Chapter 53: Desparados
Three days after Peter extracted the truth from Mr. Sullivan, night fell over the Ganseevoort Street and the cold night along with light mist signifies the coming of the winter season.
High on the third floor of an unlit commercial building across the street from the Syndicate’s storage shed, Peter stood in the dark near an unwashed windowpane. Beside him stood two of his young collectors, Billy and Mickey. They kept low behind the wooden sill, their dark wool caps pulled tight, watching the street below through the gloom.
Across the cobblestones, the double oak doors of the Gansevoort storage shed stood open. Yellow lantern light spilled out onto the wet stones, illuminating three black-painted spring wagons parked in a neat line. Several young men in clean black wool three-piece suits and flat caps were briskly hoisting heavy wooden crates and sacks of flour onto the wagon beds.
Peter took a slow drag from his cigarette, keeping the burning cherry cupped deep inside his palm so no glare showed against the window.
"How’d you track ’em down again, Mickey?" Peter asked softly, his voice barely a whisper in the dark room.
Mickey leaned closer to the glass, pointing a finger toward the lane. "Like you said. We scouted after dusk instead of sitting in the saloons. I spotted one of their black wagons turning off Morton around nine o’clock and tailed ’em from three blocks back while they dropped flour at the bakeries. Almost got spotted by one of their lookouts sitting on a stoop near Hudson, but we lost ’em in the alley. Lucky thing Billy rents this third-floor room as his hideout—gives us a direct view right into their yard without putting our boots on their pavement."
Billy, a lean eighteen-year-old with a scuffed coat, shifted his weight on the floorboards, looking at Peter with a mixture of excitement and hesitation. "So what’s the play, Peter? We found ’em. This is our territory. No uptown gang’s supposed to run shadow drayage south of 14th Street without dropping coin into our hats. They’re just a bunch of kids in fancy suits. Should we hit ’em?"
"We watch ’em for now," Peter said smoothly, his eyes narrowing as he exhaled a thin ribbon of gray smoke toward the rafters. "We’re the first ones in the precinct to spot their staging ground. If my hunch is right and these kids are backed by Five Points or Morello money from uptown, jumping their wagons is a fast way to get a gang war started."
"Come on, Peter," Billy muttered, scoffing softly. "Uptown big shots wouldn’t come this far south for a few sacks of flour. Look at ’em down there—they’re just neighborhood boys playing merchant."
Down in the lantern-lit yard, one of the field agents in a black suit, Arthur stepped up to the side of the second wagon. He pulled back the canvas tarpaulin near the driver’s bench, reached inside, and lifted out a heavy, dark steel firearm.
In the dim light, the long barrel and mechanical receiver caught the amber lantern glow. Arthur checked the action, slide-cycling the mechanism with a clean, heavy clack, before loading three brass twelve-gauge shells into the tube. At the same time, John Caldwell stepped out of the shed adjusting a dark leather shoulder holster beneath his black vest, taking out a Colt .38 double-action revolver to inspect the brass cartridges in the cylinder before sliding it back out of sight.
Up in the dark window, Billy and Mickey gasped in unison, their bodies freezing against the sill.
"Jesus," Mickey whispered, his face going pale. "Is that... a pump shotgun?"
Peter didn’t flinch, but his grip on his paper cigarette tightened slightly. A cold, knowing smirk touched his mouth in the dark.
"See?" Peter murmured softly, looking over at Billy. "Just some kids, huh? If we had ambushed that dray in the lane with three iron pipes and a couple of bricks... we’d have been peppered into red dust before we reached the wheels. And if Barney Knox brought his greenhorn crew down here to break heads, there’d be six holes in every one of their torsos."
Billy swallowed hard, his throat dry. Neither he nor Mickey said a word for a long second.
"So what do we do then?" Mickey asked, his raspy voice tight with sudden dread. "We can’t just leave ’em be, Peter. Barney’s screaming at us every afternoon to collect protection money off the route. If we don’t bring him coin, he’s gonna throw us off the beat."
"Barney doesn’t need to know a damn thing about their Winchesters," Peter said, turning his head to look at his two hungry collectors. "And he sure as hell doesn’t need to know where this shed is. Think about it. If that arrogant idiot Barney finds out where they load, he’ll order all of us to march into this lane with wooden bats. Who’s gonna be standing in the front line taking the lead buckshot? Us. While Barney sits in his saloon drinking five-cent gin."
Mickey and Billy looked at each other, the grim truth hitting them like a cold bucket of river water. They were starving, broke, and getting nothing from Barney Knox’s collections. Going to war against a shadow outfit armed with military pump shotguns and tailored suits was suicide.
"If we play this smart," Peter continued, his tone dropping into a low, persuasive register, "we don’t fight ’em. We work around ’em. The guns are for protection against street muggers and rival raiders. If we approach ’em like reasonable men and ask for a standard territory fee, they’ll pay it to keep their routes smooth without any noise or escalation. And since we’re keeping this staging ground secret from Barney, we take our own cut off the top."
Billy’s eyes flicked up, a sudden, eager glint breaking through his fear. "A cut off the top?"
"Barney raised the protection tax from two dollars to three a few days back," Peter explained, a sharp, calculating smile tugging at his lips. "So when we talk to these commission boys, we tell ’em their weekly territory toll is thirty dollars."
Mickey gasped softly. "Thirty dollars? That’s ten times what we ask off almost anyone."
"And Barney takes twenty," Peter smirked. "Which leaves ten dollars directly in our pockets for our hard work. Five times what you two make in a week of starving on the cobbles."
Billy and Mickey’s faces broke into wide, hungry grins. Ten dollars split between them was a fortune—enough for warm wool coats, hot meals, and clean rooms.
"Extortion ain’t even the main goal here, boys," Peter added, throwing his cigarette butt onto the stone floor and stepping on it. "The main goal is befriending ’em. We show ’em we aren’t crude knuckle-busters like the rest of Barney’s crew. If these kids are running an uptown supply line and clearing thousands a week, they’re gonna need local guys who know the streets, know the alleys, and know how to keep their mouths shut. If they learn to trust us... they might give us real work."
Billy and Mickey nodded vigorously, completely sold on Peter’s strategy.
"Alright," Peter said, gesturing toward the back door. "Let’s move fast. We head down to Bleecker Street right now before their wagons hit the first drop. We set up a normal street approach—no guns drawn, no loud screaming. Just professional business."
The three Dusters slipped out of the third-floor room, hurrying down the dark fire escape into the narrow rear alley. They walked out onto the street with casual, unhurried strides, Peter lighting a fresh cigarette as they moved towards their destination.
As they turned the corner, a figure sitting on an empty wooden crate in the shadow of a dark storefront across the avenue watched them pass. It was one of Danny’s newly appointed Syndicate watchmen—a sharp-eyed teenager in a dark cap.
The watchman kept his back against the wall, taking mental note of Peter’s face, his long coat, and his two companions as they walked away toward the heart of the Village, completely unaware that their every step was being recorded by the shadows of the Founder’s Syndicate.