Murder at the Flamingo
Page 16
The driver attempted to keep his eyes from fanning over her as he opened the door.
The river sparkled under the last strokes of daylight as they crossed over the bridge. Boston was awakening.
Too soon after, the driver swerved to School Street, the lights of Washington and Tremont behind her, the King’s Chapel and the Parker House in their wake. At the garish bombardment of Scollay Square, she waited for the chauffeur to open her door and assist her to the pavement.
Reporters’ bulbs flashed and a stream of satin, lace, and sartorial splendor flowed to the double Deco doors under the gaudy neon lights of the Flamingo’s sign.
Reggie thanked the chauffeur, who refused her tip, and made for the door. The doorman, recognizing her from the day before, let her bypass the long queue and enter through the doors.
“Miss Van Buren.”
That snake, Mark Suave. “Excuse me,” she said with finality before he could finish his sentence. She left him leering in the corridor.
She felt the music before she heard it: the beat of the drum and the riff of the brass thrumming through her even before her mind shuffled it into cohesive musical form. Reggie had intended to be fashionably late, and so the club was already an explosion of revelers with dancing and drinking, laughter chiming and catching the echo of the corridors.
She found his rigid shoulders and lanky stature embellished by the tight lines of a finely tailored suit. His ebony hair was shorter over the back of his neck. His right hand—always in his pocket or behind his back—was tucked in the flap between his jacket and cummerbund. Luca was laughing, throaty and deep, hand draping a martini. Reggie smiled away the attention of men on each side, crossing over the sleek tile to where Luca and Hamish stood.
Hamish was laughing at something, she could tell by the slight shudder in his shoulder blades. She grinned, tapping him on the shoulder. He turned and his smile was stretched brightly across his face. Reggie’s heart constricted. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and his tumbly black hair was smoothed back on either side of his strong profile. She had noticed he was handsome the day they met: his strong nose, that one dimple that now was deep and pronounced with leftover laughter that was, sadly, reaching the end of its ripple. “You look . . .” She blinked and blinked and blinked over the satin wings of his suit lapels and the white of his shirt and the green paisley of his bow tie. He was remarkable.
“You look . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Hamish ducked his head. “Thank you. Reggie, you are absolutely . . .” Perfect. Neither of them knew how to finish a sentence.
What was this man doing to her? Hadn’t she just told him a relationship followed at her heels? But he was lovely. She wanted to smooth the sadness from his eyes and pocket his smile for a rainy day.
Luca turned, Clark-Gable-ing the room. “Hamish, offer the lady a drink, for heaven’s sake.” Unlike his cousin, he had no qualms about letting his eyes linger over her, from her red lips slowly down her dress. “Reggie, you are a vision in red, and the man who is on your arm tonight, which I am very much hoping is my old Cicero”—he draped his arm around Hamish’s shoulders—“is the luckiest man at the Flamingo. Thank you for honoring my endeavor by appearing like a scarlet angel.”
“Luca,” Reggie said, “you are—” Another truncated sentence, but this time not for lack of words. A waiter strolled by with a tray of champagne and Luca grabbed her a glass.
“Your impeccable taste has graced my club. I can only hope our vintage suits your refined palate. Ah! Robert! You’re here . . .” Luca turned.
“He lays it on too thick, you know,” she told Hamish, watching Luca’s retreating figure. “Well, here it is. The fruits of our labor.” She raised her glass with an ironic smile, her gaze encircling the room. Luca had ensured that his club would attract everyone it needed to: the cream at the top of society and fashionable bohemians. An exhale for Boston’s new set, who wanted to find a club that was on the edge.
Reggie and Hamish stood shoulder to shoulder, Luca’s world unfolding in silk and satin. It was everything he had wanted: Roy Holliday bowing again and again to thunderous applause before starting in on another jaunty melody, the liquor flowing, the crystal tinkling, the spotlight haloing in its aimless search over perfectly coiffed hair.
Ask me to dance, Hamish, her heart throbbed. Ask me . . .
