Praise for National Bestselling Author L. A. Chandlar’s
Art Deco Mystery series
“Engaging, vivid, and intriguing, this historical mystery is not only a fascinating behind-the-scenes of Fiorello La Guardia’s New York, but an action-packed adventure with quirky characters, snappy dialogue, a hint of romance—and starring one of the pluckiest, most entertaining heroines ever.”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan, national bestselling
author of Trust Me, on The Gold Pawn
“Chandlar does a good job of evoking the period.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Silver Gun
“Dangerous villains and gangsters in 1930s NYC, with humor, history, vintage cocktails, and art as a backbone . . .”
—Jen J. Danna
“The Silver Gun has humor, excitement, mystery, danger, romance, lots of great characters, and more! I highly recommend The Silver Gun, especially to those who live, work, or vacation in the Big Apple, and to cozy readers who like their mystery mixed with history.”
—Jane Reads, 5 Stars
“[The Silver Gun] was just phenomenal . . . I absolutely loved this book and HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who is a mystery lover.”
—Valerie’s Musings, 5 stars
Also by L. A. Chandlar
The Gold Pawn
The Silver Gun
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
THE PEARL DAGGER
L. A. CHANDLAR
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Praise
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2019 by LA Chandlar
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1345-2
Kensington Electronic Edition: September 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1345-2
ISBN-10: 1-4967-1345-1
First Kensington Trade Paperback Edition: September 2019
For the artists
Who make the world a bigger and better place.
Especially for you, Destinee and Kellye
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The mystery reader and writer community is unbelievably encouraging and generous. I want to say a special thank you to my editor, Esi Sogah, for your endless enthusiasm and wisdom. The marketing team with Vida Engstrand and Larissa Ackerman has been such a joy to work with. My production and editing team of Paula Reedy and Carly Sommerstein make editing actually enjoyable—I know: amazing! And the cover art director Kristine Noble has done just sublime work making the Art Deco Mystery Series truly beautiful. Thank you to Jill Grosjean for working through this wonderful book deal with me. And there are countless authors who have taken the time to be interested and kind to a newbie. You have no idea how your acts of generosity have impacted me and I’ll never forget it. Special thanks to Jen Danna, James Ziskin, Adam Hamdy, Alyssa Maxwell, Eric Bishop, Mariah Fredericks, Kellye Garrett, Charles Todd, and Hank Phillippi Ryan.
A big thank you to my husband and Number One research assistant and tech guru. I love that you know just how important my characters are to me and how you search high and low for the coolest books and photos! You’re amazing, Bryan, thank you. And for Jack and Logan, my biggest fans and very, very tall sons. I am so grateful to get to be your mom.
I also want to give special thanks to Jamie Tulenko for finding an incredible signed book and letters from Fiorello! And to Don Wilson for lending me (and I really gave it back!) his amazing book on Winston Churchill that helped immensely for this novel.
Thank you so much to my agent, Paula Munier, with Talcott Notch, for believing in me, sharing my love of martinis, and, most of all, for sharing your wisdom and your love of art and life with me.
Lastly, dear reader, I can’t thank you enough for caring about this era, for loving these incredible real people as well as my fictional friends, and for enjoying the adventure with me. I am so grateful to get to share this different side to the thirties that is often overshadowed by the Depression. I hope the vitality, the humor, the artfulness (the cocktails!), and the joie de vivre that Fiorello La Guardia truly exemplified helps you soak up and enjoy life even more. Cheers!
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes . . .
—the second witch, Macbeth
PROLOGUE
The day was full of changes. The light from the sun alternating from bright gold with a brilliance that hurt your eyes, to a dull gray as the thick white clouds raced across the azure sky.
Chunk. He started with a jolt. “Charlotte! I taught you better than that,” he said with his usual gruff demeanor.
Charlie flicked her lon
g auburn hair over her shoulder in a carefree motion. She turned her dazzling green eyes to him and said, “I wondered what would get your attention.”
“Why—You did that on purpose,” he groused as he walked over to the large wooden target, gathering the knives and, lastly, the dagger from much higher up. It had lodged in a branch almost six feet to the left of the trunk, much closer to where he’d been standing, in fact.
