Chapter 4: Share & Shadow
The heavy wooden loading door on the ground floor slammed shut with a muffled boom, its echo traveling up the empty stairs. A minute later, the loose board near the base of the landing creaked loudly.
Marek emerged at the top of the staircase, his oversized tweed cap tilted back on his head. He was holding two steaming, skin-split boiled potatoes wrapped in a piece of rough, yellowed newspaper.
The scent of hot starch and wet earth cut straight through the warehouse’s stale smell of rotting onions.
Without a word, Marek tossed one of the potatoes across the room.
Ricky caught it instinctively, his throbbing hands immediately burning from the heat. He shifted the hot spud back and forth between his calloused palms, looking down at it hesitantly. It was completely bare—no butter, no salt, covered in tiny specks of black dirt from whatever street vendor Marek had bought it from.
Marek took a massive bite out of his own potato, chewing happily as he leaned against a rotting wooden support beam. He looked Ricky up and down, taking in the dark patches of sweat soaking through Ricky’s black t-shirt and the raw, dusty tracks across his forehead.
"You look like a drowned rat," Marek said around a mouthful of potato. "What were you doing up here? Punching the bricks?"
"Working out," Ricky said, his voice flat as he carefully peeled away a strip of dirty potato skin. He took a cautious bite. It was bland and slightly gritty, but his stomach rumbled instantly, realizing he hadn’t eaten since he left a different century.
Marek paused his chewing, looking confused. "A workout? Like a prizefighter?"
Ricky paused, his mind quickly turning over the term. Prizefighter. He’d read that word in the Carnegie and Sullivan biographies he bought at the library sale. Right. Boxing.
"No," Ricky said, taking another bite of the hot potato. "Not a prizefighter. Just keeping in shape."
Marek shrugged, clearly thinking Ricky was eccentric, but he didn’t press it. He swallowed hard and wiped his mouth with the back of his dirty sleeve. "Well, your timing is good. I just ran into Mr. Vance down by the lower basin. He owns the Mary-Ann, a small drift-netting boat. His regular crew got locked up in the Tombs last night after a saloon brawl, and he needs two extra deckhands for a run out toward the bay."
Marek looked at Ricky, his eyes sharp. "I told him I had a partner. You interested?"
Ricky stopped chewing. His mind automatically flashed back to the translucent blue screen hovering in his vision just minutes ago. He had twenty dollars in system currency waiting in his vault. He didn’t need to break his back pulling slimy ropes for pocket change. He could withdraw clean, crisp gold certificates whenever he wanted.
But as he stared at Marek, a cold spike of practical caution hit him.
He was a stranger in a fiercely tight-knit, suspicious immigrant neighborhood. If a random guy with no history, no accent, and weird clothes suddenly started buying hot meals, clean suits, and rented rooms with crisp twenty-dollar bills without a single day of visible employment, people would notice. The local cops would notice. The neighborhood gangs would notice.
Throwing around money without an explanation was a quick way to get a knife in the ribs or a pair of iron cuffs around his wrists. He needed a front. He needed a legitimate source of income to blend into this era, to learn how people talked, how they traded, and how this society functioned from the ground up.
"What’s the pay?" Ricky asked, leaning forward on his crate.
Marek finished his potato and tossed the crumpled piece of newspaper into a dust drift. "It’s a fishing boat, Ricky. You don’t get a flat wage; you get a share of the catch after Mr. Vance takes out for the boat’s coal and ice. On an average day, a small boat like the Mary-Ann brings in fifteen to twenty dollars total for the haul. Split between the owner and the hands, your share might be two or three dollars. On a really good run? Maybe thirty-five dollars total, so you’d walk away with more."
Marek tilted his head, his voice dropping into a serious, protective tone. "It’s hard work, but it’s lucky. Regular dock labor on the slips only pays a dollar and fifty cents for ten hours of hauling pig iron or coal sacks until your knees buckle. A fishing share is a good hand."
Ricky stared at the floorboards, his modern brain still reeling from the sheer, staggering deflation of the economy. A dollar and fifty cents for a whole day of body-destroying labor. He adjusted his expectations instantly. His twenty-dollar system balance wasn’t just pocket money; it was a small fortune in 1910.
A small, grim smile touched his lips. "How long is the trip?"
