“Set it on the floor behind the desk,” she said. “Better not make things too bright.”
They spotted a second lamp. When it was lit, Quinn looked around.
“You search the desk,” she said. “I’ll take the pie safe.”
She set her lamp on the floor. Its wavering light lent an ethereal cast to the photographs on display – the older woman with the haughty mien, the elderly gentleman with the knee-high children. The other photograph, the one of the young woman in the tiara, had been removed. A dark thought occurred. Quinn had assumed she was the actress who played Medea, but what if she was the flirtatious Delphine Kadinger? What if Winthrop was the suitor she spurned?
“If you find the likeness of a girl in a tiara in his desk, I want it,” she said.
“If a tiara is some kind of a crinkum-crankum headdress, I’m looking at it now.”
She crammed the awful implications into a recess of her brain for later reflection and pulled open the tin doors of the pie safe. Inside, folders had been stacked on three shelves. She flipped through the labels and extracted the one marked “Handish.” She took out the only page and bent close to the lamp to read.
10 July – Ned Handish, wanted for murder in Cairo since January. Denies killing his wife. Claims he knows who did it and has come to Chicago to obtain the man’s confession. He has business associates in Cairo who owe him money and he wants to clear his name and go back. If he is innocent as he insists, I advised him to return and stand trial. He has the ludicrous idea that a lawyer can write a letter to the authorities in Cairo and make the charges go away simply by certifying that this Merkerson person has confessed.
“Wouldja looky here!”
Quinn flattened against the wall. It was a husky voice, not loud but belligerent. The man sounded close enough to reach out and touch her. She extinguished her lamp and darted a look at Garnick. He wasn’t there. A halo of light where he’d been hovered above the desk like a spirit manifestation.
“Lotsa broke glass ‘n higgledy letters,” answered a disembodied, mumbling voice. “M, C, N, P. Whas that spell, Shep?”
“Shh. Somebody’s movin’ around in there.”
“I don’t see nobody.”
“In the back. There’s a light.”
Quinn looked. The halo above the desk was swinging around and around.
“Sa ghost,” said the mumbler.
“Nah,‘sa looter. Let’s go see whas to loot.”
“You go.”
Neither of you go, prayed Quinn.
Boots clumped hard on the wooden floor. One of them had hopped the sill. His boots squeaked as they inched forward. She caught the strong whiff of rotgut liquor and
pictured him, gun drawn and aimed at the looter behind the desk. Garnick would be anticipating him, revolver in hand. Quinn cringed. There would be a shooting after all. Her bull-headedness had once again endangered both her and Garnick.
A second clump. The other one was in.
Her mind recoiled. She couldn’t bear another glut of blood. What to do, what to do? Her powers of invention had deserted her. She rubbed her throat, which still ached from Stram’s hands, and opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came, not even a groan.
“It’s about time you boys showed up,” said Garnick, moving out from behind the desk. He swung the lantern in one hand and his revolver hung loose in the other. “We’ve been waiting here for two hours. Where’s your brooms and pails? Where’s the lanterns you were supposed to bring? Didn’t the runner tell you we’ve had a robbery here? We need that glass picked up and plywood nailed across that window by morning.”
“Wha–?” The first man stumbled back toward the window. “We ain’t here for no goddamn cleanup.”
Quinn got back her crust. She stood up and stepped forward. “Then please explain why you are here.”
The intruders were bleary-eyed, discombobulated, and mercifully unarmed. Squeaky boots said, “The window’s broke out. We came to inquisitate.”
“You sure you didn’t come looking to steal something?” demanded Garnick.
“No such a-thing,” mumbled the second. “We was gonna stop the looters.”
“Well, you’re too late. The coppers are here already, gathering evidence out in the alley. You’d best get out before I call them in to bag you. Go on now, beat feet!”
With an agility rarely seen in the inebriated, they hurdled the windowsill and were halfway down the block by the time Quinn stuck her head out to check.
