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.
The office itself is nothing special. Big and nice, but not one of those oak-sheathed executive suites you could play jai alai in. Frankly, you see more of those over on this side than in the real world anymore anyway. Memories of Wall Street and the excesses of the Eighties.
An old-school gentleman, Mayor La Guardia pulled out my chair for me and waited for me to sit before circling around his desk and taking his own seat.
“All right then, young lady, how can I help you?”
Oy. Where to start?
Well, I started where I started with all of you: the kidnapping on the way to work, the ambush attempts, being tricked into a contract with Bill Tweed like a rookie (that part was embarrassing, but he needed to have all the information; to my gratitude he just made a sympathetic noise and waved me on), and getting thrown out of the Five Points by Bill the Butcher.
When I was finished, he sighed, stood up, and turned to the window.
The windows had gone dark. Regardless of the view they were showing, there was a storm bearing down on New York.
“You have to understand,” he said. “Bill the Butcher and Bill Tweed are a big deal to all you Economancers and Bureamancers and street mages and whatever, but to me, they were always just The Thug and The Thief. Sometimes I think that’s all that’s left of the men they were, and as much as that may seem impressive to you, as much as it may seem like they’re more or bigger than what they were…believe me, it ain’t. They’re less. They’re smaller. People can build things. The Thug and the Thief can only ruin ‘em.”
He turned back to me.
“Still. They are what they are and they have their place, so we’ve mostly stayed out of each other’s way. If someone wanted to work for them or make a deal with them, well, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot I could do about that.”
My stomach sank when he said that, but I wasn’t surprised. Deals are hard to break on this side.
Then he looked away from the windows, but not at me. He was looking at the floor, talking mostly to himself.
“But this one’s different,” he said. “They see a chance to take over. The Thug or the Thief, forever. And they really can do it. I see the same dark times coming that they do.”
You have to remember, this was all back…before.
Then he looked up at me, and the storm was in his eyes.
“I need you to get in touch with Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie.”
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.
The office itself is nothing special. Big and nice, but not one of those oak-sheathed executive suites you could play jai alai in. Frankly, you see more of those over on this side than in the real world anymore anyway. Memories of Wall Street and the excesses of the Eighties.
An old-school gentleman, Mayor La Guardia pulled out my chair for me and waited for me to sit before circling around his desk and taking his own seat.
“All right then, young lady, how can I help you?”
Oy. Where to start?
Well, I started where I started with all of you: the kidnapping on the way to work, the ambush attempts, being tricked into a contract with Bill Tweed like a rookie (that part was embarrassing, but he needed to have all the information; to my gratitude he just made a sympathetic noise and waved me on), and getting thrown out of the Five Points by Bill the Butcher.
When I was finished, he sighed, stood up, and turned to the window.
The windows had gone dark. Regardless of the view they were showing, there was a storm bearing down on New York.
“You have to understand,” he said. “Bill the Butcher and Bill Tweed are a big deal to all you Economancers and Bureamancers and street mages and whatever, but to me, they were always just The Thug and The Thief. Sometimes I think that’s all that’s left of the men they were, and as much as that may seem impressive to you, as much as it may seem like they’re more or bigger than what they were…believe me, it ain’t. They’re less. They’re smaller. People can build things. The Thug and the Thief can only ruin ‘em.”
He turned back to me.
“Still. They are what they are and they have their place, so we’ve mostly stayed out of each other’s way. If someone wanted to work for them or make a deal with them, well, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot I could do about that.”
My stomach sank when he said that, but I wasn’t surprised. Deals are hard to break on this side.
Then he looked away from the windows, but not at me. He was looking at the floor, talking mostly to himself.
“But this one’s different,” he said. “They see a chance to take over. The Thug or the Thief, forever. And they really can do it. I see the same dark times coming that they do.”
You have to remember, this was all back…before.
Then he looked up at me, and the storm was in his eyes.
“I need you to get in touch with Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie.”