Crooked Hearts

by Patricia Gaffney

  “In tombs?”

  “Had them buried in their graves with them, the rich people. To take with them to the afterlife.” She shook her head. “But that’s all I can remember.”

  “Let’s see the piece of paper Fireplug had on him.”

  “Fireplug? Oh, you mean Cannonball.”

  They chortled over that, and Reuben was beginning to admire her sane, commendably masculine reaction to an event most women would’ve moaned and carried on about for weeks. Then he noticed her mirthful grin had faded and she was glaring at him.

  “How come you just sat there while that sawed-off little pig mauled me?” she demanded.

  “Let’s not start this argument all over again.”

  “How far were you going to let him go? What kind of a man are you, anyway?”

  “Now, hold on a damn minute. Did I or did I not save you? At great personal risk to life and limb.”

  “You could’ve smacked him on the head with that cane of yours about twelve times before you finally got up the nerve to do it. But no, you and Sweeney just sat there on your hands, like a couple of sheep.”

  “I saved you,” he insisted.

  “Why did it take you so long?”

  “Because he had a knife!”

  “So? You had a cane, and you’re bigger, heavier, taller—”

  “I happen not to like knives. All right? I don’t like ’em, that’s all. As soon as he put it away, I jumped up and conked him, didn’t I? For that matter, why didn’t you whip out your little peashooter and blast him? How about that?”

  She stared at him thoughtfully, ignoring the question. “So you’re afraid of knives. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

  “I’m not afraid of them.”

  “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

  “I don’t relish them, I don’t cotton to them, I prefer to be absent when they’re present.”

  “That’s how I feel about snakes,” she said, nodding. “But unlike you, I’ve got the guts to come right out and say it: I’m scared of them.”

  “Well, I’m not—”

  “Oh, forget it.” She distracted him from the argument by reaching down inside the neckline of her chemise and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “Here’s Fireplug’s laundry list.” She spread it out on her blanketed knee. “Which it might be, for all I know; it’s all in Chinese.”

  They pored over the paper briefly; the only interesting thing about it was a pen-and-ink drawing of a flower at the top, almost like a letterhead. “A lily?” Reuben guessed.

  “No, the stalk’s too short. A camellia?” They stared at it some more, then gave up.

  While she refolded the paper and returned it to its intriguing hiding place, he reached for the blue statue and turned it over in his hands. “I know somebody who might be able to tell us more about this. A friend of mine, owns a curio shop.” He stood up casually. “Knows all about art and antiques and things like that. Used to be a—”

  “No, you don’t.” She made a fast-handed dive and snatched the statue back, just as he was sliding it into his pocket. “Nice try, Jones,” she smirked, tucking it under her crossed arms.

  He spread innocent hands. “I was only trying to help. Anyway, how do you figure it’s yours and not ours?”

  “I saw it first.”

  “Not true. We saw it at the same instant.”

  “Impossible—you were blind.”

  “I own half of that statue, Sister,” he said menacingly. “If it weren’t for me, you’d never have gotten away.”

  “I was doing fine until you stole my horse.”

  “I didn’t have to buy you a train ticket.”

  That stumped her.

  “I gave you my own bed to sleep in,” he pressed. “I brought you coffee.”

  “So you think four dollars, a bed, and a cup of coffee entitle you to half of what this statue is worth?”

  “I do. Exactly.”

  She fingered the blue tiger-man thoughtfully, then looked up at him. “Okay.”

  He waited for the catch, but she just blinked back at him, blue eyes devoid of guile. “Okay,” he echoed experimentally. “Okay, good. Hand it over, then, and I’ll give it to—”

  She snorted. “Not on your life. What do you take me for, Mr. Jones, an infant?”

  “Not for a second.”

  “I’m not sure what we should do with this yet; we need to think it through. Maybe your friend with the curio shop is a good place to start, maybe not. That is, if there really is such a person. But until—”

  “Gus, you wound me.”

