She curses as Laura carefully spins her and lays her gently on the couch.
“I can’t disagree,” Laura says. “But I can’t lose you either.”
It’s maybe the worst thing that’s ever happened in Amelia’s whole life, because Laura leans down and kisses her on the cheek. “I think I might love you too much for that.”
Of all the lousy, no good, romantic, stupid, wonderful things to s…
CHAPTER 9
The majority of people don’t find drugging a person particularly romantic.
It is, in fact, presumptuous. And a little cruel.
Possibly also illegal.
Almost certainly illegal.
Nevertheless, Laura finds herself with few options. She could take her lover with her to a meeting that would surely end in death, she could lock her up—but knowing Amelia that would work for an hour at most—or she could drug her into unconsciousness and work hard not to marvel at how peaceful Amelia looks while asleep.
Sleeping people normally remind Laura of the dead. The stillness. The closed eyes. The slack mouths. She sees someone slumbering and can only see the bodies stacked like logs after a round of executions.
But Amelia is still very much alive, and Laura could sit on the couch watching the soft flutter of her eyelids and the careful tick of her lips for the rest of her waking days. Except lurking around Michel’s father’s estate, watching Amelia sleep, won’t solve a damn thing.
Laura stokes the fire crackling in the fireplace, carefully leaves the room, and pulls the door shut behind her.
Michel waits for her in the kitchen. His shirtsleeves are rolled up past his elbows, and he’s cleaning the glut of pans he’s made a mess of while baking. “How’s your friend,” he asks. There’s a hardness that rests on the word “friend.” A mild accusation he really has no right to make.
“Asleep.” She’s terser than she should be, and she knows it. Dear Michel has gone out of his way to help her with her work. Driving for her, covering for her, even housing her. It shouldn’t matter that so much of his helpfulness is related to his affection for her.
“It’s love,” he claimed once. She’d kissed the corner of his mouth and told him it would only ever be a one-sided affair. That was years ago, when she was mad for his brother. Before both she and Michel had lost him to Nazi gallows.
He would have hated what she’d just done. Would have looked upon her with revulsion—just like Amelia will if they ever see one another again.
But Michel doesn’t, does he? He’s never repulsed by the actions Laura takes. Even thanked her when she shot his brother. “You saved him from suffering,” he said at the time. “No one else could have managed.”
Michel understands her, understands the callous and cruel creature she can be.
She packs her pistol and the roll of film into her purse and shoulders it. “Can you—” She tries very hard not to sigh. “Can you watch her? While I’m gone?”
Michel nods. “Anything for you,” the gesture says.
He calls after her, still not turning from the sink. “And if she wakes up? What would you have me say?”
There’s the noise of the washing. Water sloshing and suds striking the sides of the ceramic sink.
“Tell her I’m sorry, won’t you?”
He stops washing but doesn’t look at her.
“And that…All I wanted to do was keep her safe.”
A dead man swinging on the gallows is there between her and him again. A ghostly visage lurking only in their minds’ eyes.
Michel doesn’t have to ask if Laura’s feelings for Amelia are anything like her feelings for his dead brother. But what Laura truly loves about Michel is that he won’t ask either.
Amelia’s uncle lives in South Brooklyn, which isn’t, technically, the southern most part of Brooklyn. It’s just what everyone calls the part south of downtown when they don’t want to use the name Red Hook. That moniker sounds more dangerous. Violent. Much like the man Laura’s come from Long Island to see.
Vince Pedrotti has his fingers in an awful lot of pies, but his biggest success is in import and export. With his connections at the docks, he can get anyone he wants out of the country. And he can get anything he wants in.
And that’s exactly how a film canister full of Nazi secrets made its way into New York.
She wonders if he knows who he’s working for. If he understands how he’s trading Nazi secrets to communists.
It’s one of the two things she’s come all the way out to South Brooklyn to ask.
The old man takes his time coming to the door, his shadow on the glass moving at an unhurried shuffle.
Bad hip. Must get stiff when he sits for too long.
So why has he been sitting all day? Waiting by the phone perhaps?
She gently rests a hand on the flap of her purse and stands as tall as she can.
Locks click, one after the other, and then the door opens. A record’s playing in another room. Strains of some melancholic opera filter through, and if Laura cared about such things, she might even be able to name it.
Pedrotti sighs when he finds her waiting for him. Steps aside and lets her in. “If you’ve come to kill me, sweetheart, then you better have more than a peashooter in that purse.”
She feigns surprise. “Why on earth do you think I want to kill you?”
“Was you who killed my men the other day, wasn’t it?”
She laughs and walks into the house as though she owns it. Takes a seat in a green velvet chair in the parlor. “I suppose introductions aren’t necessary.”
“Didn’t say that. I know what you’ve done. Still don’t know who exactly you are.”
“Then I have the advantage, Mr. Pedrotti, because I’m one of the very few people in this opera to know all the players.”
