“Post those with descriptions,” he directed. “What’s next?”
“Next” was a young Colored man whose bright red shirt, wide-bottomed trousers, and glazed hat—the last held respectfully in his hands—told Hays of the man’s profession before he even looked at the paper held out to him.
WHEREAS, an ACT of the CONGRESS of the Year 1818, intituled AN ACT TO DEFINE AND PROTECT THE STATUS OF SEAMEN [Hays read], does not mention the Status of Seamen who are Persons of Color, and WHEREAS, the Legislature of the STATE OF NEW-YORK in the Year 1820 has authorized the Certification of Seamen domiciled or denizened in the State of New-York who are Free Persons of Color, now, THEREFORE, be it known that I, Jefferson Van Der Wett, a Clerk of the CITY OF NEW-YORK, do hereby certify that the bearer, Lucas Oaks, a Seaman of this City, and a Man of Color, is known to me on good evidence to be a FREE MAN, and I do further Enjoin all Men of whatsoever Cities, States, Territories, and Nations, to recognize him in such Status and not to Hold, Use, nor Dispose of him, the aforesaid Lucas Oaks, a FREE MAN of Color, as if he were not in Fact FREE.
“Anything against him?” Hays asked. The Constable shook his head. Hays dipped his quill, wrote No Criminal Record. J. Hays. High Constable, C. of N-Y., scattered sand, and handed it to the Negro who departed with thanks.
And so the day proceeded. The Five-Points—that foul and teeming human rookery where Cross, Anthony, Littlewater, Orange, and Mulberry meet—had had its usual murder. The usual sailor had been found dead by violence. This time the almost nightly occurrence was not the same, though often enough it was a sailor found dead in the Five-Points; often in its black and filthy heart—the swarming, putrefying tenement called the Old Brewery.
There was little chance of discovering the killers at the moment, if ever. The night had witnessed their deeds, and as little as the night would testify, so little would the furtive inhabitants of the criminal world testify. Until and unless, of course, the cut-throats had a falling out. In which case there might be a dirty, illiterate note some morning on Hays’s desk—a whisper in the ear of the Watch (as the Constabulary was also called)—notes and whispers which might lead to arrest or conviction. Or might not.
It sometimes seemed to Jacob Hays that the work-houses, paupers’ wards, and felon-cells of all the world, European as well as American, were pouring their wretched contents into New-York; although he knew well enough that most of the ever-increasing stream of immigrants were good people. It would ill behoove him to rail against “foreigners,” as some were doing. Had not his own mother been born abroad? And his father’s parents? When you came down to it, whose stock was entirely “Native American”?—except for the Indians. And there were those who claimed (Hays recalled a recent sermon at Scotch Presbyterian Church) that the Indians themselves were none other than the Lost Tribes of Israel!
It was Hays’s custom, if the affairs of the morning permitted, to take some light refreshment about ten o’clock, and then to read through all the newspapers. That is, not to read every word, but to have a look at the items marked for him by his assistant, Constable Moore, who had standing instructions to check off any bit of news referring to crime or the police. It was always amusing—sometimes instructive—to observe the way in which the same incident was treated in different newspapers, and to see how they agreed (or, more often, disagreed) with the official report of the same incident.
In the staid Commercial Gazette of this morning, for example, there was the single line: The body of a man, as yet unidentified, was found yesterday in Dunstan-Slip. That was all. A man. Not, Hays noted, a gentleman. In the lives or deaths of the lower orders of society the Commercial Gazette was supremely uninterested.
The News-Letter had this to say:
Yesterday afternoon the body of a man was discerned floating in the River at Dunstan-Slip by a woman of the neighborhood. The dead person, who, by his dress, was evidently a member of the sea-faring class, had not long been exposed to the briny element, and appeared to be in his middle years. It is opined that he came to his death by natural causes. His name has not yet been learned.
The recently-established True Citizen and Temperance Advocate, however, had learned—or said it had learned—his name.
