by Leo Champion
“Here you go, Lady Under First,” the moneychipping clerk said to her. She folded her cash up and slipped it into the inside pocket of her jacket. Then, with a polite nod to the woman across the counter, she turned and headed toward the elevator bank that belonged to the Rigotelli Wing.
The Independent’s elevator districts were numbered from the ground up and in the Rigotelli Wing they were twenty floors apiece…
* * *
Reverend Carl Garson the Second tried to keep the dourness off his face as he left the conference room; President Lei Chang was insisting on too damn much. In return for the Changs’ four hundred and fifty soldiers backing what was left of First and Third companies – about fifty men in all, if you didn’t count the walking wounded – to oust the airborne usurper, the Changs wanted not just cash but huge chunks of territory. His was a small precinct as it was, only the four blocks… and the Chang family wanted two of them.
That would reduce the Garson family to the status of bosses in name only, glorified block captains whose nominal sliver of a precinct would be indefensible when a larger neighbour, probably the grey-haired Tong bastard he’d been facing today, came to gobble the rest up. Underboss up to boss and back to underboss in two generations, what a legacy that would be…
The Reverend had countered by offering the Changs his two southern blocks in exchange for their block containing Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a mighty fortified edifice he had always wanted; it was where his father, the late Reverend Carl Garson the First, had gotten his start. But that bastard Lei Chang had smiled from across the table and refused to even consider it.
With every day that passed, the pigeon and his turncoat allies had time to reorganize the military, to fortify the precinct and to buy support. The Garson family would not be in a better position tomorrow than they were today, but… he was not, damn it, going to lose the holding his father had built and he had been raised, and raised his son, to own!
The Reverend was a tall and somewhat portly white man of sixty-one, with heavy jowls and the last thin strands of hair on top of his head cut into a circular tonsure haircut. He wore an expensive brown suit with a priest’s collar, and carried his ample frame with what he considered to be the dignity of his rank. Right now he was unaccompanied except by John Moncreve; there had been two aides with him during the meeting with the Changs, but they had accompanied his wife downstairs to help her dress for dinner.
Moncreve was sixty-one as well, and he’d been the Reverend’s best friend for half a century. He was a couple of inches taller than the precinct boss but considerably slimmer, with a mop of grey hair over a craggy-jawed face marked, on the left side, by a long duelling scar that went from the middle of his cheek almost to the tip of his chin. He wore an elegantly cut grey suit with Intendancy-style rank straps on the shoulders (even on the streets, it was hard to find businesswear without shoulder straps) but those straps were empty; the Garsons’ civilian managers had never adopted insignia in the Intendancy-aping way a lot of tenements did.
Clipped to Moncreve’s belt was a fine leather scabbard, presently empty while he was under Hotel security; normally it held a rapier that had ended the lives of three opposing duellists and one attempted assassin. Like his boss, Moncreve came from old blood; his father had been a made man of the Italian mafia, his mother the daughter of an overboss with the title of Brooklyn Borough President.
Now the two men headed through a wide double door into the wing’s thirtieth-floor grand hall, a sprawling high-ceilinged room area half-full, in the early evening, of tenement aristocracy from across the city and beyond. They circled and chatted in knots and groups, some of the men in flashy uniforms while others wore expensive suits. The security here was elegant and discreet, and John Moncreve was not the only proudly scabbard-wearing former duellist in here. A few of the more work-oriented women, those who held positions in their own right, wore suits; more of them wore elaborate dresses, with pink a widely popular colour right now for some reason the Reverend had less than no interest in. Uniformed waiters and messengers discreetly circulated, attending to needs or ready to.
Here and there through the hall were clusters of tables and chairs, while against some of the walls and in the centre were bars. It was a gathering place for social business, in the centre of the elevator district; the massive Independent was full of such areas.
