by Lyndsay Faye
Nicolo’s face at last showed sign of recognition when Harry invoked my name. He slowly drew a knife from his pocket. Began cutting Harry’s bonds, ignoring my pessimistic friend’s gushing thanks. Meanwhile, my mind had gone as smooth and soft as a rose petal.
Go.
Right now.
Fix this hideous mistake before it eats you all alive.
* * *
—
I executed two dodges to make sure I wasn’t followed by any lookouts of Nicolo’s when I slunk away from the Cabin. By the time I was nearly back to the Arcadia, Nobody the wharf lounger was fighting not to run full tilt for the lobby.
Running means you either need to get to or away from something. Walk.
With your head down.
My eyes floated over cracks in the paving stones, fissures wrought by time and pressure. I skirted a barbecue rib picked as clean as if by vultures, a pyramid of horse shit. It made sense that Harry’s allegiance to the Spider was based in misplaced fear. Hell, I ought to have guessed as much sooner, Harry Chipchase meditated on liabilities all the livelong. All I had to do was get to Mr. Salvatici’s journals. He’d said he’d be up until midnight, which meant he’d be smoking a cigar in a rooftop armchair, breathing guttering New York streetlights and whispering to his birds. That gave me an hour to find the diary entry proving his innocence before he could catch me rooting through his past. And Nicolo, as insane as he was, was still methodical. He wouldn’t come charging into the hotel with guns blazing, he would consider, he would—
“Oh sweet Jesus, and just when I thought my luck had run dry. Hello, darlin’. Sight of you is the best tonic bar none, you know that, don’t you? Almost missed you in that getup.”
My chin raised at the familiar voice even as my chest compressed, shrinking away from what I was about to see.
Zachariah Lane stood beside the entrance of the Hotel Arcadia. Not waiting for Nobody, I didn’t flatter myself. Only waiting for someone. One of his old friends. Maybe me or Sadie or one of the porters. We were all the same to him by then. Friendly shadow shapes, a marginally brighter glow in the deep dark.
But I miswrote that—Rye wasn’t standing by the stone steps precisely. He was hunched forward, swaying subtly, just drifting in an unseen wind, the body inside the rags he wore nearly as thin as mine.
“Oh, Rye,” I breathed.
Where have you been these three months? Have you eaten anything lately? Are you still sleeping in the tent camp under the 116th Street El station, where the soot falls like wicked snow?
I looked for you, you see. I always look for you.
He held his hands up. “Now don’t get agitated, darlin’. I’ve been on the upswing these past few weeks, felt strong as an ox and was fit to hunt down some steady work, and then I took a real bad spell during that rainstorm a few days ago. Couldn’t hardly breathe.”
“And you need money,” I supplied, knowing the script.
“Not for cough syrup, now.” Sincerity poured from him like steam from a manhole. He believed every word, and that broke my heart. “I know how you feel about that, Nobody, and I’d never want to bring any grief to your doorstep. So I’d promise never to use your money for my medicine. Just a hot meal to clear my head, maybe a bunk for the night.”
Where do you keep these separate bank accounts? In your right and left trouser pockets?
Wanting to cry, I fished a crumpled dollar out of my pocket and pressed it into his hand.
“For one of those roast beef sandwiches we like so awfully much at the Empire Diner. And then a good night’s sleep.”
He smiled, and there in the glow of the Arcadia’s gas lamps I glimpsed him realizing. Not that I loved him. But that the sandwich was too far away a dream to touch. He’d walk halfway home and cough whether he needed to or not, and then he’d have to fix it, wouldn’t he, for his health’s sake, and he’d forget which pocket was which, and he’d detest himself right up until he made it all go away again.
Stepping forward, I kissed him, right above the lids falling shut over pinprick irises and every-colored eyes.
“When you feel better, next week, come see me and we’ll visit one of the mixed speakeasies that pours too much and never sweeps their dance floors,” I lied.
