by Kate Belli
Daniel elbowed through the crowd toward his own target.
Sarah Huffington appeared deep in conversation with Rupert on the peripheries of the dance floor. At Rupert’s gesture, he joined them.
Head tilted, Sarah eyed him in consideration. “Daniel,” she drawled. “Rupert says you might wish to join our little venture.”
He smiled in return, exhilaration coursing through him. He’d had a hunch that Mrs. Huffington was more involved in her husband’s dealings than either Huffington publicly acknowledged, and asked Rupert to place one or two discreet inquiries. It had paid off.
“I might. I’ve heard rumors of phenomenal potential returns.”
“And you’d spot Rupert the funds until he gets his hands on the Bradley girl’s dowry?” Rupert gave him a bright, innocent smile. Daniel hid his annoyance with difficulty. He didn’t mind giving Rupert money, but he hadn’t had time to tell his friend the entire story. There was no way he was getting in bed financially with the Huffingtons.
“Of course.” He slid a look toward Rupert, who appeared to divine its meaning and instantly looked contrite. Sarah caught the exchange.
“Now, now, don’t be cross with darling Rupert.” She slid a hand up Rupert’s arm. “The wedding’s been delayed with this murder business, and the poor lad now has to wait for all that money. As his friends, it’s our duty to help him. At least you get to socialize without that albatross of a girl around your neck for a few months.” She leaned into Rupert’s side while casting Daniel a flirtatious look from under her combined horn and halo. Rupert’s mouth tightened at the disparagement of his fiancée, but he said nothing.
“You look ravishing, by the way.” Sarah directed this toward Daniel, eyes moving to and lingering on his breeches. “You should have dressed as a B’hoy,” she remarked, referring to the decades-old nickname given to Five Points toughs. “That would really have knocked off everyone’s socks.”
He affected a look of wry amusement, privately wishing the damn breeches weren’t so tight. “I shall leave the knocking off of socks to you.” He pretended to catch sight of the time on the large gilded clock visible on the wall just outside the grand ballroom’s open double doors. “I have something else to attend to right now”—he glanced around as if wishing for discretion—“but let’s be in touch soon about this opportunity.”
The hallway clock began to chime, deep and sonorous. Two o’clock. In a moment, a servant would sound a gong, letting the guests know supper was served.
Sarah raised her brows. “Well, we all know what an appointment at this time of night means,” she practically purred. “And as I can’t imagine the righteous Miss Stewart would allow any such shenanigans, I’ll have to resign myself to speculation on who the lucky lady could be. But mind you, don’t ruin matters with the virginal Genevieve, Daniel; she’s also in possession of quite a fortune. Could come in handy.” She dropped him a wink before taking Rupert’s arm and leading him toward the dining room.
Daniel wasted not a moment but casually began making his own way toward the hall, as if heading perhaps to the retiring room or downstairs to the gaming tables. He shared one quick look with Genevieve’s friend Eliza, who gave him a single nod and paused by the door, where she would wait for his return.
* * *
Daniel paced the sumptuous hotel suite he had reserved, waiting. He stopped walking for a moment to pour a small glass of whiskey from a completely stocked side table and watched the door anxiously, hoping Genevieve could make it to the room unseen.
Hoping nothing had happened to her in the past fifteen minutes.
Twisting his mouth, Daniel took a sip of whiskey and swirled it around his tongue before swallowing. He restlessly unknotted the kerchief around his neck—he’d abandoned the ridiculous hat, sword, and eye-patch as soon as he’d entered the room—and resisted the urge to poke his head into the hallway.
A soft knock sounded at the door, and he leapt to open it.
Genevieve rushed in and quickly closed the door, the green-lined cloak thrown over her shoulders billowing behind her like a standard.
“Were you seen?”
“I don’t think so.”
Relief washed through him. “Good. I took the liberty of having some food sent up, as we’re missing the supper.” Daniel gestured toward some bread, cheese, and savory meat pastries set out on the sideboard, then poured a measure of whiskey into a separate glass and handed it to her.
