Chapter 218: Counter-Feat

The morning was still young when Larry Mulligan received the news.

?He sat in a private room behind one of his trusted saloons on the Bowery, a thick ledger open before him and a heavy ceramic cup of coffee cooling beside his hand. The room smelled faintly of stale tobacco, damp old wood, and yesterday’s whiskey, a stagnant counterpoint to the sharp winter air outside. Through the thin walls, the Bowery was already coming alive with the familiar roar of commerce. Heavy freight wagons rattled over uneven cobblestones, shopkeepers cranked open their iron shutters with sharp screeches, and the morning crowd of dockers, peddlers, and clerks filled the sidewalks.

?Larry paid none of it any attention, his eyes fixed on a column of figures.

?He was reviewing a set of accounts when the door swung open without warning. One of his associates entered, his breath pluming in the cool air of the room, failing to bother with the courtesy of a knock.

?"Boss," the man said, catching his breath. "We have a problem."

?Larry continued writing for another slow, deliberate moment, letting the tip of his pen finish a numerical entry before he put it down. He didn’t look up immediately.

?"How expensive?" Larry asked, his voice flat.

?"One of the farms in Westchester. The authorities raided it."

?That finally earned Larry’s attention. He leaned back in his wooden chair, the legs creaking against the floorboards. "Which farm?"

?"The one near the railway tracks. The main distribution place up north."

?Larry’s expression barely changed, though his fingers stilled against the edge of the desk. "Go on."

?"They took the currency, the printing equipment they found, and a lot of papers. The whole thing happened fast before our people could pull back."

?Larry tapped one finger against the leather-bound ledger.

?A single workshop was hardly the end of the world. The syndicate’s counterfeit business did not depend on one building, one crew, or one transit route. The Five Points gangs maintained their own independent workshops tucked away in basement cellars. The Eastman Gang had its own separate arrangements along the Lower East Side. The Morellos maintained their own operations as well, quietly printing what they needed without asking for permission. Beyond those, there were still dozens of other hidden spots scattered throughout Westchester County—perhaps twenty, perhaps fifty, depending on which courier reports could be trusted.

?The raided farm had been uniquely useful because of its location. Its quiet proximity to the railway tracks made it convenient for receiving heavy shipments of paper and distributing finished crates toward the river. Losing it would disrupt a portion of the operation, certainly, but the broader network was wide enough to absorb the blow.

?Larry’s immediate concern lay elsewhere.

?"What about the papers?" Larry asked, his eyes narrowing.

?His associate hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Records. Delivery accounts, payment notes, names. Whatever they kept tucked away in the loft."

?Larry’s fingers stopped tapping entirely. "Did someone see them taking the ledgers?"

?"No. I’m telling you, boss, our guys cleared out before the main force swept the yard, but they saw the feds loading crates of documents into wagons."

?"Then don’t tell me what was reported as though you saw it yourself," Larry snapped, his voice dropping an octave.

?The man lowered his eyes, staring at the floorboards.

?Larry closed the ledger with a soft, final thud. "Listen to me very carefully. We can print more currency. We can find another building. We can establish another distribution point tomorrow if we have to. What we cannot replace is a document that tells the wrong person who has been doing business with whom."

?The associate shifted uneasily, rubbing the back of his neck. "The Bowery Boys weren’t running the whole thing, boss. They were just handling the local drop-offs."

?"I know that," Larry said quietly.

?"They were only helping with distribution."

?"I know that too."

?Larry rose from his chair, his tall frame casting a long shadow across the room. He walked slowly toward the dirty window overlooking the street. From there, he could see the passing freight wagons, the slush melting in the gutters, and several of his own men standing near the saloon entrance—ordinary figures going about their day, entirely unaware that somewhere beyond the city limits, a handful of seized papers might soon become more valuable than an entire cargo ship full of counterfeit cash.

?"That farm was useful because it was convenient," Larry said, staring out at the gray street. "Convenience makes people careless. They begin writing things down. They start keeping neat little ledgers because it saves them time. They put names beside payments and dates beside deliveries because they think nobody will ever look at them."

?He turned around slowly, facing his man. "And now somebody has."

?The associate remained silent, swallowing hard.

?Larry returned to his desk, resting his knuckles on the wood. "Do we know who conducted the raid?"

?"Not for certain. Some say federal men. Others think it might have been private investigators working with local authorities."

?"The Secret Service?"

?"Possibly."

?Larry considered that possibility in silence. Counterfeiting fell squarely within the Secret Service’s historical responsibilities. It was a reasonable explanation, but a reasonable explanation was not the same thing as a confirmed one.

?"How did they find the place?" Larry asked.

?"We don’t know, boss."

?"Was someone talking?"

?"No proof of that."

?"Did a bank report the bad notes? Did someone along the railway notice the heavy crates? Were the authorities already investigating another operation entirely?"

?"We don’t know," the man repeated, his voice tight.

?Larry exhaled slowly through his nose, a quiet hiss of frustration. Too many unknowns. He disliked uncertainty because uncertainty encouraged panicked men to invent their own answers. One underling would blame an informant, another would accuse a rival gang, and a third would decide the federal government had uncovered the entire underworld. Within twenty-four hours, a manageable operational setback could turn into a dozen unnecessary turf wars.

?"Until we know more, I want absolute quiet," Larry instructed, pointing a finger at the man. "Nobody is to spread theories around the Bowery. I want a clear account of what was taken and what the investigators actually know. Not rumors. Not guesses."

