Murder at the Flamingo

by Rachel McMillan

  Hamish rubbed the back of his neck. “And you hadn’t accepted? You refused.”

  She nodded. Though the slight movement didn’t compensate for the myriad of Vaughan memories suddenly flooding her brain. “Sometimes it seems like a whole lifetime ago.”

  Hamish looked far away, sounded even more so. “I know what you mean.”

  They both turned at a slamming knock at the door.

  “Oh, it’s you,” the man storming inside said. Hamish caught his breath, and his hand went protectively to his neck where the same man had pressed Schultze’s walking stick into it. “We were never properly introduced.” He nudged at a plate of half-eaten cream pie with the toe of his white shoe. “It’s very rude to sit when you are receiving company.”

  Reggie studied his features. He wasn’t as handsome as Luca, but the overuse of cologne and pomade, not to mention the cut of a suit tailored to perfection, tried to compensate.

  Hamish slowly stood, his arm shoved behind his back—but this time, not to hide its slight shaking, but rather, Reggie deduced, to still her and protectively keep her back.

  “Sorry,” Hamish said quietly. “My name is Hamish DeLuca.” His tongue rippled slightly over the D.

  “Mark Suave,” the other man growled, grabbing Hamish’s hand. “And who’s your girlfriend?”

  “Regina Van Buren.” Reggie removed the napkin from her lap, straightened her shoulders, and rose as regally as she could, extending her hand. “And you are a fiend, Mark Suave.” She hissed his surname.

  “Charming,” Suave said, his eyes darting behind him. “Where’s Luca Valari?”

  “I think you’ll find my cousin is quite busy with preparations for our opening tomorrow,” Hamish said unevenly.

  “He’ll have time for me.” Suave walked past Hamish, but not before looking him over. “Luca’s breaking point. I was worried he didn’t have a heart. You know that?” His eyes pinned Hamish. “But seeing the way he went ill at the thought of my hurting you”—Suave stepped forward, leaning into Hamish—“made me think that I have something to bargain with.” He gave a stale smile. “I’ll go find your cousin.”

  Hamish sank back onto the stairs, wringing his hands. “This isn’t good,” he whispered.

  Reggie followed suit. “Maybe we should let Luca take care of this? Or phone the police, or—?” Reggie stopped as Mark’s voice shattered the acoustics of the club and startled Roy Holliday’s band to silence.

  Reggie strained to hear but she couldn’t make out the conversation. Only that Luca was as angry as Suave was. Then, roles reversed, Luca tugged the man back across the club toward the entrance where Hamish and Reggie sat.

  “I don’t know where he is!” Reggie made out. “I told you. You asked me to finish the job. I did.

  “I am finished there. I washed my hands of it. I did what you asked and I started over and I suggest you stop following a dead trail. It’ll just lead you to Lake Michigan.”

  Reggie met Hamish’s eye. This was more than nightclub business. Hamish’s right hand shook.

  Suave brushed his sleeves. “Let’s hope you’re telling the truth.” He swerved in Hamish and Reggie’s direction. “At least I have bargaining chips.” He sneered at the little group, then, parting them before they could rise, he left the way he came.

  Luca cursed. Then cursed again. Hamish hopped to his feet. Reggie followed, smoothing the skirt of her dress.

  “Don’t worry. Sorry about that. Please don’t worry.”

  “What do they think you’ve done? What does he need? What would lead to Lake Michigan?” Hamish tripped over the sequential questions.

  “Cicero! Heavens!” Luca laughed nervously. “Too many questions. Did you have enough to eat?”

  Hamish looked at the remains on his plate. He had taken no more than two bites. No wonder he was thin as a rail, Reggie thought. For her part, she stole another bite of Boston cream pie.

  “Fidget will have something in the icebox.” Luca studied his cousin’s face with concern. “Don’t look like you’ve just seen a ghost, Cic. We’ll set you right. That man just has a temper. A misdirected temper.” Luca turned to Reggie. “And you, lovely Reggie. Shall I arrange for a car?”

  “It’s okay, I can take the subway.”

  “Not at this time of night. I’ll arrange for a cab. Hold tight.”

