Lowering Your Own Standing
A coffee shop near the Chelsea docks.
A middle-aged man with greasy hair slicked back narrowed his eyes as he studied the man across from him.
Showing up out of nowhere and asking him to support the waterfront union's activities—it was an absurd request.
"Once you've decided to walk away, don't look back, Tanner. Otherwise you'll only chip away at the reputation you've built."
"You're not wrong, but I've got no interest in living a complicated life."
Tanner went on.
"Kid Dropper's a problem, Kelly. Leave him alone and sooner or later the damage will reach you too."
"You should be saying that to Kid Dropper, not me. I don't have the authority, and I have no intention of getting involved. And when you think about it, you're not really on my level, are you?"
The boss of a Hell's Kitchen gofer crew might have been one thing, but the Marginals—a gang that had carved up a single neighborhood among several—were nowhere near Paul Kelly's rank.
Tanner didn't deny it.
They had founded gangs and operated in the same era, yet the Marginals had never matched the Five Points gang Paul Kelly built in strength or scale.
The size of the vessel had been different.
But Tanner's vessel was going to grow the way a boy grows into a man. Even if every bit of that was an illusion, nothing more than a dream, he was still certain he was better off than Paul Kelly—forced into retirement and buried in the ILA.
"Think of me however you like. A deal's a deal. I'll match the same terms. Three hundred a month isn't bad."
"Don't talk money in front of me. Lowering your own standing like that—I'm disappointed."
"We both know what we want. No point dancing around it."
Paul Kelly toyed with the ring on his finger and fixed Tanner with a hard stare.
"And if I refuse the deal?"
"Then we go to war with Kid Dropper. And I won't be coming to you like this."
"Take it while it's offered, is that it? Laughable."
The reaction was exactly what he had expected. Cautious and ruthless, Paul Kelly cut Tanner's proposal down with a single stroke.
"Get tangled up with Kid Dropper and even that seat of yours will start looking shaky, Paul Kelly. Think carefully about what's good for you."
"Thinking's the easy part. In any case, I don't see us meeting again."
Paul Kelly rose first.
Alone, Tanner sipped his coffee, lips twitching.
We'll see who reaches out first.
The secret room inside the second-floor office of the twin buildings.
I had a lantern lit on the floor and was deep in dangerous work. There were any number of ways to build improvised explosive devices, but the realities of the era could not be ignored.
I had chosen to bundle six long sticks of dynamite into a single charge. The critical part was how to trigger the detonator.
I modified the parts of a pocket watch so that the clockwork would, after a set time, strike the primer—a simple method.
Following the bomb schematics I had drawn in advance, I assembled two complete sets of IEDs.
I stashed the bombs in the sealed room, took only the diagrams, and went out to find Marcus.
"The typing?"
"Here."
There was no way to perfectly imitate the phrasing of a vice-consul I had never seen, so I kept the language spare and imperative. The ink ribbon had not struck cleanly and a few letters were faint, but it was nothing that would draw real attention.
Once I had finished checking it, Marcus held out a few more items.
"This is an enlarged map of the Southeast docks. The book is Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto. And this—your mother made it."
On a long strip of cloth, red thread spelled out a German slogan—a line from a poem written by a German poet during the Great War.
"Mother really made this? She hasn't touched a sewing machine in a while—the lettering's rough."
"Her hands were shaking, she said. She was terrified of getting caught while she worked, heart pounding the whole time. She told me to make sure you knew…"
I hadn't thought of that. In the present climate, an Irishwoman stitching a slogan like that was no small risk.
"Oh—and these are newspapers from the last few days covering Fritz Duquesne."
The New York World, the New York Times, and others.
The articles described an insurance fraudster who had addressed New York audiences under a false identity and who might, in fact, be a German spy.
What caught my interest was the part where he had posed as an Australian officer named Captain Claude Stoughton and spoken to the public.
It had been a rally to promote the sale of Liberty Bonds—the war bonds the United States had issued to fund the fighting.
With staggering nerve, Duquesne had stepped onto the platform as a German spy and spun false war stories for the crowd.
As a subordinate he would leave the back of my head in permanent danger, but looking at Duquesne's boldness, his cunning, and his slyness, I had to admit he was a talent I wanted.
"He really tried everything, didn't he. For now, cut out every piece that mentions Fritz Duquesne."
We sat together and clipped the old articles. Marcus's face as he worked the scissors was not particularly bright.
"You don't like framing him as a German spy?"
"No. It's just… once this breaks, I can already see the way people will look at German immigrants. Funny thing is, throwing one more scrap of trash onto the dump doesn't really change the image, does it?"
"So what's your conclusion?"
"There isn't one. I'm just frustrated that Germany's like this."
Feelings toward one's homeland were always complicated—love and hate and everything in between. And somewhere in there, I suspected, was a measure of guilt at manufacturing a German spy who had never existed with his own hands.
A natural feeling for any human being.
"Marcus."
"Yeah?"
"Since we're already this far, I'll make you the undisputed star of the show."
"…?"
The bomb-making and the newspaper clippings were finished.
What remained was tracking Kid Dropper's movements and learning where he slept.
That part belonged to Corey.
"I've been meeting people around the Garment District the last few days. After the docks, it looks like he's getting ready for a clothing-factory workers' strike."
An invasive species in the labor market. The same vicious bastard who drained workers dry was about to sink his teeth into the garment industry.
"Let him roam as much as he wants before he dies. Anyway—where is he staying?"
"He took a room at a boarding house on Bowery Street."