?"Yes, boss."

?"And one more thing," Larry added as the man turned for the door.

?He stopped, looking back over his shoulder.

?"Don’t mistake the loss of one workshop for the loss of the whole business. The other operations continue unless we have concrete evidence otherwise."

?"Understood."

?When the door clicked shut, Larry remained standing beside the desk for several long minutes. The counterfeit network would survive the loss of the farm; he was confident of that. What he could not yet determine was whether the raiders had exposed something far more dangerous than a simple printing press.

?If those seized records contained names directly connecting the Bowery Boys to Tammany’s political intermediaries, the problem would quickly spread out of the underworld and into the executive suites of Manhattan.

?Larry picked up his pen, stared at the nib for a second, and then put it down again. He needed to speak with Charles Murphy.

?Charles Murphy listened without interruption as Larry laid out the facts in a private back room away from the usual bustling traffic of Tammany’s political offices.

?Laurence Veymont sat nearby in a high-backed leather chair, his gloved hands resting quietly on the silver head of his walking stick. His personal butler, Graves, waited out in the hallway with the other attendants.

?Murphy’s face remained carved from granite throughout Larry’s account.

?"One farm," Murphy said quietly when Larry finally finished. "One distribution point."

?"That’s right," Larry replied, leaning forward.

?"And the rest of the operation remains intact?"

?"As far as we know. The city presses are underground, and the outer-county sites haven’t flinched."

?Murphy nodded once, a sharp, economic motion. "Then the counterfeit business has suffered a setback, not a collapse."

?Larry shook his head, his dark eyes intense. "The currency isn’t my main concern, Mr. Murphy."

?"I gathered that."

?"It’s the records. The farm wasn’t just producing or storing notes; it was moving them. There could be ledgers of deliveries, cash payments, and the specific men who handled them."

?Murphy looked at him more carefully, his sharp gaze locking onto Larry’s face. "And you believe those records might lead somewhere inconvenient?" ℯℓ.

?"They might. I won’t tell you they do until we verify it. But I’d rather not discover that they contain the names of people who happen to be very useful to our political arrangements."

?Veymont adjusted his position in his chair, the leather creaking softly. "The real question is how the authorities found the farm in the first place."

?Larry recounted the possibilities he had considered—a suspicious bank deposit, a loose-lipped railway worker, an informant, or a broader federal inquiry.

?"The Secret Service would have the jurisdiction," Veymont observed, tapping his cane against the floor. "If they are involved, this could become a federal matter very quickly, which is the worst case scenario I’m trying to avoid."

?"Could be," Larry muttered. "But we don’t know for certain that they were the ones who kicked down the door."

?Murphy remained quiet, his mind working through the political calculus. The idea of a federal investigation troubled him for reasons that extended far beyond counterfeit bills. Over the past year, there had been too many strange disturbances in the city—too many developments that conveniently benefited reformers while bleeding Tammany’s influence. Men had died, gang alignments had shifted overnight, and long-standing political arrangements had collapsed with suspicious precision.

?Murphy had already considered the possibility that an unknown, highly organized entity was operating in the shadows. He had even wondered whether federal investigators might be quietly coordinating it all.

?"Did the authorities take everything?" Murphy asked.

?"That’s what we’re trying to establish right now," Larry said.

?"Then establish it. Until we know what documents they actually have in their possession, we don’t know what they can prove in a courtroom."

?Veymont folded his hands over his cane. "Even if the records reveal nothing politically sensitive, the timing is deeply inconvenient. Merchants across Lower Manhattan are already nervous about bad currency circulating through their tills. Marek Kowalski’s association could easily turn this crisis into an opportunity."

?Murphy glanced at Veymont. "Explain."

?"The association has been struggling to establish itself as a permanent, reliable alternative to our existing commercial arrangements," Veymont explained, his voice smooth and analytical. "Now every shopkeeper from Canal Street to the Battery has a problem that affects their daily survival. If Marek helps them navigate it, he can demonstrate that his organization is practically indispensable."

?Larry frowned deeply. "He doesn’t control the counterfeit network."

?"He doesn’t need to," Veymont replied, shaking his head. "He only needs to look more competent than the people who claim to protect the neighborhood."

?Murphy considered the warning, standing up to walk toward the tall window. If he intervened openly on behalf of the men connected to the farm raid, he risked drawing federal attention straight to Tammany’s inner circle. Yet if he completely abandoned his allies, he risked teaching every ward captain and street leader that the machine’s protection vanished the moment trouble arrived.

?"If I intervene, I risk drawing light to a fire," Murphy murmured, staring out at the street. "If I abandon them, I risk our credibility."

?He turned back toward the table, his expression hardening. "We do nothing conspicuous until we know the truth about what was seized. No unnecessary interference. No public defense of people whose names may appear in those ledgers. We establish what the authorities actually have before deciding our next move."

?"And the other printing operations?" Larry asked.

?"We don’t assume they’re compromised simply because one barn in Westchester was hit," Murphy said firmly. "But neither do we pretend the raid means nothing."

?Veymont nodded slowly, his gray eyes reflecting the gaslight. "That leaves Marek."

?Murphy’s jaw tightened. "Yes. Marek."

?The meeting ended without an order for open retaliation. Murphy had decided that the counterfeit scandal was dangerous enough without adding his own fingerprints to the mess.

?Yet the problem would not disappear simply because he chose caution. Somewhere in Lower Manhattan, Marek Kowalski was already preparing to make the most of it.