The Blackest Bird (12 page)

W
hen Tommy Coleman married the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, over a thousand members of the Five Points gangs attended the wedding, and there was much shouting and loud singing among these roughs, toughs, and bruisers of her anthem in chorus with the laughing, drunken Irish hordes tramping through the streets.

T
OMMY
C
OLEMAN
had run into his future wife, the sister of his dead brother’s murdered wife, one night after not seeing her since his brother’s hanging. She came in off the street into Murderers’ Mansion, One-Lung Charlie Mudd’s bucket of blood on Little Water Street.

The last time Tommy had seen her she was being escorted through the Tombs’ front gate by sheriff ’s deputies to stand near the gibbet, close enough to touch the naked wood. She had come to Tommy’s brother’s hanging for one reason, and one reason only: she wanted to see the man who had murdered her sister pay the big price and swing for what he had done.

That night everybody in the Mansion knew her, knew who she was, what had happened, her and her family’s torment. The girls from the neighborhood admired her for her strength and wherewithal, and bravery, the way she wore her air of tragedy, and she was so pretty, just like her sister, they longed to be like her; and the men, in awe of her beauty, felt the stirrings of wanton lust if nothing else.

She was known by sight on the street and whispered about. Not only because she was the sister of the city’s most famous hot corn girl, but also because she stood squarely on her own two feet, and had aligned herself with none other than Ruby Pearl, the rough-and-tumble leader of the Bowery Butcher Boys, and she, it was gossiped, if not said out loud (certainly not to her face), was in way over her head.

Not only because she was Irish Catholic and Ruby Pearl Protestant, him a prideful, east-of-Bowery, native true-blue American, her a potato-eating Irish lass from “the P’ernts,” but also because she was only sixteen and he a hardened eleven years her senior, and Protestants didn’t come a-social-calling in that neighborhood from where she was from, especially right there in the heart of the Fourth Ward, and old Ruby Pearl, he could be a very bad fellow, if not the worst. Very rowdy he was, and tough on women of all ages, save maybe his own mother.

When she sashayed into Charlie Mudd’s and Tommy glanced up, he had been cavorting there with his boyos, Tweeter Toohey, Pugsy O’Pugh, Boffo the Skinned Knuckle, and the rest of their lot. Her face flushed, full of rage, her dressed in gingham, her hot corn bucket slung over her shoulder like a weapon, her breath coming fast, he saw her, her excitement and anger transmitted to every patron imbibing in the Mansion, everyone laughing and singing and carrying on, and Tommy knew right there and then in his heart of hearts, this bleak mort was destined to be his bleak mort, none other.

Tommy Coleman did not deceive himself. He had no self-delusions what he was getting into. He had heard the talk. He knew to whom she belonged, and what her feelings had to be toward him personal,
given her deceased sister and his executed brother. There had never been love lost between them, even when things were going good with their respective siblings. He didn’t give a flying fig. He knew what he wanted, what he had to have. He knew no matter what had preceded, anything was possible in America.

So he sat there, biding his time at the knife-scarred table, having patience, waiting for something fateful to happen, biting his lip to blood as she stormed around Charlie Mudd’s emporium so angered and full of herself, beautiful and barefoot, the strap of her cedar bucket crossing her bosom.

There was a commotion and into the Mansion stalked Ruby Pearl himself, surveying the drunks for her. What she’d been waiting for, judging from the look on her face. She marched across the room, stood in front of him, rage sparking off her, and you better believe every citizen in One-Lung Mudd’s Mansion knew old Ruby, big as he was, strong as an ox, tough as a sheep shank, was in trouble.

Ruby Pearl was not known for an abundance of brains so he might not have known he was in dire straits yet, leastways that was the only way Tommy could ken it. Which, you have to figure, is why Butcher Pearl said so casually to her in front of all these citizens, “Why you make me follow you in here, you damn mort? Why you coming in here? Why you ain’t out working still?”

“Am I in?” she shot back without fear. She had that God-given ability, young as she was, that enables a woman to put an edge in her voice that sets a man off.

Ought to have made Ruby Pearl be more aware, but not knowing the whims and subtleties of the female gender, having worked the whole of his life in slaughterhouses and market butcher stalls, Ruby Pearl only heard what he thought—affront and disrespect—and he hauled off to strike her.

Tommy was on his feet, crossing the sawdusted floor fast, coming to her defense.

Except the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl didn’t need (or
want) any strong-arm protection offered up by the likes of Tommy Coleman.

She despised Tommy Coleman.

