Back from the Business Trip
East River Pier 17.
A few hours later I was back at the warehouse where the sewing machines were stored.
The men who should have been guarding the entrance were nowhere in sight. Absurdly enough, they had locked the door from the inside at the first hint of dusk and fallen asleep within.
Should I just cut them down quick?
It would have been as easy as turning over a hand, but removing a mere pair of them would achieve little of real value. I needed enough bodies to make this incident roar.
I slipped in by the infiltration route I had scouted earlier, climbing the fire escape to the second floor. Inside the warehouse, beyond the rows of sewing machines, construction materials lay heaped under thick webs of spider silk. The lumber was so thoroughly rotten that clearing it out would have cost more than it was worth.
I settled into the concealed position I had chosen in advance—a spot where the piled timber still left a clear view of the outside through a second-floor window.
According to the plan, Leo and Marcus would plant the rumor, and any Hudson Dusters who heard it would come swarming. Fixing the specific hour for tomorrow night had been deliberate as well: I wanted greed to outrun caution, to lure them in before they could properly verify the tale. Loan sharks or anyone else—it made no difference who arrived. All I hoped for was that they would not come in numbers so vast I could not handle them. Not more than the bullets I had left.
A few days earlier I had test-fired both guns in an abandoned sewer tunnel. The spent rounds had stung, but better that than dying with an unzeroed weapon in my hand. My current ammunition stock stood as follows: two .38 rounds remaining for Father’s M1892 revolver, seven .45 rounds in the magazine of the M1911 taken from the dead boss, plus five spare. Fourteen rounds in total.
I had been sealed inside the warehouse for quite some time. As expected, the world refused to run according to plan. Midnight came and went in silence. Well—not quite silence. Only the reek of liquor and the sound of snoring drifted up from below.
I was glad I had brought the potatoes. That kind of foresight, preparing for an uncertain wait. I was still chewing when the two men who had been snoring since early evening finally stirred—not to sunlight, but to moonlight.
“Haaah. Damn, what time is it?”
They opened the door, sat outside, and resumed drinking. How long was I supposed to listen to their filthy talk and worthless jokes? Eventually they even started singing, and my own mouth began to move of its own accord, humming along.
“The only chance to make my name fly
has finally come.
I’ll settle the Hudson Dusters
and rise into the hall of fame.
He lost his stick and his cannon,
even his shield was stripped away,
but in the end he remembered…
that every dog has his day~.”
Kieran knew this song too. Originally it had been a poem. Gangs sometimes glorified or outright fabricated violence to parade their deeds or their defiance of authority; this poem was one such case. From everything I knew of the Hudson Dusters, the song celebrated an attack on the police that raised their renown—only for them to collapse afterward—yet claimed that moment as the brightest of their lives.
In their heyday the Hudson Dusters had beaten the officers sent to arrest them without a shred of sense. The poem praised them for it. The interesting part was that the poet himself had been the boss of the Gophers, a gang that fought the Dusters tooth and nail. The verse moved the underworld so deeply that rival or not, every gangster raved about it. They set it to music, printed thousands of sheets, scattered them through the streets, even delivered copies to the hospital where the injured police lay. It spread like a fashion until every shoe-shine boy could sing along—and that was when the Hudson Dusters’ fall began. Their core leadership was rounded up and sent to prison one after another, or died of drug addiction. All of it had happened only three years ago.
The survivors scattered into robbery, narcotics, newspapers, and labor-slugger work. Some of them were the very loan sharks who had smashed my toolbox on Wall Street, conspired with the boss, and stolen the sewing machines. And now, unidentifiable Hudson Dusters were coming for me.
Clop-clop. Clop-clop.
Four carriages approached the warehouse along the well-kept road. Sweat beaded on my palms as I wondered how many men the canvas-covered beds might hold. I should have brought homemade bombs.
Neighhhh.
At last the carriages halted in front of the warehouse.
“These bastards—told to watch the warehouse and they’re sitting around drinking.”
“Relax, Stumpy. Nobody’s come. But what are you doing here at this hour? Find a buyer for the goods?”
“That’s not the problem. Looks like Robert’s after our stuff.”
