The private parlor on the third floor of the Plaza Hotel smelled heavily of expensive imported cigars and polished mahogany. Outside the thick velvet curtains, the muffled clip-clop of carriage horses and the low hum of Manhattan’s elite passing through Grand Army Plaza provided a steady, deceptive calm.
Inside the room, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Samuel Hargrove, the portly owner of Hargrove & Sons Trading Co., sat heavily in a tufted leather armchair. Across from him sat Frank Donnelly of the Donnelly Provision Shop, nervously turning a crystal glass of bourbon in his hands, and Patrick O’Rourke of O’Rourke Wholesale Liquor, who was currently staring a hole into the patterned rug.
Standing by the unlit fireplace, completely unfazed by the tension in the room, was Lieutenant William Kearney.
"Is this true?" Patrick finally asked, breaking the silence. His thick Irish accent clipped with disbelief. "Every word of it?"
"Yes," Kearney said flatly, adjusting the lapels of his wool coat. "I’ve confirmed it through the department’s intelligence channels. They started their Midtown expansion about three weeks ago. Not only that, but they’ve officially started paying their net income tax, their privilege tax, and all other municipal government fees. The Bureau of Internal Revenue just cleared their name entirely. On paper, the Atlantic & Pacific Trading Company is now documented as one of the fastest-developing legitimate businesses operating out of the West Side."
Frank groaned, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees in sheer defeat. "So even the police can’t arrest them now."
"I can," Kearney corrected, his eyes cold and sharp. "But I’m afraid it is going to be extremely difficult. I cannot execute an arrest without probable cause, and these boys know I am onto them."
Samuel rubbed his temples, a headache blooming behind his eyes. "What do you mean, Lieutenant? Just last week, the local informants I paid for brought me a direct lead to their main operational office. I gave you the Christopher Street address and the location of their storage shed. We agreed to raid their properties all at once."
"And we did," Kearney replied smoothly.
"But you couldn’t find a damn thing, could you?" Frank muttered bitterly, tossing back the rest of his bourbon. "Because it wasn’t even their real office."
"Correct," Kearney said, devoid of any frustration. "We broke the door down on Christopher Street. We arrested the eight men inside, seized the ledgers, and interrogated them for six hours. There was no conclusive information. They were just shuffling blank papers. They were decoys. We had to let them go."
Samuel slumped deeper into his armchair. "So, my street informants weren’t quite as reliable as I thought."
"No," Kearney said. "Your informants took the bait exactly as the they intended them to. This level of counter-intelligence is precisely why the Commissioner has formed a specialized department consisting entirely of veteran soldiers. We are no longer relying on dockside rats."
Samuel let out a long, heavy breath. "So we can’t even touch them now. What can we do?"
"Right now? We watch," Kearney said, stepping away from the fireplace and picking up his bowler hat from a side table. "My agenda goes far beyond just one specific group of boys. If we can map their supply connections, we can uncover a much larger network operating behind the scenes in this city."
Patrick frowned. "Isn’t there anything more you can provide for us, Lieutenant? Some kind of leverage?"
"I’m afraid that’s all I can give you right now, gentlemen," Kearney said, placing the hat on his head. "If you don’t mind, I have other pressing matters to attend to."
"Thank you, Lieutenant Kearney," Samuel said politely, though his voice lacked any real warmth. "A pleasure, as always."
Kearney gave a single, curt nod, turned on his heel, and walked out the door, the heavy brass latch clicking shut behind him.
The moment the policeman was gone, Frank slammed his empty glass onto the mahogany table. "Isn’t there anything we can do ourselves? We’re sitting here bleeding cash while a bunch of kids steal our Midtown accounts!"
"We could go for the old ways," Patrick suggested, his eyes darkening.
Frank scoffed. "What? Sneak into their cellars, put horse piss in a bottle, and stamp their label on it?"
"It could work," Patrick argued, leaning forward. "There are dozens of things we can do to sabotage their public image. Pay off a few saloon owners to claim their stock made people blind. Hire some thugs to smash their delivery wagons on the avenues."
"Yeah, but it’s going to cost us even more money to hire men discreetly," Frank pointed out.
"Not just that," Samuel interrupted, raising a hand. He looked between his two associates, his expression deadly serious. "Aside from being expensive, a street-level sabotage could backfire on us entirely. We don’t fully know what they are capable of. If they set up a decoy office just to trap the police, what do you think they’ll do if they catch us tampering with their wagons? They aren’t just kids. They’re organized."
Frank threw his hands up. "So what do you suggest we do then, Sam? These mugs are already monopolizing Greenwich, not to mention the upper-crust hotels in Midtown. They aren’t going to stop until they’ve starved us all out."
"We don’t even know who their suppliers are, or how they move their products into the city," Patrick added, shaking his head. "We literally don’t have anything on them."
A heavy silence fell over the parlor. The ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner suddenly sounded deafening.
Samuel stared at the unlit fireplace, his mind turning over the few desperate options they had left. He took a slow breath. "We could invite that guy."
