The elevator bell pinged at the penthouse floor and Luca rummaged in his pocket for his keys. The door opened and Hamish was welcomed with the bleach-clean scent of an apartment in perfect, glistening order. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture that sighed easily under his weight or had the worn-around-the-edges comfort of home. No errant magazine or newspaper slouched half-read over the sofa.
Luca crossed to the bar near the window and fixed himself a martini. Hamish declined.
“I loved seeing the Flamingo today,” Hamish said as Luca joined him on the couch, the cushion shifting with the added weight.
“It will be exactly what I hoped it would be.”
“You know I’ll do anything you need to help it get running. Make up for my room and board.”
“I told you. We don’t need to worry. I want you to relax this weekend.” He checked his watch. “All right. Get dressed, Cicero. The white, I think.” He narrowed his eyes at Hamish. “The red bow tie.”
“Going where?” Hamish took a furtive glance at the clock. “Luca, it’s 11 p.m.”
“This is when the night is coming alive.” Luca’s grin spread.
“Where could we possibly be going?”
“How sheltered you are. This is when the bands are just tuning and the champagne is popping. This is when the city finally wakes up. I have meetings.”
“When everyone else is going to bed?”
“I knew I needed to see to your education.” Luca chuckled. “The Palais Royale is a huge disappointment if you think 11 p.m. is lights-out.”
Luca rose and retreated to his room, returning several moments later dressed in a smart tuxedo, wings of ebony ornamenting his jacket. “Ticktock, Cicero,” Luca said impatiently.
Hamish was still adjusting his cummerbund. “I don’t wear things like this.” He frowned.
“You do now.”
Hamish carried his shoes to the sofa and sat down, tying the thin laces. When the phone rang beside him, he reached for it.
“Luca Valari’s residence,” he said. Polite. Official.
“Where is it?” a voice hissed on the other end.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“He sold me out.”
Hamish looked up at Luca, who crossed his fingers. “I’m not here,” he mouthed. “We have to go.”
“May I take a message?” Hamish asked, watching Luca intently.
“He knows the message.” The line clicked and Hamish listened to a dial tone.
Hamish followed Luca to the elevator. “You sold him out?”
Luca laughed. “I don’t sell people out, Cicero.”
Phil drove them the short distance to Scollay Square, its eponymous sign flashing neon, demanding immediate attention, a magnet. Signs and bulbs glimmered off the car windows and Hamish could almost be convinced it was daylight. But it was night: muggy and pitch, the lights lingering over the tarmac, deciding where to settle before spilling on the ground in bright reflection.
Boxes of newspapers outlining the headlines of the day were ignored by pedestrians skipping up from the direction of the subway while other more affluent patrons were escorted from the backs of sleek black automobiles.
Hamish tugged at his bow tie and smoothed down his hair: it felt gummy under his touch, but Luca insisted he use pomade to tame it.
Hamish ignored him and smiled at the doorman who ushered them into the cacophony of people and the rising height of the music: brass and cutting through the smoke of the crowd, the laughs, and the bustle. He shrugged off the fact that since he arrived, he could more than count on his fingers the number of times Luca had begun often unsolicited advice with can’t.
Inside, Luca beelined for the bar, cutting through a cluster of laughing girls.
“Ladies.” He parted their sea of silk and satin. “Thirsty gentleman here.”
Hamish stayed to the side. If sidling through ladies to secure a martini was part of his education, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be schooled.
“The cousin.” Hamish turned at a nasal voice undercut with irony.
“Mr. Schultze.” It was hard to see the man under the low lights. Trailing near was the young woman he recognized from Fenway Park, dressed in suspenders and boy shorts, a box of cigarettes in her hands connected around her swan neck by a thick strap. It was the only thing thick about her. Her torso and shoulders were on full display when she laughed, which Hamish discovered was quite often. A pillbox hat cocked to one side of her tilted head.
“You’re cute.” She stepped toward Hamish in her heels. “Chesterfields?”
Hamish shook his head and smiled while his eyes followed a sudden tapping. Schultze employed a walking stick Hamish didn’t remember from before. Or maybe he just didn’t hear it among the sounds of the baseball game. Or, more likely, he was too busy hoping the introductions would end so he could turn back to the game. The head of the stick caught the lights, casting a bright orbit across the dance floor.
