Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [91]
‘He’s into everything from the stale beer dives to the five-cents-a-night doss houses,’ Heaney replied disdainfully.
‘Down on the Bend?’ Jack asked.
‘Where else?’ Heaney snapped.
Jack looked at Theo and gestured to him that he wanted to talk to him outside.
‘We’ll be back,’ Theo said to Heaney.
∗
They had to go right outside on the street as the noise in the saloon was so loud.
‘Heaney won’t help.’ Jack spoke in a low voice as he lit up a cigarette. ‘So we’ve got to find her ourselves. Bottle Alley or Blind Man’s Court, she’s got to be in one of them. We pick five or six good men and storm ’em. Even if she’s not there, we’re bound to find someone we can put pressure on to tell us where she is. If we go in early in the morning everyone will be sleeping off the grog.’
‘I’ve never been down there,’ Theo said, his voice subdued as if this was all too much for him.
‘I have, and I know my way around.’ Jack grinned at him, for he liked the fact that he was in a position to command. ‘I know which men to pick too. We don’t want Heaney’s blokes, nor Fingers’. This is just us, getting our girl back.’
Theo didn’t speak for a moment. ‘I’ll have to go home and change,’ he said eventually. ‘Can I meet you later?’
‘We’ll meet up on the corner of Canal Street at six,’ Jack said.
Theo nodded. ‘What shall we say to Heaney?’
‘Nothing, like he’s told us nothing,’ Jack said viciously. ‘But there’ll be trouble after this for all of us. Reckon we might have to leave town for a while.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘Who’s this other cove then, Jack?’ Edgar asked as the men gathered at the end of Canal Street at six in the morning. It was well below freezing and their breath was like smoke as they huddled together under a lamp post.
‘A flash geezer, name of Theo,’ Jack replied tersely. He was wishing now he hadn’t suggested Theo joined them, for he was likely to be a liability. ‘Beth’s been walking out with him.’
All five of the men worked at the slaughterhouse and none had any affiliation with either Heaney or Fingers. They were all big, muscular men, ranging from twenty to twenty-five, but Edgar was the only one born in America. The other four were immigrants like Jack: Karl, a Swede, Pasquale, an Italian, Thaddeus, a Pole, known to everyone as Tadpole, and Dieter, a German.
The bonds between these men had been formed while working alongside one another. Theirs was a hard, brutal trade and serious accidents could happen at any time, so they had to rely on one another. Jack had once knocked Karl out of the way of an enraged steer, and all the others had someone to thank for giving them a timely warning or helping them when they were hurt. There was a kind of code between all the men who worked in the slaughterhouse that if one of their number needed assistance, the others would give it.
Jack was one of the group who offered their muscle when Tadpole’s younger sister was raped by three men as she walked home from a dancing class. One of the rapists would never walk again, let alone defile another woman, and the other two received a primitive form of castration.
Jack had known he could count on these men, for they not only knew that Beth was special to him but had all heard her play at Heaney’s at some time. When he’d called at each of their lodgings, their only question had been, ‘What time?’ Each man had come prepared with a cudgel tucked beneath his coat.
Sam came around the corner to join them, looking as yellow as a Chinaman in the gaslight. Jack introduced him briefly to the other men, and patted his shoulder in sympathy because he knew Sam was no fighter and could see he was scared.
Finally Theo arrived. He was wearing working-men’s clothes and Jack fleetingly wondered how he came by them as he doubted the man had ever done a day’s real work in his life. He also wondered if Theo had considered running away from this. But he would have the man’s full measure in an hour or two.
He introduced Theo, then urged everyone to gather round