Fortune Favors the Dead

by Stephen Spotswood

  “The police will, of course, ask you which bar and the name of the man who supposedly sold you the watch and so forth and so on,” Ms. Pentecost said. “But I think we can dispense with that. If for no other reason than no one would sell a Patek Philippe for twenty dollars.”

  “I don’t know a Patty Phillip from nothing. This guy said he was hard up. Needed the cash.” The whine that had crept into his voice advertised his guilt better than any Broadway marquee.

  “Jonathan Markel was indeed in need of money, Mr. McCloskey. But not so badly as to barter with you.”

  “Who’s Jonathan Markel?”

  “The man you bludgeoned to death and from whose wrist you slipped that watch.”

  “Lady, you’re crazy.”

  “Debatable. I’ve been accused of rampant narcissism, hysteria, deviancy, and a variety of delusional psychoses. But the dirt covering the back of Mr. Markel’s suit coat was no delusion. Dirt that certainly did not come from the alley where his body was found. Nor were the grooves in his skull a delusion. Grooves that I feel confident will match the kind of lead pipe you instructed Will to employ on trespassers.”

  Even through the wall of the shack, I could hear McCloskey breathing. Heavy and panicked.

  As Ms. Pentecost continued, she developed a hitch in her voice. Like her words were catching on something in her throat. I started to wonder just how calm this woman really was.

  “I would have come upon you sooner, but…it was not until yesterday that I was able to examine the clothes Mr. Markel…was wearing that night. This construction site is one of only a…handful between his club and the alley where he was found. Perhaps there was no initial malevolence. Perhaps…after an evening of drinking, Mr. Markel sought a private spot to relieve himself and slipped through the gap in your fence. Mistaking him for a thief, you…hit him. A little…too hard, perhaps? An accident?”

  “Yeah….Yeah, an accident.” It came out in a croaked whisper, like McCloskey was being squeezed. And the squeezer wasn’t finished.

  “But the second and…third strikes were certainly not accidents. Nor was it an accident that you stole his wallet and…watch. Or the subsequent covering up of the crime. These…were not accidents.”

  One of my legs took that moment to cramp. I shifted my crouch, careful to avoid crunching on loose gravel. When I got situated again, there was only silence inside the building. Then the hard click of a gun being cocked.

  “Don’t move, lady.” The thread of panic in McCloskey’s voice had swollen. I could practically hear the pistol shaking in his hand.

  “Mr. McCloskey, this pit you…find yourself in cannot be escaped by…digging deeper. The police have been notified. They are on their way…even as we speak.”

  This was delivered in a slightly chiding tenor, like she was informing a waitress that she’d ordered the tomato soup, not the minestrone.

  Except she was wrong. The cavalry had definitely not been called.

  I don’t know what was said next, because I was busy slipping around to the front of the shack, every muscle tense as I waited for the impending crack of a gunshot. The door to the shack was open. I peered inside.

  McCloskey had his back to me. He had a gun—an ugly, snub-nosed thing—pointed right at her head. I caught him midsentence.

  “—supposed to be here. I come in, find this strange woman snooping around. Maybe you leap at me holding that pipe there. The one you say killed that guy.”

  Ms. Pentecost was sitting just as I’d left her, gloved hands still primly folded across the cane in her lap. I’d have been sweating buckets, but she didn’t betray an ounce of fear. In fact, her eyes were bright with something not too far from joy.

  She gave a brisk shake of the head. “I don’t believe the police will accept that theory, Mr. McCloskey. They are frequently…obstinate, but rarely…stupid.”

  The cane looked sturdy enough—smooth black wood topped with a heavy brass handle. I thought maybe she was thinking of lashing out and surprising him with it. Except I’d had a cousin who got that kind of hitch in her voice. Had a limp, too, though hers was a lot worse. I suspected that leaping up and clubbing a man wasn’t in Lillian Pentecost’s repertoire.