  Moments later, she was in the taxi, fingering the slow raindrops jeweling the passenger window. But a half hour later when she was safe in her room, she switched on the light, finagled for a coin, and pressed it into the meter. She waited for the telltale hiss. Then she took her rickety kettle and placed it over the heating element. Reggie arranged her chipped mug and spooned loose-leaf tea into a strainer. (There were some things that a New Haven Van Buren did not leave in Connecticut, including her outrage over anything but properly assembled tea.)

  The kettle whistled and Reggie lifted it carefully. She liked the steam rising from the water as it trickled slowly into her mug. It would fog Hamish’s glasses if he were here.

  She strained the water over the tea leaves then lifted the mug gingerly to her lips. There was still a stain of pink on them from earlier. She was thinking about Hamish. About his nerves and worries. About all the imperfect smudges that blurred the outlines of his life.

  Reggie set the tea on the radiator. She unfastened her garters and rolled down her stockings. She slipped out of her cotton dress and left it puddled in a ribbon of emerald at the edge of her bed. She slipped into the reprieve of her light nightgown and stepped into her mule slippers—the ones with the pink bows her mother had given her for Christmas the year before.

  It was strange to have these little mementos of home—her past life—the one she wanted to shrug out of.

  She lifted the tea mug and sipped some more, feeling the heat of the liquid mingle with the heat of a muggy Boston evening. If anything, they canceled each other out and a sheen of perspiration over her forehead and prickling under her arms provided a damp coolness. Reggie reached into her nightstand for her Independence book—the list was getting longer with scratches and scrawls and strikethroughs denoting the changes that were slowly shifting her life. And the back held the secret of a list she couldn’t make hide nor hair of. She flipped to that page and picked up a pencil from her nightstand. Florence. Trouble. Cicero.

  Cicero. Hamish’s nickname. She wanted to throw at him all the confidence he questioned he had. But she knew he was loved. In the same way she knew she was loved. Her parents had a funny way of showing it, but they loved her. And Hamish? How could anyone not love him? Hamish with his floppy black bangs and brilliant blue eyes. The way his ears stuck out just a little and the way his smile curved slightly like a semicolon, imprinting a dimple into his left cheek.

  Reggie sipped more tea and then fell so deeply into the tunnel of thought that she let the rest cool beside her. She flipped to a new page of her journal, away from the unsolved mysteries of the day.

  On the first blank line she wrote: Make Hamish . . .

  Then she crossed it out.

  She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut and formed a picture in her mind that was at once rainbows and sunshine and promise. Then, opening them, she took pencil nub to paper and wrote in clear, bold print . . . Hamish, whose face had paled when she told him about Vaughan. Who had thrust her behind him again when that Suave fellow got too close. Who was starting to become just as pestering as the looming idea of Vaughan nearby.

  Make Hamish happy.

  Neither Hamish nor Reggie was required to show up at the office the day of the Flamingo’s opening. So Reggie spent the day lazily, painting her nails and strolling in the sunlight to the Bunker Hill monument, prowling around for the first time since she had moved to the city. If she had done the same at home, her mother would have lectured her on the benefits of social recreation. “One can relax under an umbrella at the Cape, love, especially if one is doted on by the Vanderlaans. Have an escape. But make sure that your escape mutually benefits o
ur society.”

  Surging with a revolutionary spirit that spared little thought for the benefit of any society but her own, she strolled down to the Warren Tavern and ordered a glass of white wine, which she drank while watching the foot traffic on Pleasant Avenue beneath patriotic flags draped and dancing in the summer breeze.

  The publican handed her a newspaper. She thumbed to the society pages. Instead of reading of the latest escapades and fashion of young ladies and men she knew personally if not by reputation, she was eager to glance over every last snippet of type dedicated to the Flamingo. Proud of the enthusiasm and anticipation for “Boston’s Newest and Classiest Joint,” she drained her drink and set out for her apartment and a long bath.

  The stroll home to Chestnut Street was a bright one, bricked streets sloping between houses set close together, adorned in a rainbow of colors: blues and reds and bright oranges like autumn’s flames. Reggie took the familiar route at a faster pace than usual, her Spanish heels frustratingly finding the uneven seams and grooves of the street.