She said, “I’m sorry I put us in a pickle, Garnick. One of these days I’ll learn. Thank you for saving us.”
“I don’t think those boys were much of a threat, but I’d feel a whole lot easier if we hoofed it before more ‘inquisitators’ show up. Grab an armful of everything you want to steal. There’s no reason to be finicky about the mess at this point.”
“Okay. Is there a bag or satchel lying around to carry the plunder?”
Chapter 27
By the time the burglars arrived at the Mansion, the outside lights had been doused and most of the customers had gone home. The only person still pottering about the place was Sissy. She was waving goodbye to her last client as Quinn and Garnick walked in. The departing man looked sprightly. Sissy looked tired. She tucked her earnings into her décolletage and greeted Quinn and Garnick with a weary smile.
“You want to see Jemelle again, Mr. Garnick?”
“Not now, Sissy. Miz Paschal’s been staying here as Lou’s guest. You remember her from the other day, don’t you?”
Sissy regarded Quinn’s sea-weedy hair and ill-fitting, bat-winged dress. “She don’t look the same.”
Quinn said, “It’s been a really hard day, Sissy. Is it all right if I go up to Lou’s room now? I’ll be careful not to wake her.”
“Lou’s got company tonight. The mayor, I think. She took a bottle of French champagne upstairs with her and left orders she wasn’t to be disturbed till noon.”
“Oh.”
“Is there another room she can use?” asked Garnick.
“Just her?” Sissy’s eyes slid back and forth between them as if she divined exactly what they had been up to, and how recently.
“Just me,” said Quinn. Even if all they did was sleep, she wouldn’t go to bed with Garnick in a brothel.
Sissy gave her a pitying look. “I guess you can share mine if you don’t mind sleeping double.”
“I don’t mind. And I really appreciate it.”
Garnick ran a hand through his hair. “Have you got a bed for me somewhere? Doesn’t have to be a bed. I can bivouac in the piano room, on the couch if that’s all right.”
“’Cept for Lou’s special friends, it’s against the rules for a man to stay overnight, Mr. Garnick. You know that.”
“We’ve got an important meeting here in the morning with one of His Honor’s colleagues. In fact, Mayor Rice may want to sit in.”
“Then I guess it’s okay, seeing as how it’s you and all.”
“You’re a peach, Sissy.”
“I’ll go and fetch you a sheet, but you’ll have to spread it up yourself and square accounts with Lou tomorrow.”
Quinn didn’t turn a hair. A brothel was a moneymaking enterprise and the man she loved had been a valued customer until late last year. It was a fact she wished she didn’t know, but she couldn’t feel resentment. If anything, she felt grateful. Garnick might have kept his nightmares at bay by drinking himself into a stupor, or dulled his mind with morphine like so many veterans had done. Instead he came here and Minnie had broken the house rules to let him stay all night and give what comfort she could. The brothel joggled Quinn’s moral compass. On the night the office burned, when she straggled in friendless and needy, these so-called “fallen” women showed more charity than she could have expected from any of the so-called “virtuous” women of her acquaintance. She said as much to Garnick.
“I reckon they’ve got about the same mix of virtues and vices as the rest of us.” He sounded defen
sive.
“I don’t mean to be backhanded or snide, Garnick. I sincerely appreciate their…humanity.”
“There’s more to them than what they do to get by. They’ve got their own angles and pursuits, places they’re from, places they’ll go soon as they can fix on something better.”
Quinn didn’t think Minnie’s ambition to open her own brothel constituted “something better,” but where vice was concerned, it had lately become difficult to keep her interpretations consistent.
Sissy returned with a sheet and feather pillow for Garnick. He and Quinn said goodnight and, yawning, she followed her new roommate down into the bowels of the place, along a passageway of closed doors and complicated lives.
Sissy’s room was small and dreary and the musk of her last client hung the air. With the briskness of a nurse, she yanked off the used sheet and replaced it with a clean new one. At least Quinn hoped it was clean. The horsehair mattress atop the low, cast-iron bed felt extra firm and sturdy, no doubt for occupational reasons. Quinn wouldn’t have cared if it were made of pea shucks. She was dead on her feet.
