“Just what is Butcher Boy territory, or aren’t you allowed to say?”
“It’s no secret. Not from the law or the competition, anyway—we lay claim to Greenwich Village, everything north from West Houston to 14th Street and everything east from the Hudson to Broadway. We aren’t like the Whyos or the Dead Rabbits or the Hudson Dusters—we don’t get drunk in public, we don’t fight in the streets, and we never bother a Square John. High-end stealing is our business, and we like to think the main difference between us and Jay Gould or Rockefeller is that we go to prison if we get caught.”
Becky looked puzzled. “And Lukas is trying to stick his finger into this pie?”
“That’s what Mike says. All I can tell you is that Lukas was partnered up with the best engraver in the funny money game, a Swiss named Hochstein, and Lukas’ boys started shoving the queer all over town. When they tried shoving it on businesses in our part of the city, Mike gave Hochstein a chance to repent his wicked ways and he vamoosed for points West. Now we hear that Lukas has been making moves that look like he means to to try cracking a bank, maybe one in the Butcher Boys’ neighborhood. What we can’t figure is why a fellow with a butler and a nice house on Washington Square needs to take the bread out of the mouths of honest crooks.”
Becky was nodding to herself with a pleased little smile, as if she’d just found a missing puzzle piece. “I think I can help you with that. According to my sources Lukas has been pouring money into the agitation behind the strike movement. Not that the railroad workers wouldn’t be just as mad without his help, but they’d probably be a lot more peaceful if it were just their own union egging them on. As it is, Lukas is pouring coal oil on the sparks and hoping for an explosion.” She glanced around quickly and then lowered her voice: “I have a source in the Imperial Russian consulate who says Lukas was a brain surgeon and a Professor of Medicine at the Imperial University of St. Petersburg. Not only that, the Paris office of the Okhrana says that even though Lukas is a member of the Royal Family, he was the one behind the bombers who blew up Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich, the Tsar’s favorite son and heir apparent. The big question is who’s behind Lukas? There are rumors that he’s a Little Russian spy, that he’s hand in glove with Secretary Stanton, that he’s in league with the Antichrist and Heaven knows what other outlandish skullduggery.”
Liam walked along in silence for a few moments, his chin sunk on his chest as he kicked a stone along the pavement and pondered on what Becky had said. Finally he looked up and nodded briskly:
“I can see that my personal business with Lukas is going to have to stand in line for a bit. But that’s all right—justice for Maggie will be just as sweet if it has to wait till I’ve gotten Gran free of Pilkington and his thugs. Anyway that old villain has put me on a schedule that barely leaves me time to breathe, and him with Gran tight in his clutches till I deliver.”
Becky could hear the stress in Liam’s voice but she couldn’t resist trying: “I’d don’t suppose you’d like to share the details with me, would you?”
He stopped and gave her a level look: “There’s little in this world I wouldn’t be ready and willing to share with you, Miss Fox. But I haven’t quite decided myself just what I should do.”
She returned his look just as levelly and the two of them stood locked in a moment of wordless communion until the thread was snapped by the sound of drums and trumpets approaching on 26th from the direction of Broadway. In spite of themselves they both turned towards the music, a rousing Sousa march.
“Just look at them, will you?” Liam said. “That’s the full brass band from the Marine Barracks at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they only turn out for big occasions.”
As they watched, the Marine bandsmen—resplendent in their dress blues and led by a color guard bearing the American flag and the Marine Corps flag—marched up 26th Street and executed a smart right turn down the center of the Park, where they finally halted in time with the end of the music. For a moment or two the silence was broken only by the murmurs of the crowed, then the band struck up “Hail to the Chief” and a bright light flashed from the top of a building onto a blank, canvas-draped wall at the south end of the Park.