  She wasn’t usually home so early, and her landlady, polishing the banister, raised an eyebrow in surprise. Reggie mumbled something that sounded a bit like “half day” and stomped up the worn carpet of the stairs.

  In her room, she tugged the blinds down so that the grating sun wouldn’t hamper her ability to inspect the lines and shadows of her face. She flopped backward on her bed a moment and closed her eyes. If she thought hard enough, she could transform the empty space of the Flamingo into what awaited her that evening: spilling with light and swathed in music. She caught herself wondering—rising to the small sink in the corner and splashing water under her arms and over her face—if Hamish would leave his glasses at home. And she then caught herself wondering what those eyes of his might look like unfettered by their lenses. She supposed their blue could cut through the throng like a spotlight. She caught herself and splashed more water, letting it trickle over her freckles and the bit of a sunburn just above her collarbone.

  Her eyes flittered, rounding in the reflection in the mirror above. A slight pang stabbed when she thought of Vaughan, his memory indelibly stamped on her as she recalled nights she roughed her cheeks and powdered her collarbone and etched her lips crimson and dabbed perfume at her wrists for him. All for him.

  She wasn’t one of those girls who dressed only for men. But she admitted to herself, running the pad of her finger over her eyebrow to smooth it into a tame line, that dressing for a man certainly motivated a girl. Sighing, she turned from the mirror to her wardrobe. Vaughan or not, she had her employer to impress and, yes, maybe, certainly his cousin too.

  As hard as Hamish tried to get him to talk, Luca said nothing about Mark Suave.

  Luca retired as soon as they returned from the club the night before and hadn’t risen the next morning when Hamish watched the sun slant through the window. Fidget welcomed him with a copy of the morning papers, all brandishing broad announcements of the club’s opening. Hamish now navigated the North End. He had long since skidded over the sloping stones of Beacon Hill and swerved through the Back Bay, stopping to flop on his back at the stretch of green in Copley Square. There was a freedom to the air and the commerce and the weave of pedestrians he would lose the moment he stepped into the wall-to-wall smoke and pulse of the club. Pumping the pedals with his two-tones, leaning over the handlebars, savoring the smooth swerve of the wheels over the stone, he almost unclutched his hands and lifted his arms. It was the kind of day that infused him with a glorious sense of liberty.

  He was thrilled by how tightly the past held to the city. The slick cobblestones scuffed with the hooves of galloping horses, the cries of the rebels still echoing. Hamish felt the breath of ghosts on his neck as he cycled along State Street and over the place of the Boston Massacre.

  He pedaled slowly here, he supposed out of respect, but perhaps more out of interest. If he truly was to find a home here, at least for the time being, he was determined to learn everything of importance. His father had always told him that the fastest way to understand the heart of a place is to find what its inhabitants valued about it.

  He disembarked at Winter Street, a feeling of transition mingling with the late afternoon breeze. His summer to this point, not to mention his snatching at adventure, would culminate in this evening. Luca’s success, Reggie’s endeavors, his amateurish attempts to keep books and filter through legal contracts for nightclubs all hung in the balance.

  The opening of a nightclub wasn’t unlike the fall of the curtain on the debut night of a play. By the time the clock struck midnight, you knew whether you would close the next day in a wave of failure or would carry on in a blaze of glory.

  The doorman smiled with his customary friendliness when Hamish returned, rolling his bicycle beside him. Hamish took a moment to study it: an open smile he never flashed at Luca. Hamish stopped mid-foyer. Something about Luca kept people in check. Hamish brushed the thought off and crossed to the elevator.

  When he arrived at the penthouse level, he took his time striding to the door.

  Luca was home, stretched on his sofa with a martini and the society pages. “Cicero!”

  “I’m surprised you’re here.” Hamish unrolled his pant legs, wheeled his bicycle to the alcove.

  “I am taking a well-deserved hour of relaxation.” He stretched a demonstrative hand over the length of his silk robe.

  Hamish smiled. “Did you get the basement light fixed?” The question was a stand in for “Who is that Suave fellow?” and they both knew it.

