Lispenard Street in New York runs confusingly between West Broadway on the west to Broadway just south of Canal Street on the east. Pearl’s Paints is at the Canal Street end, and Nancy Whiskey’s is at the West Broadway end. In between there are dozens of old warehouses going back to the days when Lispenard Street was the center of the garment industry. Later it was the crackhead and paint-spattered center of the Tribeca art scene, but now it is all upscale galleries for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, with most of the Bogardus wrought-iron buildings turned into million-dollar granite-kitchen condos.
The loft at 45 Lispenard was in the first block off West Broadway. It was on the second floor above a coffee and juice bar and a place that sold old architectural bits and pieces such as ornamental lions and the concrete pediments from old building columns. In the two days since the promise of office and lab space, it was obvious that the Lincoln Corporation and Carrie’s bosses at Cornwell-Maibaum had been hard at work.
The condo had been cleared of furniture except for a couch and a few chairs around the entrance foyer, and then loaded up with desks, worktables, computers and every piece of electronic gear that an archaeologist had ever dreamed of, from infrared digital cameras to fluid detectors and very-high-end discriminating metal detectors and even a big, bright yellow Seeker ground-penetrating radar unit that looked like a robotic version of an outsized kiddie stroller. Two spaces in the loft had been turned into offices, one for Carrie Norton, the other for Max Slattery. The walls were white, the floors were hardwood and big windows looked out onto Lispenard Street on one side and an alley on the other. The view onto Lispenard was the back end of a postal station with delivery trucks parked up and down the street.
The day before, a huge shelf unit had been installed in the living room area and loaded with every reference book imaginable, from Jordan Kerber’s Lambert Farm: Public Archaeology and Canine Burials Along Narragansett Bay to Barbara Meil Hobson’s Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition. There was even the Seymour Greggs famous inventory of two hundred cesspits and privies excavated in downtown New York, including his seminal essay on the variety and uses of female urinals in the early treatment of venereal disease and the differences in basic diet between Polish and Irish immigrants based on the coprological evidence at hand.
“What’s coprology?” Slattery asked, biting into his dripping cheeseburger at the bar in Nancy Whiskey’s pub at the end of the block.
Carrie picked up one of the fat, beer-battered onion rings from the basket they were sharing and took a crunchy bite. “The study of shit,” she said. “Not to put too fine a point on it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Max. He shook some hot sauce between the bun halves of his burger and took another bite. “People actually study shit?”
Carrie nodded. “Coprologists do. You’ve never heard of the Lloyd’s Bank turd?”
Slattery put down his burger. “No.”
Carrie smiled. “Eight and a half inches long, sharp at both ends. Dropped by a Viking in a hurry at the Lloyd’s Bank site in London. The biggest fossilized human fecal deposit on record. It’s insured for fifty thousand dollars.”
“No.” The cop sounded impressed, either at the size of the artifact or its value.
“True,” said Carrie. She took another onion ring and sprinkled some salt on it. She took a bite. “They had it on display in a glass case in the lobby of the bank for years.”
“So maybe what we’re doing isn’t such a wild-goose chase after all,” said Slattery. He sipped at his pint of Kilkenny.
“It’s a bit of overkill, if you ask me.” Carrie shrugged. “But it’s smart marketing by the Lincoln people.”
“You mean it’ll keep James Washington Stone and his Rollnecks off guard,” grunted Slattery. He picked up his burger again and chewed. Stone, in an updated homage to Malcolm X, had all his volunteer workers, male and female alike, dress in black roll-neck sweaters and black trousers or skirts. There had been a few ugly comparisons to Mussolini’s fascist Blackshirts from the thirties, but the quasi uniforms were certainly impressive in a sinister way. One way or another it made the point: black isn’t just beautiful; it’s powerful as well.
Carrie nodded. “Something like that. We’ll take whatever heat comes along, and that loft is going to look great for press conferences and photo ops.”