“Thank gracious. I’m famished,” Genevieve replied, accepting the glass after removing her cloak. He watched as she filled a plate, then took in the suite’s rich surroundings as she nibbled: its heavy draperies, its gilded furniture, the ornate, overly large bed made up with crisp white sheets visible in the adjacent room beyond.
She settled on a love seat and set her plate on a low table, pulling the pins out of her hair, its honey-colored mass tumbling to her shoulders.
The moment was so startling in its intimacy that an involuntary swallow briefly clogged his throat.
“You don’t mind, do you? My scalp aches from this hairstyle.”
Daniel said nothing, ruthlessly quashing any improper thoughts brought on by the incomparable sight of all that hair piling around her bare shoulders, and chose the armchair opposite her.
“What did you find out?” he asked instead, pulling off his boots. Hell, if she was getting comfortable, he might as well be too. He noted Genevieve’s eyes following his motions and felt a grim satisfaction. Good, let her be thrown off guard by a partial disrobing. He nodded as she relayed what Ted had told her, clunking his second boot to the floor.
“Sarah Huffington also invited me to join,” he said, leaning forward.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Ted did say there were other female investors.” She took a cautious sip of whiskey. “This is good.”
Daniel smiled. “It is.”
“Show me the list of investors again.”
He complied, pulling the notes she had made at the municipal archives out of his shirt pocket and handing it across. She frowned as she studied the list of corporation names.
“This only lists other businesses as investors. How are Ted and Sarah involved? I couldn’t find anything on these corporations.” Genevieve handed the list back. “And what does Lexington Industries even do? What are they protecting that they must resort to violence, to murder?”
Daniel studied the list in his hand for what felt like the thousandth time, taking a fortifying sip of his own whiskey. Lexington Industries, her notes read. Andrew Huffington and Ernest Clark, chief operators. Investing entities …
And suddenly he saw it. The answer was right there, right before his eyes. Daniel quickly switched seats so he was next to Genevieve on the love seat. He leaned into her, inhaling the fresh, almost grassy scent of her unbound hair. “Look,” he said in excitement. “Look closely at the company names.”
She puzzled at him for a moment, but did as he bade. He waited.
“Oh my god. How did we miss it?” She pointed to one of the companies listed: Tiberius Point Beneficiaries, Inc. “TPB,” she said. “Theodore Paul Beekman.” Genevieve’s mouth slanted wryly as she took another sip from her glass. “He would name himself after a Roman emperor.”
“And …” He pointed to another: Syndicated American Hospitality Co.
“Sarah Alston Huffington,” she breathed.
Working quickly, they matched most of the remaining investor names to almost all the other members of the mayoral committee on housing reform: Performance Standards Incorporated & Son must be the senior and junior Peter Stuyvesants, and Deputy Mayor Giles Manfort was likely Goode Manufacturing, Inc.
“Not terribly creative, that one,” Genevieve commented. “There’s one member of the committee missing.”
“No fictitious company with the initials R.C.,” Daniel noted. “Reginald Cotswold.” They shared a brief, grim look.
“And there is this one we haven’t matched to a person,” she said, tapping her fing
er on the page. “Tenfold Mercantile.”
“Of course,” he said. “Thomas Meade.” A chill began to overtake him, and Daniel sighed, exhaustion suddenly swooping in and draining the brief burst of energy brought by puzzling out Lexington Industries’ investors. He leaned back on the love seat and rubbed at his eyes.
Tommy. He could never, it seemed, be rid of the bastard. This was more dangerous than he’d feared.
“Why are the members of a governmental committee on housing reform using false names to support a seemingly nonexistent corporation?” Genevieve asked, more to the piece of paper laid on the table than to him.
“This is a mask,” he answered. Daniel sat up and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a shell company, hiding the real business being done. A place to funnel the money.”
“The real business of what?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet. Something they don’t want anyone to know about.”
“Enough to kill for.” It was a statement, not a question.
Daniel nodded. “Maybe not everyone on this list. Some of these people might be just innocent investors. But for some on this list, absolutely.” His finger landed on Meade’s name.
“They didn’t seem to want Reginald to know,” Genevieve said sadly. Her lips pursed in anger. “So how do we find out? How do we ascertain what they’re up to?”
