“I can’t afford the fines for stocking ballast,” said Malcolm. “They know I can’t. I wouldn’t sell out, so they’re gonna ruin me.”
“What do they want the Bee for?”
“Picture house. Showing jingo flicks.”
Aristide waved an indifferent hand “No one will come.”
“That’s not the point. They just want us shut down. Doesn’t matter if they bring in punters. They don’t need ’em.” He uncurled one hand and hissed as sticky wounds reopened. “Poor Dell. Queen’s sake, Ari, ain’t there nothing you can do?”
Aristide shook his head. “Again, I’m sorry.” It was true. He’d come to rather like Cordelia. To trust her. And here she was arrested on his account, probably holding out like a skint blush boy to keep him safe from the Ospies. Must be, or he’d be behind bars by now as well. He didn’t like to think what they’d have to do to make her talk. “You have no idea how much.”
“Don’t I?” Malcolm stood and balled Aristide’s handkerchief between his bloody fists. “She was my girl.” He tossed the red-splotched rag onto the coffee table and stalked out.
Aristide stared at it, bereft of words. Finally, his growling stomach spoke for him. He lifted the little glass bell from its bracket and rang for supper.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Cordelia’s wrist was swollen up, purple and black, and she could feel the edges of crushed bones grinding just beneath the skin. Nobody had offered to splint it. Nobody had offered her water, though her voice had given out with answering the same questions, over and over. Nobody would even tell her what time it was. There weren’t windows, wherever they’d brought her, but from the sticky dryness of her eyes and the exhaustion making her head pound, she guessed it had to be well into the next day. Maybe evening time. She hadn’t gotten more than half an hour’s sleep together, and usually less.
But she hadn’t told them anything, because she wasn’t a bird. One sleepless night wouldn’t get her singing.
They hadn’t put her in a cell, at least. Just a room with four bare walls, a chair, a table. Men came in, asked questions, left. The light stayed on. Sometimes she heard footsteps in the corridor, sometimes muted voices.
She was just starting to nod off again when the door opened and a new sculler came in. Not one of the stout, clerk-faced types that had visited her so far. He was tall and on the thin side, hair clipped close. A badly set break had put his nose crooked. He wore a plain, dark suit, jacket unbuttoned over a rumpled white shirt. No waistcoat. When he pulled the jacket off, his sleeves were already rolled up past the elbow.
He stood across from her, leaning in. Didn’t say anything. She could see the sinews of his forearms ridged beneath the skin. And she saw them tense, seconds before he turned his hands and hooked his fingers underneath the table’s edge. Cordelia scrambled from her chair, but not fast enough. The falling table struck her knee. She reached out to catch herself, forgetting her broken wrist. When she came down, her vision went white. Pain sent electric sizzles through her body.
Opening her eyes, she realized she was lying on the floor, curled up like a baby around her throbbing arm. The thin man stood over her. Down here, she could see the scuffed toes of his boots, and guessed there was steel behind the leather. She thought of her sister, whose man had got her in the belly with boots like these, and the long three days it had taken her to die.
“You gonna ask me any questions?” She squeezed her eyes shut. It was easier to sass him if she couldn’t see. “Or you just gonna start kicking?”
She heard hobnails scrape on wood. Gritting her teeth, she pulled into a tighter ball. The blow was a long time coming, but the thin man would’ve been good on stage: He knew the value of anticipation.
* * *
She held out until the knife. It was a good run, she thought. Might have given Ari time to get out of the city, even.
Sometime after the thin man broke her nose, but before her left eye had swollen shut, a dumpy sculler in a gray suit came and sat across from her, his hands folded primly in his lap. He looked like a pudding, pale and soft, his thinning hair combed neatly over his scalp.
“Hello Miss Lehane,” he said. “I’m Konrad Van der Joost. My colleagues tell me you’ve been somewhat reticent during your questioning.”
She didn’t have the energy to talk smart, so she didn’t say anything.
“Your silence is unfortunate, for us and for you. We are attempting to bring a criminal to justice, and I’m sure you are more than ready to go home.”
