Chapter 21: Hands From Birmingham
The mid-afternoon sun beat down on Greenwich Street, baking the wet horse manure and coal dust until the air smelled like warm sulfur and wet cedar.
Ricky hoisted a heavy wooden crate filled with twenty-five pounds of lard and ten tins of baking powder onto his shoulder. His legs—strengthened by his daily morning runs—hardly felt the weight, but his shirt was still soaked through at the chest with sweat.
He carried the crate through the front door of Higgins’ General Provisions. The small bell above the latch gave a dry cling.
"Right on the counter, Ricky," said Higgins, a wide-shouldered man with a thin gray beard and rolled-up sleeves. He wiped his hands on his canvas apron as Ricky set the box down with a dull wooden thud.
Marek came in right behind him, carrying a smaller box packed with paper-wrapped spools of linen thread for Higgins’ retail shelves. Marek set his box down and immediately leaned against the counter, letting out a long, heavy sigh as he wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
"You boys look like you’ve been run through a timber mill," Higgins remarked, looking at Marek’s flushed face and then back to Ricky. He took out his ledger, tapping his pencil against his thumb. "How many stops you made today?"
"Fourteen," Ricky said, pulling out his leather order book. "Bleecker, Perry, Barrow, and Greenwich. And we still have three more on Morton before we pull Bartek into the barn."
Higgins shook his head, looking out the front window at their black spring-wagon parked at the curb. "You two are running yourselves into the cobbles. The whole block is talking about your prices, Ricky. Half the shopkeepers between here and Seventh Avenue are asking when you’re taking new accounts. You can’t haul that much drayage with just four hands."
"We’re feeling it," Ricky admitted, adjusting his wool vest. "Especially on the heavy groceries."
Higgins leaned over the counter, dropping his voice a fraction. "You looking for extra help? A proper hand to lift crates and run orders?"
Ricky looked over at Marek, who was massaging the small of his back. He turned back to the merchant. "We actually are, Mr. Higgins. If he’s reliable and knows how to move cargo, we could use another pair of shoulders. In fact, if he works out, we’re looking to put another wagon on the road soon."
Higgins smiled, his weathered face creasing around the eyes. "I got just the lad. My sister’s boy. Came over on the steamship from England three weeks ago. He’s staying in my spare room on Christopher Street."
"An Englishman?" Marek asked, looking up from the counter with a slight frown.
"From Birmingham," Higgins said, nodding. "Good worker, strong as an ox, but his mother sent him over here to get him away from the streets back home. Said he got himself mixed up with some rough local gang down in the West Midlands—calls ’em the Peaky Blinders or something like that. She figured if he stayed in Birmingham, he’d end up in a box before his twentieth birthday."
Ricky froze for a second, his hand hovering over his pocketbook.
Peaky Blinders? Back in 2026, he’d seen a hundred edit clips on TikTok and Facebook Reels—dudes in flat caps with razor blades sewn into the brims, walking through dark, smoky factory streets in slow motion to heavy rock music. He’d never actually watched the TV show, but he knew the name. Hearing a merchant in 1910 speak about them like an annoying neighborhood problem back in England made his modern brain do a weird, surreal flip.
"Peaky Blinders, huh?" Ricky said, a subtle, amused smile touching the corner of his mouth.
"Aye, some bunch of razor-toting street rats," Higgins muttered, waving his hand dismissively. "But John’s a good lad when he’s kept busy. Needs an honest wage and someone to keep his head straight before he finds the wrong crowd over here in New York."
"Send him by," Ricky said, leaning against the counter. "We’re usually around Greenwhich anyway. Tell him to find us tomorrow morning if he wants to talk."
"I’ll tell him tonight," Higgins said, signing Ricky’s order ledger and sliding two silver dollars and eighty cents across the dark wood. "He’ll be there."
Once they stepped back out into the sun and climbed onto the wooden bench of the spring-wagon, Marek pulled on the leather reins, setting Bartek into a slow walk toward Morton Street.
"Ricky," Marek said, speaking out of the corner of his mouth as he kept his eyes on the street. "Is it really a good idea to hire an English gangster? Things are moving fast enough as it is. We just started doing deliveries and now we’re taking on people from across the ocean?"
Ricky pulled his pencil out, writing Higgins’ payment down in his pocketbook. "Marek, look at the order list. We took eight new orders today alone. By next week, if we don’t hire someone to help load the wagon and take orders on the side streets, we’re going to be working eighteen-hour days until our knees give out."
"Yeah, but... a guy from a gang?" Marek pressed, his brow furrowing with concern. "What if he tries to steal from the crates? What if he’s like Paddy or Martin?"
Ricky let out a quiet chuckle, closing his notebook with a soft snap. "Marek, remember what we talked about yesterday? We aren’t building a quiet little delivery company. We’re building a network. If the Dusters or any other gang on the West Side tries to mess with our carts, I don’t want a soft clerk sitting on the bench who runs away the second someone raises a stick. Having a guy who already knows how the street works is a benefit, not a problem."
Marek thought about that, looking down at his worn leather reins. He remembered the fight in the alley near the docks, the dull gleam of Doyle’s .32 revolver, and how fast things could turn ugly in New York.
