The Law of Attraction
Snatching whatever you can from whoever you can makes you nothing more than a lawless thug—a lowlife. At the very least, you investigate first. Then you take it.
Start with the building owner. Gather every scrap of information I can.
I issued the orders to Cory and the other members, as well as to Leo and Marcus. It took exactly three days to assemble every piece of intelligence on Bunny Underwear.
According to Cory, even the idle Marginals from Hell’s Kitchen had joined in—though by that point I could barely keep their names straight.
In any case, the key facts boiled down to this:
The owner of the cheerfully named Bunny Underwear was a man called Herman Kalman, a former labor slugger.
“He used to stand with the garment manufacturers and break up strike protests. Worked with Johnny Spanish once, too.”
Ah, Johnny Spanish. Even dead, the man still left threads connecting everywhere. For someone who had left such a thick trail in the labor-slugger trade, he seemed tangled up with half the city.
Beyond the Johnny Spanish connection, Kalman’s résumé was colorful. As a Jew he had once run with the Five Points Gang, and he still maintained close ties with the gang of the same name that currently controlled Orchard Street.
The decisive information, though, came from Marcus.
“Bunny Underwear used to belong to someone else. Looks like Kalman took it a few years back while he was still labor-slugging.”
Labor sluggers didn’t limit their targets to workers alone. Any manufacturer that obstructed collusion or refused to play along became fair game. Usually they wrecked the business or simply terrorized the owner—and it was still happening all over the city.
“What about the building?”
“He owns it. Bought it last year. The sale itself doesn’t look clean either—the previous landlord practically gave it away.”
That wasn’t all. He paid fabric and accessory suppliers whenever he felt like it, and the complaints were piling up. If that didn’t make him the textbook specimen of a Lower East Side sweatshop tyrant, nothing did.
In my previous life I had once heard of something called the Law of Attraction. The core idea was simple: positive thoughts draw positive outcomes, negative thoughts draw negative ones, and either can reshape a person’s fate.
Criminals work the same way. I believe they pull each other in like magnets.
Look at Herman Kalman of Bunny Underwear. The man who had become my target was flawless—someone I could strip bare without a single pang of conscience.
Basement of 76 Forsyth Tenement House. The Free Your Body garment-factory office.
Brassieres covered the large conference table. Mother and the staff had spent the weekend hunting them down—counterfeits that had sprouted like poisonous mushrooms all over the district.
“Their unit cost is lower than ours, so the retailers are already grumbling. I’m worried the department stores will start making noise next.”
Only a few days earlier the fakes had been limited to Orchard Street; now the bastards were boldly expanding their sales territory. With every new storefront, Mother and the workers grew more anxious.
“Kieran, what about the certified letter the patent attorney’s office was going to send?”
They tore it up right in front of me, Mother. That kind of paper doesn’t work on them. We need a different, more physical approach.
That part, however, was my job. To Mother and the staff I simply described the perfectly ordinary legal steps.
“We’ll send another certified letter. If that fails, we file suit. And if that still doesn’t work, we’ll hire a lawyer and fight it properly.”
“Good. We have to stop them by every means available. What’s the point of paying for a patent otherwise?”
Counterfeits are inevitable. The only way to slow them even a little is a hard response right at the start—so that every other outfit thinks twice before trying the same thing.
I left the meeting room and went straight to the patent attorney’s office to commission a fresh certified letter.
“Give them two weeks. Write that if they don’t recall the product we’ll take legal action.”
“Writing it isn’t hard, but I looked into Bunny Underwear. The owner’s a real piece of work. Every piece of underwear they make is a design knock-off. A certified letter won’t even make him blink.”
As if I didn’t know.
“Still, what choice do I have? I can’t exactly kill him. A law-abiding citizen like me has no choice but to rely on the law.”
Attorney Wellman’s doubtful expression softened into reluctant agreement.
“I’ll mail the certified letter today. We’ll wait and see.”
“Appreciate it.”
Leaving the attorney’s office, I stopped by several real-estate firms. A nuisance, but necessary—building the thinnest possible alibi to deflect suspicion. I toured buildings that might serve as garment factories with the agents.
While I spent those days establishing cover, Cory and the men had not been idle. They watched Bunny Underwear day and night, and by the time they had pinpointed the factory’s loosest, most vulnerable hours, the week I had given the Marginals was up.
Who stayed, and who left?
Tanner’s right-hand man, Patrick, came in person to the tenement house where I lived. I scanned the list he handed me and frowned.
“What the hell is this?”
Out of 167 men, only thirteen had left—and every single one because he was facing conscription.
“Why didn’t anyone walk?”
“That’s how much they’re counting on the Boss. Nothing to look so disappointed about, is there?”
“Of course not. I’m delighted.”
My plan to smash one example as a warning right at the start had just fallen apart. Why zero deserters? I had at least expected that Oliver bastard to raise a flag. Did I possess some fatal charm I didn’t know about? I could find no other explanation.
“So we trust them and move forward?”
“Looking at the mood, yeah. Oliver, Cale, and Brian are actually talking you up. Honestly, listening from the side is almost embarrassing.”
That would be because getting knocked cold in one hit still stung their pride. Or maybe they really meant it. The little bastards were hard to read.
Either way, I had no choice but to trust them for now. And luckily I already had a job lined up.
“I’ve got a piece of work for us.”
I laid out the Bunny Underwear situation for Patrick in detail.
“It’s tied to my mother’s factory, so I was planning to keep the crew small. What do you think?”
“What’s there to ask? If the Boss decides, we do it. The boys will follow.”
“If it escalates we could end up clashing with the Orchard Street gang.”
“If you’re scared of that, you shouldn’t be in a gang.”