“What’s on your mind, Kirkland?” she asked, looking closely at him. He could feel her scrutiny and tried to look insouciant. She was really good at reading him.
Didn’t work, damn it. He looked at her and her eyebrow cocked skeptically as she put her hand on her hip, basically telling him that he didn’t come close to fooling her.
“Grrrrr.”
She laughed. “Spit it out, Kirkland. And hand me those knives. You can talk while I practice.”
He shook his head as he watched her capable hands carefully take the knives and that one special dagger, Matthew’s mother-of-pearl and ebony knife, and begin to throw with uncanny precision.
Chunk. The first knife hit about an inch above the bull’s-eye.
“Well. Here goes. I’m glad you, Matthew, and Laney have come here to Rochester, safe and sound. And I am even more glad that we finally got Rex. But . . .”
Chunk. The next knife hit at three o’clock, about an inch outside the bull’s-eye.
Putting his hands in his pockets and shaking his head pensively, he said, “I just can’t help but feel that we might not be done. It feels like the Red Scroll Network will keep on going, despite Rex. I know it sounds ridiculous.”
Chunk. Six o’clock.
Charlotte turned to him, weighing the remaining knives in her hand. “No. It doesn’t sound ridiculous. I’ve had similar thoughts.”
“You have?”
Chunk. Nine o’clock.
“Yes. Matthew and I have talked about it, too. But we’ve done the best we can. When we changed our plans . . .” She had been about to say something, but then petered out, like she’d caught herself. He, too, was a keen observer and her eyes shot to him trying to assess if he’d caught that misstep.
Chunk. She missed. Her last throwing knife missed the mark.
“Damn it.”
“What do you mean, Charlotte? Changed plans?” he asked.
She quickly recovered even though the accuracy of her throw had suffered. “You know. Moving here instead of continuing on in our work.”
He wasn’t completely convinced, but sure, he’d go with it. “Well, yeah, it will be hard to find you here. I’m sure we’ll be okay.”
Chunk. The final throw—the pearl dagger—and it hit right in the middle of the bull’s-eye.
“Show-off.”
Charlotte chuckled her low laugh as she slowly sauntered to the tree. She started to methodically dislodge the knives, her petal pink feminine dress in complete juxtaposition to her knife-throwing talent. She took a deep breath and he watched her shoulders rise and then settle as she turned to him with a contemplative look on her beautiful face.
“You feel pretty certain the Network might continue on?” she asked.
“I just think that Rex would go to great lengths to have his legacy continue beyond the grave. The bastard loved toying with everyone. The ultimate game would be to have it go on. Even when he didn’t.”
She put her hand on her hip and nodded slowly. “Hmm. Yes, you may be right.” She put her hand on the ebony handle of the dagger, its mother-of-pearl scrollwork glistening in the sunshine. She pulled hard on the handle, dislodging it from its perfect landing place. Something made her shiver despite the warmth of the day.
Charlotte walked toward him weighing the satisfying handle in her hand, feeling its worth, weighing its mettle. She nodded, having come to some sort of decision.
“Kirkland.” She nodded curtly to the dagger. She deftly threw it with a light hand and a good arc, so he could catch it easily as they’d practiced a hundred times.
“Here. You’re gonna need this.”
She turned smartly around and walked into the house.
CHAPTER 1
Who knew pinball machines could set off such an explosive development?
“Lane, I’ve got a lead for us,” said Roarke.
Roarke Channing was a top-notch investigative reporter and he also happened to be my sleuthing partner. When possible threats or the odd piece of curious information came through the grapevine at work—New York City’s 1937 mayoral offices—Roarke and I would investigate.
He continued after a quick sip of his espresso, “I think that given the nature of the rumblings on the street, we need to follow up on it.”
He sat across from me in a little French café off York Avenue. Roarke wore his signature wide pinstripe suit with his crisp white shirt, wide red tie, and fedora with a matching red ribbon. I grasped a cup of cappuccino in my cold hands as I soaked in the warmth of a glowing fireplace. The café was a little slice of Europe, with the kind of casual elegance that only the French seemed to achieve effortlessly. A little ripple of joy went through me as I breathed in the scent of coffee and cream.
