The next morning, Hamish arrived at the office before Reggie to collect his thoughts.
A badly formed part of his brain affects the patient’s nervous system. It can be cut out. We section the cortex between the frontal and parietal lobes . . . Metrazol and medication . . . Injections of insulin shock the system. Separate a patient’s emotional state from their intelligent state . . . Institutions and sanitoriums and experimental treatments. Hamish may as well have gone to medical school for all of the reading he’d done in hopes that medical journals could keep his hand from shaking and his chest from closing in. Quotes from leading psychiatrists seemed to stick in his brain as well as Notre-Dame did.
He flushed just thinking about meeting eyes with Reggie again. But the sensation of her fingers in his hair had calmed him.
Her eyes had glistened with panic for him. Hamish rubbed at his collarbone, slow, rhythmic circles, hoping his heart was as tempered as it seemed. Its thuds subsisted and trailed off slowly. He was exhausted, but lighter. And the light through which he saw Reggie softened. This pretty girl with her stained lips and high cheekbones, looking at him not with condescending pity but with blatant affection.
When Reggie appeared bearing a paper bag and a jar of brown liquid she explained was iced coffee, his smile tugged.
“Breakfast!” she announced. “Care of Mrs. Leoni.”
“Fulham. Cicero. Suave.”
“And a good morning to you too!” Reggie laughed.
“Connecting the dots,” Hamish said. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“You know you don’t have to apologize.” Her voice was gentle as she unwrapped the cannoli and popped the lid off the coffee jar. She took two chipped mugs from the side cupboard and poured.
“I just don’t know . . . I guess I thought . . . Truth is, it happens. I am just ashamed it happened in front of you.”
“I’m your friend.” Reggie handed him a mug and lifted her own filled glass in a toast. “Is that why you came here? I mean, you don’t have to answer, but . . .”
Hamish held his hands out, studying them. “We have all sorts of medicine for people, don’t we? If you have a cold or a cough or influenza. I used to think that maybe there was a pill to swallow to make me like everyone else.” He fixed his eyes just above her on the crevice of the window. “And I never know when it is going to happen or why. Sometimes there’s no reason. Everything just crowds in at once and it starts in my chest.” He placed a hand over his heart. “Really dull at first but then it gets worse and my eyes go fuzzy and I feel dizzy. There’s no trying to control my hand at that point.” He tapped his fingers over his chest. “My dad was always trying to teach me ways to escape so no one had to see. Well, I did a rummy job of it that morning.” Hamish shrugged.
“I’m sorry.”
“Can you imagine me in a courtroom?”
Reggie cocked her head a little. “I can imagine you anywhere, Hamish.”
“I think my dad might have been disappointed. He’d never tell me. But he had such high hopes. And I can’t be a lawyer, Reggie. I know that. I don’t want it. I want to be here and . . .” He hoped his eyes didn’t give him away. He really wanted to be anywhere she was. She excused herself when Nate asked for a woman’s touch on a telegram he was writing, leaving Hamish with the empty office.
Now the dusty morning light striped through the blinds and kissed Reggie’s desk. With all of this talk of murder, the headlines and the nightclub scandal, all he needed was a well-dressed woman with watering doe eyes, a pocket-sized ivory-handled pistol, and a few good lines about flatfoots, and he would be in a Winchester Molloy serial. Or Reggie. Yes, she was so alive. Color and warmth and not the black ink bleeding over his memory from the latest headlines. “Society Girl at Murder Scene.” Reggie told him she was used to finding her name in the society pages. She had laughed off the front page. He wondered what life would be like if he was forced to be conspicuous. He swallowed just imagining it, the world around him fuzzing until the phone jangled.
“Luca Valari’s office,” he answered in Reggie’s absence.
“I only have a minute. You have to listen to me, Luca.”
“This is Hamish DeLuca, sir.”
“They’re giving me five minutes. They can’t know I’m calling. You know why I am calling.”
The static crackled. The same tunnel of sound Reggie must have heard with some of these calls.
“The reception is very bad,” Hamish said.
