Outside St. Nicholas, Dr. Theodore Walser, one of the three Quarantine physicians, encountered Tompkins and pleaded with him to stop the mayhem. "Some of our patients are very ill," he said. "Shall they have nothing but damp ground for a bed?"
Tompkins looked around and saw that the Female Hospital had not yet been set on fire. "Take the patients there," he told Walser. "I pledge to you that the building will not be touched." Then he hurried off to post a guard by it.
Outside the brick wall, about two hundred more townspeople gathered to cheer the arsonists on. Several of them fired muskets into the air, adding to the growing panic inside. Walser heard an insistent pounding. Someone was trying to break through the Quarantine's main gate. He and McCabe grabbed firearms from a storeroom and ran toward the sound.
As they approached, the gate burst open. Through it came Thomas Burns and the men of Neptune Fire Engine Company Number 9, some of them lugging hoses and others dragging their steam-powered pumper truck. To Walser, this was not a welcome sight. Burns was one of the most vocal opponents of the Quarantine.
"I know you, Mr. Burns!" Walser shouted. "We don't want you here!"
Burns and his men moved forward. Walser and McCabe pointed their muskets at them. "Stand back!" Walser ordered. "We will put out the fire ourselves."
But now, the mob that had gathered behind the wall pressed through the gate. Some of them had guns too. Walser and McCabe were hopelessly outnumbered. Reluctantly, they stood aside. The entering mob rushed off to set more fires.
The firemen set down their burdens, sat in the grass, and watched the hospital burn. "Should have brought sausages for roasting," one of them said.
A boat docked at one of the Quarantine's wharves and disgorged a squad of Harbor Police. Their arrival had been delayed a quarter-hour by a 150-pound sturgeon that leaped into the boat. Its thrashing had threatened to break a hole in the hull, but the beast was finally wrestled overboard. As the squad debarked, it was met with hoots, howls, and a barrage of rocks. Most of its members retreated, but two of them joined the mob and rushed off to set fires.
Flames reached the roof of St. Nicholas Hospital now. In minutes, it collapsed. The statue of a sailor that had long stood on its peak toppled into the rubble. Inside, the floors gave way. One hundred iron beds crashed through them into the basement.
From his library window, Dr. Hollick watched the fires burn all night.
* * *
At dawn, smoke curled from the rubble. Hospital staff herded ambulatory patients onto the Cinderella for transport to makeshift quarters on Wards Island. Those too sick to be moved crowded the two floors of the Female Hospital. Remarkably, no patients had died in the fires; the stevedores and orderlies, with help from a few members of the mob, had managed to get them all out. But overnight, a yellow fever patient had perished from his disease. His body lay on the grass, covered by a blanket.
A stevedore was dead, a musket ball buried in his back. Perhaps he had been struck by a random shot fired over the wall. Perhaps one of the mob had killed him deliberately. But Dr. Walser suspected another stevedore had done it, perhaps taking advantage of the panic to avenge an old grudge about a woman.
That morning, handbills were distributed in Tompkinsville and the neighboring villages, inviting all to a community meeting at Nautilus Hall to celebrate the destruction of the Quarantine. At seven thirty that evening, two hundred people crowded into Burns's hotel. There, amid much drinking of beer and hard liquor, they unanimously passed a resolution affirming the right of the people of Staten Island to rid themselves of the hazardous facility.
At ten p.m., Tompkins and a local hothead named Tom Garrett led celebrants out of the hotel. They crossed the street, pushed through the Quarantine's shattered front gate, and attacked the handful of buildings that had been spared the night before. They wrenched shutters and porch rails from Dr. Walser's and Dr. Bissell's residences, piled them inside, doused them with camphene, and set them alight. Then they swept across the grounds, burning the coffin house and several cottages where the boatmen lived. When that was done, they burned the wharves.
They surrounded the Female Hospital and gave the staff fifteen minutes to get the patients out. After the sick had been placed on the grass beside the brick wall, the building was torched. It went up like a bonfire.
