Murder in the City of Liberty

by Rachel McMillan

  * * *

  Hamish was pretty certain he was dreaming. Otherwise, he couldn’t imagine recalling Reggie in his arms and kissing him. The type of sweet, unexpected, knee-buckling kiss that would drive him into a burning building again. And again.

  The firemen had controlled the fire. Pete wasn’t found. At least that was what he made out from snippets of comments. His ear was ringing. Then he saw someone he knew.

  “Errol!”

  “I came to confront him. After you left,” Errol said, spreading his hands. “When I arrived, well . . .”

  “How did you know to come?”

  “I found a letter in our mailbox. Just after you left. Returned to sender. It was a letter from Toby addressed to Mr. Kent. Telling him he didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. I came to confront him.”

  “Your nephew had something that Kelly would kill for. Something a much more powerful man wanted. It was how we ended up in his world to begin with.”

  “It was a mess.” Errol shook his head.

  “You can’t feel guilty,” Hamish said. “You can’t lighten it. That was a part of it and it’s not selfish to acknowledge it.”

  “What kind of influence would I have been on my nephew then—if he were still with us? If I go off and defend Pete Kelly stupidly? That’s no kind of legacy. At least not the kind of legacy I would want to leave.”

  “It’s unforgivable.” He watched Errol turn the weight of the world over in his mind.

  Errol shook his head. “Nothing is unforgivable, Hamish. Forgiveness is freedom. True freedom. I don’t want to be shackled with this man’s hatred. I don’t want to be bound to the hate of this injustice. But I will always be shackled to it.”

  Hamish opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Behind his eyes a film reel of Reggie and Nate and fire and anger unfurled.

  “You’re thinking about your friend.” Errol’s voice rumbled low over the bricks and debris.

  “You’re perceptive. No wonder you can see a fly ball a mile away.”

  “You want to take on the world. Just like me, huh? You’re angry and it fills you and you need some way to let that anger out.”

  “‘Anger is the least interesting emotion,’” Hamish recited, his smile a slight comma up his cheek. “Something my mother used to tell me. From a book she read.”

  Errol chuckled. “There you are, then. Fighting battles out of responsive anger might get an immediate response. Or change a slight part of a bigger problem. But I am not going to fight just for the near future. If I fight, I want to do so for a marathon. For something that will last long after I am gone and beyond my problems to something bigger. And I think once I wash this grime off my face and get back into the field, I can fight with my gift. All of this . . .” Errol’s eyes roamed over the wreckage and jagged beams that looked like errant limbs. “This is unfortunate. But this is not my fight.” He squeezed Hamish’s shoulder. “Go find your young woman.”

  Reggie. At that, Hamish was lost. He nodded and twisted a string trailing from the bandage wound around his palm.

  * * *

  Then it was as if all of the moments Hamish had ever experienced with Reggie had flitted up in the smoke of the warehouse. The curtain drew on Vaughan pulling her in and sweeping back her hair, and while Hamish couldn’t see Vaughan’s face from his vantage point, he assumed his eyes were two shimmering pools of concern. Over Vaughan’s shoulder Reggie looked at him, and he should have been able to read a million things on her open-book face, but on this night he needed translation.

  Chapter 19

  It was an end-of-the-world kiss. But it was a start-of-a-world kiss too.

  Reggie saw this Hamish again, the one she knew by heart. The fire purged her anger at his calling Luca. But what sat in its place was far more dangerous—though both incendiary fusions felt similar. The heat of anger and disappointment, the blood-flushed cheeks of her loving him again. Now having something to hook that love onto—like a clothesline draped with the feel of his fingers and the taste of his lips, the light of his eyes breaking through a smoky night.

  Love meant accepting the lowest of a person. The parts that made you tingle and shrug. Love saw through every fight and stilled every fear and weathered every doubt. Love meant pushing past perceptions and surmounting expectations and accepting that someone would never always live up to the ideals you placed on them. And she loved Hamish. She had known it for a long, long time. At least her heart had. And because she loved him, she saw him through his shadow and back to himself.

