The Black Hand (5 page)

“Unfortunately, he has given me little to work with. Pray give me some quiet to come up with an appropriate ruse.”

Neither of us spoke for the rest of the journey. I wondered if the hokeypokey man had concerned him more than he let on.

One smells the West India Docks before one sees them. The smell is not salt water or seaweed or damp, it is rum. The sweet odor pervades everything, so that one expects to see barrels broken on the quayside, instead of lined up neatly and sealed tight. We made our way to the dock offices, where Barker presented his card; and after a twenty-minute wait, we were shown in to Dalton Green. He was a corpulent, jowly man, as if he had been designed with a French curve. The windows were open, admitting a heady
breeze, but there was a sheen of perspiration across the man’s brow.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Barker?” he said a trifle testily. “I can spare you but a few minutes.”

“Sir, I am investigating a case for a barrister whose client claims he was assaulted by a gang of Italian dockworkers.”

“Did the incident occur on the docks or out beyond the gate there?” Green nodded his head toward the stone gates separating the docks from the rest of Poplar.

“Just outside them, sir, in Bridge Road.”

“I don’t see that it is any of my concern, then,” he replied, waving a dimpled hand in dismissal.

“The District Council and the Tower Hamlets have received complaints of disruptions by Italian stevedores from these docks as far as Clerkenwell.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Green declared, as if information that didn’t reach his ear was either unimportant or downright erroneous. In this case, I knew it to be a total fabrication. “Were the men drunken?”

“No, sir. Organized. I understand it is either some sort of labor dispute or a matter between the various Italians. Had Sir Alan some trouble with them before he died?”

“He did, and now his problems have fallen into my lap. The Italians are willing to work for a wage that, frankly, the English workers won’t accept, but they have begun to demand a minimum number of working hours per day, which is madness, because we can’t guarantee the work. Ships arrive at their own pace. Some days they come in all day long, and other days the docks are empty for hours. I understand that they don’t like spending the entire day hoping work will pull up to the dock, but that’s the nature of maritime casual
work. If we agreed to pay them for even three hours per day, it could ruin us if the freight doesn’t arrive.”

“Has there been some problem with the Sicilians?”

“Bloody dagos,” Green replied, loosening his collar in irritation. “They’re always at each other’s throats. The Sicilians think themselves a cut above the rest. They swagger about like they own the docks and are too concerned about slights upon their honor, as if wharf rats had any. Was it the Sicilians who attacked your barrister’s client?”

“There was that indication. Were there any reprisals being considered against the Sicilians in particular?”

“As a matter of fact, there was. Bledsoe was going to ban them from the docks entirely. He said the labor issues began when the Sicilians arrived. He thought them natural-born troublemakers and said as far as he was concerned, we could do without them altogether.”

“Do you know if he said so in front of them, or if he kept his opinions to himself?”

“Bledsoe was a very forthright man, Mr. Barker. It was his way to throw it back in their court, so to speak. ‘You shape up and quit causing trouble, or you can work elsewhere,’ he told them.”

Barker tented his fingers in front of him in thought. “Did he receive any threatening notes? They are generally stamped with a black hand.”

“I believe he did,” Green said. “He said the Italians were trying to frighten him, but that he ‘wunt be druv,’ as the Sussex folk say.”

“Might the note still be among his effects?”

“No. I watched him crumple it up in anger and throw it to the floor. I’m sure it was thrown away days ago.”

“Was there anything in his death,” Barker asked casually, “that might make you think it was not an accident?”

Green sat up. “Here now, what’s all this about? You’re the second chap to ask me that. The first was the coroner at the inquest. Is this something to do with Sir Alan’s assurance claim? Do they plan to contest it? His heart failed, and there’s an end to it. What does this have to do with a client getting coshed by a gang of dagos?”

Barker put up his hands. “I don’t work for an assurance company, sir. I’m merely trying to determine the size of the Italian presence on the docks and in particular the Sicilians among them.”

Green pulled back his chair and crossed to the open window. The rum-scented wind was pushing in the curtains on either side, and from where he stood he could survey the unloading of the ship. “I wish they were lazy workers, these Sicilians. Then I could sack them; but they are hard workers, even if they give themselves airs. Sometimes I wish we had all good, honest Englishmen on these docks like in the old days, but we can’t afford them anymore. The Poles, the Jews, the Chinese, the dagos—they get the work done faster and at less cost. They bring in profit, and when it comes to it, the numbers on the ledger sheet are what really matters. Are we done here?”

“Just one more question, sir. Is it possible I could speak to your foreman who works day to day with the Sicilians?”

“I suppose so. His name’s Ben Tillett. He’s a good man, though I don’t care for his politics. He should be around the docks somewhere.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Green. Come, Thomas.”

Outside, Barker passed through the gates and then
stopped. He put his hands on top of the ball of his stick and inhaled slowly. I’d seen him do it before in our garden, while he was beginning his exercises. He was shaking off whatever he had been doing and preparing to take new impressions.

We watched the unloading of vessels in hope of seeing the Sicilians who had been causing so much trouble. They were not difficult to spot, for they all sported black cloth caps with short peaks. I also noticed that when compared with the Italians, the Sicilians looked thinner and harder, as if they’d seen more trials on that Mediterranean island than their brethren on the mainland. They seemed to have a preference for putting things in their mouths when not actually working, whether cigars, cigarettes, short pipes, or toothpicks. Somehow it made them look foreign and insolent. The Italians were trying to fit in with the other dockworkers, while the Sicilians stood out.

