“Loyalty by way of murder?” Luca cursed. “That I would kill a girl?” He spun to Hamish. “Is this another one of your ideas?”
“I heard her fall,” Johnny continued before Hamish could speak. “I didn’t know she was dead. That’s why I came back to the bar. I need this job. I have this music. I didn’t mean to kill her. I got angry. She said she was staying with Schultze. We were supposed to be together.” Johnny shook his head. “But she betrayed me and I saw that Luca . . . that you wanted me for your club. I heard that the club was a way you were going to keep people in your circle. That’s why I up and left the Dragonfly. They’ve been talking about you since you arrived. And you were going to give me the opportunity to make something of myself. So I took the opportunity. I thought you would see it as a gesture of loyalty. So I let it happen. Look at the publicity you got.”
“You’re wrong there,” Hamish said. “Luca doesn’t look after anyone else. Luca’s only concern is for Luca.” Hamish turned his head over his shoulder. “You would think that maybe he hired you for your potential or out of the goodness of his heart or to bring you closer into his circle, as you say. He’s not thinking of that at all.”
“Luca—” Johnny held up a hand.
“Quiet!” Luca’s voice was loud enough to draw several pairs of eyes again, though the club—quickly filling to its full capacity—had returned to its normal bustle after Luca and Hamish’s conversation. “Johnny, if you are telling me this, you are confessing to a murder.”
“It was an accident.”
“You change your pitch quickly,” Reggie said.
“You led me to believe that was what he would want.” Johnny seethed. He looked around frantically like a man who couldn’t believe he had painted himself into this corner on account of a pretty girl. Then, regardless of Luca, of the crowd demanding drinks, of the first bars of a Roy Holliday tune, he reached behind a collection of bottles and extracted a pistol that he aimed directly at Hamish’s chest.
Hamish didn’t move, just took a fleeting look at the barrel, then at Johnny’s uneven gaze. He was blinking, a nervous tic twitching his eyelash.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I can’t go to jail. Not for something I did for you.” Johnny turned at a quick diagonal and centered the gun on Luca, clicking the bullet into place. Hamish saw a lifetime cross before his mind’s eye. Luca caught Hamish’s gaze. Then they both turned to Reggie, ghost white under the lights of the bar.
“Well, at least your theory turned out to be right,” Reggie said drily.
Luca cursed under his breath. “You killed a young woman,” he said to Johnny. “For no reason.”
“For you.”
“You think I have an influence I don’t have and you’re willing to waste a life for it?”
All three men turned at the sound of a low laugh. “This is the least of your problems.” Mark Suave stood behind Luca. “And stop talking so loudly.” He scowled at Johnny. “What a terrible criminal you would make.”
“Mark,” Luca said, a warning in his tone. “Now is not the time.”
“It’s always the time, Valari. Move aside.” He lifted his own pistol and caught Johnny off guard by waving it at his nose. After a few gasps emitted from nearby patrons, Suave answered them with an ultimatum: “You clear out for a breath of air, or I start shooting at random, yes? And don’t think of calling the police.” He narrowed his eyes at Luca while still flashing his weapon. “Vasser’s men were informed of our conversation.”
Hamish tried to catch Reggie’s eye, but she’d turned toward the club. The band was still playing, though Suave’s ultimatum rippled through the milling crowd, forcing them outside.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Suave’s voice pierced Hamish’s thoughts. “That people would flee rather than play hero.” He turned to Johnny. “You killed that girl, didn’t you? That Mary Finn girl? After Luca and I had our little meeting downstairs.”
“I . . .” Johnny spluttered through a few words that only reached toward cohesion.
“Never mind. Go.” He jostled the gun a little without compromising its aim.
“No!” Reggie yelled. “He murdered someone.”
“Aren’t you a brave little thing!” Mark Suave chuckled. “I should have kept pinning you against the wall in Luca’s office when I had the chance. Be gone, Wade. Go on crowd control. Make sure the volume is loud.” He tilted his head and straightened his firing arm. “Best not disturb our guests while I finish the proprietor.”
Hamish felt something new and incendiary wind through his veins. But he stayed still. What could he do? An armed man was controlling the situation with a silent command he could only dream of possessing. He looked to Luca. Then hated himself. He had always looked to Luca, and now he knew he would find nothing in Luca to hold on to.