Frank and Patrick both froze. Their eyes widened almost simultaneously.
"Hey, hey, are you serious?" Frank demanded, his face paling slightly.
"Yeah, Sam," Patrick added, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "Isn’t there anyone else? Anyone other than that guy?"
"We are not the only ones who have their businesses falling into a pit because of these new guys," Samuel reasoned, his voice hardening with conviction. "If we have him on our side, we could easily call on dozens of other independent merchants across the city to join our cause. He has the capital, the influence, and the sheer ruthless drive to crush them."
"Yeah, but we’re going to look like absolute peasants begging at his feet," Frank muttered, rubbing his jaw. "His arrogance alone pisses me the fuck off."
Patrick didn’t say anything, but his silence was a clear agreement.
"We really don’t have any other way," Samuel said quietly. "If you have any better ideas, we can go with that. I’m all ears."
Frank leaned back, staring at the ornate plaster ceiling, and let out a long, defeated sigh. "Fuck."
"I sure hope this works for the best," Patrick muttered, running a hand over his face.
"Don’t worry," Samuel said, reaching for his own glass of bourbon. "I’ll do the bootlicking."
---------
BRRRRING. BRRRRING.
Ricky sat at his heavy oak desk in the Washington Street office, the heavy black earpiece of the candlestick telephone pressed firmly against his aching ear.
"Yes, Mr. Sullivan," Ricky said smoothly into the brass transmitter, a ledger open in front of him. "I understand the demand at your establishment is high, but the Three Piece stock is incredibly limited this week. The manufacturer simply cannot produce it fast enough. I can reserve fifty crates for your saloon on next Tuesday’s delivery, but the price per crate has increased by two dollars."
Static popped over the line, followed by a desperate sigh. "Fine, fine. I’ll take the fifty. Just make sure I’m on the primary ledger, Stevenson."
"You always are, Mr. Sullivan. Pleasure doing business."
Ricky hung the earpiece back on the hook and let out a long, exhausted breath. He rubbed the back of his neck, listening to the muffled sounds of the docks outside his window.
The strategy was working flawlessly. By artificially limiting the supply of the System-generated liquor and citing ’manufacturing delays,’ he had driven the midtown retailers into a frenzy. Saloon owners and hotel managers were putting in massive reservations for the next shipment, terrified of being left out. The profit margins were climbing to astronomical heights.
But despite the enormous pile of cash growing in the safe, Ricky couldn’t find a single moment to relax. Ever since the Bell company had installed the telephone line last week, he hadn’t been able to leave his office for more than ten minutes at a time. The ringing was incessant.
Ricky leaned back in his swivel chair, staring at the ceiling. Maybe I should just rent a single room and set up three or four telephones side by side and hire more women to take orders, he thought. But I can’t do that here. Aunt Molly’s building is already at its absolute capacity. The first and second floors are purely residential for the crew. I can’t turn a boarding house into a noisy switchboard exchange. Maybe it’s time to lease our own building.
He picked up a fountain pen, twirling it thoughtfully between his fingers.
I also need a second business, Ricky realized, the strategic map forming in his mind. Specifically, a registered import-export company. If I establish a massive trading house, I can use it to publicly distribute to the independent merchants and high-society buyers, while simultaneously listing it as the ’official supplier’ for the Atlantic & Pacific Trading Company.
It was the perfect corporate loop. If his own import-export company was listed as the supplier, the police and the rival merchants would never be able to trace where the goods were actually coming from. It would completely mask his System inventory screen.
But I can’t run both, Ricky thought.
His mind immediately went to Marek. The young Polish immigrant was currently in the next room, sitting across from Evelynn Vance, agonizing over balance sheets and administrative law. Marek had exactly the right look and the silver tongue needed for the job. He was already beloved by the elite clientele at the Waldorf-Astoria.
I’ll install Marek as the owner and president of the import-export firm, Ricky decided. It makes perfect sense to the public. A charming, influential young man rubbing elbows with the Midtown elite, opening his own trading house. Nobody would question it.
Ricky pulled up his internal System interface, his eyes scanning the glowing blue text that only he could see.
[System Vault Balance: $119,000]
A faint smile touched his lips. One hundred and nineteen thousand dollars in 1910. It was an unfathomable amount of liquid capital.
I originally planned to stay entirely in the shadows, never putting my real name on any corporate paperwork, Ricky mused, closing the interface. But the bigger this gets, the more I realize it’s actually better to blend in. Hiding makes people suspicious. Operating openly as a wildly successful, normal businessman is the best camouflage there is.
He set his pen down, his gray eyes turning cold with absolute ambition.
With the capital sitting in his vault, he could finally begin acquiring massive, legitimate industrial businesses to completely cover his tracks. In four years, the Great War would begin.
It’s only a matter of time, Ricky thought, looking out over the sprawling, smoky skyline of New York. I’ll buy a shipping fleet. I’ll acquire a steel mill and a weapons manufacturer. I’ll secure federal government contracts before the first shots are even fired in Europe, and I’ll get so insanely rich that not a single man in this city will ever be able to touch us.
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