Lawless

by John Jakes

  With a slow nod, Jamison said, “Only no one’s bothered to tell most of them.” Suddenly he spied something back along Seventh. He dropped his cigar and pointed.

  “Jehoshaphat. Look. Those men are forming up—”

  Gideon turned. A whole troop of mounted police was maneuvering into ranks that stretched from one side of Seventh to the other. Near Tompkins Square there were cries of alarm. People in the street scattered. The noses of the police horses gave off streams of vapor. The hazy sun shimmered on polished wooden clubs.

  Neither Gideon, Payne, nor any other witnesses saw the signal for the charge that started the riot.

  iii

  The demonstrators had come in an angry, militant mood. The police were equally militant and equally angry, Gideon realized. He watched with a stunned look as the first mounted rank, then the second and third, swept into the people still unlucky enough to be in the street.

  A boy slipped. As he rose, a policeman in the second rank rode by and bashed him with his billy. The boy reeled back, his temple gushing blood down the side of his face.

  “My God,” Theo Payne exclaimed. “They’re going to kill those people.”

  Gideon said, “Isn’t that what they deserve? After all, they’re radicals.”

  The editor gave him a strange, intense look. Jamison of the Herald slipped away. There was commotion on the sidewalk, the crowd surging and swaying forward, driven by half a dozen foot policemen swinging clubs.

  “Clear the walk. Clear the walk and go to your homes!”

  When an elderly man retorted and reached for one of the clubs, two policemen attacked. Gideon heard a crunch of bone, then a cry. The man sank from sight.

  What had been a relatively orderly scene quickly degenerated to howling confusion. From all sides, mounted and dismounted police poured into Tompkins Square with clubs flying. Red-sashed marchers broke ranks and either ran or squared off to fight. The speakers’ platform began to sway. It quickly collapsed, its supports demolished by the frantic mob.

  Buffeted along toward Avenue A, Gideon shouted that he wanted to locate Strelnik. Payne clutched his arm like a frightened child. “Don’t abandon me in this sea of lunatics!” Through a break in the crowd, he glimpsed a foot patrolman at the curb. He wedged and shoved till he was facing the officer. “See here, I’m Theophilus Payne of the New York Union. Who revoked the order permitting this assembl—”

  “Watch out, Theo!”

  Gideon’s cry came too late. The policeman slashed Payne’s face with his club.

  The editor pitched backward into Gideon’s arms, his cheek bleeding from a break in the skin. The policeman started for Gideon next. Then he took note of his size and ran the other way, swinging his club wildly. Payne could only gasp, “No one has ever—assaulted me in—my entire life.”

  “I expect he mistook you for a socialist sympathizer,” Gideon said with a humorless smile. “Here, sop up that blood with my handkerchief.”

  “But I’m not wearing a sash, for God’s sake. I’m doing nothing wrong!”

  “Neither are the rest of them, Theo.”

  Payne gave Gideon another long look. Something seemed to dawn in his eyes as the first of a volley of shots exploded in the square.

  iv

  Anyone who remained on the footpaths or winter-browned grass of Tompkins Square was fair game for the charging policemen. Gideon helped Payne around the corner to the west side of Avenue A, then down some stairs into a small entrance area belonging to a basement flat. Another young man, dark-haired and rather sallow, had also taken refuge there. He watched the carnage with stricken eyes.

  “The radicals brought this on by staging the rally,” the man said to Gideon. He was in his early twenties and spoke with a hint of an English accent.

  “Sorry. I happen to be on the side of the unions,” Gideon answered as he helped Payne sit on a lower step. The editor had a dazed look. He mumbled about needing a bracer.

  The poorly dressed young man hadn’t liked Gideon’s remark.

  “So am I, mister. I’m a member of the cigarmakers. But I am not on the side of the socialist fringe that’s always pushing for a scrap with the law.”

  Gideon started to argue. The young man grabbed his arm and pulled him down. A large rock sailed into the entrance area. The rock smashed a narrow window light beside the apartment door. Glass sprayed everywhere.

  “You all right?” the young man asked. Gideon nodded. “Guess it isn’t the best of places for a debate. I jumped down here fearing for my life.”

