Who Orchestrated This?
“My body feels heavy today.”
Herman Kalman rolled his neck from side to side and worked the stiffness from his hands. He had slept through the night, or thought he had, yet his whole frame still felt leaden and sore.
He was not in good condition.
“Too much stress stacking up, maybe.”
He had a reliable remedy for days like this: unload the pressure on his employees and the body would feel lighter again.
Orchard Street was already crowded with people from the early morning. Kalman stepped down from a carriage a short distance away and started along the street toward his company.
“What the hell? Why’s everyone clustered like that?”
Some kind of spectacle, perhaps.
It was not as if anyone was trying to disrupt another man’s business. A whole crowd had simply gathered.
Kalman pushed through the throng and climbed the stairs.
And then—
Bang!
The moment Herman Kalman arrived for work, he kicked open the factory’s iron door.
He could not believe his eyes even as he stared.
Dozens of sewing machines were simply gone. The bolts of fabric that had been stacked along one wall had vanished without a trace.
The entire second floor stood empty.
“What in God’s name… how the hell did this happen!”
His voice climbed higher and higher until he was screaming like a man possessed.
“Get out of my way!”
The workers who should have been turning the machines since early morning stood there with grim faces. Kalman shoved roughly past them and stormed up to the third floor.
There, just as empty as the floor below, four swollen-faced guards stood rooted in place.
“You… useless bastards…!”
Herman Kalman charged and smashed a fist into one of their faces. He stomped him underfoot, then snatched up a broom from the floor, reversed it, and brought it down without mercy.
“Die! Die, you sons of bitches!”
Only after he had raged himself half-empty did Kalman finally settle. The workers watched him with gloomy faces.
“What are you staring at, you bitches! Get downstairs!”
“……Our wages……”
“Shut the hell up! You’re looking at this mess and still talking about that!? Fuck, seriously.”
The workers stood there, eyes red with fear. From teenage girls to women in their forties, they had suddenly been left with no workplace and no certainty of pay.
A short while later.
Staring into the hollow interior of the empty safe, Herman Kalman ground his teeth until they squeaked.
The guards, faces even more swollen now, kept their heads bowed low.
Once Kalman had steadied his breathing, his eyes glittered with venom.
“Report this to the police right now, and tell Chuck and Louis Fioggi I want to see them.”
Chuck Luger was the boss of the Orchard Street gang.
Louis Fioggi was a gangster who had once worked alongside him in the Five Points Gang.
Could the police even recover the stolen goods? Kalman’s judgment was that calling in the gangs would be faster than leaving it to the law.
Separately, with his capital suddenly choked off, he went looking for the Chesterkirk Company, a loan outfit on Broadway and Fulton Street.
Allen Street, number 137.
In the freshly renovated and neatly finished basement, five men were gathered.
Patrick and Jeffrey, men in their thirties who had led the Marginals with Tanner from the very beginning.
The younger blood: Oliver, Brian, and Cale.
Nox, Tanner, and these five were, in practical terms, the leadership of the Marginals.
Oliver, who had been sitting blankly in the open space, rubbed at his temples.
“Ugh, shit. My head’s spinning.”
“Paint fumes still haven’t cleared. Or maybe you’re still not recovered from the beating the other day.”
“Shut it. You got your ass kicked right alongside me.”
“Hey, you two sit apart. Always fighting—why the hell are you glued together?”
When Oliver and Brian started growling at each other, Patrick waved a hand with an irritated look.
Just then someone came down the stairs.
It was the Boss, Nox, scarf drawn across his face.
He surveyed the wall finishes with his eyes, sniffed the air, and then rubbed his own temples.
“Head’s ringing, all right.”
Brian’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to say something, but everyone shook their heads at once.
Nox settled into the circle and spoke.
“Not sure if you’ve all heard, but we’re putting a saloon and a gambling hall on basement levels one and two.”
The ground floor would become a clothing shop; the floors above would serve as offices and lodging for the Marginals and the Union.
“And from now on, when you come into the building, don’t pile in all at once. Be thorough about it—no one should even know who we are, or that a gang is here at all.”
Nox’s gaze moved from man to man until it stopped on Patrick.
“What about the stolen goods?”
“The fabric’s already been sold off. Ten guys are working on the sewing machines right now, just touching up the exteriors.”
Sixty-seven Singer machines had been taken.
Since they intended to use them again, the work was only a light cosmetic change so they would not be recognized.
Nox pulled five thick envelopes from his bag and held them out.
“Payment for the job. You moved in teams, so captains take sixty, members forty each.”
Roughly four thousand dollars.
Because the stolen goods would be used by his mother’s company rather than sold off, he paid out of his personal funds.
Some of it had come from Herman Kalman’s safe, though the disappointing haul there had been only four hundred dollars.
Either way, receiving the equivalent of an ordinary worker’s monthly wage made the corners of the men’s mouths twitch.
They were bound under the name Marginals, but until now each man had survived on his own. Being paid out of a collective job like this was still rare.
Some of them recognized it as the beginning of a change.