“I’ve had men at South and North Stations watching, you know,” Suave was saying to Luca in a soft tone. “Watching every night just in case a ghost haunted the platforms. A ghost who looked surprisingly like Frank Fulham.”
Hamish concentrated on his shoes. Reggie saw a lot in that study: Hamish fixating his eyes, driving his hands deep into his pockets. He watched Reggie deflate a little, her shoulders sinking. It was a new sensation: wanting to assure her before he stilled his own nerves. Wanting to convince her she was safe and life was fine before he stilled his own heartbeat.
Beside him Luca was still, save for heavy swallows pronouncing his Adam’s apple. Mark was still talking but everything sounded as if they were in a tunnel, reverberating with the pulse of the club and the beat of his heart.
Luca’s face was a mask of panic while a million questions blazed behind his dark eyes. “I can’t be responsible for every rumor you hear,” Luca was saying. “But I won’t let Hamish and Reggie be a part of this. You let them leave now.”
Suave shook his head. “Her . . . maybe.” He slitted his eyes at Reggie before turning back to Luca and Hamish. Mostly Hamish. “But I saw your breaking point the night I first found you here at the Dragonfly: smoothing your way through a new city, thinking the past was far behind. But him—” He pointed the gun at Hamish, then took a step farther, pressing the barrel into Hamish’s chest. Hamish shuddered, his nerves fizzling into a frozen moment. He knew he couldn’t let that bullet hit Luca. That it was better directed at him. Better him than Reggie or Luca. His heart would beat too rapidly until it finally burst. A split second and he thought of his parents and how he would be leaving them with nothing.
“Get your filthy hand off the trigger!” Luca shouted. The patrons of the club were glaringly aware. This standoff was far more appealing than Hamish and Luca’s row. Far more distracting than the rise and fall of the band. Some panicked, but Suave ignored it.
“I can ruin you in this town.” Luca’s voice was dark, slicing through the noise. “You think you can walk out of here and point your finger at me and people will believe you? Who would take your word over mine the moment we stepped onto Salem Street? I own this city. And those I don’t own, I soon will—and you would rather shrivel into oblivion by firing a bullet at my little cousin?” Luca clucked his tongue. The gun still imprinted Hamish’s flesh. “If you harm one hair on Hamish’s head, I will see you are blacklisted the world over. You will find every door closed to you.”
“You are bartering with power you don’t have.” Suave pinned Hamish with his eyes. “There’s always someone more powerful, Luca. Something you haven’t learned.”
The world buzzed and for a moment Hamish forgot where he was. The buzz hummed around him and his eyes wouldn’t focus even as he tried to blink his surroundings into view. And even when he heard the click . . . a long moment before he felt it and even when he felt the sudden rush through him and the external force of metal and sudden shock and pain while someone said his name . . . he knew it was right. He was relieved. Because it couldn’t be Luca or Reggie who bore the brunt of this man’s rage and vindication. It had to be him. It was best this way. And even as he fel
l, the music in the club a void, the lights dimming dark, he wouldn’t have turned back the clock or had it any other way.
“Hamish!” Luca’s voice was frantic. “Hamish!”
Hamish looked through half-closed eyes. Something cold was beneath him. The floor. Cold. Luca’s arms propped him up. Perspiration dripped into his eyes, but he blinked away the sting and funneled in on his cousin a moment. Luca looked terrified. Hamish looked down. His shirt was sticky and an iron pressed through him. Hamish blinked and blinked. Mark. A crowded club. The train. Fulham. Everything hurt.
“You’re so stupid, Hamish. Wh-why did you do that?” Luca smoothed Hamish’s hair back. “You make it so hard. I don’t deserve this. Why did you do it?”
Hamish licked his dry lips, tongue cotton. He tried a slight smile but his teeth had begun chattering, clacking like crystal plates in his slackened mouth. “You’re Luca.” It was the only explanation he had. Through the ringing tunnel of his eardrums he heard sirens and then a woman’s voice. Regina was barking his name. Blurrily, he made out the scene of chaos and confusion. Acoustics usually filled with music, stale and hollow. And nearby . . . not too far . . . a ribbon of red trailing from Suave’s expensive suit.