Just a place to sleep alone, Corey said. Only a block from the hideout.
"Corey, you get a room in the same place. Right next to Kid Dropper would be even better."
"Okay, got it."
"And before we move, find out where Dropper keeps his money."
The odds of a safe in a cheap Bowery flop were close to zero.
Money wasn't the point—but if it was there, we were taking all of it.
Under Rosenthal's direction, everything in the Marginals warehouse was moved without a hitch.
The gambling-house fixtures were brought down one by one to the second basement. To stay out of sight, the work was concentrated in the small hours after the dance hall closed.
Lenny Goldstein examined each gaming table and carefully noted its operation in a notebook—material that would all go into the manual for sudden police raids.
While the campaign against Kid Dropper and the other businesses moved forward without friction, I came home early for the first time in a long while, meat in both hands.
The door rattled open.
"Big Brother! Harder to see than Santa Claus himself!"
Roa came scampering and threw both arms around the meat rather than me.
"Roa's missed you so much. You've been well, right?"
"What am I, a doll?"
At Liam's remark, Roa suddenly pressed a finger to her lips.
"Shhh! Roa's Christmas present is a total secret."
"What, the present was a doll?"
"Big Brother, how did you—!? This much is okay, right? Little Brother said it. Roa didn't."
"It's fine. Santa will understand that much."
"Phew, good. Roa's only thinking about her present on the inside."
Just then Mother opened the door, saw me, and broke into a bright smile.
"We'll all eat together for once tonight."
"I'll handle the meat."
"All right. Thank you, son."
Roa was already standing ready with the salt and pepper. We prepared dinner, said a short grace, and lifted our forks.
"By the way—you visited Uncle Larry at the hospital today?"
"Yes. He's much better. Nothing broken. They say he can be discharged in a few more days. Mrs. Imelda's husband too. Really, what a relief."
"That's good. I should go see him once before he leaves."
"He said he wants to see you, actually."
Considering our history, those were words I never expected to hear. He had never treated a mixed-blood like me as family.
"But if you're busy, don't come. No need to make special time."
"I should still go. He's family. Come to think of it—it's been a long time since you saw your parents, hasn't it?"
Mother gave a small nod.
There was none of the old gloom or heaviness in her face. Instead, something wistful and longing had settled there.
Then Roa, still chewing meat, blurted out:
"Roa's never met Grandpa and Grandma even once. Are they alive?"
"What?"
Mother looked at Roa with wide eyes. A moment later her lids reddened and tears welled.
"Of course they're alive…"
"Oh. Okay then. Roa's decided on next year's present—yes, that. I won't say it out loud."
I didn't need the words.
Roa wanted to meet her grandparents. Knowing that, a tear slipped from Mother's eye.
"D-did Roa say something weird? Did Roa ruin the mood?"
"No, no. It's just… I feel like I've been so cruel to you children all this time. I'm sorry."
Was this what they meant by finally having room to breathe?
After years of living day to day just to survive, the space to look back at her family.
That was how I read Mother's tears.
Roa read them differently.
She speared the meat from Mother's plate with her fork, put it in her own mouth, and announced:
"This isn't just steak. This is steak with Roa's Mommy-tear sauce."
"Wow. Perfectly seasoned."
"You kids…"
Liam played along with Roa's line, and the heavy mood lifted.
That night I carried Roa—who had played herself to sleep—to bed. I pulled the blanket over her and was about to leave when I overheard something I shouldn't have.
"Yeah… the present is…… I will never say it. Absolute secret…"
Christmas was close; she was getting impatient.
Roa had leaked the secret.
A few days later I put the plan we had prepared into motion. As a preliminary step I sent the following telegram to Edgar Hoover.
A friend has discovered important leads regarding those who instigated the strike. We are following them to secure solid evidence.
That night, the work began.
The first target was Weiss, the slugger who had framed Uncle Larry and his coworkers as company spies.
Late at night he was playing cards in a waterfront warehouse. My men and I ringed the place and settled into wait.
Around midnight Weiss finally left. Following the pattern we had watched for days, he walked alone toward his nearby lodging.
While we waited along his route, Weiss suddenly stopped, braced himself against a dark warehouse wall, and started pissing.
A long hiss of urine.
Now.
I closed on him out of the dark, cracked him across the head with a club, and as he staggered I looped a cord around his throat.
When Weiss's thrashing body went limp, Brian and ten of the men appeared with handcarts. Each cart carried a single drum.
Oliver stuffed the body into his drum and loaded it onto a cart. Then, looking for all the world like ordinary freight work, several handcarts rolled together toward the pier where the boat waited.
In the deserted landing, River Grey's vessel lay moored.
"Come on, load them quick."
Only the drum Oliver had brought was heavy; the rest were empty.
Crewman Carly Dustin took the drum with the body and grunted under the weight.
"Jesus—filthy heavy…"
On deck Dustin pried the lid and rummaged through the corpse. After claiming the loot, he dropped heavy stones into the drum. That was the last we saw of the boat as it pulled away into the dark.
One down.
"All right. We move."
Ten men had been called up for the night.
We climbed into two waiting carriages and headed for the next location.
The motel on Bowery Street where Kid Dropper was staying. I knocked on the door of room 205, where Corey had been living for several days.
A soft click.
Corey checked it was me and slipped quietly into the hallway.
"Kid Dropper's out cold. Dead drunk—he won't notice even if we walk in."
"Then we start."
Corey picked the lock on 203. I slipped inside.