Crooked Hearts

by Patricia Gaffney

  “We start with Doc Slaughter. He’s the antique dealer I was telling you about.”

  “‘Doc Slaughter’?” She had a surprisingly girlish giggle. “That’s the most unlikely antique dealer’s name I ever heard.”

  “Well, that’s his name. He’s got a shop on Powell Street. I could go see him tomorrow, show him the tiger and the—”

  “We could go see him, you mean.”

  “Slip of the tongue. Nice to know you’re paying attention.”

  “I always pay attention.”

  “We’ll show him the tiger, see if he can tell us something interesting about it. Even if it’s not worth much by itself, it could be worth a great deal to whoever’s got the other eleven pieces.”

  “Like a chess set with a missing queen.”

  “Exactly. As for Fireplug’s letter, Doc’s got contacts in Chinatown; he can pay somebody to translate it and keep his mouth shut afterward.”

  “Why does he have contacts in Chinatown? Tell me more about this guy.”

  “Let’s go home, I’ll tell you about him there.” He raised his hand to signal for the bill. “I think we have to figure Fireplug for a thief among thieves, don’t you? He took the tiger during the holdup for himself, either to hock on his own or hold out and sell back to his employer later.”

  “That’s assuming he had an employer. Couldn’t he and the other two have been acting on their own?”

  “They could’ve been, but somehow I don’t think they were.”

  She folded her napkin into a small, neat square, frowning. “I don’t think so either.”

  “Good, we’re agreed.”

  They stood up. He found her cape and helped her on with it. She was wearing her hair on top of her head tonight; a few blonde corkscrew curls had slipped their pins and were bobbing around her face in a cheerful, artless way. At least he assumed it was artless. With Grace, you could never be sure.

  “I love my new dress,” she sparkled, turning her head to look up at him over her shoulder. “Thank you for buying it for me.”

  She was trying to whittle down his interest rate, he knew, but he couldn’t resist her pretty, twinkly-eyed gratitude. “Seeing how beautiful you look in it is all the thanks I need,” he said fatuously. “I meant that figuratively, of course,” he called after her, weaving through tables of diners toward the door, hurrying to keep up. “Not literally!”

  Outside, a thin, sickle moon hung low in a fog-free, blue-black sky. From the crest of a hill, they could see the dark form of Alcatraz Island in the Bay, the winking lights of the Marin headlands beyond. The sidewalks in Reuben’s neighborhood weren’t paved yet. Grace stumbled, toe caught in a warped wooden crack; he took her arm and tucked it under his, and kept it there even when the going got smoother.

  He kept the pace slow, and at Union Street he started to limp. At Filbert, he leaned some of his weight on her arm.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, glancing up at him from under her lashes.

  He sent her a tight smile and a grim nod. By now they were down to a crawl, and he’d added a little hitch to his breathing.

  “Do your ribs hurt?”

  “Nothing to speak of. Let’s stop for a second and look at the”—deep breath—“view.” He leaned back against a dusty, dwarfed maple tree, stifling a manful groan, and slipped his free hand inside his coat. The “view” was of a vacant lot adjacent to a harness repair shop. Grace peered at him in the paltry glow of the streetlamp, but didn’t say anything. “Were you comfortable last night?” he asked conversationally. “Sleep well, did you?”

  She blinked at him. “Yes, thanks. Like a brick. And you?”

  “Ah.” Good answer, stoically vague; he let it lie for a minute. “When I was younger, I could sleep anywhere.” He trailed off again, then gave a hearty, forced-sounding laugh. “Thing about that couch is that it’s got a loose spring, right about—well, about rib height, if you can believe that. Shoots up right about here.” He patted his vest. “Isn’t that the darnedest thing?”

  She said, “Hm.”

  He allowed another minute to pass. “Well, guess we’d better get moving. We should probably turn in early, since we’ll be needing all our wits tomorrow. Mm?”

  “Mm.”

  “Not that I expect to get too much shut-eye on that couch.” He smiled, pained but good-humored. With another grunt, he propelled himself off the tree and got them going again at a pitiful, shuffling pace. At Napier Street he stopped dead in his tracks. “Say! I just thought of something.”