  “But until we think it through, tiger here is staying with me.”

  Her distrustfulness hurt his feelings, but he couldn’t help admiring her caution; it seemed so unwomanly. And God knew, impulsive behavior had gotten him into trouble more often than any other failing he possessed. He also liked the way the word “we” sounded on her lips.

  “Okay, Gus,” he conceded handsomely, “you’re the boss.” For the moment, he modified in private.

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “What should I call you? Madame Russelow?”

  “It’s Rousselot. If that’s too much for you, call me Grace.”

  “Grace. And a lovely name it is.” She wasn’t immune to flattery, he knew, although she tried to pretend otherwise. “How much money did Fireplug get from you, Grace?”

  She drew up her knees. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  “A bundle, eh?” He clucked his tongue in sympathy. “Bad break for the terminal African orphans.”

  She didn’t even blush. “How much did Edward Cordoba drop?” she shot back.

  “Nothing he couldn’t afford to lose,” he lied. “Say, this is a fascinating conversation; I hate to break it up, but I’ve got work to do. You know where the bathroom is. Why don’t you avail yourself of the facilities first, and I’ll follow.”

  “What sort of work do you do, Mr. Jones?” she asked interestedly.

  “Business, Grace. Boring man stuff you wouldn’t care to worry your head about.”

  Her lips thinned. “That’s my pretty little head, isn’t it?”

  He snapped his fingers. “Right you are. No offense. Well.”

  “Well?”

  “Ah! You want me to leave so you can get out of bed!”

  She made a gun with one hand and pulled the trigger.

  “On my way.” He made her his Edward Cordoba bow—two nights ago it had slayed her—and exited.

  Grace took her time in the bathroom, not to spite Mr. Jones but because his tub was enormous and the water was hot, and she hadn’t had a long, luxurious, totally private bath in weeks.

  “Sorry I took so long,” she told him as she came down the stairs to his sitting room, habit skirts raised so she wouldn’t trip.

  “Find everything you needed?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  He got up from the chair where he’d been reading the newspaper and started past her for the steps. He didn’t look a bit like Edward Cordoba this morning in his rumpled tan trousers and collarless blue shirt. The thought would’ve pleased her, considering how thoroughly he’d suckered her, if it hadn’t come attached to an auxiliary observation: that despite his uncombed hair, bare feet, and beard stubble, he looked even better.

  “Is the stove still hot?” she asked shortly.

  “I think so. Why, are you cold?”

  “No, I’d like to dry my hair.”

  “Be my guest.” He stopped with one foot on the bottom stair. “And glorious hair it is, Grace. Good thing you had your veil on most of the time with Sweeney and the others, wasn’t it?”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” He widened his eyes and spread out his hands, feigning fatuous wonder at her slowness. “Because if they’d seen that hair, they’d never forget it, and you’d probably have been arrested by now.”

  “Don’t be an idiot.”

  “Or else ’’you’d’ve had to cu
t it all off—an even more horrible alternative if you ask me.”

  She straightened from stirring the coals and put her hands on her hips. “Anything in the paper about the robbery?” she asked frostily to discourage any more of his nonsense.

  “No, not a word. Guess we’ll have to wait for the afternoon editions. Will you excuse me?” He turned, and took the steps two at a time.

  His apartment wasn’t very prepossessing, she noted with mixed feelings, leaning over the stove and rubbing her hair with a towel, listening to the sounds of water running and Reuben whistling in the bathroom. The flimflam business must be in a slump. His furniture looked like regulation boarding house issue, and the only visible item of value was his collection of vintage wines, carefully stored in a free-standing pyramid of clay pipes—the kind cities laid water and sewer lines with, she imagined. How clever of him. So he really was a connoisseur. It was marginally consoling to know that, at least about one thing, Edward Cordoba hadn’t lied.

