The Investigations of Avram Davidson (28 page)

He feels just fine.

T
HE
I
MPORTANCE OF
T
RIFLES

W
HEN
“T
HE
I
MPORTANCE OF
T
RIFLES
” appeared in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
(January 1969) the editors diverged from their normal policy of “blurbing” each story with a brief paragraph. Instead, they published a full page of comments, setting the tale in its historical context and praising it and its author. This unusual attention was well justified.

As early as December of 1958 Avram Davidson had written to Frederic Dannay (one half of “Ellery Queen”) about a proposed series of stories and asking for advice on his research. The series was to be “set in the days when Mordecai Manuel Noah was Sherrif (or Sheriff) of New York and Jacob Hays was High Constable.” The stories would involve “the New York criminal scene, @ 1830, give or take a decade or so.” Later in the same letter Avram added, “I am fond of the Jacksonian Era and rather believe that I can do some good stories on the Noah/Hays teeter-totter; certainly I shall enjoy doing them.”

It was a decade before “The Importance of Trifles” saw print, and it seems to have been the only story actually written in the planned series. It is a splendid piece of work, a fine police procedural complete with crime, clues, suspects, deduction, and action. It deals also with the social issues of its day—which are not so different from the social issues of ours—and with the seemingly perpetual struggle (Avram's “teeter-totter”) between political appointees and law-enforcement professionals. It is that rare story that truly merits the too-often awarded designation of
tour de force.

—RAL

 

Jacob Hays, high constable of the City of New-York, had eaten his usual breakfast of fried eggs and beefsteak, broiled fish (shad, this time), a heap of pan-cakes, a pair of chickens' wings, hot buttered rolls, and tea. More and more people were drinking coffee, as the nineteenth century rolled into its fourth decade, but Jacob Hays still imbibed hyson rather than java.

“Promise me, Mr. Hays,” his wife demanded, as he rose to leave, “that if it commences rain you'll take the Broad-way caravan.”

“Mrs. Hays, good morning,” said her husband briefly. And walked out of the house with brisk strides.

The day was dark, but it would be darker than it had ever been before he would spend eight cents to ride a mile. Many a mickle makes a muckle, his mother used to say; and his father's advice had been: Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of you. Besides, did it befit the holder of his office to cram into a crowded caravan like a commission-merchant or a law-clerk? Would the people not think he was doddering if they saw him in an omnibus? He, who patrolled the city afoot by day and by night? Just so.

Presumably, it had been a quiet night, for no message had come to pull him out from his featherbed. No riots or major fires—a mercy.

It had been twenty-six years since old Governor De Witt Clinton, then Mayor of New-York, had appointed him High Constable, and in all that time the City had never ceased to grow—nor had crime ever ceased to keep pace with commerce and culture. Jacob Hays had come to relish quiet nights, though scarcely even one of these passed in which he did not awaken, straining his ears for some sound—near or far—betokening a conflagration in South-street or a murderous “hooley” in the Five-Points. And yet there were citizens who still expected him to undertake the functions of a hog-warden!

The very thought of it made him snort. He looked around challengingly—then smiled. There was no trouble in the Broad-way at this time of morning, or, indeed, at any other time of day. The wide, clean street, lined with fashionable hotels and shops and busy office buildings, stretched along for almost three miles, the wonder of the country—proud New-Yorkers said, of the world. And all along it, from the Battery to Twentieth-street, looked upon from wooden shacks and towering five-storey brick buildings alike, a press of carts, drays, wagons, carriages, cabs, and omnibuses filled the eighty-foot width of the road with a ceaseless rumbling.

“Good-morning, High Constable,” said a dry-goods merchant, setting out open boxes of new percales and nankeens for passers-by to examine at pleasure. “Good-morning, Mr. Hays,” said an admiralty-lawyer, on his way to visit the forest of masts along the lower East-River. “Good-morning, Jacob,” said old Alderman Ter Williger.

And two young bloods, of the sort which had begun to infest the Bowery-road, hats cocked as sharply over carefully-soaped locks of hair as gravity would allow, nudged one the other sharply, and hissed, “Old Hays!”

