CHAPTER TEN

London, August 1854

An hour before dawn, Ralph Bucks, wearing a new check suit and only slightly drunk, opened the door to The Drowning Man. It was one of a hundred pubs at the edge of the East India Docks, where the Thames sent up a marshy fog and the water glowed in reflection of a sky never completely dark. The place was crammed with a crowd of drinkers. Tobacco, foul lamp oil, and opium clouded the air.

Bucks was in a bad mood and had been so for weeks. The cholera was making him nervous. That job in the Golden Square works two weeks ago didn't help. He hated knowing the murder was going to be done in a public place like that, where anyone might have seen. And it turned out to be much messier than he had thought. Not in terms of blood, the men knew their work too well for that. But the fellow had pleaded with them, convinced of his own special reasons for living. He was bawling like a child when they finally hit him. They'd had to bash him twice; the first blow only sent him to his knees, screaming, his hands to his head.

Today was the day Bucks had told the men they'd be paid. The two of them turned up at the appointed spot, regular as sheep, holding out their palms. After paying them off and putting the rest in his pocket, he'd gone to his rooms off Drury Lane. He'd waited until night when he could join the rooftop rum drinkers who climbed up to escape the heat and carry out the standard prescription against getting this new plague. Their noise made sleep impossible, so it was easier to go up with them.

Tonight, three more had died in the rooms below him. Bucks coughed and wondered once again if he should leave London. But where could he go? He had a decent job now, contracting for these street works, and then anything extra on the side. Picking up a legal wage in some dead market town was no life for him. Nights like tonight, and quick work like today's, were what kept him going.

Inside the pub he finally spotted who he wanted, alone at a greasy table against the wall.

Bucks's quarry was hard to miss; a dwarf, with stiff red hair and freckled skin, whose light blue eyes pulsed sweet as meadow lupines. Scars crossed the cheekbones of his elongated skull, and one freckled ear was scabbed over from a recent wound. The dwarf sat with a pint of beer before him, along with a few finished mugs, carefully lined up, their handles all pointing the same way.

In places like this, the owners, always fearful of an evil eye, filled the dwarfs glass as soon as it was needed. Ralph Bucks saw the dwarfs row of empties and felt the remaining coins in his pocket. He made his way through the tables.

"Damn you, Mango. You said you'd be at The Wheatsheaf. I've been looking for an hour. Took three pubs and had to buy two blokes a pint each before they'd say they'd seen you."

"The George, The Raven, The Wheatsheaf. Its all the same," answered the dwarf. "I said you could find me tonight, and so you did. Now what do you want?"

"I need a drink before we talk." Bucks raised a hand to the woman behind the bar. She looked straight through him as if he were a hat rack. He wasn't a regular at this place. He waved again. She finally came over, her hands dripping soap suds, her cheeks looking boiled.

"Two gins," said Bucks.

"Not for me," said Mango. "You can rot your guts on that swill if you like. I'm for beer. Aren't I right, my darling?" The dwarf batted his thick lashes at the woman and grabbed at one of her breasts. She swayed out of his reach and eyed Bucks with curiosity.

"You're a brave one if you sit to drinks with him," she said. She wouldn't look at the dwarf at all, but dealt only with Bucks. ''Men say as he's one to give you these cholera vapors."

"Just bring the drinks. I didn't come here to chat with a barmaid."

"Barmaid yourself. I own this place."

Bucks jerked his chin at her and she went off. He watched her retreat until she was out of earshot, and turned to the dwarf.

"He says you're going too strong," said Bucks. "Out of your line."

"Who said I had a line?"

"Don't play the fool with me, Mango. I know it ain't just the dogs as keeps you going. You don't want to lose this one. He's got money to spend. In the government, he says."

A surprisingly delicate frown creased the dwarfs brow and he fingered one of the scars across his cheek. "Well, maybe I'll listen. Talk."

The woman returned, slammed the drinks down, and stood with crossed arms until Bucks paid. He took the gin in one shot. Mango ignored his beer, except to straighten the mugs handle and line it up with the rest. He then kept his fist clenched like a barnacle on the sticky table.

Bucks wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "The toff says you're not to kill him off. The moneys good only if he looks bad and quits, not if he's dead."

"That's not what you said last time. You said two bob a day."

"Right-o. But the big one, the thirty guineas; that's only if he quits."

"I suppose there's money in it for you too?"

"I never said that. Just doing my job is all. And besides, you never ask, or so I was told."

"And isn't it true we're very respectable these days? Works foreman, something like it, I heard."

"Better than that. The foreman, he works under me. And I still keep a hand in, you know. Its the only way to turn a decent sum. Now what about this number?"

"What if the bloke has an accident?"

"Like I said, no pay. Why're you so taken against him?"

"I got my reasons.

Bucks's breathing grew heavy. His hand grabbed his empty glass. "Listen, you little -- I don't give a bloody damn for your reasons. If you blow this one for me I'll see you back in the hulks again."

The dwarf laughed. A few men at the other tables nervously glanced his way and quickly went back to their drinks. "If I rot away in a prison ship, Bucks, you come with me this time." He nodded his head, smiling. "With this plague everywhere you wouldn't last a month." He reached to pat Bucks's hand where it lay on the table and Bucks snatched it out of the way.

"I'll pull back," said the dwarf. "But I want double pay."

Bucks's forehead reddened and he raised his glass. It was empty. He paused for a moment and fingered a gold watch chain at his waist. "You're a tight bastard, you know that? I don't have the final word, but I know you only get half 'til its done. And where can I find you? You'll have to report, regular like. I can't be searching every pub by the river."

Mango moved his eyes to a ladder against a wall which led to a sleeping loft above. "I kip here for now," he said in a low voice. "Between you and me." He finally took a pull at his beer.