Warlord of New York City

by Leo Champion

  “You know eyes are on us,” Jacopo Benzi murmured to Hammer. “I can sense them. The Lonsdales, the Rogersons, the Changs, probably South Bowery as well. Seeing how we integrate these guys. Every stumble… is going to be noticed.”

  “And the local streetgangers,” said Hammer, “and probably the sewer raiders too. Nothing we can do about that except get better.”

  Kim Karstein had gone off to have a word with her lieutenant, Ursula Frusci. The company broke up into its four twelve-man squads and began to practice the basic movements of forming columns, then lines.

  Now the Second Company commander returned to Hammer and Benzi.

  “Second is going to be the best goddamn company in your force,” she said firmly, “and if it takes them all day – and if I have to pay for their practice ammunition from my own pocket – then we’re going to.”

  Hammer gave a slow nod. Couldn’t argue against the woman’s motivation. “Good.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Three dozen expensively dressed people circled around the room as Hammer arrived, in a tailored green dress shirt with epaulets but, by choice, absolutely no rank insignia. With him was Kimberli Karstein, who had exchanged her boots for heels and had shined the gold captain’s tracks on her shoulders.

  Councillor Marcus Lonsdale was a well-kept man in his early sixties, in a tuxedo with two gold stars on each epaulet.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said, extending a hand to Hammer and a respectful nod toward Karstein. “Come on in.”

  They shook hands, Hammer eyeing the two gold stars on the Lonsdale boss’ shoulders. They didn’t sit evenly on the epaulets. As if it’s a costume, only he’d heard that for these people, it wasn’t.

  “Major-General,” he ventured, “or Executive Intendant First Class?”

  Mrs. Lonsdale, a beehive-haired woman in a frilly blue dress with the same double stars pinned to its shoulders anyway, raised a hand in front of her mouth and giggled. She was laden down by heavy jewelry, a big gold neck-chain and several rings and bracelets with diamonds, sapphires and rubies the size of walnuts emplaced in them.

  “Executive Second, but thank you,” said the Councilor. “I rate myself about equal to a Cluster Councilperson, who are US-19. Add a grade for autonomy and here we are.”

  “My mistake,” said Hammer. He smiled: “I never really watched the telenovelas. I only saw them for myself through the windows of the skyways.”

  “He’s only a ganger,” said a shaven-headed man in his forties with two gold eagles on each shoulder, as he came up. “Of course he can’t be expected to know much.”

  “Do I know you?” Hammer asked coldly.

  “You know my brother in law,” the man almost spat back.

  “President Hammer, this is Senior Colonel Karlsen of the Rogersons,” smiled Councilor Lonsdale. “Who is indeed married to the sister of your late Reverend’s deputy.”

  “President, is it?” Karlsen glared. Hammer smiled back at John Moncreve’s sister’s husband; open hostility he could deal with and had been ready for. He’d known the top families across the city were married to one another across precinct lines. “I’d have expected Lord, or maybe Baron.”

  Some local bosses, especially in suburban and rural areas, used the titles of the old medieval aristocracies, but Hammer had heard that behavior, at least in Manhattan, was considered as tacky as putting silver insignia on your shoulders when you weren’t real Intendancy. You used real titles to confer legitimacy, not fantasy ones.

  “It’s not Reverend,” Kimberli Karstein smiled sweetly. “There was one of those. Now there’s two. I wonder how that might have been?”

  Senior Colonel Karlsen gave a murderous glare to Hammer’s plus-one, who might have been old blood herself but apparently didn’t have family ties to that tenement.

  “Yes,” said Councilor Lonsdale. “President Hammer, we have some things to talk about. A moment please – would you care for a drink, perhaps?”

  Before Hammer could decline, the boss gestured over a circling waiter in livery and took two champagne flutes from his tray. He pressed one into Hammer’s hands and took a long sip from his own as he guided Hammer toward a corner.

