“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”.
If Boss Tweed is New York’s avatar of greed and corruption, Bill the Butcher is New York’s street-level violence. He was one of the most infamous gang leaders back in the day when gangs were just becoming a thing in this city. His gang were the Bowery Boys. You may even have heard of them, nearly 200 years later, which should tell you something.
Bill the Butcher, or the thing that wears that name, squats in the Five Points. The Five Points doesn’t exist anymore in the real world of the early 21st Century. The city knocked it down and covered it with concrete and put City Hall on top of it, as if all that respectability could wash away all those years of blood and ashes, but the Five Points is still lodged there like a festering splinter in New York City’s soul, the City’s true heart of darkness. Before the Crack Epidemic or Prohibition, before the Bronx ever burned, there was the Five Points.
It’s Bill the Butcher’s personal Mordor, and Boss Tweed wants me to simply walk into it. And evict Bill the Butcher.
“You flatter me,” I say.
“I do nothing of the kind,” he says. “I know your record. If anything, I’m insulting you, asking a woman of your stature to help me with clearing out a few squatters. Still, I know that you’re the best person in this City for the job.”
Okay, now he was flattering me.
“It’s very nice of you to say so, Mr. Tweed, but I’m afraid I must decline. And if that’s all – “
“And I’m afraid, my dear,” he interrupted. “That you’ve already accepted.”
“Wait a second,” I countered. “I didn’t accept anything from you.”
“But you did. You accepted my invitation.” He gestures at my seat, like he’s asking me to sit in it again.
I get up.
Written on the seat, it says “By Accepting the rest and comfort offered by this chair, I agree to perform one service for Boss Tweed.”
“What kind of fairy tale nonsense is this?” I demand.
He raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re sitting in the spirit world, talking to a ghost, and you’re surprised that it follows fairy tale rules?”
He was right. The “contract” was even written where I could see it, if I’d just bothered to look, so I couldn’t argue ignorance. It’s binding.
Stupid. Caught like an amateur. When you’re dealing with a spirit of greed, you don’t trust anything they offer you. I resist the urge to pick up and smash the thing. Breaking the chair won’t break the contract, and I need to hang onto every last shred of professional dignity right now.
Tweed lights a cigar. “I’m sure you’ll do a fine job,” he says.
I’m sure I will too. And along the way, I’ll think of a way to remind him that forcing someone like me into doing a job we didn’t want to do tends to get you a lot more than you bargained for.
Until then, they say that if you’re willing to brave the Five Points and face Bill the Butcher in his personal Mordor, he makes a mean corned beef sandwich. Guess I’m going to find out.