Moriarty (11 page)

“I remember him, George Gittins. Big fellow with a lot of hair.”

“You used to call him a golden lad; his face has a healthy look from the sun, like a farmer's boy.” Glittering George Gittins was so called on account of his hair: It was golden and had such a sheen to it that one wag said, “Take a glim near him and he'll reflect it and light up the street.”

“Yes, well Shakespeare says that golden lads and girls all must, like chimney sweepers, come to dust. But I'll wager the ladies think him a right belvedere.”

“He hasn't come to dust yet, sir. I seen him. They put frighteners on him, but George'd need a host of frightening. We've been decimated, though, Professor, decimated.”

“We have that, Bert.” The Professor paused and looked down at his fingers. “So you're shorthanded?”

“
We
are shorthanded, sir. My men are your men, Professor.”

Moriarty nodded absently, his mind elsewhere. “You said the house was rushed, Bert. What's your meaning there? How rushed?”

“Some of the girls go out on the streets, as you know. Go out to tempt blokes, usually trying to attract men that are half seas over, three sheets to the wind, you know, to save themselves the trouble of chauvering them; letting the muscle take care of 'em in the house: strip 'em then shove 'em out, minus their cash and even minus their trousers in some cases.”

“Yes, so?”

“Well, one of the girls said they should've noticed that night. The lads they brought back were only putting on drunk, pretending. Idle Jack had likely lads on the streets where the girls go hunting—lads who looked like they needed their greens, some appearing swell. Lurking and lusting. They were younger an' all, while the walk-in trade were big set-up boys. It seems the house was full by midnight. Unusual. Then the trade started fights, took our lads to pieces. Cut 'em up. Ejected our hard boys. Took over.”

“And
your
people who've left?”

“Gone to Idle Jack like the rest. He's copped the lot. Working for him like they used to work for you, Professor.”

“And the same with Terremant's folk?”

“Exactly. That good house he ran near St. Paul's, that's gone to Jack, who's getting a lot of tribute which, by rights, should be yours, Professor: a might of hard cash from robberies, street work, the girls, garrotting, cash to keep things nice,
*
blaggings, and the saucy books. Some hundred and a half men and women gone from Jim Terremant's teams.”

“And what of Sal's house?”

“It appears untouched, but you'd have to ask Sal to be sure.”

Sal Hodges, who took care of all the Professor's whores, ran a good house herself, with the pick of the girls, just off St. James's. However, the general belief was that she paid less to the Professor than the other houses because of her relationship with him.

“You've seen her?” Moriarty asked, looking up sharply.

“No, I haven't laid eyes on her since we were all together in New York. I presumed that she'd gone to Rugby to see Master Arthur.”

“Never presume, Spear.” The Professor looked troubled for a moment. “I think maybe it's time to fight back, good Spear. Take them at their own game. Gently to start with. Have one of your hard lads with you—same for Terremant—and make a little conversation with some of these backsliders.” Then, raising his voice, “What's the cause, Spear? How's he tempting them?”

“Promises. He's promising the earth. Less of a cut for him; food and drink he's providing, he says. In the early days he claimed you wasn't coming back. Just straight talk that you was out, and he was in. Pop goes the weasel.”

“Lost sheep,” Moriarty mused, looking grave-faced, most serious; sad even. “If you're unsure of anyone, then don't bring him back. Let them think everything in the garden's lovely, then throw a little surprise party. Allow the sun to disappear; clouds, maybe thunder and lightning.” He gave an evil grin and drew his right fingers over his throat. “Understand?”

“We're not to take risks. That's sense. And perhaps I should make an example of one or two.”

Moriarty nodded, happy. He had always liked Spear, and prayed to heaven that he was not the traitor in their midst. “Go, then, and come back to me in a pair of days. Don't tarry. Make haste.”

As Spear reached the door, Moriarty called him back. “One more thing. The boot boy at the Glenmoragh? The boy, Sam?”

