VAN DORN DETECTIVE EDDIE TOBIN, WHOSE lopsided face and drooping left eye were the result of a brutal beating inflicted by the Gophers when he apprenticed with the gang squad, was from Staten Island, a faraway, isolated borough of the city. His family, an extended clan of Tobins, Darbees, Richardses, and Gordons, ran oyster boats out of St. George on the northeast tip of the island. Many of the small, flat, innocent-looking vessels were used to tong oysters. But hidden below the decks of some were powerful gasoline engines enabling them to outrun the harbor squad while smuggling taxable goods, ferrying fugitives away from the police, pirating coal, and retrieving items of cargo that fell from the docks. Young Eddie was honest, despite the childhood spent roving with opportunistic uncles and felonious cousins, which made him an invaluable guide to the immense and sprawling Port of New York.

Isaac Bell asked Eddie where the coal barges that bunkered the Cunard liners at the Chelsea Piers might come from.

“Perth Amboy, Joisey, down where the Arthur Kill and the Raritan enter the Bay.”

“Do you know anyone in the coal yards?”

“Sure.”

“What’s our fastest way down there?”

“Boat.”

“Is your Uncle Donny out of jail?”

“He’d be glad of the job. Poor old guy’s got his boat tuned up but nothing to do, seeing as how the harbor squad is shadowing him.”

Eddie Tobin telephoned a Tomkinsville saloon, where a boy was sent running to the docks. Bell and Eddie caught the Ninth Avenue El down to the Battery. They waited at Pier A, at the tip of Manhattan Island, trading gossip with New York Police Department harbor squad roundsman O’Riordan, whose steam launch was bouncing alongside on the chop stirred by the wind and passing boats.

Eying the waterborne traffic, Bell was struck by the near impossibility of their task. The Acrobat had his pick of seagoing ships getting ready to sail—American and British liners and freighters up the west side of Manhattan, German and French boats across the river in Hoboken, and hundreds across the Lower Bay in Brooklyn—all attended by hundreds of barges and lighters. Every few minutes, the thunder of a steam whistle announced another ship putting to sea.

Roundsman O’Riordan’s eyes suddenly narrowed warily. Donald Darbee’s square-nosed oyster scow was closing on his pier. “Our ride,” Bell explained, slipping the cop a couple of bucks. “Good to see you again, Roundsman. Say hello to the captain.”

Six months of regular hours, square meals, and no booze had done Uncle Donny a world of good. “You look ten years younger, sir,” Bell greeted the scraggly old waterman. “I’ll bet the girls are chasing you with a net.”

“Where you want to go?” Donald Darbee growled.