by Gorman, Ed
A body.
Even without seeing his face, she knew it was Thomas, his fair hair floating like kelp, the shirt she herself had patched billowing around him like sea foam. A wave broke against the piling of the pier and one of his hands was thrust momentarily to the surface, puffy and raw: the fish and harbor creatures had already been to feast.
Anna stared awhile, and then maneuvered the boat around. She rowed quietly back to the ladder, tied up the dinghy, and headed home.
She brought the bottle of rum to her room, drank until the cold was chased away and she could feel her fingers again. Then she drank a good deal more. She changed back into her own clothing and, keeping her father’s advice in mind, opened her Bible. In an old habit, she let it fall open where it would, closing her eyes and placing a finger on the text. The candle burned low while she read, waiting for someone to come and tell her Thomas Hoyt was dead.
• • •
Hook Miller came to the burial on Copp’s Hill. As he made his way up to where Anna stood, the crowd of neighbors — there were nearly fifty of them, for nothing beat a good funeral — doffed their hats out of respect to his standing. Miller’s clothes were showy but ill-suited to him, Anna knew, and he pretended concern that was as foreign to him as a clean handkerchief. He even waited decently before he approached her, and those nearby heard a generous offer of aid to the widow, so that she could retreat to a quieter life elsewhere.
The offering price was still an affront. When she shook her head, he nodded sadly, said he’d be back when she was more composed. She knew it wasn’t solicitousness but the eyes of the neighborhood that made him so nice. The next time Miller approached her, it would be in private. There would be no refusing that offer.
When Seaver came in for his drink later, she avoided his glance. She’d already made up her mind.
• • •
The next morning, she sent a note to Hook Miller. No reason to be seen going to him, when there was nothing more natural than for him to come to the tavern. And if his visit stood out among others, why, she was a propertied widow now, who had to keep an eye to the future.
He didn’t bother knocking, came in as if he already owned the place, and barred the door behind him. She was standing behind a chair, waiting, a bottle of wine on the table, squat-bodied and long-necked, along with two of her best glasses, polished to gleaming. One was half-filled, half-drunk. The fire was low, and there were only two candles lit.
He bowed and sat without being asked. His breath was thick with harsh New England rum. “Well?”
“I can’t sell the place. I’d be left with nothing.”
Miller was silent at first, but his eyes narrowed. “And?”
Anna straightened. “Marry me. That way ... the place will be yours, and I’ll be ... looked after.”
“You didn’t sign it over to Thomas.”
“Thomas Hoyt was as thick as two short planks. I couldn’t trust him to find his arse with both hands.”
Thomas’s absence now was not discussed.
Miller pondered. “If I do, you’ll sign the Queen’s Arms over to me.”
“The day we wed.” Her father had given her the hope and the means, but then slowly, painfully, she’d discovered she couldn’t keep the place alone. She swallowed. “I can’t do this by myself.”
“And what benefit to me to marry you?”
Her hours of thought had prepared the answer. “You’ll get a property you’ve always wanted, and with it, an eye and an ear to everything that happens all along the waterfront. More than that: respectability. This whole neighborhood is getting nothing but richer, and you’d be in the middle of it. What better way to advance than through deals with the merchant nobs themselves? To say nothing of window dressing for your other ... affairs.”
Miller laughed, then stopped, considered what she was saying. “Sharp. And a clever wife to entertain my new friends? It makes sense.”
“Those merchants, they’re no more than a step above hustling themselves. We can be of use to each other,” she said carefully. She’d almost said need, but that would have been fatal. “Wine?”
He looked at her, looked at the bottle, the one empty glass. “Thanks.”
She poured, the ruby liquid turning blood-black in the green-tinged glasses, against the dark of the room.
He stared at the glass, his brow furrowing. “I’ve more of a mind for beer, if you don’t mind.”
She looked disappointed, but didn’t press him. “You’ll have to get a head for wine if you expect to move up in the world.” She rose and slid a pewter mug from a peg on the wall, then filled it from the large barrel behind her bar.