  “Yeah, well—it’ll be your word against mine,” McCloskey sneered. “And you won’t be doing any talking.”

  When I was questioned later—and boy did I get questioned—I said that I didn’t think. I just reacted.

  Except I did think. The circus kept me on because I had quick hands and an even quicker head. So I had a split-second, lightning-flash inner debate.

  The voice in my head arguing the side of running away and letting what happened happen sounded a lot like Darla Delight. Dee-Dee was a former showgirl who did the books for the circus. Very practical woman. When Big Bob Halloway, the owner, would have his semiweekly brilliant idea for a new act, Darla was the one who would calculate the cost and put the kibosh on nine out of every ten brainstorms.

  “Have to think about the costs,” she’d say. “Especially the invisible ones. All those things that might not be on the bill but you end up paying in the long run. They’ll come back and bite your ass.”

  The voice on the other side of my inner debate sounded a lot like my father. He never counted any cost. He just did what he wanted and damned who got hurt. That I listen to his voice more often than not is something I still wrestle with.

  McCloskey muttered something I couldn’t catch. Whatever it was caused Ms. Pentecost to lean forward on the cot, like a dog testing its leash.

  “Who?” she said. “Who told you that?”

  “Ah well,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “In for a penny and all that.” His arm straightened and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  No more debate. I’d made my choice. I was already kneeling down, pulling up the leg of my trousers, and grabbing hold of the hilt of the knife I kept fastened to my calf in a leather sheath.

  Long hours spent with Kalishenko in a hundred dust-choked fields between Boise and Brooklyn made what happened next almost too easy. I stood, and in the same motion brought the knife up and over my head in a long arc.

  I remembered Kalishenko’s words, delivered in a perpetually slurred Russian accent. “You do not throw the blade. You do not throw your arm. You throw your entire body forward. The trick is learning to let go at the precise moment.”

  I threw myself forward and let go at the precise moment.

  The weighted blade hit home with a sickening thud. But instead of a pockmarked wooden target, it buried itself a full three inches into McCloskey’s back. I’d learn later that only the very tip of the blade pierced his heart. It wasn’t much. But it was enough.

  The gun fell from his hand. Ms. Pentecost reached out with her cane and knocked it out of reach. McCloskey stumbled, clawing at the hilt sticking out of his back. Then he collapsed forward, his head clipping the edge of the cot. He gave a last, ugly gurgle before going still and silent.

  Ms. Pentecost knelt by his body. I expected her to check for a pulse. Instead, her hands went to the watch. A few quick twists and the watch face popped open, revealing a small, hidden compartment. Whatever was inside disappeared into her hand, then the inner pocket of her coat, before she clicked the watch face closed.

  “How do you feel?” she asked, standing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. My hands were shaking and my breath was coming quick and shallow. It was a coin flip as to whether I was going to pass out.

  “Can you walk?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Good. I fear we will both…need to go to the station house.”

  “Do we have to?” I asked. “It’s just I’m not too fond of cops.”

  She almost smiled again.

  “They have their purposes. And they do…frown on the casual littering of bodies. But I will be with
you.”

  We began the twelve-block walk through dead-of-night New York City, me keeping my pace slow, both to accommodate my new companion and because I was still feeling a little shaky. The buildings seemed taller, the streets narrower. Everything felt higher and darker and more dangerous.

  Ms. Pentecost laid a hand on my shoulder. She kept it there most of the way to the station house. For some inexplicable reason, it made me feel better. Like she was passing on a little of whatever had kept her even and calm while staring down the barrel of a gun.

  She didn’t thank me for saving her life. Come to think of it, she never has. Though it could be argued she paid me back a hundredfold.

  It wasn’t until years later when somebody suggested I start writing all this down that I was reminded about those invisible costs. They ended up being higher than I would ever have thought possible. I’ve never really tallied them up, though. I guess in writing this I’ll be forced to. I don’t rightly know how the balance sheet will come out. In the red? Or in the black?

