by C. S. Poe
“Scally caps suit you,” Gunner had said, prompted by nothing other than the fact that I’d lost my second nice bowler since being in his company and had been forced to unearth a tweed flat cap from my closet before we’d left.
I’d absently touched the brim and answered, “Makes me look like a boy.”
“I think you look very handsome.”
I admit, as we walked across the avenues bustling with the upper class enjoying their day off and the lower class working as if New Year’s Day was like any other, I’d admired my reflection a few times in the windows of business fronts.
Fulton Fish Market sat one block north of Pier 17. And while the market served a mostly wholesale clientele these days, the oyster vendors were still parked on the curbs with their carts and stoves, serving to passerby and employee alike. Gunner and I stood huddled around one on the corner of Front and Fulton, cold air whipping off the East River at our backs.
Gunner reached across the makeshift countertop, picked up a glass bottle, and drizzled vinegar atop his freshly shucked raw oysters. “Patrick Tuffey,” he prompted, before knocking back an oyster.
“One of Driscoll’s inner circle,” I answered.
“O’Dea said that Tuffey witnessed a trade-off between Fishback, now deceased, and a mechanical man that fits the description of the one that hightailed it last night.” Gunner picked up another shell and asked, “How reliable is O’Dea?”
I sprinkled some salt on my own oysters while saying, “His reports are often hearsay, but he doesn’t fabricate or embellish those details. He’s a trusted, if obnoxious, informant.” I swallowed the oyster, cool and slick and a little briny, then picked up another. “His story pairs with what happened last night. Tuffey said, before his chest was blown apart, he only wanted to bankrupt Tick Tock. Sounds to me like he figured out which warehouse was being used for storage of their shipments and set it ablaze.”
“Unbeknownst to him, it was a powder keg.”
“Literally.” I slurped down the second oyster. “The gangster who aided Gatling Man’s escape, that’s a fellow by the name of McCarthy. He’s a Whyo, but judging by his appearance on the scene, I’d say he’s another of the double-dealing sort. He told me, this means war.”
Gunner stared at the oyster vendor for a moment, a man who was doing his very best to not appear interested in our conversation. “Gatling Man took out Fishback.”
“Never mind the bullet caliber matching, we’ve already established the timeline makes it impossible to have been Mechanical Man.”
“What if there are more of these magical, semimechanical humans about the city?” Gunner drizzled more vinegar on another oyster. “More than two, that is.”
I considered this comment, a mirror of Moore’s concern, while helping myself to more shellfish. “I think, if I were the betting sort, I’d be going home with heavy pockets. Remember what Addison said about the lookouts Tuffey saw at the handoff—never being heard from again?”
Gunner nodded.
“Tuffey also said something about playing God.” I waited until the vendor turned his back to stoke his coal fire and collect some oysters frying in a pan of oil before leaning close to Gunner and whispering, “Sure as hell sounds as if someone is building an army of some sort.”
“Out of low-tier, double-dealing Whyos.”
“Right.”
Gunner finished his last oyster and said, “It’s rather brilliant. This gang, despite their brutal disorganization, seems too powerful and widespread to be easily replaced by a new name. Am I correct in that assumption?”
“You are.”
“Then what better way to rid the streets of competition than to take it down from the inside out? A wound Driscoll doesn’t even know is festering yet.” Gunner reached into his pocket and set several coins—too many—on the countertop.
“Thank you, sir,” the vendor said. “Happy New Year.”
“It was only twelve cents for the two of us,” I said as I put on one glove and led the way toward the piers.
“Courtesy of Wells Fargo.”
“I shouldn’t allow you to pay for meals with procured funds.”
“By all means, stop me, Agent Hamilton.”
I rolled my eyes and managed to restrain a smile.
With the advent of steam technology by the end of 1865, Vanderbilt had been one of the first businessmen to embrace the concept of air travel for the masses with the construction of Grand Central—his pièce de résistance. The world followed in his footsteps after the first airships successfully landed and passengers disembarked through the palace he’d built. From Wells Fargo replacing their stagecoaches with zeppelins in ’73, to the import and export companies along the East River petitioning the city to remodel the piers to accept goods by air instead of water in ’75, the world had turned to the skies and never looked back to the ground in remorse.
The original structure of Pier 17 was still utilized, but merely as a boardwalk to reach the ramps and pneumatic lifts to the airship landings overhead. It wasn’t at full capacity today, what with the holiday, but zeppelins were still coming and going at a constant rate—the pier in ever-shifting shadows as massive steam-filled canvases blotted out the sun. Workmen stacked crates all along the pier, foremen signed off on cargo receipts for captains, and overhead was the constant bickering and barking of airship crewmen.
“What makes you think O’Dea’s California architect is involved?” Gunner asked, following at my side, hands in his winter coat pockets so as to keep the Waterbury concealed. “He’d only heard the name, not that the name was directly tied to Tick Tock.”
“Fishback told Moore and me that the packages came from out West—specifically California or Arizona.”
“That connection is tenuous at best.”
