by C. S. Poe
I stared at Joseph a long moment, collected my flat cap off the table, then slipped between Gunner and Moore on my way out. I heard Moore shut and lock the door in my wake before I turned to walk backward, saying, “This entire situation is becoming absurd.”
“Hamilton—” Moore started.
“Have you noticed that not one individual has ever met Tick Tock?” I asked.
“I had gathered,” Moore answered.
“So far, in a plan to overthrow the Whyos, we have determined the involvement of a murderer-for-hire, a pier workman, a department store manager, and an undetermined number of mechanical men and double-dealing street gangsters. I mean, what is this, some sort of… six degrees of separation?”
“Six degrees of what?” Moore echoed.
“I suspect,” Gunner said, bringing up the rear, “Hamilton means to imply that despite the number of unique vocations involved in this underground plot, these individuals are no more than, for example, six social connections away from whoever Tick Tock is.”
“Thank you,” I said to Gunner.
Gunner touched his index finger to the brim of his bowler in response.
Moore stopped abruptly in the hall. Voices and footfalls carried from the stairwell at my back. In order to leave through the side exit, we’d have to walk Gunner past any number of special agents coming downstairs, who would see him as nothing more than a wanted outlaw. And with the momentary cease-fire between him and Moore, it would also prove to be a sticky situation for our director to explain. Moore opened another door and jerked his head in invitation.
I backtracked, stepped inside, and was silent until Gunner and Moore had entered and shut the door. “I want to go to the Iron Palace and find this boutique manager.”
Moore held a hand up. “We need to move on this quickly—”
“Exactly.” I took a step forward.
“But not stupidly, Hamilton,” he said, coming to meet me at the midpoint of the room. “Have you slept? You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I slept, sir.”
Moore’s brown eyes narrowed suddenly, and he touched his own temple. “Do you—do you dye your hair?”
“Sorry?”
“I don’t recall so much gray in front.”
I struggled for a believable explanation as I touched the newest loss of color. Then I remembered, as a young boy, my mother reveling in every word of The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility as if it were holy scripture and using one of the home recipes to darken her hair to a more fashionable shade of the time. “Yes,” I blurted out. “A bottle of wine and a quick visit to the druggist will do the trick.”
Moore gave me a dubious expression.
“I’m only twenty-nine,” I said, by way of excuse.
The corner of Moore’s mouth lifted in a tentative smile. “You look nicer with the gray.”
From where he stood at the door, Gunner chuckled. He had a lazy drawl to his laugh when he was low-key amused.
Moore puffed his chest out a little as he turned around. “Something you find funny?”
“Your boldfaced attempt to take what’s not yours, Director,” Gunner said evenly. He paused, smiled widely, and added, “Despite the unequivocal no you received last night.”
“You are a criminal,” Moore retorted. “A thief and a murderer.”
Gunner didn’t seem particularly perturbed by this accusation. He merely shrugged one shoulder.
I made a quick dash to stand between them before a fuse was lit, and said to Moore, “The window, sir.”
Moore’s face, distorted by unbridled anger, twisted like a corkscrew into something softer and more socially acceptable. “The window?” he echoed.
“Upstairs,” I clarified.
He expelled a held breath. Nodded. “Agent Bligh confirmed he broke it upon entering the room in order to dissipate the smoke.”
“Why not simply open it?” Gunner asked.
“Bligh was about two bottles into his New Year festivities,” I explained.
“You don’t like him.”
I turned to stare at Gunner. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Stop it.” I returned my attention to Moore again. “Is he working today?”
Moore stroked his beard. “After failing to protect Fishback, he certainly wasn’t getting the day off to nurse his hangover. He’s retched twice.”
“I want to speak with him.”
“I don’t think that’s wise.”
“I want to question him about last night,” I reiterated. “Now that he’s sober. Clues about the break-in.”
Moore was still stroking his handsome beard. “You seem convinced it was this—what’d you say—Gatling Man from last night.”
I had, of course, informed my director of what transpired last night on Hester Street, just before interrogating Joseph Greene. But I had, also of course, skirted the finer details as to how the fire had been put out and instead heaped praise on the fire department. Those brutes wouldn’t hesitate to accept the lie as gospel if it meant a commendation from the FBMS, simply because it would piss off the metropolitan police.
Nothing but childish blood feuds in this city, I swear.
“It was, I’m quite certain,” I replied. “But McCarthy helped him escape, so he’s not here to question. And even if McCarthy or Gatling Man or Tick Tock are still lying low around Mulberry Bend, that’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“Dangerous ground,” Moore murmured in agreement.
“And I’d rather glean as much as I can about the situation before storming the neighborhood. Therefore, I’d like to speak with Bligh about what he remembers in a more sober state of mind.”
“Very well.”
“Then it’s to the Iron Palace,” I finished before joining Gunner at the door.
“Let me assign a bruiser—”
“Do you expect the satin handbags to open fire?”
“Hamilton.”
“Gunner will be with me, sir.” I opened the door.
“That does not, in any way, ease my concerns,” Moore answered.