  CHAPTER 2

  Ms. Pentecost’s promise to stay by my side lasted all of about ten minutes after we got to the station. We were separated and I was taken to a windowless interview room, where I spent the next several hours being grilled by a rotating cast of intense, florid-faced men in cheap suits.

  I thought about trying out some girlish charm, but I’ve never quite gotten the hang of it. Flirting was also out. I wasn’t dressed for the part, and besides, I had no illusions about my looks. I inherited my father’s puggish nose and muddy brown eyes, and the freckles I got from my mother tend to clump awkwardly across the tops of my cheeks.

  So I opted for the almost-straight truth.

  It started with a pair of sergeants who had me go through the events of the evening forward, backward, and inside-out. I gave them the lot, save for the trick watch, and that wasn’t a load-bearing detail so it was easy enough to subtract.

  Eventually the set of sergeants was replaced by a detective who looked so wet behind the ears I’m surprised they let him carry a gun. He had me go through the night’s events again, this time with a little more focus on everything Ms. Pentecost said about this Jonathan Markel.

  Again, I gave him the lot minus one.

  After an hour, I got promoted again. Another detective—this one sporting a face as hard and cold as a chunk of granite, with a gray and black beard that tumbled wildly down to his Windsor knot. He was a veteran cop, or at least I assumed as much from his age, his demeanor, and the way the baby detective scraped and bowed on his way out of the door. It turns out this bearded giant—he easily cracked six feet—was Lieutenant Lazenby, the detective Ms. Pentecost had name-dropped. If I was under the impression they were friends, he quickly disabused me of that.

  “How much is Pentecost paying you?”

  “When did she set you up with that job?”

  “Did Pentecost plant the gun, or did she make you do it?”

  “Who’s her client?”

  “Did she tell you who really murdered Markel? You let us in on that, and we’ll get the district attorney to cut you a deal.”

  And a lot more along those lines.

  I imagine for anyone who hasn’t had a nose-to-nose with the law this could all seem terrifying. As it happens, being part of a traveling circus that on occasion skirted if not outright trampled civil ordinances, I had long experience sitting in police stations, being pushed around by a grab bag of state troopers and small-town sheriffs. To be honest, those hick sheriffs scared me a lot more than any of these city dicks.

  If Lazenby was expecting to knock me off my story, he was out of luck. Eventually he realized as much, and I was given a statement to sign. After reading through it and making sure nothing had been inserted, I did.

  “Willowjean Parker? That a real name?” he asked after I added my John Hancock.

  “You think if I’m going to forge a moniker I’d stick myself with Willowjean?” I said, trying a charming grin on for size. Apparently it didn’t fit.

  “I don’t know if I believe a word of this,” he said, holding up the statement. “I don’t know if the DA will either. My men and I will be confirming the details. In the meantime, if you think of anything you want to add, you let me know.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What number can I reach you at?”

  It was his turn to grin. Then he promptly ordered me taken down to the holding cells.

  At first the guard was going to put me in the men’s section, but I popped off my cap to reveal my mop of red curls and he quickly hustled me to the other side of the building and the smaller, and fractionally cleaner, women’s section.

  I spent the next three days in that cell with little contact other than the guards. The only exception was early that first morning when I was joined by a trio of girls who got busted at a Chinatown whorehouse. Apparently the owner had missed a payment to a judge and the girls were paying the price. They mistook me for someone in the same line and gave me the name and number of their employer. They explained to me that there was a market for girls who can pass as boys and vice versa. Nothing I hadn’t long ago learned.

  Anyhow, I spent a handful of hours learning the ins and outs of the world’s oldest profession as it’s practiced on the higher end in New York City. By lunchtime, the girls had gotten bailed and I was left alone, save for the bedbugs, which were present in unseen thousands. I scored an old newspaper off a guard and put it down on top of the mattress, hoping to put a barrier between me and the vermin. Still, I figured everything I was wearing would have to be scrubbed, scoured, or outright burned when I got back to Hart and Halloway.

