Nothing Will Happen
“Let’s sign the contract right away.”
The lingerie manager at Macy’s was decisive. Without fussing over details, she pushed the supply contract forward first.
Mother and the workers were the ones who hesitated, flustered.
“Shouldn’t we look this over carefully?”
“I’ve already seen the product at the Intimo Boutique on Orchard Street. Honestly, I can’t guarantee the market reaction, but I don’t think it’ll be bad. It’s a fact that it broadens the customers’ options.”
I couldn’t tell how much Tom Foley had influenced the deal, but listening to the manager’s rational words, it didn’t seem like she had come charging in blindly.
Mother looked back and forth between the contract and me. Her hesitation came from the Gimbels managers who had visited earlier.
They had told us not to sign with anyone else until they made their decision. And it wasn’t hard to guess that “anyone else” meant Macy’s, their fierce competitor.
In the end, it was a happy dilemma of weighing two department stores against each other. By my standards, though, it wasn’t even a dilemma.
“As long as the supply price is right, sign it.”
Retail price at the department store: $1.20 apiece. Supply price: thirty cents. The manager looked satisfied and even showed interest in the follow-up designs.
“We’re expanding the brassieres by size and preparing new designs for men’s underwear as well.”
“Different from the existing products?”
“Of course. We don’t make anything ordinary.”
At my confident words, the manager’s eyes lit up with interest. From that gleam, I was certain that if we played it right, we could push even more products into Macy’s.
Still, the parting words she left as she stepped out of the workshop cast a brief shadow over everyone.
“Before you expand the product line, you’ll need to expand the workshop itself. This place is… well. Hang in there.”
Damn it. As if anyone didn’t know.
We were stuck like this because we didn’t have the money.
Should I look for a new workshop while I’m at it?
After seeing the manager off, Mother came back with a bitter look, smacking her lips. But the moment she glanced at her coworkers, she broke into a bright smile.
“This is only the beginning. We can move somewhere bigger later!”
“That’s right! It’s Macy’s, of all places. We made that happen!”
“Things will only get better from here! Let’s keep at it!”
Positive energy flooded the once-gloomy workshop. A department-store supply deal was that encouraging.
“Kieran, can I talk to you a minute?”
Mother pulled me into the office.
“They wanted to sign right away, and it felt ridiculous for us to be the ones hemming and hawing, so I went ahead with it. But what do we do about Gimbels?”
“First, think about the image of both places.”
They were competitors, but the two department stores were clearly different.
If Gimbels sold practical product lines at popular prices, Macy’s projected a more upscale image.
Macy’s was also the one leading fashion trends, and looking ahead, it was the rational choice.
“Besides, Macy’s didn’t demand exclusive supply. That means they’re confident.”
“True, but… ugh. If the Gimbels manager shows up tomorrow, I have no idea how to handle them.”
“Tell them we absolutely can’t accept exclusive supply. Just don’t mention Macy’s.”
“Got it.”
“I’ll step out for a bit, then.”
“Where to?”
“To buy some meat.”
To celebrate the department-store supply contract—and, secretly, to toast my own swelling assets.
I prepared steak for dinner.
“Roa grows taller every time she eats meat. After ten more times, she’ll be taller than Jake.”
“Ten times? She’ll need a hundred more. But hey, what’s that under your plate?”
“The guts of the German Empire. If I set the plate on a book, the distance to Roa’s mouth shrinks a lot.”
It really did cut the time it took for the fork to carry the meat to her mouth.
Impressive improvisation.
“But what’s with our house these days? Anyone looking would think we were middle class.”
Even while eating the meat, Liam wore the expression of a man committing a crime.
Not long ago he’d been working as a strikebreaker, terrified that a single day off would kill him.
Suddenly we were going to amusement parks, eating expensive meat, and he was even attending school—none of it seemed real to him.
“Mom and Kieran are doing well, so you and Roa don’t need to worry about a thing. Just eat well, grow well, and study hard. Understood?”