  “What could it be?”

  He didn’t like the gimlet gleam in her eye, but there was no turning back now. “Well, just that—” He seemed to recollect himself. “Oh, no, excuse me,” he muttered, sheepish.

  “What?”

  “No, no, don’t regard it. Bad idea, don’t know what I was thinking of.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can just imagine what you’ll say,” he said with a little laugh.

  “What?”

  “Well, just a silly thought—that we might have shared the um, the um …”

  “The, um, bed?”

  “Ha! There, you see? Dumb idea. Erase it from your mind.”

  They walked along in absolute silence for half a block. Passing under the streetlamp at the entrance to his alley, he risked a downward glance to see how she was taking it. Her brow was furrowed in thought. He put a little more weight on her while he got the key to the door out of his pocket.

  He got the door unlocked, but she stopped him before he could open it. “Reuben,” she said softly.

  His heart actually missed a beat; she’d never called him Reuben before. “Yes, Grace?”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t stand to think of you being in pain.” She pulled her hand out from under his arm and then, to his amazement, slipped it inside his coat. When she started to stroke his ribs with her fingertips, he stopped breathing. “I think I know you well enough by now to trust you.”

  “You can trust me.”

  “If you really want to, you can sleep with me.”

  “I—” He had to swallow before he could continue. “I really want to.”

  “Then you can. Of course, you’d be on your honor.”

  “Grace,” he sighed with his eyes closed. “You’re an angel of mercy.” It sounded like a prayer.

  All his breath came out in a whoosh when the angel landed a restrained but effective right jab to the center of his most painful rib. “You can sleep with me when pigs fly,” she clarified succinctly, and sailed into the house, leaving him wheezing on the doorstep.

  The next day they went to the Western Union office together with high hopes. Grace had to scan Henry’s short telegram while turning around in a tight circle, because Reuben kept trying to read it over her shoulder. “Anxiously awaiting details of quote mishap unquote stop. Advise trust no one, come home immediately stop. Leg is better, not that you asked stop. Love Henry.”

  The money he’d wired with the cable was a crushing disappointment. After Grace paid Reuben what she owed him, at the usurious interest rate she still couldn’t believe he’d charged, there was hardly anything left. In a glum mood, they left Western Union and set out for Doc Slaughter’s antique shop.

  She’d have walked right by Old World Curios in the nondescript block of Powell Street if Reuben hadn’t taken her arm and steered her toward it. The sign was virtually unreadable and the display window was small, dark, and almost opaque from dirt and dust; squinting, she could barely make out a jumble of antiques, if that was what they were, strewn at random across a rusty strip of velour. A bell jingled overhead when they opened the door. They stood in a small square of cleared space surrounded by piles of dark clutter, unidentifiable in the dim light struggling through the dirty window. “Anybody home?” called Reuben.

  From beyond a black curtain in the rear wall, a low, melodious voice answered, “A moment, if you please.”

  “That’s Doc,” Reuben told Grace with
a wink. “What do you think of the place? Something, isn’t it?”

  “Something,” she agreed. But she had no idea what, because she could barely see it. She was neat and tidy by nature; the idea of attacking Old World Curios with a broom and a dust mop appealed to her strongly.

  “It takes a few minutes for the eyes to adjust.” He was scanning the contents of a long, laden table in the center of the room, looking for something. Grace saw piles of broken lamps, snuff boxes, old books with mildewed covers, a tortoiseshell comb-and-brush set, music boxes, a rusty pistol. “I wonder if that … ah, here it is. Take a look at this, Grace.”

  “What is it?” A plain wooden box, rough, unpainted, with a half-moon cut in the side that had hinges and a little door handle.

  “Open it.”

  She did, and was enchanted when the tinny strains of “Beautiful Dreamer” floated out of the box. But her smile evaporated when she saw the carved figure inside, of a bald man sitting on a toilet with his pants around his ankles, grinning at her around a corncob pipe in his teeth. She slapped the door shut and pushed the box back into Reuben’s hands. “Very funny.” He was snickering with amusement, his grin as stupid-looking as the man on the toilet’s. “Charming. Exactly the kind of thing I’d expect you to like,” she said quellingly.