  If I got back.

  The circus was set to leave in three days and I hadn’t heard word one about what was going to happen to me.

  Funny thing, it wasn’t the possibility of getting pegged for murder that preyed most on my mind. It was the look in Lazenby’s eyes when I told him Willowjean Parker was my real name. Because it wasn’t.

  Willowjean was legit enough. Yeah, it wasn’t the most common name, but my mother had given it to me and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. But I’d tossed my last name as soon as I joined the circus. Parker had been stolen from a character in an issue of Black Mask.

  I kept telling myself that tracking down my kin was a hundred-to-one shot. And, besides, what harm could it do? I was a grown woman now. Not the scared little girl who ran away from home all those years ago.

  But sitting in that cell, my anxieties bred fast, and like with the bedbugs, scratching only made it worse. I spent the second night alone. The only light was from a dim bulb far down the corridor. The bravado I’d managed to conjure up and wear like a shield drained away. I pictured the cell door opening and my father stepping in, his face red, leather belt wrapped tight around his fist.

  Found you.

  I squeezed my eyes tight until I was finally able to toss myself into a fitful sleep.

  A little before noon on the third day, the cell door slid open. But no one stepped in. Instead, I was ushered out and escorted upstairs to a different interview room. This one was their deluxe model. It had a window and chairs that didn’t wobble. I was only left alone there for half an hour this time before the door burst open and Dee-Dee barreled in, an avalanche of red-dyed bouffant and jacked-up bosom.

  “Will, baby, I’ve been so worried.” She rushed to hug me but I held her off.

  “Better not,” I told her. “Not before I’ve been deloused.”

  She settled for blowing me a kiss and took a seat across from me at the little interview table.

  “What’s going on, Dee-Dee? I’ve been flying blind for three days.”

  “I’m not sure, honey. I gather the cops have been nailing down details on this Markel murder. But it looks like a sure thing McCloskey killed him. At least that’s what it says in the papers.”

/>   “It’s in the papers?”

  “Front page for two days running,” Dee-Dee said, smiling. “All about how McCloskey might have done things like this before and nobody suspected. How this Pentecost woman did what the police couldn’t. Anyhow, they’re springing you later this afternoon.”

  “Yes!” I pounded the table with a triumphant fist. “I have never been more happy to go back to my lumpy little cot next to the tiger cage.”

  Dee-Dee frowned. It was a look she usually reserved for Big Bob when he had a particularly expensive brainstorm.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “This Pentecost lady came by the grounds yesterday. Sat in Big Bob’s trailer for an hour lobbing questions at him.”

  “About what?”

  “About you. Seems she has a business proposition.”

  I leaned back in my chair, suddenly wary. “What kind of proposition?”

  “Some kind of job. Something long-term. Bob said she wasn’t specific. She convinced him she’s on the level, though. He said you should listen to her.”

  “Bob wants me out?”

  She reached across the table and took my hand.

  “It’s not like that. He just thinks it’s in your best interests. I gotta say I agree.”

  “What are you talking about, Dee?” The circus was the be-all, end-all, alpha and omega for Bob and Dee-Dee. I couldn’t imagine either of them siding against life under the big top.

  “Here’s the deal, sweetie. Traveling shows are on their way out. Audiences are thin on the ground. More competition from amusement parks. The smaller circuses are getting gobbled up by the big ones. You know the story. And it’s only gonna get worse. Better to go out on your own terms than get handed a pink slip.”

  I’d spent the last five years eating, sleeping, breathing the circus. Leaving would be like giving up oxygen.

  “I’m not saying you have to take the offer,” Dee-Dee told me. “I’m just saying listen to her. Weigh the pros and cons with as clear an eye as you can.”

  She stood up.