Fortune Favors the Dead

by Stephen Spotswood

  “Now, I don’t care what you’re infested with, I want a hug.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and did her best to crack a rib.

  “You end up saying yes, and it turns out this Pentecost broad has a screw loose or maybe she’s one of those types with a secret twist, you come running back. Got it?”

  “Got it, Dee.”

  “Love you, Will. You watch yourself.” With that, she walked out.

  A few minutes later, a guard I hadn’t seen before escorted me from the interview room, down a maze of halls, and out a back door. A jet-black Cadillac sedan was waiting for me. The driver was an older woman whose bulk barely fit behind the wheel. She looked like the love child of a sideshow strongman and a warden at a women’s prison.

  “You the one calls herself Will Parker?” she asked, her Scottish accent scouring off a layer of skin.

  “I’m the one calls myself that.”

  “I’m to take you to Ms. Pentecost,” she brogued. “In the back with you. I’ve put down a sheet. No telling what you picked up after three days in that hellhole.”

  I got in the back, careful to keep from touching any uncovered surface. I was taken on a bumpy, swerving course, with my driver slamming on the brakes whenever a pedestrian even glanced her way. We headed across the Brooklyn Bridge and into one of the nicer neighborhoods of that particular borough.

  The car stopped in front of a three-story brownstone separated on either side from its neighbors by narrow, gated alleys. The woman escorted me inside, then down a short hallway lined with padded benches. I went past what looked like a well-apportioned office and up a flight of stairs to the second floor, where she took me to a small bedroom with an attached bath. A pile of clothes I recognized as my own was sitting folded on the bed.

  “Ms. Pentecost took the liberty of retrieving some of your things. There’s soap and whatnot in the bathroom. Wash up good and when you’re done Ms. Pentecost will see you down in her office. You leave what you’re wearing in the bathroom and I’ll see everything gets a good washing.”

  “I think your best bet is a good burning.”

  She gave a snort I figured for her version of a chuckle, then left me to my bathing.

  This was the first time I’d ever had use of a proper shower. I turned the spigots to scalding and stayed under there until the hot water finally gave up the ghost. I spent a few minutes brushing out my hair, which had gotten marvelously knotted after three days tucked under my cap. Then I slipped into my clean clothes—another blue denim work shirt, my second-best boots, and a pair of brown corduroy overalls I’d bought off the rack in the boys’ section and that fit like a glove. Not exactly attire for a job interview if that was what this was, but it would have to do.

  I made my way downstairs and into the office I’d passed on my way in. It was surprisingly large and must have taken up half of the first floor. Massive bookshelves ran the length of two of the walls. They were packed to bursting with the kinds of books that tended toward leather-bound and likely boring. I preferred the kind that came with paper covers and lurid pictures of gun-toting molls. To be honest, I still do.

  Where there weren’t bookshelves, the walls were done in wallpaper—a pleasant shade of yellow with tiny blue poppies. There was a massive oak desk at the far end and a smaller one with a typewriter against the wall to the right. The room was illuminated by standing lamps stationed in the corners, as well as a pair of lamps with frosted green shades on each desk.

  Above the big desk was an oil painting as wide as I was tall of a gnarled tree standing in the middle of an empty, yellow field. I thought it was an ominous kind of picture to have looming over your shoulder.

  Arranged in a loose semicircle was a collection of armchairs upholstered in the same light yellow as the wallpaper. The chairs looked practical rather than decorative, and their arrangement suggested regular gatherings of people whose attention was focused on whoever was planted in the seat of honor.

  I sat in the largest of these chairs and waited. A small, ornate clock mounted on the wall ticked away the minutes.

  Staring up at the painting I noticed a detail I hadn’t before—a woman in a cornflower-blue dress sitting cross-legged in the shade of the tree. I was leaning forward for a closer look when the door opened and Ms. Pentecost strode in.

  She was dressed as she had been three nights ago—three-piece suit that was definitely tailored for a woman, complete with a red silk four-in-hand tie. Illuminated by the room’s warm lamplight, I could make out details I hadn’t before. She was forty-five, maybe a little younger. She had thick cheekbones that rode high enough they threatened to intrude onto her eyes, a wide mouth, and a too-sharp chin. All of it set around a nose that wasn’t quite a hook but had aspirations.

  Her hair was the kind of dark chestnut most women get out of a bottle, but I was pretty sure hers was natural. A streak of iron gray traveled up from the center of her deeply lined brow and lost itself in the labyrinth of her braided bun. She carried her cane but barely leaned on it.

  “I trust you’ve had the opportunity to wash,” she said, planting herself in the leather swivel chair behind her desk.

  “I have, thanks.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Nothing since what they brought me for dinner yesterday,” I told her. “Bologna and cheese. At least I think it was bologna. I didn’t look too close.”

  She scrunched up her nose in disgust.

  “Mrs. Campbell is fixing lunch now,” she said. “Cornish hen. In this house we like our meat identifiable.”

  “Sounds good to me.” An understatement. After three days of jail food and five years of circus chow, Cornish hen sounded more like a fantasy than a meal.

