The Crimson Shaw

by Elyse Lortz

  “Keane?”

  “Lawrence?”

  “Do you really think all this trouble—the incident when we arrived, the Smith girl’s death, the fire—is because of Harrison? Or rather, his ties to this Cohen man?” I felt my companion shift beside me, but his eyes stayed stolidly marked to the wall.

  “Remember, Lawrence, Meyer Cohen is not the only leader of the Los Angeles underground. For all we know, it could be another dozen groups—or even a madman—who want to ruin James.”

  “But, if he owes Cohen money—”

  “That does turn the scale a bit, yes.” Keane ran his finger along the edge of his glass. “There was a part in the Bible—I cannot recall where—in which it was said those who provide temptation are related to the devil. Certainly the black market provided the drugs, but it is Miss Smith, James, and others like them who willingly enjoy their effects. They enjoy the chemicals, but financially?” He needn’t have finished. I knew all too well of the stories of the late Capone’s mafia out in Chicago and the hundreds of other groups who appeared across the country who made millions off of selling drugs to former soldiers; however, until that moment, I had only heard the stories. And that’s what it felt like. A blasted story. Everything about the entire adventure seemed incredibly surreal, from the little fat man with his damn cigars to Harrison’s stupefied entrance. It was no better than a blasted fairytale.

  A damn story.

  Keane stood from the seat and stretched leisurely with the heels of his palms planted firmly in the small of his back.

  “I think it would be prudent if we watched ourselves for the next few days. Nothing paranoid, mind you, but the simple things. Staying away from excessively large windows, not eating or drinking anything you are not absolutely sure is safe, and—do you have your knife with you?” I pulled the folded silver object from my pocket and held it out palm up for Keane’s inspection. “Good. Carry that at all times.” It was a superfluous statement; suggesting a habit which had existed since he first bought me the piece. My curiosity, on the other hand, was not only justifiable, but necessary.

  “And what will you be carrying? A sickle? A saber?” I thought my companion had gone mad, or, at the very least, was on the brink of doing so. One by one he unbuttoned his coat, his fingers moving slowly but with an exquisite sense of purpose. It was not until he threw it over the back of a nearby chair that I saw the full extent of his pajamaed torso.

  Including a holster and pistol.

  I couldn’t believe it. But then, as logic and reason washed upon me, I found I could. He had been in a war. Of course he owned a gun. I had seen a few scattering various drawers of his house in Devon. Yes, I had known about these, but to see him with the holster strapped over his shoulder, it shook me. Him, with his vivid, blue eyes and poetic expression, wearing a firearm over the warm cotton of his pajama shirt. It might have been comical, had it not been a matter of life and the lack of such.

  “Has no one told you never fight fire with fire?” It was a joke; a poor, weak, futile joke muttered with a voice scarcely audible above the pounding in my head. Keane grimaced—the first step toward a smile—and gingerly pulled the weapon from its spot against his chest. He handed it to me.

  The little pistol was only marginally longer than my palm; coming several inches short of my fingertips. I had held a hundred revolvers such as this, and fired them just as often. I had no qualms to their use just as I had no doubt of their intense power. There was power to survive, and power to die. Power to live, and power to shorten the lives of others. Power to love, and power to hate.

  Power.

  I cleared my throat.

  “FP-45. Small, but effective.” I returned the weapon to Keane, who slipped it into the holster.

  “It may not be the best in the world, but it will suffice until I find something more suitable. You have used them before, I believe.”

  “More often than I would care to admit.” Keane nodded slowly.

  “‘Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.’”

  “Arthur Penrhyn Stanley; Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers. Published in 1894, wasn’t it?”

  “1895, but the words still hold the same meaning.” My companion finished buttoning his coat and sat down beside me with the air of a defeated man. His shoulders slouched low toward his knees; his hands falling uncomfortably in his lap. “I really ought to apologise—”

  “—Don’t you dare. You might injure your masculinity. And besides, ‘Qué será, será’.”

