31 Bond Street (16 page)

“Mr. Clinton, I am sure you are a most venerable member of the bar, and no doubt justice is foremost in your mind,” replied the minister in a modulated voice that had the depth and resonance of an organ pipe. “But I will have you know that Samuel is a man of courage—he has placed himself in the faith of God, which takes all the courage a man can summon. He is an honest man, and he needs no other guide.”

“Please, sir, I intended no disrespect to yourself or to Samuel. I do not suspect him of any crime. Samuel might know the victim’s whereabouts on the night of the murder, and lead us to the perpetrator.” Clinton added meekly: “Perhaps you can convince him to speak with me?”

The Reverend’s brow remained furrowed; Clinton saw that he had not penetrated the pastor’s resistance. “I do not sacrifice my brethren,” he said with a tone of rebuke. “People come here to worship in this church, which is their haven. This is a sanctuary where my parishioners shall always be safe.”

“If Samuel fears he may be wrongly accused, I assure you, I can offer him protection,” countered Clinton quickly. “I will see that he is granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.”

“You and your law cannot protect Samuel,” said the pastor with sudden vehemence. “Times have changed—and much for the worse. As a legal man, you are, no doubt, aware of the Fugitive Slave Act? Within the first year after that law, there were more Negroes removed from the North than had been captured in the preceding sixty years. And there is the case of
Dred Scott
most recently decided by the highest court in this land. And yet, as a New York City
lawyer, you still come to my church to tell me that you can offer protection to my parishioner?” The Reverend nearly spat the words “New York City lawyer,” as if there were no more contemptible species on earth.

“Follow this way,” said the minister. Clinton followed to an easel with a notice board that had bits of paper tagged to its surface. He realized with alarm that the snips were newspaper clips about slavery that were often sprinkled into the New York dailies like a sharp spicing of pepper. Courtesy required that Clinton lean forward to read them:

“If Samuel is to be protected, it will be by God, not by the law,” said the minister, his eyes hard with determination. Clinton knew that it was not just the South that was aflame; crimes against freedmen and ex-slaves were escalating at an alarming rate in New York City, including a practice whereby Negro citizens who had never been slaves were being kidnapped and sold South, to be turned bodily into gold.

With little to lose, Clinton decided to be straightforward: “There is a woman who is accused of murder, and perhaps she will hang for it, falsely. It is for that reason that I seek Samuel; his information may exonerate her.”

“This woman may be fighting for her life,” replied the minister, “but a man with black skin is no less worthy. I will not trade one for the other.” In a sudden flash, Clinton suspected that others had been to the church before him, inquiring about Samuel.

“Have any men from the District Attorney’s office come here to see you?” asked Clinton.

The minister did not give a direct reply. “Last night, perhaps you have heard, they burnt the shantytowns,” he said. “They said it was to make way for the new Central Park.” The minister’s mouth tightened around his sparse words.

“They burnt them?” asked John, alarmed.

“Is Samuel safe?” asked Clinton, earnestly.

“He is alive,” replied the minister.

“Thank you, if that is all you can tell me, I shall be satisfied.” Clinton knew that the preacher’s logic was clear and irrefutable: from his perspective, giving away information on Samuel would be the equivalent of having him lynched. The law cut both ways. A man’s liberty could easily be taken for granted and with a twist of the blade, could as easily be taken away.

Clinton was not accustomed to ending an encounter at a disadvantage. By way of concession, he turned toward the boy, and said,
“John, now that we know your friend is in good hands, it is time for us to get back to business. We have a murder trial to prepare, and there are innumerable things to do.” He offered the clergyman his name on a card. “Reverend, you may contact me, should your thoughts on the matter change.”

“Proceed carefully, when you exploit the innocent,” said the clergyman, with a cryptic warning. Clinton bowed, and retreated. As he exited the church, Clinton studied the back of John’s head, with its delicate blond tufts, fine as down. He was now certain that both John and the minister had seen Samuel since the murder. He made a point to assign Snarky the job of keeping an eye out, for John was in contact with him, thought Clinton—he cares about this man; they have a bond.

Outside, the hansom cab waited at the curb. Clinton opened the carriage door, and the boy scurried in. They headed downtown toward the office on Spruce Street, where a mountain of papers awaited. A man had been killed and a woman who had an uncertain relationship to the dead man was accused of the crime. But tangled up in Emma Cunningham’s case was an eleven-year-old houseboy and a Negro groom, both as fragile as loose pieces of straw, blown into the path of a murder that was reaching deep into the strata of the city.

