Hudson's Kill--A Justice Flanagan Thriller Read online

  Playfair and Gorton swung the clubs off their shoulders and planted their feet wide. Justy motioned at the stretcher bearers to stop. He stepped forward between the watchmen. “Gentlemen, please disperse and leave us to do our work.”

  “Looks like you’ve done your work already, you cossack bastard!” The voice was heavy and slurred with drink.

  Justy held up a hand. “Someone called us here. A person has been killed. We are taking the body to the morgue. Please let us pass.”

  “Murderers!” The man was fast. He lunged out of the crowd, straight for Justy, the dull gleam of a blade in his hand. Playfair swung hard, a killer blow, but the man slid in the mud, and the club slashed through the air above his head. The man recovered and sprang forward, his knife aimed at Justy’s belly.

  But Justy was no longer there. He had taken a long step forward with this right foot, so that he was side-on to the man. His left forearm kept the knife hand clear, and his right hand shoved the man in the back, driving him forward under his own momentum until he tripped over Justy’s outstretched foot. He sprawled on the ground, his face in the mud.

  Playfair stepped up and kicked the knife away. He raised the club.

  “Let him go,” Justy ordered.

  Playfair lowered his weapon, a sour look on his face. The man scrambled to his feet. He went to pick up his knife, but Playfair lunged at him. “Go on, ya madge. I won’t miss twice.”

  The man slunk away. There was a smatter of applause from the crowd. “Nice moves, Marshal,” someone shouted.

  “Frisk’s over, gents. Time to go back to your cribs,” Gorton said. He was still facing them, standing easy, his club on his shoulder as though he was out for a stroll. “Unless you want me to set the Marshal here on you, o’ course.”

  There was a ripple of laughter. The workers began to drift away.

  Justy looked for Vanderool, but the sergeant had disappeared. Scuttled back to his warm bed, no doubt, Justy thought, then chastised himself for the thought. The man had come immediately when he was called, after all.

  Justy motioned to the stretcher bearers. They picked up the girl and walked slowly away from the alley. One of the men slipped on the mud, falling to one knee, and the stretcher lurched sideways, the body shifting so that the blanket slipped back, revealing the girl’s face. Her eyes were still open, staring emptily up at the sky, her skin slack, her lips parted slightly.

  Gorton pulled the stretcher bearer upright. He stood over the body for a moment, then smoothed his palm over the girl’s face, closing her eyes. He pulled the blanket up. The stretcher bearers carried her away.

  Gorton and Playfair were Watch wardens. The Watch was mostly made up of volunteers who worked during the day and stood in sentry boxes around the city during the dark hours, keeping an eye out for fires. But there were six professionals, full-time employees of Federal Hall, whose job was to patrol the city during the night. These wardens went in pairs from box to box, ensuring the volunteers were awake, and acting as runners in the event of a fire.

  “Which one of you men found the body?” Justy asked them.

  “Me,” Playfair answered. “We was passing this way and I thought I heard a sound. Come down to see what was what, and there she was.”

  “Did you touch her?”

  “Just to see if she was quick or dead.”

  “And?”

  Playfair shrugged. “She was still warm.”

  “And then you came straight down to the Hall?”

  “Mister Gorton came down. I stayed on stag.”

  Justy nodded. Playfair was the senior man, in terms of time served. “Is this your usual route?”

  “We vary the routes. Captain’s orders.” Playfair looked smug.

  “I see.” Justy looked him in the eye. “Why didn’t you raise the alarm when you found her? She wasn’t long dead, so her killer might still have been in the vicinity. If you’d blown your whistle and raised the Watch, we might have had a chance at catching him.”

  Playfair scowled.

  “The doer was long gone, Marshal,” Gorton said. His eyes were fixed on a point over Justy’s left shoulder.

  “How would you know that?”

  “Stomach wound like that, it takes a long time to die. No major vessels cut. No damage to the heart or lungs. Just a long, slow bleed.”

  “You sound as though you’ve some experience.”

