The Gods of Gotham Page 6

  Matsell, I later learned, was only thirty-four when he was selected by a Democratic majority in the Common Council to serve as the first New York City chief of police. But the man before us, standing ponderous as a walrus and twice as weathered, seemed much older. His twin reputations for holiness and debauchery must have preceded him, but—apart from realizing that he was unforgettable in person—I don’t think anyone even began to take his measure that day. I can say now for a fact that he’s equally intelligent and bluntly forceful. He’s also near enough to tipping three hundred pounds on the scale. His whole fleshy face is based on the shape of a capital A: small brows drawn tight toward his nose, deep folds from his nostrils to his thin, downward-pointing lips, fainter creases continuing from his mouth down his jowls.

  “That pack of dead herrings known as Harper’s Police, or the bluecoats, has been permanently disbanded, thank Christ. Congratulations on your new appointments, to be terminated at the end of one year,” Matsell called out in a flat baritone, pulling a piece of notepaper from his yards of grey sack coat and peering at it through round spectacles. “After election results—should the balance of the Common Council and the assistant aldermen remain the same—naturally you’re welcome to reapply.”

  He’d just described why men like Valentine are so very busy: a big enough political upset means all your friends are out of work and living in broken-down abandoned train cars north of the porous borders of civilization around Twenty-eighth Street. Elections decide which horde of rats gets to gnaw at the bones. I felt a bit like a rat just knowing how I came to be there, for if there were any voters save Democrats present, they kept good and snug about it.

  “Some of you,” the chief continued, “look as if you’re itchy to know what exactly you’re going to be doing.” A few dark laughs and a shuffling of boots. “Your shifts are sixteen hours. During those sixteen hours a day—or night, of course—you are charged with the prevention of crime. If you see a man breaking into someone’s ken, arrest him. If you see a vagrant child, collect it. If you see a woman pick the pocket of a tourist, collar her.”

  “How about if she’s just a mab strolling the back drags for a gentleman friend?” called out a slouched rough. “Do we arrest her? Ain’t whoring a crime?”

  About a dozen men laughed outright at this question. Two or three whistled. Silently, I agreed with them.

  “Sure thing,” Matsell replied placidly. “Second thought—she’d have to go with you nice and quiet and you’d need the men who bought her to testify in court, so why don’t you start by building the world’s biggest holding cell and let us know when you’re finished.”

  Another ripple of laughter, and for the second time I felt a barbed twinge of interest. This was obviously going to be a job that required some thought from day to day, not work that turns a man into a glorified donkey.

  “Back to it, then: if you start dragging every owl you see into the station house on whoring charges, I’ll send you to hell myself. No one has that kind of time. Fees from the city have been abolished, but whether you accept rewards from pleased citizens is your own business,” our chief announced, reading down his long nose from his scribbled notes. “We’ve sacked the following inspection departments: streets, parks, public health, docks, hydrants, pawnbrokers, junk shops, hacks, stages, carts, roads, and lands-and-places. Those men are now you. The Sunday temperance wardens and the bell ringers are gone. Those men are also you. The fifty-four fire wardens are gone. Who are they now, Mr. Piest?”

  The crab-faced old scoundrel in the Dutch boots jumped to his feet with his wrinkled fist in the air crying, “We are! We’re the fire wardens, we’re the shield of the people, and God bless the good old streets of Gotham!”

  A round of applause and crude hoots that were exactly half sardonic and half approving went up.

  “Mr. Piest here is one of the old guard,” Chief Matsell coughed, pushing his spectacles up his nose. “You want to know how to find stolen property, talk to him.”

  I privately doubted whether Mr. Piest, who’d discovered the egg on his vest and was scraping at it with his thumbnail, could find his own arse. But I kept dark about it.

  “The majority of you lot will be appointed as roundsmen today, but there are a few special positions still open. I see a great many firemen here. Donnell, Brick, Walsh, and Doyle, you’re fire liaisons and I’ll be appointing more. Anyone here speak flash?”