His hands shoved through the feeling of cement to grip Luca’s arm with the tiniest bit of energy he still had while his brain flickered on. “You have to go. They can’t find you here. Suave . . .”
“I won’t leave you. Hamish, you’ll be fine. I swear to you. You’ll be fine. It will all be over.” Luca’s voice shook a little. “I got him. It’s over.”
But it wasn’t over. To think was like pushing through the weight of water, but Hamish was strong enough to remember there were two of them: Suave and Arthur. And Fulham, the corpse who lived. Hamish’s eyes were fluttering shut but he pried them open for one last pleading glimpse. Reggie’s voice again, this time for someone to call the police. The real police. The police not on Luca’s list.
“Go,” he whispered.
“I’m not leaving you here.”
Luca did a poor job of convincing either of them, his voice warbling. His eyes brushed over Hamish before he slowly detached himself, lowering Hamish’s head gently to the cold tile. He leaned over and pressed his lips tightly to the top of Hamish’s hair. “You know me, Cicero. There are few things in this world I truly love. But you are one of them. Reggie. Reggie, tell him I’m sorry.”
Through a fog, Hamish made out Reggie’s outline and her worried face. He grabbed at her skirt as she knelt over.
“Reggie! Th-they can’t know. About Suave. About Luca!” Hamish had no more to lose. “P-put the gun in my hand,” he whispered before the world went black.
CHAPTER 26
The Court of Miracles. He mapped it in his mind, flitting in and out of a cold, sterile room, mind tracing fragments of cobblestone and brick and jutting little alleys that winked from age-old buildings. This little land was checkered with uneven roads and painted with banners and filled with light and music and sound. And even in its safe space, his thoughts spiraled out to a night when he let Luca get away.
The gun they found in his possession worked: heavy steel he clutched so tightly the officer had to pry it from his hand. But if he had the gun, then Luca got away. The police believed it was self-defense. The real police. Not Ben Vasser. In one of his more conscious moments, he thought he heard Reggie say that Vasser had disappeared. With Schultze and MacMillan. Maybe he had.
And it was self-defense. Hamish just didn’t offer who was defending whom. He wished he had done something heroic rather than just standing there. It might have been easier if he had been able to jump in front of Luca and take the bullet, saving him. Instead, he was just collateral. He convinced himself that it was enough he was there at all. If he hadn’t come to Boston, would Suave and Luca have just reached an inevitable point without him? Maybe it was heroic enough that he was there. The un-intentional hero of Luca’s story as well as his own.
“Well, you can’t just lie there.” Nate’s voice came through a far tunnel that, when Hamish blinked away drowsiness, was really just the door of his hospital room. “If you recall, we just started a chess game and you were losing abysmally and I refuse to finish it myself.”
Hamish tried a smile. He was groggy and everything hurt. He blinked a few times, the world around him making more sense the longer his eyes stayed open. But Hamish’s will was something stronger than what chained Luca to what he thought he had to be. If you dug a hole of your own choosing, if you were responsible for your own actions, there was a kind of grace in that.
Luca didn’t think he had the will to get out of his trap. Like Claude Frollo looking at the fly in the spider’s web in the book Reggie had retrieved from the office. Hamish moved chess pieces with his good hand and tried to forget. Mrs. Leoni sent cannoli with Reggie, who didn’t seem to want to move from the chair next to him.
“I’m going to be all right, Reggie.”
Reggie sniffed. “I’m not crying for you,” she cried.
“Then why are you crying?”
“Okay, I’m crying for you! You looked dead, and Suave’s man might find Luca, and . . .”
Hamish reached out and patted her hand. “I’m not dead, and Luca is out of my control.”
Reggie shot up, drying her eyes with her kerchief. “He is?”
“I can’t be responsible. I can’t fix everything.” He said it like a mantra. Maybe he was wriggling out of that part of himself that chained him to things he couldn’t change. He looked up and smiled. Maybe it was the medication. Maybe it was her presence. Whatever it was, he felt a surge of light and possibility. “More cannoli, please.”