  With good reason, Gideon thought. Back by the corner, someone screamed. The noise and confusion worsened. Out in the square a horseman charged along a footpath. A figure with a familiar red beard ran at the mounted policeman, swinging both fists. The policeman clubbed the man three times and galloped on.

  Gideon sprang toward the steps. “Would you watch my friend, Mr. … ?”

  “Sam Gompers. Certainly will.”

  He raced up the steps and sprinted into Avenue A. Strelnik lay on the footpath, not moving.

  A woman came limping from Gideon’s left, hurrying two small, ragged boys away from a foot patrolman who was pursuing them. The older boy had a bruised left eye that was swollen shut. The woman wailed as the officer whipped his club toward the back of her head.

  Before the blow landed, Gideon bowled into the man and knocked him down. The woman and children escaped into the melee on East Seventh. Gideon ran into the square before the policeman could rise, but a second unexpectedly grabbed him from behind.

  “Clear the area!”

  Gideon glanced at the club poised over his head. “Touch me with that and I’ll break your back.”

  The policeman muttered something, lowered the club and went in search of other victims.

  There were shouts, screams, moans of pain from all parts of the square. Pairs of mounted policemen started galloping down Avenues A and B in pursuit of escaping demonstrators. As Gideon approached, Strelnik stirred. Gideon helped him up.

  Strelnik was groggy; he didn’t realize who was grasping his hand. Blood streamed down the right side of his face from a deep scalp wound hidden by his hair.

  “Sime, it’s me. Come along. There’s a safe place over on the side of—”

  Strelnik pulled away. “No, thank you, Gideon. I need no help from your kind.”

  Gideon reached for him again. “Don’t be a fool. Take my arm and lean on me.”

  “Careful,” Strelnik exclaimed, jerking back so hard he nearly fell. “You wouldn’t want a workingman’s blood on that fine capitalist suit.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sim?, it’s time to forget that kind of stupid—”

  The paunchy little Russian turned and limped off toward the north side of the square, clutching his middle and weaving from side to side. Blood dripped from the tip of his beard and left bright drops on the footpath.

  Gideon followed him for half a dozen steps, called his name. Strelnik never paused. Despondent, Gideon turned back toward the curb. A policeman on horseback rounded the corner from Tenth Street and controlled his prancing horse as he searched the square. When he caught sight of Gideon crossing the street, he broke into a smile.

  That was a strange reaction, Gideon thought. All he could see of the policeman’s face was a bulbous nose and a large gap where upper front teeth should have been. The man carried no club. Abruptly, he booted his horse into a canter.

  Gideon walked faster to get out of the path of the animal. The policeman thrust his hand beneath his dirty tunic and pulled a pistol. Now his intention was unmistakable.

  Halfway across the street, Gideon broke into a run. The policeman kicked his horse harder. Its hoofs raised white sparks from the paving stones. On the street’s west side, the heads of Gompers and Theo Payne were visible above the sidewalk. Payne yelled. Gideon flung himself sideways.

  The policeman’s revolver thundered twice. Gideon landed on his shoulder, skidding in a pile of horse droppings. The policeman turned back,
his horse looming like some gigantic beast from a nightmare. The horse reared. Slashing forehoofs dropped. Gideon rolled frantically toward the sidewalk. He could feel the air stir as the great weight of horse and rider came down. More sparks shot from the paving.

  By firing his pistol the policeman had attracted attention. He saw that, flung the gun away and galloped south across East Seventh before anyone moved to stop him. Gideon gave chase but the man soon swung his horse into an alley and disappeared.

  It had all happened with great speed. The shock of it finally struck Gideon. Trembling—and stinking like a stable hand—he walked toward the two men coming up from the stairwell. The young cigarmaker was aghast.

  “That was the first policeman I’ve seen with a gun.”

  “If he was a policeman,” Gideon responded.

  “What?” Payne was momentarily confused. Then, in a whisper, he asked, “Is someone after you?”

  Gideon managed a smile he didn’t feel. “Very possibly, Theo. Very possibly.”

