Hexbreaker - Jordan L. Hawk

by Jordan L. Hawk

  Tom knew how the world worked, knew money flowed mostly in one direction and to hell with the poor bastard who ended up with empty pockets at the end of the day. But there was wrong and then there was wrong, and this seemed terrible in a way he couldn’t articulate.

  “It ain’t right,” Tom repeated, because he didn’t know what else to say.

  “Many things aren’t,” Cicero agreed. “But it’s not like we can do anything about it. What we can do is try to find out what’s happened to Isaac.”

  Tom wanted to argue, but the words stuck in his throat. “You’re right.” He fell in beside Cicero again. “So what sort of work did Gerald and Isaac do, anyway?”

  Cicero stopped in front of a tenement. A sly smile curved his lips, and he shot Tom a wink. “You’ll see soon enough. Now let’s go up and see if Gerald’s roommate is at home.”

  “Let me do the talking,” Cicero instructed as he knocked on the door. Even under his light tap, the cheap wood shook in its frame. The hallway they stood in was dim, illuminated only by whatever feeble light could make its way from a single window at the far end.

  The door opened, and a man blinked out at them. He was very pretty, dark haired and dark eyed, his skin a delicate shade of fawn. An ugly bandage swathed his head, covering his mutilated ear. The Oriental-style dressing gown he wore was badly faded and probably third hand, but its remaining color livened the dingy surroundings. “Yes?”

  “Good morning, darling. So sorry to wake you this early.” Cicero fluttered his eyelashes. An answering smile crept over the other man’s face. “I’m Cicero—did Gerald ever mention me?”

  “Gerald?” The man lifted his hand involuntarily, as if he meant to touch his missing ear. “I think…perhaps?”

  Cicero opened his coat to reveal the familiar’s badge pinned to his vest. The man’s eyes widened and he nodded. “Oh, yes! The familiar with the MWP. They told me the hex didn’t have anything to do with…with what happened.” His lip trembled.

  “We’re still looking into the situation,” Cicero said with a nod in Halloran’s direction. “Can we come in?”

  “Oh! Yes, I’m sorry.” He stepped back. “I’m Pascal Esposito—but you probably already knew that.”

  “Charmed.” Cicero shook his hand lightly. “This is Patrolman Halloran. He’s here to be decorative.”

  Halloran made a sputtering noise, which Cicero ignored as he followed Esposito into the squalid little apartment. The single room was on a corner, and so had two windows, one of which was boarded over. Nearly every inch of space was filled by a pair of beds, a table, and a chair. Dresses hung over the ends of the beds, and cosmetics and a small mirror took up much of the table. It wasn’t hard to deduce Esposito’s line of work.

  Bracing himself, Cicero glanced over his shoulder at Halloran, anticipating a sneer of disgust, or perhaps outrage. Would he threaten Esposito?

  Halloran’s expression was sympathetic. “My condolences on your loss,” he said, and was even tactful enough not to specify whether he meant Gerald or the ear.

  Well. That was…not what Cicero had expected at all.

  “Thank you.” Esposito perched on the edge of one bed. Cicero took the other, and Halloran selected the chair. Even seated he was absurdly imposing, the small room seeming to make his shoulders even broader. “Gerald’s left me short on the rent. And with this,” he gestured to his head again, “I can’t work.” At least, not anywhere even slightly respectable. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Tch. Awful.” Cicero folded his hands on his knee. “Now tell me, where was Gerald working last? I hadn’t spoken to him for a few months before this terrible business.”

  He knew, of course, but starting with a few questions he already had the answer to seemed the best approach. Establish the reliability of the witness, as Athene always said.

  Esposito picked absently at his fingernails. The cuticles were horribly ragged; no doubt it was a habit. “He tended bar at one of the resorts on Bleecker Street. The Spitting Rooster.”

  “Subtle,” Cicero said, glancing out of the side of his eye at Halloran. A flush showed on Halloran’s fair skin, and Cicero couldn’t resist the urge to see how far he could make it spread. “Ever heard of it, Halloran? It’s on the roster for all the good slumming tours. And those newspapers you’re so fond of do like to go on about the depravity and sin of such places, wondering why the police haven’t shut them down to make the world safe for decent folk. Personally, I think the reporters must like visiting, since they go there so often to toss off their…articles.”