He scowls, and it should be menacing, but Laura’s faced down men who’ve ordered the deaths of millions. Pedrotti’s list of condemned is much shorter. Maybe just a hundred. He can’t compare.
“Like my niece.”
“Amelia’s been dragged into this, and I think we can both agree that’s a mistake.”
He sucks on the inside of his cheek, dark eyes appraising her like a shipping manifest. “You know what she used to do? Before all this acting business?”
“She’s mentioned it.”
He sinks down into a hard looking wooden chair opposite her. The finish has worn off the arm rests and the chair creaks with Pedrotti’s weight. The way he settles, the way the palms of his hands work at those worn spots, tells her it’s his chair. The throne from which he dispenses all his judgments.
“Smartest one of her whole little gang. A real talent. Could have been famous the way she drives. But her brother lost his leg, and the girl lost her taste for it.”
“Tragedy tends to do that.” Or it’s supposed to. A lover swinging from the gallows, bullet hole smoking in his chest… that’s supposed to scare a woman away.
“And I don’t know you, but I know enough to know you like what you do. The way you did those boys down at that bar, you’d have to love it.”
“No allowances for mere talent?”
His laugh is more the weary sigh of the very old. “Talent don’t mean everything. That’s why my niece isn’t famous yet.”
“Well…” She methodically smooths her skirt out over her thighs. It’s wrinkled from being worn too long, and there are stains from last night’s rain around the hem. “You’re right. Despite talent, this isn’t Amelia’s world. It’s mine and yours.” She plucks at the weave and glances up through her eyelashes. “And the world of the communists you’ve been doing business with.”
It’s quite coy.
Pedrotti hisses, drawing a breath in through yellowed teeth. “Didn’t know that
at the time. Just supposed to be helping out a friend of a friend. They weren’t fascists, so I figured it was fine.”
“Fascists are far too 1945. We’re in 1946, and communists are persona non grata. Smuggling secrets for the communists is even worse. Traitorous, some might say.”
He clenches his jaw, and the action pulls the wrinkled skin taut across bulging tendons. “You keep saying that word in my company, Miss, and you’re the one that’s gonna end up dead.”
She’s certainly hit a mark. The man wouldn’t be so ashamed if he’d known from the beginning whom he was working for.
“You can try to kill me, but I highly doubt you have anyone in your employ that’s capable of the feat.” She leans forward, her elbows digging into the meat of her legs. “However, I’m not here just to talk about your communist friends and traitorous acts—”
“I love this country.”
“Enough to betray it to Russia, Mr. Pedrotti.” She says his name clearly, with that inflection reserved for the hard of hearing. It’s the officious tone she reserves for those who need to be patronized. “Now, I had two reasons for coming here.”
“To call me a traitor.”
She nods. “And for Amelia’s sake. She needs protection.”
“You care about her.” Between people like them, killers, that’s an accusation.
And one they should both be subject to. “So do you.” If he didn’t, Amelia’s body would have wound up in the Gowanus Canal the first moment she started asking questions.
“You want my promise not to kill her,” he says.
“No, I want your promise to protect her. Whatever happens over the course of the next few days, I need to know you’ll keep her alive.”
“Long as she’s got that film, there’s not a damn thing I can do for her.”
“Well,” Laura reaches into her purse and produces the film, “it’s a good thing she doesn’t have it then.” She sets it on the coffee table between them. Pedrotti stares at it as a hungry man might stare at a sandwich.
“Calling me a traitor, and you’re sitting here ready to deal for a girl’s life?”
She slips the film back into her purse. “I’ve already seen how deals you arrange turn out. I’ll be dealing with the communists personally.”
“I can’t arrange that.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I asked you to keep Amelia safe. You’ve seen the film, and you know she doesn’t have it. There’s no reason she needs to die now.”
“I—”
“Can promise it. I know you can, because as powerful as these people are, they still don’t know this city like you do. If they did, Amelia would already be dead. And you would too.”
The opera in the other room ends, and is replaced by the hiss of white noise from the speakers. “You’re honestly just here to secure her protection, aren’t you? The film and spies, it’s all secondary.”
“Yes.” Why is that even a question?
He chuckles. Actually chuckles. The life of his niece is on the line and the man is laughing. “Jesus. I knew she was crazy, looking after you like the two of you are going steady, but you’re just as perverted as her, aren’t you?”
Other than some behind-closed-doors, very quiet interactions with other girls in school, Laura had never really considered… being with another woman. Of course she’d done it, but she’d never thought much of it. She’d certainly never explored the culture—not like Amelia.
So, this is the first time anyone has ever looked her in the eye and called her a pervert.
It is… unsettling. Not quite like being called a “dame” in a group of men. That’s something she’s been dealing with her whole life. This is a surprise.
It never really occurred to her that she’s “perverted” simply because she cares for Amelia. Yes, it is very different, mechanically speaking, from a relationship with a man. But it is theirs, and it is private. To be honest, Laura feels like laughing.