"I guess..." Marek muttered, still sounding a bit hesitant. "I just don’t want trouble."
"Neither do I," Ricky said, patting Marek’s shoulder. "That’s why we pay well and keep control. Stop worrying. Let’s see what the kid looks like first."
The next morning, at five-thirty, the air in the alley behind 14 Commerce Street was cold and thick with a damp, blue river mist.
Ricky and Marek were carrying a heavy wooden crate of refined lard down the iron fire escape. The iron steps creaked softly under their boots as they maneuvered the box toward the cobblestones.
"Commission boys?"
The voice came from the dark mouth of the alley. It carried a distinct, sharp English accent—flat, heavy consonants that sounded completely different from the Irish lilts and Italian accents of Greenwich Village.
Ricky set his side of the crate down on the bottom iron step, wiping his palms on his trousers as he turned. Marek stepped down beside him, his eyes instantly narrowing with street-honed caution.
Standing at the edge of the alley, framed by the pale yellow glow of a distant gas lamp, was a young man.
He was tall—an inch or two taller than Ricky—but built leaner, with narrow shoulders and long arms tucked into the pockets of a dark, slightly frayed wool coat. He wore a dark wool flat cap pulled low over his forehead, shading a sharp, pale face with clear gray eyes and a faint, thin scar running along his jawline.
Despite his thin frame, he stood with a relaxed, balanced posture, his eyes scanning Ricky, Marek, the fire escape, and the crates stacked in the shadows with quick, quiet efficiency.
"That’s us," Ricky said, stepping off the fire escape onto the damp stones. He held out his hand. "I’m Ricky. This is Marek."
The young man stepped forward, taking his hand out of his coat pocket. His grip was firm, dry, and calloused. "John," he said. "John Caldwell. My uncle Higgins said you were looking for extra hands."
"Pleased to meet you, John," Ricky said, looking him over. He noticed the kid moved with a quiet, careful tread—the kind of movement that came from walking dark, dangerous streets. "How’d you find us?"
John offered a faint, dry half-smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "Didn’t need an address. I’ve seen your black spring-wagon on Greenwich two mornings in a row. Watched the route you took coming off Barrow. Figured if you were moving goods before six in the morning without pulling from the commercial piers, you had to be staging out of one of the quiet lanes off Hudson. Commerce is the only street on this curve with an open rear alley."
Marek blinked, looking at John with a mix of surprise and sudden wariness.
Ricky’s smile broadened. Sharp kid.
"Not bad," Ricky said, offering a genuine nod of approval. "You’ve got good eyes."
"Need ’em where I’m from," John said simply, his voice flat and practical.
Ricky leaned his hip against the iron railing of the fire escape, keeping his hands visible. "Here’s the situation, John. Right now, it’s just the three of us. We’re supplying hardware, groceries, and dry goods to the merchants around Greenwich Village. Next-day delivery, no minimum orders."
John listened quietly, his head slightly tilted.
"Right now, we’re hauling everything off one wagon," Ricky continued. "But as our order volume grows over the next couple of weeks, we’re planning to buy a second wagon and another draft horse. We’ll split the routes. One for Bleecker and Greenwich, one for the side streets."
"And what would my job be?" John asked.
"For now? Hauling crates, loading the wagon at dawn, driving the route with Marek, and taking orders from shopkeepers," Ricky said. "Same work we do."
John nodded slowly. "And the pay?"
"A dollar and fifty cents a day to start," Ricky said, his tone thoroughly grounded and matter-of-fact. "Eight-hour shift. If we need you for extra deliveries past eight hours, you get overtime—twenty cents an hour."
John stopped. His gray eyes widened slightly, his cool, detached demeanor slipping for a fraction of a second. "A dollar-fifty a day? With overtime?"
"Depending on your performance," Ricky added, "your base pay goes up. You do good work, you keep your mouth shut about our logistics, and you treat the shopkeepers with respect, you’ll earn more here than anywhere on the docks."
To Ricky, an eighteen-year-old from the 2026 era, offering an eight-hour workday and overtime pay was just basic human decency—the bare minimum standard he’d grown up with. He didn’t have to worry about payroll taxes, health insurance forms, or government compliance in 1910, so paying a fair wage directly out of his massive profit margins was effortless.
To John Caldwell—who had spent his early youth dodging twelve-hour factory shifts in polluted English industrial slums for pittance wages—the offer sounded almost absurdly generous.
John looked at Ricky for a long, quiet second, searching his face for any sign of a catch. Finding none, the English boy took his hand out of his pocket again and offered it.
"I’ll take the job," John said, his voice quiet but solid. "Where do you need me?"
Ricky shook his hand again, a sharp, satisfied grin on his face. "Follow us upstairs, John. We’ve still got six crates of flour and a keg of nails to haul down."
Marek let out a loud, relieved sigh as he picked up his side of the lard crate. "Thank God," Marek muttered, stepping toward the stairs. "My back was starting to feel like an old fence post."
John offered a small, quiet laugh, stripping off his heavy wool coat and tossing it over the iron railing before grabbing the other side of the heavy crate with ease.
As the three of them began moving the cargo in the cold morning air, Ricky looked at the new additions to their team.
The shadow syndicate was no longer just two boys with a single horse. The machine was growing.