  “My emissary during your coup,” the Councilor said in a low voice, “said you have no plans to start another Commune. Which is why we didn’t intervene then. The Garsons were never our friends and we’ve been feuding for years with their allies the Rogersons. For our part, we’re more than happy to open up friendly relations with West Bowery, now it looks like you might survive the week.”

  Hammer sensed a ‘but’ coming. He waited to see what it would be.

  “But you’re – behaving irrationally,” the Councilor went on. “Not so much allowing the raff to quit or strike, although if you ever did tolerate a real strike it would set a bad example. But granting every last proletarian sorter and scavenger ownership of his own apartment? Letting them own guns? And more to the point, letting clerks and technicians a step above raff themselves, run every plant autonomously. I can understand that as a short term thing while you find people of good families and appoint them to properly centralized management, but I can loan you people for that. People with experience.”

  Yes, thought Hammer, I’m sure you’d love to give thirty of your people highly-paid jobs in the Chapel. That wouldn’t at all put you in a position to take over.

  “I think we’ll be fine,” he said.

  “I can feel your skepticism about allowing my people to run your production,” Councilor Lonsdale said with a smile. “But you really need to hire people, then. Or appoint your own people. I don’t mean those gangers, no offense, who helped you take over. And you need to take back control of your housing situation. Otherwise it’s anarchy.”

  “Maybe there’s something to be said for anarchy,” said Hammer. “The Airedale works fairly well, and so do the Times Square markets. All I’m doing is making official, and on a larger scale, the hustling and trading people are going to do anyway.”

  “Be serious, Hammer,” said Lonsdale. “Up there, in the scrapers, they’re scientific about this kind of thing. Algorithms and AIs make their planning a lot more efficient of course, but it’s all still done from the center outwards, from the top down. By consensus of the best people, for the good of society as a whole. Not just some greedy hustlers.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Hammer, trying to keep the dismissiveness out of his tone.

  “My production deputies tell me,” said Lonsdale, “that they’ve lost six of their best clerks to your… so-called executives hiring them away.”

  Hammer cocked his head.

  “Maybe if you offered them more money to stay, they would.”

  “We’ve had to, because others – people we can’t do without – have gotten similar offers. We’ve had to double some people’s wages to match what your jumped-up clerks think they can afford to pay people of their own class.”

  “Lock handles the production,” Hammer shrugged. Not his damn problem, that meant.

  It was as good a way to shelve the subject for now, although he made a mental note to assign his production manager a couple of competent bodyguards now the man had been named. Idly he wondered just how many people Lock’s clerks and managers had hired to the tenement, and how many others had gotten raises to keep that from happening. He wasn’t going to put a damn stop to it – if his independent shops and plants could outcompete the Lonsdales’ – and every other neighbors’ – centrally run ones, then it meant more bottom-line for the precinct and a hefty bonus for the production manager’s own bank account.

  “Have him flogged.”

  “I do not,” said Hammer, “think I will be doing that.”

  The Councilor narrowed his eyes and said nothing.

  “Ah,” said a man in an elaborate black-and-blue dress uniform. A red stripe ran down each leg and there was a silver eagle on each shoulder. The man himself was in his late thirties, barrel-chested with a nose that had been
broken more than once. A clear combat veteran.

  “Colonel…” he guessed, and then recognized the uniform. More to the point, the silver eagles he wore. Wearing silver on your shoulders was frowned upon – but there was an organization that predated the Intendancy. By two centuries. Hammer’s eyes widened.

  Aren’t NYPD supposed to stay south of Canal Street?

  “President Jeff Hammer, this is Inspector Jamie Ibson,” Councilor Lonsdale smiled graciously. “Here in his personal social capacity, of course.”

  That was bullshit. Nobody appeared in dress uniform on personal business.

  “Well,” Ibson nodded genially. “You don’t look like Spartacus.”

  “No, he only wants to turn control of the means of production to the clerks and technicians,” the Councilor growled.

  “I want what’s best for my precinct. As we bosses all do.”

  Ibson gave a slight chuckle and sipped from the glass of Scotch in his hand.

  “As all bosses do. Of course,” he said. “Oh, hello Dmitri!”

