Chapter 58: Self Destruction
Peter stood frozen in the middle of Bleecker Street, the crisp edge of the money pinching between his thumb and forefinger. The heavy, rhythmic grinding of the spring-wagon’s iron wheels faded into the dark, swallowed by the thick river mist until the cobblestones were entirely silent.
He looked down at the money in his hand. A slow, disbelieving chuckle escaped his lips. The sheer nerve of it.
"I need a drink," Peter muttered, rubbing a hand over his exhausted face. He glanced over his shoulder at his two collectors. "Either of you want a drink?"
Mickey let out a ragged breath, his shoulders slumping. "Who wouldn’t? Jesus, Peter... I thought we were in the clear. I thought we weren’t spotted."
"Maybe we weren’t," Billy said quietly, his eyes still fixed on the empty street where the wagon had vanished. He swallowed hard. "Maybe they’ve been following us, instead of us following them. If you know what I mean."
Peter folded the ten-dollar bill and slid it securely into his coat pocket. "Whatever the case, these guys work differently than anything on the West Side. They didn’t have to show their steel tonight. They showed the guns on purpose just to scare us into line."
"Yeah," Billy nodded, his voice still a bit shaky. "Worked on me."
"Let’s go," Peter said, turning his collar up against the damp chill. "At the very least, they didn’t kill us. So we’re good."
Mickey planted his boots on the stones, his face twisting into a bitter, offended scowl. "Are you still on with that? Seriously, Peter? Didn’t you understand what they just said to us? They knew we were in the window. They knew what we were doing. We’re the ones being played here!"
Peter stopped. He turned around, the exhaustion in his eyes instantly hardening into a sharp, violent glare. He closed the distance in two fast strides, grabbing the front of Mickey’s frayed wool jacket and twisting the fabric hard, yanking the younger boy forward.
"So you’re fine with the way Barney handles us?" Peter hissed, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. "You’re fine being his starving little lapdog? Huh?"
Mickey grabbed Peter’s wrists, his eyes wide, but he couldn’t break the grip.
"I’m racking my brains every single day trying to figure out how to feed ten men!" Peter snarled, shaking him. "Because at least I have the gall to take responsibility for my crew, unlike that arrogant asshole sitting in a plush chair at the saloon drinking premium gin!"
"Then why don’t you kill him?!" Mickey shouted back, his voice cracking in the quiet street.
"Guys! Guys, stop!" Billy lunged forward, grabbing Peter’s arm and wedging himself between them. "Let it go, before someone hears us or a copper walks the beat!"
Peter stared hard into Mickey’s eyes for another second before roughly shoving him away. He let go of the jacket, turning his back to them as he ran a trembling hand through his hair.
"Someday, I will have to," Peter muttered, his voice dropping into a dark, heavy certainty. "But right now, we gotta work with these guys. I don’t care if they’re tied to the Morellos, the Five Points, or whoever. Anything is better than Barney. At the moment, his stupid brother is spoiling and protecting him, and we’re the ones out here fucking dying for it."
Mickey didn’t say anything. He just adjusted his collar, looking down at the wet cobblestones in heavy, bitter silence.
"Follow me if you will," Peter said, his boots clicking sharply as he walked away. "I need a fucking drink." He turned off the street, disappearing into the pitch-black shadows of a narrow alley leading back toward the docks.
Ten blocks north, the black spring-wagon rolled smoothly along the quiet avenues. Sitting on the wooden bench beside Jimmy, Eli Morgan glanced over his shoulder to make sure the street behind them was empty, then turned back to the driver.
"Jimmy," Eli asked, his voice low over the clatter of the hooves. "How’d you find them out anyway? I didn’t see anyone in those windows."
"I didn’t," Jimmy said, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, a sharp, satisfied grin touching his face. "Danny and his orphan boys did. Our boss has got watchers and spies tipped off all over the neighborhood. They track who goes in, who goes out, who has a familiar face, and who doesn’t belong on the block."
Jimmy flicked the leather reins lightly. "Before we even rolled out of the shed tonight, Danny tipped me off. He said there were some unfamiliar mugs watching the yard from a third-floor apartment across the street. Turns out, he was dead on."
Eli shook his head in quiet amazement. "Don’t you think our boss is a bit meticulous? How’d he come up with so many ideas for running a route anyway?"