“If you give Roa meat, she’ll eat well and grow well.”
“And studying?”
“I’ll think about that after I eat, big brother. Roa’s gonna get a tummy ache.”
The grand dinner ended, and the next day arrived.
Only in the late afternoon did the Gimbels managers—a man and a woman—return.
They flew into a rage at Mother’s words, their voices so loud they carried all the way into the workshop.
“We’re not talking about a boutique! You can’t even accept the condition that you supply only our department store? Do you take Gimbels for a joke?”
“That’s not it. We’ve only just launched the product, so we need a variety of sales channels…”
“Forget it. We heard you were struggling, so we went all the way up the chain and got approval for a contract—and this is the disappointment we get.”
“I’m sorry.”
Before leaving the company, the Gimbels managers openly clicked their tongues toward the workshop.
“You’ll never get out of this place as long as you live.”
They muttered it like an aside, but everyone heard them clearly. The workers frowned or pouted.
“They really laid a curse on us on the way out.”
“Just wait and see. Macy’s is a hundred times better than Gimbels. Right?”
“Of course. Macy’s is the best.”
When I stepped into the office, Mother was slumped in a chair, rubbing her temples, completely drained.
“Don’t worry too much. They’ll be back anyway.”
“Huh? Why?”
“If the goods sell well at their competitor Macy’s, they’ll have to come crawling. What choice do they have?”
“I really hope so. By the way, we have to deliver to Macy’s by tomorrow. How are we handling that?”
The company to Macy’s was roughly five kilometers.
Until now, our clients had all been within handcart distance.
“We’ll use a freight wagon. I’ll go myself, so get everything ready.”
I discussed the new product lines with Mother. A few more workers joined the meeting, and we talked over men’s underwear designs and brassiere size standards.
“We’ll divide them into A, B, C, and D cups.”
“What’s the standard for that?”
“Bust circumference. The smallest, A, is…”
When I glanced at the ladies’ chests, they all subtly pushed them forward.
My eyes met Mrs. Anika’s—whose front and back were hard to tell apart—and she jumped.
“No way! I’m not small!”
Setting standards was this hard.
I left that to Mother and moved on to the men’s underwear designs. When I showed them the sketch of the briefs in particular, everyone’s eyes sparkled at the open front over the critical area.
As the exhausting product meeting was wrapping up, Gavin of the Marginals came looking for me.
“The number of people wanting training has gone up.”
“All of a sudden?”
“Physical exams started a few days ago.”
That meant enlistment was becoming real.
The physical exams fell under the local draft boards set up across the United States.
They notified eligible men in their districts and finalized inductees through the exams.
That process had begun a few days earlier.
“Did you get one too, Gavin?”
“Yeah. They said they’d notify the results in a week. Well, I’ll be Class A for sure.”
The classifications ran from Class 1 to 5.
Class 1 was fully fit, Class 2 limited duty, and Class 3 and below were exemptions.
Anyway, with so many volunteers for training, it was time to get started.
“But most of them are from Hell’s Kitchen, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Let’s change the location. The Italian gang war is over, so I’ll head over that way instead. Training once a week.”
“Okay. Oh, and speaking of the Italian gangs…”
According to Gavin, after the Navy Street Gang’s Neapolitan leadership was arrested and the war with the Sicilians stopped, things had started taking a strange turn.
“They’re looking for a sniper.”
The ones who had lost their minds with rage must have cooled down.
Coldly speaking, if you autopsied the bodies from the Newtown Creek warehouse, even the police would have to know a sniper had been involved.
Every bullet dug out of the corpses was .30-06, and from the sounds people nearby had reported, they would have figured out a suppressor had been used as well.
So the Italian gangs who had halted the war were now belatedly hunting for that sniper’s identity. The problem was—
“Both the Neapolitans and the Sicilians are after you.”
I stared hard at Gavin.
“No—you should have led with that instead of the training.”
“You expected it too. And how would they know the sniper is you? They’re just poking around at random. Nothing will happen. I’m off.”