  “I seen a lot of men die with their guts opened up. In Guadeloupe.”

  Justy nodded. He remembered reading Gorton’s file. The man had been a corporal of the King’s Marines. He had fought in the vanguard of the British force that had taken the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe from the French in a savage, almost suicidal action. The newspapers had been full of the story at the time. The assaulting forces had run out of ammunition early, and a resupply had been intercepted. But the British had attacked regardless, and taken the outpost using nothing but raw bravery and the bayonet.

  Justy suppressed a shiver. He knew what it was like to face a wall of English bayonets.

  He looked around at the muddy street and the ramshackle warehouses. Several were tanneries. There was a strong smell of fermented urine. It was a bad place to die.

  “I’ll assign one of your watchmen to stand guard here until the morning. Instruct him that no one is to go down this alley until I return. Then go to the Almshouse. I need you there, in case anyone comes to claim the body. If they do, one of you stay with them, while the other comes to fetch me. Is that clear?”

  “Aye, Marshal,” they said in unison.

  Justy followed the stretcher bearers along Chapel Street. The mud clung to the heels of his boots, and he could feel water sloshing around his sodden right foot. He had a sudden memory of Ireland, cool mud between his toes, and then of the ensign of cavalry who had owned the boots before him, sitting atop his horse, his pistol leveled at Justy’s head. Justy had stood in the marshy water and waited, staring at the small, black hole of the pistol’s muzzle. But the ensign had failed to cock his pistol properly. He had squeezed the trigger but the hammer had not snapped forward as he expected, and when he realized his mistake, his eyes had opened impossibly wide. Sky blue, the same color as the facings on his jacket. Justy had hurled himself out of the marsh, dragged the ensign off his horse, and stabbed him in the throat. The man hadn’t needed his boots after that.

  He heard footsteps behind him. Playfair was hurrying along the street, his feet squelching in the muck. The big watchman stopped and kept his eyes on the ground. “One thing I left out in my report, sir, before.”

  “Yes?”

  “When I said it was me what found her, sir, well, that wasn’t quite right.”

  “What do you mean? You didn’t find her?”

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  Justy sighed. “Be direct, Mister Playfair, please. I have an appointment.”

  Playfair had a sour look on his face. “Very well, sir. What I meant to say is, I did find the girl, but I was tipped off.”

  “By whom?”

  “By a young woman, sir. She said she knows you. Asked for you by name.”

  “And did she give her name in return?”

  “Kerry O’Toole.”

  Justy was glad it was dark and there were no streetlights in this quarter of the town. “Miss O’Toole found the body?”

  “Yes, sir. She said she heard the girl breathe her last, and that we should fetch you.”

  “I see.” In the dim light, far behind Playfair, the bend in Chapel Street looked like the entrance to a dark, narrow cave. Justy wondered why Kerry had come this way. “I commend you for coming to tell me the truth, Playfair. What was it that prompted you to do so?”

  The sour look returned to the watchman’s face. “I couldn’t rightly say, sir.”

  Justy hid his smile. “Well, whatever it was, you would do well to cultivate it.”

  THREE

  Justy leaned on the wall of a warehouse opposite the Owens compound and tried to ignore the sten
ch from the Collect Pond that seeped over the Broad Way. It was a potent mixture of rotten fish, decaying meat, burned hops, and urine, made all the more pungent by a blanket of thick clouds that covered the city. He wondered how the people crammed into the new tenements on Elm Street could stand it. But stand it they did. They even used the pond as a source for drinking water.

  There was a light burning in the window of Kerry’s cottage. Justy knew she would be sitting in the armchair beside the window, reading by the light of a three-stick candelabra. Something by Swift or Richardson, he supposed. He felt a spark of envy. Most of the books on his night table these days related to the law.

  He tugged his watch free of the fob on his waistcoat and squinted at the face. It was too dim to read, but he had heard St. Peter’s bell strike nine, so he knew he was now catastrophically late for dinner.

