Mock Duck and Doyers Street: Guest Post by Radha Vatsal

Inspired by real events, my mystery  No. 10 Doyers Street tells of a woman journalist from India who becomes embroiled in the case of the legendary Chinatown gangster, Mock Duck, and his young daughter in 1900s New York City.
 
Scarcely out of his twenties, Mock Duck is already a legend when the story begins. His fame has spread far and wide, and Chinatown locals attribute superhuman qualities to him. The narrator of No. 10 Doyers Street, journalist Archana Morley, notes, “His dead, expressionless eyes gazed from the backs of playing cards and souvenir matchboxes. Street urchins sang ditties in his honor. They said that he could hear a pin drop, see around corners, and that his rhinoceros-thick skin protected him from injury.”
 
Doyers Street, where Mock lives with his family, functions like a character in the novel. 
 
“No more than a few hundred feet long and maybe ten or twelve feet wide, [Doyers] hung from Pell like a sock on a line, bent sharply at the heel, and emptied out onto Chatham Square and the Bowery.”
 

 
Early on in the novel, Archana learns that the authorities want to get rid of Mock—and destroy Doyers. In fact, she learns that New York City’s ambitious mayor wants to get rid of Chinatown entirely. Standing on the steps of City Hall, across the street from Newspaper Row, where Archana works for the New York Observer, Mayor McClellan declares:
 
“Chinatown is a slum, a hotbed of vice, not to mention a fire hazard. It is a blight on our metropolis. The time has come for us to take a stand. The time has come to say, ‘no more’… The tenements on Pell, Mott, and Doyers Streets must be demolished.’”
 
But Archana is drawn to Chinatown and the people who live there—no matter the neighborhood’s reputation for bloodshed and violence. When she visits the neighborhood, she sees that:
 
“Shops were open, and people were out. Signs hung everywhere, both vertically and horizontally: from awnings, balconies, fire escapes, and grilles attached to walls and lampposts. Most displayed only Oriental characters; others also announced their goods and services in English. Clock Repairs. Shoes. Herbal Medicine.

A ragged urchin approached, his hand outstretched. I threw in a penny. A fellow pushed a wheelbarrow loaded high with crates of squawking chickens. Men in quilted vests transported loads on handcarts or from tumplines looped across their foreheads. Nuts and seeds in all colors and sizes overflowed from sacks outside a grocery store. I could have been in Canton…I could have been in Calcutta, but I couldn’t afford to become complacent.”
 
Archana realizes there’s more than meets the eye going on, and when agents of the Children’s Society raid Mock’s home and seize his daughter, she begins to investigate. 
 
Her quest for the truth leads her deeper into Chinatown and into Mock Duck’s shadowy world. She meets figures like Tom Lee, Mock Duck’s chief rival and the self-proclaimed “mayor of Chinatown.” And she uses her outsider perspective to figure out who and what to believe at a time when New York City was undergoing major transformations.
 
Quotes from No. 10 Doyers Street by Radha Vatsal

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Radha Vatsal is the author of the acclaimed Kitty Weeks mystery novels. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, she earned her Ph.D. in Film History from Duke University and has worked as a film curator, political speechwriter, and freelance journalist. She lives in NYC.