Murder in the City of Liberty

by Rachel McMillan

  Reggie spent most mornings at Mildred Rue’s temporary employment agency, perfecting her steno skills before retreating back to the office for an afternoon of whatever case they were working: from missing hat pins to a lost brother to an unfaithful wife. When there were no cases on hand that required any more than Hamish’s legal expertise, Winchester Molloy on the wireless kept her occupied.

  Hamish, through the lens of his favorite book, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, mentally christened the North End the Court of Miracles the summer he lived with his cousin Luca Valari—and it stuck. The North End’s colorful mélange of dialect and nationality—predominantly Jewish and Italian with patriotic flags draped from storefronts, close-hugging brick buildings crisscrossed with fire escapes and dangling white rainbows of hanging laundry—was now as familiar to him as breathing. Fresh bread and molasses and basil and spices mingled from carts and shop windows, and flour puffed out from vents in the streets. Children laughed and men shouted to each other in their first language. Hamish, too, stepped into the other language of his childhood. Speaking Italian allowed him to press through a barrier that kept many North End residents from seeking the fair treatment they should have been afforded. Hamish, who had the propensity to see the world through imaginative perimeters, had immediately thought of the underground community over which Clopin the Gypsy King reigned: where lame beggars retreated far from the magistrate’s eyes at night only to find themselves miraculously healed within the cloister of their fellow Romany community—a collective sanctuary far from the solitary one Quasimodo found amidst his bells in the towers of the medieval cathedral.

  * * *

  So life in Boston was pretty good. Hamish’s episodes of panic were far more infrequent than they had been when he was still living in Toronto and climbing his way to the top of his class at Osgoode Law School. The memory of the anxiety that had sped his heartbeat and stolen his breath during his first real court case was a fuzzy frame of humiliation the more he settled into his new life. His parents still worried about him, sure. But he had Reggie and Nate and a purpose. Indeed, most of the time, the only thing that clutched his heart like a slowly squeezing fist was any thought that spun in Luca’s direction.

  Not only where Luca had been spending the years since he left Hamish alone and bleeding on the floor of the Flamingo, but whether he had finally escaped the world that judged him for his treatment of Frank Fulham. Fulham had been Luca Valari’s lawyer in Chicago and the man his cousin was supposed to dispose of. To Luca’s minimal credit, he had let the man live and had even helped his wife. Whenever Hamish assumed the worst of his cousin, he tried to anchor himself to this thought. Luca couldn’t kill. Hamish never learned all the specifics surrounding Fulham’s dealings, though. Indeed, much of Luca’s life existed behind a kind of filter where shapes were blurred and lines were fuzzy and nothing ever quite added up. He supposed it was for the best; full knowledge of Luca’s dealings could rip everything open again, causing a pain far worse than the sting of the bullet wound he’d received to the chest. Fulham was to blame for what started it all.

  The one place Hamish was spared of any anxious thoughts was the dance floor. Years twirling around the monogrammed floor at the Palais Royale with his friend Maisie Forth had given him an authority more legitimate than his black hat. Even as the world changed and the headlines from his father’s national newspaper, the Telegraph, daily reported of the war in which his home country fought alongside Britain, Boston’s dance scene remained the same. Sure, the styles were loose and limber. The Lindy Hop, that dance of swift movement and careful abandon, had been building in popularity for years and had become a mainstay of nights on Boylston and Washington and some of the less glitzy halls in Scollay Square and was, for Hamish, the perfect opportunity to switch off his brain like a light switch.

  The world spun and swerved much in the same way his sometime partner Bernice Wong did in his arms with intense immediacy. And as much as he wanted to keep his shoes on the dance floor, the rhythm and the flurry of the music kept him almost an inch off the ground. When the last lines of music trilled to a halt and the stickiness of the dance floor was replaced with the sudden swoosh of fresh air to cool the perspiration on his face, he knew there was a lot of lost magic in his life.

