The room at Mrs. Montgomery’s was plain but comfortable. Justy paid her a week in advance, refused a bowl of what smelled like corn chowder and went straight back out into the night.
As he walked down the hill towards Dover Street, he thought about Kerry and tried to make sense of his feelings. She was a wee slip of a girl when he left. Now, four years later, nothing was the same. She was harder, that was for sure. Not surprising. Being called ugly and ungainly was hard for any young girl. She would have built some strong defenses for herself. But there was more to her anger than that.
Perhaps it was him. He had felt sick about leaving her, in that cold house, with her vacant father. He had always felt protective of her because they had both grown up without a mother. His own had died in a yellow fever outbreak when he was seven. Then his father. Justy knew what it was like to have everyone leave you. And yet he had left her. He had felt bad about it then. Now he was back, seeing that look in her eye, he felt worse.
* * *
Dover Street was a dark, muddy lane that branched off Pearl Street and dropped in a steep, straight line to the river. Like all the lanes in the poorer areas of the city, it was only cobbled for the first few feet away from the junction with the main road. After that, the surface became packed mud, sand and gravel. Most of the other side streets in the city were pitted with sinkholes that would fill with rainwater in winter and sewage in the summer, but Dover Street was as smooth as a slipway. Its holes were always filled with loose stones, broken from rocks by men who had offended the Bull in some small way. He gave them a choice: break rocks or lose an eye.
Justy started down the lane. None of the buildings were more than three stories high, but the narrowness of the lane made them loom above him, blocking out the night sky. Lights from a tavern flickered at the bottom of the hill. The rest of the street was pitch-black. Justy’s feet crunched on the gravel.
A shadow detached itself from the darkness. The man was as tall as Justy, but heavier. His cap was pulled low over his eyes. Justy didn’t recognize him. “I’ve come to see the Bull.”
“The Bull don’t waste his time with beggar scum.” The voice was deep, the Galway accent dragging like slurry.
“I’m his nephew.”
The man said nothing but turned and led Justy to a black-stained slab of heavy wooden planks. The man banged on the door, and a small hatch snapped open at eye level.
“He’s here,” the man said, and the door was unlatched and swung open. Another big man stood in the doorway. He could have been the first man’s brother. He wore a stained shirt and mud-colored breeches that had split in the crotch and were stitched together with a dirty piece of string. His nose looked as though someone had smeared it across the right side of his face, and his mouth hung open as he breathed. He scratched his belly.
“What time do you call this?” The same Galway slur.
“Do I look like I’m wearing a watch?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe not. But I see that chive in your boot.” He held out his hand. “Give it over.”
Justy cocked his head and stared into the man’s eyes. “You want it, you’ll have to take it yourself.”
The guard’s eyes flicked to the side. “The Bull says no blades in his house.”
“Then what does he cut his meat with?”
The guard said nothing, but the look in his eyes and the twitch in his cheek said he was close to breaking both of Justy’s arms.
“I’m his nephew, for Christ’s sake,” Justy snapped. “He’ll not thank you for keeping me standing shivering in the street while you bleat about cutlery.”
The guard chewed the inside of his mouth for a second, then stood back.
The doorway was narrow. Justy squeezed past the man into a long, white-painted hallway.
“On the right there!” the man called out. Justy ignored him and kept walking. He knew where the Bull would be.
* * *
Ignatius Flanagan was a big man, almost as tall as Justy, but half as wide again. He wore plain clothes, but of good materials, tailored to make his bulk less obvious. In his youth he had been a wall of muscle, but while age and comfortable living had turned much of the hardness to fat, it had not softened his brain or dulled his edge. He was now the most powerful landowner in the lanes that led down from Pearl Street to the East River. He might no longer have the strength or the stamina to hack his way through a room of opponents with a cleaver in one hand and a club in the other, but he had plenty of men who would, and he would not turn a hair before calling down all kinds of bloody mayhem on anyone who got in his way.
He sat in a heavy wooden chair by the fire, watching Justy, his face blank. “There’s no tea. You’re too late for that.”
Justy said nothing. His uncle had taken him in, had fed and clothed him and sent him to school. He had done everything a man should do for his dead brother’s orphaned son. Every time Justy had thought of his uncle over the last four years, he had felt anger at his obligation, hatred for being treated like a piece of valuable furniture, and contempt for a man who, he told himself, was nothing but a gutter criminal. But now, standing in the glow of his kitchen, with the warm smell of baked bread lingering in the air, Justy felt the surprise of something heavy, deep inside in his chest.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Come on in and sit, then.”
