You Probably Don't Know
The protest at Union Square must have been a little too passionate.
On the way back, the demonstrators carried only their pickets and kept their voices down.
It was just as we were passing Fourth Avenue and merging onto Bowery Street that Marcus, who had been tailing Johnny, came hurrying up to me at a quick pace.
"A friend of mine brought some information."
I had already given him the word in advance, so Patrick only nodded. He was just as curious about Johnny's next move as I was.
Once we slipped into the alley, Marcus fell in close behind me.
"So where is Johnny right now, and what is he doing?"
Marcus swallowed hard and laid out the situation. When he said Johnny had gone looking for my house, my face twisted of its own accord.
"Those guys even knew your name and Liam's. They were holding a piece of paper—the information must have been written on it."
"So they're going to grab any protester's family at random and use them as leverage?"
"Not just anyone."
Johnny especially went after the families of the strike leaders.
On the surface, the center of the current protest was clearly being led by my Irish mother.
The family: me, Liam, Roa…
Regardless of the free-for-all brawl that morning, Johnny was hunting me so he could kidnap a protester's family—using Marcus, or rather the shoe-shine kids.
"They said they'd throw in another two dollars if I brought you in."
"Not exactly pocket change."
"Eh. Compared to the money I'm going to take from you going forward, it's nothing."
Marcus wore a meaningful little smile. Something in the look said, Let's plan the future together.
"Thanks."
"…What's with the sudden formality. But shouldn't we tell the Marginals about this?"
"Too many people and we start standing out."
Johnny had even been kind enough to name the place they were supposed to deliver me.
"Then I'll go myself."
The hostage would walk straight in and send the madman to another world.
The street lay under a thick wash of sunset.
I peeled away from the protestors and the Marginals sluggers and moved on my own.
I took off the scarf. Without the toolbox, I was just another ordinary shoe-shine boy.
No matter how I look at it, this feels reckless.
Johnny's the one being reckless. Marcus, just give me the location. I'm leaving Liam to you.
Would Johnny have trusted this job to Marcus alone?
He had almost certainly put a bounty on Liam as well as me with the shoe-shine kids.
Only two dollars.
But for shoe-shine kids, that was real money.
I asked Marcus to look after Liam and went alone to the place where Johnny was waiting.
"Hey, you!"
A whole pack came thundering toward me at once—shoe-shine kids from another district.
"Kieran, right?"
Even in the same trade, most of them never knew one another. On top of that, Kieran almost never left his own territory and lived like a ghost, so he had barely any presence at all.
And yet here I was, drawing every eye like this.
They all licked their lips as they looked me over. Bounty-hunter eyes. Even if I said nothing, they were already certain I was the prey.
"Come with us."
Three of them ringed me so I couldn't run.
Breaking free wouldn't have been hard, but there was no need.
Every shoe-shine kid in the area was hunting me. Walk alone and more of them would keep attaching themselves and making a nuisance. Better to use these three as guide dogs all the way to the destination.
That was their only purpose.
Just as I expected, every shoe-shine kid we passed on the way eyed me with pure greed. The ones holding me swaggered like fishermen who had landed a prize catch.
Still—this many witnesses, and they had openly named the location.
Hard to pull off without a quiet arrangement with the police.
Or they simply didn't give a damn about the law.
I followed Canal Street upward.
Little Italy—territory I would never set foot in under normal circumstances.
The moment I entered, I cut right along bustling Mott Street.
When the clothing warehouse where Johnny was supposed to be was only a short stretch ahead, I stopped in front of a narrow alley.
"What the hell are you doing? Keep moving."
The three of them glared.
I hit them without a second's hesitation.
Thud. Thud.
I shoved them into the alley, beat all three to the ground, then stomped them underfoot. The next part mattered—I spun as if I were running and left the spot.
No. I only pretended. I slipped into cover nearby and watched them.
"You son of a bitch!"
"When we catch you, you're dead!"
They scrambled up late, burst out of the alley, and raged up and down the street.
"You two go find him. I'll go tell the man."
Two of them started combing the streets for me. One headed straight for "the man."
That man was Johnny, of course.
He would probably report that he had brought me right to the door and then lost me.
I tailed him, and sure enough the kid came spilling back out onto the street with two men in tow.
The same ones I had seen outside the house that morning.
Was Johnny alone right now? Or with more of them?
Time to find out.
I crossed the avenue choked with carriages and automobiles, melted into the stream of people hurrying home from work, and closed in on the clothing warehouse.
The street itself was a commercial artery linking Little Italy and Chinatown, and the neighborhood was thick with workshops like the sweatshops my mother had worked in. That meant plenty of clothing warehouses as well.
On top of that, the men who had hired Johnny were garment manufacturers. A clothing warehouse made a very convenient stage for what they planned to do.
The buildings were almost all the same design.
I circled the three-story red-brick structure, then climbed the iron fire-escape stairs at the rear. I was just about to slip off my shoes for silence when smoke began curling lazily from a third-floor window. Cigarette smoke, no question.
Johnny or someone else—there was a person right by that window. Even a quick glance would get me spotted.
I jammed my shoes back on and walked boldly through the front entrance instead.
The first floor was a loading bay. Fitting for a place meant for kidnapping, hostages, and blackmail—no employees in sight.
I kept my footsteps soft and climbed to the second floor.
I could have gone straight up to the third and finished Johnny right then, but the sun still hadn't set.
Escape was the problem. There might be witnesses. The men who had just gone outside could come back and run straight into me.
