Chapter 119: Lighting Up the Dynamite

By the time the last horse-drawn steam pump from the 19th Street fire brigade sputtered to a crawl, two hours and forty-five minutes had slipped by. The morning sun was just beginning to cut through the heavy layer of black smoke hanging over Chelsea, painting the horizon in a pale, dusty yellow.

​Inside an untouched saloon on 8th Avenue, half of Kid Yorke’s surviving enforcers and lieutenants sat slouched at the wooden tables. Their shirts were stained with soot, their muscles aching from throwing countless heavy buckets of water onto roaring flames. Behind the bar, the owner was pulling taps as fast as his hands could move, sliding free mugs of cold draft beer across the counter to any man who had helped keep the fire from spreading down the block.

​Yorke sat alone at a corner table, a thick coat thrown over his bare, soot-covered chest. His hair was matted, his hands coated in black grime, and his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line.

​He scrubbed a dirty palm over his face, staring blankly at the wooden grain of the table. Where the hell did this come from? he thought. His first instinct was Barney—it was exactly the kind of desperate, dirty trick Barney would pull. But Barney’s enforcers never moved across the Greenwich line alone; they always traveled in thick squads, and Yorke’s lookouts hadn’t spotted a single Greenwich crew anywhere near Chelsea all night.

​Yorke looked up and gestured sharply toward a tall lieutenant leaning against the doorway. "Dennis! Get over here."

​Dennis wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stepped over, dragging a chair out to sit down. "Yeah, Kid?"

​"Where are the rest of the boys?" Yorke asked, his voice hoarse from shouting over the fire.

​"Still out on the pavement," Dennis said, leaning his forearms on the table. "They’re walking the lines, asking shopkeepers and tenement guards if anybody saw who struck the matches. But it’s clear as day now, boss. It wasn’t an accident. Fires were set at four of our saloons simultaneously—West 18th near 10th Avenue, and three more along West 19th, 20th, and 21st between 8th and 9th."

​Yorke leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Are you dead certain your street watches didn’t spot Barney’s crew anywhere nearby? Not even one of his scouts?"

​"Not a soul, Kid," Dennis shook his head cleanly. "I checked with every post along the southern border. Barney’s boys didn’t cross over."

​Josh, another lieutenant sitting at the adjacent table, turned his chair around to face them. "Same here, boss. We had eyes on the main thoroughfares all night. Nobody from Greenwich came north."

​Yorke leaned back, pulling his coat tighter around his shoulders as his mind raced. If it wasn’t Barney’s men... then who?

​Owney, the thought struck him suddenly. Could that bastard be pulling a fast one on me? Is this his way of getting payback for the cocaine we took?

​Yorke’s mind drifted back to a dark, quiet afternoon just three days earlier.

​Three days ago, at the edge of the water off Pier 60, Yorke had walked alone into an abandoned shipping warehouse. The high ceiling was webbed with dust and old cobwebs, the floor littered with cracked shipping crates and broken furniture. In the middle of the empty floor sat two wooden chairs and a small coffee table.

​Owney was already sitting in one of the chairs, dressed in a sharp, pressed three-piece suit without a speck of dirt on him. He had his legs crossed, casually puffing on a cigar.

​Yorke stepped up, kicking a piece of rotten wood out of his path. "Alright, Owney. What’s this about? Make it quick—I don’t need my men or Barney’s scouts catching me sitting down for tea with you."

​Owney smirked, flicking an ash onto the dusty floor. "Relax, Kid. Nobody knows we’re here. Tell me... how’s the whiskey moving?"

​Yorke sighed, sitting down in the opposite chair and resting his hands on his knees. "I hate to admit it, but your blend’s taking off fast. The hooligans on the docks can’t get enough of the cheap stuff—that Blood Rose batch sells as fast as we uncork it. But everybody’s asking for the Albino’s Curse. I raised the price two cents a glass yesterday and nobody even blinked."

​Owney chuckled, a self-satisfied grin spreading across his face. "Told you. What about the Lumberjack’s Piss?"

​"That stuff’s too good for the street joints," Yorke said. "I’m keeping those crates locked up for my senior boys and special customers. It competes right alongside the European imports Barney brings in."