Justy pushed himself off the wall and went to the chair at the end of the table.
He watched the fire. Someone had mixed a piece of green wood with the logs. It steamed as the flames licked around it.
“So, did you get your bachelor’s?” The Bull’s voice was flat.
“I did.”
“Well, that’s something.”
They watched each other. The Bull’s eyes were small and hard and dark, a pair of pistol balls, drilling into him. “You look different,” he said.
“Do I?”
“You were a bright-eyed colt bowler when you left. Now you seem like you might be someone to be reckoned with.”
Justy said nothing.
His uncle shrugged. “Truth is, I’m surprised you came back here at all. I thought you’d be off in Dublin or London by now.”
Justy felt as though the words were stuck in his throat. He wanted to tell his uncle that he had come back to New York because he was sure his father had been murdered. Because he wanted to find out why and by whom. But something stopped him.
“The place has changed a bit while I’ve been away. Street lanterns.”
“Aye. We have them all over the town now. Not just where the quality live. Makes life tricky for the toolers and coat-buzzers.”
“I saw a fight down on the docks today. Irish on one side. Negroes on the other. The Watch had to come down and break it up.”
The Bull grunted. “Bloody darkies. You heard about the abolition bill the state government passed in July? It’s made those black bastards damn bold, I’ll tell you. They’re bidding low for every job on the waterfront. Picking our pockets. If someone doesn’t get them back in line soon, the city’ll be aflame.”
He took a poker and stabbed savagely at the green log in the fire. “So. What will you do, now you’re back?”
“What do you know about Jarlath Cantillon?”
“Carrots? I know he’s as Irish as a plate of poundies, but he does his damndest to make everyone think otherwise. That orange head of hair of his gives the game away, mind.”
“I’m thinking about going to ask him for a clerkship.”
“You know he works on Wall Street.”
“What of it?”
The Bull smiled. It was like a crack opening in a slab of granite. “Well, well. So you’re bound for the Devil’s half mile, are you? And there was Francis hoping you’d make an honest living.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“I mean there’s more prigs and screwsmen working on Wall Street than there is on all of New York’s waterfront. They may wear prettier duds and prefer a pen to a blade, but they’ll pick a man’s pocket just as clean. Still, if you’re going to start a life of crime, you may as well begin at the top.”
Justy felt the heat leap into his face. “You have me wrong, sir.”
“You sound like your father.”
“Aye, well, he made the hard choice, to make his living square. I’ll do the same.”
Men had been whipped until their spines showed for saying far less. But the Bull seemed to understand his nephew wanted to provoke him. The thin smile stayed on his face. “You think lawyers make an honest living? They’re the biggest thieves of the lot.”
A hissing sound came from the grate. The flames had charred the bark of the green log and were now working on the young, uncured wood.
Justy waited for a moment before looking his uncle in the eye. “I know there are plenty of dishonest lawyers. But I won’t be one of them.”
The Bull said nothing.
Justy stood. “I came here to thank you, Uncle. I owe my education and my position to you. I’m grateful, and I’ll pay you back one day, when I can.”
The Bull gave him a blank look. “What were you doing at the jail today?”
Of course. The Bull’s people wouldn’t have just passed the word when they saw him at the docks. They would have followed him. He recalled the three young lads who had run past him and Kerry in the street. And the other group of children, tossing a hat about. Children like that were his uncle’s eyes and ears, all over the city. His water rats, the Bull called them.
“I went to see William Duer.”
“A wasted trip, then. What did you want with a dead man?”
Justy thought about lying. But the Bull could smell a lie from a hundred yards.
“He was in business with my father.”
“Him and a dozen others. So what?”
“I wanted to know what kind of business.”
The Bull spread his arms wide. “Who knows? Bonds? Shares? Land? Some stupid scheme that amounted to nothing. Why do you care?”
Justy closed his eyes and saw his father hanging, his head twisted to the side, the marks on his neck. “I think it was something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was, I think it got him murdered.”
His uncle was very still. “Murdered. Did I hear you right?”
“You did.” Justy realized his hands were trembling.
“That’s not a word to throw about lightly.”
“Do I look like I’m making a skit? I’m the one who found him!”
“And I’m the one who cut him down! Do you remember that?” The Bull slammed his open hand down on the tabletop.