A pervert?
Then she remembers Amelia. Remembers the shame carried in every one of her lustful glances.
It’s all absurd to Laura, but to Amelia, the word—and all the feelings behind it—is a violent insult.
One she’s suffered from her own family’s lips on more than one occasion.
Laura has to resist the very strong impulse to pull her gun out and shoot Pedrotti in the leg. She also has to resist the urge to lunge across the coffee table and wrap her fingers around his throat.
She pops one of her knuckles with her thumb.
Glares.
That’s enough to turn Pedrotti wan.
He clears his throat. Looks away. Relents. “I’ll keep her safe.”
“Good,” she says very evenly.
When she leaves, after milking Pedrotti for all the intel she can, he walks her to the door.
He’s put on another opera, and it soars.
“You know, you never told me your name,” he says. It’s a conversational tone. Meant to endear him to her. It’s also very clumsy.
At least for a spy. “No, I certainly didn’t.”
“You going to? Ought to know the name of a woman I’m doing a favor for.”
“The favor is for your niece, Mr. Pedrotti, and if she doesn’t survive the night, I guarantee you won’t survive the week.”
“Bit of a mouthful of a name.”
Laura walks away. She’d really rather not have Vince Pedrotti see her smile. It’s not even the bad joke, or Pedrotti himself, that stirs up amusement. It’s the way he said it.
Just like Amelia would.
CHAPTER 10
Laura’s plan is incredibly daring and noble. It is also incredibly stupid. If the man who put her onto this mission in the first place knew what she is risking—if her own former commanders knew—she’d be strung up. Or drummed out. Or driven farther into the ground than she already is.
Setting traps is dangerous. Settings traps with almost no support and absolutely no contingency plan is downright suicidal.
She takes the train from Brooklyn back into the city. Returns to the Sebastian with just the gun and the film in her purse.
Two men sit in a Pontiac opposite the hotel, and their glares are all too knowing. If they could snatch her off the street right then, they would. Snatch her up and take her away to some warehouse where they’d torture her until she gave up every secret she’s ever known.
She ignores them, just as she ignored her own people. The ones she called from Pedrotti’s place. They’re in another car farther up the street, sitting low in their seats and using their mirrors to watch the Pontiac boys. They’re good at what they do, and they’ll keep Judy’s friends out of Laura’s way.
Which is all she needs. A little help to watch her back.
With her head held high, she walks into the hotel she’s called home.
Moving into the Sebastian Hotel for Young Women wasn’t her first choice. In France she’d had her own small apartment, and she’d hoped to have the same back in the States. Unfortunately, everyone else returning from the war had the same bright idea. The city was filled to bursting and demand for apartments was high, as was the rent.
The city was also tremendously lonely. She didn’t have a group of ready-made friends in the form of a resistance cell. Didn’t even have the camaraderie of the OSS. All she had was the louts at work who eyed her with wary lust, plus a few old intelligence friends who were usually too busy to chat.
The Sebastian was a ready-made group of friends. Girls who did each other’s nails, grumbled about love and looked out for one another.
Girls who drank schnapps together.
The Sebastian gave her Amelia, who stormed into her life with a cocky grin and a sharp knock on the door. “How ya doing,” she asked, held out her hand, and
dared Laura not to shake it.
While the other girls quickly shied away from Laura, Amelia doubled down. She invited her to the diner for free coffee and insisted on dragging her out to the pictures. She laced their fingers together, wrapped her other hand around Laura’s arm, and listened to every bit of idiocy that stuttered out of Laura’s mouth.
In so many ways, Amelia saved Laura’s life over the last year. She built her up when it seemed the whole rest of the world conspired to beat her down.
In those early days, falling in love with Amelia felt inevitable.
In the present, all Laura can do is curse her own tardiness. If she said something sooner—moved faster—she and Amelia might have had more than one exquisite night and an awful good-bye.
It’s the only regret she can allow to haunt her.
Laying traps requires a clear mind, and Amelia’s smile just muddies that.
The sun is well on its way to setting, and light the color of orange sherbet is lancing in through the windows of the hotel, chasing Laura’s own dark shadow.
Mrs. Edith Myrtle is waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, her small mouth screwed up tight with disdain. “Miss Wright,” she says, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Have you?” Reflexively Laura’s coy, but she means to be casual. Myrtle can sniff out a lie better than many professional interrogators.
“We had an incident last night in Miss Maldonado’s room. Imagine my shock and concern when neither she or her neighbor could be found.”
“I was in Connecticut, ma’am. Visiting my father.”
Her beady little eyes narrow, and she searches Laura’s face for the lie. “I was told you were in the hotel. Do you know what happened?”
“Someone sneak in a man?”
“A gun.”
She feigns shock with a hand to the chest. “A gun. Here? In the Sebastian?”
“Yes. And it was fired in Miss Maldonado’s room. Then someone said they saw you, Miss Wright.”
The Lavender List Page 9