I shouldered my way to the front and pressed a twenty- dollar note into the headwaiter’s palm. He rolled his eyes disdainfully, so I gave him another, and in five minutes we were seated with a nice view of the park.
“You’re awfully free with his money,” she said.
“Keeper of the purse strings, among other things.”
“Among every other thing.” Her eyes danced. I shrugged modestly and looked away. High in the mountains of Socotra there was a lake with water unburdened by any living thing, bluer than a sky scrubbed clean by a summer rain, yet even that was not as pure as her eyes, uncorrupted to the bottom, all the way down.
“Now what is this about Mr. Isaacson and reputations?” she asked, now that she had me off-balance.
“Actually, I was referring to the doctor’s reputation. This latest difficulty with organized crime . . .”
Lilly was shaking her head. “You always were a terrible liar.”
“Uncle Abram was right about one thing: To these men, honor is everything. Under the circumstances, the Black Hand is an unthinkable breach of etiquette, very bad form, even for a professional criminal. The Camorristi owe Warthrop an enormous debt.”
She grasped my meaning at once. “A subterfuge? But why? And by whom?”
“The why is easy enough—there are ten thousand reasons. The who I hope to discover before it’s too late . . . if it already isn’t too late.”
She gasped. “Kill Warthrop . . . ?”
“And lay the blame squarely upon the Italians’ doorstep. Which is why the why may not be so obvious, Lilly. What if this isn’t about money at all but about covering up a murder?”
She was silent throughout the appetizers and most of the main course, thinking of ways to poke holes in my argument, I was sure.
“How did the author of the letter know Warthrop was going to the Camorra?” she asked.
I nodded approvingly. She had teased out the one crucial fact at the heart of the tangled affair. Red is not blue, I thought in a flash of incoherence. “Right! Whoever wrote that letter knew of Warthrop’s errand. Now, he may have been followed and his kidnapper—or killer—hit upon the plan to frame Competello at the spur of the moment, or—”
“Or he knew beforehand and snatched him before he could see Competello. . . .”
“Or took him afterward; that part doesn’t matter.”
“Who knew where he was going? Who did he tell?”
“He didn’t tell me. Uncle Abram knew.”
“The others?”
I shook my head. “He might have told Pelt—but I doubt it. Definitely not Acosta-Rojas or Walker.”
“But Uncle may have.” She shook her head ruefully. “He’s gotten gregarious in his old age. If it is a traitor, I would place my bet on Walker.”
“It isn’t Walker.”
“How do you know?”
I looked down at my plate and didn’t answer. “Anyway, we shall know tonight. I suppose it could be a Five Points gang behind it all, but it seems awfully sophisticated for a bunch of hooligans from the slums.”
She nodded, and now it was her turn to stare at her plate. “What is it?” I asked. “Lilly?”
To my surprise, she fairly lunged across the table and pulled my hand into hers. “I won’t tell you not to do this—I know you will no matter what I say—but at least promise me you won’t be reckless.”
I laughed to reassure her, and myself. “Reckless? One may be reckless in love—I hear it’s preferable—but never in anything monstrumological!”
I lifted her hand to my lips.
SIX
The lobby of the Plaza Hotel, a quarter past five, and the courier is late.
Or perhaps he isn’t.
An elderly couple, both in evening wear, are chatting with the desk clerk. They are going to the opera. They’d like a recommendation for dinner afterward, something within walking distance of the opera house. The old man is distinguished, obviously well-heeled based upon his clothes and Midwestern judging by his accent. His wife is handsome in that milk-fed, thickset way of prairie women. It is their first visit to New York.
I am sitting across the lobby on the overstuffed Victorian settee near the door, set a tad too far from the roaring fire to be anything but teased by its heat. I hold Mr. Faulk’s copy of the Herald and have read the same article four times. In the right pocket of my overcoat is the doctor’s revolver, in the left the switchblade I fished out of the pocket of the faceless man in the Monstrumarium.
“But the restaurant is too far, isn’t it? I have a bum leg. Old war injury, you know.”
Outwardly, I am calm; inside I’m fuming. Why don’t they get off to the bloody opera already? The courier is probably loitering outside waiting for them to leave. I want to get on with it.
Now the old man is treating the clerk to the story behind his bum leg. Cold Harbor, spring of ’64, and afterward the general declared, This is not war; this is murder.
The clerk’s answering laugh was of the nervous variety, but the old man took offense, and that ended the conversation. He limped past me, his stalwart wife in tow, the heel of his cane clicking smartly upon the marble floor. The clerk’s eyes met mine from across the room, and he shrugged, Crazy old coot, and I had a sudden impulse to pull out the revolver and shoot the smirk off his cherubic face. What did he know of war—or of murder?
In less than a minute the door swung open and a small, dark-haired man strode purposefully past me, heading straight for the clerk. No words were exchanged, only the bulging white envelope from the shelf behind the desk. The little man tucked it into the folds of his jacket and left just as hurriedly as he’d arrived, chin thrust forward, looking neither left nor right. I don’t think he even noticed me.
I folded the paper deliberately and tossed it on the table in front of the settee, rose, nodded to the clerk, who nodded back—and perhaps I’ll shoot him later—and I stepped outside into the gathering dusk, and the traffic was heavy with the coming home and the going out, and it had warmed up a bit. The day was dying, but gently, with the heartbreaking sigh of a girl to her insistent lover.
The short, dark-haired man is hurrying along the sidewalk toward the park. He passes a much larger man wearing a frayed peacoat and a wide-brimmed hat. The big man is studying a racing form and smoking a cigar. He pays the little man no notice, but his eyes flick toward me, and I nod.