Dead Ringer

by Kat Ross

  “She might. We can go after the funeral tomorrow.”

  “I’m afraid I’m tied up with classwork,” John said apologetically. “Harry?”

  “I’ll attend,” I said. Something still nagged at me and Moran picked up on it.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. I just keep thinking. There’s so many ways to kill someone. Why this in particular?” I met his eyes. “When we understand that, we’ll have our man.”

  Chapter 9

  The funeral for Francis Bates was held under ashen skies at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. I watched from a distance in case my colleagues from the S.P.R. decided to show up. I didn’t see them in the crowd, but they could have been there. Half the mourners wore veils and it started raining midway through the service, so a forest of black umbrellas sprang up like mushrooms.

  A priest spoke the liturgy for the dead and then Francis’s parents each tossed a handful of dirt into the open grave. He had a great many friends from the theater and a large family. Moran told me that the funeral was delayed to allow two of his older brothers to travel back to New York from California, where they were building a railroad through some little town called Los Angeles.

  The surviving members of the Pythagoras Society all showed up, though they barely acknowledged each other. Quincy Hughes spoke briefly to Moran, but the others hung back like he had the plague.

  So much for undying friendship.

  Moran clearly noticed it and was in a foul mood as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan. He stared out the carriage window at the turbulent waters of the East River and I let him brood until we pulled to the curb on East Seventy-First Street.

  “What did you tell Cashel’s mother?” I asked.

  “That I wanted to pay condolences.”

  “About me, I mean.”

  He didn’t turn his head from the window. “You’re my fiancé.”

  “Oh no, Moran. I’m not playing at—”

  “Can you think of a better excuse? Besides, it’s too late now.” He leaned across me to throw open the door of the carriage. “After you, darling.”

  I gave him a filthy look and hopped out.

  “I’ll do the talking,” he grunted, placing his palm on the small of my back and practically shoving me up the walk to the front door. I shook him loose, my voice a hiss.

  “If you think you’re taking any liberties, Moran—”

  I cut off as Mrs. O’Sullivan met us at the door. She must have been waiting at the window. She wore a dress of black crepe, which also covered all the mirrors in the drawing room. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face shrunken like an apple left in the sun. I could only imagine her suffering. It was one thing to lose your child in a horrible accident, but to find his body, dead from suicide, must be a mother’s worst nightmare.

  Moran gripped my hand in his cold fingers. I couldn’t pull loose without making a scene and resolved to give him a good flaying when we got out of there.

  “It’s so kind of you to come, James,” she said in a lilting Irish accent. “And you, Miss Pell.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I said, feeling awkward. Our presence suddenly seemed like an awful intrusion, but Mrs. O’Sullivan seemed glad for the company. She’d laid out coffee and what looked like homemade raisin cookies.

  “Da is working a shift down at the docks,” she said apologetically. “But he’ll be glad to know you came. We’ve had so few visitors . . . .” She trailed off in embarrassment and I understood. Suicide was a cardinal sin for Catholics. The poor woman must believe her son was going to Hell.

  We ate some cookies to be polite and she asked after James’s mother. I remained mostly silent through the small talk, and then James broached the subject we had all been dancing around for the last half hour.

  “Did he . . . . Did he seem off to you?” Moran asked finally. “In the weeks before.”

  Her face crumpled, then smoothed out. “The accidents hit the poor lad hard. Very hard.” She paused. “And those rumors about Danny being seen up at school. You don’t believe ’em, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Moran said.

  “It’s rubbish. The things people say.” She twisted a strand of red hair around one finger, then tucked it behind her ear. “Have another cookie, James. You look like a wraith.”

  Moran obliged, though I could see he didn’t want it.

  “Did anything else happen? I’m sorry, I know it’s hard to talk about—”

  “But you need to understand. I do, too. So I don’t blame you for asking.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “He was happy, actually. Just a few days before. Happier than I’d seen him in a long time.”

  Moran leaned forward. “Why?”