  Reggie passed him a note with a name familiar to them both.

  “Aaron Leibowitz.” He studied the handwriting on the envelope. “I know next to nothing about Aaron Leibowitz—but I wasn’t expecting this handwriting.” He tilted the envelope to Reggie. Leibowitz had a delicate hand.

  “I was saving it for you. I thought we could open it together.”

  “We can’t open Nate’s mail.”

  “We have to. I don’t want it to be anything that would distress him. He might be more sensitive.”

  “He loves this feud. It’s his favorite thing.”

  “I don’t know what kind of mood he will be in. I think we should take a peek.”

  “Okay.” Hamish opened the envelope and slid out a piece of paper.

  Reggie squinted, leaning into Hamish to study the note. He backed up slightly. She ignored it, this measured line between them.

  They read it concurrently then looked up, eyes meeting.

  “Oh,” they said at the same time.

  * * *

  Aaron Liebowitz—also known as Sarah Abrams—was a lovely and soft-spoken woman with a direct, intelligent gaze.

  “You don’t have to stand in the doorway,” Reggie said warmly. “We don’t bite.”

  She took a tentative step and eventually sat in the chair Reggie gestured to.

  “I was so worried about him. I’ve never met him, but I feel I know him. If the Advocate hadn’t posted a notice . . . Tell me, is he going to be all right?”

  Hamish smiled. “I cannot believe you’re a woman. Nate talks about Aaron Leibowitz constantly.”

  “I use the Advocate as a way to work out some of my questions about faith and what I am learning,” Sarah explained, picking at a thread on her skirt. “My father is very conservative and does not feel a woman should pursue theological questions. But when I write to Nate, the passion with which he writes back . . .”

  Reggie clapped her hands together. She was sitting on the edge of her desk, legs swinging easily. “You realize you are a household name around here?”

  “I am so worried about him. I know I don’t really know him other than through the newspaper.”

  “Oh, you know him,” Hamish said. “He pours his heart into those letters.”

  “And he has a very big heart,” Reggie said.

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s one in a million,” Reggie said without missing a beat, her eyes flicking to Hamish a moment. “There is no other human like Nate on the planet. He is warm and funny and he cares about everyone. He loves the North End. He loves its history. He is obsessed with the statue of Paul Revere they are erecting in the Prado. He treats every person who crosses his path as if they are the King of England.”

  Sarah watched her a moment then turned to Hamish.

  “He’s my best friend. We share a flat. He is probably the best person I know.”

  “He will feel so betrayed if he learns I am a woman,” Sarah said with a pleading look to Reggie. “I just really wanted to know he was going to be all right. You probably think that is strange. A man I don’t know.”

  Reggie giggled. “He is going to love that you are a woman. It will delight him.” She lingered on Sarah’s face a moment, and something crossed her mind. Something she would tuck into her pocket for the moment.

  Later Reggie declined a walk with Hamish, with the intention of finding Vaughan at the office and somehow untangling the mess she had roped a
round them. She left Hamish at the streetlight at the end of his street and swerved in the direction of Cross Street. She didn’t get far before she felt someone behind her. She swerved on her heel and investigated the spill of streetlight, the sounds of the shadows.

  She continued. Then stopped again. “I have a gun in my trouser pocket and I haven’t slept well in a fortnight. So you might want to choose another lady to pursue.”

  A low voice laughed. A laugh she recognized too well. Her breath caught.

  “I never want to see you again.” She barely kept her voice from rippling. “I won’t even look at you.” She tilted her chin up and squeezed her eyes shut to keep them from curiosity.

  “It’s very unladylike to hold a grudge, Regina Van Buren. Especially for the man who gave you your first real employment.”

  “What do you want, Mister Valari?”

  “There’s that voice. Those manners. That Clara Bow accent.”

  Reggie slowly turned and found Luca there. Dressed to the nines, black hair purple under a streetlight.

  “You and Cicero have been sniffing around Toby Morris’s house.”