  Halloran’s blush deepened, but he said, “And did Isaac work there as well, Mr. Esposito?”

  Esposito frowned slightly. “Yes. Not behind the bar—he was an, ah, entertainer.” He glanced automatically at the dresses.

  After he took Cicero’s stupid, disastrous advice. “Do you work there?” Cicero asked, because he couldn’t think about that right now. About Isaac shivering and shaking, his big brown eyes ringed with bruises.

  “No.” Esposito shook his head. “The man who owns the resort, Sloane, likes to hire familiars when he can. They say he’s one himself.”

  Now that hadn’t been in the case file. Cicero leaned forward. “But Gerald wasn’t a familiar.”

  “I said when he can,” Esposito snapped waspishly. Maybe there was nothing to the rumor; maybe he’d just been putting a salve on the sting of not being hired.

  “Of course, darling, of course,” Cicero said, patting Esposito lightly on the knee. “Was Gerald in any sort of trouble?”

  “Any threats?” Halloran added. He didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of letting Cicero ask all the questions. “Strange visitors?”

  Esposito’s eyes strayed to the boarded-up window. It must have been the one Gerald had gone out of. A shiver went down Cicero’s spine, which had nothing to do with the unheated apartment. “Yes,” Esposito said at last. “Or, maybe. I’m not sure. I came home early one day and found Gerald at the table, talking with a stranger. A man. They fell silent the second I opened the door, and the man left immediately. I asked who he was, and Gerald told me it was someone from the Rooster. When I asked his name, Gerald got angry and said it was none of my business.” Esposito sniffed. “He normally wasn’t that way with me. Rude, I mean.”

  “And you never saw the man again?” Cicero asked.

  “No, but I heard a name, as I was opening the door. Karol.”

  Without a last name, the information wouldn’t do them much good. Halloran shifted forward, the chair creaking dangerously under his solid weight. “I know this is difficult for you,” he said gently. “You’d rather put Mr. Whistler’s death behind you, I’m sure. But can you tell us one last time exactly what happened?”

  Esposito’s face took on a yellowish hue, and he seemed to shrink in on himself. “We were having a party. Nothing big—we didn’t have the room for it—but a few friends. Gerald had a bottle of absinthe and some hexes. We toasted and took the hexes.” He swallowed convulsively, and his voice shook. “Then Gerald…went insane. Threw down his glass and just…attacked me. Like an animal.”

  He touched the edge of the bandage on his head. “He bit me—clawed at me. I was in shock. Couldn’t believe it was happening. Everyone was screaming. Then he got my ear in his teeth, and I realized he meant to kill me.” Esposito shuddered. “It was all so confusing, but I knew I didn’t want to die. I shoved him, as hard as I could. He fell back and his legs hit the table, and…and he stumbled into the window. The glass broke, and he fell.”

  “It’s all right, darling,” Cicero soothed. Halloran produced a handkerchief and silently passed it to Esposito. “It’s almost over. Everyone at the party took the same hexes, yes?”

  “Yes. And drank from the same bottle.” Esposito blew his nose loudly.

  “And Isaac wasn’t here?”

  “No.”

  “Are there any other details?” Halloran asked. “Anything you can remember at all?”


  Esposito swallowed and nodded. “Gerald’s eyes. He drank and took the hex, and his eyes turned red. The white parts, I mean.”

  Halloran looked grim. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” Cicero said. “I think that’s all the questions we have.”

  They started out, but Halloran paused in the doorway. “Mr. Esposito? Don’t blame yourself. You did what you had to do to save your life. Ain’t nothing for you to feel any guilt over.”

  Esposito blinked watery eyes. “Thank you. I…yes. Thank you.”

  Once the apartment door shut behind them, Cicero said, “You were kind to him.”

  Halloran arched a brow. “Because roughing him up would have been so much more effective?”

  “Of course not!” Cicero gestured vaguely at Halloran’s muscular arms. “I just assumed—”

  Assumed he’d sneer at an obvious fairy like Esposito. Bluster at him, maybe threaten, for no other reason than he could. Ogres like Halloran didn’t have to be nice, so they weren’t.

