He walked up to the Almshouse. It was still early, but he hoped the nuns would have fed their charges by now, and that Liam Corrigan would have a full belly. It should make him more willing to talk.
He took the backstreets, staying off the main roads that were a crush of people, carts, and carriages hurrying to work at that time of day. It wasn’t until he had turned into one of the wealthier residential streets that he registered the sound of hooves behind him. When he turned, he saw a carriage, driven by a slim black man with a wide hat and a narrow face. The carriage stopped and a giant climbed out of the cab. He was shaven-headed and dressed like a sailor, in a short coat and long trousers made of dark brown wool. The coat was buttoned to his neck, and because he was almost as dark-skinned as the color of the clothes he wore, he looked like a moving shadow, a man-shaped hole in the light of the day.
He held the door open and jerked his massive head.
Lew Owens sat inside. He wore black breeches and a black waistcoat, unbuttoned over a white shirt that was open at the neck and rolled to the elbows. He could have been a waiter taking his break, except that the waistcoat was made of velvet, the breeches of finest whipcord, and the shirt of pristine linen. His oiled, shaven head gleamed like a cannonball on a hot day.
He gestured to Justy. “Come on up, Marshal.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because I’ve got something that you need to hear.”
“Spill it then, Owens. For I’m not getting in that cab.”
Owens plucked at a speck of dust on his trousers. “It’s about Kerry.”
“What about her?”
He grimaced. “I fear I may have put her in bad loaf, Justy.”
Justy felt panic squirm in him. And then his dream came to him. The girl on her side in the alley, her back to him. His hand on her shoulder, rolling her gently on to her back. Her face. Kerry’s face.
“What did you do?”
“I sent her into Jericho.”
“Jericho?”
“The Mohammedan place.”
“What do you mean, you sent her in?”
Owens said nothing. Justy climbed inside. The carriage rocked as the big bodyguard climbed up beside the driver, and then they were moving.
Justy sat for a moment, fighting to get his feelings under control as his dream played, over and over: Kerry cold. Stabbed. Slashed. Dead.
“Tell me,” he said.
Owens folded his arms. “I asked her to go inside. See what that bastard Absalom’s up to.”
“Absalom?”
“Umar Salam. Absalom’s his slave name. Or it’s the name he arrived here with. Anyway, he’s up to something, and I want to know what.” He looked at his hands. “So I set her up with one of my girls, to see if she could find out anything.”
“So it was your idea to tog her up like a whore.”
Owens winced. “She’d have climbed the walls on her own, if I hadn’t had the idea. It was that girl she found. She was blazing about it. Not just that someone had milled the lass, but that no one would claim her. She reckoned the titter had a bellyful, which made it worse.”
Justy felt a cold, clear urge to stab Owens in the face, to tear him open. “When did you last see her?”
“Two days ago. At breakfast. I sent her up to the fort, to see a girl named Tanny.”
“Short, light skin, red dress?”
Owens frowned. “You know her?”
“I saw the both of them, at a gathering on Monday night.”
“Aye, well. No one’s seen either of them since. Tanny’s not been back to the fort, and Kerry’s not been back to her libben. I figured she got inside, like we planned. But I’ve had neither word nor no sign from her.”
“What sign?”
Owens made a face. “She was to signal she was safe by chalking the wheel of a cart or a carriage. I’ve got a crew up there, watching. But there’s been rotans driving in and out all the time, and not a mark on any of them.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. She just might not have got close enough.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Justy pressed himself back against the cushions of the cab. His nostrils were full of the cloying smell of coconut oil. He felt sick. His mind unspooled, like a reel of fishing line with a whale on the hook. Too fast to stop. Too fast to think.
“Why are you so concerned about Umar?”
“He’s up to something. He’s trying to set me and your uncle at odds. Poaching his doxies and passing word it’s me that’s been doing it. Sending blackfellas to start fights in his gin shops and bowsing kens. That tilt in Laycock Lane? That was his crew, not mine. But the Bull doesn’t believe me.”
“I believe you.”
Surprise, for an instant. “You do?”