“Sure enough, darlin’.” Rye smiled. It never spread past his lips anymore, hadn’t for over a year. “I’ll pay you back then—it’s a date.”
Kissing me on the cheek, he turned to go. Walking straight for the most part, a dancer’s sense of balance battling a sucking tide of toxins. And I don’t mean cough syrup. I mean the sea of loneliness that surrounded him every day, that he couldn’t even begin to battle because he supposed that he deserved it all along.
* * *
—
Nobody the marine vagabond sat at Mr. Salvatici’s familiar breakfast table, fingers thrumming with purpose, and flipped through his 1911 journal with full expectation of saving the day. Harry Chipchase, I thought through my haze of grief over Rye, was a good friend and a stalwart bodyguard but not the sharpest nail in the coffin. Mr. Salvatici knifed two scurmi fituzzi to save Nicolo’s family, for God’s sake. A few minutes of research and I’d pocket the evidence, find Nicolo, and have this entire farce booed off the stage.
October 31, 1911. It is in motion. The thing is done, and what will come of it only time can tell. The Clutch Hand’s brutes would have wasted a seminal moment in Harlem, as they are animals and not statesmen—this is the theater of the people, and this sacrifice must prove a call to action. There is such spirit in the young fellow that, once the fuse is ignited, he must burst into flame or fizzle, and expire entirely. If the latter, it is a waste of tremendous untapped aptitude for resistance. If the former—well, we shall see.
In either case, it has brought me the girl, which was always my fondest hope. Simple enough to dispatch a pair of enemies who threatened her young love; quite another thing to expose myself in such a way, all to plunge the city into sufficient chaos for her to come running. But come running she did, and oh, the completeness of it. She will barely be missed, and I don’t know whether I’m gladder over the comforts I can provide her or the asset she will become, clever wisp of a thing. I will do right by my new ward. I will do more than protect her—I will teach her to protect herself.
What luck that I caught sight of Catrin years ago, and instead of evading her accosted her there in the street. Such decisions often prove disastrous and always irreversible. But now I see my way clear: the Clutch Hand can be thwarted. The opening gambit accomplished, here’s to the success of a very long game.
Slumping back in the chair, I sat for a little, staring at the oil painting of a hunting expedition on Mr. Salvatici’s wall. I’d always liked it, liked the dogs with their sunset-pink tongues and their glossy brushstroke coats. One had a pheasant in its mouth with its neck at an unnatural angle, a neat red dot through the chest indicating its demise. Too neat, in my experience. The hunter and his prey and the dog bred to deliver it. All in their proper places.
It’s an awfully empowering feeling, to be against something. Women against liquor gave the likes of me the vote, for example. It’s dandy as hell to rail against poverty or sex or nepotism or vice. There were two sides, Mr. Salvatici always said. Them: the Clutch Hand no one ever saw, the puppet master, sending his army of Corleonesi to terrorize and destroy at his whim. Us: Mr. Salvatici with his cool gentility, the Spider, directing his shadow ward and his devoted gang to build and bolster and infiltrate. We were the resistance—the freedom fighters—and people paid us for real debaucheries instead of farcical protection, and we robbed from the thieves, and we put down the wild dogs.
Except none of that was true. At least, it held as much water as stories about Giuseppe Morello and his Murder Stable. We were a gang of violent and remorseless criminals, I was no better than an assassin, and Harry Chipchase had been right to be afraid all
along.
When I’d stopped shaking, I forced myself to take an interest and start paying attention. The way I’d been trained to do. I flipped back to the entry I should have read the instant it occurred to me to spy on Mr. Salvatici.
Which begs the question—Why didn’t I? I want to write that it was because I was loyal or I trusted him or I was too sophisticated to care about the answer. But I can’t say any of those things.
I’d always suspected something, but I didn’t want to know what it was.