“It worked out!” Reggie’s voice brightened and she dabbed her eyes dry. “Johnny Wade is being tried next week.”
Hamish’s brow furrowed. It hurt. Everything hurt. “What?”
“It wasn’t in vain.” Reggie shook her head and her curls bounced a little. “Our murder mystery was solved and the perpetrator . . . No. That’s not how you say it. Perpetrator? Rats! I have to watch a few more pictures! Our per-pe-trator . . . There! Got it!” She smiled. “Is behind bars.”
The crescent of Vaughan’s thumb stopped the tear trickling just under Reggie’s bottom lash line. Hamish looked pale. He looked dead. It wasn’t a vital organ, the doctor said, just his shoulder. A sling. Time. Healing. She hadn’t left his room. Then she did when Vaughan insisted. And when Nate insisted. And when Vaughan and Nate insisted, their voices layering in a discordant symphony of concern. Vaughan tried to reassure her with a slight shake, stretching his arm around her. She fit like a missing puzzle piece. Like the summer hadn’t wedged a space between them. If Reggie couldn’t fathom returning to who she was, maybe she could pull him into her present. His broad shoulders and nearness, his smell of New Haven. She was seeing him in a new light, and it wasn’t just the lemony tint blessing the city as fall edged in. He was relaxed here. His shoulders loose, his smile frequent. Not confined by the china and yachts and forced small talk of their parents’ circles, Vaughan was as delightful as he had been . . . once . . . when they stole a boat and shoved off far from her father’s estate. Or when he snuck a flask to a baseball game. Boston was changing Vaughan. It shouldn’t have surprised her. Boston had changed her too.
“Vaughan, I’m exhausted.” She was sticky too. Her hair was plastered to her head and the back of her neck, and she was sure she looked a sight. Vaughan’s eyes, however, positively sparkled at her. They were wandering through the hospital corridor after a visit to Hamish, her heels clacking on the linoleum, her body feeling so tired it could sleep for a week.
“I was hoping we could postpone our night.” She didn’t want to sit through the silver cutlery and ivory linen of the Parker House restaurant.
“You need to eat, Reg. Why don’t you show me where you’ve been all summer?”
Reggie lightened. “Really?”
Vaughan insisted on a cab from the hospital, but Reggie insisted they a
light just at the rim of the neighborhood she now called home.
They walked back past the North Church and onto Salem, Reggie pointing out the little moments that made her days before tugging Vaughan in the direction of a cozy trattoria.
Inside, neat tables were covered with red-and-white checkered cloths. Candle wax stood in congealed sculptures in decorative holders, and fat little wine bottles encased in wicker shells were flowing freely.
A waiter Reggie recognized from her daily comings and goings presented them with a basket of bread and filled their water goblets.
Over large platters of homemade pasta twirled in sweet tomato sauce, Vaughan picked up where they had left off at the Flamingo’s opening: with incessant small talk. She let him ramble on about the summer and his father’s business and his uncle’s participation in the annual regatta. Reggie was tugged back to sun-dimpled water, the brim of a wide hat sloping over her forehead, pretending interest in rigging and sails. She picked up a piece of bread and dipped it in a pool of olive oil.
And Vaughan was still talking. Her thoughts turned to Hamish until something about their earlier experience and his bout of nerves made her look up at Vaughan as if seeing him for the first time that evening. Was Vaughan waxing incessantly about home because he wanted to catch her up? Or was Vaughan nervous?
“I wanted to apologize. About the night at the Flamingo. For abandoning you. I hope you know I was only trying to do what was best.”
“I know. It was a horrible night. A horrible thing.”
“I thought I could make it up to you. I thought we could see a picture tonight, if you like. I checked the newspaper listings. That film you like with Loretta Young is playing. Or the other Thin Man film.”
“Platinum Blonde,” Reggie said softly, watching Vaughan over the rim of her wineglass. He was handsome and he was trying. He was a perfect gentleman to her, as always, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his starched napkin, warm and friendly to the waitstaff, not even looking up when a clang of dishes crashed in the open kitchen behind them. The fact that Vaughan Vanderlaan stepped into an establishment with an open kitchen at all told her exactly how hard he was trying. She decided to throw him a rope.
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