“I saw a man at the riot last night. He was with Umar on Monday, too. He looked like a ringleader. But why set you two against each other?”
Owens shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be he wants us to kill each other, so he can step in and take over. Or maybe he just wants us weak, for when he’s ready to fight and carve out a piece for himself. Either way, he’s getting ready for something behind them walls of his.”
“Jericho.”
“Aye. But it’ll take more than a few trumpets to get in there.”
Justy nodded. He felt calm now. The dread was inside him, like a worm working its way into his guts. But he could ignore it while he decided what to do.
He said, “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ll go to your uncle. If we band together, we can take the bastard. He won’t expect that.”
“What makes you think the Bull will help?”
“He’s close to Kerry, isn’t he?”
“Not really. And even if he was, why would he believe she’s in danger? You don’t know for sure yourself.”
Owens shook his head. “You’re a cold one.”
“I’m calling it how he’ll see it. Apart from anything else, the Bull won’t believe you care enough about Kerry to get into a fight for her. Truth is, I can hardly believe it myself.”
Owens’ eyes were steady. “She’s the only blood relative I have left.”
“One you tried to put on the street when she was barely a titter.”
“That was a long time ago. Before we got close. Before Daniel.”
Daniel. Justy remembered the last time he had seen the boy, laughing in his mother’s arms, the spring before the fever had struck, before they had hurried him out of the city. There had been no funeral service that he knew of, and he had no idea where the child was buried. Kerry had refused to talk to him about it. And then they had drifted apart.
“Again, I believe you. But the rest of New York thinks that Lew Owens doesn’t give a dog’s cock for anyone but himself. That’s what the Bull thinks. It’s what he knows. So he won’t help you. He’ll think you’re trying to lure him into a scrap with Umar. To bleed him. Or worse.”
“So what do we do?”
Justy looked into the street. People hurrying in the thin sunlight, to work or home or lunch or church. While Kerry was locked up, perhaps bloodied, or broken, or dead. He felt like ice.
“An eye for an eye, Owens.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning if you’ve killed her, then I’ll kill you.”
“She’s not dead, boyo.” Owens’ voice was quiet. “If she was, I would know. I would feel it. And so would you.”
Traffic was heavy and the carriage was moving slowly. They were in the new build, to the north of the city, and Justy stared out of the window at the half-made houses as they inched along. The view opened up at a junction in the road, and he was suddenly looking down a sweep of freshly laid cobbles that ended abruptly at the edge of the ramshackle chaos of Canvas Town. In the sunshine, the slum looked like a colorful regatta of small boats, jumbled up in a crook of the river. But then the wind gusted, carrying the stink of the cesspits and middens up the hill; the sun disappeared and Justy saw the place for what it was: a tip of broken masts, torn sails, ragged sheets and blankets, ingeniously piled up and stitched together, the most concentrated mass of people in New York, a rookery to rival London’s Cheapside.
And to the north, close by the river, were the dun-colored walls of the Mohammedan village. There were people in the marshland around Hudson’s Kill, small figures stooped between the grasses. Justy marveled at how Umar had hidden his Jericho in plain sight. The compound was invisible to the casual observer, screened by rickety buildings and crooked scaffolding, so that it looked like an extension of the sprawl. But now, knowing what to look for, Justy saw the full spread of the place. He walked around the interior walls in his mind, trying to recall the tour that Umar had given him and Gorton. But it was hard to match what he had seen then with what he was looking at now. It was like trying to fit a jigsaw piece into the wrong space. Perhaps he simply couldn’t remember which way they had gone in.
“He’s a fly cove, isn’t he?” Owens read his thoughts. “He’s walled up tight in there, like a rat in its nest. But there’s a way in, boy. There always is.”
The carriage lumbered around a turn and down the hill, rocking on its axles as they moved off the cobbled road of the New Town and on to the muddy lanes of the slum. They pulled to a halt by an alley, and Owens led him through the back door of a shack and into a small, dim coffee shop. Four men sat at a small table under a window, playing cards, but they all stood up when they saw Owens. He gestured, and all but one hustled away, through a curtain made of strings of beads, and into a back room.