Just as he was turning to say something, Tom Schultze appeared at her elbow.
“Accompany me to the floor, Miss Van Buren.” Nothing in his demand held even the inkling of a request. He shoved his walking stick at Hamish, who took it, surprised. Reggie gave Hamish one sour look she hoped read, “Thanks for nothing, chappy!”
Hamish passed Schultze’s stick over the bar to Johnny Wade for safekeeping, but not before squeezing his palm over the rattlesnake engraving so tightly it left a mark.
“Don’t you need that, sir?”
“Not for dancing.” Schultze looked Hamish over. “You look happy. You should find a girl. Scare you out of your shell.”
Scare. Interesting word. Hamish played along with a smile as Schultze took Reggie’s arm and led her to the floor.
Hamish couldn’t help but follow Reggie with his eyes. He hadn’t known fabric could cling like that. The material of her dress knew what it was doing and how to accentuate every part of a perfect package. He watched until she and Schultze were swallowed in the tapestry of smoke and music, the colorful chaos of the dance floor.
“Another drink, Mr. DeLuca?” Johnny Wade’s voice countered the din. Guests were a tidal wave lapping on the bar’s crest of shore. Hamish was surprised Johnny noticed him at all. It was because he was attached to Luca, he surmised. He asked for a Coca-Cola, which he sipped slowly, averting his eyes not out of nervousness but because he was waiting on tenterhooks for the moment he could part a sea of people and whisk Reggie from the floor.
A flash of scarlet, her dress a tipped glass of merlot amidst whites and blacks and sequined grays. And she was Vaughan Vanderlaan’s. She was a line he couldn’t cross. The sensation of his heart sinking to his knees the moment she casually made that announcement—pulled it out of air—filled his chest again. He was getting so close and she was out of reach.
Mary Finn bubbled beside him. “Go get the girl, Hamish Cicero.” Her voice sounded like her throat had been subject to a cheese grater or washing grate. He wondered if she would still have it at the end of the night, having compensated for the smoke and commotion.
“Chesterfields?” Her eyes flitted to a gentleman nursing one of Johnny Wade’s extravagant concoctions.
The man refused. Hamish sipped his Coke. Mary excused herself, edging by him, disentangling herself from the cigarette case strapped around her neck. Roy Holliday sported an affinity for Gershwin, languidly rolling through popular songs. Hamish hoped a string of fast tempos would reign and the band would leave the slow songs for a moment when Reggie wasn’t in the middle of the floor with a cad like Schultze—or whoever was currently leading her.
He smoothed his palm over his slicked hair. He was far gone. He knew it even as he should have been swept up in the magic of Luca’s dream unfolding around him.
“This is Schultzie’s,” Mary cooed behind him. She rapped the walking stick on the bar.
“Leave him, Finny,” Johnny Wade pleaded. Hamish angled himself so he could catch Mary Finn and Johnny in his periphery, noting the easy way they fell into each other and spoke to each other and engaged each other. A woman could tickle your nose like the bubbly carbonation of his Coke, or she could soothe like liquid satin, like the smooth whiskey of perfect golden vintage that Luca boasted.
“I can’t. You gonna keep me in jewels and furs? My ship’s come in. But I told you. We’ll find a way to be together. I just have to play my cards right.”
“He’s married,” Johnny said. Hamish heard the thud of a glass on the bar. “Married men don’t leave their wives for . . .”
Was it just the rising volume of the band, o
r had Johnny not finished the sentence?
“Don’t leave their wives for what?” Mary snapped. “For girls like me? You seemed to think I was just good enough when you proposed in Boise all those years ago.”
“Stop rubbing that in my face, Finny.”
“I’m only telling the truth.”
Hamish ruefully sipped his Coke. The history of the bartender and the cigarette girl. If this were a picture, Reggie would be first in line.
It was quite clear to Reggie, if it hadn’t been before, that Schultze’s walking stick was purely decorative. He wasn’t the best dancer on the floor, but he glided with the same confidence that took him through life.