April 22, 1857

I
n New York, March turns to April by way of its trees. Apple trees dot Orchard Street, left standing after the Dutch farms fell. St. Mark’s Church is known for its gnarled old pears. Washington Square is rimmed with cherry trees, the tiny petals cover the pavement like pink snow. In spring, new leaves soften the edges of the limestone edifices, and bricks and paving stones seem a part of the earth itself, with moss, sprouts, and worms wedged between the cobblestones. Magnolias bloom in church gardens, and all around the fringes of the city are stretches of wooded riverbank, with coverings of ground pine, wood violets, oak fern, and partridge vine.

Samuel sat on a log in a clearing by the river, scraping the scales off a mackerel. An Indian sat on the opposite log, carving a piece of wood. Samuel watched Katuma, in his dusty blue work pants, whittling away at the tiny piece of willow oak, smoothed into a hollow curl, not much larger than his thumb. Katuma was as tall and broad as Samuel, with skin the color of darkened butter.

There were footsteps from behind, padding along the earth of a beaten path. It was Katuma’s daughter, Quietta, in a gingham skirt
with a sleek braid swinging along her back. She carried a pile of vegetables in her apron. When she reached the clearing, she emptied the vegetables into a basket and sat next to her father on the log. “Here, girl,” Katuma said, handing his daughter a carved whistle. “It sounds enough like a bird. Blow it if you see any men riding past the market toward these woods.”

Quietta worked at a fruiterer’s stall at the Greenwich Market on Christopher Street, the westernmost market in Greenwich Village, just blocks from where they sat by the river. She came down to the riverbank in the afternoons, where her father liked to sit and fish. Between the fishing hut and the city street were two acres of brambles and high brush, and the path down to the water passed an old storage shack and a broken-down building, now derelict, which shielded this part of the woods from the street. By day Greenwich Street was busy with horse-drawn lorries and lined with brick fortresses, warehouses that were filled with barrels and crates and burlap sacks—packing houses and manufactories that had swallowed up patches of the old Village. By night, the streets were empty with the workers gone. Down the slope by the river, where Samuel slept each night in the hut, the sky was large and filled with stars.

Quietta took off her shoes, padded in and out of the hut, and got some kindling for the fire. Tall trees enclosed the clearing, and the warm sunlight from the late afternoon filtered down in columns. The aspen leaves shook softly. There was a shuffling sound as soft as the wind in the leaves. A boy appeared at the clearing, coming down the path even more quietly than Quietta.

“Here comes the fancy boy,” said Quietta, teasing John about the britches and little jacket he now wore, purchased for him by the lawyer’s wife.

“We have a bounty,” Katuma told John. “Samuel and I caught these fish without a net.” The bucket was filled with glistening fish
coiled in the bucket, up to the brim. The river glinted through more trees, not far from where they sat, and a raft was bobbing in the water, tied to a tree branch at the bottom of the sharp bank.

“Will you take me fishing?” asked John.

“I will take you, Eagle, when the trial is over, and you take off those fancy clothes.” Katuma called John Eagle because he always carried a flying eagle penny in his trouser pocket. Quietta called him Bird. “When the summer comes, we’ll go to Rockaway. To the Lenape fishing place.”

Quietta placed the basket of vegetables before John. “First the vegetables, Bird. Cut them up.” Samuel tossed John a knife he had been using on the fish, a dagger that landed at the boy’s feet upright, point first, in the earth. John picked it up and started stabbing at a beet.

“Father, Bird is trying to make a whistle out of the beet.”

“You can’t cut a beet with a double-sided blade,” said Katuma, handing John another knife.

Katuma lived with his wife and daughter in a proper house on Perry Street. He earned money working as a longshoreman on the oyster barges. Come spring and summer, Katuma, along with his Indian friends, used these tiny huts for weekend pleasure, fishing for striped bass, weakfish, porgies, and bluefish from dugout canoes they kept along the banks of the Hudson. It was on this stretch, one summer day, while Dr. Burdell was still alive, that Samuel had first met Katuma. From him, Samuel gained his knowledge of the waterfowl and shellfish that were so abundant that you could catch them with a stick and a pail. Even though Katuma was a day laborer, living in the city, it was not so long ago that his people reigned over this kingdom. Katuma told Samuel and John stories about his grandfather, the son of a chief who ruled the richest oyster beds and spawning grounds in the harbor, his lands stretching from this spot, spreading fifty miles east into the marshes of New Jersey.