  A short, sallow-faced man with two sharp straight dueling scars standing out on his pale-olive-skinned left cheek was coming up. He nodded genially at the Inspector and looked down his nose at Councilor Lonsdale, who affected not to notice.

  “And this is our friend from uptown,” the Councilor said. “Dmitri Colombo, of the Midtown Association.”

  “Here himself in a purely social capacity, I assume,” said Hammer. You a made man, or one of the vories? Colombo was possibly the only person in the room other than himself who wasn’t wearing insignia on his shoulders.

  “Assumed correctly.” Colombo’s dark olive eyes flickered with a momentary digital flash, and Hammer realized the man probably had an implant going, with everything he was saying recorded for the eyes of Kalashov himself and his consiglieres. Just as everything the Mayor’s man was saying was almost certainly being recorded for the consumption of Mayor O’Grady and Chief Kagan.

  Almost to confirm the thought, a digital ghost flashed on Ibson’s eyes. Shit, he had to get an implant himself – for all he knew the two were talking to one another. Shouldn’t they be glaring at each other? What were either of them even doing here.

  “You flew,” said Colombo flatly. “Out of the Airedale?”

  “We had our own roof,” said Hammer. Before a man under your protection had my gang wiped out.

  There would be a reckoning for that someday.

  “But you visited there for your contracts.” The sallow-faced eyes gave another digital flicker as he reviewed, checked, or noted something. “I’m told you’re not welcome there any more.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.” Santos had said as much, and mentioned another thirty grand added to the bounty on himself. The source hadn’t been announced, but it was reasonable to think the Airedale’s management had gotten pissed enough, on behalf of a clientele whose effectiveness and survivability had been seriously impaired by the barrier balloons, to soil a trusted agent’s feet with street dirt.

  “That does not apply to Times Square, I wish to make clear,” said Colombo. “If you were wondering.”

  How did the Airedale’s business even relate to the Midtown Association?

  Except that the Upper East Side tenements did pay vig to Kalashov these days, although some of the ones along the river, within cannon range of the Mayor’s fleet, were said to pay or play both sides. The Airedale, though?

  Colombo smiled thinly through yellowed teeth.

  “We protect our vig flag holders from outside interference. The Airedale doesn’t fly a flag. The guilds’ squabbles are no more ours than the internal politics of the Independent Hotel might be. And business in the No-Go Zone,” Dmitri Colombo said with a look at Ibson, “is neither of the Associations’.”

  Hammer sipped his drink, resisting the temptation to throw it down. Inter-tenement politics were a whole order of magnitude more complex than he’d first thought.

  Ibson looked at Councilor Lonsdale.

  “At least your neighbor isn’t creating workers’ committees.”

  “I did not take power to hand it over to a bunch of raff,” said Hammer flatly. This was ground he was readier to argue on.

  “No, he’s handing it over to a bunch of clerks instead,” Lonsdale frowned.

  “We left Greenwich Village alone for far too long in ’81,” said the Downtown Association man, as his counterpart from Midtown gave a slight nod of agreement. “Lessons were learned from that. Remember that, Boss Hammer. Dmitri, how about you join me for a glass of this Macallan.”

  Hammer watched the two men head off in the direction of the bar.

  “I think that concludes the necessary political business of the night,” said Councilor Lonsdale. “President Hammer, let me take you around the room. There’s some others for you to meet…”

  * * *

  “Vice-President Bo Chang,” said the man a couple of years older than Hammer’s thirty-one. He wore dark glasses that obviously concealed an implant, and a single gold star on each shoulder. He extended a hand with the callused fingers of a man who practiced his sword skills.

  Hammer shook it warily.

  “You got lucky,” the Changs’ middle son said flatly.

  Yes, let the enemy tenement consider him as illiterate as Hoshi, please. He wasn’t here to brag.

  “I suppose so. Twice, in fact. Have you figured out yet which Reverend you’ll be backing?”

  If the man took offense, Hammer didn’t care. War with this guy was inevitable given how hard the Changs had been bloodied during the coup.

