DON’T IT HAVE TO BE DARK TO DO THIS KINDA WORK?” ASKED AIDAN as they wove their way through the streets.
“It does, but we ain’t workin’ yet—you gotta lotta learnin’ and observin’ to do ’fore I put my arse on the line with you.”
Soon they entered Scollay Square, home to theatres of all stripes, saloons too numerous to count, and prostitutes for any taste. They walked in front of the Old Howard Theatre, feeling the heat from the sign spelling out “The Old Howard” in lightbulbs, a novelty in itself when electricity was still so new. As they proceeded, the brightness of the bulbs gave way to the anemic glow of the gas lamps on North Street.
In a part of the city where most streets were straight even if they were at odd angles to each other, North Street curved its way up from the waterfront like a snake. For any sailor coming into port in Boston, North Street was a meandering path of pleasure, with all the services he might require. Near to the water were places where you could store your bag of worldly goods for a fee, and after you lightened your load, every other storefront was a saloon, and every third building was a brothel. You could find a whore to do whatever you’d been dreaming of out at sea, or you could just drink until you couldn’t stand upright, and there was never a night where business wasn’t brisk.
Into this den of adult pleasures walked Charles and Aidan. Without realizing it, Aidan began walking a little closer to Charles.
“Now,” began Charles, “alleys is where the opportunities are, but down here there’s lots that could be goin’ on in an alley, so you gotta be careful. The cheaper whores that work on their own, the ones that ain’t with a whorehouse, they might be doin’ some stan-din’-up business in any one of these alleys, and you do not want to interrupt them. You make any one of ’em mad enough, they’ll make sure the cops are onto you, and then your goose is cooked.”
“But . . .” said Aidan, unsure of how to phrase his question, “how are the whores in good with the cops? Don’t the cops, you know, arrest them for what they do? I mean, it’s against the law, whorin’ and all, right?”
“Cops is frequent customers down here. Hell, they don’t even have to pay.” They passed by an alley emitting some human noises, and Aidan turned his head just in time to see the white uniform of a sailor pressed up against the violet gowns of a woman before they continued down the street.
“You ever, you know, think about using some of your profits you make down here for, you know, uh . . . with some of these, uh . . .” Aidan trailed off.
“No,” said Charles firmly.
“Why not?”
“I’ll show you later. And you better start focusing on why we’re here, or I’ll just go off and leave ya.” The thought of Charles leaving him alone on North Street was tremendously helpful in focusing Aidan back on the task at hand.
After a tasteless supper in a cheap restaurant, it was dark enough to get to work. As they walked up and down the street, they cast furtive looks into alleys, their caps pulled down on their brows. Several times they entered one and heard a quiet sound that could have been someone shifting around, semi-conscious on a pile of trash, but instead turned out to be rats. After wandering around for more than an hour, they heard some conversation that stopped Charles. He peeked around the corner to view the scene.
“Got plenny a money,” slurred a man as he simultaneously fumbled in his pocket and groped the woman.
“Yeah, I believe ya, but you ain’t got what else it takes,” she said, and she grabbed the man between his legs. “No wood in the shed. Next time, come see me earlier.” She extracted herself from his grasp and swept out of the alley, almost bumping into Charles. “Ah,” she said with a knowing look, “the vultures are waitin’ already. If I thought he had more than a dollar, I’d wait him out myself.”
The man in the alley slid his back down the wall with a moan until he was in a sitting position. “Goddamn whore won’ take muh money, whassa . . .” he mumbled, and his head lolled to the side. Soon he began to drool, and then he slumped over.
“Capital. Here we go,” whispered Charles. As they had discussed over supper, Aidan’s job was to stand by the mouth of the alley with a stone in his hand. While Charles fleeced the pockets of the mark, Aidan would look for passersby that might interfere. If an interruption seemed possible, Aidan would begin to tap on the wall of the alley with the stone, and Charles would hide until it was safe to continue.
The job went off without a hitch. Although the man had fallen on his money-pocket side, Charles had no problem rolling him over without waking him. Charles pocketed the bills, and the boys strolled away from the alley. As Charles had explained over their supper, you never count your take until you’re clean away, and you never run unless you’re being chased. “Hardest part,” he claimed. “Your whole body’s saying two things: ‘How much did I get?’ and ‘I better get the hell outta here!’ But you can’t listen. You gotta control yourself.”