At the wall, hot cinders fell on the prostrate patients, and the heat from the fires grew unbearable. Quarantine staff poured buckets of water on the sick to cool them.
Around midnight, as the mob straggled out of the gate, it began to rain.
* * *
The next day, Tompkinsville's saloons were packed with revilers. A thousand members of the Metropolitan Police arrived from Manhattan to restore order. The following week, the 8th Regiment of the state militia set up in the foothills outside the village to discourage any further disturbances. Sixty US Marines were deployed to protect federal property in the area.
There proved to be little for any of them to do.
Local police, under pressure from state authorities, reluctantly rounded up a dozen members of the mob. They were promptly released, their bail paid with cash that Cornelius Vanderbilt sent over on the ferry. New York's favorite tycoon, it seems, had been born on Staten Island.
In the end, charges were brought only against Thompson and Tompkins.
New York City newspapers demanded retribution. The New York Times was especially relentless, branding the two ringleaders "diabolical," "savage," and "inhuman." The pair had been motivated not by fear of disease but by greed, the Times thundered. They had cared about nothing but the Quarantine's deleterious affect on the value of their property.
That fall, Thompson and Tompkins were tried before Judge Metcalf. Dr. Walser and Dr. Bissell testified about what they'd witnessed on the nights of the fires. So did the watchman, McCabe, and a host of others.
The defense, led by Attorney Atherton, disputed none of their testimony. Instead, they offered a string of witnesses, including Dr. Hollick, who testified to the sickness and death the Quarantine had long visited upon the people of Staten Island. And they entered into evidence the Castleton Board of Health's resolutions as proof that the townspeople were justified in taking action "to abate a nuisance."
At the conclusion of the three-week proceeding, Atherton rose to make his closing statement: "I demand their immediate release on the grounds that they have committed no crime, but have simply done their duty as citizens and men. Here among their fellow citizens and neighbors, they will be looked upon as men of noble hearts who have acted fearlessly and zealously for the public good."
Judge Metcalf issued his ruling without delay: "Undoubtedly, the city of New York is entitled to all the protection in the matter that the state can give, consistent with the health of others. She has no right to more. Her great advantages are attended by corresponding inconveniences; her great public works by great expenditures; her great foreign commerce by the infection it brings. But the legislature can no more apportion upon the surrounding communities her dangers than her expenses; no more compel them to do her dying than to pay her taxes. Neither can be done."
And so he set Thompson and Tompkins free.
The decision surprised no one. The judge's sympathies were well known. His house was located just a quarter-mile from the Quarantine. And a decade earlier, he had attended his own brother, caressing his brow with cloths dipped in ice water and changing the sweat-drenched bedding three times daily, in the week that it took him to die of yellow fever.
PAYING THE TAB
BY MICHAEL LARGO
Four Corners
Eddie Lynch had opened the doors every afternoon at two since 1980. Even when his mother died, he came back in his funeral suit to fill the bins with long necks and dump them over with pails of ice. He wiped out the speed racks, dipped the glasses in the first sink of soap, and the two others for rinse. The day he bought the Sunnyside Lounge from old man Sully he promised not to change a thing, and he hadn't. The same woo
d panels painted black, L-shaped mahogany bar with a pipe for a foot rail, and swivel stools with red seat pads. He had reskinned the pool table in the back room many times, but always in red felt the way Sully said a bar pool table should be.
"Character," Sully had said. "Bars take on their own—and you can tell it by its aromas, if you let them fester. If I hear you add hanging ferns or make this shithole fancy, I'll come back from my urn and burn you alive."
Eddie knew that Sully was selling it to him for less, and not giving it to Sully's daughter like she wanted, because of his name: Eddie Lynch, the onetime famous local kid who had his name stolen as an alias by one of the greatest banker robbers of the twentieth century.