  “You figure I don’t know how to be a decent fellow,” Halloran said. “That I don’t care if guilt eats a man alive, when none of what happened was his doing. I know just what you assumed.”

  The bitterness in his voice took Cicero aback. Before he could think how to respond, Halloran clomped off toward the stairs. Cicero stared after him for a few moments, before his wits caught up with him. “Where are we going?”

  “We’ve learned all that we can about your dead man,” Halloran replied. “Now it’s time to look into mine.”

  Cicero remained silent as the Sixth Avenue El rattled and clattered its way through the city. Tom supposed he ought to take it as a blessing—the familiar had made his low opinion of Tom clear enough from the start. His shock over Tom’s ability to act like a decent human being shouldn’t have had any teeth.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have stung as badly if Cicero hadn’t been so damned…Tom groped for the right word, but couldn’t find any that fit right. You couldn’t help but look at him, no matter who else was in the room. And not even because of the way he dressed or lined those beautiful gemstone eyes of his, though Saint Mary knew that didn’t hurt.

  He’d done a good job of questioning Esposito, too. Better than Tom would have expected.

  So maybe Cicero wasn’t the only one who’d jumped to conclusions he oughtn’t.

  They descended the platform, and Tom led the way to Barshtein’s shop. It was the walk of a few blocks, but soon enough Tom felt his shoulders relaxing. Back on familiar ground, and well away from anyone who might recognize him as Liam O’Connell.

  “Where’ve you been, Tom?” Mrs. Zywicki called from the stoop of her tenement.

  “Duty reassignment,” he told her. “Just temporary, though.”

  “Thank the Good Lord for that,” said Finn Cooper, who had parked his pushcart on the sidewalk in front of the tenement. The dead fish piled within stared glassy-eyed from their bed of snow.

  A few others called greetings as they drew closer to the pawn shop. “I’ve never seen people so glad to see a policeman,” Cicero remarked.

  Tom glanced warily down at him, but for once Cicero didn’t look as though he were secretly laughing at Tom. “This is my neighborhood. I look out for it.”

  “Apparently.” Cicero looked back over his shoulder at Cooper. “A pushcart on the sidewalk. Isn’t that illegal?”

  Tom snorted. “And who is it hurting? No one in the neighborhood, that’s for sure. I arrest him, put him out of business, and then what? He’s got no job, and Mrs. Zywicki has to walk all the way to the market to get something to make her dinner. And her with a bad hip and all.”

  “And I suppose the bribes don’t hurt, either,” Cicero said.

  Tom stopped. Working with Cicero might be his best chance to get to the truth of things, but that didn’t mean he had to take abuse from some fop who’d never walked a beat in his life, no matter how pretty he was. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said. “You can say I’m a witless fool, act all surprised when it turns out I ain’t some—some whatever it is you think of me. But I ain’t never taken a bribe, and I ain’t never beat up some poor fool just to get an easy confession. This is my neighborhood, and I look out for the people in it, understand?”

  Cicero blinked up at him, eyes wide. He moistened his lips, a quick flash of tongue against their softness. “I…yes.” He lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry. I’ve offended you. Unintentionally, even.”

  “Well, aye,” Tom said gruffly. “Intentionally too, I’m sure.”

  Cicero laughed, a bright sound against the rumble of passing carts. “Yes, but you wouldn’t expect me to apologize for those times, would you?”

  Tom snorted and started on his way again. “Saint Mary forbid.”

  “I am sorry, though,” Cicero added, scurrying to keep up with Tom’s long strides. “Truly.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Good.” Cicero ostentatiously rearranged the hang of his coat over his shoulders. “Now that’s settled, where are we going?”

  “Here.”

  Tom’s steps slowed as he reached Barshtein’s. The pawn shop’s sign, displaying the traditional three balls hanging from a bar, swung slowly in the cold breeze. The curtains were pulled tight over the windows, and a small sign indicated the store was closed under police orders.

  “Did they have children?” Cicero asked. “The man who lived here, I mean. And his wife.”

  “Thankfully, no.” Tom shuddered. At least there’d be no children left to remember the sight of their father’s teeth red with their mother’s blood.