  “Your friend Nate recommended someone and he should be on it.” Luca’s face was washed of any stress and Hamish knew not to press. “You look tired. Have a nap before tonight.”

  “I will.” Hamish lowered onto the chair opposite the table on which the remaining sections of Luca’s newspaper fanned.

  “Luca.”

  “Why the dark tone, Cicero?”

  “Do you know anything about a person or organization that links the North End to . . . nefarious purposes? Money laundering?” Hamish studied his cousin’s face to see if there was a flicker or switch in his eyes, a tic in his jaw. “Is that why Mark Suave followed you from Chicago?”

  “I’ve heard of it. Same thing you have.” Luca’s voice was dismissive. “You can’t be in this business and not rub shoulders with men who are using it for a different kind of profit.”

  “So you’re not using it . . .”

  “What are you implying?”

  “You’re not using the Flamingo for the same kind of . . . profit.”

  “What did I tell you when you came with me? I have a past I am not proud of. Do you really think I would drag you—you, of all people. My cousin! As close as my very brother, into something . . .” He waved his hand. “Nefarious.”

  “I just . . .”

  “I told you. I need you to trust me.” Luca cursed in Italian—a word Hamish had heard his father use when his Underwood was out of ink in the middle of a story. “I am going to be tired of explaining myself to you. You would be a fool not to think that such things go on. But I need you to focus on tonight. To come and be my moral support.”

  Hamish flexed his fingers. Something about Luca made the doorman’s sunny smile check itself when Luca passed but spread wide with relief when it was Hamish. Something that rippled in soft tones and under breath when his cousin passed by.

  Hamish retreated to his bedroom. Fidget had laid out his tuxedo, steamed and pressed, on his bed. He reached for Notre-Dame, clutching it as he turned on the tap to run a long bath.

  “When you get an idea in your head, you find it in everything.” He paraphrased a line from the book.

  He just had an idea in his head. Too many late nights. Too much nervousness about making Luca proud at the Flamingo. He needed to tuck this stupid notion behind his pocket square.

  A half hour later he dabbed his wet hair with a towel.

  “Be ready in a half hour,” Luca said.

  “I
thought I’d cycle over. Get some fresh air before I’m stuck in a smoky club all night.”

  “You can’t cycle to the Flamingo in a tuxedo.”

  “I’ll sling the jacket over my shoulders so it doesn’t crease and fix my tie there. I need the space.” Everything felt close. The leftover steam from the bathroom, Luca fastening his cuff links in the front room before stopping at his bar by the window. Hamish smoothed his hair back and nudged his glasses on his nose.

  “Oh, leave the glasses, Hamish. For once.”

  “And be blind as a bat?” They both knew he was exaggerating.

  “You’re being childish.”

  Hamish took the glasses off and left them on the table. Then, when Luca turned, picked them up and slid them into his pocket. “Fine. But you’re being secretive. Luca, you can tell me anything. Remember when you had me double-check those contracts?” Hamish remembered when his cousin showed him a lease agreement. Hamish had enjoyed going through it line by line and feeling useful. “I am trustworthy. You said so yourself.”

  Luca didn’t seem to hear him, focusing instead on rearranging his tie in the mirror and smoothing his hair. “Don’t be late,” was all he said as Hamish finally rolled his bicycle to the door.

  CHAPTER 16

  Streams of color pulsed in contrast to the calm of nearby Scollay Square, settled under the blanket of starlit dark.

  Reggie took her time with a sleek red satin that accentuated the white of her shoulders with thin, decorative straps and a bodice that clung to her waist before falling away with a delicate, silky flounce. Her lips were outlined in rich cranberry, her face immaculately powdered. Her hair gleamed in its brown finger waves. She turned from side to side, pleased with the effect. The dress fit more tightly than usual, the result of her passion for Mrs. Leoni’s cannoli, but rather than flinch at what her mother would say about watching a ladylike figure, she laughed. She had been enjoying life and she had a few new curves to prove it. Rather than traipse to the trolley in her finery, she had accepted Luca’s offer for a car to collect her. She gathered her fur wrap and her small purse and stepped to the street, thinking of how her background of finery clashed with the everyday happenstances she was crossing off in her Journal of Independence.