So what was the next step?
Every eye fixed on Nox’s mouth.
“We’ve raided the boss’s honey pot. Now we put real pressure on him. Jeffrey—approach the workers at Bunny Underwear today.”
For a boss whose capital was completely blocked, the most urgent problem was the workers’ wage pressure.
“Kalman will definitely try to crush them with violence, so we help the workers.”
Jeffrey was an early member of the gang, a man who had cut his teeth with Tanner on labor-strike agitation—slugger work.
His name had been overshadowed by famous sluggers like Johnny Spanish, Kid Dropper Kaplan, and Rosenzweig, but his experience was every bit as deep.
There had once been a saying that a strike site was Jeffrey’s second home.
That was the past, of course.
What can we even do now?
We go as far as we can go. Ending it like this would just be too damn sad.
If not for Patrick’s words, Jeffrey—already in his thirties—would have left the gang.
A new boss, a new gang.
In the middle of a great upheaval he had felt sidelined and had been ready to walk away from the life.
And now the new boss was telling him to go back to the slugger work that had been the starting point of the Marginals themselves.
Something hot rose from deep in Jeffrey’s chest.
“Leave it to me, Boss!”
“Take as many men as you need.”
“Okay!”
Next were Oliver and Cale.
“You two go find the suppliers Kalman still owes for deliveries.”
“Whoa—so we’re collecting the unpaid bills for them?”
“You set the fee yourselves, but don’t overdo it. The important thing is squeezing Kalman.”
A dry laugh slipped from both Oliver and Cale—not contempt, but pure admiration.
Wage pressure through the workers, payment pressure through the suppliers. Unless the man had money stashed away, he would have no choice but to sell the building.
The variable was whatever cash Kalman had saved.
Another team was already moving to deal with that.
In the upscale residential area near East Sixth Street, Corey and his men prowled the streets around Kalman’s house, watching.
“Kids went off to school this morning, wife headed to the department store. Only a maid left in the house.”
“If we just handle the maid, daytime would be clean.”
“Let’s see if tomorrow’s the same pattern.”
At the same hour, Leo and Marcus were tailing Herman Kalman.
The tail that began on Orchard Street stretched all the way to the intersection of Fulton Street and Broadway.
But once Kalman vanished into a high-rise with a spire, they could follow no farther.
“Where the hell’s that bastard going?”
“Let’s go in ourselves for now.”
Leo and Marcus stepped into the building as if they belonged. Marcus glanced at the name painted on the side—Mail and Express—and his eyes lit up.
“This is a newspaper building.”
“Which paper?”
“Evening Mail. Used to be Mail and Express until a few years ago.”
“You know every damn thing.”
Marcus lowered his voice.
“German-language paper. Still openly taking the German Empire’s side, no shame about it.”
“What, so they’re spies?”
“Keep it down. But yeah, I get a bad feeling too.”
What Marcus hated most were the types who pretended to be neutral while leaning hard one way.
Evening Mail was exactly that.
They hammered American papers for siding with Britain and abandoning neutrality—while they themselves waved the German flag without a blush.
Marcus liked Swaff, the New York World reporter who had written Inside the German Empire. The man criticized Germany’s problems with a clear eye.
Evening Mail, by contrast, stirred up German immigrants and pushed the righteousness of the war.
“If even I’m this suspicious, the intelligence people know even better. Anyway, once the war ends, this paper will be the first to go under.”
“Hey, enough. Find out what companies are in the building. A boss who just got cleaned out of everything wouldn’t come to a newspaper for fun.”
Finding the tenant list was easy. A directory ran right beside the elevator.
As Marcus had said, the upper floors belonged to Evening Mail; the lower ones held various small firms. Only when they read the small print under the names did they guess where Kalman had gone.
“Five loan companies in the building alone. Kalman definitely went to one of them.”
“Needed a place to stop the bleeding right away, huh.”
“Whatever it is, the Boss’s plan is going down smoother than expected.”
“You’re calling him Boss naturally now.”
At Leo’s remark, Marcus nodded with complete seriousness.
“I told you. I’m sticking with Kieran—no, Nox—all the way. He’s the real Boss now.”
“I know, you bastard. I’ve been calling him Boss for days. Anyway, let’s wait outside.”
“Okay.”
Leo and Marcus waited in front of the Mail and Express Building for Kalman to come out.
Allen Street 137, basement level one.
Patrick and I remained alone downstairs to talk over other business.
“Opening up the walls really makes it feel bigger. Saloon, gambling hall—the interior costs alone are going to be serious.”
“Money going out every direction. By the way, I noticed there are women on the Marginals roll.”
“They’ve been raising hell wanting to see the Boss’s face.”
“……”
Most of any gang is men.
There are women, of course, but their roles differ from the men’s.
That part interested me.
“What kind of work do they mainly do?”
“Women in this life fall into two big types. Girl gangsters who are tougher than the men, or molls—girlfriends.”
Of the Marginals’ total roster of 154, fifteen were women.
Five girl gangsters, ten molls.
“Do the girl gangsters fight alongside the men?”
