The Lost Plot

by Genevieve Cogman

  The cab remained idling at the curb. Presumably the men inside were waiting to be sure she actually went through the door and didn’t make a run for it.

  It could be an ambush in waiting. It could be a death-trap. But if it had been, Irene reasoned, then she’d be dead by now.

  There was a wide range of reasons why she should walk through that brown door and down the stairs. They ranged from keeping her cover (as Jeanette Smith, mob boss, Girl with the Gun in Her Garter) to avoiding the police who might have been trailing them. She also needed to keep Qing Song and his mob minions convinced by her diversionary tactics. But ultimately there was an even better reason why Irene headed for the door.

  It was simple curiosity.

  Irene hoped that none of her enemies ever realized how much she was driven by an urge to find out how, what, where, when, and, in this case, who.

  Nobody answered the door. She hadn’t really expected them to. She opened it and stepped into a narrow hallway lit by a swaying bulb, with a stairway entrance opening like a dark mouth on her left. The hallway’s whitewashed walls were dirty, but its tiled floor was scrubbed clean, still wet from recent work with a mop. She didn’t need to be a great detective to deduce that. The mop was propped beside the doorway in a bucket of brown-tinged water, like some sort of sentry.

  She started to make her way down the unlit staircase, one hand on the battered rail. The wooden stairs creaked under her new shoes in spite of her attempts to move quietly, and she knew that whoever was waiting down there could hear her coming.

  The door at the bottom of the stairs stood a few inches ajar, outlined by light on the other side. Irene hesitated for a moment, considering knocking, but then simply pushed it open.

  Bright lights glared at her. A hand grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the room, twisting her arm up behind her back. The cold metal of a gun-barrel nestled into the back of her neck.

  “How nice of you to join us,” a voice drawled from beyond the lights.

  CHAPTER 15

  “I had to do some shopping first,” Irene answered, her mouth on autopilot.

  As her eyes became used to the bright lights, she could pick out more of the room. It was larger than she’d expected, emphasized by the whitewashed walls and ceiling, which went past bland whiteness and all the way to stark sterility. Dark gleaming objects hung on the walls. On closer inspection, these were guns of all shapes and sizes, hardly any of which she recognized. A few armchairs were dotted around the room, upholstered in black leather. Two of them were occupied by seated men, expensively dressed and holding cocktail glasses. At the far end of the room was a weather-beaten table and half a dozen low banks of drawers, the sort that craftsmen would have in their workshop.

  The whole room smelled of metal and gun-oil, right down to the person—it was a woman, Irene realized—who was holding Irene’s arm locked behind her back. Her gun was pressed into the nape of Irene’s neck, and the cold metal focused Irene’s mind wonderfully. It was the sort of wake-up call that was usually bottled with caffeine and sold to college students or van-drivers who’d been up all night. It reminded Irene that curiosity sometimes came at too high a price.

  The man who’d spoken before chuckled, and took a sip from his glass. His heavy Southern accent—a little too heavy?—dripped like thick honey. “Well, I’d say that women always make that excuse, but it’d be mighty impolite to my little Lily there. She’s the lady who’s got one of her favourite guns pointed right at you.”

  And as he spoke, a surge of fear swept across Irene like an ocean wave. It clenched her throat and chest, then dragged back through her body in a freezing undertow that put ice in her veins. The smell of cold steel seemed to sear her nostrils and the back of her throat. It was the fear of death and everything that went with it in this place: the fear of guns, the fear of violence, the fear of casual murder. The Library tattoo on her back ached in response like an old burn.

  The woman behind Irene pushed her sideways, turning her so that she faced the wall, and casually ran her hand down Irene’s body. Through the terror that was trying to impose itself on her, Irene realized the woman was checking for weapons, patting her down professionally and checking her handbag. She’d released her grip on Irene’s wrist, but her other hand kept the gun at Irene’s neck.

