Conned: A Bureau Story (The Bureau Book 6)

by Kim Fielding

  “I need to talk to you,” Donne growled.

  Abe simply nodded. He took Rosie gently by the arm and led her down the hall, surreptitiously offering her five dollars at the door. She took it but paused with her hand on the knob. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  “I’m fine.”

  “That was—”

  “I’ll explain another time, sweetheart.”

  She scrunched her mouth together. “But that big fella, he don’t look too safe.”

  “Nothing worthwhile ever is. I’ll see you tomorrow, Rosie.” He gave her a gentle push out the door and locked it behind her. Then he turned and walked back to face Donne.

  7

  Thomas was accustomed to anger, but it usually sat cold, heavy, and permanent—like an iceberg in his chest. Now, though, his anger was searing-hot and wickedly sharp. The fear and uncertainty were new, although the anguish wasn’t. He’d thought it buried deeply inside, but here it was again, as fresh as the day it first hit him.

  He stood in France’s parlor and resisted the urge to draw his gun.

  Most of the séance had been innocuous. Quite literally parlor tricks. Well-executed, yes, but the gullible marks had done most of the magic themselves, eagerly swallowing whatever tripe France fed them.

  But the end….

  France returned to the room alone, his face pale and eyes bleak. He didn’t seem frightened of Thomas, which was a surprise. But he looked exhausted. “Do you want a drink? Not that stuff”—he waved at the glasses of watered wine—“but a real drink.”

  The offer calmed Thomas. “All right.”

  “Follow me.”

  France led him to a small kitchen. Nothing mystical about it; the white cabinets and bright curtains were almost shockingly homey. “Have a seat.”

  The wooden table was small and round, its top scarred from years of use. Thomas sat with his back to the corner and watched as France filled two glasses with clear liquid from a bottle. Before bringing the drinks over, France removed his evening coat and hung it on a hook, then rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal wiry forearms. He set the glasses on the table and took the other seat.

  “L’chaim.” He lifted his glass, took a healthy slug, and laughed.

  “Why is that funny?”

  “It means to life. Ironic, yeah?”

  Frowning, Thomas tried a swallow. The stuff was stronger than he expected, hot and smooth on his throat. “What is it?”

  “Slivovitz. Plum brandy.”

  Thomas nodded and drank some more. France silently drained his own glass, fetched the bottle, and refilled them both.

  “What happened to your accent?” Thomas asked, although that was the least relevant question at the moment. But the heavy Eastern European tones had disappeared, replaced with American ones.

  “I put it away, along with my other props.”

  “You’re good at it.”

  France chuckled. “I spent my first six years in Budapest. When we got to New York, my parents insisted we all talk in English instead of Hungarian or Yiddish, but they never stopped sounding like foreigners. I can pick it up again whenever I need to.”

  Budapest. And he was Jewish too. “What’s your real name?”

  “Abraham Ferencz. My parents called me Avi. Nowadays people mostly call me Abe. You can call me whatever the hell you want to.” He squinted one eye. “And you’re Tommy Donne from England.”

  “Thomas,” he snapped, ignoring the fresh kick to his gut. “How did you know that?” He’d given only his last name when he phoned to reserve a spot at the séance. “And how did you know about—” He gritted his teeth and glared at his glass.

  “About Albert?” France—no, Abe, apparently—finished the sentence gently.

  “Yes.”

  After remaining silent for a moment, Abe nodded to himself. “Tell you what. You got questions, I got questions. You answer mine and I answer yours.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I guess we can start with why the hell you’ve come here. I don’t think you had any intention of talking to dead people.”

  Dammit. In the thick of everything else, Thomas had almost forgotten his original goals. “I came to talk about dead people. One in particular. I’m a private dick.” He removed a card from his pocket and slid it across the table.

  Abe didn’t touch it but bent down to read it. “Thomas Donne, Private Investigator. All right, Thomas. What are you investigating?”

  “A murder.”

  “Who was murdered?”

  “Roy Gage.” Thomas watched Abe’s reaction very closely.