  “Other than the de facto starvation, I hope your treatment by the police was not too egregious.”

  I’d never encountered the words “de facto” and “egregious” in casual conversation, but I managed to translate.

  “There was a lot of shouting, finger-pointing, and calling me a dirty, rotten liar,” I said. “But they kept their billy clubs tucked away.”

  She nodded. “Good. I apologize for the delay in your release. There were bureaucratic snags, or at least that’s what my attorney was told.”

  “Yeah, I think they were hoping I’d crack and tell them you planned the whole thing. Whatever ‘the whole thing’ was.”

  Her hand came up like she was swatting away a fly. “The police sometimes have fancies. They have not learned the lesson that correlation does not equal causation.”

  My inner translator failed. “What’s that again?”

  “Just because they find me embroiled in the unraveling of a crime, it does not mean that I’m responsible for the crime. Quite the contrary. Though in this case, they have at least half a point, as my arrival did directly lead to Mr. McCloskey’s death.”

  I considered that logic for a couple beats. “A guy like that, someone who bashes a man’s brains in for his watch and wallet, he’s gonna end up in jail or in the ground eventually. No fault of yours.”

  A slow, satisfied nod. “A very pragmatic philosophy. Perhaps a little too grimly optimistic.”

  “Okay, yeah. Right,” I said, making like I knew what she meant. “So…what’s the pitch?”

  “The pitch?”

  “Dee-Dee said you had an offer. That I should give it a long think before brushing you off.”

  “What do you know about me and my work?” she asked.

  You’ve got to take something into account. The previous five years of my life had been spent crisscrossing a big swath of the country, cooped up in trailers and truck beds, and pursuing a rather unique education. That education definitely did not include the regular consumption of New York’s newspapers.

  If you’re thinking: How could this girl not know who Lillian Pentecost is? The most famo
us woman detective in the city and possibly the country. The woman who tracked down the murderer of Earl Rockefeller. Who discovered the identity of the Brooklyn Butcher. Who Eleanor Roosevelt herself turned to when someone tried to put the squeeze on.

  All I can say is this: I can pick a lock blindfolded, walk a wire twenty feet in the air without a net, and wrestle a man twice my size into submission. How about you?

  To her I said, “All I know about your game is what I picked up from the police. You’re some kind of private dick.”

  “A private investigator, yes.”

  “And people pay you to solve things the police have miffed.”

  “I generally take cases the police have been unable to solve or, for whatever reason, are unwilling to invest time and effort in.”

  “Like this guy Markel?”

  “That was unusual. Markel was an acquaintance, so there was a personal element.”

  She glanced away at that. Not quite a tell, but close. I noted for the first time that there was something off with one of her eyes—the left one. It wasn’t quite the same shade of gray-blue as the right. It looked just a little flat—like it was reflecting the light differently. I’d find out later that it was made of glass. She’d had several made over the years and none had managed to get the color quite right.

  “So what’s this got to do with me?” I asked.

  “As you might have noticed, I have certain physical limitations.”

  “Yeah, I picked that up. Sclerosis, right?”

  “Multiple sclerosis. That’s very perceptive.”

  “I had a cousin. She was a lot worse off than you, though.” That was an understatement. Last I saw her, Laura had been spending more time in her bed than on her feet.

  Ms. P nodded grimly. “Yes, I’m told by my physicians that my symptoms are progressing slower than most.” She shot a baleful look at the cane propped against her desk. “However, they are progressing.”

  A glimmer of what could have been rage flickered in her good eye. She took a deep breath and a long exhale and the glimmer was extinguished.

  “My profession is a stressful one, and can be physically and mentally taxing. Unfortunately, these things exacerbate my condition. This means I find myself frequently too exhausted to answer letters, arrange interviews, and otherwise deal with the more mundane aspects of my job. Mrs. Campbell is an excellent cook and housekeeper, but her skills otherwise are limited. And, to be frank, her imagination has long-ingrained limits.”

  “So you want to hire me to be, what?” I asked. “A secretary? Because I can’t type and I don’t own any pencil skirts.”

  “More an assistant than secretary,” she said. “While you would handle the day-to-day business of running the office, you would not be confined to it. As you discovered the other night, a certain amount of legwork is required, though rarely does it result in bloodshed. As for the office-management portion of the job, I feel confident you can learn to type. From what Mr. Halloway told me, you have a sharp mind and are proficient at picking up new skills quickly.

  “And as for the dress code,” she continued, “I see no reason you cannot wear what you wish within the confines of propriety. I prefer suits, myself. I’ve found the abundance of pockets to be quite useful. In exchange, you’d be provided room and board, as well as expenses for any training I’d require of you. You would also be given a salary, paid every two weeks.”

  She quoted a number that nearly sent my poker face packing. Just one of those checks would be more cash than I’d ever had in hand in my life. Still, in order to cash that check, I’d have to cut ties with everything I’d known since I left home. My friends. My family. My world. To come work for a woman I barely knew.