“Never heard of Battle Annie?”
“Ah—I’ve heard the name.”
I had heard it in both lives.
The Queen of Hell’s Kitchen.
Female boss of the Lady Gophers who had been active for roughly twenty years.
A woman slugger who specialized in throwing bricks during labor strikes.
“That’s the one. I nearly got killed by one of her throws. She hurled those things like a maniac.”
“……So?”
“Whether they were influenced by Battle Annie or not, a lot of women started joining gangs after that. Every one of them is as dangerous as any man.”
“And the girlfriends?”
“Think of them as support.”
They mainly provided safe houses and hideouts during escapes, or handled medical aid when violence broke out.
“Do they all have work right now?”
“They’re doing something or other. You thinking of putting them on staff here?”
“No need to hire outsiders.”
Patrick agreed it was a good idea. But I needed people for something more urgent than the saloon.
“I’m planning a clothing shop on the ground floor. Anyone suitable?”
“What are you selling? Oh—underwear?”
At first I had thought of Leo or Marcus.
But they would be lucky to sell one piece a day.
Women’s undergarments needed a woman selling them.
“Ida might work. She’s rough around the edges, but her looks and way of talking make her seem like she went to school.”
“Did she actually?”
“Hell no. Never set foot past a schoolhouse door. It’s fucking compulsory education and she still never went. Anyway, she was one of the two Battle Annie doted on. Memory’s sharp if nothing else.”
The Lady Gophers had shared the fate of the Gophers. After the 1910s they began to collapse fast; by now they had scattered and even the name was gone.
Everyone had either joined other gangs or returned to ordinary life. Ida was a talent the Marginals had gone out of their way to recruit.
The reason was simple.
They had brought her in because she was pretty.
“I’ll have to interview her soon.”
With the basement renovations and painting finished, the remaining work was the secret passage connecting to the ground floor.
It was the Gunsmith’s turn to step in.
Bunny Underwear on Orchard Street.
Three days had passed since the place was cleaned out, yet nothing had changed. The factory stood empty; no workers were in sight.
The one small mercy was that the office desk and sofa remained. Heavy, worthless pieces no one had bothered to take.
“Bastards. The second I catch them I’ll tear their limbs—”
Herman Kalman was pressing a pencil hard into paper, scribbling something, when one of the guards who had failed him appeared holding a letter.
“What now?”
“……Certified mail.”
“You joking? Just tear it up, you idiot. Why bring it in here and piss me off?”
“……Besides the patent attorney, four different law offices sent them.”
There were several envelopes.
Kalman scowled, then flicked his fingers.
He tossed the persistent patent attorney’s notices straight into the trash and tore open the envelopes from the law firms, scanning the contents. His jowls began to tremble.
“Fuck…… have these people all gone insane? They’re going to sue if I don’t pay the wages?”
The workers had sent certified letters through attorneys. With a contemptuous look he opened the next ones.
These were notices from the suppliers he still owed. Three of them had arrived at the same time, as if they had coordinated.
“Goddamn hyenas. They all think Kalman is already dead!”
Ha-ha-ha. They say when rage goes past a certain point you start laughing. That was Kalman. His mad laughter echoed through the empty factory.
But he was not going to die.
He had put the building up as collateral; the loan company would deliver the funds today.
With that money he would bring in sewing machines to get the factory running again, pay the fabric suppliers what he owed, and catch his breath.
Worker wages came last.
He would pay them only after everything else was back to normal.
That was Kalman’s plan.
“You think I’m going to die like this?!”
Bang!
He slammed the desk just as another of the failed guards burst into the office, gasping.
“The workers are massed outside…… Those crazy bitches hired sluggers!”
“Those insane whores have lost their fucking fear. You take this money to Chuck Luger and tell him to send some boys.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
The underling bolted from the office. Kalman ground his teeth again. But before long another group pushed straight into the building itself.
“Hey—who the hell are you to just walk in?”
“We’re here for the money. Clear the way if you don’t want to get hurt.”
“You used the goods, you pay for them—right, Mr. Kalman?”
A dozen or more men poured into the office.
One group led by a mountain of a man whose head nearly scraped the ceiling. Another led by a small, snide-looking fellow.
Collectors sent by two different suppliers.
A dark cloud settled over Kalman’s face as he looked at them.
Pressure coming from every direction like a dam bursting. Someone had planned this—organized and deliberate. Nothing else could explain so many things hitting at once.
Kalman bit his lip until it bled and glared at them.
“Who is it? Who put this together?”
Cale stood with his arms folded. Oliver tapped an iron pipe against the floor and smirked.
“Shut up. If you don’t have the cash, put your face on the desk. We’ll start crushing from the right.”
Oliver took a step forward—
And suddenly a commotion erupted outside the building.
Screams, curses, and dull impacts mixed together.
Herman Kalman’s reinforcements had arrived just in time.
With the Orchard Street gang intervening, the situation reversed.
“Let’s see whose numbers are bigger.”
The counterattack began.
The corner of Kalman’s mouth curled upward.