  “Who, for God’s sake?”

  “Never mind that right now. Let’s get out of here and find a doctor for you.”

  “Balderdash. I’m perfectly fit. Just a little quivery. It’s nothing a few bracers won’t cure. I’m going back and write an editorial for tomorrow morning.”

  “What about?”

  “The behavior of the police.”

  “But they were only clubbing trade unionists. Maybe a few Communards—”

  Payne bent down and picked up a piece of red cotton flannel lying beside Sam Gompers’ left shoe. Perhaps the scrap had been torn from some marcher’s shoulder. A darker patch of red discolored one end.

  The editor gazed at the bit of cloth for a moment. Then he tucked it in his waistcoat pocket and looked across a square all but empty of demonstrators. Near the wreckage of the platform, the mounted police troop was forming up again.

  “Yes, the victims may have been that,” he said in a voice touched by hoarseness. “But they do seem to bleed like anyone else who is beaten without provocation. They do seem to bleed, don’t they?”

  Hoofs rang on stone. Half a dozen policemen spotted the three men and came cantering along a footpath. Gompers called a hasty goodbye and ran the other way as Gideon quickly shepherded Payne around the corner into Seventh Street.

  v

  He exchanged his soiled coat for a spare one he kept at the Union, then spent an hour at police headquarters. What he’d suspected proved true. From the sketchy description he provided, no one could identify the policeman who had shot at him. A bulbous nose and missing teeth? There were dozens of men on the force who drank too much and whose teeth had rotted out.

  The officer to whom Gideon spoke was adamant about one thing. The use of guns had not been authorized for the men sent to clear Tompkins Square. When Gideon asked who had authorized clubs—and why—the officer refused to answer, except to say the socialists were a menace to the maintenance of law and order.

  “And are the eight- and nine-year-old children who were beaten also a menace to law and order?”

  The other man bit his lip. “I have no comment to make on that, sir.”

  “You may not, but I do. What I saw in Tompkins Square wasn’t a labor riot. It was a police riot.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “But you’ll investigate my charges—”

  “Most definitely.” The officer’s eye was already roving elsewhere. The headquarters building was in turmoil. Flying squads of mounted men were being dispatched to sweep the lower East Side streets of any demonstrators displaying red sashes—or hostility to the authorities.

  “Yes, yes, most definitely,” the officer said. “We will investigate—”

  “As soon as hell freezes.” Gideon walked away.

  On his way out, he stopped a policeman leaving with one of the flying squads. He asked what law was being broken by the demonstrators the police were going after. All he got for a reply was a hostile scowl. He left the station in low spirits.

  The man who’d shot at him would never be found. He suspected the man wasn’t even a member of the police department. It was unnerving to realize the hand of Thomas Courtleigh had almost touched him again—and could reach all the way to New York City, could even plant a man in a policeman’s tunic right in the midst of bona fide officers.

  Who had located him for the assassin? He’d probably never learn that either.

  He decided he mustn’t say a word to Julia. It would worry her. Nor did he dare tell Margaret. Doing so would only send her into another fit of hysterical anger.

  vi

  He heard the lamentation long before he reached the pitch-black sixth floor. It was a woman’s voice, wailing.

  He stood for perhaps five minutes on the landing of the Bottle Alley tenement. The smells of old cooking and urine and dirt all but choked him. Finally he summoned the courage to knock. The wailing went on.

  He knocked again. It was Strelnik’s five-year-old son who answered.

  The glow of candles in the flat—the only illumination—put flecks of light in the boy’s damp eyes. But Strelnik’s son made an effort to speak without crying.

  “Hello, Mr. Kent.”

  “Hello, Anton. I saw your father get hurt in Tompkins Square this afternoon—” He couldn’t go on. There was a heaviness in his belly, a numbness in his fingers. Somehow, he already knew.

  But Anton had to confirm it.

  “Yes, sir. Papa was hit.” He patted the top of his head. “It made him sleepy. After he came home he lay down and he isn’t getting up.”