A cry of “Magic lantern! Magic lantern!” went up from the crowd, only to fall silent abruptly as the mournful, sympathetic face of President Lincoln appeared on the canvas, accompanied by a message in ten-foot-tall black letters that scrolled slowly across the screen under the portrait:
“MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN! JUST TWELVE YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, THE LAST SHOT WAS FIRED IN THE TRAGIC CONFLICT THAT COST THE LIVES OF MORE THAN HALF A MILLION OF YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS. SO IT GRIEVES ME DEEPLY TO COME BEFORE YOU NOW AND SAY WE MUST BE PREPARED FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF A NEW WAR, AGAINST A CRUEL AND DETERMINED ENEMY. BUT DO NOT BE AFRAID, FOR THE BONDS OF OUR BROTHERHOOD HAVE BEEN TEMPERED IN THE FURNACE OF OUR PAST TRAVAIL. ABOVE ALL, MY FRIENDS, WE MUST STAND UNITED AND FIGHT AS ONE NATION, SO THAT RIGHT AND JUSTICE MAY TRIUMPH ONCE FOR ALL!”
As the last word scrolled past and disappeared, the Marine Band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” and sky rockets went up from the 23rd Street end of the Park. Liam shook his head grimly:
“I doubt there’s many of us from the last time around who’ll be overjoyed at the sound of that.” He held out his arm and pulled Becky’s through it.
“I don’t know about you, Miss Fox, but a glass of wine and some dinner sound mighty fine to me just now.”
“Amen,” she said. As they turned and walked pensively towards Delmonico’s the Marines segued smoothly into “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” but they hadn’t played more than a few bars before there was a crackle of gunfire from the rooftops on the Fourth Avenue side of the Square. Liam ducked involuntarily, pulling Becky with him, and as the crowd began shouting and screaming they turned back to look.
Flashes of gunfire could be seen on the rooftop from which the magic lantern was beaming, and a moment later a body was flung off the roof into the midst of the onlookers, who scattered as if it had been a bomb.
“What in Heaven’s name …” Becky began, but her voice trailed off as the picture of Lincoln disappeared from the canvas-draped wall, leaving a glaring white rectangle that was replaced moments later by a crude but powerful drawing of Secretary Stanton with an axe buried in the top of his head and his features hideously distorted. Underneath the portrait in huge red letters were the words: “KILL THE BEAST STANTON AND ALL HIS MURDERING THUGS!”
There was a moment of stunned silence and then an inarticulate babble swept through the crowd, swelling slowly and peaking with a roar like a tidal wave as a dozen or so Police Acmes spotted around the perimeter of the Square let loose all at once with a terrifying screech of high-pressure steam whistles. Then, their whistles still screaming full blast, the Acmes started running crazily through the crowd towards the building from which the body had been flung, their great metal feet smashing and clanking on the pavement as they simultaneously unleashed a ripsaw din of mini-Gatling gunfire towards the building’s roof.
“Let’s get out of here!” Liam shouted, taking Becky by the arm and pulling her in the direction of Delmonico’s.
“Absolutely not!” she shouted back, grinning excitedly and pulling hard in the opposite direction. For a brief moment they were locked in a tug of war, but Liam saw in a flash that the only way he would have a chance to keep her safe would be to stick by her side.
“Come on,” she yelled, “help me get through the crowd!”
She was pulling him in the direction of the giant statue’s arm and most of the panicked crowed seemed to be pushing in the opposite direction, stampeding west towards Fifth Avenue. Gamely, Liam moved up ahead of Becky and cleared a path for them, pushing and punching through the maddened herd until they were able finally to break out onto the grass in front of the platform supporting the titanic arm.
“I want to get up there where I can see what’s happening,” Becky yelled, “but it looks like we need to find a vantage point down
near the torch. Give me a hand up, will you?”
Liam rolled his eyes, jumped up on the platform and then reached down to pull Becky up; a moment later she was standing beside him in the lee of the thing’s enormous bicep, which seemed to be a good twelve feet thick. Becky was flushed and excited, grinning happily as she pulled a small leather-bound notebook and a pencil out of her reticule.
“You certainly do know how to show a girl reporter a good time,” she laughed, leaning forward impulsively and giving Liam a kiss on the cheek; then she turned and ran down the platform towards the torch, leaving Liam momentarily flummoxed.
Becky had picked out a fairly sheltered observation post behind the statue’s wrist, and as Liam caught up to her a chorus of “oohs” and screams went up from the crowd as a half-dozen sparking bundles arced from the rooftop towards the attacking Acmes.
