A Golden Grave

by Erin Lindsey

  “Yes, but I’m afraid I’ve no talent at drawing.”

  “I do, a little.” I couldn’t help blushing as I said it, especially when Thomas threw me a curious look. I’d never shown him any of my sketches. That would have been awkward, considering they were mostly of him. “I’m hoping that between us, we can come up with a sketch that Mr. Wiltshire and I can show around at some of the local saloons. It’s a long shot, but…”

  “It’s a cracking idea, actually.” There was something oddly rueful about the way Thomas said it. Apparently he was still processing, whatever that meant.

  As for Edith, she just shrugged and said, “I’m very happy to try. When shall we get started?”

  “Right away, if you can.”

  She took off her gloves, unpinned her hat, and set them on the sofa. “In that case,” she said, “is there coffee?”

  * * *

  “A little lighter in the brows, I think,” Edith said. “He looks rather more sinister than he did in real life.” She sipped her coffee, even though it must have gone cold ages ago.

  “Sorry.” I grabbed an eraser and took a corner of it to the eyebrows. “I guess I’m letting my feelings influence my memory.”

  “That’s perfectly normal. It even happens to me, if only in dreams. I’ll wake up marveling at how thoroughly my imagination has revised reality.”

  I paused, curiosity getting the better of me. “Do you remember all your dreams?”

  “Down to the last detail.”

  “I can’t imagine what that would be like.”

  “I’ve grown used to it now, but as a child I found it quite upsetting. My dreams made so little sense, I thought I must be mad. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that’s just how dreams work.” She set her cup aside and tilted her head. “Yes, that’s better. And they came to a little peak, just here.”

  Thomas appeared in the doorway. “How is it coming?”

  “We’re nearly done,” I said. “I’m sorry it’s taking so long. I’ve never had to work on a schedule before.”

  He came over to examine the sketch. “Impressive. I don’t recognize the fellow, but he certainly looks like someone.”

  I held it out at arm’s length. “He doesn’t look like a murderer, though, does he?”

  “They rarely do, in my experience.”

  Edith glanced up at him. “Do you have a lot of experience with murderers, Mr. Wiltshire?”

  “More than I would like, Miss Islington,” he said gravely. “Well, I’ll let you ladies get back to it.”

  Edith’s gaze lingered on the doorway after he’d gone. “I suppose that seals it,” she said with a sigh.

  “Seals what?”

  She gave me a guilty-looking smile. “I’ve a confession. I’m afraid I’ve got the most terrible crush on your cousin.”

  I swallowed. “Oh.”

  “I’ve always been a fool for the mysterious type, but now that I know he’s a Pinkerton?” She shook her head. “Doomed.”

  My gaze dropped to the sketch. I started shading along a cheekbone, quite unnecessarily. “Speaking of confessions, Mr. Wiltshire and I aren’t actually related. We’re just partners.” I kept on shading, avoiding Edith’s gaze. Observant as she was, I was afraid she’d read more in my eyes than I wanted her to.

  “I see,” she said, and I wondered if she did. “But you live … here? With him?”

  “Temporarily. Purely for convenience, of course.”

  Well, she didn’t know what to say to that.

  I tried to change the subject. “What about the nose? Do you think it’s too prominent?”

  There was a pause. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I hope it’s all right. I would hate for it to compromise our friendship.”

  “It won’t,” I said, and I hoped that was true. After all, I could hardly fault her taste in men, and it wasn’t as though I had any claim on him. “Mr. Wiltshire and I work very closely together, but as far as I know, he’s romantically unattached.” I brought the sketch up between us like a shield. “What do you think? Is he ready?”

  “Nearly. I’d darken up his eyes a little, and then he’s perfect.”

  “Did you notice anything else distinguishing about him? Scars, maybe?”

  “Not that I saw. Though,” she added with a laugh, “if he’s from Five Points, he’s probably covered in them, isn’t he?”

  I winced inwardly, but my pencil didn’t falter.

  Clara came in a moment later, bearing scones and strawberry preserves. “Mr. Wiltshire thought you all might be hungry,” she said, stealing an appraising glance at Edith as she set the tray down.