The man who climbed down—Stumpy—was the same one who had beaten our neighbor Mrs. Jane the day they hauled the sewing machines away. Moonlight revealed his face clearly.
“Robert’s after our goods?”
“The bastard’s lost his mind lately. Keeps saying we should help him take down the Marginals, and the other day he flat-out told us we should dispose of the sewing machines together. Called it a chance to rebuild the Hudson Dusters.”
“Idiot. Who does he think he is, the boss? What’s he ever done that he gets to eye our meal ticket?”
“Exactly. If you understand, get the door open. We move the machines before Robert shows.”
While they worked the padlock and chain, I counted the men who had stepped from the carriages. Eight in total—exactly the same number that had taken the machines from Mother’s workshop. A sewing machine weighed about twenty kilos; two grown men could easily carry one.
Creeeeak.
The heavy iron door swung open. I held the M1911 ready and waited for the right moment. They filed inside and paired off, latching onto the machines to begin the move. Their hands were occupied—now—
Hmm?
Sudden hoofbeats. Approaching the warehouse at speed. Every gaze snapped toward the door.
“Damn it!”
“They followed us!?”
Stumpy’s reaction told me exactly who they were. No time to deliberate. My muzzle was already leveled at the backs of their heads. I squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
Bang!
One round apiece. I poured out seven shots in rapid succession. Thud. Thud. By the time the M1911 magazine ran dry, Stumpy—nearest the door—had scrambled free of his machine and was clawing for a gun. I was faster. The knife I had already drawn left my hand.
Whirrrr.
Moonlight through the window flashed along the spinning blade. The tip buried itself square in his chest. Thud.
I snatched Father’s revolver and vaulted down. Two more rounds finished the ones still twitching on the floor, then I tore the pistol from Stumpy’s grip and stepped outside, firing toward the group that had been trying to approach the warehouse from behind the carriages.
Bang!
Bang!
“You crazy bastard, pointing a gun at us?!”
“Stumpy! You’re gonna regret what you just did!”
Too little reaction would have been suspicious in its own right. I scraped my throat raw and bellowed back.
“Eat shit, you worthless pricks!”
Only five of them. They had no real grasp of what had happened inside the warehouse, and their numbers were thin. The gunfire that cracked through the dead of night would soon draw people. Risk a prolonged firefight and try to haul away dozens of sewing machines on top of it? Impossible.
As expected, they wheeled hard and put distance between themselves and the warehouse. Click. The gun I had taken from Stumpy was an M1905, the predecessor of my M1911. I dropped the magazine and checked the loads—three rounds left. To muddy the ballistics and make it look like a multi-person fight rather than a lone shooter, I turned the muzzle on the corpses.
“If you take something, you’d better be ready to have it taken back.”
The words applied to me as well.
Bang!
Bang!
When the ammunition ran dry I used the knife, stabbing and slashing the bodies to leave additional wounds. Dockworkers from the nearby piers would almost certainly arrive first. Factor in the hour and the police’s sluggish response, and I still had time enough.
From the bag I had brought I pulled the evidence that would expose the dead boss’s fraud—letters and ledgers. Among the dozens of sewing machines I chose one in the middle to hide them. Without the machine mounted on top, a sewing cabinet looked much like an antique vanity. The only difference was a hinged leaf on one side that folded out for fabric and folded away again to save space. Hoping someone other than the police would find it first, I opened a drawer. Thread and scissors and other odds and ends still sat inside; I left them and stuffed the mail in among them.
Next came the personal effects taken from the dead boss—ring, necklace, watch. I slipped them into the pockets of Stumpy’s corpse. While I was at it I found an unexpected paper inside his coat: the bill of sale and transfer papers for the sewing machines. Worth keeping.
Dead men tell no tales. The police, eager to pad their numbers, would almost certainly pin the boss’s murder on Stumpy. I gave the bodies a rough going-over and left the warehouse. Instead of heading home I concealed myself a short distance away. If the ones who fled returned for the machines, I would simply shoot again.
Lower Manhattan, the southern docks.
