“Long day, Marshal?”
Justy jumped. The nib of his pen jammed and a large blot of ink spread slowly over the paper. “Damn it, Gorton!”
“Sorry.” The watchman leaned on the door of Justy’s office.
“You look pleased with yourself. Did you get some sleep?”
“I did.”
“I don’t suppose you had any luck getting Umar to take you on as a spy as well.”
“I put the hook in the water, but nothing nibbled.”
The Trinity bell began to sound five. One more day before the girl’s body was taken out of the Almshouse and dumped in a common grave.
“I need you to make some inquiries for me.”
“I’m at your service, Marshal. But you only paid me for two days, and you’re already a day in arrears.”
Justy grimaced. He tugged his purse out of his pocket and counted out five dollars. Gorton’s hand whipped out, and the coins disappeared.
“You and Playfair picked up a man after that fracas last night,” Justy said. “Name of Shard.”
“Did we?”
“He got rapped over the head. Ended up in the sick bay. I need you to find out who he is.”
“Why not just ask him?”
“Because he’s still unconscious. Playfair’s report doesn’t list a profession.” Justy shuffled through the files on his desk, then shifted the light so he could read the paper. “Robert Shard.”
There was the sound of footsteps in the hallway, and Vanderool’s face appeared over Gorton’s shoulder. “Evening, Marshal.”
“Sergeant. What can I do for you?”
“I need Mister Gorton,” Vanderool said. “We’re briefing the patrol.”
“Take him, then.”
Gorton slipped away down the hall. Vanderool lingered.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
Vanderool sucked his teeth. His eyes were like a pig’s, sunk deep into his flesh. “You’re paying Gorton for extra time.”
“That’s right. Nothing that will interfere with his Watch duties. I’ve seen to that.”
“I’ll bet he hasn’t earned his pay.”
“And what makes you say that?”
Vanderool smirked. “You want eyes about this city, Marshal, you’d do better to hire a man that’s from here and knows the place.”
“Like yourself, I suppose.”
“At least I can tell you who Robert Shard is.” Vanderool showed a row of grubby teeth. “I heard you as I came up the hall.”
Justy hid his distaste. “So who is he?”
More of the sergeant’s teeth appeared. “What’s it worth?”
Justy sighed. “Not much. Gorton will find out eventually, and I’ve already paid him. But if you tell me now, Sergeant, I’ll count it as a personal favor.”
Vanderool thought about that for a moment. “He’s a lawyer.”
“That much I know. Where does he work?”
“Well, that’s an easy one. He works here.”
“Here?”
“Aye, Marshal.” Vanderool smirked. “He’s Albany’s agent for the southern counties. His office is up on the fifth floor.”
Shard’s clerk had left for the day, leaving his office secured with a cheap lock that was easily turned. The room was whitewashed and unadorned, as austere as a Puritan lawyer’s office might be expected to be. Two identical, uncluttered desks, two hard chairs, and two large cabinets filled with boxes of papers, all neatly labeled and stacked.
Five boxes were marked with the letter R. Tobias Riker’s name was on a single, thin file that contained just four sheets of paper. There was a statement of ownership of a house on Rector Street, a certificate of purchase for a warehouse on Albany Basin in 1802, a certificate of sale of a few acres of farmland on Wallabout Bay to a Peter Sturtevant in 1801, and a statement of ownership of a 400-acre island in the Helgate of the East River. These were his New York properties. The bulk of his holdings were New Jersey and Pennsylvania estates.
Justy slumped in the lawyer’s chair, and looked around the empty room. The desks had no drawers, nowhere to hide any notes or papers. It seemed all Robert Shard did was copy and sign documents brought in by landowners. So why was he riding in Tobias Riker’s carriage? And what business did he have in Jericho?
Something snagged in his mind. He thought about the tour of Jericho that Umar had given him. What had he called the place? Mimo. He said it meant several things. Sanctuary. And property. Would Umar have come and filed paperwork like the rest of the landowners in New York? But there was no file marked either Umar or Salam.
There was a tap at the door behind him. A stout, red-faced man in a sturdy brown suit stood in the doorway, a sheaf of papers under his arm. “Mister Shard?”
“No,” Justy said.
The man brandished his papers. “I have bills of purchase for lands in Harlem.” A strong German accent. “My lawyer says they must be signed. Where is Shard?”
“Mister Shard is very ill, sir. And it is after hours.”
“Verdammt!” The man slammed the papers on the lawyer’s table. “The roads are terrible today. Two carts shed their loads, and a carriage turned over. It is why I am late.”
The topmost of the man’s papers was a sketch map of the north of Manhattan Island.
“Your map?” Justy asked.
“Nein. Mister Shard’s map.”
The German’s purchases were marked in red. It looked as though Shard—or his clerk—had hatched them in red ink when they were prospects, and then colored them solid with a wax pencil when the purchases were complete. The German had bought several parcels, not in the fashionable part of Harlem, where Alexander Hamilton had built a large residence, but further east, on the sloping land that abutted the Horn Hook and the East River. The map showed Randall’s and Ward islands, and the New Town promontory by the Helgate, where the German had bought a small plot of land by the upriver shore. Further to the right, on the margin of the map, was a rough circle hatched in red.
Justy pointed. “Is this an island?”
“Ja. Riker’s place.”
“I see you looked at it. Why didn’t you buy?”
The German sniffed. “The low ground floods in the spring. The rest is scrub. The schwarzes can have it.”
“Schwarzes?”
“Blacks. They are living there. Escaped slaves, my neighbor thinks. They hide when I come to inspect the place.” He hauled on one of his watch chains. “Ach! I am always forgetting which one is the dummy.”
Justy failed to hide his smile as the man shoved the dummy back into its fob and yanked on the other chain.
“It confuses the thief,” the man said.
“If you say so.”
“And it is the fashion, of course.” The man’s small, piggy eyes glared at the working watch and then at Justy. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I am here to see Mister Shard’s clerk. The door was open, but I fear he has already left and simply failed to lock the door.” He gestured to the lawyer’s chair. “We can wait together.”
“Nein.” The German thrust his watch into its pocket and swept his papers off the lawyer’s desk. “I am already late for dinner. I will come back another day.”
Justy watched him go, mulling what he had said. Tobias Riker didn’t strike him as the type to permit runaway slaves on his land.
Runaway slaves. What had Lew Owens called Umar?
He jumped to his feet, opened the cabinet, and took out the first of the boxes marked A. He flicked quickly through the folders.
A file labeled ABSALOM, JOHN was a half-inch thick. The top sheet was a sketch map, like the German’s. It showed the area north of the Broad Way, from St. Paul’s Church to Greenwich Village. There were several patches of red, concentrated around the area where a line ran inland from the Hudson River, extending Hudson’s Kill across the Broad Way and down to the Collect Pond. The Kill was a tidal stream that flooded in the spring. The land all around it was sunken meadow, or marsh, depending on your point of view. Useless land for building. Good only for fishing eels or growing reeds. And yet it seemed that John Absalom, or Umar Salam, had bought all of it. Justy scanned the papers, looking for the amounts paid, and saw that Umar had borrowed heavily, paying just ten percent of the price of each plot in cash.
The balance came from the Millennium Bank.
Which was owned by Tobias Riker.