  I was almost startled by the reaction—dozens of hands shot into the air, primarily from the wickedest-seeming American dead rabbits, the Britishers with tattoo marks, and the most scarred-up Irishmen. The Germans, almost universally, held their peace. Meanwhile, the air had turned lightning-sweet and thunderstormish. Whatever these positions were, they obviously were the shortest route to direct dealing with New York’s underbelly.

  “Don’t be modest, Mr. Wilde,” Matsell added mildly.

  I glanced in shock at our chief from under the brim of my hat. I’d felt downright transparent an instant before, but seemed like I’d been wrong.

  Flash, or flash-patter, is the curious dialect spoken by foisters, panel thieves, bruisers, dice burners, confidence men, street rats, news hawkers, addicts, and Valentine. I’ve heard tell it’s based on British thieves’ cant, but damned if I’ve ever heard them compared. It’s not a language, exactly—it’s more like a code. The words are slang substitutes for everyday speech, employed when a bloke who already knows the patter would prefer the bespectacled accountant sitting next to him to mind his own bloody business. The word flash itself, for instance, means a thing is about as spruce as possible. Of course, most of the men and women who speak it are poor. So some of our street youth grow up jabbering nothing else. And every day more honest workaday folk accidentally use flash terms like “my pal” and “kick the bucket,” but those are pretty amateur corruptions of everyday language. Matsell meant a higher level of expertise.

  And not only was every damn rogue and rabbit present now staring at me, I couldn’t see how Matsell had worked out who I was when only my lower face was visible.

  “I’m not a bit modest, sir,” I answered truthfully.

  “You mean to tell me you can’t understand your own brother speaking, or Captain Valentine Wilde of Ward Eight lied when he said you’d be our most apt new recruit?”

  Captain Wilde. Of course. Same youthful features, same deep hairline, same muddy blond coloring, except for only half the size and three quarters of the face. I set my jaw so hard my raw skin began throbbing under its light layer of bandaging. Typical Val. Not enough to get me a position I wasn’t suited for and didn’t want. Everyone had to be watching when I, as it’s said, kicked the bucket.

  “Neither,” I replied with an effort. “I’m no dab hand, but I can work on it.”

  That was flash for “I’m not proficient.” But I’d every intention of doing my best.

  Mr. Piest’s arm shot up like a Fourth of July rocket. “Will there be training for us and for the new recruits before we go on duty, Chief?”

  I’ve never seen George Washington Matsell snort, but that was as close as he’s yet come to it in my viewing.

  “Mr. Piest, it’s as much as I can do to get us launched without our noble populace screaming out ‘standing army’ and aborting us out of pure patriotism. I need hardly add that the loudest patriots are currently wholesale villains. There isn’t a moment to lose—the captains will take you through your paces and hand out scheduling assignments according to my guidelines, flash speakers where they’re most needed, and you start tomorrow. Good morning, and good luck.”

  Chief Matsell moves with remarkable speed for his size, like a bull charging, and was gone in another eyeblink. A wave of murmurs rustled the crowd, the energy muttering in my breast. The pair of captains, who seemed to be the tall black-Irish man in the plug hat and the native Bowery type with the greased sidelocks and calcified eyes next to him, exchanged puzzled looks. What did he mean by “paces”? I saw pass the American’s lips. It’s
an easy skill, one I learned within two months of tending an oyster bar that sounded like a mob riot. Tough to pass a fellow a drink if you can’t tell what he wants.

  They ought to be knowin’ how to march in case of riots, which would be a danger to the entire city, the Irishman replied, nodding sagely. A well-formed marchin’ police force, that would go a fair way to breakin’ a mob.

  By Jove, if that isn’t the very thing.

  So we spent the next three sweat-drenched hours learning to march in formation in the Tombs courtyard. It didn’t do much to help us learn policing. But it sure seemed to give the inmates being led from the court to the cell block a pleasurable time.

  I was nearest the door leading back to the courthouse when we were through the ridiculous parade training and thus the first to be assigned. When I was seated on a pine stool before a wizened clerk and asked about my qualifications, I flinched inwardly but played the hand I’d been dealt. “I speak flash a little,” I said.

  God help me.