Striking workers had no reason to turn in early. Some of them nested in the waterfront taverns once night fell and killed time with cards. In a corner booth a man clamped a cigarette between his lips and narrowed his eyes to check his two cards. That was when the gunfire began—small but sharp and continuous.
Every head in the tavern swung north. Manhattan was so compact that shots from the city center sometimes carried this far, but tonight—
“Sounds pretty close.”
“Some drunk going crazy at the moon.”
“Or gangs going at each other?”
At the word “gang” every eye settled on one man.
“What? You want me to do something about it?”
Tanner Smith shrugged. Rumors that the Hudson Dusters were preparing a war with the Marginals had been flying everywhere; linking them to the shots was only natural. Still, both gangs kept their bases several kilometers away in the Lower West Side.
“They’re not idiots. No reason to come all the way out here to fight.”
Tanner’s reaction stayed cool—until the shots kept coming, more than ten of them. His brow furrowed.
“Doesn’t sound that far. Maybe we ought to take a look.”
“You could catch a stray and die.”
“Who knows? Maybe the slugger bastards got hopped up on dope and went nuts.”
The labor sluggers hired by management were pure garbage—drugs were standard, and they pulled insane stunts all the time.
“Catch them at something and we can hit them tomorrow without a peep of protest.”
Slugger or otherwise, it was only an excuse. The liquor already in their systems and simple curiosity pulled the striking workers toward the scene. Tanner buckled a billy club to his belt and joined them. When the group stepped out of the tavern, plenty of others had the same idea. Among the loiterers were sluggers and police as well.
“Honestly, they can’t even take a day off properly.”
One or two shots would never have drawn this much attention. This was almost a miniature war zone. Grumbling policemen, sluggers, and dockworkers all moved as one toward the sound.
I waited among the scrap and refuse, dew soaking into my clothes in the small hours, eyes fixed on the warehouse and its surroundings. Just as I had expected, the men who fled north refused to give up; they circled back and prowled at a distance without closing in. With the warehouse as the center they held the twelve-o’clock position. I watched from nine o’clock, hands busy reloading magazines.
The thought struck me that my firepower was desperately thin.
“A proper rifle would be nice right about now.”
Mosin-Nagant, Enfield, Springfield… The Browning Automatic Rifle wouldn’t appear until next year. Even a Mauser would have been a godsend. At this range I could have swept every skulking figure without a scope.
The prowlers edged closer, growing bolder—they had begun to sense something was wrong. No one was loading machines. The carriages never moved. Above all, it was far too quiet. Unable to wait any longer they crept toward the warehouse, believing themselves stealthy. They never finished the approach. They had to turn their horses around again.
From the six-o’clock direction—south, from the docks—a crowd appeared. The Hudson Dusters who had hesitated and lost their chance abandoned the sewing machines and melted away. More and more people poured into the area around the warehouse. Uniformed police mixed among the workers. With that many witnesses, covering the incident up or spinning some other story would be impossible.
Once the confusion was thick enough that no one would notice me, I finally left my nest. Spoils taken from the corpses: twenty-four rounds of .45 and .38 ammunition, and thirty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents.
Four in the morning.
I slipped back into the tenement house and opened the door without a sound. Mother, fretting over the eldest son who had gone out after spouting some nonsense about a “business trip,” had left the oil lamp burning and fallen asleep slumped over the table. I hid the guns and ammunition atop the cupboard and was peeling off my clothes when she stirred and rose.
“Kieran… you’re back?”
“……Eh, I got in a while ago.”
“That line doesn’t work anymore.”
She arched an eyebrow and came close, then pulled me into a tight embrace.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was?”
“That’s why I came back quick.”
“For your mother?”
“……Something like that.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
She released me and smiled softly.
“I don’t know what you’ve been up to again… but go to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I spoke to her retreating back.
“I found the sewing machines. When you go to the site tomorrow, open every single drawer.”
“Wh-what site?”
“You know which one.”
“……”
For a long moment Mother stood frozen, as if turned to stone. Only after a deep sigh did she disappear into her room without another word.
I had not brought the machines home, but I had given them a reason to look. What remained was Mother’s rightful demand—and the fierce protest of her fellow workers—to reclaim them.