  When she spoke, her voice was clear and uninflected, with the faintest of local New York accents. “She’s not carrying.”

  “Now, that’s a surprise. Turn her around, Lily. Let’s have another look at Miss Jeanette’s face. She’s come all this way here to visit us. It strikes me that it’s the least we can do.”

  The woman turned Irene again, spinning her round to face the men. Again that rush of fear beat against Irene, as threatening as a gun against her lips.

  But this time she swallowed it down. It wasn’t her own fear. Someone in this room—a Fae in this room—was trying to enforce it on her. Knowing that the fear was an external force made it easier for Irene to strangle it into compliance.

  She brushed a stray hair back into place. “The least you can do is offer me a drink,” she said calmly. “God knows I’ve come far enough to get one.”

  There was a pause, almost a stunned silence, and then the man burst out laughing. But his laughter was a little forced, as though he was using it as a stopgap while he decided what to do next. “You’ve got just the cutest accent, Miss Jeanette. I should hire you to read the phone book to me all day long. Sure, have a seat. Dave, you fetch the little lady here a drink. What’d you care for?”

  “I’ll have a Black Russian,” Irene said as she walked forward to the indicated armchair. She could hear Lily’s footsteps behind her, high heels ticking on the tiled floor like a countdown.

  The second man, who’d risen to his feet, halted. “What’s that?” he asked.

  Oh, wonderful, Irene thought. Yet again a Librarian engages in cross-cultural contamination. She couldn’t remember when a Black Russian had first been mixed, but she did at least know the recipe. “Five parts vodka to two parts coffee liqueur, if you have it,” she said. “Or I’ll take a gin sling—however you make them here.”

  “Maybe England’s got more to teach us than I realized,” the first man mused. “Go see what you can do about it, Dave. And make yourself comfortable, Miss Jeanette. We’ve got a few things to discuss. I don’t suppose you know who I am?”

  “I’m guessing that you’re the gentleman they call Lucky George,” Irene said. She sat down in the armchair and allowed herself to look him over as obviously as he was considering her.

  He was a small man with sharply cut and oiled dark hair, a flabby nose, and the sort of manly unshavenness that needed careful effort to maintain. His double-breasted suit was styled to minimise his waist and improve his shoulders, but it couldn’t disguise the lines of a holster underneath his jacket. His tie was either a masterpiece designed by an abstract artist or the result of someone throwing blobs of paint at silk. And his shoes were so highly polished that mere contact with the air should have dulled their shine.

  He swirled his drink in its glass and smiled at her, displaying tobacco-stained teeth. “And who told you that, Miss Jeanette? Anyone I should know about?” So I can have them killed, his tone suggested.

  Irene shrugged. “Your name’s hardly a secret,” she said. Unobtrusively she scanned Lily, the woman who’d been holding a gun to her neck. She had wandered round to perch on the arm of George’s armchair. Lily had the sort of looks that should have been described as pretty as a picture. But there was something a little off balance about her whole presentation, like the foundations of a building in a Lovecraftian horror story. Her blonde hair was cut like a cap and fell to hide her left eye, but the visible right eye assessed Irene as though she were measuring her for a coffin. Her skin had the perfect pallor of someone who didn’t go out in the sun, and her violet satin dress clung to her as tightly as her stockings.<
br />
  George took in the direction of Irene’s glance and chuckled. “I see that you’re admiring my Lily here. I’m a modern up-to-date man, Miss Jeanette. I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman—I employ whoever can do the job. And my little Lily . . .” He patted her thigh just above the knee, with a proprietorial air. “She’s the best with a gun in the whole Big Apple.”

  “It’s nice to meet a man with an open mind,” Irene said cheerfully. The Library itself might be a gender-neutral organization—after all, books didn’t mind whether they were read or stolen by men or women—but some Librarians needed time to shed the attitudes of their worlds of origin. And while Irene might be able to manipulate other people’s prejudices during assignments, that didn’t mean she enjoyed them. “And it’s a good start to possible working relationships.”