“Come now, Director,” Gunner said in that easy, almost monotone manner of speech. “I might be a criminal, but I’m the best this country’s ever seen.”
XIII
January 1, 1882
Once we’d left the office, Gunner vanished into the midday crowds on Twenty-Third Street. Having remembered my Personal Discussion Device on our way out of The Buchanan, I rang Henry Bligh and requested he join me out front in five minutes. He took seven, which could have been as much about his ego as it was the effects of his overindulgence. I was studying the disembodied hand of Lady Liberty across the street at Madison Square Park, the gilded copper of the flaming torch gleaming in the noonday sun, when the door opened behind me.
“Agent Hamilton,” Bligh said brusquely.
I turned on my heel as Bligh came down the front steps. He stopped on the last tread and forced me to look up. “I’d like to ask you about Frank Fishback.”
His bleary blue eyes narrowed and a cloud of air puffed around his mouth on his exhale. “I gave my report to Director Moore last night.”
“Yes, I am aware. But now I’m asking you. Is that a problem?”
Bligh shifted from foot to foot, looked away, and ground out, “No, sir.”
“I’m sure that hurt.”
Bligh’s gaze shot back to me, and if looks could kill….
“What did you hear that made you open the door to the jail?”
Bligh crossed his arms, and I could so easily imagine his aristocratic features on the face of a child, cheeks stained red as he threw a tantrum until his parents lavished on him whatever his heart desired. Bligh himself had indicated on his registration documentation that his caster abilities hadn’t manifested until he was seventeen, quite late in comparison to the national average of thirteen years old, or myself at the tender a
ge of five. He’d had a normal childhood, whatever that meant. When Bligh had realized he had an ability to utilize the raw stream, magic was already legal. And his parents, with money so old, they were able to sway the public ever so gently on the benefits of the magic community, worked diligently to find Bligh a position with the Bureau and then convinced high society it was an elite opportunity instead of what it was most of the time—thankless and dangerous work.
“Bligh.”
“I heard the window.”
“Breaking?”
“I—yes.”
“You told Director Moore you broke the glass.”
Bligh blanched a bit. “I did. I mean—I heard the window rattle in its frame. It sounded as if something were breaking. By the time I opened the door, the cell was on fire and the hall was full of smoke. I broke the window.”
“It wasn’t left open?” I clarified.
“Why the fuck would I break the window if it was already open?”
“You were drunk,” I stated.
Color came back to Bligh’s cheeks—embarrassment and anger. “Are we done?”
“Not quite. What did you see once you entered the hall?”
“What do you mean? Fishback was on fire.”
“And?”
“And that’s it.”
“Where was Agent Plunket?” I asked next.
“How the hell should I—?”
“Section Four, Article Two of the Bureau’s hand guide specifically states that agents in the field must be made informed of their partner’s whereabouts at all times, which extends to both office hours and—”
“She was in the toilet,” Bligh protested over me. “Jesus Christ, Hamilton.”
“Don’t skirt details with me because of undue modesty.”
Bligh shook his head at that and let out a sort of aggressive laugh. “I suppose you really don’t know anything about women.”
I was reminded of the countless editions of The Delineator I’d purchased and read over the years—the women’s publication my secret to successful communication with the opposite gender. Feeling heat rise to my cheeks despite the cold day, I said, “Yes, and you’re a damn wizard simply because you’re engaged? Plunket is a special agent. The fact that she is a woman is not relevant—”
“Your fairy tendencies are showing.”
I bristled. “My human decency is showing, Agent Bligh. If I see you treating your partner as lesser, in words, in writing, in person—in any goddamn capacity, do you understand me?—I will make it my personal mission to see you stripped of your badge and tossed to the curb.”
“Well, we all know you’ll do anything to keep others from getting promoted, so I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Not all casters can obtain level five certification. That does not mean I’m sabotaging you. Your skills are maxed out.”
Bligh pushed closer into my space, and I was forced to take a step back, lest my magic unintentionally hurt him. “Hogwash.”
“Hardly. I oversaw your training. You’re a level two. Period. And you’re upset I’m a senior agent? I’ve been at the Bureau for a decade, putting in the work every day. You’ve been here three years. Earn your keep.”
“Earn it?” Bligh laughed mockingly. “By doing what, cradling Moore’s sac? That’s probably your favorite assignment. You’re an ugly little sodomite. It’s what everyone thinks.”
“Do you not remember what I said to you last night?”
“Do you not realize how easy it’d be for me to ruin you?”
I clenched my fists so tight that my fingernails were digging crescents into my scarred palms. “I can’t imagine you admitting that I whipped your ass would be something you could stomach. And I don’t think Moore will be terribly receptive to one of his agents blackmailing another for kudos toward his next review.”
The smile that crossed Bligh’s face just then was different from the cruel and mocking grins of the last three years. This one was ice-cold. Dare I say, malevolent. “You’re a fucking slum rat, Hamilton. I can always pick out the ones who act above their station, trying to prove they aren’t trash. But they are. I bet you scurried out of the shit and piss of the Lower East Side. Moore might be desperate to keep a level five lightning caster on his roster, so much so that he’s willing to ignore any complaints filed against you for your filthy tendencies, but you forget, I’m not like you.”