“Dear Lord,” murmured Slattery. “The media.” He chomped through the rest of his burger in silence, wiped off his hangdog jowls with a napkin and took a slug of beer. “So where do we start? I’ve never done a hundred-and-fifty-year-old murder. An old lady clubbed to death in Flatbush in 1958 is my personal best.”
“You told me your computer’s hooked up to every cop database they could think of, and mine’s hooked into just about everything New York and every major university and museum the country has to offer. I figure I’ll track down the victim and you see what you can do with any of the stuff the other guys at the site have for us.”
“You really think you can find out who he was?” Slattery asked.
“That should be the easy part,” said Carrie. “It’s definitely a Civil War naval uniform he’s wearing, and they kept pretty meticulous records back then. The fact that he was an African-American should make it even simpler.”
Slattery picked up his Kilkenny and stared at the condensation on the side of his glass. “Why couldn’t the poor bugger have come from County Cork and saved us all a lot of trouble?”
“Think positively, Detective; the guy was killed during the Civil War. That means between 1861 and 1865. During the Civil War there were less than a million people here, against eight million now. That’s seven million suspects you don’t have to worry about, right there.”
“You are going to be a joy to work with, aren’t you, Dr. Norton?”
“Finish up the onion rings, Detective Slattery. We have to get back to the über-office to greet our new assistant.” An assistant had been assigned from the Administrative Division at One Police Plaza to take care of any filing and paperwork. He or she was due to arrive later that afternoon.
The assistant turned out to be a young black officer in patrolman’s uniform wearing horn-rimmed glasses. He was as lean as Slattery was fat, and his name was Archie Kling. Somehow he’d been given the nickname Diddy Kong by his companions at the Police Academy and it had stuck. He didn’t seem to mind. He’d been at Central Registry for two years and knew enough about police pension plans to put everyone to sleep in five minutes.
He was twenty-three years old and willing to do anything to get out of his assignment in the bowels of One Police Plaza. As far as Diddy was concerned, Max Slattery was his knight in shining armor. By the time they’d finished their lunch at Nancy Whiskey’s, Diddy was seated behind his desk in the foyer making up telephone call sheets for both Carrie and Slattery on his computer. He’d also made a fresh pot of coffee from beans ground in the shop downstairs.
“It’s Sulawesi,” he said after he introduced himself. “It’s my favorite, but I can get something else if you like.” He stood up when he talked to them.
“I like my coffee brown, with lots of Sweet’N Low,” said Slattery. “Beyond that, I don’t much care.” He stared at the young man. “Sit down,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Diddy. He sat. Carrie smiled.
“Don’t call me sir. My name is Max. Or Slattery, or if I start drinking with you I might even let you call me Slats. Get it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass.”
“Yes. Max.”
“Do you know what a coprologist does, Diddy?”
The young man barely hesitated. “Yes, Max. He studies shit.”
“Crosswords?” Carrie asked.
“New York Times, every day,” the young man said proudly. “Top ten at Stamford every year.”
“Stamford?” Slattery asked.
“Connecticut,” explained Carrie. “The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. It means he’s one of the ten best crossword puzzle solvers in the United States.”
“Yeah, you’ll fit right in,” said Slattery.
“Some people from Cornwell and Maibaum brought in some big plastic containers about an hour ago,” said Diddy. “They’re on the first examination table in the living room area. And this.” He held up a Sony Memory Stick.
“They tell you what it was?” Carrie asked. She took the mini–storage device from Diddy. The young patrolman consulted a notebook on the desk in front of him.
“They said to tell you it was the stratigraphic analysis of the interment site.”
“Which means?” Slattery asked.
“A three-D diagram of where the body was found and what else they discovered there. Come and take a look if you want,” said Carrie. “You too, Officer Kling.”
“Diddy, please.”
They went into the living room. The boxes were big, translucent Rubbermaid containers neatly labeled S-1 through S-9. There was a separate box off to one side simply labeled RD. Carrie switched on the computer at the end of the table and waited for it to boot up. “S stands for strata. Each of these boxes represents what was discovered in a one-foot deep, six-by-nine area around the body.”
“What about RD?” Slattery asked.
