CHAPTER 21

I figured to find Hickie swimming somewhere down by the East River waterfront, even on what was, for New York, a cool summer’s afternoon: the kid was as fond of water as a fish. On top of that, where there were ships there was cargo, and the best way to case the docks was to take an innocent swim and see what they had to offer. Not that shipping freight was Hickie’s usual target; like I’ve said, he was a second-story man, a housebreaker, good enough at his trade to operate independent of any single gang, but respected enough to be able to join forces with whichever group suited him for a given job. All in all, he was a bit of a loner, was Hickie-except when it came to animals. He lived in an abandoned basement on Monroe Street, north of the Brooklyn Bridge, with a whole collection of dogs, cats, squirrels, snakes, raccoons, and nobody-ever-knew what else. The only animal he wouldn’t keep was a rat, and he trained his other pets to keep his house clear of them, too. You see, when he was just two or three years old, Hickie’s mother and father, who’d been immigrant cigar makers in a tenement on Eldridge Street, had been robbed and shot to death, and it had been more than twenty-four hours before anyone had discovered the crime and the young boy who’d survived it: plenty of time for the rats to set to work on the bodies. Seeing his own folks get halfway eaten by the things was enough to set Hickie on a lifelong campaign to kill every rat he saw-which, in a city like New York, meant that he was never at a loss for something to do.

Sure enough, that afternoon Hickie was down behind the Fulton Fish Market-a big, clapboarded building with three little towers what they called “cupolas”-swimming naked with a few other boys. A couple of cargo schooners and a paddle steamer were docked in the river near the swimmers, along with the Fulton Ferry, the station of which stood next to the fish market. A couple of the littler kids were taking dives off the bowsprits of the schooners, and coming within an ace of breaking their necks on the docks, too. But nobody seemed to care, least of all Hickie, who oftentimes told me that so far as he was concerned, any kid left to swim unattended in a river with currents as dangerous as them in the East was qualified to decide when and where he’d bust his own head open.

I made my way through all the smelly, noisy huckstering that was going on outside the fish market, then crawled down around the bottom of the building to where the kids were splashing in and out of the eternally shadowy, roiling waters below.

“Hey, Hickie!” I called, seeing his head bobbing up from under the surface. “You wanna die of pneumonia, you found the right way to do it!”

He gave me a grin, showing a big gap in his front teeth what had been left by two cops. “What’re ya thayin’, Thtevie?” he answered, his s’s getting lost in the gap. “Ith a perfeck day for a thwim!”

“Come on out,” I answered. “I got a business proposition for you!”

Whipping his black hair back on his head, he began to swim, quickly and expertly, over to where I was sitting. “Well, there’th thwimmin’, and then there’th buthineth,” he said, shooting up out of the water in a pale white flash and running over to his little pile of clothes. He dried himself off with a rag that might’ve been a towel once, then got dressed in a hurry. “How’ve you been, Thtevie? I ain’t theed you round for a bit.”

“Ain’t been around,” I said, noticing that Hickie’s voice had gotten lower. He was probably a year or two older than me, but small for his age. “Workin’. The legitimate life, you know, it tends to keep you busy.”

“And becauth of that, I thtay away from it,” Hickie said, now covered up in an old shirt, wool trousers, and suspenders. He pulled on a beat-up pair of shoes and shook hands with me, then slipped a miner’s cap onto his head so that it slouched over one eye. “If I couldn’t walk away for a thwim whenever I felt the urge, I wouldn’t thee the thenth in life. Whath on your mind, old thon?”

I picked up a few rocks and started tossing them into the river. “You still got Mike?”

“Mike?” Hickie said, like I just mentioned a member of his family. “Thure, I got Mike! Couldn’t get rid o’ Mike, Thtevie, he’s my boy-born rat-killer, ith that Mike.”

“You ever hire him out?”

“Hire him out?” Hickie folded his arms, put his hand to his chin, and touched a finger to his nose as he considered it. “No… no, I don’t believe I ever have conthidered it. Don’t know ath I’d feel right about it, thomehow. Mike’th hith own man, you know.”

He was dead serious; and there was no sense in anybody trying to tell Hickie that animals were just animals. “Well, I could use his services,” I said. “For a week, maybe. And the pay’d be top dollar.”

Hickie’s finger kept tapping at his nose. “A week? Well…” He suddenly brightened up. “What thay we go an’ athk him? If Mike taketh to you, Thtevie, that’ll be a thign that he wanth the work-and thuch bein’ the cathe, far be it from me to thtand in hith way!”

I watched Hickie start to march off in the direction of the hovel he called home, like the pint-sized captain of criminal industry he was; and as I fell in alongside him, I allowed as the kid would enjoy a brilliant future, so long as he could stay one step ahead of the long arm.

We caught up on each other’s doings during the walk to Hickie’s home on Monroe Street, which was in one of the oldest and worst sections of shantytown in the city. Hickie’s building, like most around it, was a decrepit wooden deal, a leftover from the last century or thereabouts; and what he called a “basement” was really more like a cave. We reached it by going round to a back alley-which was thick with ash heaps and laundry that’d been hung out to dry-and then heading down an old set of stone steps into a dirt-floored space below. The joint was dark, save for the barely detectable light of a high, filthy window at the front-but that didn’t stop a collection of dogs from starting to bark as soon as they heard us coming. Once we were inside, Hickie lit a kerosene lamp, and as soon as he did, the place jumped to life: not only dogs yapping and leaping around, but cats scurrying away from the dogs and hissing at them, and dozens of other, smaller animals moving around in ways what made it seem like the walls themselves were alive. Hickie greeted them all with great enthusiasm, a process that took some time, while I just waited cautiously, not sure which of the beasts were dangerous to outsiders and which were okay.

Past the few pieces of furniture that Hickie owned there was an old sink with a bucket of garbage underneath it, the contents of which had been strewn around the room-and out of which soon appeared a medium-sized raccoon, what gave Hickey a very guilty look.

“Willy!” Hickie shouted, moving for the garbage pail at a speed that made it tough (but not impossible) for the raccoon to escape up the sink’s single water pipe. “How many timeth doth I got to tell you, no more garbage!” He looked up the pipe to the blinking, clinging animal. “You act like you don’t ever get fed, you ungrateful little-”

I had to laugh. “Hickie, he’s a raccoon, for Pete’s sake, what do you expect?”

Hickie’s hands went to his hips, and he continued to stare the animal down. “I exthpect him to act with a little common courtethy and gratitude, or he’ll find himthelf thleeping in the alleyway-that’th what I exthpect!” He went farther toward the front of the room and lit another lamp, carrying it with him. “I named him after the Kaither Wilhelm, that one, but he don’t wathte any time bein’ imperial, he don’t…” Hickie signaled for me to join him; and as I noticed that a sizable snake was making for my feet, I decided to brave the other animals and enter the deeper reaches of the room. “Now, then,” Hickie said, climbing up onto a huge pile of old trunks, “come and thay hello to Mike.”