Read Chapter 4: A COOPER’S DEATH

Gideon Rusk lived above his workshop near Corlear’s Hook, where the city thinned into rough ground, slaughter yards, ropewalks, and cheap houses leaning away from the river wind.

Elias went there at dawn carrying a broken barrel hoop.

Rusk opened the door with a mallet in his hand.

“Warehouse trouble?” he asked.

“Intelligence trouble.”

Rusk’s face did not change, but the mallet lowered.

“Come in.”

The workshop smelled of oak shavings and smoke. Three unfinished barrels stood against the wall. A boy of perhaps twelve slept behind a hanging blanket.

“Your son?” Elias asked.

“Apprentice. My son is in Connecticut.”

“Good.”

Rusk looked at him sharply.

“Why?”

“Major Harcourt asked me where you sleep.”

The cooper went still.

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“And you came here?”

“I need you to die.”

Rusk stared.

Elias set the broken hoop on the bench.

“Not truly. Only enough.”

“What kind of enough?”

“Enough for a constable, two soldiers, and one clerk.”

Rusk gave a humorless laugh. “Merchants.”

“Coopers make barrels. Merchants make circumstances.”

Elias explained quickly. A dock laborer named Peter Dace had died overnight in a tavern near the Fly Market. Consumption and gin, according to the landlord. Dace was near Rusk’s age and build, had no family in New York, and had worked occasionally under false names.

“How do you know this?” Rusk asked.

“Because his landlord owes me twelve pounds.”

“And you want to call him me.”

“I want a body found in the East River wearing your coat, with a cooper’s token in the pocket and enough damage to the face that no one asks for resemblance.”

Rusk’s eyes narrowed.

“How does a dead drunk get damage to the face?”

“He fell from a wharf after death.”

“Convenient wharf.”

“I own it.”

Rusk walked to the window.

“If Harcourt is watching me, he may have men outside.”

“Then you leave in a flour cart.”

“To where?”

“Brooklyn first. Then Jamaica. Then north if the roads are open.”

“And my workshop?”

“Burn nothing. Leave it as if you expected to return.”

Rusk turned.

“What does this cost?”

The question pleased Elias despite everything. Men who asked the price remained alive longer.

“One favor. Tell Hart I saved you.”

“That is not a price. That is advertising.”

“Then we understand each other.”

By evening, Peter Dace had become Gideon Rusk.

Elias bribed the tavern landlord to say Dace had left alive. Amos paid two river men to move the body after midnight. Rusk’s coat, knife, and brass cooper’s token went with it. The corpse struck a piling exactly where Amos intended, leaving the face ruined without looking deliberately mutilated.

At dawn, a watchman found the body.

By noon, a British clerk had recorded Gideon Rusk drowned, probably drunk.

At three, Lieutenant Barstow came to Warehouse Three.

“Harcourt says you work quickly.”

Elias looked up from an invoice.

“I heard Rusk was found in the river.”

“You heard.”

“He was a cooper. News travels when a man who owes half the waterfront money dies.”

Barstow wandered toward the shelves.

“Did you speak with him before his death?”

“No.”

“Strange.”

“What is?”

“Harcourt asked you to find him. Then he dies.”

Elias dipped his pen.

“If Major Harcourt wants me to stop finding people, he should ask me to find more of his enemies.”

Barstow smiled despite himself.

“He wants you tonight.”

“Again?”

“Your social life improves.”

When Barstow left, Amos emerged from behind a stack of sailcloth.

“He suspects.”

“Harcourt suspects everyone.”

“No. He suspects you correctly. That is different.”

Elias capped the ink.

“Rusk is alive.”

“So far.”

“And Harcourt has a body.”

“So far.”

Elias looked toward the river.

The phrase disturbed him.

So far.

Everything in his life now existed only so far.

That night Harcourt did not question him about Rusk.

Instead, he spread a military map across the table.

Westchester County lay north of Manhattan, crossed by roads, farms, small settlements, British posts, rebel patrols, and the shifting no-man’s-land where raiders called Cowboys and Skinners stole from anyone unable to defend property.

Harcourt tapped three routes.

“The rebels believe we will forage here.”

Elias studied the map.

“Will you?”

“That is what I want you to tell them.”

Elias looked up.

For the first time, Harcourt made no pretense.

“You know,” Elias said.

“I know enough.”

“That I communicate with rebel agents?”

“That you are in a position to.”

“And you have waited?”

Harcourt folded his hands.

“A double channel is more useful than a closed one.”

The room seemed smaller.

“What do you want sent?” Elias asked.

“A forage column of eight hundred men leaving Kingsbridge on Thursday. Route west toward Dobbs Ferry.”

“True?”

“Does it matter?”

“To the men who may die believing it.”

Harcourt’s eyes cooled.

“I had not realized you had become sentimental.”

“I am commercial. Dead men stop owing money.”

“Send it.”

Elias stared at the map.

Hart had demanded the forage plan. Harcourt was now supplying one.

The trap was so obvious it might conceal another trap beneath it.

“Very well,” Elias said.

As he left, Harcourt added, “Mr. Vale?”

“Yes?”

“Rusk had a scar on his left hand.”

Elias did not move.

“The body had none.”

A pause.

“Three days,” Harcourt said softly. “You really do work quickly.”