Hamish leaned in for a closer look at the insignia carved atop it.
“Ah, this interests you, Mr. DeLuca.” He obliged Hamish by tilting the stick toward him.
The top of the sterling head bore the insignia of a carefully crafted rattlesnake. It was obviously expensively intricate work and the symbol was somewhat familiar to Hamish. Though he couldn’t immediately recall why.
Luca returned with a laugh and a fresh drink. “Schultze.” He noticed Mary Finn in her red lace and corseted romper. “You were right. She looks perfect. You’ll be great at the Flamingo, darling.”
“Bob’s a nice old fellow,” she soothed. “But the Dragonfly is nothing compared to your club, Mr. Valari.”
Hamish followed Mary’s eyes to a short, balding man holding a drink in a toast their way.
If that was Bob, the proprietor, Hamish could see why she preferred his dapper cousin.
“She laughs too much,” Luca said quietly, passing a martini to Hamish as Mary strutted away for more cigarettes. “I don’t like women who laugh too much.”
“The Dragonfly has potential. We could think of buying it out if the Flamingo goes according to plan,” Schultze said just as the bandmaster was announcing another set after a ten-minute break. Hamish, Luca, and Schultze strolled away from the sudden barrage of dancers forming a sloppy line at the bar.
“It’s too crowded.” Luca’s eyes scanned the bar. “I want to make sure the dancers have the space they need and a walk to the bar to take a deliciously short effort. They’ll work up a thirst dancing and drink more.” He searched and calculated. Hamish watched the slow movement of his cousin’s face. It was steady but something danced in his eyes like a teetering flame. He saw everything at once and was committing it to memory.
“Only you would want the bar to take effort.” Schultze snorted. “You want people to stumble into more purchases.”
“I don’t want my club filled with intoxicated ruffians who spill out onto Washington and into police vehicles. It’s going to be a classier joint than this. The magic is what happens en route to the bar.” Luca warmed to his theme with a wide smile. “The magic is the little conversations, brushing shoulders with a stranger.”
“You’re a romantic underneath it all, Valari.”
Mary returned and Schultze tapped his stick with finality. “My lady awaits. We have some business next week. And I’ll need that payment for MacMillan.”
“I know.”
“And I am hoping you’ll take my advice and hire some legal counsel.” Schultze’s eyes dragged over Hamish a moment.
“I told you, I still have some guy on retainer in Chicago and my cousin here is a lawyer. He’ll go over anything I need at a moment’s notice.”
“You’re still too loyal to Fulham,” Schultze said.
Hamish fingered his pocket square.
“Who is Fulham?” Hamish asked Luca once Schultze had left.
“Old lawyer. In Chicago. Let’s find you a partner.” Luca’s eyes circled the room.
“Mr. Valari
.” The balding man who had toasted them earlier edged in.
“Bob! The Dragonfly is in its prime.”
“I worry about your Flamingo stealing away my clientele.” Bob didn’t possess Luca’s confidence or swagger. His eyes beaded a little as if he was always adjusting to the dim light.
“You could use a better band,” Luca said easily as a trumpet riffed on a discordant note.
“Are you looking to buy me out?” Bob’s voice picked up speed. “Because word on the street is that you are. That you know things. About numbers.”
Luca grabbed Hamish’s elbow. “Meet my cousin here. Take a breath. Bob Miller, this is Hamish DeLuca.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Hamish shook his hand and gave Bob a half smile. How much of this business of Luca’s would he be expected to know? Luca couldn’t enter a room without having a connection with at least one person therein. Luca lingered in a place like a trail of liberally doused cologne.
“Why don’t we go to the bar and talk?” Luca peeled a bill off his clip and handed it to Hamish. “Buy a girl a drink. Take a spin, Cicero. Don’t crowd here in the corner.”
They disappeared.
Hamish folded the bill in his slightly trembling right hand.
“Chesterfields?” whined Mary Finn, wiggling her hips by him.
Hamish smiled. “I don’t smoke.”
“What did Luca Valari say your name was? Cicero something.”