The washstand was supplied with soap, tooth powder, and water. She performed a cursory toilette, cleaned her teeth with her fingers, and dropped onto the bed in nothing but her chemise and pantalettes. Her eyes closed. A few minutes later she felt the mattress give as Sissy snuggled down on the other side. A subversive thought scratched at the periphery of her consciousness. Had Garnick ever taken comfort in this bed?
Brothel nights under the bridge, she decided. This would be the last one. She would wall off the past and concentrate on the future. She put the pillow over her face. After that, black nothing.
She slept the sleep of the innocent. No pangs of guilt interrupted her slumber. No nightmares about the past, no worries about the future. At dawn, a spear of sunlight pierced the transom above a shaded window and woke her. Somewhere in the distance a rooster crowed. She opened her eyes and sketched out the day ahead. Winthrop’s files, the meeting with Tench, finding a new boarding house.
A decadent, fatty smell affected her like an astringent. She sat up and saw a jar of beard oil on the table next to her, no doubt left behind by the last person to occupy this side of the bed. She rubbed her eyes. There was something leveling about waking up in a brothel. Whatever fate had brought you there, you couldn’t feel self-righteous or superior.
Sissy was still fast asleep. Very quietly, Quinn slipped out of bed and dressed. Her watch had died during the night, but the clock on the dressing table said eight o’clock. In two hours, if all went as planned, Alderman Tench and Fen Megarian would be here. A fortuitous appearance by Mayor John B. Rice would add a measure of suspense to the meeting. Her intuition told her his all-night visit with Lou was no coincidence. She and Garnick had a lot of reading to do in a short time.
She gave her hair a vigorous brushing, picked up Winthrop’s satchel, and started for the kitchen. Garnick was sitting at the table counting Stram’s greenbacks like he was dealing a deck of cards, inspecting each bill front and back.
“Is it counterfeit?”
“Looks legal.” His smile was intimate, his hair endearingly tousled. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a baby. A baby on laudanum.”
“No bad dreams?”
“No.”
He got up and took a pan off the stove. “I made a stack of johnnycakes. Are you hungry?”
“Ravenous.”
“Good. I found a crock of cane syrup. Let’s eat.”
Quinn set the table and Garnick served their plates and poured the coffee. They sat down to breakfast like normal people. It seemed so ordinary, yet so unreal. She could scarcely assimilate the events of the past two days – whipsawed between happiness and horror. She should have had bad dreams, should be haunted by Stram’s staring eyes and gurgling chest wound. But it was like something that happened to somebody else, a story she’d heard secondhand a long time ago. Her mind was anesthetized. Maybe the anesthesia wouldn’t last, but in the meantime the cakes were good and her appetite was hearty.
“I didn’t know you could cook, Garnick.”
“You’re enjoying the full repertoire, though I have been known to fry an egg or a pork chop if there’s any on hand.”
She wondered if breakfast together like this would become routine, whether it would be boring without the pulse-quickening ingredients of death and danger. When they finished eating, she cleared the table while Garnick covered the leftovers for the next people into the kitchen. In passing, their arms touched and she felt a frisson. A kiss ensued. Again, she thought how vulnerable she’d become, not just to the passions and predilections of another person, but to her own desire. Only a few days ago she’d been rational – sexually curious to be sure, but in control of her life. She concealed her doubts with a quip. “If this keeps up, I shall have to start calling you by your Christian name.”
“Like as not it’d slip your mind in a crisis.”
“I don’t think it would, but no more canoodling, Garnick. We’ve a lot of reading to do and not much time before our first interview of the day.”
“Nobody could accuse you of going moony on me.” He pocketed the stack of bills he’d taken off Stram and poured a second round of strong coffee. “What is it we’re looking for, Quinn? We know the government’s a-wallow in graft. We know Tench was paying Kadinger for something Kadinger didn’t want his clerk asking questions about. We know from Verner that Tench was Delphine’s paramour. And we know Winthrop’s played us for saps.”