“Sheriff Cawley!” John Moncreve greeted a tan-suited man in a cowboy hat with a gleaming six-pointed silver star on the centre of its bridge. As he turned to face them, Reverend Garson saw he had dark glasses and a waxed black handlebar moustache. Another bright sheriff’s star was on his lapel, and four gold stars ran along each of his shoulderboards.
“John Montford,” Sheriff Cawley greeted him.
“Moncreve, actually. And this is my boss, the man I was telling you about this morning – Reverend Carl Garson the Second. Tenement boss of Manhattan; our precinct’s down in the No-Go Zone.”
Hands were shaken and introductions made. The two others, like Cawley both middle-aged and white, were Sheriff William Perry and Baron Alex Ralph; they were rural bosses in the northeastern part of what had been the state of New Jersey, their territories – “districts, we call them out in the boondocks, districts or estates!” Sheriff Cawley grinned – adjacent to one another.
“And you, sir, clearly came to his rightful place by working the Good Book!” Baron Ralph beamed at the Reverend. “We always meet the most interesting people when we come into town, don’t we Billy?”
“I was telling your deputy this morning about the hunting we do,” Sheriff Cawley said to Reverend Garson with a motion of his head at Moncreve. “Runaway raff and bond-tenants – the most dangerous game, eh!”
“You city fellows,” said Sheriff Perry, “employ bounty hunters for that sort of job, don’t you?”
“When it happens,” the Reverend agreed. City raff tended to stay in their tenements; street- and sewergangers made leaving a dangerous proposition and there was nowhere for them to go anyway.
“We keep that pleasure for ourselves – we ride after them on dune buggies and motorcycles. With lances!” Cawley said.
“All three of our districts face an old state forest on the Delaware River,” Baron Ralph explained. “Hills and wetlands that the runaways think they can hide in – and they do, until the dogs and the beating crews flush them out!”
“And then,” said Sheriff Cawley with a grin, “the chase is on!”
All five men laughed. Fine fellows, thought Carl Garson; there really was a lot to be said for the social scene here! His wife was loving it as well.
A pair of three-gold-stars-on-each-shoulder underboss types – one of them pure black African in complexion – joined the group and were introduced as Sheriff Perry’s chief deputies. Someone called for a round of drinks, and the group drifted toward the nearest of the bars.
“Throats get parched while the women try on the new fashions they’ve been shopping for all day, eh?” said Baron Ralph, drawing a thick wad of bills from his jacket. “First round’s on me, gentlemen!”
“You said you’re a Manhattan boss, local to here,” said Sheriff Cawley to Reverend Garson after a pair of attentive bow-tied bartenders had filled their orders.
The Reverend sipped his beer. “Yes, down in the No-Go. We are, in fact, independent of the Associations,” he bragged.
“Oh, you must pay vig to someone,” said a greying-bearded man with a smile. “There’s always vig unless you’re an overboss. You an overboss, good Reverend?”
“I can’t quite say that,” Reverend Garson said, and because you never knew who was listening added, “and we do proudly fly the vig flag of South Bowery. I meant independent of the city’s major Associations.”
The Chief Councillor of the South Bowery Neighbourhood Watch Zone had, last night, told him that the Garsons’ vig payments were a protection policy against external threats, not mutiny from within. Fifty grand a month and they won’t even intervene w
hen I need them, but he hadn’t said that aloud.
“The No-Go Zone,” mused Sheriff Perry’s black underboss. “That’s really not far from here, is it? There were some historic battles in that area back in the early ‘70s.”
“It’s three or four solid miles,” said the Reverend. “Most of it high-building country, dangerous at night.”
“We are in Times Square, gentlemen! There is no better place in the city – in the region, perhaps on the continent! – for hiring freelance protection,” Sheriff Perry agreed with his underling. “Cost of it’s on me, my friends. We’ll convoy down there and our friend the Reverend can show us his precinct – and then you two and your captains can ride west with us for a fine hunt!”