Their expression, as they met his cold, knowledgeable eye, changed from one of studied insolence to a mixture of uneasiness and would-be defiance. He gave his high-constabular staff, which he always carried with him, a slight shake in their direction, and they lowered their gaze and slunk by. No, they were just strutting, and would make no trouble in the Broad-way.

The unpaven, narrow, pig-ridden, and stinking side-streets of the lower city, ill-lit and under-patrolled (but try to obtain additional money for more constables from the Board of Aldermen!)—these were the places they would choose for crime. And it was in the Bowery, with its popular theatres and pleasure gardens, that they would seek their amusement: jostling citizens, insulting ladies, and causing commotions in general.

Once in his office Hays ignored the view of the City Hall Park, and dealt rapidly with that portion of the day's new business which responded to rapid treatment. Then he looked over his correspondence—runaway daughters and fugitive sons; complaints of bogus lotteries and similar frauds which seemed to go on forever—like “The Spanish Prisoner” swindle, the “English-Estate-in-Chancery-to-which-you-are-heir” swindle.

“Any new ‘cards'?” he asked his assistant. There were—there always were. Bank robbery in Portland, green-goods merchant hastily departed from Philadelphia, murder in Albany, funds embezzled from London, cargo of rum stolen in Boston, shipment of cotton made off with in Georgia, eleven absconded apprentices, two fugitive slaves, piracy in the Gulph of Mexico.

“Post those with descriptions,” he directed. “What's next?”

“Next” was a young Colored man whose bright red shirt, wide-bottomed trousers, and glazed hat—the last held respectfully in his hands—told Hays of the man's profession before he even looked at the paper held out to him.

WHEREAS, an ACT of the CONGRESS of the Year 1818, intituled
AN ACT TO DEFINE AND PROTECT THE STATUS OF SEAMEN
[Hays read], does not mention the Status of Seamen who are Persons of Color, and WHEREAS, the
Legislature
of the
STATE OF NEW-YORK
in the Year 1820 has authorized the Certification of Seamen domiciled or denizened in the State of New-York who are Free Persons of Color, now, THEREFORE, be it known that I,
Jefferson Van Der Wett,
a Clerk of the CITY OF NEW-YORK, do hereby certify that the bearer,
Lucas Oaks,
a Seaman of this City, and a Man of Color, is known to me on good evidence to be a FREE MAN, and I do further Enjoin all Men of whatsoever Cities, States, Territories, and Nations, to recognize him in such Status and not to Hold, Use, nor Dispose of him, the aforesaid
Lucas Oaks,
a FREE MAN of Color, as if he were not in Fact
FREE.

“Anything against him?” Hays asked. The Constable shook his head. Hays dipped his quill, wrote
No Criminal Record. J. Hays. High Constable, C. of N-Y.,
scattered sand, and handed it to the Negro who departed with thanks.

And so the day proceeded. The Five-Points—that foul and teeming human rookery where Cross, Anthony, Littlewater, Orange, and Mulberry meet—had had its usual murder. The usual sailor had been found dead by violence. This time the almost nightly occurrence was not the same, though often enough it was a sailor found dead in the Five-Points; often in its black and filthy heart—the swarming, putrefying tenement called the Old Brewery.

There was little chance of discovering the killers at the moment, if ever. The night had witnessed their deeds, and as little as the night would testify, so little would the furtive inhabitants of the criminal world testify. Until and unless, of course, the cut-throats had a falling out. In which case there might be a dirty, illiterate note some morning on Hays's desk—a whisper in the ear of the Watch (as the Constabulary was also called)—notes and whispers which might lead to arrest or conviction. Or might not.

It sometimes seemed to Jacob Hays that the work-houses, paupers' wards, and felon-cells of all the world, European as well as American, were pouring their wretched contents into New-York; although he knew well enough that most of the ever-increasing stream of immigrants were good people. It would ill behoove him to rail against “foreigners,” as some were doing. Had not his own mother been born abroad? And his father's parents? When you came down to it, whose stock
was
entirely “Native American”?—except for the Indians. And there were those who claimed (Hays recalled a recent sermon at Scotch Presbyterian Church) that the Indians themselves were none other than the Lost Tribes of Israel!

