Urban Fantasy – Page 2 – Matthew Keville

The Economancer Chapter 11 – Meeting Bill the Butcher

Bill the Butcher’s place was probably something he wanted to have when he was alive. Powerful ghosts tend to do that to any spiritual real estate they control. That made me think that the human man William Poole was in there somewhere, and not just the NYC version of a god of war. He could still want things.

It was huge, the size of a modern warehouse. Probably too big to exist in the Five Points in the mid-19^th century. It was a combined slaughterhouse and butcher shop, and I don’t think I need to go into any more detail than that. It neither looked nor smelled pretty.

Bill is hanging out near the door with a few of his buddies, all sitting on barrels and boxes and rickety wooden chairs. I don’t need to guess or ask which one of them is Bill the Butcher. I recognize him the same way I recognized Boss Tweed, which is the same way they recognize me, for that matter: there’s a sense of power that you just can’t mistake for anything else. Some of the “men” in this group are ghosts, while others are just spirits that cling to a predator like Bill like they were remoras. Bill doesn’t look any different than the others, just a 19^th century working man in a leather apron and a handlebar mustache, but just beneath the surface is a thing made of hate and blades.

The Economancer Chapter 10 – Heading Downton

I took another bus downtown to the Five Points. Of course, when you’re down in this layer of the Soul of the City, a “bus” is actually a horse-drawn trolley. Oddly enough, it didn’t take a whole lot longer than a bus with a motor would have taken. Travel isn’t about distance from Point A to Point B here.

As if to drive that point home, we pass through a Beatnik-era East Village and a 1920’s Little Italy to get there. I mean, how does that even happen? Little Italy and the Five Points occupied a lot of the same physical…never mind.

The Economancer Chapter 9 – Closing The Deal

“I need you to evict Bill the Butcher.”

I raise an eyebrow.

Bill the Butcher is a lot like Boss Tweed himself. There was a real person by that name once. In Gangs of New York, they called him “Bill Cutting”, which is juuuuust a bit too on-the-nose. I mean, it’s like calling the evil family in a certain famous chainsaw-based horror franchise “Sawyer” or “Hewitt”. The real person was named William Poole.

Interesting factoid: both real person and fictional character are actual, buy-your-brisket-from-‘em butchers, in addition to the other kind.

But even more than Tweed, the legend has almost nothing to do with the person, and it’s almost impossible to know if the human man William Poole has anything to do with the thing that now wears the name “Bill the Butcher”.

The Economancer Chapter 8 – Back Room Deals

Boss Tweed claps his hands.

“Gentlemen!” he says to the things circling in the air above. “I need a moment alone with Miss Jessalyn, please.”

Then the things are just men in suits, filing out the door. Some of them are leering at me as they go, while others are just blank-faced. That’s one way to tell which of them used to be human and which never were: the ones who used to be human can feel things other than greed.

Tweed sits down behind his desk, sets his axe down on the floor, and leans it up against the desk within easy reach.

Corruption always carries the threat of violence.

The Economancer Chapter 7 – Tammany Hall

I step through the door into a Tammany Hall that never existed.

The real Tammany Hall was a place where rich and influential men met to discuss political and economic strategy. Those men might not have actually been very respectable or refined, but they tried to look it.

This Tammany Hall is a parody of hoopty-do politics out of political cartoons and old movies. It looks more like the inside of a barn than the marble building outside. Straw and sawdust is spread on the wooden floor. There are brass spittoons here and there (okay, the real Tammany Hall probably had those), but nobody bothers to use them. A man in a cheap suit stands on a rickety wooden stage, hoarsely haranguing the crowd, but I can’t hear him over the shouting and laughing and cheering. The crowd includes men from every social class, high society to roustabout, but they are all men, and they’re all white. By the standards of the 1870’s, not today. Not an Italian among them, and very few Irishmen.

Unlike outside, they’re all in-period. I’m getting close to the center of Boss Tweed’s power, his literal comfort zone, so of course it looks like the time and place when he was most comfortable.

The Economancer Chapter 6 – 14th Street, 19th Century

I get off the bus in 1870, leaving the supporting cast for The Warriors on the bus. I could have dragged them along to use as muscle, but they would’ve been more trouble than they were worth. Even spirits that dumb know how to do the “exact words” thing.

I even did ‘em a favor. I made it so they could truthfully tell their boss that they obeyed their orders: I didn’t go below 14^th Street.

Exact words, my friends.

The Economancer Chapter 5 – Downtown Bus

Riding a bus through the soul of a city is different than riding it through the physical world, as you might expect. The physical world has limits: the island of Manhattan is thirteen miles long and just over two miles wide at its widest point. Depending on what shape they’re welded into, steel, concrete, and glass can only support so much of their own weight. Two objects can’t occupy the same space. Time only ever moves forward, so whether you miss something dearly or if it’s a scar on your memory, once something is gone it can never really come back.

None of that is true about souls. Souls are about meaning. That’s as true about the City’s soul as it is about yours. That’s how the Statue of Liberty can be a mile-high colossus whose lamp can be seen thirty miles out to sea – not that I would recommend going out into the soul of the wild ocean beyond the harbor. That’s how Coney Island can be as big and full of wonders as you remember it from when you were a kid, instead of being a three-block remnant filled with carnie rides. That’s how Manhattan can be as big as it looks in the movies and TV, with Studio 54 from the heyday and Nineties nightclubs separated by only a few blocks of Eighties urban decay.

And that’s how I can be accosted on the bus by gang members from The Warriors. Not the Coney Island Warriors themselves, oh no. They might actually be reasonable. Not even the Baseball Furies, who everyone pictures when they’re thinking of The Warriors.

The Economancer – Chapter 4 – Boss Tweed

In case you haven’t seen Gangs of New York, “Boss” Bill Tweed is one of the most corrupt figures in New York City history, which is saying something. He got into politics in 1850, had a system for large-scale graft set up by the end of the decade, became the leader of the Tammany Hall Democratic machine and one of the biggest landowners in the city (New York City real estate has always been a good way to launder money) in the 1860’s, took total ownership of the City in 1869…fell from power and died in prison of pneumonia in 1871, aged fifty-five. Never held an elected position more exalted than U.S. House Rep, and most of the time it was things like State Senator, City Alderman, Commissioner of Public Works. All politics is local, and if you know where the levers are and sit on the right committees, it’s the unimpressive-sounding positions that have the real power. Especially back then.

If you have seen Gangs of New York, Tweed wasn’t the weakling you might remember. He was a fireman when he was younger, and that was a time when fire departments were basically street gangs fighting for turf and protection money. Tweed himself apparently earned a reputation for being a nasty customer with an axe.

The Economancer – Chapter 3

So I’ve somehow been transported to the Soul of New York City. How was your morning?

The Economancer – Chapter 2

I get off the train at 59^th and Lexington and head up the stairs, stopping just long enough to give a young homeless girl a dollar bill infused with luck.

By noon, she’ll have enough money for a room with a hot shower, some new clothes, a real meal, and a bus ticket back to Georgia. And yes, that’s what she’ll use it for. I scribbled a little suggestion on the bill to make sure. Her eyes will never notice it, but her unconscious mind will. I usually don’t like to do stuff like that, but if I didn’t, she’d still be in the City next Wednesday, at which point she’ll be hit by the M60 bus. How do I know?

Because that’s what I do. Economancy. Money magic.