Hell's Gate Read online

  At least he had his pistol. He felt good about that. He looked down at the hand that held it. He did his best to make it stop shaking. It had a will of its own and would not listen to him no matter how many times he told it to stop.

  He cursed himself for not using the pistol on Braddock. He’d been so surprised at being shot, all he could do was run. He closed his eyes and saw himself pumping bullets into the cop even after he fell to the street. That’s the way it should have been, the way it was going to be if he saw Braddock again. He could make his hand stop shaking long enough for that, he thought. He imagined Braddock’s back, a big target on it as he rushed up the street to shoot him. Wouldn’t he be surprised?

  Mickey had almost used the pistol a few minutes before when somebody was at the window. He’d held fire not out of concern for shooting some poor joker taking a piss, but because he didn’t want to alert the two detectives, one of which was almost certainly Braddock. Though he wanted to kill Braddock, he wasn’t brave enough or stupid enough to try it, not in his state. He still had enough presence of mind to know that. Braddock would have to wait for his killing. Mickey smiled as he leaned against the rough brick of the air shaft. Even if he didn’t have the pleasure himself, there’d be others. He’d gotten the word out.

  The sash by his left foot flew open. Mickey was startled and shot quickly without aiming, shattering the glass. Before he could see if he’d hit anything, before he could even fire another shot, the window on the fifth floor just above his head opened, too. Hands reached down and grabbed his shoulders. He tried to fire up, but his aim was thrown off by the arms that had popped out of the lower window, pulling at one leg. Another shot went off by itself as his hand tried to clutch something solid. Chips of brick rained down as his bullet ricocheted. But his balance had been lost and he began to fall.

  Mike felt Todt go. He didn’t have much of a grip on the man’s undershirt and Mike was already as far out the fifth-floor window as he could go. The sash was blocked by layers of old paint and hadn’t opened all the way. He’d barely been able to get his head and shoulders out. He’d held on as the shots seemed to explode in his ears, but Mickey Todt had still slipped away, tumbling, his shirt ripping in Mike’s hand. Primo nearly went with him.

  Mickey Todt fell to the bottom of the shaft, arms and legs twisting and thumping off the walls, his head striking a windowsill so hard the glass shattered and rained after him. He landed amid a pile of trash, the detritus of the tenement’s families. It threw up a billowing brown plume that was sucked slowly up like smoke from a chimney. Mike and Primo waited while the dust cleared, straining to see.

  The body seemed to float up, as if emerging from a great depth. Mickey’s face stared up at them. He didn’t move. His head rested on his right leg, which was twisted up behind him, almost as if he’d put it there, like a man might put his hands behind his head. Primo looked up at Mike from the window below and shook his head. Mike thumped his fist on the windowsill, but said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  9

  GINNY COULDN’T GET Mike out of her head. His flowers stood in a pitcher by the bedside, a riot of hope with the hint of curling, brown edges. Their afternoon together had somehow changed everything. She knew it shouldn’t be so. No few hours in any day should be so full of promise and yet also dread.

  She tried to remember the last time she’d felt things shift in her life. Not even the day her family had cast her out could be counted that way. There hadn’t been the sense then that things had changed in some fundamental way, as though the moon no longer rose at night. In truth she had left her family before they left her, had already made her choices in every way but her address. The cutting of that cord had been hard, but not unexpected, not unplanned.

  The opening of a door, the extended hand when they’d descended from their cab, the chair held out for her at Luchow’s, these were things unexpected. They had a meaning far beyond what they might for an ordinary girl. Mike had seen her not for who she was, but for who she wanted to be. After all the men who’d seen only her sex, she’d begun to lose her faith. That a man might see her as she saw herself was a wonder indeed. He’d treated her like a lady, a woman of grace and refinement, a woman worthy of respect and even love. She knew she had no right to those things, not by society’s rules. She had forfeited those rights when she’d chosen her life. But she had not forfeited her dreams.