“We’re special agents. We’re all held to the same set of reg—”
“That’s where you’re wrong, you dumb fuck. Not when you’re from Fifth Avenue. All it’d take would be a whisper to my mother-in-law during a dinner party. She’s got the biggest mouth for gossip in this whole damn city. You’d be right back in the gutter you crawled out of.”
“Don’t you dare pretend you know a thing about me,” I said.
“I don’t have to pretend. I can smell your destitution, you toad.”
I’d had to learn some important life lessons at a very young age: no one is going to come to your defense, weakness is certain death, the small are underestimated. These cautions were true as a child, but perhaps held even more weight in adulthood. Because right here, right now, on a busy street in Midtown, not one person had spared me a second glance as Bligh bullied his way into my personal space. If I hesitated, cried, screamed, Bligh would have all the confirmation he needed, and God only knew he’d spare no expense to get me off the corporate ladder so that he could bask in his preconceived success. So I did what I hadn’t done in a very, very long time. I relied on physical prowess and took Bligh by surprise when I socked him right in the face.
He stumbled back, tripped on the stair, and crashed to the icy steps while holding his nose. Blood seeped from between his fingers.
I winced and shook my hand. My knuckles were red, not so much from the strike, but the interactions of our lightning magics. “That’s twice now I’ve put you on your ass,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “I’m not impressed by your riches or your lineage. Your character is what matters. And clearly, Henry Bligh, you have none.”
Bligh removed his hand and gingerly touched his nose. The tip was scorched black. “You’re a son of a whore.”
“Unfortunately, I knew my father.”
Bligh got to his feet while wiping his face. “Your days are numbered.” He flicked his hand and splattered blood across the front of my coat. “I’ll see to that personally.” With that, he turned, walked up the stairs, and vanished inside.
The Iron Palace was exactly that—a six-story behemoth taking up an entire city block on Broadway and Tenth. Its front featured cast-iron ornamentation and support columns, it had a glass skylight, endless expanses of windows on every floor in order to maximize the usage of natural light, and nineteen department stores inside. The Palace employed something like 2,000 people, from the managers to cashiers, bookkeepers to ushers, to the army of seamstresses that made the consumption of fashion so easy nowadays. And while I’d never had reason to step inside before today, based on the crowds coming and going from the main doors, it was a marvel of business and marketing savviness that should have made the rest of Ladies’ Mile envious.
Whether Gunner had watched the scene between Bligh and me from a safe distance, or the freckling of blood on my nice coat told the story, or even if my disposition alone was enough warning, we passed the trek without conversation. To say that I had never liked Henry Bligh was an understatement. Upon his hiring three years ago, he’d been assigned to work with Rachel Plunket, but was to complete additional studies under myself for his first year in an effort to hone and strengthen his lightning casting.
It hadn’t been successful.
Bligh was an egotistical and arrogant motherfucker. He hadn’t liked showing me respect as his senior from the start, which I suspected stemmed from his upbringing of sucking on a golden spoon, but when he got it in his mind that I was… not like most men… all hell had truly broken loose. And perhaps what had been most upsetting was that he seemed to truly believe ther
e was a secret to reaching level five casting skills that I simply refused to share with him.
I’d written an official report to Moore six months into Bligh’s training, indicating that he had reached his maximum potential at level two and it would simply be best to assign cases reflective of his and Plunket’s current abilities rather than to waste federal revenue chasing the unobtainable.
Bligh hadn’t liked that.
Whatever professionality had been hanging by a thread between us snapped afterward.
While his insults and name-calling had been relentless and painful, I had always felt that as long as I kept my head down and didn’t get caught up in flippant emotions for another man, everything would be okay. In the last three years, Bligh had never actually filed a report against me because he had no evidence. He had never gone to Moore, or D.C. for that matter, to complain about working with a sodomite. He’d shared his theory with others of course, and those who hadn’t liked my presence before were thrilled with his jokes, but my career had always remained intact. And now, with Moore’s truth known to me, and the pseudo-understanding currently existing between us, Moore would certainly make any complaint against me disappear.
Except this time, Bligh hadn’t threatened to go to Moore. He’d threatened to hit up society. And New York society loved only one thing more than money: other people’s scandals. If Bligh parsed the story exactly right, he could gain immediate sympathy from Mrs. Olin, who would undoubtedly move mountains to save her daughter’s upcoming marriage and acceptance into an Old Money family. There’d be public pressure on the FBMS to toss my sorry hide onto the street for having wronged poor Henry Bligh. After that, humiliation would chase me out of New York entirely.
I heard the snap of my fingers being broken, stuck on a repeating static loop like a PDD in need of recalibrating.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
I stopped in front of the doors to the Iron Palace, removed my flat cap, and fanned my heated face. I had to swallow several times before the bile threatening to come up my throat settled uncomfortably in my gut.