  “For a case,” Reggie said, hating that her voice wavered.

  Luca nodded with a patronizing raise of his eyebrow. His hands were tucked deeply in his pockets, and his whole body seemed a study in leisure: cavalier, as if he were just out for a stroll.

  “I need you to give me anything you found there. Papers. Are they at the office? We can just duck back there.”

  Reggie shook her head. “No. Get out of my life.”

  “I’m in your life, Reggie, because you are in my cousin’s life. Bit of a circle we have going.”

  “Did you kill Walt Bricker?”

  Luca waved his hand. “I don’t kill people, Regina.”

  “No. You just make other people do it. Were you behind Kelly killing Toby?”

  “What use would a boy’s corpse be to me?” He started walking as the lights of Haymarket Square winked over them, and Reggie, through some force she couldn’t describe, fell into step. His magnetism, she supposed. He drew her. She hated him for it. And for a million other things. “What people do out of a sense of loyalty to me, however misguided, is on them and not me.”

  Reggie wondered if he included his cousin in that statement. “That would make a good epitaph for you,” she said. “I don’t have anything from that case. We saw some orders in his bedroom when we investigated, then Hamish took them to Kelly’s where he was almost burned alive.” She said the last part emphatically, hoping to stir some reaction from Luca. It worked. The only redeeming thing about this man was his obvious love for his cousin. Luca’s impeccable stature faltered with the slightest tug at his collar.

  “Is he hurt?”

  “What are you doing here, Luca?”

  “Is Hamish hurt?”

  “Tell me!”

  “I tried and failed to get Nate Reis. That man has a working knowledge of a neighborhood I found myself missing. Not much use for nightclubs if we all go on bully beef rations if the war comes here. I have some business prospects at the docks here. War, Regina. You’ve heard of it, right? If your country is stepping in that direction, we’ll need a contingency plan. Is my cousin all right?”

  “Did you hurt Nate?”

  “No. Kent did.”

  Reggie was surprised Luca was so straightforward.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Luca said. “He thought if he could lure him to my cause, I would appreciate it. Rather ironic, isn’t it? Like that fellow at my old nightclub. Kent will not be allowed near any enterprise or endeavor of mine. I don’t condone brutes beating up Hamish’s friends. How is Hamish?”

  “He’s fine. Not like when someone allowed him to be riddled with Suave’s bullet.”

  Luca chuckled through his exhaled relief. “Well, I miss him. But I didn’t come here to shoot the breeze. I came because I had a rather interesting phone call from Schultze telling me that a Mr. William Van Buren thought he might like to pursue property development. Fiske’s Wharf to be exact. I was, of course, surprised. The Van Burens were always insurance people, I thought. But times are tough and people are constantly making bad investments.”

  Reggie’s shoulders straightened. “I-I don’t really speak to my parents. I don’t know what business Father is part of. I . . .”

  Luca reached over and lifted her ring to the halo of a streetlamp. “Bet my little cousin loved seeing this on you. It’s gorgeous. You could pawn it and buy a yacht.”

  He dropped her hand, but Reggie could still feel the creep of his touch. She tucked her hand behind her. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to keep an eye on that development. I told you. I am interested in the area. The geography. Pete Kelly took a few stupid turns, but I know you won’t. You’re smarter than that, Regina.”

  “You have to speak English, Mr. Valari. Despite my penchant for mob pictures, I am not completely fluent in gangster speak.”

  Luca smiled but his eyes were dark. Pitch dark. Darker than the sky around them. “Hamish has my number, but you’ll do best to reach me here.” He handed her a calling card with a fancy Beacon Hill address on it. “Got tired of the modern amenities. Thought I’d invest in one of those rambling old houses.”

  “I won’t need to reach you.”

  “Regina, William Van Buren has quite the name for himself. Quite the set. And now quite the loan. Yes, a few bad investments here and there can easily be wiped away.” His eyes flitted to her ring. “And people find that the right money can unfetter them from some hasty choices.”

