His face was veined and red now, his eyes glittery with danger, his arms hanging from his shoulders as if prepared to punch. Two others, smaller and younger, stood behind him. Most of the women were on the stairs, peering down, while the night’s last customers huddled in the rooms. Mulligan glanced at Cormac as he came down the final flight of stairs. And saw the sword.
“Look, lads, this poof’s got him a sword.”
The two smaller men grinned and each drew a new English-style revolver, made to fire five bullets without reloading. The countess backed up, eyes wide. The women on the staircase made a sighing sound. Millie the Weeper was weeping.
“You’re in the wrong house, aren’t you, Hughie?” Cormac said. “If you want a woman, you should be at thirteen Baxter Street, isn’t that the case, Hughie?” He smiled and moved around, turning his shoulder toward the three men to make himself a smaller target. “That is where your mother lives, isn’t it?”
Mulligan howled Youdirtybastardofawhoringponce and charged, and Cormac turned into the charge and put the tip of the sword under the larger man’s chin. Everything stopped. Mulligan seemed to stop breathing.
“Oh, poor Hughie Mulligan!” Cormac said. “What’s that red stuff coming from your neck?”
Mulligan’s face went pale. He started moving a hand to his neck, and Cormac jabbed with the tip of the sword and then blood actually did trickle down the man’s neck.
“Now, tell these two midgets of yours to hand those pistols to the countess. If you don’t, this sword will come out the back of your fucking head.”
Mulligan made a gesture with his hands, directing the two smaller men to hand over the guns.
“Hold the barrel with your thumb and forefinger, boys. You know which fingers they are? That’s it. Nice and easy, now. Real dainty-like.”
The countess took the guns, gazing at them with a curious respect.
“Countess, you can now shoot these three idiots for breaking into your establishment.”
“What a marvelous idea,” she said. “Look what they’ve done. Those three vases are worth, oh, a hundred dollars. And the door…” She shouted up the stairs. “Ladies, you saw what happened, didn’t you?”
A chorus of yeses.
“Should I shoot them?”
The words came rolling down from above: Right now, of course, between the eyes, why not?
Cormac took the tip of the sword away from Mulligan’s chin, and the big man swiped at his neck and saw blood on his finger-tips. His nostrils widened in rage.
“You’ve got some nerve,” he said.
Cormac laughed out loud.
“You come in here to break the place up and try to extort money, and we’ve got some nerve?”
“You’re foolin’ wit’ the wrong people.”
“In that case, we should kill you. To make sure you never come back.”
Mulligan turned as if to leave, then charged. He shoved Cormac against the banister of the stairwell, and Cormac fell, rolled, came up with the sword in both hands, and put its point against Mulligan’s heart.
“That was stupid.”
He turned to the countess, who was holding both revolvers. He nodded. She aimed.
“Take off your shoes,” Cormac said to Mulligan. Then turned to the other two. “And you two idiots: shoes, jackets, and trousers.”
The two smaller men were alarmed. They looked at Mulligan’s back, at Cormac, and the guns in the hands of the countess. They started undressing.
“You too, big boy,” Cormac said to Mulligan.
“I’ll not do that.”
“Let me help.”
He sliced Mulligan’s belt and the man’s trousers fell. He wasn’t wearing drawers. From the stairs came giggles and titters and one woman’s loud sob.
“The rest,” Cormac said.
Within minutes, all three men were naked, using hands to cover themselves, and the chorus on the stairs erupted in applause. Even the countess was grinning.
“Now go home.”
“It’s ten bloody degrees out there!” one of the younger men said. His teeth were already clacking.
“If you run hard, you’ll be warm enough, boys.”
They went out, and Cormac saw that it was snowing.
The next afternoon, with a foot of snow upon the ground, a mob showed up at the door of the brothel of the Countess de Chardon. It was led by clergymen, who declared themselves firmly against sin. One Methodist, one Anglican, one Presbyterian. They prayed. They hurled anathemas. They chanted. They sang. A few policemen watched carefully but did nothing. There were no laws against prostitution, since, as the countess observed, the laws were written by men. The age of consent in New York was ten. Watching with the countess from a high window, Cormac saw Hughie Mulligan and a dozen other Dead Rabbits on the edge of the crowd.
“I hope I haven’t caused more trouble than it’s worth,” he said.
“It was worth it,” she said, and giggled.
“What will you do?”
“Pay a few visits.”
While the mob still chanted, the countess slipped out the back door, dressed warmly against the cold. When she returned three hours later, the mob was gone.
“They won’t be back,” she said.
“Who did you visit?”
“Certain gentlemen who would rather not have their private tastes made public.”
The mob showed up over the following months at other places run by women but did not return to Duane Street. Hughie Mulligan and his boys had created one of the first true New York rackets: They would protect the houses from themselves. That is, if they were paid a fee, nobody would bother the madams, their women, or their business establishments. And through connections at Tammany Hall, they’d make certain that no fool of a politician would try to pass a law in Albany that would close the houses. They did not try again to move against the countess.
“But be careful, Cormac. Hughie Mulligan won’t forget what you did.”
“I know.”
Then one night, after a mild summer when only 213 New Yorkers died of cholera, the countess came to wake up Cormac in his room. The clock said 1:20. He sat up.
“What is it?”
“They have a plan,” she said, her voice breathless. “They’re going to burn out some blocks downtown, get rid of the old wooden houses, and…”
“Wait, slow down.”
She calmed herself and explained how she had learned from a favored customer that a certain group was planning to burn out some of the old streets, because the land titles and squatting rights were now too complicated to deal with. Later, they would help move the rich up to the new districts in Greenwich Village, where they could come to work on the new horse-drawn omnibuses. The speculators among them already owned the land up in Greenwich and were investing in the omnibuses. The mechanics, the apprentices, and the poor would be forced into the houses off Chapel Street, where many other poor now lived (including the children of Africans). Others would be directed to the houses of the Five Points. Everything below Wall Street would be rebuilt and devoted to business.
“And who is this favored customer?”
“I can’t speak his name. I call him the Wax Man. He likes, well…”
“And the name of his group?”
She sighed. “They don’t have a name. But they are real.” “And why would the Wax Man tell you?”
“He was drinking wine, a lot of wine, he was getting… I suppose the word is sentimental. He wanted me to know—so that I could buy land now, in Greenwich Village, or along Bond Street, or even farther into the country. He was offering me a favor. A piece of the information. It’s not the first time.”
Cormac wrapped a blanket around himself against the seeping September cold.