  Mike had given her more than any man had before, a thing that had nothing to do with sex. It had been years since she’d had that kind of gift. She’d known that she couldn’t expect it. It had to be given freely, like the fairy-tale kiss that woke Sleeping Beauty. She almost felt that way, as if the day before had woken a part of her that had long been sleeping and tucked away, insulated from pain. But in the waking there was much to fear. The note with his flowers had read only, “Warmly, Mike.”

  These thoughts ran through Ginny’s head, blocking out most everything else. She had a hard time acting out her role, playing wanton when Mike was the only man on her mind. She tried to imagine that it was Mike she was with, when instead she was with a man who called himself Johnny Suds. He was a beer salesman, or at least that’s what he’d told everyone. She’d seen him before and did not cherish the memory. Suds behaved like a gentleman with Miss Gertie and Kevin, but he had a very different reputation with the girls. He was rough and drunk.

  Still, she did her best, moaning things that seemed like a bad jokes to her ears, but Suds didn’t seem to notice. Speeding up, he tore at her already tender spots. She moaned again, but this time from pain. She did her best to get it over, using all the tricks she knew, but Suds was oblivious. His breath forced her to turn her face away. He kept hammering harder still, telling her she was a whore, a dirty little whore. He said other things too, things that Ginny had heard before, but never listened to. She tried to block them out and think of Mike, but she found she couldn’t now. Her mind cried out for him to rescue her, but there was no rescue to be had. She began to listen then to the vile words growled in her ear and began to think again that those words were true.

  She was crying when Suds collapsed on her, carelessly crushing the air from her lungs. She cried for herself and for what she had once again become. She was no lady, no girlfriend, nobody! She had no right to a man like Mike. She was dreaming if she imagined he could really want, much less love, a whore like her. How could she ever be with him again after an animal like Johnny Suds? Mike would always be beyond her if she stayed where she was, gasping beneath a stinking drunk.

  She pushed Johnny’s flaccid bulk off her, rolling him to one side, sobbing with the effort. Johnny stirred. “Like that, huh?” he mumbled. He sat up and grinned at her. “One o’ them cryin’ types, huh? Give you somethin’ ta cry about, bitch.” Suds pulled his hand back, an ugly glare flashing across his face.

  Stamping feet echoed from the hall and Suds’s eyes flickered toward the door. When he looked back, the heavy pitcher, filled with Mike’s flowers, had found its way into Ginny’s hand. It crashed against his head in a shower of jagged shards, old water, and happy colors. Kevin and Miss Gertie burst in, followed by a friend of Suds’s that Ginny had seen downstairs. They arrived to see Suds as he hit the floor.

  Ginny didn’t feel much of anything. She should have been happy to have cracked Suds’s head, but she couldn’t stop sobbing. She wasn’t even certain why she was. There didn’t seem to be any emotion behind her cries, just a release, like steam from a kettle. Not even the blood that smeared her hands when she tried to cover herself from Kevin’s eyes could bring forth a true emotion. The blood didn’t seem to really be hers, though it stained the bed under her. The pain was hers, and the ache in her face where Suds hit her. She was sure of that, but it was somehow disconnected. She wondered at that as the shouting in her room boiled up. Suds was there, holding his bleeding head and pointing a finger at her. Kevin was there, one hand on Suds’s chest, pushing him back, and Miss Gertie and Rachel and Eunice, too. They’d heard her c
ries and knew things had not been right and had fetched Kevin and Miss Gertie. They crowded around her bed, covering her, fetching sponges and towels. Ginny observed them all with a curious detachment.

  “Hit me with that goddamn pitcher,” Suds yelled. “Look at ’er. She still got the handle in her fuckin’ hand.”

  “I am lookin’ at her,” Kevin shouted back, his slungshot ready in one hand. “I see blood.”

  “That ain’t nothin’. She was lovin’ it; all cryin’ an’ moaney,” Suds spat. “I’ll have the cops in here if you don’t do what’s right.”

  The balding, mustachioed man in the doorway buttoned up his trousers. He interrupted and said, “There’ll be no cops, Miss Gertie, but there’ll be other troubles if things don’t go right. Johnny may not be a gentleman, but that’s no cause to have pitchers broken on his skull.”