  “Thanks, Clara.” I sniffed at the plate appreciatively. “These smell great.”

  “How’s it coming, anyway?”

  I showed her the sketch. “You tell me.”

  “That’s him, huh? Mr. Tall ’n’ Gangly?” She cocked her head. “Don’t look like much, does he?”

  “I tried to make him look more sinister, but Miss Islington wasn’t having it.” I smiled, but Clara didn’t seem to be in much of a mood for joking, because she didn’t crack even a half smile back at me.

  “Anyways,” she said coolly, “Mr. Wiltshire’s in the study when you and Miss Islington are done.”

  There was most definitely a tone there, though I wasn’t sure why.

  Edith must have heard it, too, but like a proper high society lady, she pretended not to notice. “These really do smell wonderful,” she said, reaching for a scone. “So now that you have the sketch, will you make copies?”

  “No time for that, unfortunately. We’ll just have to go door to door, starting with the saloons nearest Wang’s General Store.” I didn’t much fancy the idea. It had been years since I’d set foot in any of the fetid caves that passed for watering holes along Mott Street, and I can’t say I’d missed it. Dark and grimy, smelling of spilled beer and lamp oil and day-old oysters … As a child, they’d seemed like secret places full of adventure, each one a portal to a different world. As an adult, they just made me ill.

  “I don’t envy you the task,” Edith said. “I’ve only been down there once, myself, on a slumming tour.” She shuddered. “Awful. I can’t imagine how those poor people get by.”

  “Sand and pure cussedness,” I said with a faint smile, echoing something my da used to say.

  She gave me a quizzical look, but otherwise let that pass. “You should eat something before you go.”

  “Good advice,” I said, reaching for a scone. “Something tells me I’m about to lose my appetite.”

  CHAPTER 21

  INTERLOPERS AND INVISIBLES—SAND AND CUSSEDNESS—THE LANKY LOOKOUT

  The task proved even more dismal than I’d expected.

  When you live in a place long enough, you stop seeing the things you don’t want to see. They become part of the background, like a trash heap or a pothole or the tangle of electric wires overhead. You know they’re there, but you don’t really see them anymore. Well, I guess it’s like that with people, too. I’d stopped noticing my neighbors: the stargazers, the drunks, the guttersnipes with their threadbare clothing. The jobless men loitering on street corners, or coming home from work streaked with the grime of their toil, digging ditches or shoveling coal or sweeping chimneys. Mostly they’d stopped noticing me, too. But walking up Mott Street with my oh-so-elegant partner, we saw each other all over again, and it was jarring.

  “It’s difficult, isn’t it?” Thomas murmured, gently shooing away the latest clutch of small boys pressing around us with their palms open. “Winter around the corner, and these little ones forced to fend for themselves. One gives to the orphanages and the benevolent societies, but it’s never enough.”

  A trio of men watched us from the hock shop on the corner; I glanced furtively at them as we passed, feeling guilty for reasons I couldn’t fully explain. “The way they’re looking at us…”

  “Like outsiders.�
�

  “Like interlopers. As if we were to blame for their troubles. The waiter looked at Theodore Roosevelt like that.”

  “We were certainly off the mark about him, weren’t we? Our killer, I mean. With his luck, I’d simply assumed he was wealthy, but it seems he belongs to that far rarer breed, the working-class man with luck. And not just any brand of luck either. With abilities like that, he would make an ideal assassin for hire.”

  “Maybe that’s all he is to Price. A hired thug.”

  Thomas hummed skeptically. “After last night, I’m inclined to believe that we overestimated the extent of Price’s involvement. He didn’t react when Miss Islington came to tell me you were in trouble, and as far as I know, he didn’t show much interest in the goings-on around Roosevelt. If he was curious as to the fate of his man, he did a very good job of hiding it. He is certainly funding Tammany’s efforts to keep the matter quiet, but that seems to be the limit of it.”

  We’d crossed Pell by this point, and Thomas paused, eying a set of crooked steps leading down to a cave below the hardware store (the grandly named Crown Saloon, according to the hand-painted sign). “Here’s another. How many more, do you think?”