The window looked out onto the front gate of the compound. A hugely fat black man stood there, dressed in a stained gray smock and a battered straw hat. He filled the entryway like a prize bull, chewing slowly and spitting an occasional stream of tobacco juice into a puddle.
Owens turned to the remaining card player. He was a gaunt-looking man, with knobby wrists and elbows that had been polished to a high shine, like bits of weathered walnut.
“Have you seen anything?” Owens asked.
The man jerked his chin at the gateway. “Just yon bacon-fed gundiguts stood there. He hasn’t moved since long before noon. Not even to piss.”
“No traffic?”
“A carriage went in a while back. Nothing since.”
Justy looked at the sentry. He was like a wall, his jaw moving slowly, his eyes invisible under the wide brim of his hat. He was the only way in. There were other ways, of course, hidden in the chaos of shacks and lean-tos abutting the walls, but Justy had no idea of where they were, and no time to find them. He had to get past the guard.
His fingers twitched. There was an easy way. He could stroll up to the sentry, ask an innocent question, and then attack, hard and fast. He imagined the knife in his hand, the blade like a lash across the man’s throat, the spray of blood. He would be covered in gore, but he would be inside in a second, and that was what mattered.
“Don’t,” Owens said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t stick a blade in some poor cove that’s done nothing more than stand in a doorway minding his own. I believe they’d call that murder up by Federal Hall.”
“Ware,” the card player said.
The sentry stepped back against the wall beside the gate. A pair of chestnut horses appeared, and then a four-seater sprung drag, with a low-slung cab painted a glossy midnight blue.
Justy felt as though all the blood in his body had been sucked into his feet. “Hardluck!”
The jarvie ignored him. He sat slouched in his seat on the top of the cab, wrapped in a dark cloak, his face shadowed by a hood. He flicked his whip hard against the backs of the horses. They snorted and jolted into a canter, hauling the cab hard along the rutted street.
Justy stared at the carriage as it rattled past. The curtains on the windows were drawn tight. He watched the carriage turn, wanting to convince himself that his eyes had tricked him, but there was no mistaking the two red pennants streaming from the whips on the back of the rig.
He shook himself awake, leapt into the street and broke into a run. His boots skidded in the mud as he made the slight turn in the road, but he stayed on his feet, and saw the carriage ahead of him, the driver’s whip rising and falling. He ran down the shallow hill, gaining on the cab as it slowed to make another turn. And there was a sudden tug at his foot as the sole of his boot came loose, and he tripped and went hurtling forwards, his shoulder slamming into the dirt.
There was a ripping sound as the seam of his coat split down the back, and then he was rolling, over and over, pain shooting up his right arm and down his right leg. He stopped on his back. His right shoulder was numb, and his hand was tingling. He lifted his arm, and saw a long tear in the sleeve of his coat, and blood on his fingers. There was a grating feeling in his knee. The sole of his right boot was hanging by a few threads.
“Come on, then.” The card player loomed over him, a slight smile on his face. He held out a hand like a shovel. It was warm and dry and as hard as iron. He pulled Justy to his feet.
Justy wiggled the fingers of his right hand, and winced as pain rippled up his forearm. “Did you see which way it went?”
The man shrugged. “It turned left, so up to the Broad Way then down to the town, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Where’s Owens?”
The man shrugged again.
Justy felt the cold sweat of shame. He had been a damned fool. Piers Riker had wanted to find out what he knew, so he had set a trap. And Justy had blundered right into it. Riker had baited Justy into a card game, wagered his carriage, then lost it on purpose. But he never had any intention of giving up the vehicle, or its driver, Justy saw that now. Hardluck was his spy, reporting back to his master, who had now reclaimed his carriage. And what recourse did Justy have? Was he going to take Riker to court, to claim a carriage and a slave won in a card game?
Across the street, a small boy in an indigo shirt was watching from the doorway of his house. He was grinning, his hand over his mouth. Justy looked down at his feet, at the sole of his right boot flapping on the mud. The whole of his right side was covered in filth. His sock was sodden with what looked like horse piss. He sighed. He was a dupe. He was a fool. He had let everyone down. Especially himself.