An intelligent and respectable female identified the remains to this journal as that of one Gorman or Gormby, a sailingman, much given to the prevalent vice of his class (though not only of his class) vide licet, imbibing large quantities of alcoholic liquors—we do not denominate them ‘beverages.’ Whilst in a condition of intoxication, the dead man, we adduce, fell into the Slip and drowned. Within four blocks of the fatal scene our reporter counted no less than thirty-nine dram-stores, grog-shops, gin-mills, brandy-houses, and so-called “grocery” establishments, these last entirely devoted to purveying raw spirits to the ignorant. When will a supine administration awaken to the menace, et cetera, et cetera.
And the Register devoted a full column to what it called a
dastardly crime, undoubtedly committed by a gang of crimps, bent on conveying the innocent seaman against his will to the cruel mercies of a conscienceless master-mariner bound for foreign ports where the writ of the American Republic runs not. It was doubtless owing to his reluctance to be forced into a berth he did not desire that the unfortunate Jack-Tar resisted so vigorously that his kidnappers decided on his Death. He was tossed into the brackish waters of Dunstan-Slip where, being like the generality of sea-farers, unable to swim, he expired by drowning.
Old Hays snorted. “Catch any crimps tossing twenty dollars worth of two-footed merchandise away! Those they don’t dope, they bash—but, one way or another, they get them aboard alive. Any wounds on him, Neddy?”
“Few bruises, Mr. High—but no wounds,” said Constable Edward Moore. “Course he wasn’t no Gorman nor Gormby, any more than he was crimped.” His tone of voice indicated that he realized he was not telling his superior anything the latter didn’t know.
Hays nodded, picked up the official constabulary report, mumbled the words to himself, adding his own comments. “Bruises on breast, abdomen, and face; also, back of neck. Couldn’t have gotten them all by falling down: been fighting. Clothes worn and dirty—been on shore a long time. Not known to the Watch or any of our water-front friends—didn’t ship out of the port of New-York. Shoes show signs of recent hard use—walked from his last port.”
“Wasn’t killed for his fortune, we may be sure,” said Moore.
“The Coroner’s inquisition?”
“Dead before he hit the water, seems like. Neck broke. Lungs dry. Hardly swollen, scarcely a mark on him from fish or crabs.” Hays thought about his breakfast shad, but he had a strong stomach (twenty-six years as High Constable!) and didn’t think about it long. “He was found in mid-afternoon, and conjecture is that he’d been dead since the night before. Woman emptying a slop-bucket spied him.”
The two men mused on this unusual fastidiousness in a district where slops were emptied, usually, out the nearest window. Then Moore continued: “Noteworthy features? Had a great swelling of the left ear-lobe. Forget what you call it. Key-something.”
But Hays remembered. “A keloid. Scarred over and swelled when he had it pierced for an earring, I expect. Sometimes happens so. We’d know he was a sailor from that alone. Potter’s Field?” Constable Moore nodded.
Hays started to put the report down, then sensed, rather than saw, that his assistant had something else to tell him; and waited.
“He had this in his mouth.” The Constable held out a screw of paper, unwrapped it. Inside lay a piece of fibre, yellowish-brown in color. “Cotton—raw cotton. A trifle, but I thought I’d save it for you. What do you think?”
Hays shook his head. “No idea. But glad you kept it. File it with the report. What’s next?”
“Lady robbed of a diamond heirloom ring wants to see you about it, personal. Englishman with letter of introduction from Lord Mayor of London. Three candidates for the Watch. Man from Eagle Hotel with information about th
e gang of baggage-thieves. A—”
The High Constable raised his hand. “That’ll do for the while. Lady first…”
* * *
TWO NIGHTS LATER there was a wild fight involving the crews of three ships moored in South-street. The Night Constable-in-charge was new to the post and, not trusting to his own ability to discriminate between riots major and minor, sent for Hays. He came quickly enough, though the brawl was over by then; most of the men had either stumbled aboard their vessels or staggered away for further entertainment. The few who insisted upon continuing the affair had been hauled off to the Watch-house to meditate on their sins. And several of the spectators vanished the instant they saw the High Constable’s well-known figure come in sight.
But by that time something else had developed.
“Hold up your lanterns,” Hays directed his men. “The gaslight from the street is so dim I—that’s better. Ah, me. More sailors must die ashore than at sea, I think.”