“Remains detritus,” explained Carrie.
“Come again?”
“Pocket litter,” said Diddy. “Right?” he asked Carrie.
“Right,” she answered.
“Maybe I should go and sit in a rocking chair somewhere,” muttered Slattery.
“Your time will come, Max, believe me.”
The computer went through its cycle and Carrie plugged in the memory stick. A few seconds later there was a wire-frame image on the screen that looked like a pale yellow elongated three-dimensional rectangle dotted with red, black and bright blue squares. Each of the squares had a tiny number beside it. In the middle of the rectangle, like an alien corpse in a sci-fi coffin, was a solid representation of the bog man in the naval uniform.
“What are we looking at?” Slattery asked, looking over Carrie’s shoulder.
“Red is organic material, black is bone or ceramic and blue is metal.”
“What’s all that metal stuff around where his feet are?” Diddy asked, pointing to a little cloud of blue squares.
“Max?”
“This some kind of test, Doc?” the cop said with a sour note in his voice.
“No test. Just wanted to see if you could figure it out.”
“Hobnails,” said Slattery easily. “From his boots. The smaller pieces are the tips from the laces.”
“Not bad,” said Carrie. “I’m impressed.”
“Good,” said the grizzled old detective. “Show some respect for your elders.”
“There’s something big and metallic on the edge of the S-3 layer,” said Diddy, pointing at the screen. “What’s that?”
“We’ll get to it,” said Carrie. “But let’s go through the man’s pockets first.”
She left the computer terminal and crossed to the pile of Rubbermaid boxes. She pulled a pair of disposable surgical gloves from the container on the table, snapped them on and peeled back the lid of the box marked RD. She began examining the scattering of objects with Slattery and Diddy looking on.
“Coins,” said Diddy, peering into the box. Carrie lifted one out and held it under the extension-lamp magnifier attached to the end of the table.
“Knickerbocker token,” she said. The one she held between her fingers had the figure of a stooped old man on one side and 1 CENT—PURE COPPER-I.O.U. on the obverse. She went back to the remains detritus box and picked up another token. This one had a bearded old man, a circle of stars and a date, 1863, on one side and a beer mug inside a laurel wreath with the name GUSTAVUS LINDENMUELLER and NEW YORK on the other side.
“Not like any money I ever saw,” commented Diddy.
Carrie peered closely at the coin under the magnifier. “They were store tokens, made of cheap copper alloy, sometimes bronze or cardboard or rubber. Lindenmueller ran a saloon; he gave them out in change after people started hoarding government coins. Every big store used them. They were used in general circulation, but they pretty much date the body because they were only used in New York for about a year: 1863, just like it says on the coin.”
“Oh, great,” said Slattery. “Time of death: sometime during the year 1863.”
“You’re such a pessimist.” Carrie grinned. She went back to the RD box and quickly looked through the rest of the objects: two more tokens, a broken piece of a clay pipe, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles with one lens cracked and the other missing altogether, a wooden button, a penknife corroded shut and what appeared to be a piece of cardboard folded down the middle. Somebody at the dig site had wisely placed the soggy piece of cardboard into a separate plastic bag to keep it from drying out unevenly.
Carrie set out a large blotter under one of the infrared heat lamps clamped to the table and used a small instrument called a bone folder to gently open the cardboard, laying it flat on the blotter. There was a picture of a black man on it in a dark blue naval uniform. He was smoking a clay pipe and wearing wire-rimmed circular spectacles.
“There’s our man,” murmured Carrie. She pulled the big extension magnifier over to look at the little photograph more clearly. “They used to use photographs like these as calling cards back in the Civil War. It was fashionable.” She paused, reading the ribbon on the old-fashioned flat hat the man wore on his head. “My God,” she whispered, “he was one of the crew on the USS Monitor.”
“As in the Monitor and the Merrimac?” Diddy asked. “The first ironclads?”
“That’s the one.” Carrie nodded. “Our bog body was famous, once upon a time.”
“Wonderful,” said Slattery. “Just what I need, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old celebrity killing.”