“Why do you have that stick of yours if you never need it?” she asked, the band lazing through a three-quarter-time tune.
“Power,” he said gruffly, spinning her in time with the music.
“Power enough for someone to take it and threaten Hamish with it?” She hated the feel of his clammy hand on her bare shoulder.
“I am an investor in the club. Whatever Luca has following him is none of my concern.”
“And yet there you were, watching from the sidelines as men roughed up your investment.”
“He sure found a spitfire in you. My secretary is dull as tombs. Moth-eaten sweaters. Talks about her cat a lot.”
Finally boring of her, Schultze spun her to Brian MacMillan, who seemed genuinely happy to have her near. He wasn’t a fabulous dancer, but at least he kept to the rhythm. Anyway, she was painting in rigid lines, the music not liberating her the way it should have.
“Loosen up, Miss Van Buren.”
She’d heard that a million times on several dance floors: varsity parties that Vaughan and his set spun her away to on weekends at Harvard, weekends her mother never would have allowed her to attend had she not made up a safe alibi of a cottage on Martha’s Vineyard. She gripped Brian more tightly, mindlessly stepping into his lead while her brain spiraled Vaughan-ward. She even thought she saw him. She blinked away the feeling through the hot lights overhead, the tempo rising and the heat even more so.
“Miss Van Buren, I know that you are Luca’s secretary and I know that he trusts you. Luca Valari wouldn’t hire anyone he didn’t trust. I want to know the real story. If he’s involved in anything . . . if he controls anything . . .”
Reggie struggled to formulate cohesive thoughts amidst the pulse and pound of the dance floor. “I’m sorry, you know about as much as I do.” She tried to keep her voice to a near whisper, which was quite impossible considering the volume of the band.
Brian’s grip tightened slightly, his footing suddenly unsure as they swerved into another coda of another song. “I need his influence. Everyone talks about it. You have to help me. My father . . . He is leaving me with nothing.”
“I know more about you now than some people I consider my dearest friends,” Reggie said drily.
“Our business is washing up and I don’t want to follow my old man’s footsteps.” His eyes pierced hers, almost ethereally light in the strobe of the spotlight roving over the dance floor. “I would do anything.”
Brian halted so quickly Reggie almost tripped over his shoes.
“May I cut in?”
It was Luca. Even at a party he had everyone bending to his will in that soft-spell way of his. Reggie thought Brian looked almost pale under cheeks flushed from their exertion on the floor. She gave him a sympathetic look, one she hoped read, “There’s no way he could have heard.”
She matched Luca’s rhythm, steadying herself with the beat and his presence, his competent movements. Luca never let loose, but the sinews in his arm and the confident movement of his feet tricked everyone around—including her—into believing he had.
He lowered his lips to her ear. “What did Brian want?”
She was aware of his nearness. Very aware, and it wasn’t the pleasant sensation that the women looking enviously at them imagined it was. “Everyone seems to think you control a lot of business. They ask a lot of questions.”
“I should hope you haven’t been putting any ideas in anyone’s head. My cousin’s, for one.”
“I don’t need to put any ideas in anyone’s head,” she said plainly. “Especially not his. He’s far too smart as it is. Besides, we both saw you almost lose a finger.”
“Talk about more pleasant things,” he growled through smiling teeth. She fell into his steps and smiled back genuinely, shelving what she really wanted to say to him, deciding to cut him some slack as this was the opening of his lovely club and, though his hands were sure and steady, even Luca Valari wasn’t immune to opening night jitters.
“You want to dance, Hamish Cicero?” Mary’s eyes looked over his shoulder at Johnny Wade. Hamish followed her gaze.
“I . . .” He wanted a wink or a nod or a blink or anything from Johnny to solidify a silent contract. He didn’t want to stand between any two people who had a past as palpable as they did. Even in the slow few minutes that they ticked through a history, Hamish could feel the pulse of something strong. Maybe it was years of spending so much time alone that made him especially capable of sensing a spark between two people. Maybe his lack of deep personal connections allowed him to see connection between others more transparently. Johnny gave no indication, so Hamish joined Mary.