She caught Ruby Pearl’s big arm in midair, before he could strike her, and she just sneered up at him like he was nothing, lower than a worm, a mesomorph, holding him fiercely, digging her fingers into the flesh and muscle and tendon in the seam of his thick wrist, the electric ganglionic nerve, smelling on him the overpowering smell of dead animals, her crazy smile, if you can call it that, a smile, God, could you believe it? In his cell Tommy grinned to himself as he remembered how beautiful she was!

Tommy was left to standing and staring. There was nothing for him to do, just look on and grin, Ruby Pearl dispatched just like that. Everything taken care of by this beautiful girl, neat as a pin.

Nevertheless, Tommy felt like he needed to make his presence known, and then he was of a mind to have a word with old Ruby. After all, he, Tommy, had got up and crossed the room this far, might as well go all the way.

Butcher Boy Ruby Pearl, wobbled from beer and oysters, toughest of the tough, roughest of the rough, whirled, rubbing his wrist where his bleak mort had pinched him, or whatever she’d done, and turned on Tommy, now focused in on this nemesis, glaring at him as a man glares at another when it is understood between them that their manhood is at stake.

Ruby Pearl knew Tommy Coleman, knew him all too well, knew how crazed and dangerous he was; loathed him. Loathed Tommy as Tommy loathed him.

“Pearl,” Tommy spoke.

“Step back, Coleman,” Ruby countered, “before I punch your parking railing through your face.”

“Don’t you know that’s no way to treat a lady, boyo?”

“I ain’t no b’hoyo of yours. Don’t call me no b’hoyo, b’hoyo! I’m Ruby Pearl, Bowery Butcher B’hoy. Mr. Pearl to the likes of you,
Coleman.” And advancing on the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, he growled mightily, “Go back to the street, you. Make money, and leave me to deal with the likes of this nickey. I don’t want you to see what I’m gonna do to him.”

“Mr. Ruby Pearl, you don’t belong down here in this part of the city,” Tommy Coleman said. “This ain’t your neighborhood, this ain’t your ward. I think you better go home, back to your Bowery ways. Before you can’t, boyo.”

“Meaning what?” Ruby Pearl was not a man to step down lightly. “I’m here to see my mort. On her invitation. This is a free nation if you know it or not, you little Irish runty pig.”

Ruby was over six feet two inches tall and weighed more than two hundred and twenty pounds, with the torso of a side of beef. He grew up on the street. But sometimes the biggest and the strongest, the slyest and the most adept, cannot win. Looking around him, Ruby knew when he was put down and could not persevere. Even against a straw-weight lad a foot inferior, a hundred pounds lighter than he.

Tommy’s gang, Tweeter, Pugsy, Boffo, a dozen others, their hands on their slungshots and daggers, surrounded him.

“You’ll get yours, Coleman,” Ruby growled, looking from one to the other. “I’ll be back one day to dispatch you to hell, or I’ll meet you on the streets and grind you into the paving stones then. You know that, don’t you, wee one, when you don’t got your life preservers around.”

“I’m not scared, mate,” Tommy told him.

“Neither am I,” retorted he.

All in attendance at Mudd’s Mansion that night, every single one, pressed forward one step to witness what was to transpire.

“One last thing, Mr. Pearl. From now on, stay away,” Tommy warned, spitting on the floor between Ruby’s feet for punctuation. “This here mort is not your mort no more.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Pearl said. “Now you’re telling me stay away from what’s mine.”

“I don’t like no man who hits no woman.”

“No? Well, it ain’t no secret I don’t like you, Tommy b’hoyo. And I don’t much like no Irish pig runt rat telling me what to do.”

“Stay away, Ruby. Stay away if you don’t want to be took out.”

R
UBY
P
EARL SWORE
up and down the Bowery that vengeance would be his. He enlisted the other local native gangs to join his throng of Butcher Boys: the True-Blue Americans, the American Guard, every last stick and straw of the rest of the Bowery russers, making threat to march on Tommy Coleman’s wedding, the festivities of which were to be held in Paradise Square, and fillet Tommy on the spot in front of his new bride, making her a widow.

Armed guards, all emanating out of Eire, and all over six feet tall, were volunteered, primarily out of the ranks of the Plug Uglies and Kerryonians, to protect the nuptial celebration. These giants, in their reinforced stovepipe hats and hobnailed boots, were located strategically on the Five Points side streets and alleys and around the wrought iron fence that surrounded the square, as added deterrent, per Tommy’s orders, a rusted but workable cannon placed on Cross Street facing east.

But all was quiet and the wedding went off without incident.

Still, a small, festively wrapped box came, delivered by a toothless old woman in a yellow head rag. In it was the carcass of a dead white piglet, and a note that read:
IT’S NOT OVER YET
, with no signature, no nothing, but Tommy Coleman needed no signature to know the low style of a Bowery Butcher Boy.