  A knock came at the back door, the one that faced onto the alley behind the refurbished carriage house. Grace laid her towel aside and moved to the foot of the stairs. “Mr. Jones?” He couldn’t hear her. But she could hear him, singing “Blue-eyed Lady of Caroline” over the clank of the hot-water boiler in the bathroom. She hesitated a few seconds longer, then went to the door and opened it.

  Five men stepped back in surprise when they saw her. The one in front whipped off his hat, and the other four hastily copied him. “Morning, ma’am,” the leader said politely, in the deepest, raspiest voice Grace had ever heard. It sounded like a piece of earth-moving equipment that needed oil.

  “Good morning.”

  “How you doin’ this morning?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “Ma’am, could you tell us if Mr. Jones is home at the present time?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Can we talk to him? If it ain’t too much trouble, dat is.”

  “He’s … indisposed at the moment, but I expect he’ll be down shortly.”

  He held up both hands, palms out. “Hey, in no way would we wish to distoib him if he’s indisposed.”

  “No, I’m sure he’ll be down in a few minutes,” she repeated. She couldn’t quite make out what they were. The spokesman with the sandpaper voice was a thin, sallow-faced individual, respectably dressed except for the flashy dyed-blue carnation in his buttonhole. The others she couldn’t pin down at all, at least not as a group; one had on bib overalls, two wore suits, another corduroy pants and a Western shirt with a string tie.

  “Is it okay wit youse if we come in an’ wait?”

  She hung on the door, indecisive. They looked harmless enough, and the leader was politeness itself. “Yes, come in,” she finally invited, and opened the door wide.

  In Reuben’s sitting room, they insisted she take the only chair, while three of them squeezed onto the couch and the other two perched uncomfortably on the arms. They all put their hats in their laps. An awkward silence ensued. “I’m Mrs. Rousselot,” Grace offered at last, desperate to break it.

  “Pleased to meetcha. Croaker’s my name, Lincoln Croaker, and dese are my brudders. All except Winkie.”

  The one on the left sofa arm winked at her, solving that mystery. The others bowed their heads in a sedate greeting, and she bowed back.

  Out of the next silence, Lincoln grated, “We wish to extend our deepest sympathies, ma’am.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “On accounta your recent bereavement.”

  “My—oh, yes,” she fumbled, realizing belatedly that without the veil, her black habit resembled mourning clothes. “Thank you, it was … very sudden.” The Croakers’ sad nodding prompted her to elaborate. “We’d been married such a short time, you know. Not quite a year.”

  Lincoln made sympathetic clucking sounds. “Terrible, ma’am, just terrible. What carried him off?”

  “Cholera. At least it was over quickly; he didn’t suffer.” She dabbed at her eye with a dainty knuckle.

  “Tsk-tsk. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

  “Carpe diem,” she snuffled.

  “O tempora, o mores,” he countered.

  “To everything there is a season.”

  He looked beaten for a second, then held up his index finger and declared, “Time is money.”

  Grace had no choice but to incline her head in gracious defeat.

  Another lengthy pause. When she couldn’t take any more polite, mutual staring, she stood up, and all four Croakers, plus Winkie, clambered to their feet in her wake. “Why don’t I go and tell Mr. Jones you’re here?”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” they said in chorus, bowing her out.

  Upstairs, beyond the bathroom door, Reuben was singing the falsetto chorus to “Rally ’Round the Flag”: “The Union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah—”

  “Mr. Jones?” Grace called softly, giving the wood a discreet rap. The door opened abruptly and she fell back a step. He grinned at her through a face full of shaving soap.

  “Hi, Gus.”

  “You have visitors,” she got out, breathless, unprepared for the sight of his naked chest and long, strong, hairy legs, and the intriguing strip of white towel in between.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s the Croaker brothers and Winkie.”

  His grin went from cocky to sickly; under the shaving lather she thought his cheeks paled. But all he said was, “Tell ’em I’ll be down in a second, will you?”

  “Okay.” She studied him, not moving. “Everything all right?”