October 27, 1911. At last I’ve made contact with her. After watching for so long, it was a palpable thrill, far more satisfying than knifing a pair of soulless Family men. She is everything I expected from studying her at a distance—pensive and insightful, wary but unbowed. She will fill the single post remaining vacant for this great undertaking: while I cannot anymore under the circumstances risk the danger a theoretical wife of mine would face, Nobody I can keep close, hidden. Safe. Far safer than she would have been in that flesh market. I have the right to a family of a sort, as does every man, having left mine behind entirely. The symmetry of it pleases me. I never bothered over divorcing her mother all those years ago, after all.
Quietly, I closed the book. Thinking about a closet full of dresses that fit me perfectly, living quarters I adored on sight. Lessons designed to spark my interest. A chill, dry hand stroking my hairline for comfort and for camaraderie and for no reason at all.
I thought about my mother’s opinion regarding Mauro Salvatici’s version of ambition versus Giuseppe Morello’s, and I shivered with such violence that my head ached.
I mean the more dangerous kind, the kind what grows instead of erases, the sort o’ fellow as sees himself as the king in a storybook. Making a world all his own.
◆ Twenty-Two ◆
NOW
Section 6. That if any such free negro or mulatto shall fail to quit the country as required by this act, he or she may be arrested upon a warrant issued by some justice of the peace, and, if guilty upon trial before such justice, shall receive upon his or her bare back not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes, to be inflicted by the constable of the proper county.
—LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF OREGON, Act barring all blacks and mulattoes from the state, June 26, 1844
Wait, what?” I exclaim. “You suppose that because this blanket is draped in that admittedly curious fashion, Davy is here? At your cabin?”
Max snaps back into stoicism. But inwardly, I imagine he’s altogether Belgium of 1914.
“Maximilian, the ham is positively absent from that sandwich. What could he be doing here, miles from where he vanished?”
“You wanna make me believe some tramp busted in to make up a pillow fort?”
“But you could have forgotten to set it back,” I soothe.
“Nah. I run a tight ship. Either Davy was here or I got an issue with prankster ghosts.”
“My God.” As I allow myself to believe him, more questions arise, a domino effect of uncertainties. “Who has a key to this place?”
“Just me, since everybody as comes up here, I bring myself. That don’t mean I carry it on the road, though. Hangs it on a rack in my room at the Paragon.”
“Oh, my Lord.” Even though I questioned the possibility of an inside job, facing evidence of such is mortifying. “Someone could easily have copied it. They’d never fear you catching them—you’re out there clacking away for days on end.”
“I can’t wrap my brains around it. It’s like family at that hotel.”
“And how could he possibly have gotten here from the Elms? And if he did, then what happened next? Davy could still be in the area,” I realize. “We’ve been carrying on like rabbits, and he’s been—what, hiding from us? Hurt or lost?”
Another possibility materializes, one we both see but don’t speak: freshly spaded earth under the bracken, a loamy and far-too-small hole dug deep enough for the rain not to wash it away.
“Shit.” Max brushes his hands over his head in distress.
I pull his shirt around me tighter, if only for the comfort of its smell. “Max, I’m fantastically good at this. Allow me to pose some questions?”
“Hell, I’ll try anything. I love that kid, and there’s burning crosses involved.”
“Who from the Paragon has ever visited here?”
The space between his pale eyes folds into a thoughtful groove. “Davy, plenty. And Blossom with Davy. Dr. Pendleton twice, when the hooch got real bad and I figured as he needed some peace and trees. Davy with Wednesday Joe maybe a dozen times. Fishing, shooting arrows, showing ’em how to track. That’s it.”
“Very good. Now, how many people have ready access to the keys behind the front desk? Supposing they didn’t just take a hairpin to your door, of course.”
Max whistles, glancing up as he reflects. “Rooster and Mav, rotating night clerks. Anybody else would hafta time it out careful.”
The inkling of an idea has already dripped into the old girl’s cranium. It’s still just speckles, mind. But they’re present, and they give me chills.