The alley was wide enough to accommodate only two men, and one of these was dead. Hays patted the pockets of the peacoat, was rewarded with a jingle, and thrust a hand inside. “Thirty cents.”
For thirty cents a man could eat well and drink himself into a stupor and still have enough left for a night’s lodging if he was sober enough to want more than the floor of the city to sleep on. Men were killed for much less than thirty cents. Therefore—
Word had gotten around, and a knot of night-crawlers, still excited from the fight, crowded into the alley, pressing and craning for a glimpse. Hays rose and looked at them; at once several caps were pulled low and faces sunk into collars. He held out his staff. “Clear the alley, citizens. Just so. Constables, take the body out. Has a cart been summoned? Lay him down here. No, don’t cover his face. I want him identified, if possible.”
It proved easily possible. The dead man was identified before his coat touched the sidewalk. “Tim Scott. Everyone knew Tim Scott. Poor Tim. Poor Tim’s a-cold.” (This last from a gentleman later identified as a play-actor at the Park Theatre.) “Spent his money like a gentleman. Who saw him last alive? Well…” A reluctance to be identified in this capacity was at once apparent.
But other information continued to come forth. “Not so long ago Tim bought wine for everyone at Niblo’s Gardens. And segars. Yes, segars, too, for all the gentlemen. Did this more than once a night, and for more than a few nights, too.… Enemies? Not a one in the world.”
“I suppose his friends killed him, then?” Silence again. Cart-wheels rattled, and the crowd, gathered from all the dram-cellars whose yellow lights beckoned dimly through dirty window-panes, parted. As the body was lifted into the cart Hays removed his hat, and—one by one—reluctance evidently springing not so much from contumacy as from ignorance that this little gesture was customary or expected—one by one the greasy hats and dirty caps came off. Then the cart clattered away again. The crowd, still eager for excitement, stirred restlessly.
“All good citizens,” said Hays, “will now go home.” He did not expect the suggestion to be taken literally. If “home” was a lumpy, dirty pallet on a filthy floor it naturally had no appeal to match that of a brandy-shop or an oyster-stall, where some of the “good citizens” were even now heading to satisfy newly-awakened or previously-ungratified appetites; even if “home” was the streets, the mud, filth, and dim lights were no deterrents—there was nothing better at home. In the streets there were at least company and excitement. But the crowd dissolved, and this was all Hays had hoped for.
The next day Hays paid a further visit to Tim Scott, now naked on scrubbed pine-boards. Constables Breakstone and Onderdonk accompanied him. Both young Watch-officers had taken to heart Hays’s almost constant insistence on the importance of “trifles,” which was more than could be said for most of the Watch, to whom a crime was insolvable if not accompanied by a knife with the knifer’s name burned in the hilt.
“How much would it take to treat the house at Niblo’s to wine and segars several times a night, several nights running?” Hays asked, looking at the dead man’s face. The death pallor could not dispel entirely the tokens of sun and wind.
“More than a sailingman would be likely to make on a coasting voyage,” Constable Breakstone said. He was the son of a ship-chandler, had grown up along the water-front, and knew its ways. At Hays’s look of inquiry he continued, “Tim had said his last trip was on a coaster, but he didn’t say where to. Besides, he hadn’t been gone long enough for an overseas voyage. But that money in his pocket, sir, it wasn’t the last of what he’d had.”
“You mean there’s more somewheres?”
“No, sir. I mean that he’d spent it all some time ago. He’d been cadging off the lads since then. Then the other day he said he was going to get some more. He turned up at Barney Boots’s gin-parlor last night with a dollar, and the thirty cents was the last of that. And he was heard to say that this was just the beginning—that he was going to get more very soon. I asked did he have a particular friend, and it seems he did—Billy Walters. Some think they’d sailed together on this last trip. But no one has seen Billy lately. And that’s all I know, sir.”
Hays nodded. “That’s a good bit to go on. Meanwhile—” He lowered the sheet. “Just so. I thought these would show up better today.” On the dead man’s muscular throat were two sets of small and ugly marks. “Strangled, you see. And strangled from behind, too. Either someone crept up on him unbeknownst, or he knew the man behind him and wasn’t expecting violence. Mr. Breakstone, hold the body up. Now you, Mr. Onderdonk, stand behind him. Let’s have your hands. Big ones, a wide spread—just like these. Let your fingers rest where I place them.”