Home. She didn’t rotten have one anymore. Not in this city. Not with people like this in charge of things.
“Why don’t you tell me who gave you those papers,” he went on, “and we can all get exactly what we want out of this.”
“Why don’t you stroll off,” she said, summoning the last of her attitude, “and leave me with my friend here.” She jerked her chin at the thin man, who stood at Van der Joost’s shoulder. “We was getting along just fine.”
“Regrettably, Miss Lehane, I will not be strolling anywhere. But please don’t let my presence interrupt your rapport with Rehimov.” He waved the thin man forward with two fingers. Cordelia braced herself, sinking down into the solid foundation of her chair. She latched her good hand under the seat, holding on, but Rehimov grabbed her wrist and yanked her fingers free. One of her nails splintered and she yelped. Van der Joost pursed his lips.
“Now,” he said, as Rehimov pinned Cordelia’s hand to the table. “You have ten fingers, and each finger has three joints. That’s … well, it’s thirty, technically, but the last joint of the thumb is always difficult, or so Rehimov tells me. So let’s say twenty-eight. I thought we’d start with your good hand, and only move on to the broken one if we have to.”
Cordelia realized what he was getting at, and tried to stand. Rehimov sat in her lap, pinning her to the chair, her arm lodged against his ribs. She could feel the grain of the wooden tabletop under her palm, and scrabbled at it, breaking more nails. Rehimov put his own hand over hers, stretching her pinky finger flat. A cold, thin weight came down on her first knuckle.
“Twenty-eight joints,” Van der Joost repeated. “That’s twenty-eight chances to answer one simple question. Who gave you those papers?”
She reeled back, gathering momentum, and slammed her head into Rehimov’s spine. He grunted and gave, but not enough. She was trapped.
“Miss Lehane,” said Van der Joost, irritation creeping into his voice at last. “Patience is not one of my strongest suits. If you think I am toying with you, I suggest you revisit that assumption.”
She couldn’t see Van der Joost nod, or give his silent order, but she felt Rehimov tense, saw his shoulders move. The tip of his knife slid into her knuckle, separating the bones and cutting neatly through the tendons. He did it so quickly, the first of her twenty-eight chances was gone before she even started screaming.
When she subsided into sobs, her cheek resting between Rehimov’s shoulder blades, her tears soaking through his shirt, Van der Joost cleared his throat. He had mastered his irritation, and spoke as calmly as he had before. “So, Miss Lehane,” he said. “Tell me: Who gave you those papers?”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
As he prepared to leave, Aristide opened his tall glass parlor doors onto the balcony so he could listen to the city’s anger. He had friends down there. Lovers. Associates. As he made his final circuit of the flat, he stopped and stared at Baldwin Street.
The crowd had not begun as a riot; it had started with puppets, costumes, songs. Students and artists and actors, the denizens of Baldwin Street and the theatre district, giddy and frightened, acting out. But the comical effigies they had burned earlier were at the bottom of heaped bonfires now, beneath smoldering mattresses and motorcars. Aristide stood at the back of the balcony, listening to the chanting and catcalls. Across the street, a woman in lace knickers and a defaced Ospie jacket—how had she gotten ahold of that?—hefted a gray-
and-white banner and hurled it across a pile of burning detritus. A rock careened out of the crowd and smashed the windows of the dress shop behind the conflagration.
Aristide was on the second story, near enough that the protestors could throw things if they wanted: a fact he was counting on.
“Mr. Makricosta?” He turned and saw Ilse lingering at the parlor door. Her face had a sick green tinge around the lips. “Sir, there’s some folk come to the service entrance with a … well … they asked for you.”
“Ah. Yes. Go to the kitchen, Ilse, and stay there. I’ll take care of it.”
She nodded and fled.
Two men with shipyard muscles waited at the bottom of the service stair. Between them, they carried a laundry basket. From the way their arms were straining, it weighed nearly as much as either of them.
“Come in,” said Aristide. “Can I help you carry?”
The three of them got their burden up the stairs and into Aristide’s flat with no small amount of cursing. He directed them with jerks of his chin to the parlor, where they set the basket down.
