunsmith. I spread the three legs, adjusted the height, and laid the rifle across it.

Through the scope the pier was still blocked by another vessel.

"Ease us forward a little."

We shifted the boat by degrees until I had a clear line of sight.

"Even with no waves, that ain't gonna be easy to hit. Though… with the kind of shooting you did on Newtown Creek, I guess…"

River Grey muttered half to himself, staring toward the Fulton Fish Market landing.

This shot might put the Newtown Creek warehouse in someone's mind the same way it was in his. The gang that backed the Island Union at Fulton Fish Market—Dini Meehan, boss of Brooklyn's White Hand—might well think of "Knox."

Anyway.

"If you've got a blanket, bring it."

Carly hauled over a thick one. I draped it over myself and the rifle so that only the muzzle and scope broke free of the cover.

Distance to target: roughly two hundred and fifty yards. If I couldn't make this from a calm deck, I didn't deserve to call myself a sniper.

I put in the earplugs, settled behind the scope, and waited for the hour.

Around the time the hands hit two, a vessel that had come up from the Upper Bay eased into the pier.

The anchor went down. The docking bridge swung into place between ship and shore.

As the crew started unloading, laborers poured out of the market itself. Cargo piled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on the pier began to fill the waiting carts.

Under the yellow pier lamps, a middle-aged man with his hands in the pockets of his coat stepped into view—Donato Russo, bodyguards at his flanks.

"That him? Russo?"

River Grey had the binoculars on the target as well.

I held a clean sight picture and set my finger on the trigger.

Each time a gentle swell tapped the hull, I felt the minute tremor run through the rest. Compared to the noise on the pier, my world was nothing but the soft lap of water against wood.

I steadied my breath and watched the mark.

I rode the swell like music on the surface of the water, waited for the beat I'd been counting, and when it came—I squeezed.

Thud.

The round took Russo clean through the forehead. His head snapped back hard; a dark jet of blood fountained into the air.

His body crumpled to the cold planks. The bodyguards, late to react, closed around him and scanned wildly in every direction.

Then one of them looked our way.

"Go, River."

I'd already turned the bow north. River Grey, who'd run this dance with me more than once, had the boat moving before I finished the sentence. We pulled away from the pier at speed.

"I had a drum ready. Guess we'll save it for next time."

River Grey muttered under his breath.

The next morning, second-floor office of the twin buildings.

Because it had happened in the small hours, the shooting hadn't made the papers.

What owned the headlines was the passage of the wartime Sedition Act.

An expansion of the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act made "disloyal" or "abusive" speech against the United States government punishable by up to twenty years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine.

Its passage meant the agencies hunting spies were about to get a great deal more power. Edgar Hoover's rise was all but guaranteed.

I turned the page.

Further in, a smaller piece caught my eye—an article marking the start of the first wave of what would one day be called the Spanish Flu, though no one had given it a proper name yet.

What was more interesting was a similar piece in a rival paper.

Herbert Swope of the New York World.

Author of a book on the German Empire—and the reporter I had written to under the alias K. Nostradamus G.

With the flu spreading, the paper was looking for me. I was still turning over how to answer him when word of the flu's cost reached me from much closer to home.

Hazel called.

Gunsmith hadn't made it through the night.

I wanted to keep it simple, but… Grandfather had a long list of wishes.

Gunsmith himself must have known the end was near. In his final hours he had laid out the funeral arrangements and even named the cemetery.

Given how alone and solitary he had lived, I expected the barest of rites. In death, he chose the opposite.

He invited everyone who had ever crossed his path—myself, Tanner Smith, Patrick, Rosenthal, the lot of us—to a funeral home in Brooklyn.

Uliano & Yale. Frankie Yale's funeral parlor.

Did he want to watch me put Yale down from inside the coffin—or at least hear the man scream?

I couldn't begin to guess what Gunsmith had intended.

The next morning, in a black suit, I went to the funeral home in Brooklyn.