  Whatever will be, will be.

  “Even so, if I had not canceled your meetings—”

  “—Then I would be bored to death in England. Really, Keane, this is much more fun.” He was silent then, as if I had just raised a flag of surrender for the sake of his pride. That was, of course, partially true, but not completely. Nothing is ever entirely truthful, no matter how hard one may believe it to be so. He knew as well as I that my publisher was a common goat of a man who was just as existing as an unsolvable algebraic equation. Lord knows I would have rather spent the summer months with one of my disgruntled relations than endure those tedious meetings. All Keane had done was to provide an excuse to save my sanity.

  I began to sip at my long forgotten glass of whiskey.

  IT WAS KEANE WHO AWOKE me. Not the scruffy, furious Keane who talked of weapons, but one who had recently shaved (the brisk scent of his shaving lotion), combed back his hair (with that one little curl refusing to go behind his right ear), and dressed fully in a three piece suit (the lingering vinilla of cigarette smoke still clinging to the fabric). The dark blotches were still quite apparent under his eyes, but they were not quite so heavy as before. In fact, if I hadn’t been looking for them, I might not have noticed at all.

  I was also equally aware of a steaming cup being shoved beneath my nose.

  “Good morning, Lawrence. Or should I say afternoon? By God, if you had your way, you’d sleep the entire day into oblivion. Now drink this—no, it’s not coffee; though are you certain your distaste for the beverage is not psychological—you’re quite right. This is no time to discuss your many mysteries. Now get up.”

  I accepted the tea, allowing it to liquid to scald my throat and jerk me into reality. My mutterings of thanks scarcely passed my lips before I realised the suit he was wearing was too loose at the midsection and short at the ankles. The necktie too, I thought, was not his color.

  Yellow never was.

  I took another long sip of the strong liquid.

  “And how is the patient this morning?” Keane pulled at the ends of his suit cuffs (which weren’t nearly long enough to conceal his wrists) and cocked his head to one side as a doctor might when preparing to give a diagnosis.

  “His breathing and heart rate are normal. Pupils seem alright. All and all, I think he hass come out of it right enough.”

  “And what are you going to do about the Hydrocodone?”

  “Do?”

  “Of course. I can’t believe you would stand by and watch that man—your friend—slowly kill himself. It isn’t in your nature.” I would have said more, but I neither wanted to inflate his insufferable ego, nor puncture that great collection of hot air called masculinity. Instead, I sat with the mug of tea cradled in my hands and an expression wavering dangerously between curiosity and the expectancy my companion would suddenly announce some ingenious plot to forever rid Harrison’s system of the little, white pills. But he said nothing. No great exclamation of marvelous insight came. There was only the thick murk of silence between us as he pulled out his cigarette case and began smoking the treasured things one by one. A thin shroud of smoke encircled us in a scent slightly more bitter than vanilla, but just as pleasing to the senses. I observed every twist of the flitting clouds that rose about Keane’s head in a slow, mystic dance. The memory of those Irish pubs, heavy with the smells of smoke and stout, fell upon me in a wave of nostalgic impulses. I want
ed to return again. I wanted to be free of this place. I wanted to be free of my past, just as Keane wished to be free of his. But I could not. A hundred stings, a thousand welts.

  At last, as the final trails of smoke ceased to take breath from his cigarette, he slowly ground it into a nearby ashtray and glanced at me down the bridge of his nose.

  “My dear Lawrence, I am hardly a role model for the ‘straight and narrow path’ as they say. I have my own problems—my own addictions.” He waved a thin, clean hand over the ashtray. “And until I am willing to give them up—and Lord help me if I ever did—how am I to say I am in the right and poor James is in the wrong? After all, everything is relative.”

  “But there are some religions that even encourage smoking. The native tribes, for one.”