It is always best to hide in plain sight, Katuma had told Samuel, after the murder. He had been right. The northern shantytowns and Negro neighborhoods had been the first places the sheriff ’s men had gone looking for him, tearing in and out of the shacks and hideaways, and startling sleeping families. Fleeing Manhattan posed a greater danger. A lone Negro wandering through the countryside would be suspected of being a fugitive from the South. A fugitive was a boon for the bounty hunters, more so if a slaver discovered there was a link to a murder.

After the murder, Samuel had first gone to seek asylum at his church, and being told that it was not safe, he had come down to the river to Katuma’s hut. Quietta brought him some food and drink, and during that stormy weekend, he slept, wrapped in furs and blankets. It was February, and when he stepped out of the hut, snowflakes swirled lightly about, falling like a light ash. The ribbon of the broad river was barely visible, shielded by a blanket of white that rolled over from the opposite shore. The bank of New Jersey disappeared under a dense curtain of snow. Looking into the flurry he could see nothing but the snow itself, the infinity of its white flakes thick as the depth of a million stars.

“Did you come from the lawyer’s office?” Samuel asked John.

“Yes, they are all busy. The trial is starting soon,” said John.

Katuma shook his head solemnly. “Maybe after the trial they will stop hunting for Samuel.”

“You are useless with a knife, Bird,” said Quietta, taking the knife from his hands. The vegetables were chopped into ragged pieces. “Here, go fetch me some water. Try to keep the minnows out.” She handed John a pot that hung from a tripod, and John headed over to the bank of the river.

Samuel finished scaling the last piece of fish and Katuma placed them in a pan he had rubbed with seasoning. As he was crouching over the pan to start the fire, the Indian paused, his back braced, his
head cocked to one side. All of them heard the faint distant scratch of iron scraping against iron.

“Scatter,” whispered Katuma. His limbs pushed him upright. He leapt to his feet, and Quietta was instantly gone, dashing silently through the trees. Samuel worried for a second about the boy, at the waterside, but he knew that John was hidden by the high riverbank, so Samuel started to run north. In the winter months, they had all talked about routes of escape, and John could run south on the sandy stretch along the river’s edge. The boy was faster than all of them.

A shot rang out like a crack. Samuel heard a bullet whiz into the trees. There were voices now, back by the hut. Samuel kept on running, the adrenaline carrying his limbs at a faster and faster pace. Down South, a manhunt was accompanied by dogs, but now there were no bloodhounds, and without the use of scent, these city men were blind, crashing through bushes without a clear direction.

Samuel kept going, pumping his legs and arms faster and faster. He jumped over a fence, cutting his hand, and he landed in a churchyard. He crept along the shelter of tombstones and then dashed down a lane, under pear trees that were in bloom. Breathless, slowing down to a walk and at other times trotting, he zigzagged through the stable alleys that ran behind the houses, past the little Village kitchen gardens, keeping off the main streets. The sun was still high, and the spring evening had not yet changed to twilight. Better that it was still light—a Negro running behind the houses in the shadows would have created alarm. He bent over, catching his breath, then started again at a saunter, walking casually like a stable hand making his way home. Finally, he reached Sixth Avenue and cautiously stepped into the traffic and crossed the street.

His heart was still beating fast. There was a milk cart standing without a driver, idle at the curb, and he moved to the other side of it. He picked up the horse’s brush from its bucket and started
brushing the horse, ducking behind the horse’s flank, crouched low, to use the vantage to look around. His heart slowed and he regained a steady breath. Across the broad avenue, he spotted a posse of men on horseback, at the corner of Perry Street, seeming to debate which way to turn. The posse turned and headed north on the avenue, and Samuel, hidden behind the milk cart, watched their backsides recede, bouncing in their saddles.

A man hurrying by, wearing spectacles and a black suit, stopped to ask Samuel where to find the apothecary. Samuel pointed him to the apothecary sign, and the man rushed off, tossing Samuel a coin. Samuel saw that not a foot away from him was a poster on a pole: Reward: Wanted in connection to the murder of Dr. Burdell—a Negro, 30 years, tall and strong. The poster had a black face in profile, an etching that could be a caricature of any Negro, with a sloping forehead, tight curly hair, and overly large lips. It so little resembled Samuel that just about any man of color could be assigned the role. There wasn’t anyone among the legions of policemen or general population that could point him out as the man who drove Dr. Burdell on the night of the murder. Hide in plain sight, thought Samuel. With the posse fanning out toward the north, he would return to where he had been hiding, close to the riverfront. Katuma and his generations of Lenape, here on this crowding island, understood how to flee. Like fledgling birds, they scattered from a familiar spot, then circled around before coming back again, calmly resettling on their terrain.