I stopped to study a stack of wooden crates taller than myself, checked the leaflet on one to confirm its provenance, then kept walking. “There are two hundred and thirty-five registered casters in the country. The FBMS estimates at least an additional one hundred are alive and well, but not yet registered.”
Keeping my arms to my sides, I turned my bare left hand out and followed the ebb and flow of magic. Even here, at the southernmost point of Manhattan, I could still feel the rip in the atmosphere above Hester Street. I could feel the hurt of the energy, like an animal licking its wounds. And I could feel that invisible, tangible barrier between me and the raw power become just a bit more dense as the manufactured spells were slowly but surely being woven into the planet’s magical atmosphere.
“There’s about a third the number of architects in the country—”
“One hundred and eleven,” Gunner supplied. “Give or take.”
“Er—yes. Seventy-five of whom are registered, and eighteen have been arrested since ’65 for illegal magic.”
“You believe one of the unaccounted for eighteen is the architect working with Tick Tock?” Gunner concluded.
“Correct. Of course, for an enterprise such as his, this would require an architect of noted strength, which reduces the count even further. The average skill level of scholars, architects, and casters in this country is two point five.”
Gunner stopped walking and looked down. “What sort of level would be required?”
I met Gunner’s gaze and offered a noncommittal shrug.
He seemed to understand that.
“So,” I continued, “if Addison has intelligence on an architect located on the other side of the country, it’s likely the news traveled for good reason.”
My fingers twitched as I came into contact with the remnants of days-old magic. I turned away from Gunner, shifted my focus, and followed the weak, glittering trail toward a shipment coming off a dinky airship sputtering and wheezing steam from its aft-end.
“Excuse me,” I said, approaching a foreman counting the crates as they were piled onto the pier. “What’s this shipment?”
He paused his count, finger still pointing at the nearest container, and looke
d down at me. He was built like the side of a barn—tall and wide and red in the face. “Who’s fuckin’ askin’?”
I pulled back my coat lapels to show my badge. “Special Agent Gillian Hamilton with the Federal Bureau of Magic and Steam.” To the left, a dock worker pushing a full box cart down the ramp from the airship slowed to watch our interaction. I returned my attention to the foreman and repeated, “What’s the shipment?”
“It ain’t nothing you magic coppers ought to be concerned with,” the foreman answered.
“Special Agent,” I corrected. “And if that’s the case, you should have no issue showing me the provenance.”
The foreman raised his clipboard out of my reach. “I know my rights.”
“Don’t make this difficult,” I answered.
“I’ll do as I damn well—hey!”
Gunner had, unnoticed by us both, approached from the right and snatched the clipboard from overhead. He handed it to me while keeping his gaze trained on the foreman. “I believe Agent Hamilton requested you not be difficult.”
I accepted the clipboard, gave the documents a cursory once-over, then asked, “Pinkerton’s Ladies Wear?”
“Aye, you arrogant son of a—”
I glanced up when the foreman abruptly cut himself short. Gunner hadn’t done anything so blatant as unholster his Waterbury and wave it around for the foreman, workers, and God to see, but he had set his hands on his hips so the open lapels pulled back enough to show he was armed.
“From California?” I prompted.
The foreman shrugged. “That’s what the paperwork says.”
I gestured with the clipboard, saying, “Luxury items such as these are typically imported from Paris.”
“You’d know all about ladies’ gloves, would you?”
I narrowed my eyes and passed the clipboard back with a bit of a shove. “Was this the only shipment of Pinkerton’s in the last week?”
The foreman spared Gunner a glance before agreeing. “Aye.”
“Let’s take a look, then.”
“You ain’t got the right to be pilfering—”
Without breaking eye contact, I raised my left hand and snapped my wrist up. A wind spell tore the nails out of the nearest wooden crate, sending the top flying and skittering along the pier a dozen feet away.
Clipboard in hand, the foreman raised both arms up like he was done arguing.
I reached inside and sifted through a number of poor quality sets of gloves—haphazard stitching, fur likely that of vermin—and then my fingers settled on metal. I removed a pistol that was similar in structure to a Waterbury, but the barrels were too long, like it’d been built from other parts. And instead of a handle, the gun’s end was fitted with gears and snaps and locks—a limb attachment.
Gunner took the weapon, checked the chambers, then said, “Modified Jordan rifle.”
I dug through the crate again, pocketed one of the cheaply constructed gloves for evidence, and tossed aside the rest of the accessories, which were clearly a front and nothing more, before unearthing a box of ammunition. The magic inside the bullets had waned during its travel cross-country, but the manufactured fire was still potent enough to make my skin itch. I suspected once it was activated by a gun, much like Gunner’s aether bullets, combined with the curious mechanical men, this ammunition would regain its full strength.
Perhaps this answered the ongoing query as to why I sensed the spell originating in one location, despite the detonation occurring in a completely different place. This manufactured magic settled into its storage, like honey sinking in water. It left a sort of dense signature, so when the mechanical men collected ammunition from Hester Street to use on myself and Fishback, the manufactured fire followed the trail of its own signature back to where the boxes had been left for a prolonged period.
Interesting.
Looking at the foreman, I said, “You’d better start talking.”
