by Paddy Hirsch
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To cousin Michael.
For your faith, your strength, and your inspiration.
NEW YORK
September 1803
ONE
Saturday
Kerry O’Toole pushed the big iron key into the brass lock of the African Free School, and jiggled it back and forth. The lock was new and poorly set, and the key needed finessing before it turned properly. John Teasman, the headmaster, had ordered the lock fitted a week earlier, after a lumberyard owned by a black man named Bonsel was burned to the ground. Fires were not uncommon in New York in 1803—the city was still made mostly of wood, and accidents happened—but everyone was saying that the fire that put Bonsel out of business was different. The Irish, black, and American nativist gangs were all struggling for control of what they considered to be their quarters of the city. And they were becoming more brazen and violent by the day. The African Free School was on Cliff Street, in the old Dutch district, and while it was endowed by some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in New York, it was still a Negro business in a neighborhood claimed by the nativists. Teasman wasn’t taking any chances.
Kerry twisted the key, and the tongue of the lock slid home.
The sound of a bell made its way up the street. She turned to the little girl in the long brown dress standing beside her. “How many chimes was that, Rosie?”
Two big, hazel eyes looked back. Rosie Tully’s fine, dark hair was tied back in two pigtails. She held up five fingers on one hand and one on the other.
“Six bells. Very good. Now, shall we see if we can find a cab?”
Rosie’s pigtails bounced.
Cliff Street was empty, but the sound of laughing and singing filtered up from the waterfront, just three blocks away. Kerry took a last look at the façade of the school, to be sure all the windows were closed. She slipped the heavy iron key into the pocket of her dress and touched the hilt of the long-bladed boning knife she kept there. She took the child by the hand.
Rosie was the youngest daughter of Tamsin and Seamus Tully, who owned Hughson’s Tavern on the North River waterfront. They often asked Kerry to mind their youngest on busy days. And Saturdays were always busy. Kerry would go to the tavern for a late luncheon, then take Rosie to the African Free School. Rosie would look at the pictures in the books and pamphlets while Kerry prepared her lessons for the following week. They would read together for a while, and then go home to Kerry’s house.
The little girl skipped ahead, tugging Kerry’s hand, and Kerry felt her throat close up.
Rosie slowed, and looked up at her with solemn eyes. Kerry smiled and squeezed her hand. She shifted her thoughts. How many women in this city had lost an infant child, to disease, fever, or cold? She was more fortunate than most. She had lost, but she had gained, too. When her own child had died, three years before, her future had looked empty. It was bad enough that she was the daughter of an Irish gangster and a runaway slave. Times were changing, but mixed-race children were generally assumed to be the offspring of black prostitutes and their white clients. They had few prospects for marriage or choice of career. Servant. Thief. Whore. Kerry had made her way as a pickpocket for a while when she was younger, so, when Daniel died, she was on the point of throwing herself back into the cesspools of the city. But Justy Flanagan had pulled her back. He had helped her to read and write and try another path. And everything had changed.
* * *
There were no cabs, and when they reached Beekman Street every hansom that passed was occupied. So they kept walking, up the shallow hill to Chatham Row and around the Park. They crossed the Broad Way, traversing the spine of Manhattan Island, and walked down into the New Town. The heels of Kerry’s boots clicked on the uneven cobbles, and she had to tread carefully to avoid turning an ankle. Landowners were throwing up townhouses and tenements as immigrants flooded into the city and demand soared. But the buildings here were thin-walled and rickety, the streets poorly paved. Most of the street lanterns in the area had been stolen, and those that remained were rarely lit.
The evening light threw long shadows in the lanes, and Kerry could feel the eyes on her, watching from dark windows and doors. This part of the city was still neutral territory, too far uptown for the nativists, and too new for the blacks or the Irish. Families were still moving in. But it wouldn’t be long before the population settled. And then the gangs would stake their claims and the fighting would start.
Even then, she would still be safe enough. Her father was O’Toole, the bloody right hand of the Bull, who controlled the East River waterfront and the Irish gangs. And her cousin was Lew Owens, whose heavy-handed enforcers took a piece of every business run by someone with colored skin, from brothels to bakeries. Everyone who lived in this part of New York knew who Kerry O’Toole was, and if they did not, if they had just recently arrived in the city and mistook her for a soft mark, the long, thin blade in her pocket would set them straight.
They walked on, towards the north end of the town. Kerry lived with her cousin, in a tiny, two-room cottage in the rear of an enormous compound, bigger than any house in the old Dutch quarter on the tip of Manhattan. It was nearly impossible for a black man to buy property in the city, but Lew Owens had persuaded a lawyer to do the conveyancing for him, and he was now one of the few Negro landowners in New York. The compound was well-sited, at the cusp of the new developments and the ramshackle shanties of Canvas Town, where most of the city’s free Negroes lived, and Owens’ gang held sway.
