Chapter 9: It Smells Fishy
Deep in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen, the afternoon heat didn’t stop the drinking.
Inside the Tenth Avenue saloon, the air was a thick soup of stale beer, sawdust, and cheap tobacco smoke. Coal shovelers, off-duty dockworkers, and a few soldiers in rumpled uniforms crowded the long mahogany bar, slamming down nickel beers and shouting over the din of a ragtime piano.
Beyond the locked door marked Employees Only, the noise of the tavern faded, replaced by the sharp rattle of dice and the steady, quiet murmur of the gambling den. Men huddled over green felt tables playing faro, poker, and craps, their faces tense under the low-hanging gas lamps.
At the very back of the hall was a smaller, carpeted room reserved for high-stakes card players, and behind that was a private office.
Malone, a lieutenant for the Gopher Gang, sat behind a heavy oak desk with his scuffed leather boots propped on the corner. He was a thick-necked Irishman with sharp, calculating eyes, slowly swirling a finger of amber whiskey in a heavy glass.
In front of him stood Martin, the tall young man Ricky had beaten in the alley. Martin was holding a sweating, dirty rag filled with chipped ice against his swollen cheekbone, his shoulders hunched.
Malone took a slow sip of his whiskey, his boots never moving from the desk. "Martin," he said, his thick Irish brogue quiet but heavy. "Tell me why you’re holding ice to your face like a schoolboy who fell off a fence."
Martin winced as he shifted the rag. "Some local dockworker. He did a number on Paddy and Jones while they were collecting the weekly envelopes down on the west pier."
Malone’s eyes narrowed. "Paddy and Jones are thick-headed thugs, but they know how to swing a pipe. Why are you the one standing here bleeding?"
"I went to check it out," Martin muttered, looking down at the floorboards. "Took four of the boys with me to teach him a lesson. But the guy... he’s a Yankee, Boss. A real American. We didn’t know he could fight like that. He was fast. Incredibly fast."
"So you took five men, and you got thrashed," Malone cut him off, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register. He slowly lowered his boots to the floor. "I assigned you that stretch of the waterfront to keep the peace, Martin. Not to get your faces broken in broad daylight. If a rogue worker gives you trouble, you don’t trade fists. You show him a pistol. You threaten his knees. You don’t let him make a laughingstock of the Gophers."
Martin didn’t say anything. He just looked at his boots, keeping the cold rag pressed to his throbbing cheek.
Malone stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the dirty West Side street below.
"A Yankee who can handle five of our boys single-handed. It doesn’t sound like a common loader. Could be the Hudson Dusters trying to creep back onto our slips. Or maybe the Black Hand putting feelers out from East Harlem."
"He was strong, Boss," Martin said. "It was like fighting a professional prizefighter. Or a high-ranking lieutenant."
"Aye," Malone grunted, staring at his reflection in the dark glass. "Only a proper lieutenant takes on five men and walks away without a broken jaw. We can’t be reckless, Martin. It’s been peaceful on these docks for months. The only reason our income is at an all-time high is because the merchants flock to our slips. They pay the protection because they know our streets are safe from random chaos."
Malone turned back around, pointing a thick finger at Martin’s chest. "Keep a close watch on the slips. Find out where this Yankee sleeps, who he talks to, and what boat he’s running with. But do not touch him. Not until we know who sent him. Understand?"
Martin nodded quickly. "Understood, Boss."
"Get out of my sight," Malone muttered, reaching for his whiskey. "And get some real meat on that face."
Four days later, the harbor fog was just beginning to lift.
The Mary-Ann drifted quietly in the middle of the Upper Bay. In the distance, the colossal green copper figure of the Statue of Liberty rose from the gray water, her torch cutting through the low-hanging morning mist. The steady, heavy thump-thump-thump of the boat’s steam engine was a comforting, familiar vibration beneath Ricky’s boots.
Over the last four days, Ricky and Marek had become permanent fixtures on Mr. Vance’s deck. The old man didn’t bark as loudly anymore, and he’d started leaving them to handle the drift nets without constant supervision.
They were bringing in a steady three to five dollars a day each, and the routine had become almost second nature.
Ricky leaned against the wooden rail, his hands shoved into the pockets of his gray hoodie. He watched the green water lap against the hull, his muscles feeling surprisingly loose. His physical baseline was rising every day, and his body was finally adapting to the brutal demands of the 1910 waterfront.
Mr. Vance stepped out of the small wheelhouse, a lit pipe clenched between his yellowed teeth. He looked at Marek, who was busy coiling a wet hemp rope near the fish boxes, then turned his bloodshot eyes toward Ricky.
"Let me ask you boys something," Vance grunted, puffing a cloud of blue tobacco smoke into the salty air. "Do you actually have a home? A place with a boiler and a proper washbasin?"
The question caught Ricky off guard. He and Marek exchanged a quick, silent glance.
Marek cleared his throat, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. "Sure, Mr. Vance. We got a place we’re staying. Why?"
Vance let out a short, dry chuckle, shaking his head. "Because you two have been wearing the exact same duds for seven days straight. I can smell you from the wheelhouse, and let me tell ya, you’re starting to smell a whole lot riper than the fish we’re hauling."
Marek laughed sheepishly, looking down at his dirty woolen vest.
"Look," Vance said, pointing his pipe stem at them. "I don’t care if you’re runaways, or if you’re off the boat without papers. I don’t ask those kinds of questions. But you, Ricky..."
Vance looked at Ricky’s frayed gray pullover hoodie and his scuffed modern sneakers. "You talk like a proper American, but you’re dressed like a tramp who slept in a coal car. You’ve got grease on your chest and fish slime on your sleeves."
Ricky looked down at his clothes. He hadn’t really thought about it, but the old man was right. His gray pullover—the one he’d practically lived in back in Georgia—was stiff with dried salt, coal dust, and dried fish blood.
The cuffs were black with soot, and the fabric carried a heavy, pungent stench of raw cod and low-tide mud.
He had over a hundred dollars sitting in his system vault. He had the money to buy a dozen high-quality wool suits if he wanted to, but he’d been so focused on working out, hauling nets, and staying under the Gophers’ radar that he’d completely neglected his basic appearance.
"You boys made a clean thirty dollars between you this week," Vance said, turning back toward the wheelhouse. "Do yourselves a favor when we hit the slips tonight. Go find a tailor, buy yourselves a decent set of wool trousers and some clean shirts. If a patrolman sees you looking like that, he’ll lock you up for vagrancy just to get you off his sidewalk."
"We’ll do that, Mr. Vance," Ricky said, a small smile touching his lips. "Thanks."
As the boat turned back toward the Manhattan skyline, Ricky rubbed his chapped hands together. The old man was right. It was time to shed his 2026 skin and buy some real, period-accurate clothes. He couldn’t run an empire if he looked like a beggar.