"Eight to ten hours on the water," Marek said, pulling his tweed cap lower over his eyes. "Depending on the tide and the nets."
"Alright," Ricky said, standing up and reaching for his gray pullover hoodie. "I’m in."
"Good. Move your legs," Marek said, whirring around toward the stairs.
Ricky blinked, holding his hoodie in midair. "Right now? Like, today?"
"Yes, right now!" Marek barked over his shoulder as he descended the first few steps. "Mr. Vance isn’t going to sit at the pier sucking his teeth waiting for us. If we aren’t at the basin in ten minutes, he’ll hire two Irishmen off the boardwalk who are hungrier than we are. Come on!"
Ricky threw his hoodie on, his sore muscles protesting as he hurried down the dark, creaking stairs behind the smaller boy. They scrambled through the loose board at the back of the building and burst out into the bright, blinding sunlight of the alleyway.
The moment they hit the open street, the chaotic roar of the North River docks slammed into them. Ricky fell into a jog to keep pace with Marek, his modern sneakers silent against the dusty wooden planks of the sidewalk compared to the heavy, iron-rimmed clatter of Marek’s boots. They darted between massive horse-drawn flatbeds piled high with timber, ducking under the long leather whips of furious drivers who screamed curses at them over the deafening rattle of iron-shod wheels on the stones.
"We need to stay off West Street as much as we can," Marek shouted over his shoulder, his eyes constantly scanning the crowds of laborers in matching flat caps and woolen vests. "The Gophers control most of the commercial piers along this side of the Hudson. The North River docks are their kitchen."
Ricky frowned, picking up his pace to run side-by-side with the boy. "The guys from the alley? They’re that big of a deal?"
"They’re a massive gang, you idiot," Marek huffed, his breath growing short as they ran. "The two you broke the nose of probably went straight to the saloon on Tenth Avenue to find their older cousins. If they find us lingering near the warehouses, they’ll bring ten men with iron stays and brickbats to split our skulls."
Ricky cursed under his breath, a heavy knot of anxiety tightening in his stomach. Back home in Georgia, if some street thugs cornered you, you stayed in well-lit areas or kept an eye out for a white-and-blue police cruiser.
"What about the cops?" Ricky called out, ducking around a fishmonger’s wooden cart. "Can’t we just find a patrolman on the beat?"
Marek let out a sharp, mocking laugh, not slowing down for a second. "The police? Are you truly soft in the head, Ricky? The precinct captains are on the Gophers’ payroll! The gang pays them a cut of the dock extortion every Saturday night. If a copper sees a Gopher beating you with a wooden club, he’ll turn his back and walk the other way to examine a shop window. If they pay him enough, the copper will hold you down himself."
Ricky’s jaw tightened. He felt a cold sweat break out across his back that had nothing to do with his workout. The reliable, institutional safety nets of his modern life were completely gone. Out here, the law wasn’t a shield; it was just another weapon bought by the highest bidder. His instinctive move to protect Marek in the alley had inadvertently painted a massive bullseye on both their backs in a world where backup wasn’t coming.
"Great," Ricky muttered, his knuckles tightening inside his hoodie pockets. "Just great."
"Don’t worry so much," Marek said, veering sharply down a narrow, sloping wooden ramp that led toward a lower, less organized section of the basin. "We just lay low on the water for the day. By the time we come back after dark, the shift will have changed, and they’ll be looking for us somewhere else. I just didn’t expect you to fight them like a lunatic. Most people just give up the envelope."
"I don’t like watching people get stepped on," Ricky said simply, his eyes tracking the line of smaller boats moored along the weathered timbers of the lower pier. "But I didn’t know they owned the whole neighborhood."
"Over here!" Marek yelled, ignoring the comment as he sprinted toward a battered, twenty-five-foot wooden fishing vessel moored at the very end of the slip.
The boat looked ancient. Its white paint was peeling away in thick, salty flakes, revealing dark, oil-soaked wood beneath. In the center of the deck sat a small, boxy iron engine housing that hissed with a steady, high-pitched leak of white steam. A thick, pungent smell of old diesel, fish scales, and wet hemp rope hung over the deck.
A stocky old man with a massive, snow-white beard and a grease-stained wool cap was grunting as he rolled empty wooden barrels across the deck. He looked up, his face lined with deep, sun-baked wrinkles, his eyes narrowing as Marek and Ricky jumped down onto the gunwale.