Oh no. To buy a moment, Reverend Garson took a long sip on his beer, a storied and expensive arkscraper brand called Budweiser.
“Sounds a splendid idea!” said Cawley. “Reverend Garson, we await your invitation!”
Reverend Garson looked down at the tiled floor, aware that Moncreve was doing his best to fade into the background. “Unfortunately, we might need to raise a little more force than some convoy guards to tour the place right at this moment. Right now my precinct is in a temporary state of” – he’d look even more the fool if they thought he’d been turfed out by a pack of raff and gangers – “disruptive occupation.”
The Baron and the two sheriffs had convoyed in together, and most of their shared convoy guards would be enjoying Times Square themselves right now, mostly off duty and probably drunk. The rest of their guards were at home in their districts, two days or further away. The possibility of assistance from any of these three men was nonexistent.
“You’re an exile, my good Reverend?” Baron Ralph laughed. The other men chortled with him: “A boss without a precinct! A homeless man!”
Reverend Garson glared murder at the Baron, who responded with a chuckle. There were grins and laughs from the other men while Garson seethed inside; good-natured laughter was still laughter, and he did not enjoy being laughed at.
“Sir?” came an aide named Giselle Bragg, well-born elder sister to Fourth Company’s former lieutenant. It was a relief and a distraction for the Reverend to turn to her, away from the raucous laughter at him.
“Yes?” Any pretext would do to get away from this humiliation!
“Captain Daniel’s back from the Airedale, sir,” the aide whispered.
“Important business calls, gentlemen,” Reverend Garson said to the group. “John, come with me.”
Moncreve seemed only too glad to scram himself.
“Pressing and vital work indeed,” Sheriff Perry’s white deputy remarked deadpan. “Of reorganizing one’s luggage and issuing whole-district declarations to be obeyed across one’s hotel suite!”
Only the discipline from a lifetime of ruling, or being groomed to rule, kept Reverend Garson from showing his anger. If Lei Chang had agreed to reasonable terms this afternoon, occurred to him, I would be inspecting troops right now. Not being mocked by underbosses!
There were smiles on all the men’s faces right now, but Carl Garson the Second had never appreciated even good-natured mockery – least of all to his face, by people he couldn’t flog or hang for it. And there was a less pleasant undertone present in that laughter: no boss ever felt completely secure in his place. What had happened to him Friday could happen to any of the others tomorrow – usurpation by internal enemies and invasion by external ones were possibilities as ongoing and constant to any tenement boss, as the certainties of death and vig.
Men might smile genially as they mock the leper, the Reverend half-remembered a line from one of the newer Justice Bible translations, but the leper is mocked regardless with laughter echoing his bell. You laughed at the dispossessed guy to distance yourself from him and the possibility that it could just as easily be you… he’d done so himself enough times.
Reverend Garson fixed Perry’s mouthy, cheeky deputy with a stare that had cowed more powerful men. The deputy had the decency to look away.
“Organizing an invasion,” he said coldly, “and issuing execution orders.”
“The captains are waiting on us,” John Moncreve said with a nudge.
“They are,” Garson agreed. Are these guys smirking at me?
“As are the bellhops and the errand boys,” Sheriff Perry observed.
There was another round of laughter.
“Well,” said Sheriff Cawley, “best of luck with your triumphant return home, Reverend Garson! I look forward to my invitation to your victory parade!”
Laughter followed the seething Reverend Garson out of the grand hall.
* * *
The Reverend’s second son, Daniel, had been commander of Fourth Company. He’d been the one to sign and swear wingless airborne Jeff Hammer into the tenement guards, in fact, without much diligence beyond verifying a junior sergeant’s recommendation. Outside the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned backstabbing Karstein scum, Reverend Garson thought as he marched stiffly and irritably down the corridor… aside from the fucking Karsteins and Hammer himself, it was Daniel Garson whose negligence had put the family into this position.