“It’s a bad connection. A basement I—”
“Who are you? Does Luca owe you money?”
“Where’s Florence? He sold me out. I had to . . . I had to get this number.”
“Speak up! I can only hear every few words. I don’t know any Florence.”
“He sold me out. She needs to know I am here.”
“I can’t understand you. Who are you?”
“Tell him I know everything. And I will tell the moment I get out of here. He threatened—”
“Sir—what’s everything?” Hamish’s hand shook over the telephone cord.
“She always hangs up on me. Calls me a creditor. I’m not a creditor. I’m Valari’s lawyer.”
“What?”
“Frank. Frank Fulham. He thought he was sending me away, but I found the number. He always thought I was slow. That I wouldn’t find her.”
“Find who?”
“Florence.”
The connection went dead. Hamish exhaled then stared out the open window. He almost wanted it to be cloudy and rainy to match the mood he was in after the cryptic phone call. Instead, the world outside was a study in sunlight.
Below, schoolchildren tripped over the stones as tourists rummaged in their bags for their box cameras, snapping the Revere House and the neighboring Pierce-Hichborn residence, snippets of pocket-sized history to take home and show their friends in floral albums. Seeing the kids sparked memories he would rather not recall. Besides, Hamish was making his own type of memories: ones that severed him from Luca. Ones with Nate and Reggie manning an office where they did little but listen to the radio and eat cannoli. He would have gone on like that forever.
He nudged the window open farther and a breeze countered the North End mugginess, picking up the familiar scents of laundry detergent, fresh baking, basil, and flowers.
He loved the fresh air now. A far cry from when Hamish was little and stayed in his room, refusing to see any sunlight . . . dragged out the door to school, hiding near the back, begging his teacher to let him spend recesses and lunch hours in the library. He would sit near the drawn curtain and press his fingernails into his palm to stop the shaking. It was his teacher who first noticed. She clucked her tongue and rang his father at the Telegraph while he sat outside the principal’s office until he arrived.
Sitting in that dark corridor, his chair scraping over the linoleum, a slight movement as he pulled his knees to his chest to make himself into a small little ball, he was certain he had done something wrong. That he was horrible and bad. That the pain and scabs on his right hand were tattooed there as punishment. The principal handed his father the number of a doctor and instructed he take care of “the problem.”
The problem, Hamish had learned, was him. He crept down the stairs to the landing when he heard his father yelling, and he knew then that his strange shakes and stutters and his habit of breaking his skin with his nails meant that he was trouble. He was something wrong.
So Hamish got used to hiding. To avoiding people and preferring books. He was an excellent student. He had a mind that could absorb anything. He’d wanted to practice law. It made his parents so proud. Furthermore, he knew he could. He had top marks in high school and university. But every time he spoke in front of people, he was afraid his voice might stutter—as it did with little warning. So he practiced putting marbles in his mouth, avoiding his father’s eye contact at the dinner table. But he did go to school and he vowed never to be trouble. He wouldn’t be a problem. He would be the smartest
one in class. Luca would be proud of him and his father too. As Hamish grew older, Luca moved in and out of their lives on a dime; but when he was there, everything was alive. He took Hamish to baseball games, to his first nightclub, and Hamish decided Luca was some kind of shield. He could be out in the world but still invincible, armored by his cousin’s easy nature.
“Look at this!” Reggie startled Hamish from his reverie. “‘With the success of Luca Valari’s Flamingo, long-standing clubs like the Dragonfly might find themselves in dire straits.’ Your cousin is singlehandedly obliterating any competition!”
“Driving them out of business. Taking their best employees.” Hamish blew out a long breath of air. “You coming to the club tonight?”
Reggie tossed the newspaper on her desk. “Dirk and Vaughan want to have dinner with one of Dirk’s old school chums. He’s finally worked up the courage to ask her out and he wants a chaperone.”
Hamish tried to hide his disappointment. “I understand.”
“I’d much rather be with you.”
“It’s best if I talk to Luca alone anyway, Reggie.” He rolled a pencil over the desk.