  “The stutter. It went away. Just like that, one day to the next.” She shook her head in wonder. “He’d had it since he was six. So bad he could hardly get the words out sometimes, like they all jumbled up in his throat and got stuck there. You could hear him almost . . . almost choking on them.” She swallowed. “We brought him to doctors but they took our money and didn’t do a thing to help him. And then it just . . . stopped.”

  The tears started flowing in earnest and Moran pulled out a handkerchief and offered to her. Mrs. O’Sullivan wiped her face. “I know he thought it could all change for him. That he might land a speaking part. He was wonderful when he wasn’t nervous, you know. When it was just the two of us and he’d read lines. Sometimes I’d read with him and we’d pretend . . . .” She started weeping again.

  The conversation turned to reminiscences and I excused myself to use the powder room. On the way down the hall, I passed an open door and paused. The ceiling fixture in the room beyond had been wrenched half out of the plaster. I paused, but Moran and Mrs. O’Sullivan were talking quietly, out of sight.

  I stepped inside. Bright theatrical posters were tacked to the walls. A coat had been slung over the back of a chair as though waiting to be put on. I wondered if it was the same chair he’d stood on when he looped the red scarf around his neck.

  My gaze roamed over the scripts piled on a small side table near the bed, and a bookcase with holdovers from childhood gathering dust on the lowest shelves. A few boys’ magazines and a raggedy edition of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.

  I didn’t want to linger too long and was turning to go when I saw the edge of a piece of paper peeking out between two of the magazines. Feeling slightly guilty, I slipped it out. It was a photograph. I guessed it had been taken five or six years before. Cash had his arm slung around Moran’s shoulders. They were teenagers and they were both laughing. Each had a parasol propped over his shoulder.

  Just two boys goofing around as I’d seen John do with his brothers a hundred times before, and it wasn’t so much Cashel who caught my eye, though there was certainly pathos in knowing how this laughing boy would end up. No, it was James Moran.

  The picture must have been taken before he killed his father. There was an unguarded lightness in his expression that was hard to imagine now. I stared at the photograph until I heard Moran calling my name. I hastily slipped it back between the pages and hurried back to the drawing room.

  When I returned, Moran seemed to guess what I’d been up to for he arched a heavy brow in a questioning look. I gave the barest shake of my head and sat down. Moran rose to his feet and expressed his condolences once again to Mrs O’Sullivan. She seemed sad we were leaving and I imagined that the house was a very lonely place for her now, but she said goodbye to us with warmth and dignity.

  “Digging through his things, were you?” he muttered once the door was closed.

  “I wouldn’t call it digging. The door was open.”

  “And did you find anything?”

  “Not that bears on the case.” I glanced up and down the empty street. “Where’s your driver?”

  “Emma wanted to go shopping on the Ladies Mile,” Moran replied. “For an avowed spinster, the woman spends a bloody fortune on clothes.” He glanced at me with
disdain. “Are your poor tender feet too tired to walk?”

  In answer, I strode off and Moran hurried to catch up.

  “Cashel wasn’t bullied only for the stutter, was he?” I said as we crossed Park Avenue.

  He shot me a look, his eyes narrowing. “What are you after?”

  “Only the truth. He liked other boys. Am I right?”

  Moran grunted.

  “And that didn’t bother you? I find it surprising given your intolerance for the perceived weaknesses of others.”

  “What do I care who fucks who?” he said bluntly. “Cash was a loyal friend.”

  I frowned at him. “If you mean to provoke me with foul language—”

  Moran let out a chortle. “Oh, pardon me, your highness.”

  “I know you’re sad and angry, but you don’t have to take it out on the person who’s trying to help you.”

  He fell silent. Another block passed before he mumbled an apology.

  “Quincy’s a pompous ass,” Moran said. “He always acts like we’re better than the rest of them, but Cash was worth twenty of his kind.”

  “Plus you Irish stick together.”

  “Aye,” he replied in his best brogue. “That we do, lass.”

  “I’ll walk you over to Fifth and then take a streetcar downtown,” I said.