One by one he placed the young man’s fingers so that each rested on one of the finger marks, or as near to it as possible. Leaving them so, he peered at the skin of the dead man’s back. “Just so. Jabbed up his knee, used it as a lever, grabbed the throat, and squeezed. Tim Scott was a strong man. This fellow was stronger. Had finicking ways, though. All right, let him down.”
Breakstone covered the face. “‘Finicking ways,’ Mr. High?”
“Yes,” said Hays thoughtfully. “Let the little finger of his left hand stick out whilst he was doing his evil work. Like he was drinking a dish of tea. Mr. Breakstone—”
“Sir?”
“You might see that the word is passed among those who enjoyed the late Tim Scott’s hospitality at Niblo’s—and those who enjoyed his business anywhere else, like Barney Boots, for instance—that it would be the mark of a good citizen and a good Christian to contribute for funeral expenses.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Let it be known,” said Jacob Hays reflectively, “that I particularly favor such contributions. Yes. Just so.”
* * *
CRIME NEVER SLEEPS, but it is no coincidence that in warmer weather it is more restless than commonly. As the shad run dropped off and Spring, on its way into Summer, continued to crowd the trees with green, the residents of those districts in which few trees grew seemed more and more to fall into those lawless ways from which they had taken a partial vacation during the Winter months. Which often proved unfortunate for visitors to those districts. Mrs. Jacob Hays, however, was unsympathetic.
“Do not tell me, Mr. Hays,” she said, “that you intend to spend the greater part of yet another night on patrol.” Her husband, as if obedience itself, did not tell her that, nor anything else—but addressed himself to his supper. “I cannot believe,” she continued presently, “that these people who get themselves into trouble are truly innocent of improper intention. What is a respectable person doing in the Five-Points? Tell me that, if you please, Mr. Hays.”
Evidently he did not please, for he said, “Mrs. Hays, good-evening,” rose, and departed. He had doubled the patrol in the Five-Points these nights, and that meant taking men away from other places. Wall-street and South-street would howl; well, let them. Or, rather, let them come out in favor of higher taxes to pay for the extra pr
otection the city needed. Let them pave the streets, too, while they were at it; and put up more gas-lamps. Let them—
He stopped. There was some one very near at hand, some one who did not wish to be seen, some one in the pool of darkness which was the space between two buildings at his left. “I know you are there,” said Jacob Hays.
And from the darkness a low voice said, “There is a body in the Old Brewery.”
“There usually is. What floor?”
“Second.”
“Just so. What else?” But there was nothing else. His ears had heard no sound of departure, but he knew that whoever it was had gone. And he walked faster.
On Anthony-street he found Constables Breakstone and Onderdonk, gestured them with his staff to follow him. As he approached the looming hulk of the Old Brewery, the neighborhood was in its usual uproar—screams, shouts, obscenities, drunken songs, the raucous cries which would go on almost till dawn, and then begin again almost at once. Then—from somewhere—not in a shout or scream, not in any tone of hate, but with a sharp note of warning—“Old Hays!”—and silence fell.
That is, comparative silence: quiet enough to hear his own and his men’s feet on the muddy sidewalk and then, as they entered the building, on the rotten wood of the floor, or, rather, on the accumulated filth of years which lay inches thick over the rotten wood except where the flooring had given way and left ugly, dangerous holes.
“Turn up your lamps,” he directed. It was small enough light they gave at best, though enough to keep them from breaking a leg. It was a wonder that the tiny lamps burned at all in here, the air was so foul. There was no railing on the sloping stairs, but still the three men gave the walls a wide enough berth, alive and rippling with vermin as they were.
And all the time there was a murmuring, a muttering, a whispering, a hissing from the darkness. Doors were ajar and dim lights shone and bodies slunk past, but no faces were seen. Rats’ claws scrabbled. The stench grew more fearful, more noisome. Doors closed softly as they approached, opened after they passed. But the door at the end of the first corridor did not move, and behind it Hays found what he had come for.
The Investigations of Avram Davidson Page 21