  “So you’re going to be straightforward about this?” George demanded.

  “There comes a point when it’s a waste of time and effort to keep on lying,” Irene said. “I think, in poker, you’d call it knowing when to fold. So.” She leaned forward in her armchair. “You’ve got my attention. What do you want?”

  “You’re more blatant than I expected, Miss Jeanette,” George said. He leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his drink.

  “May I be frank?” Irene asked.

  “Sure, sure.” He pointed two fingers at her in a miniature gun-barrel. “Just as long as I’m the only person you’re frank to, honey. We don’t like squealers around here.”

  “We don’t like them back home either,” Irene agreed. He’d accepted her as a crime boss. It was time to play on that fact. “That’s partly why I’m annoyed.”

  “Annoyed?” George said. Lily didn’t move her head, and her face remained expressionless, but her gaze shifted to focus on Irene.

  “As I said, I’ll be frank. This was not supposed to be a public visit. Someone has been talking a bit too loudly. I don’t know if the leak came from my organization or from Boston, but either way, people now know I’m here. This is not a tenable situation.”

  “Tenable situation. I just love your accent.” George emptied his glass. “So what are you thinking of doing about it, Miss Jeanette?”

  “I need to go home sooner than planned. The police may take a few pay-offs, but if you get too obvious about it, the prices go up and the security goes down. The situation here’s not working, and I have too many people gunning for me. This game’s not worth the risk.” Irene shrugged again. “Is that man of yours going to be all day fetching my drink?”

  “Lily, you go see where Dave’s gotten to,” George said. He didn’t look away from Irene as the woman slid off his chair and moved to the door at the back of the room, as smoothly as a snake. “So you’re just dropping everything here in America, Miss Jeanette? Calling it a day and heading back home with your tail between your legs?”

  “Oh, I’m not saying that,” Irene disagreed. “I’ve already made a couple of deals, and I’d like to make a few more. I hate wasting my time. That’s why I’m suggesting we drop the formalities and cut to the deal.”

  She hoped George would lay out his proposal. Then all she’d have to do would be to go along with it, with a bit of bargaining to cement the part of gin-running mobster. It was so much less work than making up her own tissue of lies. And it would get her out of here safely so that she could get back to laying false trails for Qing Song to chase.

  Irene actually found herself relaxing into her part. Here, in the middle of the territory of the biggest crime boss in New York, she was actually—temporarily—safe from all the other people who were chasing her. She had a character to play, and her lies were holding up to casual examination. This was as good as it got.

  And to be honest, she was having fun being Jeanette Smith, Crime Boss. It was much less nerve-racking than being Irene Winters, Librarian.

  The door at the far end of the room swung open and Lily swayed back in—her shoes clicking on the tiles, hard as a skeleton’s vertebrae. Dave was right behind her, Irene’s glass in his hand.

  Lily settled herself on the arm of George’s chair, in a position that would have looked kittenish if she’d seemed at all vulnerable. Once again the fear of death stroked its way up Irene’s spine, urging panic and obedience. It was like sitting in a machine gun’s sights.

  Now Irene was certain. That first feeling of terror might have come from anyone in the room. But it had left the room with Lily, and returned when she did. Whatever the truth of the Boston situation, there was clearly at least one Fae in the New York mobs, and she was sitting right here.

  The situation had just become rather more complicated.

  Irene sipped her Black Russian. She knew it might be poisoned, or drugged. But really, if they’d wanted her dead, then they would already have shot her. (Kai was going to disapprove when she updated him. Maybe she’d censor the story, just a little.) “Not bad,” she judged. “Thanks.”

  George took a long swallow from his own glass. “Okay,” he said. “This is how it seems to me, Miss Jeanette. You’re here to find trading partners. Well, I’m looking to import. If we can agree on that, then the rest is just details for our accountants.”