A
fter Tommy Coleman married the sister of his late brother’s late wife, as it turned out, some citizens of the metropolis were not exactly in his corner. The doomed romance of his brother and his new wife’s beloved sister hung over many. Her parents were desperate for fear that the terrible scenario would be played out again, and before the marriage, in their most intimate moments, even she, the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, said to him that she was repelled at the same time as attracted.

Now people were saying that she was even prettier than her sister, prettier than the Pretty Hot Corn Girl. Her head could be turned. She was not above that.

Many gossips said Ruby Pearl had put out the word right after the romance began: Any Bowery Boy or True-Blue American found buying an ear of corn from the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl would find himself answering to the Butcher Boys.

After Tommy had won the hand of his future intended, it proved more than a victory for him, it was a statement, because not only had he vanquished his rival, Ruby Pearl, domo of the hated Bowery Butcher Boys, but also (maybe even more importantly) it was wider
acknowledgment to all that a brash, clever rogue the likes of Tommy Coleman might live a life of leisure off the steaming ears sold out of that cedar bucket.

No one ever mistook Tommy Coleman for a gentleman. After marrying her he had no qualms about partaking in his new wife’s success, evidently having desired the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, whether he knew it or not, not only for love, not to mention what a bleak mort like her represented in his ward, but also for the lucre she’d bring in.

But not surprisingly, with all the warnings and dire onus, the gay blades, the biggest contributors to her business, stayed away in droves, and the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl found her income shrinking.

Like his brother before him, Tommy Coleman was not good in taking disappointment, especially disappointment of the economic kind. Scarcely eight weeks into the marriage, when she came home with less than five shillings, Tommy became volatile. Day after day, her income had failed to measure up to his expectations. By now, at the end of two months, he was able to endure no more. She had been making sixteen, eighteen dollars a week, now she made only five. Since they were married she handed all her money over to her new husband, but Tommy did not like only five shillings, and they were squabbling, shades all over again of her murdered sister and his hanged brother.

“Can’t you make money on your own?” the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl shouted back at him following Tommy’s rage and rampage against her. “Give me a break? Why don’t you use your gang? Do you always need to depend on me?”

“You’re right,” Tommy admitted reluctantly. “I have the boyos and they’ll make plenty of conscript for me when I give the say-so.”

“So there you have it,” the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl said gaily to her husband, and kissed him.

“The only catch is, they’re not you. It speaks well of a bloke to be supported by his woman.”

“I’m going to give up peddling corn on the street for a while,
Tommy,” she said. “I’m pregnant,” truly heartfelt, touching even him who was not so touchable. “I’m tired. Maybe I need to rest before the baby comes.”

“Okay,” Tommy relented as the notion of an heir intrigued him. “But just until the baby finishes suckling. We got a good thing going here. I’d hate to see you spoil it.”

Tommy had wanted a son, but he swore, his eyes misting, that the newborn Daughter of the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl was the most beautiful baby in the Five Points, and maybe on the face of the earth.

“The spitting image of her mother!” he boasted.

For a number of months Tommy did not mind that his wife was not on the street plying her trade, raking in the money. His Forty Little Thieves were doing well for themselves, lying in wait, jacking drunks, stealing purses, smacking heads, leaving their victims naked and unconscious on the sidewalk for the roundsmen to discover and— if luck was with the mark—wake.

But then one crisp day there came a problem.

Two skull-bashers, older boyos left over from the reign of his brother, Crags Mahoney and Greedy Armond, who had run in the days with the original Forty Thieves, were strolling by the waterside, near the seawall at Castle Garden, when they came upon a newly arrived German immigrant. The man had twelve cents in his pocket. They clubbed him and tossed him in the river, where he promptly drowned, while Crags and Armond repaired back to the Green Turtle’s to divvy up their plunder.

First they asked for a drink. The Turtle took a hose and squirted some swill down each of their gullets. Then Greedy Armond, living up to his name, announced that because he’d tossed the fat German into the river he deserved seven cents of the twelve.

“No!” Crags Mahoney retorted. It was he who had struck the blow that put the man out. If anyone deserved seven cents, it was him. Common sense said if the man weren’t jacked out, Crags argued,
Greedy Armond never would have been able to lift him up to propel him over the seawall in the first place.

Such a statement infuriated Greedy Armond. With deep conviction he took hold of Crags’ nose in his teeth. Lest his nose be bit off, Crags pulled a knife and slid it between Greedy Armond’s ribs. Unfortunately for Crags, the knife between the ribs barely slowed Greedy Armond, although he did let go of Crags’ poor nose, but sorry to say, the alcohol-swollen fleshy bulb of it was still clenched in the vise of Armond’s brown teeth.