Gavin reacted as if it were nothing and left. I had expected it thoroughly enough myself that I didn’t take it too seriously either.
The next day.
I loaded the bundles of brassieres for the department-store delivery onto a handcart and headed for the freight wagons.
Since the cart had to be brought back, Leo tagged along.
“Lately the gangs have been crawling all over Little Italy. Something about hunting for a sniper.”
Thud.
I nearly lost my grip on the cart before catching it again.
“A sniper?”
“Apparently the suspect in that murder case at Newtown Creek a while back. They even put a bounty on him.”
“……How much?”
“A thousand dollars. No joke, right? So after work these days I’ve been running the information net with Marcus. Damn, back in the day I would’ve known right away.”
I swallowed hard and kept my eyes forward.
One block away, the intersection of Hester and Allen Streets.
Only a few wagons stood there now, but from dawn it was the place where freight wagons lined up in a row.
Plenty of nearby garment manufacturers and retailers were their main customers.
The driver loaded the cart’s cargo with practiced ease.
“Destination?”
“Macy’s. I’m going too.”
“Two-fifty. Use me regularly and I’ll do it for two.”
“I’ll see how it goes.”
Leo hauled the empty cart back to the company.
I climbed onto the wagon and headed for Macy’s.
“I think I’ve seen you pass by a few times. Mixed blood, right?”
“Korean and Irish.”
“Korean? Rare combination, anyway.”
I kept the scarf around my neck but didn’t cover my face. Right now, covering it would have been more dangerous.
About forty minutes to the destination.
In that time the driver never shut his mouth. Half of it was complaining about his lot in life.
“Work keeps drying up. Damn Ford factory ought to get blown up or something. We’re all gonna starve soon.”
He was right. When eras change, some jobs vanish, and teamster was one of them.
As automobiles spread, they were steadily losing ground.
“You still have a competitive edge for now, though.”
For one thing, cars were still too expensive.
A Ford Model T cost $350; the newly released Model TT truck was a full $600.
You could save by converting a base model into a truck, but then came parking and storage.
Park it in front of a tenement and you’d wake up to the magic of it vanishing.
Car theft was serious enough that without a garage, owning one was pure fantasy.
The conversation naturally drifted into the transport business.
“Some own their own wagons, some work for companies. A few years ago it was all chaos, but these days the prices and routes have settled down some.”
Businessmen had realized early that transport mattered and poured effort into building networks.
Those networks shifted with the developing industries—early industrialization centered on coal, oil, and mail delivery.
Lately, with the garment industry booming, related work was drawing attention.
The key point was that the gangs hadn’t actively muscled in yet. They still hadn’t realized how much money the distribution business could make.
Bootleg liquor distribution in the Prohibition era, and garment transport.
I needed to build a structure that naturally linked the two.
So much to do.
“There—Macy’s is coming into view.”
The corner of 34th Street and Broadway.
The grand Renaissance-style Macy’s building filled the eye at a glance.
Crowds thronged in front of the main entrance. The driver steered around them toward the loading dock at the rear of the building.
“Not much cargo, so I figure you can hop off here.”
“That’s fine.”
“If you’re going to ship regularly, come find me. I’ll cut you a deal.”
“Understood.”
Wagons waited in a line to unload. I used one of the department store’s handcarts to bring the goods to the receiving clerk.
He checked the items and quantities, signed the invoice, and that was it.
I could have gone straight home, but having come this far, could I just leave?
I had to see the Gunsmith first.
Hell’s Kitchen, where he was, wasn’t far from Macy’s.
I took a streetcar north along Broadway and entered the grimy Hell’s Kitchen district.
Just as I reached the alley where the Gunsmith worked—
I was about to pull the scarf over my face.
A man stepped out of the alley.
I dropped my hand from the scarf and quickly scanned him.
Italian.
Blood spatters on his face and shirt.
He wiped the blood from his face with a casual rub of his hand, jammed his hat down low, and brushed past me.