Mick lived in a seedy rooming house just off Mulberry Street. The late-afternoon sun warmed the pavement and mingled with the stink from chimney stacks, salted cod, and rubbish collecting in the alleys. The air rumbled as an elevated train passed overhead. Peddlers hawked their wares, and children played in the alleys. It was a rough neighborhood without a blade of grass, just buckled concrete and hard-packed dirt.

The Five Points had horrified Patrick when he arrived as a fourteen-year-old immigrant. Ireland was poor, but it was a rural poverty that didn’t feel so desperately bleak. The raucous squalor of the Five Points was alien to him. All he could see from the roof of his boardinghouse were endless streets of concrete, laundry lines, and chimney stacks. Women shouted from windows to their children below, roving gangs intimidated shopkeepers, and he’d been forced to grow up fast.

The Irish gangs were tough, but Patrick rubbed along okay with them. By the time he was sixteen, he’d learned to fight and was soon earning a pretty penny in the bare-knuckle boxing pens. It was a brutal way to earn a living, but he was big, fast, and tough. Were it not for Father Doyle, Patrick would have eventually become one of those Irish gangsters, but God had other plans for him.

The stairway in Mick’s tenement was so cramped that Patrick had to duck as he climbed to the third-floor hallway. Water stains marred the plaster, and a single lightbulb provided dim illumination for the entire hall.

He knocked on Mick’s door and waited. It cracked open to reveal the suspicious eyes of Mick’s wife. Ruby Malone’s face immediately brightened when she recognized him.

“Patrick, love!” Ruby exclaimed, reaching a hand through the narrow opening to cuff him on the shoulder. She had been named for her fiery-red hair, although it was now faded with age. Rumor had it she was the best pickpocket in the neighborhood and had only been imprisoned for it twice.

“Mrs. Malone,” he said respectfully. “Can I come inside?”

The narrow gap closed an inch more. “I’m afraid I can’t invite you in. What do you need, love?”

“To talk with Mick. Is he here?”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s at the pub already. The one on Anthony Street.”

“Can I come in? I’d like to speak to you as well.”

The opening in the doorway narrowed even farther. “Oh, this isn’t a sight for your saintly eyes. Good day to you, Patrick.”

The door slammed in his face.

Was it possible Ruby had a man inside? Mick and Ruby were famous for their long, loud, and boisterous marriage of thirty years, but Mick had a roving eye, and maybe Ruby was balancing the scales. Or fencing stolen property. Whatever was going on in that room, he wasn’t welcome inside, so he headed to Anthony Street in search of Mick.