Miller smiled, thanked her. She raised her glass to him, sipped. He saluted and drank too.
It was then he noticed the large Bible on the table next to them. He reached over, flipped through carelessly.
“Too much theater for one about to be so soon remarried, don’t you think?” He flicked through the pages, as if looking for something he could make use of. “Devotion doesn’t play. Not around here, anyway.”
Anna suppressed her feelings at seeing him handle the book so roughly. She shut it firmly, moved it away. “My father said it was the only book besides my ledger to heed.”
Miller shrugged. Piety was unexpected, especially after her reaction — or lack thereof — to her husband’s murder, but who could pretend to understand a woman? Her reaction aroused him, however. Any resistance did. “Let me see what I’ll be getting myself into. Lift your skirts.”
Anna had known it would come to this; still, she hesitated. Only a moment. But before Hook had to say another word, she bunched up the silk, slippery in her sweaty palms, and raised her skirts to her thighs. Miller reached out, grabbed the ribbon of her garter, and pulled. It slithered out of its knot, draped itself over his fist. He leaned forward, slid a finger over the top of her stocking, then collapsed onto the table. His head hit hard, and he didn’t say another word.
Repulsed, Anna unhooked his finger from her stocking, let his hand fall heavily, smack against the chair leg. She straightened her stocking, retied her garter, then picked up the heavy Bible. She hesitated, gulping air, then, remembering her father’s words and the fourth chapter of Judges, nodded.
I must be better than this. I must manage.
She reached into the cracked binding of the Bible and withdrew a long steel needle. Its point picked up the light from the candle and glittered. Her breath held, she stood over the unconscious man, then, aiming carefully, she drove it deep into his ear.
Shortly, with a grunt, a shudder, a sigh, Miller stopped breathing.
• • •
She had been afraid she’d been too stingy, miscalculated the dose, unseen in the bottom of the pewter mug, not wanting to warn him with the smell of belladonna or have it spill as it waited on the peg. Her father had been frailer, older, and when she could stand his rasping, rattling breathing no longer, could wait no longer to begin her own plans for the Queen’s Arms, she had mixed a smaller amount into his beer. No matter: either the poison or the needle had done its work on Hook Miller.
Anna threw the rest of the beer onto the floor, followed it with the last of the wine from the bottle. No sense in taking chances. She had a long night ahead of her. She could barely move Hook on her own. Slender though she was, she was strong from hauling water and kegs and wood from the time she could walk, but he was nearly two hundred pounds of dead meat. She’d planned this, though, with as much meticulousness as she planned everything in her life. Everything that could be anticipated, that is. Thomas’s ill-conceived greediness she hadn’t counted on, nor Miller’s interest in her place. These were hard lessons and dearly bought.
She would be better. She would manage.
She went to the back, brought out the barrow used to move stock. With careful work, and a little luck, Anna tipped Miller from his chair into the barrow, and, struggling to keep her balance, wheeled him out of the public room into the back kitche
n ell. She left him there, out of sight, and checked again that the back door was still barred. She twitched the curtain so that it hung completely over the small window.
Lighting a taper from the fireplace, she considered her plan. A change of clothes, from silk into something for scut work. She had hours of dirty business ahead of her, as bad and dirty as slaughtering season, but really, it was no different from butchering a hog.
A small price to pay for her freedom and the time to plan how better to keep it.
Holding the taper, she hurried up the narrow back stairs to the chamber over the public room. When she opened the door, her breath caught in her throat. There was a lit candle on the table across from her bed.
Adam Seaver was sitting in her best chair.
Anna felt her mouth parch. Although she’d half expected to be interrupted in her work, she hadn’t thought it would be in her own chamber. But Seaver had wanted to see what she’d do — he’d said so himself. She swallowed two or three times before she could ask.
“How?”