Hamish extended his hand. She snorted, reaching and taking it around a pack of cigarettes. “You’re the polite one, Cicero something.”
“Hamish DeLuca,” he corrected.
“I have a break in five. Save me a dance?”
Hamish agreed and a few ticks later nudged his glasses and followed the trail of her heady perfume to the smoke and light of the dance floor.
Her hand was clammy in his, her breath close. She’d changed, and the cotton of her dress fell like water through his fingers when he brushed his hand over her shoulder. The first measures of an Ellington tune ricocheted and Hamish’s heartbeat matched the pound of the drum. His feet did the work while his eyes moved past her, over the crowd, his brain anticipating the next turn. Then he did something reckless: he switched his brain off so all around him was silky light and the ashy tang of secondhand smoke, and her perfume tickling his nostrils. His hand unshaking in the curve of her outline and his smile wide. The girl noticed the change and brightened. “You’re swell at this, Cicero.” She fell into him, her footwork not as sure as her hands moving up his shoulders.
The band slowed and stilled, the last note lingering in the close air. Hamish smiled. “Wanna dance another? Do you have to get back?”
Mary’s eyes were over his shoulder and locked with Schultze’s. Hamish felt her tighten slightly. He turned and followed her gaze a moment. Even in the dark of the club, Hamish could make out the whites of Schultze’s eyes.
“I’d better get back,” Mary said softly, disengaging herself. “Thanks for the dance.”
“Are you frightened of him?” Hamish asked.
“You’re nothing like him, are you?”
“Who, Schultze?”
“Your cousin.” She bit her lip.
“I don’t know—”
“Thanks again.”
She spun away on her heels. Hamish felt the back of his neck, working through the odd interaction. He caught the eye of a girl with bottle-red hair and bright cherry lips and followed her lead, compensating for her enthusiasm with every drum roll and her tendency to drag him across the floor. Just like Maisie. He missed the familiarity of the Palais Royale despite the new faces. The pretty girls.
Hamish took his time on the way back to the bar, sidling close to where Luca leaned, whiskey glass dangling from his hand, his laugh rising over the bass line. The band had slowed to a thrumming number in three-quarter time, the dancers’ heels scraping over the floor in a slow waltz.
Hamish ordered a Coke from the bar.
“There’s no such thing.” Hamish heard Luca’s voice gather authority.
“Mr. Valari. I have heard that you have influence. That you have ways of solving problems.”
“Bob, I am just trying to open a club.”
“But Schultze said . . .”
“Don’t believe everything you hear.” Luca cursed under his breath. “I’m empty.” Luca rapped his fingers on the counter and another whiskey appeared. “And what does he know? He just rents me that office of his over in the North Square.”
Hamish swooshed the ice in his Coke glass. Luca’s back was to him, the hand not holding his drink in his pocket. He leaned in. Part of him wanted to give his cousin the privacy he needed, but the other part of him was intrigued. Bob was pleading. “I can’t afford to keep this place if I don’t have some help. I heard you could help. You never just hire someone. You are too careful. People talk about you.”
Luca chuckled. “I am just trying to open a club.”
“I’m sorry, Valari, I thought . . . Chicago said . . .”
Luca lifted his drink and drained it. “The Flamingo. I’ll send you and your charming wife an invitation.” Luca turned and Hamish saw he was annoyed.
Hamish stepped back, swishing his Coke and pretending he hadn’t heard.
“Did you dance, Cicero?” Luca didn’t look back at the club owner.
“With Mary Finn,” Hamish said quietly, not wanting Bob to hear. “She was on a break.”
“She’s a bit of a flirt, isn’t she?”
“I think she’s scared of something,” Hamish said, keeping his voice low. “She tensed up a lot. When Schultze—”
Luca squeezed his shoulder tightly. “Not everyone gets anxious in crowds,” he said lightly.
“This was more than that.”
“Stay for another set? Or should we head home?”
“Whatever you want, Luca.”
“Off we go. Our business is done.” He directed this to Bob, while his smile stayed on Hamish. “We’ll see you at the Flamingo.”
Hamish and Luca stepped into the night, Hamish stretching his arms out to the fresh air: still warm, but without the mix of perfume, alcohol, and smoke found inside.