  “Sure. Hunky-dory.” He held up his razor, waiting for her to go. Unable to think of anything else to say, she finally did. But she rejoined the Croakers uneasily, and their bovine courtesy didn’t amuse her anymore.

  “Lincoln!” Reuben exclaimed a few minutes later, with every evidence of hearty pleasure, bounding down the stairs with an athletic stride and advancing on the head Croaker with his hand out. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Likewise.”

  “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you quite this early in the day.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what dey say about the oily boid an’ all.”

  “So true, and so profound. Did you meet Mrs. Rousselot?”

  “Yeah, we already had dat pleasure. An’ now, we was wonderin’ if we could speak wit’ youse in private, like, if the widow don’t mind.”

  “The widow?”

  “Of course,” Grace said quickly. “It was lovely meeting you all.”

  “Lovely,” they echoed sincerely.

  She sent Reuben a look, one he probably didn’t understand because she wasn’t sure what it meant herself, and took her leave.

  Upstairs, she walked briskly into the bedroom, removed her shoes, and tiptoed back down the short hall to the top of the steps. But the masculine bonhomie below had suddenly grown subdued; try as she might, she couldn’t make out anyone’s words, although from the cadence of the voices, Reuben’s and Lincoln’s, she gathered they were having a rather jovial argument. Suddenly the talk broke off; she heard sounds of movement, and a second later the click-squeak-click of the door to the alley opening and closing.

  She crept down the stairs, listening intently. “Mr. Jones?” No answer, and when she reached the bottom step, she saw that the house was empty. Everybody was gone.

  The suspicion that Reuben had run out on her came and went speedily. He wouldn’t have left without taking a single possession, and certainly not without his beloved wine collection, no matter what the inducement. He’d gone out for a while, that was all, with his peculiar friends, to do whatever men without regular jobs did together during the day. Well, fine. Leave her here all by herself, then, with no money, nothing to eat, and nothing to do. She’d find something to do.

  She cracked his desk and searched it. The locks on the drawers made her laugh; she picked them with a couple of hairpins as easily as picking dandelions. What she found inside, arranged, filed, and organized wit
h admirable neatness and attention to detail, were the records of a half-dozen bunco games and confidence schemes, operating simultaneously from seven different city post office boxes.

  Among other things, Mr. Jones ran a bogus clipping service—Readiclip, Inc., was its current name, although it periodically went out of business and reappeared as something else. He sold fake lottery tickets and Irish sweepstakes chances, sometimes forged, sometimes nonexistent. He dabbled in the rightful-heirs swindle, a complicated genealogical-investigation fraud that Henry used to work years ago, she recalled. But Henry had given it up because it had gotten too dangerous.

  Here was a game she hadn’t heard of: the Skytop Roof Services Company, Ltd. The handsome brochure offered amazingly inexpensive roofs to people whose only obligation, after the roof was built, was to allow potential new customers to inspect the finished product. The lucky homeowner paid for his cheap new roof up front—and never saw the salesman again.

  The ad Reuben took out in newspapers from time to time was a masterpiece of small-time simplicity. It promised nothing, so it wasn’t even illegal. It merely asked readers to send a dollar to a post office address, for “a little surprise in store for you. Who knows?” Grace knew: the surprise was that they lost a dollar.

  But her favorite was the “International Society of Literature, Science, and Art,” a combination correspondence course and talent school. Hopeful amateurs sent in their stories, pictures, and inventions, and for thirty dollars Reuben sent back advice on how to “revise” their work, to ready it for submission to a publisher or a patent office. And for a small additional fee, he offered diplomas, plaques, scrolls, certificates, and—she loved this—the privilege of using the initials A.S.L. or M.S.L. after their names.

  Leafing through the Society’s correspondence, she was cynically amused until she came upon Reuben’s unfinished reply to the writer of one particularly bad piece of autobiographical prose, a lonely-sounding spinster from Sacramento. He was sending her money back, along with the kind and very gently worded advice that she perhaps try gardening or needlework for an artistic outlet.