Later, he maneuvered his bike down the staircase. The city embraced him, holding him close, knowing exactly what he needed. As the sunset bathed the rooftops in pink and gold, the bricked streets of Boston unfurled before him, his path occasionally interrupted by children playing or lovers tripping into themselves as they wound familiar streets in pursuit of the pulse resounding from a club’s open door.
When Scollay Square exploded in noise and light, Hamish hopped off his bike. The night was humid but there was a nice breeze and he almost looked forward to the beat of the club.
“Cicero.” The nickname grated on Hamish now. “You’re investing a lot of time in my club.”
“I will come every night until I find out what happened to Mary Finn.” Hamish tried to keep his voice casual, though his hand was shaking behind his back. “And I want to know who Frank Fulham is and why you hired a secretary just to keep his calls from reaching you. And I want to know why you keep company with Mark Suave when he roughed up Reggie in your office.”
Hamish noticed Luca’s face darken at the last part of his challenge. His smile shrouded gritted teeth. “You need a better hobby, Cic.”
“You’re lying to me, Luca.” Hamish squeezed his hand. He broke skin and winced. Luca noticed. “You know I can tell when people are lying to me.”
“I would never keep anything from you,” Luca said evenly. “Go dance.”
Hamish shook his head. “I will find out what’s going on.”
“You’re investigating me? Your cousin . . . your best friend?”
Hamish blinked, his nails deeply grafted into his palm. “I would. Because my conscience won’t let me do otherwise.”
Luca cursed. “Well, I suppose we’re at odds, then.”
Hamish flinched under the cold spark of Luca’s look. “I suppose we are.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid like run away. Stay at the apartment. I still feel responsible for you. Your father would kill me if anything happened to you.”
“Like being roughed up in the basement of the Dragonfly?” Hamish said. “Were you ever in danger at all?” Luca was smart enough to ignore the question. “Where’s Johnny Wade?” Hamish looked toward the bar. Something needled his mind, drawing him back to Johnny, but he wasn’t completely sure what. Something that made him want to keep Johnny in his sight line. But Bill was washing a glass and a young man Hamish hadn’t seen previously was mixing a drink.
“He has his own gig for the next two nights,” Luca said passively. “Are you finished with your mystery for the night? Because the fellow from the Herald is here for an interview and he’s just finishing his dance.”
“Yes. I am finished.” Hamish didn’t smile. “For now.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
Reggie felt stupid. Here she had spent months shaking off her old life, and now it stuck to her like gum on her shoe. She had forgotten how Vaughan’s snobbery heightened the longer he was around Dirk. Dirk’s companion was silent save for a few complaints to the waiter. She preferred to agree with everything Dirk said with a nod of her head. Everything from the workless population showing their laziness to the inevitable rise of their class. Reggie sputtered out several rebuttals only to have Vaughan squeeze her kneecap under the table.
“You know what he’s like,” he whispered in an aside. “Let’s not make a scene.”
Reggie wanted to throw her napkin. To use the gold-plated fork beside her plate of obnoxiously small mussels as a projectile into Dirk’s left eye. Instead she pinned on a smile and tried to engage Dirk’s girlfriend in conversation. Suddenly, she realized she had never gotten the girl’s name. She wasn’t an individual, rather an ornament.
When the chardonnay in her glass was gone and the main course had been cleared, Reggie decided to throw propriety out with the same easy flick that sent her ivory napkin to the floor.
She rose and shook her head. “I can’t listen to this anymore. Dirk, have you been living in a cave? I knew you were insufferable in New Haven, but I thought the city might have broadened your perspective. There are people starving. Lining up at soup kitchens, desperate to find any work for their families. I see them every day. They rise before dawn and wait in the heat in a line for temporary employment that stretches out of my office building.” She turned to Vaughan. “And you’re making it harder and harder for me to feel remorse for slapping you at my parents’ party. I know you don’t share his views, so say something.” She collected her handbag. She had drawn a few stares from onlooking diners but wasn’t sure if their collective shock was from her outburst or her recent fame in the newspapers. Maybe both.