  “I can’t understand why nobody’s bought it,” he said, sincerely puzzled, shaking his head and putting the box back on the table. “It’s here every time I come in.”

  “That really is unexplainable.” A movement to her right caught her eye. “Oh, look—finches.” Dozens of them, she thought at first, fluttering with ceaseless industry from perch to perch in a wicker birdcage. But after she’d studied them for a minute, she saw that there were only nine birds in the cage, pretty things, bright flashes of gray and yellow, incapable of stillness for longer than a few seconds at a time. “Aren’t they sweet? I had a parakeet when I was a girl.”

  “On the ranchero?” Reuben inquired, standing too close behind her shoulder. The smell of bay rum teased her, made her want to turn around and inhale. “Was that before or after Maria Elena got the stigmata?”

  She chuckled, hunting for a retort. Last night she’d lain awake for a long time, bombarded by pictures and images of what might’ve—no, what would’ve happened if she’d pretended to believe Reuben’s sore-rib story and let him sleep with her in his big bed. Annoyingly, the images came flooding back now, graphic and familiar, uncomfortably stirring.

  “Good day to you. May I help you with something?”

  The voice was quiet, deep, soothing; it was the unexpectedness of it that made her spin around in a startled pivot, brushing Reuben’s coat sleeve with her breast. A man stood behind them in the shadows. Pale, rake-thin, he was so tall that the top of Grace’s head didn’t reach to his bulbous Adam’s apple. She could only see half of his face in the dimness, and guessed him to be somewhere on the far side of fifty. He wore a loose, long-sleeved jumper and a pair of baggy corduroy pants, both in an indeterminate shade of gray or brown, it was hard to tell which; on his feet were soft-soled Chinese slippers, which explained how he’d come up on them so quietly. His rather harsh features mellowed when he saw Reuben; his lips parted in a smile, revealing long brown teeth.

  “Reuben, how are you? It’s been a long time. I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about your ring.”

  “Doc, good to see you. No, no, I just haven’t had time to stop in. Business, you know. Keeps me hopping all the time.”

  Doc didn’t seem to believe this any more than Reuben seemed to care if he did or not. Watching them shake hands and exchange small talk, Grace deduced that they liked each other, but weren’t great friends. She sensed mutual respect, too, but not necessarily trust.

  When Reuben got around to introducing her, as an “old friend,” Doc made her a courtly, old-fashioned bow. The smell of tobacco smoke hung around him like an invisible fog. “A great pleasure, Mrs. Rousselot,” he intoned in his wonderful voice. “Any old friend of Reuben’s will, I hope, become an old friend of mine.”

  She said something suitable back—then froze for a split second when he turned his shadowed profile toward the window. As if sensing her shock, he stepped back again, away from the dim sunshine wavering in beams of dust through the murky glass. But it was too late: she’d already seen the thick, livid scars that covered all of the left side of his face, from jawbone to brow. Pity immediately supplanted her horror. But there was no time to communicate anything to him, by a look or a word; with a murmured apology and something about Reuben’s ring, Doc Slaughter turned his back on her and disappeared through the curtain in the wall.

  “Mother of God,” Grace breathed, rubbing her arms. “Reuben, how awful. Do you think he thinks I’m afraid of him now? I couldn’t help it—I think I jumped when I saw his face. Why didn’t you tell me? What happened to him?”

  “An accident, years ago. I’m sorry, I should’ve warned you, but I just didn’t think. I’m so used to it, it didn’t even occur to me. Grace, don’t worry. He’s fine.” His fingers gently squeezed her shoulder. “He’s fine, really, you’ll see.”

  And when he came back, he did seem to be fine. He retreated behind a row of chest-high, glass-fronted shelves that doubled as a counter along the right side of the shop, and cleared a space among a collection of colored glass bottles for a display board, black velvet, about ten inches square;

  “Come look at the ring,” he invited, making no attempt this time to hide his disfigurement. But the gloominess of the shop served as a mask by itself, and the full, pitiful extent of his deformity remained obscure.