  “You mean the same tribes that use hallucinogenic mushrooms for their various rituals and other ceremonies? No, Lawrence, we are back where we started. I absolutely will not—cannot invoke upon my friend a hell I do not wish to walk myself. It goes against my code as a gentleman.” Damn his blasted code.

  “But Keane,” I paused to collect the words rushing about my brain. “What if—What if it was me. Would you be so unable to do anything then as well.”

  It was a low blow. It was, dare I say, ungentlemanly. But I was not a gentleman. I was a woman, a skillful, conniving woman, who had dreams to great for realities, and realities too awful for nightmares.

  It was also a risk. I was wagering the whole of the future on the thought that our relationship might have been so ingrained into him as it was to me that it would topple all fears he had at being an inadequate temperance worker. William Wilberforce, one of the great British politicians and author of Real Christianity, once said in a speech to the House of Commons in 1789;

  ‘You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know,’

  Keane stared at me with his jaw stolid against the rest of his features and his eyes stone against stormy seas.

  “Confound it, woman!” He growled, circling around the back of his chair until I festered some vain hopes he might sit down.

  “But, Keane—” I had scarcely uttered his name when he was upon me completely, my coat lapels twisted in his clenched fists as he pulled me to my feet and then some until our noses were but a breath from one another. I stared into those pools of blue flecked heavily in grey; those two oceans rippling in color as the black centers darted back and forth between mine. His lips were pressed tightly into a stiff line. I knew that look well. I knew that look of intense thought, of measuring the consequences of a situation quickly with his mind reeling in a thousand directions at once. I knew most everything about that look; every line, every crease, every muscle, every movement of his eyes. I knew it. I knew it because I knew him. The years of our acquaintance, our companionship, our friendship, our—God, if our faces got any closer—

  He suddenly released me and I fell back into my seat. We had been thrown back into our separate corners of the ring, but, by the soft, tentative nature of his voice, I did not doubt he remembered the bout in the middle.

  “You are quite right, Lawrence. Quite right. It was . . . callus of me to say I could do nothing. Perhaps, with a little effort, I might be able to create some plan of action.” He said it with such conviction I was hard pressed not to believe him.

  I watched him awhile then, miserably aware of my own failings in life while perfectly oblivious to his supposed sins. He bent down for his coat (accentuating the insufficient length of his trousers) and hung it over his arm. “I am going out for a while. An hour—two, at most. Will you be alright here? Of course you will. No, I am not about to leap over a bridge, and I would appreciate a change in your humor. It has been rather dismal lately, and certainly not complimentary to your intelligence. Tell James when he awakens he had best cancel any rehearsals for the next two weeks. He and I have work to do.”

  And then Keane—Keane in a yellow tie and too-short trousers—was gone.

  PART THREE

  Those who aim at great deeds

  Must also suffer greatly.

  -Marcus Licinius Crassus

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THEY HAD DISAPPEARED like the final scenes of a dream. Their words rattled through my mind as clearly as the moment when Harrison emerged into his sitting room. The weight of the situation was well upon us, and our understanding reasonably questioned the sure path of the world. After all, it is difficult to take a man seriously in anything when you have seen him in nothing.

  My mind wandered briefly to the strength of Keane’s hands pulling my head above the petty thoughts deemed for the common man. Yet his grasp did not hurt me in the slightest.

  They had gone and I had stayed. It was that simple.

  And yet it was so horribly complicated.

  I had watched Keane practically drag Harrison into the car with a final shout in my direction. They would be staying in the beach house and I, in turn, should stay in the director’s apartment. I assured him I would.

  And then caught the first available taxi and registered in a nearby hotel.