Most of the Sicilians were young, I had noticed, about my age. They could not work without making chafing remarks to their companions, even to ones across the dock. They had not come here to join a criminal organization, I thought, which they could have done in Sicily. No, they’d come because the opportunity to work and the living conditions were better in London than in Palermo. Working as casual labor was hardly ideal, however, if one was forced to wait all day and the work never arrived at the docks. In order to survive, some may have reluctantly stepped under the umbrella the Mafia offered. It was that or starve. For all of their bravado, none of the Sicilians looked well nourished, and I doubted anyone on our little island ever gave them a
warm greeting or a full belly. Gallenga had said once one took the blood oath, one was bound for life, which meant forty or fifty more years of being indentured. That is, if they lived that long. To men like Faldo, I thought, these were the yeomen guard, the least trained, the most expendable, the first to be mown down in battle.

C
OMING OUT OF THE BROWN BETTY, BARKER
headed north into Poplar following the bend around Lime-house Reach. There was no need to wonder where we were going. He was headed for a tearoom of his own choosing, a clandestine one, run by his closest friend, Ho. Once we’d reached the establishment, we walked down the dark stairs that led along the tunnel under the river. After an inspector had been shot in the darkened tunnel, lamps were placed and lit permanently at either end, though Ho complained about the price of naphtha. There was to be no more walking in complete darkness, which had once been the sign that one was a regular. However, in my opinion, the gloom and odd shadows cast by the flickering lamps were more eerie than mere darkness.

Inside the restaurant, Barker skirted our usual table and made his way to a door on the other side of the room that led to a banquet hall. I followed him through it. Ho was already inside. He is a squat Chinaman with weighted ear-lobes, a braid of hair, and heavily tattooed arms. In his hands
was a long length of rope with a metal spike on the end that he twirled about the room. He dropped it to his feet, kicked it across the empty space, and then snapped it back again. At the other side of the room lay a row of shattered clay vessels, and as I watched he shot the dart forward with a kick and broke the least damaged of the lot. Some might have called it a child’s game, but the pointed dart made it look far more dangerous to me.

“We’re going against the Sicilians,” Barker stated, crossing his arms. Ho continued spinning the rope, wrapping it and unwrapping it around his arms again and even whipping it around his head close enough to ricochet off one of the gold earrings he wears. He gave no sign of hearing what Barker had said.

“We’re gathering a ragtag army against them, since the government cannot supply us with any assistance. I was wondering if you might help us.”

“I can feed your troops if you wish it,” Ho said, launching the dart at the row of pots again.

“I don’t need cooks,” Barker said, clearly irritated. “I need soldiers.”

“I have no concern about the Sicilians,” the Chinaman finally remarked.

“You should. They will be taking over London before you know it.”

“Mr. K’ing has reached an agreement with a representative. He will not go against them. Bad for business.”

“What about you, then? You must have a dozen cooks here.”

“Cooks, not soldiers,” Ho continued, winding his rope
dart back again. “Cannot run a restaurant with dead cooks and waiters.”

“Not if you’re there, too,” Barker pointed out.

Ho shook his head. “Mr. K’ing would be displeased.”

“Are you his lackey now?” my employer asked. “Is this the same man I fought alongside against the Heavenly Kingdom?”

Ho shrugged one of his brawny shoulders. “If I can help, I will help.”

Barker tossed one of the sharpened pennies he always kept in his pocket at his friend. It could sever a jugular. Without breaking stride, Ho sent the dart after it, deflecting the coin into one of the beams overhead.

“You are slowing down,” Ho commented.

“Come, lad,” the Guv said to me. “Apparently no one in town has the pluck to take on the Sicilians save us.”

Barker walked past me and was gone. I turned and followed. In the tunnel, I caught up with him.

“That’s it?” I asked. “What are we going to do now?”

“We’ll go back to our chambers and see if any new information has surfaced.”

An hour later, we heard a voice in the outer office.

“Is your boss on the premises?”

I recognized it instantly, though on previous occasions it had been heralded by the sound of hobnailed boots. Patrick Hooligan was a gang leader in Southwark, who had crossed our path before. He had a gift for listening closely to the word on the street and brokering his services quickly. Had he a proper education, I’m sure he would have done well as a businessman, not that he was doing badly now.

When last I’d seen him, Hooligan had a donkey-fringe haircut and bell-bottom trousers. Now his hair was shorn close, little more than stubble, and he wore a long black coat over a shirt, whose collar and tie were held in place by a diamond-studded pin in the shape of a horseshoe. One thing hadn’t changed, however; his boots still had brass caps on the toes, all the better to kick agreement out of certain persons.

“ ’Lo, Push,” he greeted, coming into the office with his usual swagger. “May I?”

“Help yourself,” Barker said, waving to the cigar case on his desk.

“Fanks. You allus ’as the real goods, not the stuff that passes for a proper cigar these days.”

“You’re quite the Brummell today, Patrick,” the Guv noted.

Hooligan opened his coat and turned around slowly, allowing us a view of his sartorial splendor. His waistcoat looked as if it had been cut from a Persian carpet, but of course, I wouldn’t tell him that.

“I’m movin’ up in the world,” he announced. “A man of business like you yourself, Push. A little bit of advertisement for me services, a little word of mouf, a kick to the jaw for them what deserves it, and me and the lads are doing well for ourselves. Expandin’ is what we are. ’Member the Rat-cliff Highway Boys?”

“Of course.”

“Brought ’em down Friday. Nobbled ’em proper. Them not willin’ to join my lot were ducked in Limehouse Basin, they was. I gave ’em the choice. Almost got ol’ Kingy hemmed in now.”

“Kingy” stood for Mr. K’ing, head of the Chinese Blue Dragon Triad, Hooligan’s personal nemesis, though Mr. K’ing never acknowledged his presence. Hooligan wanted to take over the East End but was not as powerful as K’ing. Still, Hooligan was young; and if hunger and drive were enough, he might make a name for himself in the underworld.