  He opened a small box, removed the ring inside, and laid it on the square of velvet. Plain gold, with a half-dozen polished garnets inlaid around the circumference, the ring was handsome if not particularly distinctive.

  But Reuben was elated. “It’s perfect,” he announced, fitting it to the fourth finger of his right hand. “Exactly what I wanted. Like it, Grace?”

  “Yes, it’s very nice.”

  “Know what it’s for?”

  “For?”

  He smiled mysteriously. “Let’s try it out,” he told Doc, who reached under the counter and retrieved a deck of playing cards from the bottom shelf. Bemused, Grace watched Reuben shuffle the cards and deal five to her, five to himself, while Doc lit a cigarette and leaned back against the wall.

  “What’s the game?” she asked.

  “Draw. Just one friendly hand. No ante, and the bet’s to you.”

  She squinted at her hand. “I’ll start with a thousand dollars.”

  “See that and raise you five. How many do you want?”

  She looked back at her mess of nothing and asked for three.

  “Three for the lady, and the dealer takes a pair. Bet is back to the lady.”

  “Mmm. Five thousand.”

  “Raise that five more.”

  “I’ll see your raise because you’re bluffing, Jones.”

  “Find out.”

  Grace spread her hand on the counter: a pair of jacks.

  “Gotcha with trips,” Reuben gloated, showing three deuces. Shuffle the cards.”

  “New game?”

  “Nope.” He took the deck back when she’d finished shuffling. “What’ll you bet I can pick out those three little old deuces blind, Gus?”

  She opened her mouth to say something smart, but then a hint of what he was up to hit her. She smiled a slow, foxy smile. “Pass.”

  He palmed the deck expertly, fanned it, and extracted one, two, three cards, laying them facedown on the black velvet square. Without surprise, Grace turned them over and saw deuces. The pinhole was tiny, and he’d made it in the red or the black, never the white, rendering the dot all but invisible unless you were looking for it. The bubble it made on the other side was only a speck, a grain, unnoticeable unless you knew it was there. Or you had extraordinarily sensitive fingers.

  “May I see the ring?” she asked. With a wink for Doc, Reuben took the r
ing off and dropped it on her palm. At first she couldn’t figure out the mechanism; she pressed on each red stone separately, but nothing happened. But when she pressed on two opposite stones at once, a tiny pin emerged from the gold filigree between two others.

  She laughed out loud, delighted. “Did you make it?” Last night Reuben had told her about some of Doc’s accomplishments, fencing and forgery among them, but nothing about jewelry making. Doc didn’t respond to her question directly, but his pursed lips and modest wave of the hand were answer enough. “It’s wonderful,” she praised him, “really ingenious. You do beautiful work.”

  He took a drag from his cigarette and blew out a thin stream of smoke. “Thanks.”

  Reuben cleared his throat. “How about taking twenty on it until tomorrow.”

  She drifted away tactfully to give the gentlemen privacy to conduct their business arrangement. When she saw money change hands and Reuben pocket the ring, she moved back to the counter.

  “Spare a few more minutes, Doc?” Reuben asked.

  “Of course.”

  “We were wondering if you’d take a look at something for us. Grace has it.”

  She was already opening her new pocketbook, a pretty tapestry bag that went well, she thought, with her new dress. She drew out the tiger, which she’d wrapped in a pillowcase, along with the piece of paper with the Chinese characters. Doc found his spectacles in his pocket and bent over the items on the velvet square. He made a humming noise Grace couldn’t interpret, turning the tiger over in his hands. After a moment, he took it over to the window where the light was better. More humming sounds. She and Reuben exchanged looks.

  “Glazed porcelain,” he said, coming back. “Ming, unless it’s a fake.”

  “It’s no fake,” Reuben assured him. “How old is Ming?”

  “Fourteenth to seventeenth century.”

  “So this would be … ?”

  “Two to five hundred years old. That’s all I can say; I’d have to show it to someone who knows more to nail it down better than that.”

  “How much is it worth?”

  “It might be part of a set,” Grace threw in. Reuben frowned at her, and she remembered she was supposed to let him do the talking.