  Eliza would understand. She was twenty-two years old, a doctor’s daughter with sparkling blue eyes and a mouth that rose on one side and fell on the other when she was trying not to laugh, which seemed to be all the time. They had only met twice, the first time in Philadelphia a month ago. He was giving evidence in court; she was handing out books to veterans at the City Hall. When they had met again, two weeks later, at the Governor’s Ball, he was surprised to learn she lived in New York. He was even more surprised when she had taken his arm for a stroll by the Battery, and bombarded him with questions: about him, about books, and about how best to help the immigrants that were flooding the city, usually without prospects of any kind. He wasn’t used to women talking about anything other than themselves or what they were wearing. It was a pleasant feeling.

  He took a deep breath, walked across the street, and knocked. When Kerry opened the door, her face was shadowed by the candlelight behind her.

  “You must be chilled to the timbers, standing out there all this time,” she said.

  “You saw me?”

  “Like a spare peg at a wedding. I don’t know how you managed to creep up on all them English during the Rebellion. They must have all been drunk or half asleep.”

  He shrugged. “Most of them likely were.”

  She looked down her nose at him, a half smile on her face. She wore a long dress and a heavy woolen shawl. Her hair fell in a dark wave over her right shoulder. He thought about the habit she had, of curling it around her right hand, over and over, as she read. He swallowed the vague sense of panic that rose in him. “May I come in?”

  She stood aside. “There’s no fire.”

  The room was small and plain, with a table and two upright chairs at one end, and a swept fireplace flanked by two armchairs at the other. There was a door opposite that led to her bedroom. It was ajar, and as Justy walked in, he heard a sound come from it. He looked at Kerry.

  She smirked. “Jealous?”

  He felt the heat in his face and she laughed. “Don’t worry, ye drumbelo. It’s just wee Rosie Tully. She’s only five, but she snores like an old man.”

  “Seamus and Tamsin’s girl?”

  “They had their hands full tonight.”

  They each took an armchair. Justy nodded towards the bedroom. “Was Rosie with you when you found the girl?”

  Kerry’s face seemed to close up. “I couldn’t leave her in the street.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I told her to look away. It was dark. I don’t think she saw anything.”

  Justy nodded. “There’s nothing else you could have done.”

  Kerry swallowed. “It was like the girl was holding on for someone to come. So someone would be there when she died.”

  The words hung for a moment in the chilly air of the plain room. There was a book on the small table between the armchairs. Wax from the candelabra had dripped onto its cover. The Coquette, or, The History of Eliza Wharton.

  “Is it any good?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure many men would say so.”

  “I heard it was written by a woman.”

  “Too lowbrow for you, then?”

  Justy drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Tell me about the girl.”

  “She was lying on her side.” Kerry’s voice was tight. “She had a kind of thin robe wrapped around her. One of her shoes was off. She was crying. I tried to turn her, and then…”

  Justy waited.

  “She’d been cut open. She had her arms wrapped around her.” Kerry swallowed. “But the innards were spilled out of her. She was half-frozen.”

  She bent her head and her hair fell across her face.

  “Did she say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Did you take anything from the alley?”

  She looked up. She shook her head.

  “Just one more thing, then. Why were you down there in the first place?”

  “What? Are you worried about me now?” Her voice was clotted.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. That’s a dangerous area, Kerry.”

  “Why? Because of all the darkies? Did you forget I’m half darky myself?”

  “That has nothing to do with it. That girl you found had darker skin than you, and that didn’t save her. Now why were you there? It’s hardly the most direct way to here.”

  Kerry took a deep breath. The light caught her face for a moment, showing the strain around her eyes. “The direct way is along Elm Street.”

  Justy nodded. The week before he had stood in the center of a line of watchmen at the corner of Elm and Barley Streets, holding back a crowd of angry black men who were intent on tearing the heads off a crew of construction workers. At first he had thought it was an ordinary labor dispute between blacks and whites, but then he saw that the builders had begun to dig up the old Negro burial ground.