  The blood drained from Abe’s face and his eyes widened. Then he dropped his head and muttered something in another language. Yiddish, Thomas thought. Abe’s eyes were shiny when he straightened again and polished off his second glass. He might be a consummate actor—he was a skilled performer, after all—but Thomas didn’t believe this was a put-on. Until this moment, Abe hadn’t known the kid was dead.

  “What happened?” Abe’s voice sounded rough.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “And that’s why you came here—to investigate me.”

  “He worked for you.”

  “Sometimes, yeah.” Abe filled his glass for the third time. “He was— I saw him last night. I had a stage show and he assisted me.”

  “I know.” Thomas opted not to reveal that he’d been there. No reason to give away more information than needed. “Do you know who killed him?”

  Abe pressed his lips together and shook his head slowly. “Could be…. He had a rough time of it growing up. He is—he was—smart, really smart. Could have made something of himself if life hadn’t fucked him. But his father killed Roy’s mother when Roy was nine. The old man’s doing life in San Quentin, and Roy was mostly on his own. Boys like that end up hardened. They have to be, to survive.”

  Thomas wouldn’t argue with that; he’d seen plenty of those hard boys on both sides of the Atlantic. But none of this was useful information. “So?”

  “So he had his fingers in a lot of things he shouldn’t have.” Abe huffed a laugh that was almost a sob. “I first hired him years ago, after he tried to pick my pocket. Nimble hands are helpful for a magician’s assistant.”

  “Did you fuck him?”

  Instead of anger, Abe responded with a grin. “No. I like men, not boys.”

  I like men. Those three words rocked Thomas like a blow. He wasn’t surprised that Abe was queer, but Thomas had never met anyone who admitted this so baldly. He’d experienced veiled euphemisms and meaningful looks, but never a man stating his preference so openly and plainly without a hint of shame. Abe stared knowingly at Thomas, as if he were dead certain that Thomas felt the same.

  But he knows about Albert, doesn’t he?

  Thomas pushed away that intrusive thought. He’d suss out that trickery soon enough, after he’d discovered any information pertinent to the murder.

  “Did he do any other work for you?”

  “When he was younger he’d run errands for me sometimes—anything to earn a nickel or two. Lately, though, he rarely works for me at all. Enough money in his pocket from other sources. Honestly, I think he mostly stayed because he enjoyed being on stage. He could have made a fine magician if he’d had the patience for it.” Abe sighed, emptied his glass, and poured again.

  He must have been at least a little drunk by now, yet his large eyes remained clear, amber in the bright light of the kitchen. Everything about the man was warm, it seemed: his gemstone eyes, his olive-toned skin, his coffee-colored hair that showed no gray. Thomas wondered if he also felt hot to the touch.

  No. That was not the point of this visit at all.

  Thomas wanted a cigarette very badly but didn’t take out his tobacco; he knew his fingers would shake. But then Abe rose, crossed to his evening coat, and as if he’d read Thomas’s mind, returned with a gold cigarette case and a silver-and-enamel lighter. He lit two cigaret
tes and handed one to Thomas before sitting down again.

  “Who else did Gage work for?” Thomas asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to get mixed up in any of that.”

  “You think you’re too good for that? You con people for a living.”

  Again, Abe smiled instead of becoming angry. “I do. But you’ve seen it yourself—they want to be fooled. Some of them leave lighter in their hearts after speaking with the dead. The rest were at least entertained.”

  “They’re not speaking with the dead,” Thomas growled.

  “That doesn’t matter. They think they have. And I’ve harmed no one.” Abe leaned forward. “But now it’s my turn to ask a question. Who hired you?”

  Thomas didn’t answer.

  Abe tapped his cigarette into a chipped ceramic ashtray and looked thoughtful. “Roy has no family members who’d care, poor boy. So was it those gonefs—the villains he worked for?”

  Thomas couldn’t have answered that question honestly if he’d wanted to. He wasn’t sure whether Townsend was a villain and didn’t know if he’d employed Gage. Both were quite possible. “Can’t tell you,” he said.

  “You can’t say who hired you; I don’t know who hired Roy. It doesn’t sound as if we have anything to offer each other.” Definitely a tease there, or a challenge of some sort.

  “Who did Gage leave with last night?”