“I don’t see how you can frequent these places every night,” Hamish said as they walked to the edge of the block where Luca said his driver was waiting.
“Ha! You love them just as much as I do. Do you remember that night at the Palais Royale . . . when was that . . . last year? Last Christmas, wasn’t it? You and Maisie Forth and I. We wanted to go, but you wanted to dance all night.”
“There was a pretty girl there.”
“Pretty but a few sheets to the wind if I recall.”
Hamish shrugged, studying his two-tones a moment.
“But you were so bold that night, Cic!” Luca continued. “You strolled right across that floor just as Maisie remarked that the girls might have thought you were a wall sconce.”
Hamish cracked a half smile. “None of them dance like Maisie.”
“How is she doing, anyway? She’s a bit in love with me I think.”
Hamish laughed. “A bit? She’s fine. She—”
“Valari!” Hamish and Luca turned at Schultze’s voice.
“We should have walked faster,” Luca said under his breath.
“You have Bob in a fix.”
“Not now, Tom.” He dismissed Schultze with a wave and shuffled Hamish toward the car. Hamish looked over his shoulder, puzzled at the exchange. How many conversations did Luca leave in the middle of?
As he had only swirled the martini glass Luca handed him before asking for Coke, Hamish was awake and alert long before his cousin. He smelled coffee under his door. Luca had left him a silk robe and he tied it over his pajamas, tucked his feet into mule slippers of the same fabric, and reached for his glasses and Notre-Dame. The night before when he jolted awake thinking about the fight with his father that brought him to Boston, he normalized his heartbeat by peering into Pierre Gringoire’s first encounter with t
he beautiful Romany girl Esmeralda. He thought of Esmeralda in poetry. Familiar words on familiar pages: a safety blanket, something bringing him home. Wherever home was. At night, sometimes it was up in Quasimodo’s bell tower overlooking medieval Paris. Maybe home would be here.
Fidget was in the kitchen attempting to be quiet, but she peeked her head out after he settled on the sofa.
“You read your book, Hamish. I will bring you something to eat. You are too thin.”
The something was piles of eggs and cinnamon rolls. Hamish smiled and tucked in with an appetite he hadn’t had in a long while. After she cleared his plate away, he quickly dressed, eager to have the city’s roads and alleys introduce themselves to him.
His bicycle leaned where it had taken temporary residence, outside the front door of the penthouse, and he wheeled it to the elevator. Once on the main floor, he walked it by the concierge and maneuvered it at an angle through the revolving door.
The day was overcast with low clouds billowing with the threat of rain. The sun struggled to lighten the hovering gray and its effect highlighted the tarmac and rooftops with the possibility of light. Hamish loved mornings like this because they framed the world with possibility. He flung his leg over the crossbar and kicked a few times for momentum, leaning over the handlebars a moment and pedaling off into the city.
Hamish didn’t think he could belong anywhere he didn’t know intimately from the friction of rubber and pavement. He pedaled across Tremont after the Temple and in the direction of Park Street Church. He smiled without inhibition, quietly acknowledging the restraint he had shown in not pursuing this activity—gliding and swerving through a new world of paths and streets, growing accustomed to the bike Luca had bought him.
He promised himself his quick slide through Boston Common and the Public Garden would be one of many, opting instead to pedal through as much distance as possible. He leaned up a little to gain traction up a slight hill and turned on Washington Street, avoiding pedestrians as the Old South Meeting House and the Old State House whirred by. A quick familiarization with Boston from a map Luca had left in his bedroom allowed him to recognize Faneuil Hall below him with Quincy Market straight beyond. The Custom House announced itself. Then, beyond, the type of monument he always chased when on his bike. Something to work toward: a landmark so he could find his way back. The arrow of a compass pointing north when you most needed your bearings. Chasing markers had introduced him to many nooks and crannies of Toronto. Now, in Boston, he used the same skill: weaving past the farmers hawking their wares, the horse-drawn carts, the butchers and tailors, the automobiles and gas stations and billboards of Haymarket Square, sliding to a halt at Cross Street and looking beyond to an uneven line of brick, signs for markets and restaurants in his father’s first language, fire escapes skittering down and crisscrossing between closely connected buildings.
Murder at the Flamingo Page 6