“I agree. If only for the fact that those gangs are notorious for following through on their threats,” I said.
“Exactly. When Fiorello got rid of thousands of those slot machines from the delis, he also targeted the pinball machines. They fell through the cracks at first, but now he’s set his sights on them to finish the purge. And as we’ve already seen, that makes Fio a target.”
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, New York’s ninety-ninth mayor, was my boss and dear family friend. The little dynamo was fearless against the criminal gangs that had taken shape during Prohibition. When Fio took office just after Prohibition ended, he went to work. Ousting corruption, bringing health care and low-income housing to a desperate city, a whole fleet of public pools and parks, the first public arts high school . . . all accomplished with the panache and joie de vivre of the finest ringmaster.
I set my cup down and rested my chin in my hand. “So, to sum it up, you and our sources at the NYPD have intercepted increased agitation against the mayor. What about Uncle Louie Venetti? He hasn’t been as active on that scene, having most of his slot machines thrown onto barges and dumped. He’s been working in other arenas, right? So do you think that these rumblings are other gangs vying for control?”
“I think that’s definitely possible and I can’t tell who’s working with who. It’s all been vaguely threatening, like bar talk and an occasional intimidating note. But you know, Fio gets those all the time. So it’s hard to decipher what’s an actual threat,” said Roarke, thinking it through.
“Absolutely. He gets that kind of mail a couple of times a week. But he gets ten times more notes that are encouraging and grateful. I think it’s all those petitioners he listens to every single day. Fio really does take note of their concerns and they never forget it.” I finished my cappuccino and set my napkin on the table. “So what’s this lead you have?”
“Okay. So, an informant of mine has been running messages for different groups of, let’s just say, a less than savory type of crowd. He doesn’t ever look at the messages, not because of any moral high ground, but because the less he knows, the safer he is.” I nodded. Made sense to me.
Roarke went on, warming to the subject. “The way it works is he receives a note by messenger that it’s time. He has a pickup place where he gets the message and directions on where to take it, so he’s never seen the person who is sending the messages. This morning, he caught a glimpse of a note when he dropped it inadvertently. He quickly grabbed it up off the sidewalk but the words mayor and get him out of the way definitely got his attention.”
“I bet,” I said, eyes wide with appreciation.
“Yeah. So he read the whole thing and started sweatin’ bullets and sent me word right away. Usually he does a dead drop for the messages, so he never sees the recipient. But today, I guess there were too many ways for the messag
e to get into the wrong hands because he has direct orders to hand it to a particular person. He gave me the time and place. I want to see just who this message is for.”
“Yeah, we definitely need to see who it is. But, uh . . . where exactly is it all going down?” I asked a bit warily since we had gotten into many debacles on our past sleuthing sprees.
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Lane.” Roarke chuckled. “It’s an easy one. It’s smack in the middle of Grand Central Station.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. For once it wasn’t in an unsavory, dark, and dangerous location. “Great! I’ll meet you after work and let’s check it out.”
* * *
Eight hours later I was running away from bad guys, down a busy thoroughfare in my high-heeled, red Mary Janes. Again.
“Roarke! Honestly. This must stop,” I said between gasps of air.
He chuckled.
“You’re laughing?” My sides hurt. I twisted my ankle a ways back, scuffing the side of my left shoe. My blouse had begun to untuck itself from my vigorous running. Roarke looked impeccable. Bastard.
We were in pursuit of information, and we found it. But we also found trouble. As usual. Roarke’s informant did in fact make a drop at the exact time and place he’d given us. He stood by the famous brass clock in Grand Central and I assumed he wore some kind of identifying article of clothing because the guy came directly to him without hesitation.
We recognized the recipient right away, a notorious gangster with the appellation the Crusher. Unfortunately, he had looked over at us right at that moment and started toward us. Which led to the running and the panting. We darted up a stairway to the walkways behind the large windows in the Great Hall. From below, you could always see the forms of people walking to and fro. We went right to the top, as far as we could go.
The Pearl Dagger Page 1