Exactly. That was what a gang was.
Patrick showed not the slightest hesitation about joining a crime. His eyes actually lit up with interest, and he even offered a suggestion of his own.
“While we’re at it, pull Oliver, Cale, and Brian in and make them co-conspirators. The more dirt you share, the tighter the bond.”
Now I understood why Patrick had been Tanner’s right hand. He had been thinking exactly what I was thinking.
We worked out the concrete plan and set the date.
Bunny Underwear on Orchard Street.
Someone came up the stairs to the third-floor office dangling a mail envelope.
“That prick sent another certified letter.”
Herman Kalman, manicuring his nails at his desk, snorted. He glanced at the envelope with open contempt and tossed out a single word.
“Tear it up.”
Riiiiip.
The man shredded the envelope without a second thought. The carefully worded certified letter the attorney had labored over fluttered into the trash in tiny pieces.
“By the way, this morning I saw a factory over in the Garment District going on strike.”
“Like that’s new. Just keep our own workers in line.”
“They all know striking gets them fucked. Anyone who doesn’t listen, we rough up a few of them. Easy.”
“You have to come down hard. When you try talking to them like idiots they start thinking a strike is some kind of right and go crazy.”
Workers needed constant reminders that they possessed no such rights. Lock the doors while they worked, forbid so much as a whisper of chatter, deliberately delay wages whenever production slowed. A boss who knew how to handle violence had plenty of cards for breaking laborers to the bit.
As the sun set, Herman Kalman rose and shrugged into his coat.
“I’m heading out first. Keep them working till eight and finish the production quota for the day after tomorrow’s delivery.”
“Understood.”
“Oh—and when the Orchard boys show up, give them thirty dollars and send them packing.”
“Again? They’re gonna bitch that it’s small.”
“Those freeloaders do nothing. That’s plenty.”
Once upon a time Herman Kalman himself had run with the Five Points Gang. A mere unit like the Orchard Street crew was never going to impress him.
“Pay the protection money half-heartedly. If they complain, toss them a little more later. That’s business.”
One corner of Kalman’s mouth curled as he left the office. Only then did the men on the sofa light their cigarettes one by one.
“Looks like another ten-o’clock night.”
“If you hate it so much, start your own place.”
“You know what? While we’re at it, maybe we should just take one. Do it the exact same way Kalman used to.”
The methods were vicious and petty, but Kalman had a gift for taking what belonged to others. First he would pick a soft owner, steal merchandise from the shop, then play detective by returning the goods—mixing kindness and pressure until he got hired. By the time he showed his true colors he was already acting like the boss, bleeding the real owner dry with threats and beatings. When the exhausted man finally cracked, Kalman would take the family hostage and force the transfer of ownership piece by piece. That was how he had acquired both Bunny Underwear and the building.
“I should seriously think about it.”
“You’ve been ‘thinking’ for years. That’s why we’re still stuck like this.”
“Kalman’s execution, though—that’s worth copying.”
Only around ten at night did the overtime finally end and the factory lights go out. The workers hurried home; four night watchmen closed the windows and locked up. At that exact moment—
Footsteps thundered up the stairs. A dozen-odd figures with faces wrapped in black scarves stormed in.
“What the—who the f—”
Crack.
Clubs and iron pipes answered. The intruders dropped the guards in seconds. Instead of killing them, they rolled the men in bolts of fabric, bound them tight with cord, and shoved them into a corner of the storeroom.
Outside the iron door of the second-floor workroom, one particularly tall figure pointed at the locked gate. Two men attacked it with bolt cutters and a crowbar; the lock gave. The raiders poured into the workroom and began piling sewing machines and fabric into neat stacks ready for loading. More men kept streaming into the building.
The same scene unfolded on the third floor, though one raider alone fixated on the office safe.
Left—right. Click-click. Clack.
The safe opened. Without even glancing at the contents, the man swept everything into a bag.
Meanwhile the guards, rolled in fabric and gagged, could only listen. From what they could piece together: at least fifty men had entered the factory; they worked in total silence, like mutes; and they were stripping the place bare…
Thud!
The moment any guard so much as twitched, an iron pipe slammed into flesh.
“Stai zitto, bastardo.”
The only words spoken—Italian. A clue. They burned the clue into their minds and gave up resistance, listening for every sound.
Even at that late hour Orchard Street still had a fair number of pedestrians, all thanks to the streetlamps. Without those lamps the job would have been easier. Still, Oliver and the first wave had already neutralized the guards. After that, men entered in small groups at staggered intervals so as not to draw suspicion. Their task was simply to organize the factory goods for easy removal. The work continued at a leisurely pace until the small hours, when the street finally emptied and quiet settled in.
Meanwhile I and a handful of men watched the surrounding alleys, ready for any unexpected police or rival crews.
At last, around three in the morning, a carriage drew up in front of the building. Because it was night, the horses wore cloth or rubber boots to muffle their hooves—a trick favored on noise-sensitive streets and by thieves. And now I was using it myself.
Once a carriage was loaded, another took its place. Fifteen carriages in total. Rental alone had cost fifty dollars.
Everything was proceeding smoothly when two patrolmen appeared in the distance.
“Fuck you!”
Two of our men immediately hurled curses and a couple of stones, drawing the cops in the opposite direction as naturally as breathing. That was what a gang—what teamwork—looked like.
Sixty men committed in all. Two full runs of the carriages, and we cleaned out every sewing machine, every bolt of fabric, every finished garment. Everything except the fabric still wrapped around the guards.
The men celebrated as if they had pulled off the crime of the century. But this was only the beginning.
We had cleaned out the inside. Now it was time to strip the outside clean as well.