  “We’re letting them duke it out for now. Doesn’t put us in a worse position when we come for you.”

  “I suppose you’d better hope we don’t get lucky again. With airstrikes or people taking walks in alleys.”

  Bo Chang frowned, the first expression Hammer had seen on the neighboring heir’s face.

  “We think you’ve shot your bolt, airborne. It was a good one, I’ll give you that. But are your fliers going to go through your own balloons – or ours? – the next time?”

  “Yes, we saw you putting them on carts,” Hammer said. It wasn’t giving away anything that he had his neighbor under observation. His own testbed was the Lower East Side, in Hoshi’s old ground. Santos had been doing some successful experimentation there with magnesium-tipped crossbow bolts…

  Chang lowered his voice.

  “It will cost us money to fight, and your armed raff will die by the score. My father has authorized me to pay five hundred thousand, to be split between yourself and your upjumped underbosses however you want to work it out, if you’ll just cede everything to us.”

  Cutting both aspiring Reverends completely out of the picture, huh?

  Half a mil was a lot of money, on the other hand. It would set him up somewhere like Times Square, buy him an ultralight of his own. It wouldn’t quite be fuck-you money, not if he gave the Karsteins and the Benzis a reasonable share, but… it might set him up to make that later.

  No. The hell with that; he hadn’t come this far to sell out his people. It made him ashamed to have considered it.

  “I’ll take it under consideration,” he replied. In the same tone he continued: “And I wish you the best with your other options.”

  * * *

  “Well,” said Marla Cowan, “you’re not much of a diplomat.”

  Hammer shrugged. “I grew up on rooftops. Ganger, as a few of these nice people were courteous enough to remind me.”

  “This is my husband, Francis Cowan. Of the Downtown Cowans.” The man was handsome, fortyish, with three gold hourglasses on his shoulders. And a frown on his face.

  “Deputy production manager for the Councilor,” Francis said. “Hammer, do you even have deputy production managers?”

  “I have thirty of them,” Hammer smiled. That was about the number of independent business managers reporting to Lock for their dispute resolution and financial administration.

  “No,”
Marla Cowan said. “He’s not a diplomat.”

  “It’s hard to be diplomatic from four hundred feet.”

  Both Lonsdale executives laughed.

  “On a related note, your plus-one” – Marla gestured across the room at Kim Karstein, who was chatting with Mrs. Lonsdale, as well as one of the three Watch Chairmen who ran the South Bowery Neighborhood Association, and that Chairman’s wife – “is having the time of her life hohnobbing with bosses and their wives.”

  Hammer smiled. Karstein had jumped at the opportunity to be his plus-one, saying it would be a fine opportunity to gather intelligence while Ali Benzi, who as a captain was still wearing a soldiers’ T-shirt and jeans with combat boots around the Chapel, might not quite fit. To put it delicately.

  “To think,” said Marla, “that her parents were raff.”

  Hammer couldn’t keep his eyebrows from rising, sharply.

  “Do tell.” He’d had no idea.

  “Oh,” said Cowan with a look at her equally well-born husband. “I think we already have.”

  * * *

  It had been First Company’s job to escort dignitaries on visits, and Hammer hadn’t been quite sure what the etiquette was. It turned out that the usual escort size was a squad, a formality when simply crossing the road to a friendly neighbor. On entering the Lonsdales’ gates they’d been allowed to keep their weapons un-bonded, armed but escorted by a courtesy guard of the same number of Lonsdale soldiers.

  The soldiers, Squad Mangoletti of First Company, had been chilling with Lonsdale guards and escorts from the eight or nine other precincts whose senior people were at the party.

  Kimberli Karstein had drilled Mangoletti on how to behave: don’t drink, don’t let the men drink, yes you guys are only a formality and there’s no danger, but soldiers do not ever drink on duty outside the tenement. Not even First Company. It didn’t matter if the other guards were drinking, Mangoletti and his soldiers weren’t to.

  As they left, Hammer noted that Karstein herself hadn’t followed that rule. She’d had several flutes of arkscraper champagne over the course of the evening.