"Every busted nose, clogged toilet, and last-call puke lives in the walls." Sully wanted Eddie to know what he was getting into. Eddie remembered that day, looking at the small hexagonal floor tiles, and came to know that no matter the mopping of ammonia, Sully was right.
Today, Eddie left the front door unlocked while he stocked. He knew the soda gun guys were coming, wanting their cut, once again raising their fees. He saw the wedge of bright daylight slice in when the inner doors opened and thought it was them. But it was the first customer of the day, a man in a suit carrying a long-stemmed rose. When he took the stool that was normally Max's, he asked for a glass of water, bourbon in a rock glass, and a glass of red wine.
Eddie served him what he wanted and figured he'd have plenty of time to hear the winded BS of why the man was putting a flower in a water glass—since they all had their stories. That was what bars were for: telling your side of life's injustices to the captured bartender. But Eddie went outside to see if they had picked up the black trash bags piling ever higher on top of the dumpster. He'd start getting fines from the health department soon. Eddie refused to pay the rate hike on trash pickup and could get no new service to break waste removal routes and territories, all of that racket long established and divvied up.
Eddie went out the back door and surveyed like he always did before he opened for business. The bar's sign was white script letters painted on dark blue glass-paneled siding. The plate glass windows that ran on the Manor Road side were so dark he saw only a reflection of himself when he passed.
The last month or so, especially now with the garbage problem and the soda gun guys, he realized he was getting too old for this. He thought he saw Sully's face, the big cigar in his mouth, never lit and soaked at the end like a soggy dipstick, instead of his own reflection. Sully was laughing at him, giving him his classic nod that he gave to the parade of the misguided who sat on the swivel stools waiting for the bartender's verdict: Now you did it, you went too far.
"Everybody thinks owning a bar is easy, but it's a rock in your shoe, and a revolving hand in your pocket," Sully had told him.
It had been a dive, the Sunnyside, and would remain as such as long as Eddie could manage to keep its "character." But he was starting to understand how Sully one day said yes, and took Eddie's bag of cash, signing over his license. Red-faced Sully, with his permanent six-months-pregnant beer belly, never did make it to Florida like he planned, and died during a bypass in the hospital. No sunshine for Sully, and the curse of the Sunnyside got Eddie too, just as Sully predicted.
Eddie had been famous when he was a kid. Everyone knew the story of how the legendary gentleman bank robber, Willie Sutton, a.k.a. Willie the Actor, stole his name. There was a yellow newspaper clipping framed and hanging near the register to prove it. "You'll add a splash of character to the joint," Sully had said.
Continuing his daily outside survey, Eddie turned the corner onto Victory Boulevard. The street was empty, not a car up or down, like it was four a.m. Sunday, but the sun was out. Eddie stopped. There was a body on the sidewalk. A chubby guy, looking to be maybe twenty, dressed in a 1950s suit and overcoat. He was sprawled in that odd way only the dead can land, one leg out, one hand turned sideways. His fedora resting neatly two feet away, while a pool of blood slowly ran from the crotch of his trousers. His eye sockets were pockets of red, filled to the brim and dribbling down the sides of the head. Eddie knew it was the kid who'd spotted Willie Sutton on a bus in Brooklyn and then went and told the cops. It was the classic snitch shooting, with the first bullet dropping him to his knees and the eyes telling you to keep what you see to yourself. Eddie backed away and hurried along the Manor Road side and into the rear door of the bar.
"What the . . . ?"
The man with the rose pushed his rock glass forward and tapped the side. Eddie reached for the bottle and poured more by reflex, though he wondered what the hell was happening to his mind. He had seen that sprawled body a hundred times in his dreams, but never while he was working. Why were there no cars?
"You," the man knocked back the drink in one gulp and pushed the glass forward for another. "You're the owner, right?" He took the rose from the water glass and smelled it.