“You should nail up that kitchen window. It’s too easy to reach in and shove the bar from the door. Then up the stairs, just as you yourself came. But not before I watched you with Miller.” He pulled an unopened bottle from his pocket, cut the red wax from the stopper, opened it. “I’ll pour my own drinks, thanks. What is the verse? ‘After she gave him drink, Jael went unto him with a peg of the tent and smote the nail into his temple’?”
“Near enough.”
“A mistake teaching women to read. But then, if you couldn’t read, you couldn’t figure your books, and you wouldn’t have such a brisk business as you do.” He drank. “A double-edged sword. But as nice a bit of needlework as I’ve ever seen from a lady.”
Keep breathing, Anna. You’re not done yet. “What now?” She thought of the pistol in the trunk by the bed, the knife under her pillow. They might as well have been at the bottom of the harbor.
“A bargain. You’re a widow with a tavern, I’m the agent of an important man. You also have a prime piece of real estate, and an eye on everything that happens along here. And, it seems, an eye to advancement. I think we can deal amiably enough, and to our mutual benefit.”
At that moment, Anna almost wished Seaver would just cut her throat. She’d never be free of this succession of men, never able to manage by herself. The rage welled up in her, as it had never done before, and she thought she would choke on it. Then she remembered the paper hidden in her shoe, the document that made the tavern and its business wholly her own, and how she’d fought for it. She’d be damned before she handed it over to another man.
But she saw Seaver watching her carefully and it came to her. Perhaps like Miller not immediately grasping that the obvious next move for him was civil life and nearly legitimate trade — with all its fat skimming — she was not ambitious enough. Instead of mere survival, relying on the tavern, she could parlay it into more. Working with Seaver, who, after all, was only the errand boy of one of the most powerful — and dangerous — men in New England, she might do more than survive. She saw the beginning of a much wider, much richer future.
The whole world open to her, if she kept sharp. If she could be better than she was.
She went over to the mantel, took down a new bottle, opened it, poured herself a drink. Raised the glass.
She would pour her own drinks, and Seaver would pour his own.
She would manage.
“To our mutual benefit,” she toasted.
• • •
DANA CAMERON uses her archaeological training to explore the darker side of humanity — and the past — in fiction. Her “colonial noir” story, “Femme Sole,” was honored with Edgar and Agatha nominations. She’s not afraid of werewolves and vampires, either; her urban fantasy “The Night Things Changed” (Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, 2009) won an Agatha and a Macavity. More “Fangborn” stories are on the way, starting with “Swing Shift” in the MWA anthology Crimes by Moonlight (2010). A member of the American Crime Writers League, The Femmes Fatales, Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime, Dana lives in Massachusetts with her husband and feline overlords. Learn more at www.danacameron.com.
THE DARK ISLAND
By Brendan DuBois
Boston Harbor
She was waiting for me when I came back from the corner store and I stopped, giving her a quick scan. She had on a dark blue dress, black sensible shoes, and a small blue hat balanced on the back of thick brown hair. A small black leather purse was held in her hands, like she knew she was in a dangerous place and was frightened to lose it. On that last part, she was right, for it was evening and she was standing in Boston’s Scollay Square, with its lights, horns, music, honky-tonks, burlesque houses, and hordes of people with a sharp taste who came here looking for trouble, and more often than not, finding it.
I brushed past a group of drunk sailors in their dress blues as I got up to my corner, the sailors no doubt happy that with the war over, they didn’t have to worry about crazed kamikazes smashing into their gun turrets, burning to death out there in Pacific. They blew past me and went up to one of the nearby bars and ducked in. There were other guys out there as well, and I could always spot the recently discharged vets: they moved quickly, their eyes flicking around, and whenever there was a loud horn or a backfire from a passing truck, they would freeze in place.
And then, of course, they would unfreeze. There were years of drinking and raising hell to catch up on.
I shifted my paper grocery sack from one hand to another, and went up to the woman, touched the brim of my fedora with my free hand. “Are you waiting for me?” I asked.