  Reggie felt her cheeks heat as if she had been slapped. “I don’t want that.”

  “I want Hamish to be happy. This is one way we all get what we want. You can end your sham of an engagement, your father can find a thriving business world, and my little cousin can finally get his girl.”

  “No. I don’t want you near my family. I don’t want you near Vaughan. My engagement has nothing to do with you, Luca!”

  He raised his finger to his temple in a makeshift salute and turned. “Wonderful to be back, Regina. Always loved Beantown.”

  Chapter 20

  Errol Parker was on the road with the Patriots and Nate was back in his office.

  Hamish was thrilled to step through the open door and find its desk occupied.

  “Just discharged. Came right here. Don’t want that fool Liebowitz getting any further ahead.” His eyes were light as he looked around his desk.

  “Nonsense. You couldn’t bear to spend another day without checking up on your neighborhood.”

  Hamish watched Nate and his heartbeat started up a little. There was a part of the puzzle Nate was leaving out. “If I hadn’t introduced you to Luca . . .” Hamish shifted in the chair across from Nate’s desk.

  “He wanted me to work for him. I’d be a horrible mobster, you know.”

  Hamish winced. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t take attention away from my predicament by stealing the blame.” He winked at Hamish, who smiled in turn. “I was always meant to intersect with Luca. It was part of life’s plan. Everyone is threaded together. A tapestry. If I didn’t have Luca, I wouldn’t have his cousin. So I’ll take the trade-off.” Nate sipped a glass of water. “You weren’t really worried about me, were you?” Nate’s eyes were glossy, but they held a bit of their usual twinkle. A tired twinkle.

  “I was a little worried.” He cleared his throat. “About having to pay the entire rent check myself.”

  “Right. So worried about the rent you slid into a horrifically uncomfortable plastic chair and talked my ear off while I was trying to be a good comatose patient?”

  “What can I say?” Hamish kept his voice light. “Times are tough. Are you . . . I never learned . . .”

  “About how crippled I am?”

  “Nate . . . I . . .”

  Nate held up a restraining hand. Then reached for a walking stick, holding it up for Hamish’s inspection.
He still looked tired and his eyes had aged, but he was back to his good humor. There were slight bruises on his cheek and a bandage under his hairline, ensuring the stitches healed properly.

  “Makes me look sophisticated.” Nate gestured to the stick.

  “Is it forever?”

  Nate shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s hope not, huh?”

  “Nate. All of those times you brought work home . . .”

  “I don’t have your cousin Luca’s memory, Hamish. I like paper and files. Keeps me organized. I am my own secretary. Good job at keeping my office clean, by the way. I assume that this is you and Reggie.” He inspected under the blotter and swiped a patch of dust away. “But it became harder and harder when I knew that people were finding ways to sneak around here. Like Errol Parker’s locker. I didn’t have anything so gruesome happen to me, but I have a responsibility to keep the secrets of the neighborhood.”

  Hamish scraped the chair opposite the desk close to its rim. “This is why you started bringing everything home . . .”

  “And keeping it in seemingly disorganized piles all over the house? Yes.” Nate scratched at the edge of the blotter. “I should have told you more, Hamish. It’s not that I didn’t trust you. It’s that I didn’t ever want you to be put on the spot. If you didn’t know, I thought you would be safer. Especially when I understood that your cousin was involved.”

  “I’m not afraid of danger.” Hamish mimicked Winchester Molloy’s gravelly voice.

  Nate laughed. “You aren’t, are you? I created a code system. It took me hours and hours. That is why I was always working. I had a hunch . . . an inkling that something might happen to me. I am lucky to be alive, Hamish, I know that.” He reached into his desk and took out a file. Hal Simpson’s: the fellow from the Old North Church. He slid it across the desk and reached for a pen.

  “So you’re going to show me your code system?” Hamish said lightly.

  Nate passed him the pen. “You’re going to show me my code system. I knew if something happened to me it needed to be left with the person I trust most in all the world.”