  Bernice had been a client, a pretty girl whose ebony hair was always pulled into a ponytail and whose smart brown eyes made him think she probably saw more than her quick smile ever let on, on a night when he was dying to dance and Reggie was unavailable as a partner. The Flamingo Club towered over the square, its emblem and neon sign still trickling light onto the pavement. It was still flushed by the notoriety of a murdered girl and an owner who had shot an assailant—a man with all manner of nefarious connections—in self-defense. Hamish knew it wasn’t self-defense. Hamish knew more than he should have about the whole thing. Knew more than he wished he did about his cousin Luca.

  Even though Hamish knew that Reggie wore the engraved necklace he’d given her and spent almost every waking hour by his side, it was hard to imagine her stepping away from Vaughan Vanderlaan.

  Bernice helped. He was genuinely fond of her. Her lithe figure and inherent athleticism. She was beautiful, tonight especially so, with a new shade of lipstick, its color parting over her teeth—pronounced ivory in the lights of the club. Hamish’s hand fit into the slight curve of her tiny waist.

  “We should try this joint again.” Her voice was all expectation as they crossed that night’s crowded floor to the bar. It was casual. Far more casual than the tenders mixing martinis at places like the Dragonfly and the Flamingo. They both had Coca-Colas that fizzed their noses. Bernice wasn’t one for fancy cocktails. Not that they were on offer where they were. Mostly straight gin sloshed into squat glasses. A far cry from the flourish and toss of the mixers at the Flamingo.

  The band took five then started on the first bars of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Hamish dabbed at the perspiration dripping into his own. So many steps with Bernice. So many nights after a long day at the office, perfecting a twirl and turn, swerving in and out. He didn’t feel the same zing and pull that made magic of his time with Reggie. He shrugged off his guilt.

  “Hamish DeLuca!” Hamish and Bernice both turned at a voice right over his shoulder. Hamish focused on a face familiar but vague.

  “Yes?”

  “You have to remember me.” The man—who had ruddy cheeks and blond hair that caught the overhead light—pushed the bangs from his forehead and smiled. “You helped my mother last year. They wanted to foreclose on her home and you . . .”

  Hamish ducked his head a little bit. He could almost feel the intensity of Bernice’s smile beside him. He remembered now. Reggie told him sometimes it was easier to let the cases go so they didn’t overtake his brain and crowd it. He could only do as much as he could and couldn’t be expected to take on every last issue from every last client even after their consultations had ended. “A pleasure, truly.”

  “Well, thank you.” He extended his hand and Hamish took it. He pumped it enthusiastically, Hamish jolted by the grip.

  “How is your mother?”

  “She is happy. My sister has moved in. She is expecting. My mother is going to be a grandmother, and she wouldn’t have been able to help except for what you did for her.”

  “I am sure it was nothing,” Hamish said, a familiar heat under his collar.

  “It was more than nothing.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  The man nodded. “And I’ve helped her find a new place to live. New developments are happening. Not ready yet, but will be. Down in Fiske’s Wharf—a new property development on the harbor. I’m involved too.”

  It was this that struck Hamish’s memory chord. Thomas Greene.

  He hoped his voice sounded nonchalant when he said, “Housing, isn’t it? I keep seeing signs around the neighborhood.”

  “Not for long though.” He lifted the crook of his finger in a tentative salute, leaving Hamish to Bernice�
��s wide-eyed adoration. “Building will start and I mean to be in the midst of it.”

  “You make a difference.” She gripped his hand and swung their arms in time as she led them back to the middle of the dance floor. Hamish’s brain lit with the mention of Fiske’s Wharf. Pete Kelly’s building. Suave’s man Kent. He tried to shelve it to back of his mind as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was replaced by the frenetic energy of a clarinet solo blasting in the first bars of “Jeepers Creepers.” If he could just forget the words and focus on the music . . . but even though Bernice was close, her jasmine scent in his nostrils, and her pretty eyes holding a charming magnetism, the words to any love song made him think of Reggie. And when he thought of Reggie, it was the strangest mix of sheer panic and utter delight. Worry that if he swept her into his arms and confessed his love, it might end their friendship. But if he didn’t, she might decide Vaughan Vanderlaan’s long-ago proposal hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. There was also the exhilaration of having someone to hop on the handlebars.

