Read The Black Hand for Free Online

numbers on the ledger sheet are what really matters. Are we done here?”
    “Just one more question, sir. Is it possible I could speak to your foreman who works day to day with the Sicilians?”
    “I suppose so. His name’s Ben Tillett. He’s a good man, though I don’t care for his politics. He should be around the docks somewhere.”
    “Thank you for your time, Mr. Green. Come, Thomas.”
    Outside, Barker passed through the gates and thenstopped. He put his hands on top of the ball of his stick and inhaled slowly. I’d seen him do it before in our garden, while he was beginning his exercises. He was shaking off whatever he had been doing and preparing to take new impressions.
    We watched the unloading of vessels in hope of seeing the Sicilians who had been causing so much trouble. They were not difficult to spot, for they all sported black cloth caps with short peaks. I also noticed that when compared with the Italians, the Sicilians looked thinner and harder, as if they’d seen more trials on that Mediterranean island than their brethren on the mainland. They seemed to have a preference for putting things in their mouths when not actually working, whether cigars, cigarettes, short pipes, or toothpicks. Somehow it made them look foreign and insolent. The Italians were trying to fit in with the other dockworkers, while the Sicilians stood out.
    Most of the Sicilians were young, I had noticed, about my age. They could not work without making chafing remarks to their companions, even to ones across the dock. They had not come here to join a criminal organization, I thought, which they could have done in Sicily. No, they’d come because the opportunity to work and the living conditions were better in London than in Palermo. Working as casual labor was hardly ideal, however, if one was forced to wait all day and the work never arrived at the docks. In order to survive, some may have reluctantly stepped under the umbrella the Mafia offered. It was that or starve. For all of their bravado, none of the Sicilians looked well nourished, and I doubted anyone on our little island ever gave them awarm greeting or a full belly. Gallenga had said once one took the blood oath, one was bound for life, which meant forty or fifty more years of being indentured. That is, if they lived that long. To men like Faldo, I thought, these were the yeomen guard, the least trained, the most expendable, the first to be mown down in battle.

Demo version limitation

12

    C OMING OUT OF THE BROWN BETTY, BARKER headed north into Poplar following the bend around Lime-house Reach. There was no need to wonder where we were going. He was headed for a tearoom of his own choosing, a clandestine one, run by his closest friend, Ho. Once we’d reached the establishment, we walked down the dark stairs that led along the tunnel under the river. After an inspector had been shot in the darkened tunnel, lamps were placed and lit permanently at either end, though Ho complained about the price of naphtha. There was to be no more walking in complete darkness, which had once been the sign that one was a regular. However, in my opinion, the gloom and odd shadows cast by the flickering lamps were more eerie than mere darkness.
    Inside the restaurant, Barker skirted our usual table and made his way to a door on the other side of the room that led to a banquet hall. I followed him through it. Ho was already inside. He is a squat Chinaman with weighted ear-lobes, a braid of hair, and heavily tattooed arms. In his handswas a long length of rope with a metal spike on the end that he twirled about the room. He dropped it to his feet, kicked it across the empty space, and then snapped it back again. At the other side of the room lay a row of shattered clay vessels, and as I watched he shot the dart forward with a kick and broke the least damaged of the lot. Some might have called it a child’s game, but the pointed dart made it look far more dangerous to me.
    “We’re