That last item made Quinn’s blood boil. Winthrop must be sniggering up his sleeve at them, or he would be until he discovered his empty file cabinet this morning. He couldn’t be sure they were the thieves, but it was dead certain he’d be asking all over town where she could be found and wondering who else would have cause to burgle his files.
“I don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, Garnick. Anything that ties Stram to Winthrop or to any of the other people in this imbroglio. Who he worked for, what he was doing at the Kadinger home besides seducing Rhetta, why he broke cover to come after me? Anything.”
She emptied the booty from Winthrop’s satchel onto the table. The tiara rolled out on top. Ornately carved coral spikes studded with pearls, it looked like something from another century, or part of a costume worn by an actress portraying a woman from another century, another country. Maybe Quinn’s first guess had been correct and it really was Adelaide Ristori in the photograph. She fanned out the rest of the loot across the table. The picture was there, still in its frame. “You did find her, Garnick!”
“Who is she?”
“I’m not sure, but wouldn’t it be an eye-opener if it were Delphine?”
“You think the lady had both Winthrop and Tench on her string?”
“Maybe. I wish we had a magnifying glass.” She held the photo close and studied the hands. The woman wore a large ring, but it was impossible to make out the design. “Do you have the center stone from that ring I gave you?”
He fished it out of his pocket and they compared the cupids on the woman’s bracelets to what Quinn had first thought was an angel on the ring.
“They look the same to me,” said Garnick. “Leastwise they both have wings.”
“Josabeth told us the unnamed suitor demanded Delphine give back the jewelry he’d given her. Whoever gave her the bracelet must also have given her the ring. The bracelet may have been destroyed in the fire. If Rhetta hadn’t borrowed the ring, it would probably have burned, too.”
“It’s possible Winthrop was holding these baubles for somebody else.”
“But not a photograph,” said Quinn. “And Winthrop would be beside himself if a woman failed to appreciate his extraordinary attributes.”
“Tench can tell us whether or not it’s Delphine. Meanwhile, let’s get started on the files.” Garnick grabbed a thick one marked City Business and dug in.
Quinn started with the Handish file, some of which she’d read the
night before, and reread what Winthrop had written about Handish. He has the ludicrous idea that a lawyer can write a letter to the authorities in Cairo and make the charges go away simply by certifying that this Merkerson person has confessed.
“Listen to this, Garnick.” She read the sentence out loud. “Does it sound like Handish believed it was somebody named Merkerson who killed his wife?”
“Handish sure sounded hell-bent, beg pardon, on beating a confession out of Stram. Hard to fake that much hate.”
“The feeling could have been genuine if he was thinking Merkerson when he said Stram.” She rethought her assumptions. “At first I thought Handish came to us of his own volition, but what if Winthrop sent him?”
“That would explain how he came by our business card,” said Garnick. “You gave the shyster a packet a few months back with the idea he’d hand ’em out to anybody who came to him with an absconded wife or a suspected embezzler at the till.”
“Clearly that was wishful thinking on my part. But suppose Winthrop or one of his other clients wanted Stram found, but couldn’t afford to be seen in the low places Stram hung about? Suppose he sent Handish to sic us on Stram.”
“Makes sense. Handish must have memorized that description of Stram. I remember you had to pull the words out of him.”
“Do you think Handish was completely in the dark about Winthrop’s trickery?”
“Like as not. If we’re talking brain power, Handish appeared to be pulling a light wagon.”
“I don’t know. He was smart enough to keep out of prison for all this time. If he hadn’t been so bent on proving he didn’t kill Florrie, he might have lived a long life and never served a day. The fact he was killed on the other side of Lou’s hedge must mean he came here for a reason. There are too many other brothels in town for it to be coincidence.”
“Jemelle gave me the feeling she’s holding out on us a jot,” said Garnick.
Devil by the Tail Page 20
