Will Thomas: The Black Hand

“Quite a scene over in Wentworth Street, gentlemen,” he said. “Buncha I-talians tried to break into a certain establishment, with everything short o’ dynamite, but it was nuffink doing. They gave up. The door is half stove in and shot to pieces, but it held. The tenant inside discouraged them wif one good shot of his scattergun. Carpet tacks do make wery in’eresting projectiles, don’t ya fink?”

Mac woke me the next morning with the welcome news that he had located Etienne’s baker and purchased pain au chocolat for my breakfast, which happened to be my favorite. I’ve got to hand it to him: Mac’s willing to go above and beyond the ordinary, though at the time I recall thinking that this was his subtle way of suggesting this would be my last meal on earth. I sat in the kitchen watching Barker pace about the back garden and reflected on the fact that my fate was in his hands.

After my bun and coffee, I crossed the bridge to the training area and practiced one of my forms, more to please Barker than myself. I didn’t want to intrude on his thoughts, which must have been a jumble of plans and concerns.

“Today’s the day, then,” I said when I was done, which was trite and obvious, but it helped to break the silence.

“Indeed,” he rumbled, still half consumed in thought.

“Do you believe we will flush Marco Faldo out from under whatever rock he is hiding?”

“That is in the Lord’s hands,” he responded, which caused me to infer that he had been up early praying. A miscalculation on his part could result in more people being killed. If he ever needed divine help, it was now.

Once we were in our offices I found that everything that occurred that day was geared toward the evening’s activities. Jenkins sent all new business to one of the detectives nearby, while Barker employed an elaborate system of telephone calls and messages.

“Sir, is there anything I should be doing?”

Barker looked up at me as if aware for the first time that I was in the room. “You want something to do? Go to Charing Cross Hospital and get those stitches looked at. But be careful. Remember the note you received.”

There was little chance I could forget. I lifted hat and stick from the stand and headed toward Trafalgar Square, tuning all my senses to what was going on about me. It was another sunny day, and I stopped and reflected on the fact that the weather we were having was almost Mediterranean, as if the Sicilian criminal hiding somewhere in London had brought this weather north with him.

Where was the fellow? I wondered. He was hiding very well; but, then, there were many bolt-holes in London-restaurants like Ho’s and abandoned tunnels like Mr. Soft’s, basement dwellings, vacant shops, and warehouses. One would assume he was in the Italian quarter, but he could just as easily be in a nice hotel under an assumed name. He might even … I stopped in my tracks. He might even be someone we already knew.

Suppose this Sicilian criminal was not Sicilian at all. Perhaps he was Irish: the local criminal leader Seamus O’Muircheartaigh, playing both sides against the middle, or Hooligan, bringing down Gigliotti in order to gain power. Perhaps he was the Chinese Mr. K’ing, in an elaborate charade to enlarge his sphere of influence. Or could it be another Italian? Perhaps someone within the late Victor Gigliotti’s organization wanted to be rid of him, someone that Inspector Pettigrilli might have recognized, so that he must be killed, too. I would count it a conjurer’s trick were it not for the litter of bodies left behind. So many deaths merely so that one man could stand up and claim himself the ruler of London’s underworld? K’ing and O’Muircheartaigh would not allow that, but this fellow seemed bold enough to try anything.

I came to Trafalgar Square and surveyed the area, looking for anything out of the ordinary. No caped assassins stood about, and no one appeared to be following me; but just the same, I detoured through Charing Cross and came to the hospital from another direction.

I sat patiently as the doctor examined my face, his cool fingers inspecting my stitches. He decided since the stitches were already in place, he wouldn’t remove them, but he swabbed the wound heavily in iodine and put a sticking plaster on it.

“They’re coming along as expected,” the doctor said. “I’ll need to take them out in another three or four days.”

I stepped into a book and cartography shop in Cecil Street to while away half an hour, having convinced myself I deserved a treat for seeing a physician, then arrived back in Craig’s Court in time for lunch.

“I like the plaster,” Barker judged. “It makes you look more formidable, and you need every advantage you can get.”

“I could be cut again at any moment, given the way this case has gone so far.”

“It is a corker, isn’t it? I don’t understand what fellows see in adding accounts or trading in corn.”

“You do realize if you are able to solve all the empire’s problems, you’ll only put yourself out of work.”

“Then I shall enjoy my garden. What’s that you’ve got there?”

I’d been trying to hide it, but he missed nothing behind those black spectacles of his.

“A bound Newgate Calendar. Picked it up in Cecil Street for one and six.”

Barker picked up the book and grunted his disapproval. Oh, not at the book, of course, but at me. The book, containing records of old crimes from the early part of the century, interested him enough that he started turning pages. “I was unaware there was a clinic in Cecil Street, lad,” he said casually, absorbed in the illustrations in the book. I had been caught out. I should have known better.

“The bookstore did beguile me.”

Barker sniffed. Mistake number two. “I wish you wouldn’t paraphrase verses from the Holy Book for your own ends. Let’s get some lunch, then go out to the docks. It’s time to choose a location for tonight’s events.”

Barker was up and out of the office before I even got a remark out of my mouth. I jumped up and just made it to the waiting cab before it started without me.

“You mean you haven’t even chosen which dock the fight is going to be at tonight?” I demanded, a trifle out of breath.

“No. That would have been a capital mistake. The Mafia has eyes and ears everywhere in the docks. If I decided too early, they could get in ahead of us and take the high ground, so to speak. They have a sense of honor, but it is idiosyncratic. If they pledge to fight without guns you may depend upon them, but they are not above stacking the deck. Let’s go, lad.”

In the East End, my employer and I looked at docks, lots and lots of docks. I had no idea there were so many in the area. East India; West India; London; St. Katherine’s; Millwall; and both Royal docks. Some were divided by canals and were two docks together; so actually, there were over a dozen to inspect one by one, which the two of us did. Now, as far as I’m concerned, a dock is a dock. It has boats in it, with warehouses and packing crates of all sorts nearby. They all looked alike, save for the cargo-tea for the East Indian, for example, and coffee for the West Indian-but to Barker they were as different as women. His shaded eyes apparently took in every detail, weighed it as if on a scale, balanced each attribute with a demerit. One might almost think he was buying a property, rather than planning a battle.

That is not to say that the Guv was working while I stood idly by. I counted the Italian faces on the docks and tried to ascertain whether we were being watched or followed. We were not followed perhaps, but we were certainly watched. I saw workers nudging each other and pointing at us with nods of their chins. There were many Italians and Sicilians on the docks-dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. They must have all known one another on an intimate scale, by face and family and personal history, in order to distinguish friend from foe, an ability which we lacked completely. If a stevedore walked up to me, how would I know if he meant to shake my hand or stick a knife into my stomach?