“Took care of that first thing, yes.” Spear told how he'd been up betimes and gone to a school supplies business just off St. Giles's High Street and purchased a cane of the kind they used in all schools for corporal punishment, for flogging. He was waiting with Terremant at the back of the hotel when Sam came off duty at half past eight. They had a cab ready and took the lad to a quiet house that Terremant knew of and had arranged to be vacant. “Didn't want to bring him here, Professor, lest he didn't take his medicine proper. As it was, he was a mite difficult in the cab, so Jim Terremant had to cuff him round the head.”

In the basement of the house, Terremant held the boy by his wrists over a stuffed chair, while Spear flogged him. Twenty-four stinging strokes that had Sam gasping after three and howling after half a dozen.

“I swished him good and proper, told him to hand in his notice at the Glenmoragh, then come to me at my lodgings for a new job. Little bleeder could hardly walk when we left him. He won't peach again, and he'll wear the stripes for several weeks.”

When it was over and Sam was taking great gulps of air, trying to control himself, his world diminished to the scalding area of his backside, Spear told him, “You're never to go near Idle Jack nor his people again, otherwise it's your neck that'll be stretched, not just your arse stinging. Think on it, lad. And come to see me tonight. If you prove yourself true there'll be work and riches and responsibility for you.”

“Howled liked a wolf, wept like a willow,” he told the Professor.

“It'll be the making of him,” Moriarty said flatly, convinced.

“No more'n lads get at boarding school.” Spear, in the back of his mind, wondered how young Moriarty—Arthur James as he was known, son of Moriarty and Sal Hodges—was doing at Rugby School, and he saw what he could only describe as a kind of pause in
the Professor's face, the mouth starting to open to form a word; then he altered his mind, eyes alight, darting somewhere else. Then a total change. “Yes.” The Professor gave a series of small nods—
like a monkey on a stick
, Spear thought—
Indeed, yes. Make a man of him
. In his head Bert Spear shuddered, hearing again the terrible swippy-swish of the cane and the flat thwackering as it came down, cutting across the boy's buttocks. He did not envy boys who went to public schools and were beaten for the slightest irregularity. Spear's father had leathered him, but with his belt, usually across his back and shoulders, and he'd learned the art of turning away to avoid the worst. From what he'd heard of public schools, the beatings were laced with ritual and filled with pain—dreaded, like an execution.

“Out you go, Spear. Use your men wisely and bring my lost sheep into my pen, and if they won't come, put them to the slaughterhouse.” He gave a wheezing chuckle, as if he relished the idea of an abattoir, his head oscillating in that strange, slow reptilian manner of his.

Spear nodded, exchanged no more words, turned on his heel, and left to keep an appointment with Jim Terremant and his own golden lad, Glittering George Gittins, who wanted to prove his loyalty to the Professor.

As he went, Spear sang, under his breath, one of his favourite music-hall songs:

W
HILE
S
PEAR AND
T
ERREMANT
were off planning how to deal with the stray lambs, so Ember and the evil Chinee, Lee Chow, were heading toward another memorable moment: on the prowl for the man who had been described as hard as the Rock of Gibraltar by the boy Billy Walker, who added that he was muscled all over and had a shaved head—a bullethead. Sidney Streeter, once one of Moriarty's brutal boys, now seemingly joined hip and thigh to Idle Jack and ready to do his bidding, his bodyguard—a sharer of secrets.

Lee Chow's reputation may give Sidney Streeter pause, Ember considered as the two murderous mobsmen made their way unerringly toward The Mermaid tavern in Hackney Wick, where Ember recalled Streeter drinking on most days around the noon hour.

They went by a double-decker omnibus, drawn by two docile nags, almost all the way, the vehicle advertising Nestlé's Milk, Pears Soap, and Virginia Cigarettes. Close to the Hackney Wick bus stop there was a stand for cabs, four of them there with the horses nibbling carrots and the cabbies dozing, whips in hand.