“Dynamite!” shouted Liam, pulling Becky down as a series of bone-rattling blasts went off one after another, filling the air with fragments of pavement and metal that whistled and moaned through the air in tones that instantly threw Liam back to Gettysburg. For a long, stretched beat there was silence, and in the wake of the explosions the air around them seemed to reverberate like a giant gong. Then, crazily, a skirl of bagpipes sounded nearby, accompanied by shouts and the thump of a big marching drum.
Becky jumped to her feet, looking around in every direction. “Look,” she cried, pointing westwards. “It’s the railroaders!”
Marching towards the square along 26th Street came a phalanx of railroad men in working dress, from the striped overalls and red neckerchiefs of the engineers to the crisp blue uniforms and brass buttons of the conductors, the seemingly endless column led by a coal-blackened fireman playing “The Wearing of the Green” on the pipes and flanked by laborers holding aloft a giant banner that read “Support the General Strike!”
As the marchers started across Broadway towards the northern edge of the Park, a stentorian voice roared out from behind Becky and Liam:
“Bandsmen! Down instruments!”
The drum major, a gargantuan, barrel-chested Master Sergeant whose stiffly waxed moustache-tips jutted skywards like bayonets, watched the marching workers grimly as his men set their instruments down on the grass, his face growing redder by the moment as he smacked the palm of his left hand with the globe of his baton.
“Oh, oh,” muttered Liam. He turned to Becky: “More trouble!”
As if in agreement, the Master Sergeant drew himself up to his full height, drew in a breath that expanded his chest enough to strain the gold buttons on his tunic and roared:
“All right, men, let’s throw those bums in the East River!”
With an answering roar of approval, the Marines tore off across the grass towards the marchers and a moment later the neat column of railroaders dissolved into a swirling, bellowing battle royal.
Becky, who had been scribbling furiously in her notebook, looking up every few seconds to scan the square again and unconsciously push back the wisps of hair that had come loose in the heat of the moment, froze abruptly and cocked her head, listening.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, catching her lower lip with her teeth as she strained to hear something in the distance.
Liam laughed. “You mean the sound of cracking noggins?”
Becky shook her head impatiently: “Listen!”
A moment later he caught it: the clamor of fire bells and steam whistles approaching Madison Square at top speed. Liam shook his head uneasily and laid a warning hand on Becky’s arm:
“This is beginning to feel a whole lot like the Draft Riots,” Liam said, “do you think I could talk you into making up the rest of your story?”
Becky grinned. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Mr. McCool? And anyway, how could I make up characters as piquant as those?”
She pointed southeast in the direction of Fourth Avenue and 25th, where a phalanx of duded-up young toughs was pouring into the Square and making their way towards the fighting. At the forefront, dressed in the obligatory heavy boots, black suits with flowered waistcoats and derby hats with eight-inch-high crowns, were a couple of big and surpassingly mean-looking thugs chewing cigars and swinging knobby shillelaghs.
“Unless I’m mistaken,” Becky said with the relish of a birdwatcher spotting an elusive sort of nuthatch, “those are the two Dannys, messrs. Lyons and Driscoll fresh out of the Tombs.”
Liam nodded glumly: “And all the darling little Whyos tagging along for the party.”
At that, the sound of the fire bells suddenly grew much louder and a hook and ladder screeched into the Square from Broadway and 24th, followed by another and then another, all three of them swarming with firemen and what looked like hastily uniformed soldiers. The lead fire engine turned left and tore towards the fighting, steam whistles hooting and bells clanging, and as they came closer the soldiers raised their rifles over their heads and yelled like Banshees.
“Well, there’s the last straw for you,” said Liam, “unless I miss my bet those are the anointed champions of the Swell Set, New York’s own 195th Light Infantry.”
Becky shot him a look. “Run into them before, have you?”
“Oh, yes,” Liam said with a mirthless grin. “My commander at Little Round top sent me to ask them to lend us some men and ammunition, but I couldn’t find them till I slogged all the way back from our position to Meade’s headquarters. Then their boss said I should find someone closer to our position.”
“Ah,” said Becky. “Well, it’s not for nothing they call them the Kid Glove Regiment.”