​"Same here," Owney said smoothly. "Rarity keeps the price high. People like feeling like they’re drinking something hard to get."

​Yorke narrowed his eyes, leaning closer over the table. "Cut the small talk, Owney. Why am I really here? Are you planning to hold back my supply, hike up the wholesale prices, and try to poach my customers the same way Barney did?"

​Owney scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. "Don’t insult me, Kid. I’m not that petty. To be completely honest, I ought to be thanking you boys for stealing all my cocaine a while back."

​Yorke blinked in surprise. "Thanking us?"

​"I hated what that junk was doing to my crew," Owney said, his tone turning surprisingly cold. "When I stopped taking it myself last year, I spent three days flat on my back in cold sweats, puking my guts into a bucket. I killed two of my own corner boys last month just for pushing that powder to young kids on the block."

​Yorke let out a dry, mocking laugh. "Didn’t realize a killer like you had such a delicate conscience."

​"Difference between you and me, Kid, is that you guys keep half the precinct captains on your payroll," Owney replied, unbothered. "I don’t have the police on my side, so I have to do my own judging and executing."

​"We pay the coppers because if we don’t, they shut down our doors," Yorke said sharply. "It’s cost of doing business."

​"Anyway," Owney said, tapping his cigar against his knee. "I brought you here to offer a bulk discount on the whiskey. You order a high enough volume per brand, I’ll drop the crate price. It’ll help you undercut Barney’s saloons, draw his regular drinkers right into Chelsea, and line both our pockets."

​Yorke looked at him thoughtfully. "What kind of discount?"

​"You take 500 crates per brand, I’ll knock fifteen percent off the total bill," Owney said.

​A smirk touched Yorke’s lips. "Fifteen percent for 500 crates? Hell, Owney, that’s practically pocket change for us right now."

​Owney put a hand over his heart, feigning offense. "Don’t say that out loud, Kid. Hearing you call 500 crates pocket change makes me want to rob you."

​"Are you going to?" Yorke asked, amused.

​"I already am," Owney grinned, shrugging his shoulders. "By selling you my liquor."

​Yorke shook his head with a short laugh. "I swear, I can’t tell what kind of idiot you are."

​"A smart one," Owney replied smoothly. "Now, if you really want to twist the knife in Barney’s back, here’s a free piece of advice: drop your profit margin on your cocaine down to five percent for a week."

​Yorke frowned. "Five percent? We’d barely make a dime on it."

​"It’s not about making a profit this week," Owney explained, leaning in. "It’s a marketing strategy. You flood the market at dirt-cheap prices, Barney’s buyers abandon him overnight to buy from you, and once they’re hooked on coming to your joints, you raise the prices back up. You’ll drive him out of his mind."

​Yorke thought it over for a long moment, tapping his chin. "Five percent... yeah. That would drain his joints dry."

​"So," Owney said, standing up and buttoning his jacket. "We got a deal?"

​"Send the 500 crates for every brand," Yorke nodded, standing as well. "We’ll take ’em all."

​Back in the present, inside the dim, smoke-scented 8th Avenue saloon, Yorke’s hands clenched into tight fists as the memory faded.

​Did that bastard Owney set me up? Yorke thought, his blood running cold. Did he convince me to buy thousands of dollars worth of his liquor, store it in my saloons, and then send his own torch-men to burn it all down?

​Before Yorke could speak his suspicion aloud to Dennis, the front doors of the saloon swung open with a heavy thud.

​A lieutenant named Powder stepped inside, his shirt torn at the collar, dragging a badly beaten man by the scruff of his neck. The suspect’s face was swollen, blood dripping from his nose onto the floorboards as he stumbled over his own feet.

​Powder shoved the man forward, sending him crashing onto his knees right beside Yorke’s table.

​"Boss," Powder gasped, wiping sweat from his forehead as he glared down at the shivering man. "We caught this rat hiding in an alley two blocks from the 18th Street fire. Found a glass vial of pure cocaine and a box of matches in his coat. I think we just found one of the bastards who torched our joint."

​Yorke’s eyes darkened instantly, his tiredness vanishing as he leaned forward, staring down at the bleeding man on the floor.