  “In that case, we’ll route you past where Centre crosses Anthony. Four in the morning to eight in the evening is your shift,” the clerk announced. He pulled a sketched map from one of several piles. “Here is your course when you make rounds. No drinking, carousing, or other entertainment while working. Your number will be one-zero-seven. Report for duty here at the Tombs tomorrow at four.”

  I stood up.

  “Wait a moment.”

  The clerk reached into a large leather satchel and pulled out a pin shaped like a copper star. He placed it in my hand with a muttered, “When you’re on duty, you’re not meant to take it off, mind.”

  I passed my fingers over the metal. It was a plain thing, a bit misshaped. Just a hammered star, with a dull polish the color of the dead leaves blanketing City Hall Park in the autumn. Nothing much to look at, but then, they’d made them in a hurry, I thought. I touched the crown of my hat to the clerk and was the first man out the wide granite doorway.

  An officer of the New York City Police Department.

  There are fifty-five of us in the Sixth Ward, and a wider range of pure and half-bred scoundrels you won’t find. But there’s a common vein to us nevertheless, and I put my finger on it as I walked home to Elizabeth Street and a growler of Bavarian lager.

  We’re damaged right down to the last man, I’ve discovered, we 1845 star policemen. Perforated. There’s something the city hasn’t given us quite yet, or has taken away, a lacking shaped a little different every time. We’re all missing bits and pieces. For each of us, there’s a gap no one can quite ignore.

  I was still puzzling out the best way to both hide and ignore my own unsightly punctures when the blood-covered girl appeared, three weeks to the day later. Pulling at her hair like an Irish widow of half a century, the moonlight painting her dress a dull stiffening grey.

  Her name is Aibhilin ó Dálaigh. Little bird is what it means—Bird Daly. And she was about to turn the city upside down. August twenty-first was also the date, as it happens, when we found that poor baby. But I am getting ahead of myself.

  FOUR

  At No. 50 Pike Street is a cellar about ten feet square, and seven feet high, having only one very small window, and the old-fashioned, inclined cellar door. In this small place, were lately residing two families consisting of ten persons, of all ages.

  • Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York, January 1845 •

  Mrs. Boehm’s naturally early baker’s hours had already proven a godsend, for my landlady willingly rapped at my door at three thirty, before the day broke. A sallow stain from her taper’s light would be just visible, and I’d call out, “Good morning!” before rolling to my side with a groan. Such was my new routine. The silent trickle of honey-colored light would drift back down the stairs as I changed the dressing on my face in the near-dawn gloom, relishing the half hour of cooled air before the sun contaminated it.

  I will look at my face, I thought every morning, though in truth I hadn’t a mirror of my own. Followed by Why haven’t you stolen a keek at your face in some shop window or other by this time? in the afternoon. Next would clang You’re spooney in my brother’s voice, each and every night as I blew out my bedside candle, and then I’d plummet into exhausted slumber. Telling myself all the while that my face was really an unimportant factor in the grand scheme of things. My ribs had healed quick enough, after all, and wasn’t it better to dwell on good news? I was strong as I’d ever been, though I’d not yet grown used to the fatigue dragging at my bones when I was awakened before the sun had yet caressed the lip of the world. Good looks are trivial, I’d think. Or I’m not a vain person.

  And I already knew more than enough about it, didn’t I? You were lucky, I heard the stooped, nasal-sounding doctor telling me the day before I’d quit Valentine’s, not to have lost your eye. As it is, the damage will probably not affect your range of facial movement in the regio orbitalis—the scarring will be extensive, but the muscles of the frontalis and orbicularis oculi will work normally. So I knew the medical jargon, and I knew that all the skin from the level of my right eye upward, covering my temple and a third of my brow and even a bit into my hairline, felt perpetually aflame, and I knew the expression that flickered across my brother’s face when he supposed I didn’t savvy he was watching me. That was plenty of information, wasn’t it?

  Truthfully, my stoicism was all bluff—the thought of seeing myself turned my stomach. It was a coward’s avoidance, not a resigned and phlegmatic survivor’s. But no one I encountered knew me well enough to either notice or mention that niggling fact, and I was back to scrupulously avoiding Val, and so it was fine. Everything was fine.