  “On Mott? Half a dozen or so. It’ll be worse when we head down Mulberry. There must be fifty of them, if you count groceries like Augusto’s.”

  Thomas sighed from the soles of his oxfords. “Very well. Shall we?”

  It went on like this for an hour: the two of us descending into one dive after another, showing our sketch by the sickly yellow light of papered oil lamps, each time to be told that no, they’d never seen him, an observation accompanied as often as not by a jet of tobacco juice or some other gesture designed to show contempt for the nosy intruders.

  “I’m starting to wonder if they’d tell us even if they had seen him,” I muttered as we negotiated our way around the colorful mounds of beans and lentils and cornmeal lining the steps of Constantino’s Grocery.

  Thomas paused at the top of the stairs, gesturing up the street with his walking stick. “Look, it’s Pietro.”

  So it was, in the company of the three roughs I’d seen him with the other day. They were crossing from one side of Mulberry to the other. Making their rounds, I thought sourly, extorting the local businesses for Augusto.

  “Let’s stay out of sight,” I said, hurrying my step. “I don’t want to have to explain what I’m doing down here with you.” And he won’t want to explain us to his new friends. Before Thomas could let his gentlemanly instincts get the better of him, I ducked into yet another saloon, the floor of which was so generously coated with sawdust that it was like walking through a blanket of fresh snow—if the snow smelled of stale beer and tobacco, with just a hint of human urine.

  Pausing to let my eyes adjust to the gloom, I took in the long, narrow space. Only two patrons stood at the bar, both of them eying me curiously, ladies being about as common as leprechauns in a place like this. I walked over to the iron stove and pretended to warm my hands.

  Thomas, meanwhile, approached the barkeep with the sketch. I couldn’t hear the murmured exchange, but the barman shook his head, at which point Thomas turned to the patrons. They shook their heads, too, but not before I saw one of them nudge the other with his boot. Thomas wouldn’t have seen it from his vantage, but from where I stood, it was plain as day.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said, sidling up to them, “I couldn’t help but overhear, and I must say I think you’re being very rude. My friend here asked you a direct question and you went and lied to his face.”

  Thomas glanced at me briefly, but we’d worked together long enough for him to trust me on such things. “Perhaps it’s the light in here,” he said, grabbing a lamp. “Would you care to have another look? There’s a dollar in it for the fellow who knows him.”

  One of the men snorted into his beer. “Will you look at this Jack Dandy? You can keep your dollar, mister.”

  “Think we don’t know a Pinkerton when we see one?” the barkeep added. “You ain’t gonna find a nose around here, so why don’t you head on back up them stairs?”

  The third man, though, the one who’d done the kicking under the bar, didn’t look so sure. “How about you, sir?” I asked him. “A dollar and a bottle of gin?”

  “Lady, that sumbitch owes me a lot more ’n that. I give him to you, he ain’t never gonna pay it.”

  “Why don’t you shut your rat trap, Wilson?” the barkeep snapped.

  Thomas leaned against the bar, placing himself between the barkeep and the man called Wilson. “A debt, is it? Cards, I presume?”

  “Ain’t no concern of yours, mister.”

  “Fair enough. And if I offered to purchase the debt outright?”

  Wilson blinked; even his companion looked interested now. He hesitated for a moment, eying Thomas cagily. “It’s ten dollars,” he said.

  Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Rather a princely sum for a fellow of your circumstances.”

  The barman, meanwhile, was slowly turning an ugly shade of purple. “Goddamn it, Wilson, what the hell you doing?”

  “Getting my money, is what. I got better things to do than sit around your joint all day waiting for that soda jerker to pay up. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your rat trap and maybe get a bit of this chink I’m about to make.”

  “Pinkerton money,” the barkeep sneered. “You can keep it.”

  “Damn sure will, and spend it someplace else, you ornery sumbitch.” To Thomas, he said, “His name’s Jack Foster. Used to come in here all the time.”

  “Used to,” I said. “Not anymore?”

  “Not since he started working at that fancy hotel. Too good for us now.”