Jimmy scoffed, a genuine laugh escaping his chest. "I don’t know, man. But I like him. He’s not afraid to show the silver. Like he said... there’s no such thing as too much."
Inside the cool, brick-walled Gansevoort storage shed, the air smelled cleanly of fresh pine and burlap. The amber glow of the hanging oil lamps illuminated a flurry of quiet, highly organized activity.
Ricky stood near the center wooden table, his arms crossed over his dark wool vest as he observed the floor. The four new warehouse recruits—Mark, Joseph, Luke, and Sander—were moving with focused efficiency. Instead of waiting for the wagons to arrive and pulling stock blindly from the massive piles, they were actively separating the goods, pre-staging neat stacks of flour, sugar, and hardware tailored to each route leader’s specific order list. When the wagons returned, loading them would take minutes instead of hours.
"They’re picking it up fast," Ricky noted, glancing to his right.
Danny, the newly appointed Warehouse Manager, leaned against the table beside him. He took a slow drag from a paper cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the rafters. "They’re hungry for the work, boss. Give ’em a week and they’ll be running the floor blindfolded."
Ricky nodded, keeping his eyes on the crew. "What do you know about these Dusters, Dan?"
Danny tapped his ash onto the brick floor. "Apart from what my watchers and the neighborhood gossips tell me? I’ve got a couple of old friends who run low-level errands inside the gang. They tell me there have been heavy internal complaints from the street collectors under the lieutenant named Barney Knox."
"What kind of complaints?" Ricky asked, his analytical mind searching for the structural weakness.
"Apparently, Barney has been starving his own men out," Danny explained, keeping his voice low. "He collects the weekly envelopes, but he doesn’t give his boys a single cent of the share from the extortion or the other local rackets. He’s keeping the whole pie."
Ricky frowned slightly, turning his head. "Why? Don’t street collectors usually skim a little off the top and just not tell their boss?"
"Normally, yeah," Danny said. "But Barney has loyal lapdogs mixed in with the crews. They get paid specifically to snitch to him. If someone is even suspected of stealing from Barney’s collection, they get their body chopped to pieces and sunk to the bottom of the Hudson in a pickle barrel. Nobody risks it. It’s also why there’s been so much unauthorized activity in the alleys at night lately. The lower-level boys are getting desperate. Everyone is going hungry."
Ricky processed the sheer stupidity of the management style. "Won’t the actual boss of the Dusters eventually reprimand this specific lieutenant and remove him before his crew mutinies?"
"Normally, Rubber, the other boss, would have broken Barney’s jaw by now," Danny said, shaking his head. "But this specific lieutenant is Goo Goo Knox’s younger brother, the other boss besides Rubber. They’ve been running the gang since then and Rubber has to be incredibly patient with him because Goo Goo is the one with the heavy political connections. He’s got Tammany Hall men and precinct coppers on his direct payroll. When election season rolls around, the politicians need the Dusters to eliminate rival voters, sabotage ballot boxes, and provide muscle against other candidates who might have connections with the Gophers or the Eastmans."
Ricky let out a slow breath, the political web of 1910 New York clicking into place. "Ahhh... so he’s basically untouchable. Until one of them is crazy enough to kill that son of a bitch."
"Not just anyone," Danny agreed, taking another drag. "But there’s gotta be a breaking point soon."
"Well, even if they have internal conflicts, we still need to be very careful where we tread," Ricky said, his voice practical and firm. "If one of his own lieutenants or collectors decides to kill the spoiled brother, the Duster bosses might need someone to blame. We could easily become the scapegoat if we step out of line or flaunt our money too much."
Ricky looked out toward the open alley doors, where the mist was drifting past the brickwork. "We need to make them think we’re submissive and friendly. Otherwise, we’ll have the entire gang and the corrupt police force on our doorstep. Money can be earned back. Human life is not."
Danny nodded slowly, fully agreeing with the grounded strategy. "What do you think we should do if we have some unavoidable scuffles with their men? Hot heads always prevail on the street, after all."
"Leave that to me," Ricky said smoothly, pushing himself off the table. "I’ll plan a schedule for the night drops to avoid their heavy beats. And once the McClain brothers are finished printing the forged licenses and shipping manifests... it’ll buy us all the time we need with the coppers if inspections ever come up. As long as our paper trail looks clean, we avoid that kind of problem overall."