Daniel picked up the list and tapped it on the table a few times, thinking. “My guess is one of these company names is shared with the real business at hand, and the real company has the same initials as one of these.” His eyes met hers. “We have to keep digging.”
Genevieve’s eyes flared with a brief moment of fear, quickly replaced by determination. “Back to the archives.”
He nodded, his stomach twisting at the thought of her in yet more danger. But there was no other way. “Whatever they’re hiding, they’ll already know we’re getting close by the time the archives reopen Monday morning. Go in broad daylight.”
“It’s fine.” She straightened in her seat and finished her glass. “I can do it. I can even check whatever I find against the paper’s records; I’ll bring one of the secretaries with me if I must. Like you said, broad daylight.”
Daniel noticed a worried look returning to her eye. “Only if you feel up to it. We’re getting closer, though, and time is running out. This should be it.”
Genevieve took a deep breath and nodded. “Reginald was on the committee, but why kill Elmira Bradley? And what does Robin Hood have to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps Amos was approached and declined to be involved in whatever this is. My gut tells me Tommy is somehow involved. He’s devious, Genevieve, and more dangerous than you can possibly imagine.” Privately Daniel wondered if Tommy had ordered Elmira killed simply because she had embarrassed him at her ball, but he didn’t see the need for alarming Genevieve further.
Genevieve’s brow furrowed. “How do you know?”
He paused. “I’ve known Tommy a long time.”
“Of course,” she allowed. “But despite his past, the man is a mayoral candidate. Do you really think he’s capable of murder?”
Daniel leaned back again and regarded her through tired eyes.
“I don’t just think it; I know it.”
Genevieve’s mouth opened a bit in shock.
He sighed a breath and unwound his limbs, which suddenly felt ten times their normal weight, from the love seat for a brief journey to the sideboard, where he refilled his glass with a generous splash of whiskey. He held up the bottle with an inquiring look, and Genevieve nodded, holding her glass up as well.
Daniel resumed his seat and took a deep breath. He’d never revealed as much about his past to anyone as he was about to share with her, with the exception of Rupert. And he’d told Rupert only after they’d gotten rip-roaring drunk one night at college in Boston, where they’d both been attending Harvard. He’d woken up the next morning, expecting his friend to have forgotten all about their mutual confessions the night before, or at least to be very British about the whole thing and pretend to forget. But as he cracked one eye open and tried to assess the damage to his pounding head, Rupert simply blinked up at him from the floor of Daniel’s room where he’d collapsed, rubbed a hand through his wild hair, and said, “So, mate, if you’re from Five Points, you must know where to get some very good opium. Let’s go next weekend; what do you say?”
Daniel said no and convinced Rupert through stories from his youth that opium was a very bad idea indeed. But the casualness with which his friend had approached the topic opened something up in Daniel, something he hadn’t even realized he needed before telling Rupert about his past. The secrets had been festering, and the strain of pretending to be someone and something he wasn’t had been slowly killing him. Unburdening some of the darkest moments from his past—and only some of them; he hadn’t told Rupert about Maggie—had eased his mind enough to allow him to continue on the path Jacob had set for him, but to simultaneously make that path his own.
“I do know Tommy from my youth,” he said now. “We grew up together on Elizabeth Street. Tommy was just one of the kids we knew.”
“Who is ‘we’?” she asked.
“Just the kids I ran around with.” Daniel shrugged, peering into his glass. “There came a time, in the 1860s, when if you lived in Five Points and you were male and you were of a certain age, you needed to declare your allegiance.”
“Allegiance?”
“To a particular gang.”
Genevieve nodded, seeming to take the information in stride, though he knew it was miles outside her lived experience. “And did you?”
“Of course. It was the only way to survive. Especially with my father gone. And it wasn’t that bad. Your fellow gang members were like brothers. They protected you, and you protected them.”
“Were you and Tommy in the same gang?”