They walked a few blocks and then ducked into a side street. Charles unfolded the bills and took inventory in the weak gaslight. He looked up at Aidan. “That mug had a fiver on him.” He showed Aidan the five and a one-dollar bill. They both grinned.
As was the deal that Charles had outlined, Aidan received a quarter of the profits for his part. After another hour, they found another mark who yielded two dollars, a much more typical take, according to Charles. When he declared them done for the night, Aidan balked. “That’s it? But we’re doin’ great!”
“Yup. That’s another rule I got: Don’t get greedy. Can’t do too many jobs a night without gettin’ a little sloppy. There’s only so many times you can roll the dice before it stops coming up in your favor.”
Aidan thought that it was easy for Charles to be satisfied—he had more than five dollars in his pocket, after all—but he held his tongue. His profit was far more than he could make bootblacking for a full day.
“We got one more stop,” said Charles as they headed down a side street. They came to an inn called Fore and Aft, a place for sailors and other transients to sleep that had a sooty saloon on the ground floor. They headed in, and Charles ordered beers at the bar. This saloon seemed particularly grimy to Aidan, even compared to the ones that they had passed in previous hours. There was a disheveled old man who had slipped from his chair and appeared to be asleep on the floor in the middle of the room, and two men up front were having a slurred argument. A glass fell off a table and shattered. No one moved to clean it up.
“Why celebrate here?” asked Aidan. “We passed a dozen places that was better than this hole.”
“We ain’t celebratin’. I’m answerin’ your question of earlier.” Charles took a sip of his beer. “You see that mug over there at the end of the bar?” Aidan looked over and saw a wreck of a man. He was young but seemingly crazy, talking softly to himself, swatting at imaginary flies. On the side of his nose was a large, tumor-like protrusion, and there was a smaller one on his jaw.
“Name’s Gus. He’s here all the time. A regular. Be here until the barkeep give him the boot. Wanna know what’s wrong with him?”
Aidan didn’t answer. He knew Charles would tell him anyway.
“French gout,” Charles said to his beer. “People say he was always down by the waterfront, sampling the goods. And that’s why I don’t spend my money down there.” Charles took one more sip and walked out, closely followed by Aidan, who was suddenly far less enamored with the ladies of North Street.
“Listen,” said Charles as they walked away from the waterfront, “you did all right tonight. I’m flush for a while—Rosen’s is my treat tomorrow.”
They walked in silence for a while, Aidan still horrified by the syphilitic man. When they reached Washington Street, Charles stopped. “It was good tonight, you know, good to have someone else around down there. I mean, not that I couldn’t have done it myself, you know, but it was different. Good. You know.”
But Aidan barely heard him.
When Aidan walked into the apartment, he was dead tired, even though it was only half past ten. Maeve was asleep, but Ella was up, playing with paper dolls she had cut out earlier in the day. “Whatcha doin’ awake, ya naughty mouse?” Aidan asked her as he hung up his cap on the nail behind the door.
“I needed water, but I couldn’t wake Mommy up. Then after I got me the water, I weren’t so tired no more.”
Aidan could smell gin and hear Maeve’s soft, rattling snores. “Ya gotta get back in bed now. Go on, scoot,” he mumbled as he rubbed his eyes.
“Ya gotta tell me a story,” Ella insisted, sticking her lower lip out and twisting her red hair around her index finger. She looked up at Aidan with Dan Connelly’s cornflower-blue eyes.
Aidan thought about the stories he could tell. As he looked at little Ella in her muslin gown with pink flowers at the collar, something Maeve had embroidered back in her better days, everything he’d done and witnessed that night suddenly seemed unbearably dirty. Standing before his sister, just having the memories in his brain of the prostitutes in the alleys, the drunks staggering from one saloon to the next, the man with syphilis—it felt like a violation. He was irrationally fearful that Ella could read his mind and see all the filth he had seen and the crimes in which he had participated.
“Get to bed now, or I’ll fix it so you don’t play with the McGarrity twins for a week!” he growled, and Ella scampered off to climb back in bed with Maeve. Aidan took his cap off the nail and went down to sit on the stoop, looking up at the moon, until enough time had passed that he was sure Ella had fallen asleep.