  Dark clouds had massed over the city while we were with Mrs. O’Sullivan. Moran glanced at the sky, then quickened his pace. We entered Central Park through the Gate of All Saints at West Ninety-Sixth Street and took a meandering pathway south. Within minutes, a thin rain began to fall. I unfurled my umbrella. Moran turned his collar up, hunching his shoulders.

  I’d always liked the park in late September. The crowds of summer were gone, yet the leaves were still on the trees and although autumn was close, it hadn’t quite arrived yet. The grass was still a deep, lush green and squirrels darted through the undergrowth, burying acorns for the winter.

  We hurried along without speaking for a few minutes. The wind picked up, shaking the branches of the Dutch elms lining the path. It was only about four o’clock but a murky twilight descended. Lightning forked overhead, followed immediately by loud rumble of thunder. Moran stopped dead.

  “Come on,” I said impatiently, struggling with the wildly flapping umbrella. “We’re halfway across—”

  “There’s no way in hell I’m prancing through Central Park in the middle of a lightning storm, Pell,” he snarled.

  “Then what do you propose?”

  “The Boathouse isn’t far.” He shook a lock of wet hair from his eyes. “We’ll wait it out there.”

  Moran was already making for the deserted pavilion at the edge of the lake. The rain intensified as we ducked underneath the eaves and I had to admit I was glad for the shelter. My stockings were soaked. I shook the tattered umbrella and leaned it against the wall. Moran stood with his hands stuffed in his pockets, watching the trees bend and sway in the wind. The boaters had fled at the first sign of rain. Whitecaps ruffled the surface of the lake and bobbed the skiffs where they floated at anchor.

  Long minutes passed and the storm only grew worse. Moran had gone broody again. I watched him deftly roll a quarter across his knuckles and thought he might have made a decent magician.

  “Cashel’s stutter going away,” I said. “All of a sudden. Strange, don’t you think?”

  Moran caught my eye and gave a brief nod. “He never had it when he talked to me, but I heard it plenty of times at school, especially when one of the professors would put him on the spot.” He shook his head in disgust. “The sadistic bastards. It’s like his mother said. The poor sod sounded like he was choking on a fishbone.”

  “If twisting the odds is part of this, maybe there’s a way we can test your luck,” I said. “With that coin.”

  Moran made the quarter vanish into his fist. “What the deuce would that prove?”

  “Never mind. If you’re scared, there’s no need—”

  He laughed. “Oh, Pell, you’re so transparent. But if you insist.” He tossed the quarter into the air and snatched it up, then slapped it down on the back of his other hand.

  “Tails,” I noted. “Now try it again.”

  Moran repeated the process.

  “Tails. Do it again.”

  His face grew hard as he unveiled the third consecutive tails. And the fourth. And the fifth.

  “What are the odds of that?” I wondered.

  “Half to the power of five,” he replied. “About a three percent chance.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Keep going,” I said softly, rubbing my arms.

  His hands shook slightly as he performed the trick fifteen more times. “Jesus Christ,” Moran muttered. “One-half to the power of n, with an inverse probability of two to the power of n minus one divided by 2n.”

  “English, please.”

  He swallowed. “If I flipped this coin a million times, I’d have a thirty-eight percent chance of getting twenty tails in a row.”

  I frowned. “That’s fairly high.”

  “If I flipped it a million times. If I flipped it, oh, let’s say five thousand times, the chances are. . . .” His eyes grew distant for a few seconds. “Approximately .00237281 percent.”

  “Give it to me,” I said. “We need a control subject.”

  He handed the coin over. I threw it into the air and caught it, then opened my palm.

  “Heads,” he said with a hollow laugh. “So if you thought I was having you on with a rummy coin—”

  “I didn’t think that.”

  Thunder boomed and he visibly flinched. “Do you know the odds of getting struck by lightning, Pell?”

  I shook my head.

  “About one in seven hundred thousand.” He gazed out at the dense woods of the Ramble. “But in my case, I get the feeling they’re a lot higher.”