  “After my show, you mean? That was Leo Zook.”

  “You know him.”

  “We’ve met.” Abe shrugged. “He goes home with Roy sometimes. Maybe he pays Roy—I don’t know. But he’s not a criminal. He sells jewelry at Gump’s.”

  Thomas waved away Abe’s easy assumption. Someone with a straight job during the day could just as easily be a crook at night; Thomas had seen that plenty of times. In fact, it was often the well-respected businessmen who were the biggest scoundrels of all.

  “All right.” Thomas helped himself to another cigarette and the lighter but didn’t take any more slivovitz. “Is there anything else you can tell me about who might have killed Gage?”

  “No. I’m sorry. But I hope you find him. Roy was no angel, but he didn’t deserve this.”

  Thomas could poke a little longer, but he doubted it would get him anywhere. Abe sat there, burning like the devil himself but unsinged, downing plum brandy as if it were water. Drawing Thomas in as if he’d hooked him on a line.

  “How do you know about Albert?” Thomas’s voice almost caught on the name.

  Abe slumped in his chair, suddenly ten years older. He reached for his glass and considered it a moment before refilling it. By now the bottle was almost empty. “The guests at my séances, they believe my lies because they want to. You won’t believe my truth because you don’t want to.” He tapped his chest with two fingers. “Belief is here, my friend. Not here.” He tapped his head.

  “I believe facts.”

  “Facts! Der oylem iz a goylem. My father used to say that. Do you know what it means?”

  “No.”

  “People are idiots. He was wrong, though. It’s the world that’s stupid. We just try to make the best of it that we can.”

  Thomas finished off his slivovitz, grabbed the bottle, and poured the rest into his glass. “I’m not here to talk in riddles.”

  “Fine. Here’s how I know about Albert.” His face drained of expression. “Most of my spiel is utter nonsense. But the part about the veil? That’s mostly true. The dead pass on, move away. I don’t know where they go. Heaven? Hell? I have no clue. Some of them don’t progress, though. They remain near the border for reasons of their own. Sometimes they’re strong enough to reach across on their own—those are ghosts, but they’re rare. Others, though, they need to find something on this side to latch on to, or more often, someone. And some of us are easier for them to reach.”

  “Because of your dead twin.” Thomas blew a long plume of smoke.

  “I never had a twin.”

  “Then why?”

  Abe raised his palms. “Ver vaist? Why was my cousin Sara born with a clubfoot?”

  “So you see ghosts.”

  “I told you, ghosts are something different. I hear spirits speaking from the other side. And once in a while, one of those spirits crosses over—crosses into me, you understand? Shares my body like two men squeezing into a single coat.” He shuddered.

  Thomas raised an eyebrow. This was, of course, the rubbish that made Abe a nice little living, that brought people to his cozy house at five dollars a head. A good enough scam that it wouldn’t eat too much at his conscience. “How do you know about Albert?” he growled.

  The planes of Abe’s face toughened and his eyes went hard, like fire turned suddenly to ice. He stood slowly and paced the short length of the kitchen. When he turned back to face Thomas, that full upper lip was lifted in a sneer. “His name was Albert Dixon but you called him Birdie—with a d, not a t—because he talked a lot and you said he twittered like a bird. You met in 1916, not long before the Battle of the Somme, when you were transferred to his division. The moment he first laid eyes on you, he decided to seduce you.”

  Thomas’s rushing heartbeat threatened to drown out Abe’s quiet voice. He lurched out of his chair and across the kitchen. By the time he reached Abe, the familiar weight of his Smith & Wesson was heavy in his hand.

  Abe didn’t back away, didn’t flinch. Didn’t appear surprised or frightened. In fact, warmth returned to his eyes and the corners of his mouth lifted into a sorrowful smile. “He loved you, Tommy. Even when the fever took him and his lungs filled, he was thinking of you.”

  Roaring, Thomas rushed forward, driving Abe back and pinning him against the wall. He held him there with the bulk of his body, the gun trapped between them. “Shut up!” he shouted into Abe’s face.

  Abe reached up with both hands, laced his fingers into Thomas’s hair, and pulled his head closer. And he kissed him.