  Turning to Miss Gertie he said, “I know people. She’s a whore for chrissake, she’s gotta expect a little rough play. No real harm in it.” With a gesture, the man herded Miss Gertie and Kevin into the hallway.

  “Who…?” Ginny asked. “He’s got no right to.”

  Rachel shushed her. “He’s got pull, Gin. He runs with Paul Kelly.”

  Ginny shivered. She knew that name and what it meant. She glanced at Suds, holding a towel to his head as he craned to see what was happening in the hall. Suds must be more than he appeared, she realized, and a part of her shriveled at the thought of what he might be capable of. They could hear the other man’s voice from the hall, but not the words. His baritone vibrated the walls in tones that left no room for argument.

  Kevin and Miss Gertie came back in a moment later. “You go now, Mister Suds,” Gertie said as if it was in her power to make that happen. Kevin, who’d gathered up Suds’s clothes, pushed them at his chest and moved him toward the door.

  “What the—” Sud began to protest.

  “Ich—” Miss Gertie caught herself. German always slipped out when she got angry. “I am doing right, sir. You get out now, please.” She would have been pleased to set Kevin loose and watch him beat Johnny Suds to a pulp. There was no percentage in that though, no matter how glad she might be to see it. He’d hurt Ginny, an asset, a solid earner, and a favorite with many customers. But on the other hand, Ginny could be replaced. Any girl could be replaced. “Mister Suds, you vill please not come back. You are no longer velcome in this house.”

  The other man’s voice rumbled from the hall, “It’s settled, Johnny. Be a good sport and let it go.”

  Suds deflated visibly, but managed to rally as he left, grunting, “Fuckin’ ain’t heard the last o’ this.” Suds shoved his way past Kevin, who caressed his slungshot with longing. Miss Gertie put up a hand and shook her head. When Suds was out in the hallway, she whispered a few words in Kevin’s ear. He nodded quickly and walked Johnny Suds out of the building.

  * * *

  It was perhaps two hours later that Ginny found herself standing in front of the house, looking left and right, trying to decide which way to go. She stood a long time, shifting from one foot to the other as if blown by a strong wind. A small carpetbag was in one hand. It held everything worth taking, which wasn’t all that much. She had a splitting headache, which had made any kind of decision a painful process; her clothes and shoes the most painful of all. Most of her flashy things she’d given to the other girls, not caring how much they’d cost. They were worthless to her now. She’d even left her diary, a thing too much filled with her old life, and its sorry memories; although her recent entries about Mike had made her hesitate to put it aside. She had been cast into the street like a defrocked nun. The notion brought a faint smile to her lips. Despite her pain, her pounding head, her hatred of Johnny Suds, her indignation, Ginny Caldwell was happy.

  Miss Gertie had told her she’d have to go. No hint of violence, at least on her girls’ part, had ever been permitted to exist within her walls and could not be tolerated now. She didn’t give a snap for Johnny Suds or his cracked head, but she couldn’t be seen to let the matter slide. It wouldn’t be good for the other girls, she explained, who might get ideas, and above all her business depended upon a clean reputation. Houses like hers were becoming a rarity now. Hers was no panel house, with thieves hiding behind the walls. Her customers paid handsomely for privacy, discretion, and security. They paid more than they had to so as to take their pleasures without fear.

  Ginny didn’t care, not about Miss Gertie’s reasons, not about the proper behavior of whores, the reputation of the house, not even about the growing bruise on her face. She knew that it had been as much the work of Kelly’s man as anything else. She was leaving, a thing that she’d learned was not easily done without Miss Gertie’s consent, or the fear of being dragged back by Kevin. Ginny was leaving and the price of her ticket had been paid in full.

  10

  “AN’ HOW’S DA kids?” Connors asked as Big Tim Sullivan settled into his office chair. His headquarters were in the Occidental Hotel, a once fashionable affair, now in decline. It was in a good location though, in the heart of his empire, on the corner of Bowery and Broome.

  “Ouch, growin’ like weeds, Chuck. Eatin’ me outa house an’ home.”

