The USS Monitor was the first of three ironclad warships in its class ordered by the U.S. Navy early in the Civil War. Unlike the ironclads used by the Confederacy, which were merely wooden ships clad with iron armor, the Monitor was a brand-new class of ship, the hull almost completely underwater and built with a rotating turret with two cannons that could fire in any direction. In terms of armed warfare, it was as great an innovation as the tank was to mounted cavalry, or the machine gun was to the musket. The Monitor wasn’t particularly successful as a warship, but it became famous as the first ironclad to engage another ironclad in battle, at Hampton Roads, Virginia, engaging the CSS Merrimac, by then renamed the CSS Virginia, on March 8, 1862. Neither ship did much damage to the other, but in the end the Virginia was forced to withdraw, so it was considered to be a victory for the Union navy. Unfortunately, the USS Monitor sank during a storm off Cape Hatteras on December 31 of the same year, but the so-called “cheese box on a raft” had earned its place in history, and the forty-six surviving crewmen were treated much like the crew of the B-17 Memphis Belle eighty-two years later during World War II. Being a member of the Monitor crew was to be automatically conferred with the status of hero.
“It looks like our bog body was the real deal,” said Carrie, looking up from her computer in the Tribeca loft. “His name was Barnabus Andrew Coffin, originally from St. Lawrence, New York. He signed up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as a seaman, which probably means he was a whaler before that. He was twenty-three when he enlisted. He was sunk not once, but twice. He was part of the original crew at Hampton Roads, but then he was transferred to the USS Cairo, another ironclad, this one on the Mississippi, probably because they were looking for experienced crewmen. The USS Cairo was sunk clearing river mines at a place called Haines Bluff, Mississippi, on December twelfth, 1862, and our guy asked for a transfer back to the Monitor and his old crew, which he got. He rejoined the crew in Hampton Roads just in time for her to be sunk by a storm on December thirty-first. He survived that too and came to New York on leave sometime in July 1863. He was supposed to report for duty at the Jeronemus S. Underhill Dry Dock and Iron Works in Brooklyn for an assignment to the USS Keokuk, another ironclad that had just been commissioned. He never showed up.”
“How can we be sure it was him?” Slattery asked, sitting behind his own desk, which had already become a mess of papers, coffee cups and stacks of file folders.
“There were only two black crewmen on the Monitor,” said Carrie, glancing at her computer screen. “Coffin and a guy named Siah Carter. Both men survived Hampton Roads and the Cape Hatteras sinking. Carter was honorably discharged in 1865, married a former slave named Eliza Tarrow and had thirteen kids in a place called Bermuda Hundred, Virginia. It’s not Siah Carter, so it has to be Barnabus Coffin. The age is right, and so is the height. Five eight and three-quarters.”
“Or maybe it’s somebody who borrowed his uniform,” suggested Diddy, sitting at his reception desk close to the door.
“Just in time to have his throat ripped out. That’s a stretch,” said Carrie.
“It’s all a stretch,” responded Slattery in a moody voice. “And the kid’s right. Just because he’s got a hat on that says USS Monitor doesn’t mean he’s this Barnaby Coffin or whoever. It’s not like we can call up the guy’s dentist.”
Diddy beamed at Slattery’s agreement. Carrie tapped her teeth with the eraser end of a pencil and stared at the screen. “Let’s assume it’s Barnabus Coffin,” she said quietly. “What was he doing in the basement of a tenement on Minetta Lane?”
“It was a ghetto back then,” offered Slattery, “Worse than Five Points. He was black. Maybe he was visiting friends. Maybe he had family there.”
“Do you know much about Minetta Street and that area in the 1860s?” Carrie asked.
“Like I said, it was a ghetto.” He paused and looked across at Diddy. “No offense, kid, but it was called Niggertown.”
“None taken,” said the crossword champion. “Just a six-letter word to me. Like ‘whitey.’”
“Or ‘cracker.’” Carrie grinned.
“‘Cracker’s’ got seven letters,” said Diddy. “Good if you’re playing Scrabble.”
“What’s the point you’re trying to make, Dr. Norton?” Slattery sighed.
“The point is I can tell you more than any sane person would want to know about that address on Minetta, and the first thing I can tell you is that it was built in 1861 after a house owned by a man named Louderback had been torn down. The builder was a German named Strudder. Strudder built a standard five-story brick tenement with small windows and off-the-rack doors and fittings. It was an early form of prefab. It had a raised first story and a storefront supported on cast-iron piers. The storefront sold dry goods for a while, but it went out of business and turned into a laundry. The building was forty feet wide and sixty-eight feet deep on an eighty-eight foot, six-inch lot. The remaining twenty feet was used for a cesspool and privy for the whole building, which consisted of twenty apartments, four to a floor, two in the front and two in the back. Each apartment was somewhat less than five hundred square feet and generally housed at least eight people.”
“I still don’t see your point,” said Slattery.
“No basement?” Diddy suggested.