  I resisted the sudden urge to take a step back. “Listen, Moran. Whatever this is, it might not intentionally be trying to kill you. Although I’ll grant that does seem to be the usual outcome.”

  “Maybe I should go down to the Bronze Door and hit the faro tables like Danny,” he said acidly. “For all the good it did him!”

  “Don’t be an ass, that’s not what I’m suggesting—”

  His black eyes narrowed, his voice sinking to that dangerously low register. “It’s all just a fascinating little puzzle to you, isn’t it? A curiosity you can write up and file away when it’s over and you move on to the next challenge.”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” I protested. “I didn’t even want it! You begged us to help you.”

  Moran seemed not to hear. “I’ll be dead, horribly mangled most likely, the funeral will have to be a closed casket affair—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I muttered, crossing my arms. The temperature was dropping and I felt chilled to the bone. Rain drummed incessantly on the sloping mansard roof. The ground beyond was a muddy mess and I wished I had my rubber sewer boots. How much longer would the storm continue?

  From the corner of my eye, I sensed him studying me. “What?” I snapped.

  “You’re prettier than her.”

  I didn’t need to ask who he meant. “Don’t waste your time with flattery,” I replied scornfully.

  “It’s not flattery, simply a fact. And here’s another fact. She’s smarter.”

  I scowled and Moran gave me a crooked little smile. “But not by much.”

  I stared out at the hissing rain, which had raised a fine mist above the lake. I thought about Cash and Danny. The mud man and the Pythagoras Society. None of it quite fit together, though I had that ticklish sense that I already knew the answer if only I could see it clearly.

  A bee flew past, droning loudly above the drip, drip, drip of water. The gusting wind had twisted the ribs of my poor umbrella into mangled batwings. I was trying to straighten them out when I noticed a blur of movement under the trees. A man walked slowly along the edge of the lake, hat tipped low over his eyes, the br
im streaming with rainwater. He had his collar turned up. Next to me, Moran was playing with the quarter again, rolling it across his knuckles as he gazed ruminatively at the rain.

  The figure came closer and something about it seemed familiar. Then it looked up and I drew a sharp breath. Black eyes, broad cheekbones and a sharply defined mouth, full, bloodless lips curved in a grin.

  The face was my companion’s in every detail, except that it looked faded somehow, like a corpse.

  The double held my gaze for only an instant. Then its attention moved past my shoulder and I knew it was staring at Moran.

  “Come on!” I urged, tugging his sleeve, but the real Moran stood rooted to the spot.

  I acted without thought, dropping my umbrella and dashing toward it. Fear dried my mouth, but this otherworldly creature held the keys to the mystery, so I pelted across the wet grass in pursuit. A clump of oaks came between us and when I reached the other side, the phantom had vanished.

  I skidded to a stop in the middle of the bridle path and turned in a slow circle, scanning the park. The figure was gone.

  A moment later, Moran himself came running up. He’d turned a sickly color and his chest heaved, but he’d managed to overcome his own paralysis. “Do you believe me now?” he whispered hoarsely.

  I nodded. A hard, convulsive shiver ran through me and I rubbed the sudden goosebumps on my arms. “Moran—”

  I spun at the sudden clatter of wheels. A carriage careened towards us down the lane, the horse wild-eyed and galloping full tilt in its traces. The driver’s bench was empty. I gave Moran a violent shove. He stumbled out of its path an instant before the carriage hurtled through the space he’d just occupied. The trembling beast halted fifty feet away and the driver came running up, an older fellow with sparse white side whiskers and thinning grey hair plastered to his head.

  “I’m so sorry, sir, are ye all right?” he gasped.

  Moran had landed in a large puddle. He shook off the man’s efforts to help and got to his feet.

  “Molly was stung on the ear by a bee.” The driver shook his head in wonder. “In this weather! She bolted and I couldn’t stop her, sir.” He crushed his tweed cap between large, calloused hands. “I’m awful sorry, sir. Yer coat is ruined.”