Hays knew the voice, the tone, and what it meant, too well. “Yes?”
“Sir?” The man waits. It is Sergeant McArdel, standing with Hays’ driver, Balboa. Balboa is outfitted in his Sunday best, forest green pantaloons, yellow shirt, yellow stock. Both men, McArdel and Balboa, were at attention.
As dictated by local ordinance, chains were set up at either end of streets fronting churches to keep away traffic and keep down the din during Sunday services. The Scotch Presbyterian Church on Mott Street was no exception.
The black police barouche was parked at the kerb just outside the chain link.
McArdel tipped his hat at Olga. “Morning, missy,” he says.
“Morning, Sergeant,” Olga answers.
“Sir?” McArdel turns. “I need your ear.”
“Then have it,” Hays grumbles, taking a step to the side and saying, “Excuse us, dear,” to his daughter.
With that the sergeant joins him and they walk off a little distance. “My apologies, sir, but there’s been a rather grisly discovery behind Cow Bay this morning.”
“Where?”
“In the rear alley that leads from the tenement.”
“What kind of discovery?”
“Three bodies, including a little girl.”
Hays glances over at his daughter. She is taken in rather heated conversation with the reverend doctor. Balboa is holding the carriage horse, Old Joe, by the rein.
“Do we know who they are?”
“We certainly do, sir. The Butcher Boy Ruby Pearl is one of them.”
“And the others?”
“The wife and child of Tommy Coleman, sir.”
John Colt, in his cell on the Tombs’ death row, his face thickly lathered by his manservant, Dillback, reclines in a fine leather patent chair of his brother’s invention.
Outside, in the prison courtyard, carpenters construct the gallows, what they call the “picture frame.” The basic structure is already complete, the carpenters preparing to test the progress of their work.
John does his very best to ignore the commotion without.
Sam Colt has designed the reclining chair for his youngest brother’s comfort during this, his final confinement. The Colonel has sent the chair over, along with John’s writing desk, his personal library, and custom-made green velvet curtains to give the cell some semblance of warmth and privacy. Lovely fresh flowers stand in a crystal vase on the table.
Eventually John’s annoyance peaks. Dillback is poised over him with a razor. John abruptly pushes him away, leaps to his feet, and hurries to the high iron-barred window.
Standing on his cot in order to be able to see, he peers out, sees the gallows, the workmen in caps and coveralls. He watches as the carpenters attach a heavy sandbag to the thick rope dangling from the crossarm. A counterweight, tethered at the opposite end, comes running down, jerking the sandbag aloft.
A single image occupies John’s head. He pictures himself in the prison courtyard, alone, underneath the gibbet. He sees himself fitted with the hemp necklace, sees his neck jerked sharply at the end of the rope.
He remembers the words of Samuel Johnson, author of the Dictionary of the English Language, subject of the Boswell biography. “The prospect of being hanged,” wrote Johnson, “focuses a man’s mind wonderfully.”
Young John stares out glassy-eyed for some time before Dillback takes him by the arm and leads him back, firmly insisting the lad down into his chair for the resumption of his toilet.
Colt sits but refuses to recline. Head in hands, his eyes closed, a horrible chill runs through him. His jaw quivers. He hugs himself.
The manservant gently pushes him into a more workable position, refreshes the shaving soap with horn-handled, boar-bristled brush, and begins again to meticulously scrape whiskers from chin, cheek, jowl.
The door from the Hall of Justice opens and Tommy Coleman is led in. As young as he is, the accused is already as hardened a cove as there is in local environs. He is aware as all eyes turn on him. He heeds not a single soul.
Following his arrest, his hearing has just ended. Across the Bridge of Sighs he comes, escorted by two prison guards, one of whom tap-tap-taps his keys like castanets against the iron handrails.
The Tombs is arranged in four tiers with catwalks skirting each. Each catwalk is connected to the next by stairs, a bridge spanning the two sides of each gallery. On each bridge a guard sits idly reading or dozing. On the ground floor an iron Franklin stove sits idly, ready to heat the whole; diffuse light filters down from a skylight above the fourth tier.
Next to the cold stove, High Constable Jacob Hays sits. As he is led to his cell, Tommy Coleman, the unrepentant youth, feels Hays’ eyes boring in on him. He chooses not to meet them, staring down at his feet instead.
He is escorted to a cell on the first tier. A key is fitted to the lock by a harelipped keeper, and the door, reminiscent of that fronting a furnace, replete with small grated window, swings open.
“Step inside, hardbody,” the jailer says, removing the boy’s leg irons and wrist shackles before prodding him inside. “That’s a good young feller.”
The door clangs shut, the lock reengaged. The keeper smirks and is gone. His flat footfalls slap the granite cobblestones of the cell block.
It is late October yet warm, Indian summer. Still the prison floors are chilled and damp. Tommy gives his cell the once-over. Stone floor, stone walls, iron-barred window and door. A wooden slops bucket in the corner reeks of human waste. He knows all too well, from the experience of his brother Edward before him, that this is death row, and no rabbit-sucker was meant to leave this place alive.
He has made peace with his fate. If asked, he would