  Scorching hot, strong but soft, and tasting of sweet plums. A kiss to get lost in and be both grateful and chastened for having been led astray. A sorcerer’s kiss, a sublime trickery, an inferno that consumed intellect and wisdom and self-restraint. The gun was still there, but so was Abe’s cock, hard through the fabric of his trousers. Thomas pushed against it with his own.

  Somehow Abe escaped from beneath him—but that was no miracle; he was a magician, after all. Instead of moving away, he grasped Thomas’s shoulders and shoved him back against the cabinet. Gently took the gun from Thomas’s slack hand and set it on the counter. Dropped to his knees and unfastened Thomas’s fly.

  Thomas had thought Abe’s mouth was hot when they kissed, but that was nothing compared to the molten slickness that enveloped him. He braced himself on his hands and closed his eyes, aroused almost as much by the obscene licking and sucking noises as he was by the friction. The sight of Abe’s bobbing head would have been too much. Abe proved as agile with his mouth as with his hands, and when Thomas gave a few inquiring thrusts, Abe moaned around him and pulled Thomas’s hips forward, encouraging him to go deeper.

  Thomas spilled with a guttural cry.

  As he was replacing his clothing with shaking hands, Abe gathered Thomas’s coat and hat and handed them over. His reddened lips were a little swollen, and hectic color had appeared on his cheeks. His hair stood in frantic curls. But his expression was serene.

  “Don’t forget your gun,” he said, waving toward the counter.

  “I could have shot you.”

  “Sometimes I like to catch the bullet.”

  8

  Abe didn’t have dinner that night. He tidied up the parlor: putting away the slates, washing the wine glasses, and straightening the chairs. When he cleaned up the kitchen, he drank the last few drops of slivovitz from Donne’s glass. And then he went upstairs, stripped naked, and sat in front of an open window in his dark bedroom.

  Although the street was quiet, he could hear the clatter of streetcars over on California. Lights glowed in the windows of the
houses opposite. He liked to imagine he could smell the ocean, even though it was many blocks away.

  “Are you still there, Birdie?” he whispered. Nobody answered. No surprise, since he hadn’t felt the spirit’s presence since the séance ended. But the sensation lingered within him, just as the taste of Donne lingered on his lips.

  Quite suddenly he wondered about Roy Gage’s spirit. He hoped the death had been quick and he’d moved on effortlessly.

  Who was Donne working for, and what did his employer want? No use wasting thoughts on those questions; Abe was a magician, not a detective.

  Tomorrow was Saturday, and he hadn’t scheduled any séances. Perhaps he’d go for a swim at the Sutro Baths and then take himself out for a nice dinner. Or maybe he’d do a bit of shopping, followed by a visit to his former mentor, whom he hadn’t seen in months. Emil was in his late seventies and had looked somewhat drawn the last time they’d met, as if he’d been battling an illness.

  For now, though, Abe sat at the window and stared out into the night.

  9

  Thomas took dinner at Bianchi’s. Bertha had long since gone home, replaced by a surly relative of Bianchi’s who sometimes liked to pretend he didn’t understand English. Afterward, Thomas stopped to buy some tobacco and cigarette papers and then restlessly strolled the streets.

  He seriously considered contacting Detective Munroe to ask for help in tracking down Leo Zook. He decided against it, however, on the principle that he didn’t want to have to share his fee.

  Somehow he ended up at the Embarcadero, leaning against a rail and looking down at the dark water. He’d been a good swimmer as a lad but hadn’t tried it since the war. The bay would be cold, saturating his clothing at once and dragging him down. He’d die with his lungs full of fluid, just as Birdie had, although Birdie had met his end on dry ground.

  A memory came to him of a rest camp in Flanders. He and Birdie had managed to get their four days there together. It had been lovely to get clean and dry, to eat decent food, and to simply relax over card games. When the other soldiers had become involved in a football game, Thomas and Birdie had snuck off to a tent. If anyone had found them, Birdie had a ready-made story about needing his feet tended to. Nobody would have believed the tale, but they might have pretended to. In any case, Birdie and Thomas weren’t discovered, and they spent almost an hour passionately trying to forget about the war.