It was Hays's custom, if the affairs of the morning permitted, to take some light refreshment about ten o'clock, and then to read through all the newspapers. That is, not to read every word, but to have a look at the items marked for him by his assistant, Constable Moore, who had standing instructions to check off any bit of news referring to crime or the police. It was always amusing—sometimes instructive—to observe the way in which the same incident was treated in different newspapers, and to see how they agreed (or, more often, disagreed) with the official report of the same incident.

In the staid
Commercial Gazette
of this morning, for example, there was the single line:
The body of a man, as yet unidentified, was found yesterday in Dunstan-Slip.
That was all.
A man.
Not, Hays noted,
a gentleman.
In the lives or deaths of the lower orders of society the
Commercial Gazette
was supremely uninterested.

The
News-Letter
had this to say:

Yesterday afternoon the body of a man was discerned floating in the River at Dunstan-Slip by a woman of the neighborhood. The dead person, who, by his dress, was evidently a member of the sea-faring class, had not long been exposed to the briny element, and appeared to be in his middle years. It is opined that he came to his death by natural causes. His name has not yet been learned.

The recently-established
True Citizen and Temperance Advocate,
however, had learned—or said it had learned—his name.

An intelligent and respectable female identified the remains to this journal as that of one Gorman or Gormby, a sailingman, much given to the prevalent vice of his class (though not only of his class) vide licet, imbibing large quantities of alcoholic liquors—we do not denominate them ‘beverages.' Whilst in a condition of intoxication, the dead man, we adduce, fell into the Slip and drowned. Within four blocks of the fatal scene our reporter counted no less than thirty-nine dram-stores, grog-shops, gin-mills, brandy-houses, and so-called “grocery” establishments, these last entirely devoted to purveying raw spirits to the ignorant. When will a supine administration awaken to the menace,
et cetera, et cetera.

And the
Register
devoted a full column to what it called a

dastardly crime, undoubtedly committed by a gang of crimps, bent on conveying the innocent seaman against his will to the cruel mercies of a conscienceless master-mariner bound for foreign ports where the writ of the American Republic runs not. It was doubtless owing to his reluctance to be forced into a berth he did not desire that the unfortunate Jack-Tar resisted so vigorously that his kidnappers decided on his Death. He was tossed into the brackish waters of Dunstan-Slip where, being like the generality of sea-farers, unable to swim, he expired by drowning.

Old Hays snorted. “Catch any crimps tossing twenty dollars worth of two-footed merchandise away! Those they don't dope, they bash—but, one way or another, they get them aboard alive. Any wounds on him, Neddy?”

“Few bruises, Mr. High—but no wounds,” said Constable Edward Moore. “Course he wasn't no Gorman nor Gormby, any more than he was crimped.” His tone of voice indicated that he realized he was not telling his superior anything the latter didn't know.

Hays nodded, picked up the official constabulary report, mumbled the words to himself, adding his own comments. “Bruises on breast, abdomen, and face; also, back of neck. Couldn't have gotten them all by falling down: been fighting. Clothes worn and dirty—been on shore a long time. Not known to the Watch or any of our water-front friends—didn't ship out of the port of New-York. Shoes show signs of recent hard use—walked from his last port.”

“Wasn't killed for his fortune, we may be sure,” said Moore.

“The Coroner's inquisition?”

“Dead before he hit the water, seems like. Neck broke. Lungs dry. Hardly swollen, scarcely a mark on him from fish or crabs.” Hays thought about his breakfast shad, but he had a strong stomach (twenty-six years as High Constable!) and didn't think about it long. “He was found in mid-afternoon, and conjecture is that he'd been dead since the night before. Woman emptying a slop-bucket spied him.”

The two men mused on this unusual fastidiousness in a district where slops were emptied, usually, out the nearest window. Then Moore continued: “Noteworthy features? Had a great swelling of the left ear-lobe. Forget what you call it. Key-something.”

But Hays remembered. “A keloid. Scarred over and swelled when he had it pierced for an earring, I expect. Sometimes happens so. We'd know he was a sailor from that alone. Potter's Field?” Constable Moore nodded.