“You’re working!” Schultze bellowed. Hamish hadn’t seen him.
“I’m taking a fifteen. Luca won’t care.”
She strolled from behind the bar and led Hamish to the floor. She smelled like peaches and her hair curled tantalizingly under her ears. Just take this for what it is, Hamish! Stop thinking that there has to be an intense equation. Just put your arms there on her waist and be grateful that you have a girl in your arms. Roy Holliday lingered on the first few bars of Gershwin before accelerating the pace. A lover remembering every little nuance. The way she sipped her tea. Almost-love. Hamish would have found it sad if Holliday’s band didn’t keep the tempo so snappy. As one of Luca’s cigarette girls, Mary had traded suspenders and boy shorts for a reddish dress of the same palette as Reggie’s. It warmed her cheeks.
“You’re good,” Mary said happily, holding tightly to Hamish.
“Thanks!”
“How did you learn?”
“I practiced.” Maisie. The Palais Royale. Nights of imperfect precision. Wasn’t that what swing was? He took a beat. A breath. And she fell into his lead. Smiling. Perfectly trusting him. He smelled alcohol on her breath.
“You’re not bad yourself.” Somewhere Hamish knew Luca was watching. Happy that he was taking his advice. “Though I wonder what Luca would say if he knew you imbibed on your shift.”
“We’re celebrating.” She giggled. “He won’t mind. Best boss in the city.”
Hamish whirled her out a moment, enjoying the buoyancy and pull in his arm as he looped her back toward him. “But he also wants a perfectly run establishment.”
“Are you going to rat me out, Hamish Cicero?” Her eyes were saucers as she blinked up at him, stalling their movement for a moment, the crowd around them making him dizzy with the swirl around their pause.
“No.” The rhythm found a faster pulse and the trumpet wailed.
Reggie leaned against the bar. Johnny Wade rattled an olive onto a transparent stick and slid the drink to Brian MacMillan.
“Sitting this one out?” she asked, accepting a glass of sparkly wine from Johnny’s partner, a blond kid who may not have had Wade’s clean-cut looks but had his own rakish, confident charm.
“People keep cutting in on me.” Brian’s smile was sheepish. Charming, really. “I don’t have any of their—how shall we say it—cocksure confidence?”
“But you’re in the business of nightclubs.” Reggie swooshed her glass up to the light.
“Not just nightclubs. I am learning the family trade. My father is the one who has invested all of the money. I am merely trying on a new profession for size.”
“And how do you like it so far?”
“Down to the champagne.” She raised her wineglass slightly.
“Precisely. A wiser group of investors would have encouraged him to settle for less expensive brands for a trial run.”
Reggie’s mind’s eye sojourned to the dungeon-like cellar and the riches therein.
Brian accepted another drink and then another, and by the time Schultze meandered along asking for Mary, he was talking too loudly about how Luca wouldn’t let him in on the ground floor.
Reggie strained to hear, but Schultze was vociferously demanding a drink of Johnny Wade and the band was loud, the drums and trombones in a competition to out-improvise themselves, and she lost the gist of the conversation.
“Do I finally get a dance with you now?” Hamish appeared, his voice slightly tripping over his d’s. He looked tired but happy, slicked hair breaking free of its gel, one rebel strand a lazy comma over his shining forehead.
“Finally.”
She stepped to the middle of the floor, the clarinet blaring legato through a few perambulatory bars while the drum slowly layered, thrumming softly through a mounting persistence, the trumpeter roaring whimsically overtop even through the modifying effect of its mute. Reggie’s smile stretched so wide her cheeks hurt, and not just from the carnivalesque selection on the band’s stands. The rhythm and the effect of the wine. Nothing was quite like the magic of an extended hand. Being picked out of a crowd—floral arrangements of girls in silk and shine and dripping with diamonds, lips russet and eyes bright—and led chosen to the middle. And suddenly a song was just for you: matching your passion and rippling through you as you fell into steps you knew but were new, somehow.