  On the morning of August twenty-first, for the first time my own body awoke with a gentle slip into consciousness at around three o’clock. It ought to have been a sign, but I didn’t notice. And so I watched the veil of clouds from my window that would smother the city until the storm broke. An atmosphere like being drowned.

  Downstairs I left a penny on the clean countertop and took a roll of bread from the basket of yesterday’s leavings. Shortcuts. Placing my wide-brimmed hat on my head and the roll in my pocket, I set off for the Tombs, where my day’s long shift commenced. My beat had for a fortnight been a pretty fascinating blur, though I was wary about admitting as much. But I may as well be frank: I was a roundsman on a very interesting circuit. As for what roundsman entails, the word is its own definition: I walked in a circle until someone wanted arresting. Simple as that, and yet how engaging it was, to pass steady and silent through scores of people, casually scrutinizing them, making certain none of them needed any help or meant any harm.

  After I signed in at the Tombs, my route took me up Centre Street. The trains with their enormous horses lumbered past me, wheels churning thick cinders into pavement dust for the bootblacks to erase. When I reached the imposing gasworks building at the corner of Canal and Centre, I turned left. Canal seemed to me a wonderful pulsing fray of a street—greengrocers crushed up against haberdashers, windows stuffed with gleaming shoes, windows packed with bolts of turquoise and scarlet and violet silks. Above the profusions of clocks and of straw hats lived the clerks and laborers and their families, men’s elbows resting on high sills as they sipped their morning coffee. On the north side as I reached Broadway stood a hackney stand, the tops of the four-wheeled coaches thrown open to the pinkening sky, drivers smoking ninepin cigars and gossiping while awaiting the first fares of the day.

  Broadway was my cue to turn south. If there’s a wider street on earth than Broadway, a street more roiling, a street with a more dizzying pendulum swing between starving opium fiends with the rags rotting off of them and ladies in walking gowns bedecked like small steamships, I can’t imagine it nor do I want to. Colored footmen sitting atop phaetons and wearing summer straw hats and pale green linen coats whirred past me that morning, one nearly colliding with a Jewess selling ribbons from a wide hinged box hung around her neck. Ice delivery men from the Kn
ickerbocker Company, shoulders knotted with painful-seeming muscles, strained with iron tongs to hoist frozen blocks onto carts and then wheeled their cargo into the opulent hotels before the guests awoke. And weaving in and out, mud-crusted and randy and miraculously nimble, trotted the speckled pigs, rubbery snouts nuzzling the trampled beet leaves. Everything begrimed but the storefront windowpanes, everything for sale but the cobblestones, everyone pulsing with energy but never meeting your eye.

  From Broadway I turned east onto Chambers Street. On my left rose the elegant brick-fronted offices of lawyers and the coolly shuttered consulting rooms of physicians. To my right, meanwhile, squatted City Hall Park, encompassing not merely City Hall but the Hall of Records. Everything in it either sordid or brown. When I’d reached the end of that grassless canker, I’d find myself at Centre Street and make straight for the Tombs once more.

  It was where Centre Street crossed Anthony, just a block before the Tombs, that things got leery.

  In the two weeks I’d been a policeman, I’d made seven arrests. Each within spitting distance of where Centre crossed Anthony. Two gang coves on the mace, which is what my brother and the rest of the swindlers call swindling, selling fake stock certificates to emigrants. Three men I’d collared for being drunk and disorderly, which had been a challenge only in the sense that I had been forced to explain to them, “Yes, you are required by law to go with me; no, I don’t care that it will break the heart of your sainted mother; no, I’m not the smallest bit frightened of you; and yes, I am willing to drag you to the Tombs by your ear, if required.” Finally, I’d a pair of minor assault cases to do with hard liquor, weary workingmen, and the whores who’d been unlucky enough to get in the way. In Anthony Street itself, in either direction as your eyes cross the railway line, the houses are dark charcoal streaks from an unsteady hand dragged across the sky, and they come too cheap. They’re hungry buildings. Man-eaters, ready to swallow the nearest emigrant down a broken stairwell or rotting floor. Stuffed near to rupturing with Irish, of course. And on that morning, by the time I’d made my eighth slow circuit and the sun had burned past rose into yellow, they were calling my name.