Tag: Urban Fantasy

So that’s the story of my grand adventure.  I’ve certainly had other adventures, and I’d be glad to tell you about them if you’re interested, but unlike a certain chain-smoking London street wizard, I don’t save the world every other day. 

So what actually happened, there at the end? 

La Guardia would have been a match for either Bill the Butcher or Bill Tweed – the spirit of New York’s violence and the spirit of its corruption – but not both at the same time. 

So we called in help.

I’ll spare you the negotiations with Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie.  They get repetitive. 

So Fiorello LaGuardia took me back to his office in the City Hall at the center of New York City’s soul. 

It’s a weird day when you can write that sentence.

It was a corner office, as you might expect – or you might expect if you live New York, anyway – and its windows each looked out over a different vista of the City, views that changed each time you looked out the window.  First look: Civic Center, like you might see from City Hall in the real world.  Second Look: Central Park, looking up from the South, you can see all the way to the Sheep Meadow before it becomes just a mass of trees.  Third look: looking out over Batter Park and the Harbor, Lady Liberty lifting her torch in the distance.  Fourth look: Times Square at night, showing off its brightest colors. 

And so on.  This really is the Heart of New York.  But then, New York has a lot of hearts. 

So last time, I tried to deliver an eviction notice to Bill the Butcher, New York’s personal spirit of violence, on behalf of Boss Bill Tweed, New York’s spirit of greed.  It’s exactly as ridiculous as it sounds and it was not my idea.  Much to my entire lack of surprise, Bill the Butcher wasn’t having it and kicked me straight out of his headquarters in the Five Points and into the Collect Pond, which was the same place but about 100 years further into the past.  Frankly, I counted myself lucky.  Still, to get where I needed to be, I would have needed to take two horse carts, a carriage, a streetcar, and a subway, which would have taken time I just don’t have.

So I tapped my emergency stash.  I used the power from a gold double-eagle coin from Bill’s time to power my way up through all those layers of New York City’s memory.  It got me where I needed to go, but as will happen when you have an emergency and have to spend whatever it takes, I’m completely tapped out.  The coin is still worth millions in the physical world, but it won’t buy me a cup of coffee here in the City’s Soul. 

So where was it I needed to go so fast?

City Hall. 

Previously on The Economancer, my morning commute was hijacked into the Soul of New York City by Boss Tweed, the City’s own personal spirit of greed.  He tricked me into accepting a job to evict Bill the Butcher, the closest thing the City has to a war god, from his home in the memory of the Five Points.  Unfortunately, since he basically kidnapped me, I didn’t have a chance to properly equip myself for the job. 

So now here I am in the Five Points, facing Bill the Butcher with my good luck charm, a gold double-eagle coin from his day, which was worth twenty dollars in his day (which of course bought a lot more than twenty dollars does now), is worth a lot more today, and in my hands is basically a nuke, which is why I carry something that valuable around with me. 

I’ve just given him his eviction notice.  He’s just metaphorically torn it up and thrown it back in my face.