  Music obliterated all other thought. Later when he was under the streetlights of Boston seeing Bernice home, unsure of how to answer her incessant questions about their relationship, about his meeting her family, he felt queasy. He was raised better than to lead a girl along. Heck, before he moved to Boston, he had never had a girl to lead along.

  “Bernice.” He drew her eyes up to him by finally intersecting her sentences. “You know that I like you as a dance partner. You’re really . . . uh . . . you’re swell on the dance floor. Best I’ve seen since my friend Maisie back home.”

  Bernice’s smile widened. “Really?” She tugged at his coat sleeve. They rounded the corner to her street and he watched her jog up the walkway then stop. She turned her head over her shoulder.

  “Are you going to come up and kiss me good night, Hamish?”

  Hamish didn’t have a response. So he slowly joined her, brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, and kissed her cheek lightly. “Good night, Bernice.”

  He didn’t rush home but enjoyed the clear sky spread over Boston like a sparkly blanket. Even the buildings and scenes familiar from the Flamingo incident two years earlier seemed to glimmer under the light of new memories. He had taken a city that had been Luca’s and made it his own.

  Sure, back home, underneath socks and shirts and a few letters from Maisie Forth, was a book holding every last clipping and picture from the Flamingo investigation. While most reporters focused on the scandal of the Flamingo, Hamish still wondered if he would find something between the lines. He pretended something in his chest didn’t constrict with every flash of Luca’s face: either from a staged publicity photo or from the turn of his handsome profile the night he was arrested. But there was still something he needed to solve. Needed to fix. He hadn’t told Reggie that the sight of Kent had the opposite effect it should have. It left Hamish hopeful. He hadn’t actively pursued Luca. He didn’t want anything to do with whatever life his cousin had inevitably found for himself, but he kept hoping the beginning of a trail would stretch to him anyway.

  He would defend himself too. In case whatever business might intersect him with Luca again might lead to the same intensity of the injury he sustained at the Flamingo. Even though a doctor in Toronto had deemed him unfit to go to war, he had learned to fire a gun. He had Jasper Forth, a retired constable and as close as an uncle, not only help him choose a small weapon for more dangerous cases but also teach him to shoot. To narrow his eye on a target and focus, to pull his trigger only when necessary.

  “Never out of vengeance. Or anger,” Jasper reminded him, gripping his shoulder fondly. “Only out of protection.”

  “Is that what you told Maisie when you taught her?” Hamish said with a knowing smile. There was no way Maisie wouldn’t have pestered her father for the same training.

  Hamish blinked away the rest of the memory trail and picked up his pace to navigate the last stretch of the North End toward home.

  A dog yelped nearby, and a car swerved in the pitch black. Somewhere music spilled over a fire escape and the moon was slick on the cobblestones: the familiar music of his new home. Hamish sped up again and made out another set of footsteps in precise rhythm with his own. He stalled then and turned his head over his shoulder, pressing the fingers of his right hand into his palm, their familiar tremor just starting. It was all right. The gun was in the back of his trouser band.

  “Can I help you?” He kept his voice as still and calm as possible. A furtive glance merely gave a view of a deserted road, a streetlight sputtering overhead. Hamish exhaled and quickened his step. He also erected his shoulders and practiced in his mind how he might physically defend himself. Jasper Forth’s training was at the tip of his brain.

  “Mr. DeLuca.”

  “Yes.” Hamish couldn’t dismiss the flicker of satisfaction that his premonition was more than an unfounded prickle on the back of his neck.

  “When did you last hear from your cousin?”

  Hamish’s breath caught. “I-I haven’t heard from Luca in quite some time.” His eyes swept the street to make out the source of the voice. But it was just shadows and a shrub. Finally, the leaves moved and a figure stepped out.

  “Some time?”

  Hamish assumed Luca had found his feet again. He always did. Some people are not easily killed. “Yes. What do you want?” He clutched the fingers of his right hand together.