“No, Tommy was in a different gang. I was a Bayard Tough; he was with the Oyster Knife boys. Our gangs were rivals. You must understand, gangs functioned something like social clubs, but of course violence and crime were—are—part of their nature. The Bayard Toughs traditionally worked the political angle of crime, fixing polls and the like, arranging repeat voting.”
Genevieve’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you participate in this as a child?”
Daniel shrugged. “Of course. I served as a lookout for the approach of the police, ran messages for whoever was in charge, that sort of thing. Tommy’s gang, though, the Oyster Knife boys … they were harder. Tougher than us, actually. Despite our name.” He smiled, lost in memory. “Don’t get me wrong, the Bayard Toughs could hold their own in a street brawl—and brawl we did, quite often. Casual turf wars, that sort of thing.”
“I see,” she said faintly.
“The Oyster Knifers, now, they ran bars and brothels, could be hired out as muscle. As I said, they were harder, more vicious. I was invited to join their gang at first, as they are a more traditionally Irish gang, though there were Irish everywhere in Five Points, of course—did I tell you my parents immigrated from Lansdowne?” She shook her head. “They came in 1850. My mother was already pregnant with my older sister Maggie. It’s a wonder they didn’t starve on the boat. Or back in Ireland.
“But I didn’t want to join up with them—even as a child I knew their reputation. It was just the sort of thing you knew if you lived in Five Points. Besides, my father had been a Bowery Boy, and the Toughs were a subset of the Boys, if you will.”
“He had been?”
“Oh yes. Fought against the Dead Rabbits in that famous turf war in ’57. And gang membership often stays in the family. The Toughs have traditionally been from a slightly more elevated social class than the Knifers—slightly.” He smiled wryly in acknowledgment of the bare distinction. “Skilled tradesmen, butchers, mechanics, that sort of thing. My father had been a blacksmith. I meant to apprentice as one myself.”
“But then you moved into the Van
Joost house?” she guessed.
Daniel nodded slowly. “Yes, then we moved in with Jacob.”
A thoughtful expression crossed her face. “Is that how you know Paddy and Billy from the alley the night I met you? From your youth?”
Daniel nodded ruefully and ran his hands through his hair. “Yes, that is how I know Paddy and Billy.”
“You seemed to be the group’s leader that night.”
Daniel barked a short laugh. “Nobody leads Paddy and Billy. But I’ve offered legal assistance to them and to some of their associates in the past, helped them out of a jam or two, so sometimes they respect me enough to do as I ask. Within reason.”
“So if you moved in with Jacob Van Joost in—what year?”
“Eighteen sixty-five.”
“Eighteen sixty-five! Were you at all involved in the Draft Riots?”
“Yes, I was. This is when I first learned something was deeply wrong with Tommy. I snuck out of my house, joined some friends.” They’d been wondering where to find some of the older gang members, he told her, looking for direction, boasting to each other about how brave they’d be if they ran across any rival gangs, when they rounded a corner and come across a group of similarly aged boys from the Oyster Knife gang, including Tommy.
“Normally there would have been a fight, but they ran past us and joined with a group of their older gang members.” Daniel paused, struggling with the memory. “We followed them for a few blocks, but it soon became clear they were involved in, well, what the Draft Riots became known for.” His stomach soured at the recollection.
Genevieve’s hand drifted to her mouth. “They … killed someone?”
“Yes … hung him from a lamppost. I’d never seen anything so horrific, and I’d seen a lot. Tommy was in the thick of it, laughing like a loon.”
“Oh my god,” Genevieve breathed.
Daniel nodded. Jacob had sent him abroad when he was fourteen, but he still came home during the summers, and at night he’d join up with his old friends, like Asher, and roam the streets with fellow gang members. It was during this period that Daniel learned to exist in two worlds: the polished, mannered, and civilized ballrooms of Fifth Avenue and the summer houses of Newport, and the streets of the Lower East Side. As he grew older and went to university, he met up with his old friends less and less, apprenticing in the law after Harvard and becoming familiar with the city’s courts. Even so, he retained the ability to slip back into gang life at will, at least on the surface. He still knew the streets and the alleys and kept up with the major players in his other, dirtier, world, and for a long time it was a world he often felt was more honest, and probably where he truly belonged.