A clatter on the ramp distracted me, and I turned in time to see the workman with the full box cart had let go of the load. It rolled, fell, and toppled into the East River, and he took off in a full sprint toward the Fish Market. Gunner grabbed the palm-sized box of ammunition from my hold and threw it. He hit the man squarely in the back of the head, and the worker stumbled before planting face-first.
“That’s who you want,” he stated.
In the end, I took both men into custody.
I’d hoped the foreman would admit to some level of guilt after insulting me at the pier, but Gunner had been right—he was only a clueless bastard. The workman, on the other hand—Joseph, he said his name was, although Judas would have suited him just as well—was frantic to roll over after his initial underestimation of my person.
“You nackle-ass cocksuck—”
I sidestepped a punch, shoved my palm into Joseph’s chin, and threw him to the floor of the booking room at the field office. I put a knee into his back, dug in enough to make him grunt, and asked, “What were you about to say?”
Joseph turned his head to spit some blood from his mouth before saying, “N-nothing.”
“Are you certain? Something about me being a nackle-ass cocksucker?” I pressed harder with my knee.
Joseph made a sound of pain this time. “No. I swear.”
I lifted off his back, slipped my hands into my trouser pockets, and stared at him as he rolled onto his backside and sat up. “Tell me about Pinkerton’s Ladies Wear—no, don’t move. You sit your ass right there on the floor. How long have they been a front for the distribution of illegal magic weaponry and ammunition?”
“Two months, maybe.”
I looked over my shoulder to the open doorway. Just outside the room on the left, Gunner leaned one shoulder against the threshold, silent and dangerous. On the right, Moore stood with his big arms crossed over his chest. The two of them were like the moon and sun, night and day. My director nodded once for me to continue.
I looked at Joseph again. “How many shipments in that time?”
He shrugged. “I can’t say.”
I took a step toward him, my hands still in my pockets. Joseph scuttled backward like a crab. “Were you handing off specific crates to Frank Fishback?”
“Aye.”
“Then you very well can say how many shipments came through Pier 17.”
Joseph swallowed hard and peered around me at his only exit, blocked by a deadeye marksman and fiery caster.
“You look at me,” I directed. “Not them.”
“M-maybe ten,” he answered. “About one a week.”
“And Fishback would come by when?”
“Early. Before sunrise. Pinkerton’s was usually the first shipment of the day.”
“Why so late today, then?”
Joseph shook his head. “Airship trouble. That hunk of junk broke down over Jersey for most of the morning.” He wiped at the bit of blood trickling from the side of his mouth. “Ain’t seen Fishback all day, though.”
“You wouldn’t. He’s dead.”
Joseph’s eyes grew as big as saucer plates. “You lot murdered him?”
“Would you like a repeat of my knee digging into your spine?”
“No, sir.”
“Agent.”
Joseph nodded and whispered, “Agent,” under his breath.
“Fishback was murdered by the same man paying him, and you, I presume, to get those packages into Manhattan. Who’s the contact in California?”
“I got no idea.”
“Who would know? What about the captain of the junker airship?”
“It’s a different captain every time, sir—Agent Hamilton.”
“Then who is your contact?” I tried.
Joseph hesitated.
I rolled my shoulders, removed a hand, and pointed at him as lightning crackled and snapped around my fingers. “Joseph—”
“Wait! Wait, I’ll tell you! Good Christ, don’t kill me.”
“Less pissing and more explaining.”
�
��The department head of Grace Gallery.”
I furrowed my brow, lowered my hand, and asked with a touch of wariness, “At the Iron Palace?”
Joseph nodded several times. “You’re familiar with ladies’ consumption? No, I ain’t mean nothing by that, sir—Hamilton—Agent Hamilton! Oh my God, I fuckin’ pissed myself!”
“I did warn you,” I answered. “How is this individual connected?”
“I don’t know.”
“The floor manager of a women’s boutique having a relation to illegal magic is absolutely something you know.”
Joseph was outright sniveling now. I was fairly accustomed to such dramatic reactions to my being. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that magic was still outlawed and considered an immediate threat to society. But this man had soiled himself in my presence. I turned to the open doorway a second time and offered both Gunner and Moore a sort of What can I do? expression and hand gesture.
Moore expelled a breath and then said, loud enough to be heard, “Mr. Greene?”
“Y-yes, sir?” Joseph whimpered.
“Please answer Agent Hamilton. Of the three of us, he’s the one you need to befriend.”
Joseph’s panicked expression met mine once more, and he sobbed, “I-I used to work at the Iron Palace as a cash boy. Got a job at the piers when I was older, a proper man’s job, you understand? The manager sends me a telegram one day, out of the blue. Says he’s got a job offer for me. Ain’t nothin’ I gotta do but allow a fellow named Fishback to come by and collect a few crates from Pinkerton’s. What he don’t take, the rest goes to Grace Gallery.”
“Nothing else?” I reiterated. “Because if you’re lying to me, Joseph—”
“No, no, I ain’t. I swear, really.”
I was quiet for a beat before asking, “And what of Tick Tock?”
“Just a name I heard. Never met the man.”