  The clerk gaped down his sharp nose at me; a figure in a pair of plaid trousers, loose shirt, and shoes that bore a multitude of scuffs and filth. I had no doubt my short hair was also a reason for concern, but that was irrelevant. Anything was irreverent when it came to those such as he. Polished leather was not bright enough to create his boots, and no queen or king hath power enough to bow before him. I slipped a few extra, large bills across the counter, signed my name (or an alias thereof), and was rewarded with a key. The bellboy, having only recently entered out of the shadow of childish youth, attacked me with an arsenal of jokes that would have made the most vulgar bow their heads in shame. With each abhorrent line, his irrotic cackling nearly sent my single piece of luggage clattering down the stone staircase. The third time I caught it myself and instructed him (none too gently, I’ll admit) to open the door when we got there. He did. I paid him. He was gone.

  Thank God.

  Ask most any Englishman, Keane especially, and they will tell you that American hotels have always been designed for the staff’s convenience, not yours. He once compared them to Victor Hugo’s Thenardier; picking money from your pocket with all those little wastes one has not requested, and could very well live without.

  And yet, it was not as horrid as I might have feared. A single bed had been shoved into the corner across from a worn armchair. Below a row of windows set a writing desk, complete with a select amount of stationary and pencils that were short enough to fit into a reporter’s hat band. The dresser had been topped off with a vase of flowers. Really, aside from the striped wallpaper, I had no complaints.

  I dropped my luggage onto the bed and turned immediately toward the lavatory. The bathtub would have fit the former president Taft, and still had room to spare. I immediately twisted the taps and cajoled a steady stream of hot water from the pipes. Peeling off the woven ilk of my clothes, I stepped down into the porcelain bowl and allowed all my worries to sprout wings and take flight far from the realms of my mind.

  I am convinced there is nothing so wonderful in the world as a good, hot bath; the tingling sensation of the water as it pulls the dust and grime from your skin, breathing the aroma of soap as it bubbles upwards towards the water’s surface. All pains and frustrations were slowly tugged away from my person on the golden chariots of fire. The world no longer grabbed at me with frozen hands. It was a heady combination of absolute bliss. Not something I was permitted to experience very often. My mind drifted aimlessly from the whitewash ceiling to the cream tiled floor. Everything smelled of those meadows of Summer after a Springtime of rain, barring only the slightest brush of smoke wafting from somewhere below.

  A shock shot up my spine. No matter how many times I came to that exact moment (The screech of tires as the machine fell from the brink of control . . . ), it still felt like the last pangs of a nightmare ( . . . the burning cigar ash flinging into my
face. . . ); the fingers of a fevered mind clawing its way to the layer of reality rarely punctured ( . . . and the vice grip on my collar jerking me out of the car just before—)

  I sat up in the porcelain tub just in time to watch a cloud of steam fly upwards with the sudden motion.

  (. . .and the blast of hot air as a pillar of black, oily smoke shot into the night sky.)

  I extracted myself from the bath soon after, fully aware the water was still warm but not caring in the slightest. What was comfort to the body when the mind is unwilling to succumb to rest?

  I dried and dressed with the intention to do nothing more than write for the remainder of that day. Pulling out the wooden chair of the small desk, I took my battle position; pen in hand to fend off all enemies of the literary arts.

  And then I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  At last, when nothing would peek its head upon the horizon of malleable ideas, I slammed the fountain pen onto the stack of stationary with the cold vomit of black ink spewing from the silver nib.

  The first mark I had made in hours.

  I shoved my hands together and stretched them high above my head with a painfully satisfying pop of my stiff shoulders. God, since when had I become a domestic? Extracting my leather jacket from its prostrate position upon the suitcase, I left the room and jogged down the stone steps into the lobby. The greasy-haired clerk stationed behind the desk grinned as I quickly approached.

  “Leaving so soon.” It was not so much a question as a hopeful proclamation.

  “No, but I would like to know where the nearest library is.”

  “Oh.” His cold smile faltered to the point of near extinction. I would have to remind myself to check for reptiles under my pillow before retiring that night. “Well, I think there’s one if you walk down the street a bit, turn left, turn right again, and keep walking for a block or so.” He might as well give me the directions to Siberia, for all the good it did me.