“That’s right,” nodded Carrie. “No basement. The ground was too soft, so they hammered iron piers into the mud and built on that. There was a subfloor with the laundry, and then five floors of apartments over that. The bog body was buried below the subfloor level.”
“Under the laundry?” Slattery asked.
“We’ve got pretty extensive plans of the building. He was under everything.”
“How could that be?” Slattery asked. “Somebody in the laundry dug through their own floor?”
“No. He was in the sewers,” said Carrie. “It’s the only answer.”
“I didn’t know New York had sewers back then,” said Diddy.
“They didn’t,” the archaeologist responded. “Not ones that carried actual sewage, but they did have a system of storm drains and aqueducts to control water flow. Minetta Creek flowed down the street to the Hudson; the city just covered it over with planks and bricks. That’s why the street still has a curve in it; the street follows the path of the old creek bed.”
“Then it’s even more of a mystery,” said Diddy. “Strange enough to be in the basement, but what was he doing in the sewer?”
“That’s an easy one,” said Slattery. “And now it’s actually beginning to make some sense.” He got up and went to the giant map of Manhattan pinned to the wall and found Minetta Street with his thick, blunt-nailed finger. “In my day they used to hide bodies in the Jersey Pine Barrens. Back then it looked like they just stuck them down the sewer.” He peered closely at the map. “I wonder where they put him into the system.”
“There’s eleven thousand miles of sewer, about a hundred and fifty thousand catch basins and almost five hundred legal outflows for sewage and wastewater in New York. Six thousand miles of pipe in Manhattan alone.”
“Why don’t I ask my dad?” said Diddy brightly.
“Your dad?” Slaterry asked.
“He’s a professor of history at Columbia,” explained the young man. “If he doesn’t know himself, he’ll know somebody who will.”
Slattery grinned. “I knew I was right about you,” he said.
“What was that, Detective?” Carrie said.
“I knew he’d fit right in, just like I said.”
Diddy picked up the phone and dialed.
Carrie got up and crossed over to where Slattery was standing. She stared at the map. After a minute she traced a pathway with her finger. “Water flows downhill,” she said. “Most people think Manhattan is flat, but it’s not. It’s always been highest in the center, like a spine that runs the length of the island on a midline that Fifth Avenue follows roughly.” She tapped her finger on Washington Square. “The square used to be a swamp, then a potter’s field, and then the original quad for NYU. This is where Minetta Creek originates, so the dumping point will be somewhere between here and the tenement site.”
“You’d make a pretty good detective,” observed Slattery. “Or have I told you that before?”
“Just an old smoothie, aren’t you?”
“While Diddy’s calling his dad, why don’t we see what else is in those little treasure chests of yours?”
They crossed the room to the big examination table and pulled the top off the box marked S-3. On the three-dimensional grid it had been Diddy who’d first noticed the presence of a relatively large metal object. In the box they discovered more coins, all of the same 1863 vintage, what might have once been a child’s toy whistle, and a large rust-and dirt-encrusted object approximately five inches long, with a large circular disk at one end and an oblong of oxidized metal at the other.
“This shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Carrie. She picked up the object in a pair of rubber-guarded tongs and carried it across to the far end of the main room, where a large glass-sided electrolyte tank had been set up. She attached an alligator clip to the central portion of the object, wrapped it in a piece of stainless steel mesh for an anode and attached a second alligator clip. Using the tongs again, she lowered the object, now wrapped in steel mesh, and then turned on the current. By that time Diddy had left his post at the reception desk and joined them.
“My dad said he’s got a friend who did his PhD on the New York sewer system. He’ll have all the possible access points by tomorrow at the latest.” He peered into the glass tank. Bubbles were beginning to form on the rusty object, and flakes of scaly red were magically beginning to drop off, falling through the steel mesh to the bottom of the vat. “What’s the electrolyte solution?” Diddy asked.
“Weak H2SO4,” said Carrie.
“Huh?” Slattery said.
“Bobby was a chemist’s son, but Bobby is no more. What Bobby thought was H20 was H2SO4,” rhymed Carrie. “It’s a fairly strong solution of sulfuric acid. Run an electric current through it and you’ve got the world’s greatest rust remover.” She stared into the tank. “It’s working.”
“A key,” said Diddy, excited, as more flakes of rust peeled away. “There’s some kind of design at the top.” They kept staring into the tank.
“Archaeology TV,” grunted Slattery. “Like watching clocks tick or paint dry.”
“Archaeology is patience. Just like being a cop,” said Carrie.
“Being a cop is donuts and free coffee at the 7-Eleven,” answered Slattery.
“It’s two letters, intertwined, “said Diddy. “A design. Old fashioned.”
“A G and a P,” said Carrie, squinting. She straightened, remembering an illustration in a book on the architectural history of New York she’d once seen. “Good Lord,” she said. “It’s one of the original keys to Gramercy Park.” Carrie frowned. “Now, how did our friend Mr. Barnabus Coffin get his hands on that?”