Eddie put on his reading glasses and looked for the numbers of services the bar used, and found the one for garbage pickup taped to the side of the ice machine. He'd call the trashmen and agree to pay most of the rate hike if they'd come and empty the dumpster today. It was the stress, he knew, and before he called, Eddie broke his own rule by pouring himself a scotch, which he never—almost never—took until after midnight. "You got to keep an eye in the back of your head," Sully had warned, "or they'll steal the shoes off your feet while you're walking."
"Sutton broke out of a Philadelphia prison. He tunneled, didn't he, like in a movie, in 1947," the man said as he put his rose back in the glass. "Another." He pushed the rock glass forward again, but left the wine untouched.
The trash number was a busy signal. "Listen, pal, I'm not even opened yet," Eddie said. "Drink, relax. I see your hundred there on the bar, so you can drink until you tell me to call you a cab. But—" Eddie dialed again and it was still busy, "I got business."
The man took out a pouch of tobacco and began to hand roll a cigarette.
"No smoking. You know the laws."
"You ain't open, pal," the man said, mimicking Eddie. He reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of cash in a bank wrapper, placing it on the bar. "That's ten thousand dollars, unmarked. I'm gonna smoke and you're gonna stay closed until I tell you."
Eddie looked closer at the man and he seemed familiar, but Eddie couldn't place him. He paused, then picked up the bundle of cash and fanned through the bills. "Never take their money," Sully had said, "or then they will really own you." Eddie poured the man another drink and put the money next to the rose.
"This is for?"
"So I can smoke. No strings. Take it." The man looked around the bar. "The floor is filthy. You haven't mopped and the tables are filled with bottles and glasses. You're a long way from opening, anyway."
Eddie always cleaned the bar after last call, turned on the bright lights, switched the setting on the back of the juke and played whatever while he got rid of the bulk of the night's mess. He never liked to close the doors and deal with it the next day, when the stench of yesterday's drinking was even too much for him. Eddie couldn't remember why he didn't clean up last night.
"You were, what, ten?" the man said. "And the story goes that Willie Sutton bought a newspaper from you and asked you what your name was."
Eddie was going to pull down the framed article, like he'd done a thousand times, to show new customers the history he had, describing how the bank robber used Eddie Lynch as his alias while laying low in Staten Island. But the garbage line was busy, and there were no cars on Victory. He never left bottles on the table from the night before.
"Sutton worked in the Farm Colony for almost three years." The man lit his rolled-up cigarette. "It was an old folks' home, near Seaview Hospital. He worked as a janitor, with everybody calling him Eddie Lynch."
Eddie put down the phone and looked at the man closer. "You. Who are you?"
"Sutton's time at the Farm Colony was the best, where he took care of the old ladies." The
man closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead like something pained him.
"He lived a few blocks from here on Kimball Avenue, while he was hiding out on Staten Island. I know all about Sutton," Eddie said.
"No you don't. It really broke his heart, the way they sat there in their wheelchairs with nothing but memories, waiting for their kids who never came. Or when they did visit—what do you think they brought their mothers who wiped their tears and bandaged their cuts? A bag a candy or a five-cent comb. Like that was enough, all that was needed for the payback."
"I might take that money," Eddie said. "I should get out of this business. Do something different. You want to buy this place?"
The man rolled another cigarette. "We waste so much time, don't we? Everybody does. There's no way around it. Robbed banks for thirty years, bagging more than two million, when a million was something. But half of the time in the joint, for what? For the money, I guess, but—" The man let out a deep breath. "It don't matter now."
Eddie poured the guy another drink and another for himself. He picked up the bundle of cash. He peered closer at the man's face. "You look like . . ."
"You still didn't figure it out yet, did you?"
"The body on the sidewalk. No cars."
"Take the cash, if it makes you feel better. You don't need it anymore, but take it. It took me some time to understand how it all works too," the man said, "why I wasn't going."
"Going where?"
"I don't know exactly. But where we all go. Where Sully went. Where the poor guy on the sidewalk outside went. Where you'll go. You got to clear the slate, pay off everything before you go. This I finally got."
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