Expanding Connections
Uniformed police were thick around Tammany Hall. It was only natural—the place had become a target for anarchists.
Even that wasn’t enough for the politicians inside. They had hired plainclothes bodyguards on top of the official detail.
The Marginals. They prowled the perimeter like undercover agents, blending into the street traffic.
The mix of gangsters and cops didn’t look half as strange as it should have. If you squinted, they might have been private detectives—Pinkertons in cheap suits.
“Rookie. Tom Foley’s looking for you.”
Patrick spotted me at the entrance and jerked his chin toward the building.
“Isn’t a suit required?”
“They’ll make an exception for you.”
He glanced back at the men behind him for confirmation. One of the officers at the door recognized me, gave a short nod, then spoke with a faintly curious expression.
“Mr. Foley’s in the first-floor office.”
They stepped aside. Gavin stayed outside trading words with Patrick while I went in alone.
The man posted at the office door checked me, then opened it.
“Well, well. Our hero has arrived.”
Tom Foley rose from the round conference table, beaming. The sturdy older gentleman beside him looked me up and down before offering a hand.
“Charles Murphy.”
Charles Francis Murphy, boss of Tammany Hall. Fifteen years at the top. The man who had helped elect governors, mayors, and even President Woodrow Wilson. Real power.
“Your mother’s Irish, I hear?”
“That’s right.”
Murphy was Irish himself, so he never asked about my Korean father. The early Tammany men had welcomed the potato-famine immigrants for their votes. Once the Irish took the leadership, that was enough. Half-blood or not, it bought me a measure of goodwill.
Of course, deeper calculations were always in play.
“Foley, I’ll be greeting people down in the convention hall. Take your time.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be right along.”
Murphy left. Foley and I were alone.
“I hear your mother’s one of the garment workers who picketed not long ago.”
“Yes, sir. She just took over the factory from that swindler and started a new business.”
“Tanner filled me in. That’s why I called you here.”
If anyone knew exactly where I itched, it was Tanner Smith. Introducing me to Dopey Benny—the labor slugger turned shirtwaist manufacturer—had been more of the same. Tanner always understood what I needed.
“I’m old enough that heaven could call me any day, but you bought me a little more time. I’d like to return the favor.”
The favor turned out to be introductions to the salesmen who would be arriving for the garment merchants’ meeting. People called Tom Foley a corrupt politician. To me he was simply a man who paid his debts.
Security was handled by the police and the Marginals. I stood alone in the basement convention hall while Foley brought people over one by one. Boutique owners, department-store managers—all of them selling clothes in Manhattan.
The most memorable introduction:
“I’ve been curious about the hero who took down those anarchists. You’re younger than I expected. Percy Straus.”
Macy’s. Founded in 1843 with four dry-goods counters, now the largest department store in America. Percy Straus was the founder’s grandson and the man in charge.
Still, Macy’s was too grand a target for the cheap underthings coming out of Mother’s factory. Once we had a finished brassiere line and a real range of products, maybe. For now it was a castle in the air. I simply filed away his invitation to “stop by sometime.”
The gathering Tammany hosted was more social than substantive—a quiet way to link capital to politicians. When it ended I had five business cards from retailers who might take our undergarments. Men who wanted a pipeline to Tom Foley, and through him to Tammany itself.
I rode in the back seat beside Foley as the car headed for the Tenderloin. His salon was the destination.
“Thanks to you, Mr. Foley, I’ve taken a real load off my mother’s mind.”
“Making introductions is easy. And I didn’t help just because you saved my life.”
A seasoned operator always has his own arithmetic.
“Tanner says you’ve got vision far beyond your years. That Anne Morgan’s investment in your mother’s factory came entirely from your head?”
Who in New York didn’t know J. P. Morgan’s youngest daughter? Tanner had already elevated me in their eyes—from a sharp-shooting Irish half-blood gangster to someone worth watching.
You know why Tammany’s run New York politics for nearly a hundred years? They spot promising seedlings, grow them carefully, then put them to work.
Tanner himself had been one of those seedlings. Tammany needed Irish gangs, but never wanted any single one too strong. So they pulled strings behind the Gophers, the Hudson Dusters, the Marginals—playing them against each other. At the same time they courted Jewish and Italian votes through the Eastmans and the Five Points Gang. Tammany understood power: how to make it, keep it, and spend it.
We were almost at the Tenderloin when Foley tested me.
“What do you make of this place? If you were going into business here, what would you do?”
He wanted to see whether Tanner’s praise was justified.
I gave him the answer I knew he already held.
“Why start anything in a neighborhood that’s already dying? I’d do it somewhere else.”
“Dying? Why do you say that?”
A man at the center of power knew the truth better than I did. The Tenderloin’s glory days were over; the pleasure district that had once filled Tammany’s pockets was changing.
“Rents are too high. Clubs are already drifting up to Harlem and around Broadway. And the biggest reason—”
Times Square was rising at terrifying speed. The heart of nightlife was shifting to something newer, brighter, more modern.