  Saint Mary, there had been nothing left of Ma’s face by the time Tom reached his parents. Nothing but raw meat, and Pa turning to kill, his eyes bloody and nothing sane left behind them.

  The light brush of Cicero’s fingers on his wrist brought him back to the present. “Halloran? Are you all right?”

  Tom swallowed. Halloran. Right. He was Thomas Halloran, whose sainted mother had died in Dublin long ago. Whose family still lived there, happy and full of love. Who wasn’t a hexbreaker and had never laid eyes on those damned hexes. “I’m fine.”

  “I did read the newspaper reports,” Cicero said in a subdued tone. “Eventually. Returning here, after seeing what happened…it can’t be easy for you.”

  Tom gratefully seized on the excuse. “This is a quiet beat,” he said, reaching for the door. “I ain’t used to such sights, it’s true.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone is used to seeing a man tear out his wife’s throat with his teeth,” Cicero said with a shudder. “And least, I certainly hope not.”

  Tom tried the latch. Locked, but no hex on it, thank heavens. He took an unlocking hex from his pouch and applied it. A moment later, they stepped into the dusty confines of the shop.

  Only a little light filtered through the drawn curtains, but he found himself reluctant to open them. They weren’t doing anything illicit, but Tom didn’t feel like answering questions if anyone spotted them. Cicero lit the gaslights, then looked around. “What a mess.”

  Tom’s heart sank at the destruction. The cabinets had been wrenched open and all but the cheapest baubles removed. Those lay scattered about on the floor: a bracelet of glass beads, a wind-up tin soldier, and a banjo made from a cigar box. Barshtein had sometimes bought items of little worth, if he knew the seller needed the money badly enough.

  Cicero strolled through the shop with his hands on his hips. “Now that your fellow boys in blue have taken everything of value—all of it was evidence, I’m sure—what’s left for us?”

  Shame heated Tom’s cheeks. No wonder people like Cicero had such a bad opinion of the police, with the men helping themselves to whatever they wanted. “None of this would likely have been useful to us anyway,” Tom said, instead of trying to find an excuse that didn’t exist. “We should look for…I don’t know. Ledgers, private letters.” He turned his face to the ceiling with a grimace. “Which he probably kept in the apartment upstairs
.”

  They climbed the stairs with heavy feet. Thank Mary it was winter, because even in the cold the place reeked of spilled blood and fluids. The gore-soaked rug had been shoved to one side, but otherwise the place was just as it had been the night of the murder.

  “Dear heavens.” Cicero’s olive complexion took on a distinctly greenish hue, and his hand fluttered above his chest. “This is horrible.”

  “Aye.” Tom pulled his gaze from the dried blood spattered on the wall. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  A stack of paper lay on the table. “The maid said he was sitting there, writing.” Tom pointed to an overturned chair. “He had her bring the bottle of absinthe. He kept the hex in a drawer.”

  “Just the one?”

  “Aye. I think he’d taken up drinking the stuff not long ago. Maybe he wanted to see if he liked it.”

  “Hmm.” Cicero moved to the table, stepping lightly. The floor didn’t so much as creak beneath his feet. His yellow-green eyes sharpened, as did his expression, all languidness replaced by concentration. He reminded Tom of a stalking cat, pacing the floor and listening for mice in the walls. “I don’t mean to disparage your neighborhood, but it seems more of a whiskey sort of place.”

  “I would have thought the same,” Tom admitted. He moved to a bookshelf, peering at the titles.

  Cicero joined him. Tom was painfully aware of just how close the familiar stood, and felt an almost irrational sense of disappointment when he turned all his attention on the books, without so much as a glance at Tom. So close, Tom could smell Cicero’s hair oil, combined with some cedar scent he couldn’t quite place.

  “Oscar Wilde,” Cicero read. “Now there’s a fine Irish witch for you.”

  “If you say so. I never heard of the fellow,” Tom said. “Was Barshtein part of your set, then?”

  Cicero arched a brow. “My set, darling? Whatever do you mean by that?”

  “You know.” Tom stared at the titles, none of which were remotely familiar. “Bohemians.”