  Connors laughed, though his own experience with children was of the bastard variety. He took a seat across the cluttered desk from Big Tim and got a cigar going. Though Big Tim wasn’t a smoker or a drinker, he tolerated the habits in others. Connors looked about the office; a splendidly shabby affair with a window overlooking Bowery. He eyed the photos arranged on the walls. There were dozens; testaments to the warm and cordial relations Sullivan shared with the rich, the powerful, the political, the ecclesiastical, and the criminal elements of the city. McClellan was there, McKinley too, and, of course, Howe and Hummel, the best and certainly the most corrupt defense attorneys the city had ever seen. Even Roosevelt was captured shaking Big Tim’s hand, though he appeared less than pleased to do so.

  “Ah, if these walls could talk,” Connors said. “You’se come a long ways, Dry Dollar,” Connors said, calling him by his old nickname, from when he owned the Dry Dollar saloon on Chrystie Street, once the headquarters of the Whyos gang. Big Tim had six saloons now and many other interests beyond his nominal job; head of the Third Assembly District, which included the Bowery. Along with the famous gambler, Frank Farrell, and Big Bill Devery, possibly the most crooked cop in New York, Big Tim ran a protection racket for gambling joints throughout the city.

  Sullivan smiled, but said, “It’s just as well these walls stay silent.”

  “T’ings what get talked about here stays here. Always has always will,” Connors said, bristling at a reminder that he of all people didn’t need.

  Sullivan was a powerful man, more powerful than even the framed photos might seem to indicate. All the ward healers, all the shoulder-hitters, gamblers, bartenders, gang bosses, cops, city inspectors, pimps, and banco men in the district owed their allegiance and, in many cases, their existence to him. There was hardly a job in any of the city’s departments that he didn’t have control of one way or another, at least when it came to his turf.

  He’d started his career in his teens as a saloon keeper, but soon expanded that to controller of the Whyos’ votes and was a repeat voter of great talent and creativity. He’d won his seat in 1892 with a vote of 395 to 4. He’d beaten poll-watchers in his younger days and was without doubt one of the best shoulder-hitters the city had ever seen. He was a master of the shakedown, regularly putting the arm on local merchants, saloon keepers, gamblers, whores, liquor vendors, and the like to buy tickets to his many clambakes, chowder suppers, and summer outings to College Point.

  His generosity was every bit as outsized as his extralegal endeavors. It was widely agreed that he gave away something like $25,000 a year to the poor. He regularly went out at dawn with groups of the unemployed to secure jobs for them on the docks. His Christmas dinners for the down-and-outers of the Bowery were legendary and it was not unusual for him to host well mor
e than four thousand indigents. Thousands of pounds of turkey, hundreds of loaves of bread, thousands of pies, and at least a hundred kegs of beer would be consumed and every man left with a pipe, a bag of tobacco, new socks, and shoes.

  “So, you got a problem,” Sullivan said. He didn’t ask. Nobody who visited his office came without a problem.

  “Not my problem. A gentleman, name o’ Saturn, got a gamblin’ debt ta Kelly. Wants me ta meditate.”

  “Mediate,” said Big Tim, crossing his hands over his stomach.

  “Right,” Connors agreed. “Anyway, I figured youse could help.”

  “How bad?” Sullivan asked, tapping a pencil to his lower lip in an attempt to hide a smile.

  “Ten.”

  “Thousand?” Big Tim asked. He didn’t raise an eyebrow or give any other sign of his astonishment. It wasn’t that he was surprised at the number itself. Wealthy men sometimes lost that much and more. What was astonishing was that the debt was to Paul Kelly. Kelly wasn’t one to let a debt grow to those proportions. He’d had men killed for much less. People who owed Kelly either paid up quick or got hurt, usually both.

  “Who is this gentleman? Saturn, you said his name was?”

  “Knickerbocker Steamship Company. He’s da senior VP or somethin’. Kelly’s puttin’ da screws ta da guy.”

  “As only our Paul can do,” said Tim thoughtfully. “Can Saturn pay?”

  “Says he can. Needs time like they all do. Same ol’ story.”

  “And why would I want to help?” Tim asked, narrowing one eye at Connors.

  “Five percent. Five hundred fer a phone call or two.” They both knew it wasn’t quite as simple as that, but they nodded as though it was.