The room was silent. They stared at each other. The Bull’s eyes shifted. “You were barely fourteen.”
“Don’t treat me like a chip.” Justy fought to keep his voice steady. “I know what I saw. I saw him when he was hanging, I saw you cut him down, and I saw him when you laid him out. And I know now, he didn’t kill himself.”
The Bull’s face hardened. His eyes were cold. “You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I have a picture in my head of him, just as he was when you cut him down, before the dustmen took him away. I’ve spent the last four years comparing it with real corpses. Some hanged, and some throttled. With rope, with hands, and with wire. I’ve come to learn what a self-murder by hanging looks like, and I can tell you for certain, my father wasn’t one.”
“That’s slicing the gammon pretty thick.”
“Is it? Let’s talk about the rope, then.”
“Don’t test me, boy.” The words were a low growl. Justy ignored them.
“We had a length of rope in the scullery. It was six feet long, left over from the move to the big house. I remember Father telling the cook to hang it behind the door. It would have been perfect. But the rope that hanged him was a piece of ship’s hawser. Inch-thick hemp, with a stitched loop. And it was tarred. I remember how black it was against his neck. And filthy. Where did that rope come from? Father never went near the docks.”
The Bull said nothing. His hand tightened into a fist.
“And what about the knot?” Justy went on, ignoring the acid in his guts. “Father didn’t know one end of a rope from the other. But the knot on the banister was a perfect bowline.”
He drew a breath. “And then there were the marks on his neck. There was no diagonal rope mark, which there always is on a hanged body. There was just tar, smeared all over his throat. The tar wasn’t ground into his skin, which it would have been if he’d thrashed back and forth. And there was that thin line lower down, below his windpipe. I asked about it, but that drunk of a surgeon said it must have been made by the rope when he first put it over his head, before he jumped. I can’t believe I accepted it then, but I was a child. No one was listening to me. But I’ve seen marks like that since, many times. Garrote marks.”
Justy was standing now, his head pounding, the blood thumping in his temples. He pointed at his uncle. “You know I’m right. I can see it in your eyes.”
The Bull ran a hand over his face. Suddenly he looked old. “I had to take an axe to that rope. There was bits of tar flying everywhere. It felt like it took me forever.” His voice was soft.
Justy sat down. “There was no way he could have tied it. Even if he knew the knot. You’d need hands like iron for a job like that.”
“Aye. And Francie’s hands never saw a day’s hard labor, right enough.” The Bull looked away, something in his eyes.
“So you did suspect something.”
The Bull said nothing.
“Uncle?”
He shook his head. “Even if you’re right, and I’m not saying you are, it was near eight years ago. What are you going to do about it now?”
Justy reddened. “Find out who did it, and why.”
“Look at you, breathing smoke and spitting fire.” The Bull’s smile reaching his eyes.
“Don’t mock me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
There was a loud crack from the fireplace, and a large ember flew across the floor. Justy ground it out under his heel. “I want to know who else was in the partnership that Duer had with my father. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about it.”
The Bull gave him a blank look. “We had an agreement, your father and I. He didn’t bother himself with my affairs. And I didn’t bother myself with his.” He thought for a moment. “Who did you speak to, up at the jail?”
“A Marshal, name of Desjardins.”
“That fat madge. Was Callum Drummond there? He’s chief of the guard.”
“There was an older man at the desk. Bald. With a brand on his cheek. You know him?”
“Aye. He’s an old soldier. A broken pisspot like most of them. But he’s been a jailer there for years. He was there when Duer was locked up.”
“Do you think he might know something?”
The Bull shrugged. “Maybe. No harm in asking.”
“Let me do it. I want the truth, not some story he’ll make up to stop you cutting off his tallies.”
The fire cracked again, and Justy felt a wave of tiredness wash over him. “I should go.”
The Bull heaved himself to his feet. “You’re welcome here, Justice. My lads told me you’ve taken a place in the New Town, but your old room’s still made up for you, if you want it.”
Justy stood up slowly. “Thanks, but no. I’ll take a few things now. I’ll send for the rest when I’m settled.”
“As you like.”
He stuck out his hand, and, without thinking, Justy took it. His uncle pulled him close.
“You’ll be back, and not just for your tackle.” The Bull’s eyes were narrow and his face was set hard. Justy could smell the meat on his breath. “You’re young and you think you’re invincible, but one day you’ll need something from me, from my world. And then we’ll find out who you really are.”