  The cemetery had been closed nearly a decade ago, in 1794, but the city appeared to have gone back on its promise to leave the ground untouched. The workers didn’t know who had employed them, and there were no records at Federal Hall of anyone applying for permission to start work on the site. After Justy had stopped the dig, the workers had not returned, but the long, dark scar of open ground in the corner of the old burial ground remained. Justy was not superstitious, but even he had to ask how the spirits of the thousands of men, women, and children buried over the years might take exception to being disturbed so callously in the name of progress. And how they might react.

  “You might do better to stay on the Broad Way in future.” He pulled out his watch.

  “Nice tatler,” she said.

  He nodded. It was not a particularly thin piece, and it was made of silver, not gold, but it was precious to him. Jacob Hays, the High Constable, had presented him with it on his first anniversary as Marshal, two years before.

  “No dummy?” Kerry smirked. It had become the fashion for men to carry two watches on their person, one of which was a fake, a disk of cheap metal painted gold tucked into the opposite fob pocket from the real watch. The idea was to confuse thieves, who would not know which of a man’s twin watch chains was attached to the genuine article. But Kerry had been one of the best pickpockets in the city, and she knew all it took was a little patient surveillance. Wait until the swell draws his thimble from its pit, and then have at it.

  Twenty-five minutes past nine. He tucked the watch away. “I’ll leave you be, Kerry. Thank you for telling the watchmen to send for me.”

  He was halfway to the door before she spoke. “How’s the doctor’s daughter, by the way?”

  He stopped and turned slowly.

  “It’s a small town, Justy. You can’t walk a girl along the water for more than an hour in this town without some cove noticing.”

  “Is that so?”

  Kerry’s mouth twisted. “I didn’t know you liked the fair ones. Or maybe it’s not her looks that draws you. Her father’s a wealthy man, I’m told, for a nimgimmer. A big house here, and a spread across the river, too. She’s quite the catch.”

  His face burned, and s
he laughed. “Boys a dear, you always were easy to rake.” Her voice was bitter. “But don’t worry. I know you’re not the kind to whore yourself. Not like me.”

  “Kerry…”

  “I’ll see you, Justy.”

  It was like having a door slammed in his face. He took one last look at her, sitting in the shadows, staring into the empty grate, then he turned and walked out into the night.

  FOUR

  A tall black man dressed in a long, old-fashioned coat opened the door to Dr. Reginald Cruikshank’s townhouse. His lined face and patient eyes made him look like a statue of a saint carved in mahogany, with a halo of graying hair.

  Justy stepped up under the porch, out of the rain. He pulled the dripping hat from his head. “Justice Flanagan. I’m very late, I’m afraid.”

  “All the other guests are in attendance, sir.” The footman took the hat, and stood aside to let him into the hallway. A hum of noise came from deep in the house. There was a strong smell of candle wax, cigar smoke, and brandy. Justy struggled out of his wet coat. The ornate clock on the sideboard told him he was nearly two hours adrift.

  “Sir?” The footman took the coat with one hand, and held up a mirror with the other. Justy used his fingers to fumble his hair into place. He looked the man in the eye. “What’s your name?”

  “Nicholas, sir.”

  “Well, thank you, Nicholas.”

  The slightest bow. “You are most welcome, sir.”

  A door behind him swung open, and the sound of a small crowd filled the hallway.

  “Oh, Justice, at last!”

  Eliza Cruikshank seemed to float down the hallway. A shiver ran through him, hot and cold at the same time, as though all the blood had been sucked out of his head and into his belly. The first time he had met Eliza, she had worn a long-sleeved, high-necked dress; the next time she had worn a ball gown. Now she was wearing a strapless sheath of translucent white silk that barely covered her breasts.

  He closed his mouth. She smiled and touched his cheek. “You’re so late, you bad boy!”

  It was the fashion to have tousled hair, but Eliza’s was in more than the usual disarray, and there was a smear of lipstick at the corner of her mouth. Justy smelled the musty scent of brandy and champagne on her breath. The tingle in his groin evaporated.