Foley looked at me with real interest.
“You like Times Square?”
“That’s how I see it.”
He only nodded and asked nothing more.
The real death blow was still coming: Prohibition. Once the law passed, the government would need an example. The Tenderloin—gambling, prostitution, liquor—was the perfect stage. One serious police crackdown and the whole district would vanish into history books and museum exhibits. That was why, in my previous life, I had only ever known the Tenderloin as a name in textbooks.
Right now the place was burning its last bright flame.
As we stepped into the salon, Foley asked me to bodyguard him every evening for the next week. Two dollars a day.
Worth it? Cold calculation said the current Tammany bosses were old. Murphy and Foley themselves had expiration dates. But they could introduce me to younger men with real ambition. A few nights of work seemed a small price.
I accepted.
The next morning I woke to find Liam stuffing things into a bag. Mother had already left for the factory. Liam stood awkwardly, bag in hand, not quite ready to leave.
Once the business started bringing money in, I had replaced his old shoeshine box with a proper school satchel. After more than a year away, today was his first day back.
I walked over and gave him a push of encouragement.
“Don’t worry about money. Just study hard. Big brother’ll back you all the way.”
“How exactly are you going to back me?”
I smacked him between the shoulder blades and shoved him out the door. He muttered something under his breath as he disappeared down the stairs.
“Big brother, I think he just swore. Roa has good ears, you know.”
“I’ll deal with him tonight.”
“Good. Can’t let it become a habit.”
Then Roa planted herself in front of me and turned her back.
“Push Roa too.”
No bag, just heading to the neighbor’s—our makeshift daycare. I gave her a gentle shove. She shot out the door with a little whoosh, then spun around and held out her hand. I took it and walked her downstairs to Mrs. Mary’s apartment.
“Big brother, Jake says Coney Island is amazing! They’ve got everything, even people who fly!”
What kind of fever dream was that? Turned out he meant the circus.
“He says elephants dance and monkeys juggle hats!”
“That’s a load of nonsense. Elephants can’t dance. Jake’s never even been.”
“Has too! He says he’s been three times already!”
“You’re too trusting, Roa.”
Three trips to Coney Island from a tenement? With that kind of money they could have been eating meat.
We reached Mrs. Mary’s door.
“Morning, Kieran. Big brother brought Roa today?”
“Please look after her.”
I nodded politely. Curly-haired Jake was already inside—the little liar who’d been filling Roa’s head. I shot him one hard look, then headed home.
I made a quick breakfast of potato and bread, then started dressing for the factory. A knock sounded at the door.
“Kieran! You up?”
“Be right out. Wait.”
“Hell no—stay put! Isaac’s boys are waiting for you downstairs!”
I yanked the door open.
“Who?”
“Yesterday on Orchard Street, collecting that overdue money—you beat two of them, remember? Those are Isaac’s guys.”
Leo’s mouth was dry; he swallowed hard.
“How many did they bring?”
“Five!”
I grabbed a knife and a club.
“Y-you really going down there? They just joined the Orchard Street gang. This could blow up.”
“It already has.”
I went downstairs. Exactly as Leo said, five of them were loitering outside the entrance. Two flinched the moment they saw me—yesterday’s victims.
“You little bastard—”
“What, you got your ass kicked by that skinny chink? Hey, you. Get over here.”
A big, thick-necked man crooked a finger at me.
When they call, you go.
I slid the club into my hand and tightened my grip.
“Where do you want to take the beating?”
Mouths dropped open. Behind me Leo sucked in a horrified breath.
I walked straight at them. One by one they started pulling weapons—brass knuckles, a length of pipe, a club, a folding pocketknife.
Morning exercise.
“Follow me into the alley.”
I stepped into the narrow passage between tenements, barely wide enough for two men. Before they could even form up I charged the nearest one and cracked the club across his skull. That started it.
The alley forced single combat. Hit, step back, drop one, plant a foot on him, take the next. One cracked head after another. I advanced over bodies.
Thud. Thud.
When I finally stepped out the far end, every one of them was on the ground moaning.
And right there, blocking the exit, stood two more men. One wore a police uniform.
Shit.
The cop stared open-mouthed at the wreckage in the alley. One of the downed thugs found his voice.
“A-arrest that guy! He assaulted us!”
Gangsters calling for the police. Pathetic. I turned a cold look on him—then the second man spoke.
“You’re Kieran?”
I looked back. Young, early twenties, sharp suit, eyes bright with curiosity.
“Who are you?”
“That’s him, all right.”
Instead of answering he glanced at the sprawled gangsters and clicked his tongue.
“Not just a good shot, I see. Got a minute?”
He said he needed a private word and led me away. The policeman snapped a salute as if his work were finished and vanished.
Barely into his twenties, yet the older cop had been his escort. Who the hell was this?
As if he’d heard the question, the young man extended his hand.
“John Edgar Hoover, Bureau of Investigation. Pleasure to meet you.”