Her face was pale and frightened, like a young mom, seeing blood on her child for the very first time. “Are you Billy Sullivan?”
“Yep.”
“Yes, I’m here to see you.”
I shrugged. “Then follow me, miss.”
I went past her and opened the wooden door that led to a small foyer, and then upstairs, the wooden stairs creaking under our footfalls. At the top of the stairs a narrow hallway led off, three doors on each side, each door with a half-frame of frosted glass. Mine said B. SULLIVAN, INVESTIGATIONS, and two of the windows down the hallway were blank. The other three announced a watchmaker, a piano teacher, and a press agent.
I unlocked the door and flicked on the light and walked in. There was an old oak desk in the center with my chair, a Remington typewriter on a stand, and two solid filing cabinets with locks. In front of the desk were two wooden chairs, and I motioned my guest to the nearest one. A single window that hadn’t been washed since Hoover was president overlooked the square and its flickering neon lights.
“Be right back,” I said, ducking through a curtain off to the side. Beyond the curtain was a small room with a bed, radio, easy chair, table lamp, and icebox. A closed door led to a small bathroom that most days had plenty of hot water. I put a bottle of milk away, tossed the bread on a counter next to the toaster and hotplate, and then went back out to my office. I took my coat off and my hat, and hung both on a coat rack.
The woman sat there, leaning forward a bit, like she didn’t want her back to be spoiled by whatever cooties resided in my office. She looked at me and tried to smile. “I thought all private detectives carried guns.”
I shook my head. “Like the movies? Roscoes, heaters, gats, all that nonsense? Nah, I saw enough guns the last couple of years. I don’t need one, not for what I do.”
At my desk, I uncapped my Parker pen and grabbed a legal pad, and said, “You know my name, don’t you think you should return the favor?”
She nodded quickly. “Of course. The name is Mandy Williams ... I’m from Seattle.”
I looked up. “You’re a long way from home.”
Tears formed in the corner of her eyes. “I know, I know ... and it’s all going to sound silly, but I hope you can help me find something.”
“Something or someone?”
I asked.
“Something,” she said. “Something that means the world to me.”
“Go on.”
She said, “This is going to sound crazy, Mr. Sullivan, so please ... bear with me, all right?”
“Sure.”
She took a deep breath. “My fiancé, Roger Thompson, he was in the Army and was stationed here in Boston, before he was shipped overseas.”
I made a few notes on the pad, kept my eye on her. She said, “We kept in touch, almost every day, writing letters back and forth, sending each other mementoes. Photos, souvenirs, stuff like that ... and he told me he kept everything I sent to him in a shoebox, kept in his barracks. And I told him I did the same ... kept everything that he sent to me.”
Now she opened her purse, took out a white tissue, which she dabbed at her eyes. “Silly, isn’t it ... it’s been nearly a year ... I know I’m not making sense, it’s just that Roger didn’t come back. He was killed a few months before the war was over.”
My hand tightened on the pen. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Oh, what can you do, you know? And ever since then, well, I’ve gone on, you know? Have even thought about dating again ... and then...”
The tissue went back to work and I waited. So much of my working life is waiting, waiting for a phone call, waiting for someone to show up, waiting for a bill to be paid. She coughed and said, “Then, last month, I got a letter from a buddy of his. Name of Greg Fleming. Said they were bunkmates here in Boston. And they shipped out together, first to France and then to the frontlines. And Greg told me that Roger said that before he left, he hid that shoebox in his barracks. He was afraid the box would get lost or spoiled if he brought it overseas with him.”
“I see,” I said, though I was practically lying. “And why do you need me? Why not go to the base and sweet talk the duty officer, and find the barracks your fiancé was staying at?”
“Because ... because the place he was training at, it’s been closed since the war was over. And it’s not easy to get to.”
“Where is it?”
Another dab of the tissue. “It’s out on Boston Harbor. On one of the islands. Gallops Island. That’s where Roger was stationed.”