A light onshore breeze blew up the hill. It carried the stench of woodsmoke, roasting meat, and open latrines. Chapel Street narrowed further, hemmed in by a high brick wall and a row of rickety wooden tenements, divided by deep, narrow alleyways. The street had not yet been paved, and Kerry could feel the dampness of the ground through the leather soles of her shoes.
There was a mewing sound. Rosie stopped and looked up at Kerry, huge hazel eyes, her fingers in her mouth.
Kerry smiled. “Was that a kitty-cat?”
The soft whimper came again, floating out of one of the alleys. Kerry peered into the darkness. She felt the hair rising on the nape of her neck.
Rosie’s eyes were like saucers. Kerry bent to pick her up. “Don’t be scared.”
Her heart thumped. She took the knife out of her pocket. She balanced Rosie on her left hip and shuffled down the alley, the blade held out in front of her.
Nothing moved in the gloom. She stopped halfway down the narrow passageway, feeling the pulse in her temples, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Slowly, she began to make out a shape, crumpled on the groun
d, wedged into a niche in the wall. She edged closer, and saw it was a girl, wrapped in a kind of thin shroud, lying on her side. One of her shoes had come off, and the sole of her foot was pale in the dim light.
Kerry went down on one knee. She slipped the knife back into her pocket, and eased Rosie gently off her hip. Her heart was pounding. She tried to keep her voice steady.
“Look away, now.” She turned Rosie to face the mouth of the alley. And then she turned back.
The girl on the ground was shivering, her eyes closed, her face wet with sweat. She whimpered again, the voice catching with pain, like rust on a blade. Kerry touched the girl’s face. She was pale and freezing cold, and Kerry knew instantly that she had been cut somewhere, and that all the blood had poured out of her. She pulled the shroud back to see.
“Oh, Jesus.”
The girl had been cut from her breastbone to her pubis, a long, smooth gash that had opened her up and let her entrails spill out onto the ground. Her arms were dark with blood, crossed over her abdomen, loosely cradling what was left of her belly. Her guts glistened, white against her dark skin. Kerry rocked back on her heels, bile burning the back of her throat. “Jesus. Sweet Jesus Christ.”
The girl’s eyes flickered open. They seem to look right through her. She muttered something, and tensed, as though she was hugging herself tighter. Kerry dropped to her knees in the mud and wrapped her arm around the girl’s shoulders. She pulled her close, but there was only a halting sound, as though the girl was trying to catch her breath. And then, nothing.
Kerry grabbed Rosie up and hurried back to the street. She ran back along the puddled lane and up to the Broad Way. Two watchmen were ambling up the shallow hill, talking quietly to each other, swinging their long clubs. Kerry ran to them, Rosie clutched tight to her chest.
“Whoa there, missy!” The bigger of the two watchmen held out a hand.
“There’s a girl, in an alley off Chapel Street…” Kerry stopped to catch her breath.
“There usually is, lass.” The big watchman grinned, showing a badly chipped tooth.
“She’s dead.”
He frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I watched her give her last breath. I need you to get down to the Hall and tell Marshal Flanagan.”
“Oh, Marshal Flanagan, is it?”
Kerry checked herself. “Yes. Tell him Kerry O’Toole told you.”
The tiniest hesitation. “O’Toole?”
“Are you going to stand there and repeat everything I say, or are you going to fetch the Marshal?”
The man’s face darkened. “I don’t fetch. I’m not a goddamned dog.”
“Right, then, leave her there,” Kerry snapped. “And when some stall owner finds her tomorrow with a hole in her belly and her guts half-eaten by rats, remember that you were told she was murdered and you did nothing. I wonder what the Marshal will have to say about that, when I tell him.”
She stood trembling, holding tight to Rosie.
“It’s all right, miss,” the second watchman said. He was wiry and narrow-shouldered, with long gray hair swept back from his face. He was staring at her hands. She looked down and saw her fingers were dark with blood, which had smeared on Rosie’s dress. “We’ll get word to the Marshal.” The man’s voice was soothing. He had a faint Cockney accent. “Whereabouts on Chapel Street?”
“By the Armstrong tenements. Third alley down on the left.”
He nodded and smiled. He had strange eyes, with large, dark pupils and enormous irises. Like one of the husky dogs she had seen on the waterfront, years ago. She felt nervous and reassured at the same time.
“Thank you for telling us,” he said. “Now are you all right to go on home with the child there? Do you need us to come with you?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Right you are, then. Good night.”
The watchman with the broken tooth was staring at her, an odd look on his face.
“What?” she snapped.
“If it is a murder, like you say, the Marshal will want to talk to you.”
Kerry held Rosie tight. “He knows where to find me.”
TWO
Justy Flanagan knelt beside the body. “Hold the lamp higher, please, Sergeant.”