For the next half hour the two of them rolled around the barroom floor, looking for advantage. Eventually Greedy Armond got hold of the knife and thrust it in Crags’ throat.

Crags collapsed on the floor, weak from loss of blood. Seeing him helpless there, Greedy Armond promptly stomped him to death with his heavy hobnailed boots.

Tommy Coleman and all the Forty Little Thieves present that evening at the Green Turtle’s, of which there were many, stood in abject silence.

After that Greedy Armond made good his escape, leaving poor Crags lying dead on the floor with his head caved in.

The timing of these two rogues couldn’t have been worse. Only a few weeks before, the body of Mary Rogers had been discovered floating in the Hudson, and from Jersey came word that Fourth Ward gangsters might have been at work in the woods nearby.

For rowdies it was not a good time to call attention to oneself.

When it was learned that Five Points gangs were prime suspects, Sergeant McArdel of the Night Watch with five leatherheads came around the neighborhood to Rosanna Peers’ greengrocery and One-Lung Charlie Mudd’s Murderers’ Mansion, asking for alibis. Old Hays came poking around the Green Turtle’s again, for the second time questioning Tommy.

No one could ever connect any of the Forty Little Thieves strong enough to the killing of Mary Rogers to make indictment. Still,
Tommy’s income took a dramatic plunge, seriously wounded by his gang’s persecution, the inevitable result of such social and political heat.

Tommy flatly told his wife it was time for her to hit the city byways again. Always thinking and considering, he had his own ideas for her to improve sales from what they had been at their best. Not only would she walk the streets of the Broadway by City Hall Park peddling her wares, but their little daughter, the beautiful blue-eyed two-year-old Daughter of the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, dressed identically to her mother, carrying her own little cedar bucket, would also toddle the streets. Their sweet voices in tandem a sweet song of jingling coins:

What realistically might the expected income from such a setup be? The righteous man dare not hope, confabulated an ecstatic Tommy, but even a conservative soul might in these hard times speculate twenty a week minimum.

So here was the motive, later to be underscored by a staunch prosecuting attorney in the Essex Street police court, and eventually pondered by a jury of Tommy’s peers, because less than a month after they had returned to the city’s best thoroughfares to peddle their golden wares, the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, like her doomed sister before her, and even more tragically, her beautiful darling, the little innocent Daughter of the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, were found in the back of Cow Bay, lying in the mud, beaten to death.
Nearby was discovered the body of the thick-necked, redheaded native American butcher Ruby Pearl.

At Tommy’s trial (Tommy would never forgive High Constable Jacob Hays for confronting him with the bodies of his brutally murdered wife and daughter in the Dead House), the wily prosecutor alleged that Pearl had once again become paramour to the comely Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl. That Tommy had discovered their reentanglement, finding them in the back of the loathsome Cow Bay alley spooning and kissing there, and that he had grown vicious mad, lost all control, and had made short shrift of them both, and then, as afterthought, laid waste as well to his young daughter, the Daughter of the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, learning or suspecting or having fallen prey to either poison notion or malicious rumor that the Daughter of the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn girl was not the fruit of his loins at all, but the child of Pearl.

Tommy denied all this in court.

“Lies!” his defending lawyer, young Hummel of Centre Street, pronounced in his high-pitched Bavarian immigrant’s mutilation of the English language. “Scurrilous lies!”

Tommy testified in his own defense. “Now this is what happened that fateful night. Nothing more, nothing less. My wife and daughter was out working, but they was late and I grew worried. I went out looking for ’em and come acrost that native rat, Ruby Pearl, in the back of Cow Bay alley, my wife dead at his feet, my daughter tossed off in the corner, like a rag waiting for the picker.”

Tommy’s eyes gleamed in what purported to be memory. He went on with his blithe recollection: “The redheaded bastard was standing over them he was, they no longer of this eart’. I challenged him. I said, ‘Whatsamatta, boyo? Why you do this?’ He says, I swear, ‘Whaddya care? I did it. What you gonna do about it?’ Right there and then I took him out, and mark me if I don’t feel good about it.”

Now, ignoring his lawyer, rising to face Ruby’s supporters, who were in attendance that afternoon at the proceedings, challenging,
shouting, “You hear me you low-life butcher apprentices!” Tommy’s gaze flitting back across the curiosity seekers, to the box, swiveling back to catch the black-robed judge, looking him square in the eye, the jury, “Now which one among you would not do the same?”

But unfortunately for Tommy, his twelve peers did not buy his story. With High Constable Jacob Hays looking steadily on from the gallery, he was condemned to be hanged, and remanded to the Tombs to meet his fate forthwith.