Moriarty kept a large number of people “on the books,” as he put it: doctors, surgeons, undertakers, publicans, politicians, a pair of policemen, nurses, even lawyers, and, of course, cabbies. Ember looked up, getting off the omnibus, and saw Josiah Osterley, hansom cab license number 7676, his piebald horses named Valentine and Vivian, a growler-shover because he had a larger cab, four-wheeled, suitable to go on a growler around the pubs and fancy houses. Ember signalled him on, pausing to give him instructions. “Not now,” he told him. “But when we're inside. You stop outside and linger in case we need you.”

Osterley was a taciturn man; he didn't speak much. He nodded, indicating he would do anything they wanted; Ember had only to say the word.

They had to walk only half a mile now, reaching the tavern at a quarter after noon. And there was Streeter standing in the Saloon Bar,
drinks in and with two men known to Ember and Lee Chow—Jonah Whalen and Sheet Simpson, both formerly in Bert Spear's brigade, therefore Moriarty men.

The Saloon Bar was spacious, done out in a lot of mahogany panelling, with plenty of gilding and much glass, the glass ground and decorated with curlicues and flourishes. There was a girl, nicely dressed in a starched full apron, seeing to a hot box where she was cooking sausages and potatoes for serving all day long; and next door in the Public Bar they had a piano and were singing old music-hall songs quite raucously, even though it was not yet half past noon.

They sang:

“Sidney,” Ember called loudly to Streeter, leaning against the counter, and the little bullet-headed man turned around, automatically assuming the boxer stance, ready for anything. Ember took in the whole man and his clothing: the narrow trousers, none of these newfangled turn-ups, the cloth a worsted in a hound's-tooth check. A matching jacket, shorter these days, three buttons, all fastened, and his shirt open at the neck—no tie, no neckerchief, nothing for a fighter to catch hold of—while the trousers were cut simple and there was one vent in the jacket that meant easy access to whatever he had hidden behind his hip, one side or the other. A fighter's rig.
A heavy topcoat thrown over a nearby chair and a hard bowler resting on top.

Sidney Gresham Streeter gave them a sideways look—sly, expecting trouble, looking for it—while his cronies had their eyes slipping side to side, not knowing where to look, concerned knowing Lee Chow's reputation.

“Hands on the bar,” the whippet Ember snapped in his high little voice, seeing Streeter's arm starting to stray toward his back, just behind his right hip, and Lee Chow came up beside him, one strong hand clasping the right wrist, a wicked knife in his left hand, a humourless smile decorating the Asian's face, slant-eyes glittering.

The landlord appeared behind the bar, like the Demon King in a Christmas pantomime. “Here, here,” he growled. “None o' that. We don't want no trouble here.”

“No t'ouble,” said Lee Chow, tight and close to Streeter, turning now, swapping hands, his back to the bar. “No t'ouble. You likee dlink, Mr. Steeter?”

The other two, Whalen and Simpson, had nodded some secret agreement, starting to walk away, toward the door.

“Oi, Jonah! Sheet! Back with you,” Ember commanded. “Want a word! Alright?”

Sheet Simpson kept going, but Jonah Whalen stopped, swivelled, and took the two steps back to Streeter's side.
Bugger
, Ember thought,
that Simpson's going to return with friends, and while we're evenly matched now, I don't think we'd be up to it if Simpson brought back another pair of fancy dancers
.

“I've no quarrel with you, Mr. Ember.” Streeter looked uncomfortable, eyes trying to take in too much, searching them both and trying to look farther afield.

“No? Well, that means you've no quarrel with the Professor, then.”

“The Professor? Moriarty? You mean he's back?”

“You know bloody well he's back. What's more, he wants to see you. Wants it bad…have a little chat with you.”

“He does? Why me?”

“Why not?”

“Well, we thought him gone. Gone for good, the Professor. Had to find work where we could.”

“Really?” Ember raised his eyes to the ceiling. “You thought he'd gone and left you, eh, Sid? Left you all on your own? Dear, oh dear me. That why you went running to Idle Jack?”

“Idle Jack? I don''ave nothing to do wi' Idle Jack. The very idea!”

“You was wiv 'im last night, Sid. Don't deny it. We know you was wiv 'im, like you're wiv 'im most of the time. We know. The Professor knows.”