Wait for the surest moment.
The second floor was a warehouse stacked high with bolts of fabric—perfect cover. I slipped into the piles and waited for night.
I passed the time turning over one thought after another, and before I noticed, my hands were running over the cloth.
Muslin—light, with poor breathability. The most common cotton fabric there was: cheap and easy to get.
Mother had said muslin was ideal for brassiere fabric.
That choice was tied to the customer base. We were aiming at working women.
As more of them took jobs in factories and offices, they wanted practical underclothes they could actually move in. Corsets were already expensive because of the steel shortage. They were hard enough to wear as it was; this was the perfect moment for a push to leave corset culture behind.
The wealthy, by contrast, treated expensive corsets as status symbols, and their taste in fashion stayed stubbornly conservative. From a market-expansion standpoint there was little to gain by chasing them first.
Early on, flood the market with cheap fabric bras. Later, once the idea had taken hold, bring in luxury materials for the rich…
Footsteps entered the first floor of the warehouse.
Two people. The steps climbed the stairs at once.
When they passed the second floor I got a clear look—the same pair who had charged outside hunting for me.
Click.
They went into the third-floor office.
I pressed my ear to the sounds leaking under the door.
Roughly: Can't see where he went. Leaving it to the shoe-shine kids was a mistake. Looks like we'll have to go to the house ourselves…
They were going to raid the house and snatch people?
No time left to wait for night. These bold bastards needed to be sent somewhere farther than outside—straight to the next world.
It still wasn't dark.
To keep from walking the streets covered in blood, I stripped first.
I left only my underclothes, folded the rest onto a bolt of fabric, and—looking like a complete pervert—slipped between the piles with a knife in one hand and a club in the other.
The stairs zigzagged from the first floor all the way to the third. I tucked myself into a blind spot so no one coming down would see me. Almost the same instant—
Click.
The office door opened. Johnny and his men started down the stairs.
"To get the little brats inside the house to open up, we need a couple of shoe-shine kids."
"How about we stick those kids out front just to get the door open, then go in and grab everybody?"
"That's a little ineffici—!"
Thud!
I launched myself, slammed the lead man into the wall, and drove the knife into his throat.
One down.
I twisted the blade free and immediately swung it in a wide arc at the man one step higher.
Slash.
He jerked back on pure instinct and threw an arm up. The tip raked coat and skin; at the same moment the club in my left hand smashed into his skull.
Crack!
He collapsed in a heap on the stairs and blocked the last man from moving.
Second one out of the fight for now.
The final man half-fell and scrambled backward up the steps. If he got away, catching him would be hell.
I dropped the club as if throwing it, lunged, snagged his trousers, and yanked him down toward me. As he slid and skidded, I stabbed him in rapid succession from groin to chest.
Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.
Only when the blade reached the neck did I realize the man wasn't Johnny.
I finished cutting the windpipe, then grabbed the hair of the second man—the one I had clubbed—and dragged him into the warehouse. This one was Johnny.
To make sure he couldn't run, I severed the nerves in his arms and legs with the knife. I hauled the other two corpses into the warehouse as well, then covered the blood-soaked stairs with bolts of fabric.
I walked over to Johnny.
Tap. Tap.
"Johnny. Still Johnny?"
Get up, you bastard.
I slapped his cheek with the flat of the blade, but he gave no reaction—unconscious. The skull had cracked properly.
Without taking my eyes off him I pulled my clothes back on from the fabric pile. Just as I fastened the last button of the shirt, a wet gurgling sound rose from him.
I went to him, seized a fistful of hair, half-lifted him, and locked an arm around his throat from behind.
Then I put my lips to his ear and whispered.
"You were supposed to be so dangerous. So crazy."
"Guh…"
"The world must have looked easy to you. But your journey ends here, Johnny. Ready for the next world?"
I tightened the pressure by degrees.
The price for touching me and my family.
I wanted Johnny to feel every second of dying if I could manage it.
As if answering, a steady trickle of water began to run.
"You pissed yourself."
Thud.
Only when his body went completely limp did I let go.
He crumpled. From my coat pocket I took out a single sheet of paper—the contract I had taken off the loan shark Stumpy.
Originally the ownership rights to the sewing machines had belonged first to the loan shark. Once the contract vanished and the fraud came to light, the factory owner's bereaved family had stepped in hard and started suing.
In that climate, if a sewing-machine contract turned up on Johnny Spanish—hired by the garment manufacturers themselves?
The protesters could turn it into a weapon.
Use it, together with the ILGWU, to hit the bosses where it hurt.
I covered the bodies with fabric and slipped out the second-floor back door. Down the iron fire escape, feet on solid ground, and straight out of the alley.
Spoils of war: one hundred eight dollars from Johnny's wallet. Another nine dollars and twenty cents scraped off the other two. A respectable haul.
The clock read seven in the evening. The streets thronged with people heading home from work.
Now if I just got clear of this neighborhood, everything would be perfect—
"Huh. Well, look who it is."
A familiar face stepped into my path.
Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel. Three kids I didn't know trailed behind them.
"Kieran. Perfect timing. Still shining shoes these days?"
"No."
They clearly had no idea what I had just been through.
Meyer noticed the missing toolbox and gave me a strange look.
"We're on our way to meet a guy who can throw us some work. Want to come along?"
"Who?"
The corner of Meyer's mouth lifted.
"You probably don't know him. A guy called Johnny Spanish."
He was, they said, a very famous labor slugger in this world.