“Did you have any trouble,” panted Aristide, “getting here from Pellu’s?”
“Did we?” One of the men wiped his forehead with a striped kerchief. He had a cut over his eye. “Had to fight our way through like it were a war.”
“Thank you,” said Aristide. “Wait here for just a moment.” He went to his office and came back with two fat envelopes. “You were never here, understand?”
“We know the routine.” The second workman tucked his payment into his canvas jacket. “In, out, and nobody the wiser. Good luck with ’im, whatever you’re planning.”
Together, they wrestled the linen-wrapped contents of the laundry basket onto the sofa. Then, the two men left and Aristide was alone with … well. He pulled back the sheet and stared into a face almost like his own, slack with death.
About a week ago, a friend in the Royal Arms Paupers’ Hospital had tipped him off to an anonymous Chuli corpse, which he’d claimed and passed on to a colluding undertaker, one Mr. Pellu. The dead man matched Aristide’s height and weight, roughly, and his bone structure was similar. Charred beyond recognition, that was all they’d need. He didn’t have the same charming gap in his teeth, but Aristide’s dental records were not on file anywhere the Ospies would find them, and neither Amberlough’s coroner nor her assistants had intimate experience with his smile.
Though Pellu had kept the corpse on ice, a week of death had done its work. The flesh around the man’s eyes had sunk into his sockets, and a faint smell of corruption clung to him like rank cologne. But the fire would take care of that, and burn away the gaping knife wound in his gut.
He arranged the dead man on the sofa and, when his body was propped upright, paused to touch his cheek.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling only moderately foolish. The poor creature had probably been stabbed anonymously in an alley and dumped for the night nurses to find. A senseless death, but at least now it wasn’t entirely without purpose.
Aristide slipped out of his dressing gown—Niori silk embroidered with explosive peonies—and wrapped it around the dead man’s shoulders. His slumped body was otherwise naked, stripped of any identifying clothes or effects. If anything remained after the fire, it would be scraps of Aristide’s robe.
In the kitchen, Ilse was washing the breakfast dishes. Aristide almost laughed. He started opening drawers, shuffling through foreign implements. Finally, she put down her rag and rounded on him.
“You’re making a mess,” she said. “What are you looking for?”
He bit the inside of his cheek. “Shears.”
“Why?” She wiped her hands on her apron, leaving wet splotches.
His hand moved, unconsciously, to the braid hanging over his shoulder. He forced it back to his side, but she’d seen him.
“Ah. I’ll get my sewing kit.”
She passed him on her way out, and he caught her arm. “Thank you. And … I’d avoid the parlor.”
In less than a minute, she was back with a comb, a pair of bright silver shears, and a smaller set of thread snips.
“You should’ve asked,” she said. “If you try to do it yourself, it always comes out crooked.”
“I don’t need anything fancy,” he said. “Just … take it all off.”
She lifted the braid and he shut his eyes, as if that would stop him feeling the bite of the scissors. But it didn’t come.
“You’re sure?” she asked. His scalp prickled as she hefted the weight of his hair.
“Just do it, Ilse. I haven’t got much time.”
She tched. “No need to be so snappish.” Then, without ceremony, she sliced clean through his plait.
* * *
He sent her home after that, with another one of the dwindling stack of fat white envelopes from his safe.
“It might be for the best if you got out of the city for a while,” he told her. “You have an aunt who lives in the weald, don’t you?”
She nodded, and pocketed the cash.
“Go to her. Don’t come back if you don’t have to, not for a month at least. Are all your things out of the flat?”
Lifting a voluminous handbag, she said, “This is the last of it. Most I took home on my night off.”
“Good girl.” He looked around the office once more and squeezed her shoulder. “Now, stroll off. Do you have a gun?”
She shook her head.
“Do you want one?”
She shook her head again, more violently.
“Well, be careful. Take a hack if you can find one. There’s more than plenty in there for the fare. Now, go.”
And she did.
