Inside, at an old steel school desk, a guard or clerk sat vetting visitors. He had two boys, about twelve, seated at either side of the desk like bookends. They were runners, evidently, used to dispatch messages to the different offices throughout the building. To the left side of his desk was a double row of splint chairs where those who had checked in to do business with Curry waited their turns.
We were told to write out our business on a slip of paper, supplied to us with a lead pencil, and take a seat-and be sure to return the pencil, the guard said. Our note said: Seek information about the crew ofthe trading boat Elizabeth out of Union Grove missing several weeks, and gave their names. We were called within ten minutes. One of the messenger boys led us up another flight of stairs in the center of the hall to the floor above.
Curry sat at his ornate wooden desk eating lunch off a tray. For a moment I thought we had been taken to the wrong office, because the man behind the desk was so young. He couldn’t have been over thirty years old. But even seated, he gave the impression of being physically imposing, like his building. He had a full head of curly dark hair, a trimmed beard to match, and wore a clean white cotton shirt with puffy sleeves under a fawn-colored linen vestwith a napkin tucked in at his throat. He gestured at us to sit down, while taking a mouthful of rare-cooked meat there on his plate, along with a savory pudding and fresh peas. A tall glass of milk and a smaller plate of corn bread sat on the tray too. It made me hungry. To Curry’s right, a well-dressed woman with silvery hair worked writing letters at a desk along the wall of the large room. She was old enough to be his mother. To his left at a desk doglegged off Curry’s was a slight, hollow-chested man working at ledgers. Apparently both were secretaries. Behind Curry, a big arched window, a wonderful piece of old salvage composed of many panes pieced artfully together, framed a picturesque view looking down the river: blue sky, white clouds, and a few buff sails on darker blue water.
“I was wondering when someone would send for these boys,” Curry said in a booming voice when he finished chewing.
“Where are they?” I said.
“Why, cooling their heels in my custody,” he said.
“For what reason?”
“For the reason that they couldn’t come up with bail among them.”
“For what?”
“Charges, of course.”
“What charges?”
“How should I know. Birkenhaus here would know. What charges,” Curry said to the drudge at his left.
“Willful avoidance of excise tax. Lack of insurance documents. Battery upon a chippie. Oh, and resisting arrest.”
“What’s this excise tax?” Joseph said.
“You come into this port, you have to get the proper stamps and clearances,” Curry said. “You can’t just move cargoes as you please. We don’t stand for smuggling.”
“Since when are you taxing cargoes?” I asked.
“When did we come up with that?” Curry asked Birkenhaus.
“March,” Birkenhaus said.
“Why’d we do it?” Curry said.
“We needed the money,” Birkenhaus said. “The waterworks and all.”
“Oh?” Curry said, spearing more meat. “There you have it.”
“Perhaps they didn’t know about it,” Joseph said.
“Know about what?”
“This new tax of yours.”
“Ignorance of the law is no defense,” Curry said. “Well, if you’ve come here to get them, let’s talk turkey, shall we? Actually, I’d like a little turkey. All they give me around here is beefsteak. Every damned day. A fellow gets sick of it.”
“Maybe they think you’re still a growing boy,” Joseph said.
“That’s a smart remark,” Curry said, giving his napkin a tuck while he cranked his head. “What are we looking at in terms of bail, penalties, and all?”
“Hundred thousand each,” Birkenhaus said. “U.S. paper dollars, that is.”
“That’s a lot,” I said. “Even by today’s standards.”
“And another hundred thou for storing the boat,” Birkenhaus said.
“I hardly remember when paper money was worth more than a curse,” Curry said. “You fellows would, though. I hear you could buy a shoat for twenty bucks in the old days.”
“That’s so,” Joseph said. “How do we know these men are alive?”
“You want to see them? They’re down below, in stir.”
“I’d like to talk about these charges with them,” Joseph said. “Hear their side of the story.”
“Be my guest. But in the end you’ll have to pay. We both know that. Jojo,” he said to the messenger boy who now occupied a chair near the door. “Bring these fellows down to Mr. Adcock. And take this corn bread. I’m getting fat as pig.” He turned his attention back to us. “You weren’t far off about how they feed me around here. Price of success, I guess. Nothing I courted, you understand. This is just a time when nobody seems to know how to do anything, to get things done. A fellow makes a few things happen, and the world falls at his feet. You come back before four o’clock today if you want to spring these boys. We don’t conduct business after that hour. I’d like to discharge these fellows as much as you’d like to bring them home. It costs me to feed them, you know, and new ones come in all the time. It adds up. Whenever you’re ready to settle, you come back. They’ll show you right up, I’m sure. Oh, and if you don’t come get them in twenty-four hours, I’ll have to hang them. They’re cluttering up my jail.”
Thirty-five
“What did you make of that?” I said to Joseph as we followed the boy downstairs.
“I make that he’s a fantastic rogue for such a young buck, and probably not bluffing,” Joseph said.
“He’s holding them for ransom, all right. Just plain extortion.”
“Yes he is. And if we don’t pay it, I believe he’ll kill them.”
“How can we pay him?”
“Oh, we can pay him,” Joseph said. “We’re prepared.”
“Are you going to offer him silver? I imagine he’d lower that figure for hard currency.”
“We have several ways of paying him.”
The basement of the building contained what can be described only as a dungeon, a dim, dank, raw masonry chamber fitted with wrought-iron cagework. Light came through in a shaft from a single slit of a window up near the ceiling, barred both inside and out. The basement stank fiercely of human excretions, mold, and filth. Within the cage, about twelve men sat inertly on benches or lay on triple-decker wooden shelves along the wall, apparently bunks on which they had to rotate in shifts, because there weren’t enough for all the men to sleep at any one time. The boy delivered us to Adcock, the jailer, a tall, skeletal, pallid figure who looked like he had stepped out of a medieval engraving of the apocalypse. Adcock bent down to listen to whispered instructions from the boy.