It was a trick of the light, caused by the flickering candle, but Justy could have sworn the girl gave a slight smile. It could not be, though, because she was long dead, her limbs stiffening and her skin waxy and ashen.
She lay on her right shoulder, one arm draped so that her right hand was cupped loosely over her lower belly. The wound in her torso was a long, dark slash. Her entrails were a pale tumble of old ropes.
Sergeant Vanderool leaned close. “He must have been one unsatisfied customer.” He bumped against Justy’s shoulder. He smelled of grease and damp wool and whiskey.
Justy was a tall, narrow-faced man, with high cheekbones and long fair hair that flopped over a pair of blue-gray eyes. He was one of five Mayor’s Marshals, but he wore no uniform. Instead, he was dressed casually, in a dark green coat and cream-colored whipcord breeches that were now soaked through the knees with God knew what. His boots were not doing much better. They were made of butter-soft brown leather, but they were getting old. He had taken them from the body of an English cavalry officer that he had killed in a skirmish during the Rebellion in Ireland, five years before. He had worn them almost every day since. They had been repaired over and over, but now that he could feel water seeping through the soles and stitching, he wondered if it was time for them to retire.
“That’s a lot of assumptions you’re making, Sergeant.”
“That so?” Vanderool hawked, and spat against the wall. “What other kind of woman’s going to be down this way but a stephoer? And only a man’s going to do damage like that.”
Justy looked around the dank, narrow alley. It was well past dusk, and the light from the lantern cast long shadows against the mottled walls and made the churned, muddy ground into a battlefield. Vanderool had a point. “Has anyone touched her?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
The sergeant rolled his eyes. He was a slope-shouldered, pot-bellied man of about fifty years, with thin hair and a receding chin covered in stubble. “Mister Playfair,” he called out. “Anyone been down here since you found her?”
“No, Sergeant,” a voice came back down the alley. “No one but you and the Marshal.”
“Satisfied?” Vanderool’s voice was sharp.
Justy ignored him. He touched the girl’s neck. She was as cold as the water soaking his trousers. He shifted position, took a breath, and slipped his fingers into the long wound that split her torso. The skin was as stiff as salt-soaked canvas; her intestines were slick and cold against the palm of his hand. He had to swallow hard to keep down the bile that seared the back of his throat. He closed his eyes and slid his hand into the body cavity, past the knuckles. It was freezing in the alley, but he could feel a trace of warmth under his fingertips.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Vanderool was aghast.
“Something I learned in France.” Justy had spent time with the Paris police as a student, and had gone back the summer before to learn about the techniques their criminal detectives were developing. He sat back on his haunches, tugged a handkerchief from his cuff and used it to wipe his hands. “See how her legs are stiffening, slightly?”
“Rigor mortis. We all know about that.”
“Yes, but it hasn’t set in yet. It usually takes four hours or so, depending on the cold. And the core of her body is still warm to the touch. So we know a few things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as she wasn’t long dead when Mister Playfair found her.”
Vanderool sniffed and shuffled his feet. “Come on, then. We need to get her out of here. There’s a crowd gathering. We don’t want to set them off.”
Justy nodded. Vanderool might be an Irish-hating, nativist bully, but he was no fool. He
knew the city well, and he knew that the alley they were standing in was only a stone’s throw from the Canvas Town slums. Which meant the crowd outside was almost certainly made up of poor black men, most of whom would resent the presence of white faces on their turf.
He stood up, wincing as a sharp pebble poked through the sole of his right boot. Another reminder to have the damn things mended.
“Very well, Sergeant,” he said. “Let’s get her up to the morgue.”
Vanderool barked an order, and Justy walked back to the street, stepping out of the way of two lads carrying a stretcher and a blanket. Perhaps a dozen men stood a few yards away, watching. They were all a little drunk and a little curious, speculating about what was down there in the dark.
There was no tension in the air, but the two watchmen were taking no chances. They stood in the center of the street, facing the crowd of black men, their clubs on their shoulders. Playfair was the bigger of the pair, an inch over six feet, and broad as a heifer. Justy had seen him in action before, and knew he was the kind who relished a fight and never held back. Tasty, in the vernacular. He caught Justy looking at him and grinned, showing a broken tooth.
Gorton was slighter and shorter, although not by much. His eyes flicked back and forth, scanning the faces in the crowd. He looked older than Playfair, with long, steel-gray hair and a face like a hatchet. Justy didn’t know him well. He was a Londoner, a former soldier who had come to New York less than a year ago. A quiet, thoughtful man.
The stretcher bearers emerged from the alleyway. The blanket bulged obscenely. The men had tucked it in under the dead girl’s body, to keep her entrails from spilling out.
A growling sound came from the crowd. Justy felt his skin prickle. Suddenly, men were shouting, loud and angry.
“What have you done?”
“They’ve killed him!”
“Damn them!”