  The sputtering streetlight lit broad shoulders and height and a shaded face he knew from its strong jawline. When he stepped closer, Hamish made out a figure familiar to him from his first moments in Boston—and beyond. At first, Hamish had been unsure if Phil (he never got a surname) was his cousin’s chauffeur or bodyguard—or a bit of both. He assumed the latter.

  “Phil, what are you doing here?”

  “Luca sent me. I’ve been keeping an eye on you, you know.”

  Something caught in Hamish’s chest and made its way down through him. A tightness that had clearly also settled in his throat, because when he spoke next it was with effort. “He didn’t inform me of his whereabouts.” Hamish knew that while he tried to sound casual, his words shook slightly.

  Luca’s whereabouts may have comforted his aunt Viola when she still had not received word from her son, despite her incessant questioning of Hamish at Christmas. Might have halted his dad’s demands as to Luca’s whereabouts and why he’d left Boston in the first place. And this . . . this near stranger knew more about his cousin than Hamish did.

  “Was he required to inform you of his whereabouts?”

  Hamish rolled his eyes up to the slice of moon catching the rooftops. “So you have talked to him? Is he all right?” Of course he was all right. Luca was always all right. “He would want you to tell me. He would—”

  Phil raised a restraining hand. “I ask the questions.”

  Hamish swallowed hard. He hated Luca’s life. Never more so than when having to cross an invisible barrier. Luca had eyes and ears everywhere. Luca would always know where Hamish was, but Hamish had gone two years worrying only to learn that Luca was somewhere at home. “Ask away.”

  “Luca needs to know that you’re safe and well.”

  “You can see I am,” Hamish snarled. “I gather Luca wants to stay away from Boston, but he can still get ahold of me. He could call or write, and then I can tell him myself rather than take up more of your valuable time.” Everything about Luca annoyed him these days. The timing too. What were the odds of Hamish and Reggie thinking they saw Suave’s man, Kent? Now Phil. He’d had a long stretch of nearly two years to separate himself from these people, and here they were all at once. What had Luca got himself into? His slightly shaking fingers tucked into his shirt and found the scar from Suave’s bullet. Was Luca back?

  “He wants you to be careful.” Phil reached into his breast pocket, extracted a piece of paper, and handed it to Hamish. “This is not for pleasantries. You use this if you need to use it. Not for an Easter card or well wishes.”
>
  Hamish blinked up at the man, wondering if the softening in his face welcomed Phil’s scrutiny. “And if I rip it up?” Facetiousness was foreign to Hamish’s voice. He cleared it from his throat uncomfortably.

  “Do what you want, kid. I don’t care.”

  Hamish turned the paper over without truly looking at it under the streetlight, then tucked it in his pocket. He snapped at his brace. “Do you remember Mark Suave, Phil?” Hamish hoped his voice meted a challenge.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Do you or do you not remember him?”

  “I try to keep a short memory, DeLuca. It doesn’t do to remember too much. In case people ask questions. Nosy kids, for example.”

  “I’m not a kid. And you came to me.”

  “I do remember him. Of course I do.”

  “Do you know what happened to the man who was with him? That night in the Dragonfly?” Hamish left Phil to pick up the pieces first of the two men about to saw off Luca’s pinky finger, then to mentally cast out to the dead body of Mary Finn lying at the bottom of the stairwell leading to the Flamingo’s well-stocked liquor store, his cousin Luca holding what was later determined to be the murder weapon. And while Luca was innocent of Finn’s death, he was far from innocent when it came to acting as the center of an operation that saw the rich getting richer at the expense of the working class across large American cities like Boston and Chicago.

  Phil gave a curt headshake before Hamish could recount seeing his cousin Luca in a chair—a man twisting his pinky finger—just before Reggie and Hamish barged through the door to Luca’s rescue and Hamish was almost strangled to death. It wasn’t until much later Hamish learned that it had been a ruse. A power play. Like so much of Luca’s world. His untouchable cousin playing at an ornamented ruse to demonstrate the true power he wielded. “My errand is finished.” He gave Hamish a quick, clinical look-over. “You seem well.”