  Nor would he ever, Gideon thought as he gazed past Anton and saw the body lying on the floor amid candles set in small dishes. A great shadow loomed on one rotting wall. The shadow of a woman swaying back and forth, hands clasped.

  vii

  Tompkins Square put a new partisan of labor on Charles Dana’s Sun. John Swinton, the editorialist who had never gotten to deliver his speech. It added a similar partisan to the staff of the Union. Long after Gideon had arranged to have Sime Strelnik decently buried, and had borne all the expenses of the funeral and given the widow ten thousand dollars besides, he wondered whether Theo Payne’s conversion was worth the little Russian’s life. When he remembered Anton’s eyes and Leah’s grief, he thought it was not.

  He wrote a long letter to London, describing Strelnik’s death and once again asking Matt to come home for a visit. Once again Matt refused.

  Chapter VI

  In Boston

  i

  THE OLD SCOLLAY Oyster House did not cheerfully welcome unescorted ladies during the evening. But when Mrs. Henry Blackwell brought a member of her own sex there to dine on chowder and scrod, the proprietors knew better than to complain. In repose Mrs. Blackwell might resemble an angel, but certain restaurant owners who had attempted to bar her from their premises had been known to call her an adder—or worse.

  Mrs. Blackwell was in her middle fifties, a tiny woman no taller than the friend accompanying her. Mrs. Blackwell’s gray eyes matched her hair. Her dress was a plain black bombazine. She and her companion had come to the Oyster House on an evening in February, about a month after the Tompkins Square riot.

  The older woman’s eyes sparkled with a youthful enthusiasm as she said, “In spite of the reverses you’ve apparently suffered, I’ve never seen you looking happier.”

  How soothing and melodic that voice was, Julia thought. In a lecture hall it had an almost hypnotic effect. Julia smiled and spooned up some of the delicious chowder. The waiter, a pink-faced young man with thick side whiskers, approached the table.

  “Everything all right so far, Mrs. Blackwell?”

  The little lady laid her soup spoon aside. “You are new here, are you not, young man?”

  “I suppose you’d say that, ma’am. Been in Boston three years, but only in this fine establishment two and a half weeks. I come off the immigrant boat in seventy-one. I learned the hotel an’ restaurant trades in Dublin.”


  “I’m afraid you still have many other things to learn.”

  He enjoyed the banter. “That so? Pray tell me what.”

  “It’s true that I’m married to Henry Blackwell. But I don’t use his name, and that gentleman over there knows it. I imagine he told you to call me Mrs. Blackwell so you’d get in hot water.” A glance at the smirking headwaiter confirmed it. “It’s not your fault, but I go by the name Lucy Stone.”

  “And I go by the name Dennis Sheeley,” he said with a grin. “Lucy. Now that’s one of my very fav—” Suddenly it registered. “Oh. You’re that one. The one who thinks womenfolk should vote.”

  “In one U.S. territory, they already do.”

  “Well,” Dennis declared, “it surely won’t happen anywhere else—not until the Holy See turns into a musselman an’ the Boston summer brings forty inches of snow.”

  Julia spoke up. “Are you married, Dennis?”

  “No, indeed, miss. Would you care to make a proposal?”

  “I asked you a serious question.”

  “All right, here’s a serious answer. I am not presently married. But I plan to be when I find the right girl. An’ this I guarantee you, ladies. My wife shall know and keep her proper place—which is one step behind me at all times, with an attentive eye upon me so as to detect and accommodate my slightest wish. That’s the role women were born to play, an’ all this hullaballoo about voting only stirs them up for nothing. I can’t speak for present company, but it’s generally true that females don’t have the head to understand a subject such as politics.”

  A storm was brewing in Lucy’s gray eyes. “Dennis,” she purred, “I do believe you had better see to the rest of our order before I bash you with that vinegar cruet. If I don’t, Miss Sedgwick will.”

  Dennis left, rather irked and clearly wondering what he’d done wrong other than address the infamous lady by her married name.

  Lucy sighed. “Sometimes it seems to be such a long, wearying struggle. Americans will rush to embrace any crazy fad from grahamism to phrenology. But when it comes to votes for women—an idea that couldn’t be more sensible or fair—you’d think it had been proposed by Satan himself.”