  “Why me?” I asked. “If this is because of what I did the other night, you could slip me a few bucks now and call it even. There’s got to be better people you could get. People who actually know how to do the things you want done.”

  She took a full ten seconds to respond. She doesn’t like to be scattershot with her words, and has a tendency to make people wait while she sits stone-faced, mulling over an answer.

  “You might be correct,” she finally said. “But I’ve learned to trust my instincts. Seeing firsthand your powers of observation and of action, and hearing about your particular set of skills and your capacity to learn, I think you might be exactly who I’m looking for.”

  Basically, yeah, there were better people for the job, but I could catch up. The deal sounded good, but not quite too good to be true. Still, there was the thing with the watch. I just couldn’t let it go.

  “I appreciate the offer,” I said. “But I’ve got to ask…Are you a spy or something? There aren’t many lines I won’t hopscotch over, but signing on with a Nazi is definitely one of them.”

  She arched an inquisitive eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

  “The thing with the trick watch. Didn’t seem like the kind of piece you’d hide blow in. And gems are out. You’d want to hide those in something people wouldn’t want to steal. I figured it was some kind of message.”

  Her look confirmed that was exactly what it was.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I didn’t tip that to the cops. I figured what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. But I don’t want that coming back to bite me, you know?”

  Another long silence.

  “I am not a spy, Nazi or otherwise. Nor was Mr. Markel,” she said. “Though there was a message contained in the watch, it was of a personal nature.”

  “Oh.”

  She shook her head. “Not that kind of personal.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed that but let it go.

  “Did it have anything to do with what McCloskey said at the end?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said something I didn’t catch. You got all excited. Asked him, ‘Who told you that?’ ”

  She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Like she’d just realized she wasn’t quite sure what breed of dog she’d brought home from the pound. She took a deep breath and twisted her fingers together, a rare nervous habit.

  “If you were to take this position, I would bring you into my confidence in nearly all of my investigations. To do otherwise would be impractical. But you would have to be resigned to the fact that I won’t share everything with you. There are certain cases—ones I have been engaged in for several years, and which involve an element of danger—that I am unwilling to expose you to. Do you understand?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Every performer I ever worked with held something back. Usually their best gag.”

  “Gag?”

  “Gag. Trick. Gimmick.”

  She nodded approvingly at the analogy.

  “I understand it’s an offer that requires a certain leap of faith,” she said. “I cannot promise that you will be happy. Happiness is, I’ve found, an elusive thing. But I think I can promise you will find the work interesting.”

  “Do I have to answer right now?”

  “Of course not. Please take the day.” She came out from around her desk and retrieved a package from a side table. “While I was leaving the circus grounds I was stopped by a Mr. Kalishenko. He asked that I give you this.”

  She handed me the package. It was heavy and small, wrapped in brown paper and twine and with a sealed envelope taped to one side.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen seeing about lunch.”

  When she was gone, I opened the envelope. I’d never seen Kalishenko’s handwriting, but it was exactly as I’d imagined—cramped and elegant but somehow slurred. No Russian accent, but I couldn’t help but read it in one.

  My dear Will,

  You told me once that you consider the circus your chosen family. I think you know, having left my family behind in the steppes, that I feel much the same way. But for the young, families
should not be things you cling to. They should be something that helps propel you to new heights. The trick, you see, is knowing when to let go.

  Your friend forever,

  Valentin Kalishenko, Dancer of Blades, Master of Fire, Last and Final Heir of Rasputin

  PS: I heard that the commissariat would not return your blade. I hope you will find these a suitable replacement. I also hope you will never have to use them in such a manner again. However, hopes are fragile and the world is hard. You should walk into it prepared.

  I unwrapped the package and found not one but a whole set of throwing knives. Unlike the one I’d left in McCloskey’s back, each of these had a wooden handle, worn smooth with oil and long use. These were some of Kalishenko’s originals—taken with him from Russia when he fled the fallout of the revolution. They were the best going-away present I could have imagined.

  Then it hit me. He assumed I really was going away. In his mind, I’d already said yes.

  For the first time in years, I started to cry. Just for a moment. Then it passed and I wiped my tears away. I put the letter and the knives on the smaller desk.

  My desk now, I figured.

  The first time I left home, I ran as fast as I could. This time, I needed a little shove. But there’s no sense arguing with an heir to Rasputin.

  I walked into the kitchen to see what was cooking.

  CHAPTER 3

  Three years passed.

  Enough happened during that time to fill a dozen books. And if you’re wondering why I’m not starting there—with the first case Ms. P and I ever worked together—it’s because I don’t know how this is going to go.

  It’s possible I’ll type “The End” and never want to hit another key again.

  So if I’m only going to tell one story, it might as well be the Collins murder. In a lot of ways that was a threshold moment for both of us. It set a lot of dominoes falling and left me with more than a few scars, physical and otherwise.

  But first, I realize up to this point I’ve been a little cagey about my biography. That won’t do. Not if I want you to understand everything that follows. Here are the essentials.