The arrival of the soldiers and the Whyos at almost the same moment seemed to drive the battle into a frenzy that quickly turned lethal—as the 195th’s commanding officer ordered his men to fire, the Whyos started shooting back, and a few moments later a bundle of dynamite flew from the midst of the gangsters and arced through the air towards the soldiers, its fuse twinkling merrily in the evening gloom. The Light Infantry tried desperately to get out of the path of the explosives, stumbling and shoving and emitting unsoldierly shrieks. But not fast enough—with a stunning explosion the dynamite went off in their midst, blowing pieces of men and equipment in every direction.
Liam took Becky firmly by the arm. “That’s torn it,” he said, “you’ll definitely have to make the rest of it up, your poor pa has troubles enough without you being blown up on the way to Delmonico’s.”
“Yes, Liam,” said Becky mildly, and as Liam jumped to the ground on the safe side of the huge bronze arm, she slid down the curved surface to Liam’s waiting arms. Without really meaning to he held her for an extra second or so, thinking involuntarily about her unaccustomedly meek tone and her calling him Liam, before she grinned again and tugged on his sleeve:
“Come along then, if we don’t hurry they’ll give someone else our reservation.” She sprinted away so briskly that Liam had to pour on the speed to catch up with her. Fortunately the distance from their observation post to the block of buildings on 26th and Fifth that housed Delmonico’s was less than a hundred yards, and Liam was relieved to see that Becky was heading towards an alleyway that seemed to run between the restaurant and a building that housed a modiste and a bookstore.
“In there!” Becky called out, pointing, and a moment later they were safely—if a little too fragrantly—sequestered in the narrow lane behind Delmonico’s kitchens, standing between a row of heaped-high garbage bins and the roaring, steam-driven blades of the kitchen’s exhaust fans. Both of them stood panting for a moment, listening in spite of themselves to the racket of gunfire, dynamite explosions and screams, then Becky signed to Liam to follow and headed down the alleyway towards 27th Street, where a narrow band of light shone between the buildings.
Before they reached it, Becky stopped before an anonymous-looking doorway illuminated by a single gaslight and knocked loudly: three raps, a pause, then three again. After a moment a spy-hole opened and emitted a gleam of light from inside, which dimmed as someone l
eaned forward to look out. Then the door opened cautiously to reveal a middle-aged waiter in Delmonico’s livery, his bald, wrinkled brow furrowed even deeper by anxiety as he looked around to either side of Becky.
“It’s all right, Joseph,” she said in a gentle, reassuring tone. “We’re both expected.”
“Yes, Miss Fox,” he said, still looking anxious. But he stepped aside and gestured for them to enter,
By now Liam’s curiosity had been stoked to a fever pitch, but once again Becky was hurrying ahead, this time up a short flight of stairs. At the top, a row of closed doors stretched away down a corridor into a dimly gaslit distance, but Becky stopped at the first one and repeated her cryptic knock. This time it opened immediately to reveal a figure that made Liam want to rub his eyes and look again: a compact, medium-sized man in a rumpled white suit and floppy black bowtie, with a bushy head of graying curls and a drooping walrus moustache that quirked upwards into a welcoming grin. He held out his hand to Liam, who took it disbelievingly:
“Mr. Twain?” he gulped.
“Just call me Sam,” the man said in a cheerful drawl, “and I’ll call you Liam.”
Chapter Seventeen
As Twain drew Liam into the interior of the sumptuously furnished chamber (one of Delmonico’s private dining rooms, as it turned out), two more strangers got to their feet: the first an impressive, dignified black man with a mass of long, wiry white hair, his big aquiline nose and fierce brow belied by a radiant smile, and the other an elegant and aristocratic old lady whose high, smooth forehead and unlined face were set off by blue eyes that sparkled with humor and intelligence.
Liam didn’t need any more introduction to them than he had to Mark Twain—or Sam Clemens, as he seemed to prefer—both had been pictured in New York’s journals and newspapers more often than Liam could count. The man was Frederic Douglass—a former slave, now a world-famous reformer, writer and statesman—and the woman was the Honorable Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Liam’s beloved Lord Byron, not to mention her own eminence as a mathematical theorist and the inventor of the Lovelace “predictive engine.” Douglass stepped forward and Liam offered his hand:
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