Finally, she leaned toward Dirk’s date. “And you’re nothing but a pretty, silent bobble on a Christmas tree. Not even the star. Speak up, for the love of angels! Unless you honestly agree with every last thing the oaf beside you says!” She walked out of the fancy Beacon Hill restaurant, relishing the first blast of fresh air, and started in the direction of the Common, intent on making it to the club in Scollay Square.
“Regina!” Reggie turned at Vaughan’s voice. He breathlessly caught up with her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want tonight to be like this.”
“What did you expect, Vaughan? That Dirk would have grown a heart?”
“I like seeing you in your new world. I know I haven’t proven that . . . but I think I deserve a second chance.”
“Vaughan . . .”
“You don’t realize how intimidating you can be.”
Reggie softened at the vulnerability in his voice. “I have to go. But—”
“Regina—you’re a force of nature. I just thought I had to do something drastic to keep up with you. Do you understand? You can’t make me the villain. Maybe I was just the catalyst. You were always going to run, weren’t you?”
“Vaughan . . .” Reggie turned toward the Common. Vaughan lightly touched her elbow.
“Please, Regina.”
“Oh, fine.” She wriggled free and took a few steps forward. Tomorrow she would deal with Vaughan. Tonight she wanted to find Hamish and the Flamingo.
CHAPTER 24
Hamish knows Luca flits in and out of disastrous company, but he won’t see him lined up with any crime he did or didn’t commit,” Nate had said earlier, Reggie revisiting the conversation trying to make sense of Hamish’s dour mood. “It’s like he has loyalty cataracts, Reggie. And it probably makes for some awkward dinner conversations.”
She had to find him.
“If all murder mysteries include dancing with you, Hamish DeLuca, I am ready to live on the fringe of crime.” Reggie tried brightness on for size. His face was morose. She had reached the club, smoothed her hair, and stilled her brain of wandering Vaughan-ward. And then they had set into an easy dance. She was pleasantly surprised at how her heart skipped a beat when she saw him, and the night and Vaughan and his fr
iend fell away with the prospect of Hamish DeLuca and a dance floor.
Reggie had met him at the Flamingo, where she cut in on a girl who sounded like she had a perpetual cold and was tripping over Hamish’s feet. Soon after, they changed location. Johnny Wade’s band was at a new club that night, or so Hamish said.
They heard Johnny Wade before they saw him. Reggie stepped onto the floor and couples parted to give her room. Johnny leaned over the piano keys, half off the bench, his charisma matching his fingers over the riffs on the keys, bathed in the searching light of the Butterfly Room. The club was off Washington and Boylston, cradled on a side street, well attended but without the air of exclusivity patrons enjoyed at the Flamingo. The dress code was different too. No silks and satins. No jackets or ties. Just people—honest people—falling into music to shrug off the day. Cotton and sewn homemade lace, oxfords and curls falling from their pins with the athletic movements of swing.
She wasn’t sure if it was the night or his pent-up energy, but Hamish was more passionate now. There was a possessiveness in his tight clutch on her waist and she knew he, like the rest of the patrons wriggling out of the week, was trying to forget. Everything was in the feel of his hands on her shoulder and on her waist, the way his feet found the perfect steps. Anyone watching Hamish here wouldn’t believe that he stuttered over a consonant now and then and that his right hand trembled ever so slightly even in repose. And the longer they danced, the bolder he became, pulling her along into a confident spin and taking her with him as the tempo sped. Reggie felt as if everything he was feeling and thinking from the past week was manifesting itself in the pulse of a truant beat, the slide of their shoes over the floor, the almost suffocating atmosphere of people and smoke.
When the tune finally dissolved into one lingering note, Reggie was exhausted and exhilarated at once. She brushed a stray curl from her forehead and focused on Hamish. She thought of a book she had as a little girl all about the meaning of opposites: a dinner with Vaughan Vanderlaan and a spin with Hamish DeLuca to Johnny Wade’s band would make a stirring example.
Murder at the Flamingo Page 24