  Irene nodded. “Right. We don’t need to have some sort of high-powered conference for that. The percentage points either way are important, but . . .” She shrugged. “Not as important as us agreeing to work together in the first place. Besides, you know where I’m staying. I’m not trying to hide. Not from you, at least.”

  He slowly pointed a finger at her, understanding dawning on his face. “That’s why you’ve been strolling around the city like some kind of tourist. You were waiting for someone to get in contact.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Irene said, and watched him chuckle at the metaphor. “I figured someone professional like yourself would get in touch before I had to leave town.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “The cops may not have anything definite on you yet, but the longer you’re around, the more chance there is that they’ll make something up, just to hang a charge on you. Even if it’s just the Sullivan Act.”

  Irene raised an eyebrow.

  “Being caught carrying without a licence,” he clarified. “Something that a good half the guys and a quarter of the dolls in the speakeasy next door might have a problem explaining. An awful lot of people in this town are afraid of catching a cold if they go out of doors without a bit of pre-emptive self-defence.”

  “I’m English,” Irene said. “We handle it a little differently.”

  “So how are you going to handle it when you find out who talked?” George asked, a little too casually.

  “The English way.” Irene lifted her glass and swirled the liquid in it, watching it catch the light. “Whoever it is will vanish and never be heard of again. Except for the part where somehow everyone knows what happened to them, and why.”

  She took another sip of her Black Russian, savouring the jolt of caffeine and vodka, but enjoying the look of approval in George’s eyes just as much. It occurred to her that she might be getting a little too far into character. She ignored the thought. She didn’t often get to play mob boss.

  “All right. Now that we’ve got an understanding, I’d better not detain you. Don’t want the cops sniffing around.” George jerked a thumb towards the door at the back of the room. “That goes through to the private establishment under Armstrong’s, and you can have yourself a drink before calling a cab. I’ll be in contact with you at your hotel this evening and we can work out the details. And I’ll put out the word on the street that you’re in good with me, and nobody is to try anything. That okay with you?”

  “Sounds good,” Irene said. Especially the bit about no more random assassination attempts. “But there is one thing I’d like before I go. I’d like a private word with Lily here. Woman to woman.”

  George glanced up at Lily, then shrugged. “S
ure, no problem. Mind if I ask why?”

  “I want to talk about guns,” Irene said.

  George nodded, satisfied. “Fit our guest up with something in her size, Lily, darling. Dave, come along with me—I need another drink.”

  Lily stayed sitting on the arm of the chair as the two men left, considering Irene as thoughtfully as a raven would consider a tasty-looking snail. “Well?” she said as the door clicked shut.

  “Are we being listened to?” Irene asked bluntly.

  “No,” Lily said. “George knows I’m as loyal as it gets. So what do you really want to talk about? And who are you?”

  “I have a question first,” Irene said carefully. She wanted some answers, but not at the price of being shot.

  “Sure,” Lily said, without a moment’s hesitation.

  “And I’d like you to give your word—by your name and power—that the answer’s true.”

  Lily’s visible eye narrowed. If she had been a raven, she would have been looking for a nice edged stone to smash the metaphorical snail against. “If you can ask me that, then you know too much.”

  “Or not enough,” Irene said regretfully. “But if you will answer my question truthfully, then I can be more honest. I think that just this once, we might have no reason to be enemies.”

  “Who are you?” Lily asked. Then more carefully, she said, “What are you? You’re no dragon.”

  “My question gets answered first,” Irene said. She leaned back in her chair, as casually as she could manage, and sipped her drink.

  Lily hesitated, then sighed. “What a fuss. All right, it’s a deal. I give you my word, by my name and my power, that I’ll answer your question truthfully.”

  “I accept your word,” Irene said. The Fae were punctilious about keeping their oaths, even if they were prone to sticking to the letter and not the spirit. “Now tell me: were you, or any other Fae, involved in bombing the Boston Public Library?”