When still no response came, he turned from the bar, a tattered and dented sheet of metal, hammered to planks extended between two empty hoop-staved tar barrels, and took a seat at a nearby three-egged table in order to wait more comfortably. He made subtle show of continuing the light tapping of his long ash baton on the fetid floor.
Behind him there now came the rustle of movement. He turned as the Green Turtle, her skin as deeply shaded as the color of a ripe plum, entered the groggery through a curtain in the rear. She was a massive woman, weighing, Hays would guess, something in excess of three hundred and fifty pounds, outfitted with two huge Colt five-shot Paterson pistols stuck in a wide leather waistband buckled around her ample middle. Pressed against the small of her back but very nearly concealed by layers of flesh, he observed, she carried two bone-handled daggers.
She hesitated momentarily before strolling heavily behind the bar, where she stood, without saying a word, ham-sized arms akimbo, her gaze measured and glaring. In this manner she assessed Hays through bloodshot eyes from underneath a tiny black hat adorned with droopy black feathers, her black hair beneath in severe rolls.
“Madam?” He signaled her.
Taking no heed, she began polishing the sheet metal in front of her with a vigor that led Hays to imagine she applied herself thusly lest the hidden microbiology residing thereon rise up and infect her or her valued customers. Hays very nearly smiled to himself. What would have been the audacity? Could the bar top have been the copper absconded from the steeple? He rose and approached to stand directly in front of her. At closer scrutiny, he took the alloy for zinc. So not pilfered from the church, but likely from somewhere else.
Making one last swipe with her polishing cloth, she finished what she was doing as he watched, the surface in front of her now duly damp and disinfected to her satisfaction.
Again without a word, she poured a large portion of rhum from a cracked blue flagon into a chipped yellow ceramic bowl. Sloshing the drink, she pushed the yellow vessel unceremoniously in front of him.
“I need to have a word with Tommy Coleman,” Hays said to her, not touching the poteen.
“You don’t say.”
“You know who I am, madam?”
“Truefully, I don’t care who you are,” she said. “I don’t care your business. But I know who you are, Mistuh Ol’ Hays.”
He pushed the bowl of swill away from him. “I repeat myself, madam. Tommy Coleman. I am after him.”
She said, “A bit of the devil might do you some good, Mr. High.” Then, thinking better, she picked up the cracked bowl he had rejected and drank deeply of the elixir she had poured out for him. “Mr. High,” she commended, “here’s to your health and the Lord our God looking out for you and your kind.” She glanced at the back curtain. “You’ll find him through there.”
The curtain in front of Hays trembled ever so gently in some secret draft. He reached the heavy drapery, pushed it aside, and moved through it into a back room not so different from the front: several ordinary battered wood tables, dusty floor, dirty sawdust, two filthy windows, one half open, painted black. Three young men stood, one sat, inside the curtain, lounging. Hays knew them all for who they were. Standing: the bugger Tweeter Toohey, an adroit pickpocket despite him having one withered arm, and one withered leg; Pugsy O’Pugh, known to be no nocky-boy him, Tommy’s second-in-command; and Boffo the Skinned Knuckle, a squat boy built like an outhouse, the gang’s strong-arm captain.
And seated: Tommy Coleman himself, slouched against the wall, feet up, underneath a portrait of George Washington, at a much-knife-scarred table, the smirk on his youthful face bearing witness to his youthful bravado.
Hays rewarded each young gangster the benefit of his studied glance before descending on Tommy, looming over him.
None of the boys looked away.
“Mr. High,” Tommy pronounced.
“Master Coleman.”
“Are you in search of me?”
“I am.”
“You don’t find me venturing north past Canal Street to do my business, and no leatherhead, not even no high constable, better dare come here to my den if he values his life and the life of his family.” Tommy spoke soberly; Hays hoped more for the impress of his cohorts than for him.
“Is that so?” said Hays.
“I make no idle threat, suh,” Tommy persisted.
“No?”
“No.”
“Do you know why I am here, Tommy?”
“Should I?”
“You were reported outside the Scots church.”
The big grin reappeared. “Church?” Tommy shook his head at the other boys. “Not likely.”
The curtain stirred. A beautiful barefoot girl in the familiar calico dress of a hot corn girl, no older than Tommy, seventeen or eighteen maybe, carrying a cedar bucket suspended from around her neck, entered. A two-year-old in similar garb trailed her. Seeing Hays, the hot corn girl abruptly halted and shrank back against the wall.
The little girl murmured, “Mama.”
Hays studied mother and daughter, noticed something of Tommy in the tot. His auburn-colored hair. His freckled nose. He turned back to Tommy. “The copper sheathing off the steeple is gone.”
Again Tommy shook his head. He grinned, showing prominent white teeth outlined by dull brown. “I do’nah do metal,” he shrugged. “Them native gangs, the Butcher Boys, the True-Blue Americans, they are more likely participants.”
“Not you?”
“Not me. Not mine.”
The little girl murmured, “Da.”
Tommy turned and scooped his daughter off the floor. When he returned his gaze to Hays, the high constable asked, “What about the Hudson shoreline at Weehawken, Tommy? Have you and your tribe done outrage there?”
News of Murder Breaks in the Public Prints
Not much of the murder of Mary Rogers appeared in the newsprints in those first days following the discovery of her body. Only a small mention on July 29 was made of the crime in the Commercial Advertiser:
BODY FOUND FLOATING IN NORTH RIVER
but beyond that nothing.
It wasn’t until the morning of August 1, 1841, that news broke in James Gordon Bennett’s Herald.
MURDER!
cried the headline.
BODY OF SEGAR STORE GIRL FOUND
“The first look we had of her was most ghastly,” began the account. “So much violence had been done to her, her features were scarcely visible.”