"You’re late, boy," the old man barked, his voice sounding like two bricks grinding together. "I was about to give the slot to a couple of Germans from the coal slips."
"We ran the whole way, Mr. Vance," Marek panted, leaning over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. "This is Ricky. The guy I told you about."
Mr. Vance turned his heavy, bloodshot eyes toward Ricky. He sized him up slowly, looking at Ricky’s broad shoulders, his height, and the thick frame he’d built from years of lifting heavy batteries and scrap iron at the perimeter tracks. A slow, toothless grin spread through the old man’s white beard.
"Aye," Vance grunted, nodding with approval. "You picked a proper horse this time, Marek. At least this one looks like he can haul a wet net without his spine snapping like a dry twig."
The old man turned back to the center of the boat and yanked a heavy iron lever on the side of the engine box. The small steam-gasoline hybrid engine shuddered violently, spitting a loud, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of dark grey exhaust into the brackish water of the slip.
"Marek, unfurl the stern lines!" Vance shouted over the rumble of the motor. He pointed a thick, calloused finger at Ricky. "You! Big man! Get to the midship and prepare the drift nets. They’re tied down under the canvas on the starboard rail. Shake the ice off ’em and get the corks clear!"
"On it," Ricky said, his voice steadying as the routine of physical labor took over. He stepped across the rocking wooden deck, his sneakers finding grip on the slimy boards, and pulled back the heavy, gray canvas sheet.
Suddenly, Marek slammed his hand hard against Ricky’s shoulder.
"Ricky," Marek hissed, his voice tight with sudden, bloodless panic. "Look. Don’t move."
Ricky stopped, his hand freezing on the canvas. He slowly turned his head, looking back up the wooden ramp they had just sprinted down.
At the top of the pier, a group of six men had just burst through the crowd of dockworkers.
They didn’t wear the neat uniforms of the shipping foremen. They wore grease-stained shirts with the sleeves rolled up, their faces tight and furious. Two of them were carrying heavy, red-faced clay bricks in their hands; another carried a length of dull gray iron pipe that caught the bright sunlight. In the center of the group was the second bully from the alley—the one Ricky had pinned against the brick wall. He was pointing a trembling finger down toward the lower slips, his eyes wild as he searched the boats.
"Keep your head down," Ricky muttered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Both boys dropped instantly to their knees, leaning over the midship rail as if they were buried deep in the work of clearing the tangled nets. Ricky pulled a thick, salt-crusted section of dark hemp netting over his shoulders, completely obscuring his modern gray hoodie from view. Marek tucked his chin into his wool vest, his hands moving automatically over a wooden cleat.
Through the narrow gap in the wooden bulwark, Ricky watched the heavy leather boots of the gang members stop at the top of the ramp. The leader, a massive man with thick sideburns, spat a dark glob of tobacco juice onto the boardwalk, his eyes sweeping over the dozens of small fishing boats preparing to leave the basin.
"They went down toward the slips, I tell ya!" the alley bully shouted, his voice carrying over the rumble of the Mary-Ann’s engine. "The big bastard had a gray coat with a sack on the back of it! He ain’t from around here!"
The massive leader grunted, his eyes lingering on a nearby barge before he turned back toward the main boardwalk. "Come on. If they’re down here, they’re trapped against the water. Check the oyster boats near Pier 14."
The group whirled around, their heavy boots clattering against the thick timber planks as they sprinted further down the waterfront, their iron pipes swinging at their sides.
Ricky let out a long, shuddering breath, his chest deflating against the cold wood of the rail. Beside him, Marek slumped back against a fish box, his face pale underneath the coal dust, a faint sheen of sweat breaking out on his upper lip.
"That was too close," Marek whispered, his eyes locked on the empty space at the top of the ramp.
Mr. Vance didn’t notice a thing. He slammed the engine into gear, and the Mary-Ann jolted forward, her wooden hull scraping gently against the green-slimed pilings of the pier as she backed out into the wide, churning gray expanse of the Hudson River.
Ricky stood up slowly, shaking the salt-crusted net off his shoulders. He looked back at the receding shoreline of Manhattan—the chaotic, smoke-choked line of red-brick warehouses, the thousands of faceless men swarming the docks, and the hidden dangers lurking in every shadowed alleyway.
He was in their world now. And the water was the only safe place left.