Left alone under the high ceilings of his flat, Aristide changed into a cheap suit of itchy brown wool—the kind of thing a farmer might wear, on his one big trip to the city—and secreted a snub-nosed revolver in his pocket.
In his scuffed white canvas duffle, there was a heavy overcoat, because the nights in Currin would already be cold, and getting colder. An oilskin, for the relentless rain and mist. Other clothes and sundries. And at the very bottom, sewn into the lining, a rope of golden pearls he couldn’t sell but couldn’t bear to burn. The rest of his jewels had been converted to more liquid currency.
He emptied his safe into the sack as well—a few more envelopes of cash to use as needed. An emergency roll of large bills wrapped inside a few disguising smaller denominations. And a thin packet he slipped carefully against the side of the duffle, curving it with the canvas so it wouldn’t wrinkle.
He set the bag by the service stair and went into the kitchen. Ilse had ordered a drum of paraffin, at his request, last week. Aristide dragged it out into the parlor, where his doppelgänger rested on the sofa. With a heave, he toppled it over at the dead man’s feet. Oil soaked the carpet, wicking through the thick white pile.
Aristide dragged the barrel across the room, letting the last of the stuff drain out. Outside, glass broke. He could hear the crash over the noise of the crowd. Then, the high keening of an ACPD whistle. He had to hurry, before the hounds and the mob really got into it.
He left the barrel by the sofa and went to the bar. Set behind the brandy and port, there was a bottle of white blinder—grain alcohol. He tucked it under his arm, settled into his secondhand boots, and stopped to look around one last time.
The corpse in his flowery dressing gown reclined against the arm of the sofa as if asleep. Above him, crystals on the chandelier swayed in a breeze off the street. A bouquet on the coffee table dropped a petal. When Aristide breathed deep, hoping to catch the last, lingering scent of flowers, of cigarette smoke and perfume, all he smelled was kerosene.
A gunshot in the street shook him out of his reverie. He went down the service stair, shouldering his rucksack, and paused in the alcove to light a cigarette and open the bottle of liquor. Wrinkling his nose at the fumes, he took a scrap of calico from his breast pocket and stuffed it into the open neck of the bottle. Then,
pulling a broad-brimmed felt hat low over his eyes, he went out into the alley, and from there, to the street.
* * *
He held a hand to his face to keep his cigarette safe from careless elbows. It didn’t stop the crowd from stepping on his feet or shouting in his face. At the south end of the block, a cordon of ACPD officers fought their way forward with truncheons and heavy coshes. Aristide headed for the center of the street. There was a makeshift podium built from a chair set on stacked shipping pallets, where students had been making wild orations earlier in the day. Aristide looked around swiftly and levered himself up. Exposed for an uncomfortable moment to the gazes of the rioters and the police, he lit the rag of his makeshift bomb with his cigarette, took aim, and hurled it over his own balcony.
Blue-and-orange flames exploded between the decorative wrought iron. One of the hounds blew a whistle, but Aristide was already down off the podium and pushing his way through the crowd. He didn’t stop until he hit the end of the block and could duck around the corner. Pressed against the sun-warm brick of a kebab shop, he looked back the way he had come. Fire filled the windows of his flat and licked out the open doors, reaching for the third story. Pity he couldn’t have warned his neighbors. But uncanny foresight might have made his subsequent tragic death suspicious.
The mob thinned out off of Baldwin Street proper. Looters were at work already, shattering shop windows and hauling off their spoils. Aristide kept one hand hooked in his jacket pocket, ready to reach for his pistol if anyone looked at him wrong. No one did; they were all preoccupied with their politics and thievery.
* * *
Loendler Park was worse than he’d hoped. He should have known. Radicals of all persuasions loved to use the bandstand for their speechifying.
Still, he found the girl he was looking for. They’d agreed to meet here, pending Aristide’s signal: the call he’d made yesterday afternoon to his contact in the office of the Clarion.
She was pressed against a crooked tree in the center of the ramble, her bony back flush with the bark. She kept her shoulders crunched up near her ears, as though she wanted to sink into her own body like a tortoise and hide. The noise outside the tangled branches was incredible.
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