  “Still visits his mama now and then, though,” his companion put in, apparently feeling helpful now that there was real chink in the offing. “She lives just down the way, corner of Park and Mulberry. That place above the laundry.”

  “He was s’posed to come by here first thing in the morning to pay up,” Wilson said, “but he seems to have overlooked the engagement.” He swigged the last dregs of his beer and inclined his head at the bar. “Now about that ten dollars.” Thomas produced the funds, at which point the man added, “and another for that bottle of gin the lady promised.”

  “One really must commend the entrepreneurial spirit,” Thomas said dryly as we mounted the steps.

  Sand and cussedness, I thought, amused despite myself. “Do you suppose that’s the joint where the incident happened? The one with the fellow Mr. Wang treated?”

  Thomas tapped his walking stick against his once-shiny oxfords, knocking the sawdust free. “It’s certainly possible. We’re only just around the corner from Wang’s.”

  “Closer, even, if they cut through the alley by Augusto’s.”

  “And the mother lives just down the street, which suggests that our Mr. Foster grew up in the area. I wonder how many of your neighbors he’s murdered in his lifetime?”

  “No one would ever know, would they, the way his luck works? On the other hand, who’s to say he’s killed anyone before now? He obviously places some value on human life.”

  Thomas tilted his head. “What makes you say so?”

  “He could have killed me if he’d wanted to, I’m sure of it. And then there’s this Wilson fellow. Why pay your debts, or even lie about intending to pay your debts, if you could quietly take care of your creditors without anyone being the wiser?”

  “A good point,” said Thomas. “The mere fact that he owes money at all is interesting. A contract killer with his abilities would presumably be flush with funds, unless he happened to be afflicted with one of the more expensive vices.”

  “Can’t afford to settle a ten-dollar debt and hesitates to kill. He doesn’t sound like a professional assassin, does he?”

  “Not especially, but we won’t know for certain until we catch him.”

  I inclined my head in the direction of Mrs. Foster’s flat. “I know the building they�
��re talking about. There’ll be at least twenty apartments, maybe more. Do we knock on every door or just ask one of the neighbors?”

  “Neither. I’d prefer to keep an eye on the comings and goings for a little while first.”

  “I thought we were in a hurry.”

  “There’s little point in haste if it comes at the expense of our objective. Knocking on doors risks arousing suspicion. But if we watch the building for a time, one of the residents will eventually emerge, at which point we can ask which apartment is Mrs. Foster’s. Much more discreet than canvassing the building.”

  “Clever,” I said as we started down Mulberry.

  “We’ll be near Tesla’s lab. We can take the opportunity to get that watch of yours fixed. Do you still have it with you? You can drop it off and meet me outside Mrs. Foster’s building.”

  “Leave you alone? What if someone comes out while I’m gone?”

  “I’ll find out which apartment is hers and wait for you to return. Don’t worry, you won’t miss a thing.”

  I didn’t much like the idea, but I couldn’t deny that it made sense. The inventor’s lab was only two blocks away, and since we’d lost our suspect, chances were good I’d be needing that luck meter again. So we parted ways at the foot of Mulberry Street, Thomas turning left for the Chinese laundry while I turned right for Chatham Square.

  Mr. Tesla lit up when he found me at his door, touching my shoulder in what I sensed was, for him, an unusually intimate gesture. “I’m so glad to see you well, my friend. The fellow who telephoned last night said you were taken very ill.”

  I couldn’t suppress a shudder. “The killer was at the event last night. He attacked me. His luck set my heart racing, and…” Sheepishly, I handed over the watch. “Well, it also seems to have overloaded your luck meter.”

  “Overloaded?” He took it with a puzzled expression.

  “When he touched me, it sent a jolt through my whole body, almost as if it were electricity. After that, the watch stopped working.”

  The inventor headed for his workbench. “If it was indeed an electric shock of sufficient voltage, that would explain it. The innards were carefully calibrated to receive wireless electricity at a specific frequency.” Selecting a tiny screwdriver, he removed the back of the watch. “Now let us … yes, I see…” He poked around for a minute or two before pronouncing it fixable. “If you have time, I can complete the work in half an hour or so, once I obtain the part I require.”