Daniel was a blond man of thirty-six, his hair cut – like every man in the Garson family by blood or marriage – in a circular tonsure. He wore his officer’s uniform of a green shirt over trousers and black boots, an empty scabbard and pistol holster attached to a Sam Browne belt. Next to him in a similar uniform was Third Company’s commander Roger Moncreve, John’s second son. Roger was a couple of inches taller than Daniel, wore a floppy brown hat with a feather stuck through it, and was right now nursing a nasty burn he’d taken amongst other injuries in the fighting two days ago.
The difference was that Fourth Company had mutinied and cost him the precinct. Third had stayed loyal to the point of losing nineteen dead to the streetgangers and the airborne’s bombs in Friday’s fighting. As the two captains drew themselves to attention in the hallway, banging closed fists to their foreheads for the Reverend, the exiled boss wondered if that indicated certain things about the relative leadership values of blood versus merit. Not that Roger, as the second surviving son of the precinct number two, didn’t have fine blood in his own right…
“You’re back from the Airedale,” Reverend Garson greeted them. They wouldn’t have gone alone, of course, but their First or Third company guards were bedded down in cheaper Midtown accommodations than the Independent. “With what news?”
“With good news, Dad,” said Daniel with a smile. “Saved a few thousand bucks for you – none of the pigeons we contracted made it back to claim the other half of their pay!”
“That’s the good news, Boss,” said Roger Moncreve. “The bad is that nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to bomb our precinct again. Not after the first two gangs were wiped out by some kind of balloons.”
“Wars are won on the ground, not in the air,” Daniel shrugged. It sounded like the two had been going back and forth with this argument for a while.
Roger put a hand to his right bicep, where his green shirt was loosened a bit to allow for bandages and salve. There were little cuts on his face and hands, too.
“My boys and the Changs would have saved the Chapel and ended the coup,” he said, “if it hadn’t been for that pigeon’s airstrike. Coordinated with the streetgangers – you really think Mr. Pigeon doesn’t know that, Dan? Bet you if we send some scouts down there we’ll see the regular companies practicing with Jeff Hammer’s tame pigeons, too.”
Wait.
What?
“Do you mean to say,” Reverend Garson demanded, “that we don’t have spies watching the precinct right now?”
Daniel shrugged dismissively. “Dirty snitches are Kim Karstein’s job, not ours.”
Reverend Garson’s lip curled at the name. Bottom-feeding hand-biting scum Karsteins… but she had a deputy, who hadn’t turned coat…
“They’re your youngest brother’s job now,” he said to Roger. Idiots. “Get Willi
am onto it! And then…”
He’d been reluctant to take this route, because it was inherently dangerous and would get expensive… but Lei Chang’s greed needed to be balanced with something.
“Yes, boss?”
“Start asking around in whatever dives the unemployed soldiers drink in,” Reverend Garson ordered. A plan was forming in his mind: he was going to show up those cow-fucking Jersey rednecks and greedy Chang. “We’ve got… First and Third companies both took losses in the fight. How many fighting effectives do we have right now, John - fifty?”
“Last roll call has it at forty-one,” said John Moncreve flatly. “Soldiers and officers, that’s including every signed man. We have four captains, five lieutenants and sixteen sergeants with us in Times Square right now.”
Of course. The higher-ranking people were better-born, tied more closely by blood and marriage to the precinct’s upper leadership. Regular soldiers, most of whom would fight for whoever controlled their homes if the pay kept coming on time, could and would be forgiven – fined, of course, but not much stiffer punishment than that for most of them – when the precinct was taken back. More binding loyalty was expected from officers, and the opportunistic ones who’d defected to Hammer… would be wise to flee when the precinct’s rightful authority reasserted itself.
Of course, particularly troublesome lower-ranking individuals like Hammer, the Benzi family and… just about everyone those guys had given significant rank to, really… would be treated very differently, peeling-knife differently in certain cases. There were already generous prices on those heads, and double those prices in bounty money for them brought in alive.