“All right, here’s the kicker, and I ask that you give this due consideration before considering fisticuffs. Which of the Paragon’s inner circle has not been out searching for Davy Lee?”
Max’s eyes widen.
“I know!” I throw my hands up pleadingly. “Just think it over. Wednesday Joe is too young to fault for not beating the bracken—he wanted to, terribly. You and Mavereen have been frantic. But something dreadfully fishy must be going on, if what you say is true. Blossom I could chalk up to illness and Rooster to duty and Miss Christina to work. But none of them have been taking a comb to the undergrowth, and . . . and shouldn’t we ask why?”
Rocking on his heels, Maximilian gives a defeated shrug. I can’t blame him. These are his friends.
It took me years to question my friends, though, and look where it got me.
Max sighs. “I’ll search the woods. It’s plenty light enough now. And you go through the cabin for whatever else you can find. Food scraps. Crayon or pencil shavings—the squirt loves to draw. A goddamn shoelace. Anything to confirm what I been saying. All right?”
I make a quick salute. “I know what I am about, sir. Trust in me.”
Max looks at me, really looks for the first time since he told me about his lost wife. “I do, you know. Kinda figure that makes me nuts, but. I do.”
Blinking, I accept this statement. It makes me feel considerably more like whoever Alice James is becoming these days.
“Go forth, handsome swain. Search the mouseholes and neglect not the birds’ nests.”
The door shuts, and I’m alone.
First I toss my wrinkled chemise and frock back on lest Max prove lucky enough to return with a little boy in tow. Then I start flinging open cupboards and growing intimate with nightstands. There’s a simple larder of nonperishables like tinned fish, powdered milk, coffee, rice, some flapjack flour. A small shelf of books, mostly travel and guides to fishing or carpentry, the rest in French and therefore Greek to me. The straightest row of folded socks a woman could ever wish for. A phonograph with a predictably large and thorough collection of ragtime, blues, jazz, and classical, doubtless purchased in dozens of cities. A photo of him in uniform that leaves me flushed for minutes, not on display but neatly hidden under a set of sheet music catalogs.
Nothing whatsoever of use to us.
So I start doing what I used to when looking for Rye’s heroin syrup, after he’d sworn to discontinue the medication and instead started wedging the stuff in loafers and sugar bowls: I snoop. Salt cellars, laundry hampers, cleaning products.
When hark ye: I reach into an empty vase on the mantelpiece and encounter a slip of paper within.
I unroll it. It feels quite new. The handwriting is crisp and clean, the languag
e terse enough to make me suspect it deliberately cryptic, lest somebody—or Nobody—stumble upon the thing.
To Those Concerned,
The exchange has been made, and all is satisfactory. First payment safely in receipt. Subsequent installments may be delivered to the same address.
I remain,
At Your Service
Minutes pass as I stare at words I shouldn’t be seeing. This note, then, must have been left by whoever brought Davy here. And was to be retrieved later by someone with access, when Max was flying over rail ties. But who?
And far more important, why? Is this a ransom note? What in God’s name are payment installments? Can this be some sort of blackmail? Or worse yet, the twisted indenture of a child?
My skin goes cold.
Miss Christina has secrets. Oppressive ones. And an arrangement.
Blossom needs money. Badly. And wasn’t jazzed over finding me prying.
And neither of them having been out searching for Davy since that first night, I remind myself.
Impossible.
It’s an instant rejection. Both women were with me that afternoon at the Elms. Yes, it ought to be further evidence damning them, but the opposite is true—they were destroyed when Davy disappeared.
I have to quit the cabin or else perform the Alpine summit routine on its walls. So I steal one of Maximilian’s cigarettes and occupy the front porch. The morning air is misty, rich with soil and conifer, clearing my head even as it obscures the trees. I still have Evelina Vaughan’s scarf and I snug into it, wondering how she fares. Then my hackles rise again.