The Paragon Hotel

by Lyndsay Faye

  “I met Catrin on the ship from Europe.” The Spider turned to face me, resting his lean body against the wrought iron. “I don’t suppose, knowing her, that she ever told you anything about me? The past is a foreign country, so far as Catrin is concerned. I was in second class, and your mother was in steerage, but I caught a glimpse of her on the promenade just after a vicious squall that had everyone prostrate in their bunks—supposing they’d bought bunks—and the air was sparkling that morning, electric. She’d snuck onto the deck and was staring out over the waves, and there was . . . a calm about her, and a beauty, unlike anything I’d ever seen.”

  Nodding, I brushed my index finger over the pigeon’s quavering head. Mum was nothing if not beautiful. And calm.

  “The ship’s captain married us. I was poor, and she was poorer. But I was also enchanted, and afraid, and alone, and she was . . . amenable?”

  “Things happen to people.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Mum says things happen to people.” I focused on the pleasantly rough avian feet gripping my hand. “You happened to her, so she said yes. Like later, you happened to me.”

  Smiling, Mr. Salvatici shook his head. “Catrin to the letter. And therein lay the problem, you see. I very quickly realized that I’d foolishly tied myself to a woman content to drift wherever life took her. Did you know that she won her berth to America in a card game, in a bawdy house where she plied her trade in Cardiff? Oh, yes. She held that ticket, mulled it over, and decided, why not? I thought she would steady me, ravenous striver that I was, but soon after I’d married her, it was clear that we would become a misery to each other. We parted ways a week after landing in New York.”

  “You mean you left her.”

  “My dear young lady, she didn’t need me.” Mr. Salvatici’s high brow furrowed sympathetically. “Not before she met me, and not after.”

  He was right. She’d never really needed anyone.

  Not even her daughter.

  “Then she met my father,” I continued with a catch in my voice. “And he called her bella, and I think she may have loved him because she’s never told me his name, and I was born. And then you came back.”

  “I’d been working like a fiend—forming connections in Hell’s Kitchen, watching the Corleonesi spread like an infection.” He propped his elbow against his wrist. “Growing powerful enough to make a difference. When I considered branching uptown to Little Italy, I started taking long walks—just soaking it in, the Raines law hotels and tenements and street vendors. One day I saw Catrin again, and. Couldn’t look away. We’d never suit each other, but instead of evading her, I planted myself in her path. When your mother nearly ran into me, she set her hands on her hips, laughed, and invited me back to the Step Right.”

  This brought the specter of a smile to my face.

  Of course she did.

  “Which is where I learned about you,” he added.

  Swallowing, I let the pigeon pass from one of my hands to the other, back and forth. I thought of the day I was shot at the Tobacco Club, of my guardian’s words just before he killed the little brown bird.

  People will do practically anything for you, just so long as they believe they’re on the right side.

  “You were ferocious when I first saw you,” he said wistfully. “Screaming at one of Catrin’s johns to give you back your favorite handkerchief. As you grew older, you grew less visible, but never less alive. And you were always watching.”

  “And you felt alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you took me.”

  “Not precisely,” he corrected, sipping his drink.

  “You killed three people.” My knuckles were crushed against my mouth, the pigeon cupped against my chest. “No, it was four. You killed Nicolo, that day. The person he was died.”

  “It’s natural for you to think so.” Mr. Salvatici inclined his head. “I admit, I didn’t expect the results to prove so drastic. Rebellion, open defiance? Rage, even? I hoped for that. Did I expect this . . . twisted mechanism of a person to be born? No.”

  “How could you,” I whispered. “No—don’t answer that. You were telling a story.”

  The dash of his lips tilted.

  “You wanted a world where people fought back against the unspeakable, so you did something unspeakable to make them fight.”

  He lifted one shoulder. “When my father’s torso was slit from his breastbone to his cock by the Family, and he was left to rot in our vineyard, it was the crows’ screeching that led us to him. He’d been crawling for the house with his entrails in one hand. I’m happy to tell you he didn’t get very far. The event became a source of . . . motivation for me. As far as the Benenati family is concerned, I admit I needed a catalyst. But I am sorry all the same, my dear young lady.”

  We were silent for a spell. Just the bird nipping my sweater, and the delicate scrolled rail, and the memory of Harry Chipchase begging that Nicolo kill him rather than leave him to the mercy of my guardian.

  Just don’t turn me over to the boss. I’s seen what he can do.

  Mr. Salvatici cleared his throat. “The Veuve Clicquot was a conciliatory gesture, but it was also a celebratory one. While you were at the Cabin, I traced the missing counterfeit. It was stolen by a police captain with a certain enthusiasm for gambling, and luckily for us he indulges at our faro palace on a Hundred and Tenth. When he showed up far more flush than usual, I was notified—oh, he’s quite all right, I simply removed it from his keeping and elicited a promise to think of us fondly in future, considering what we know about him. He hadn’t spent much yet. There’s approximately fifty thousand dollars in immaculate bills in my bedroom safe. I’m quite admiring of the craftsmanship. The cops only seized it in the first place as part of a liquor raid.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Don’t sound like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “All right, forgive me, you’re . . . tired, overwhelmed. Perhaps even bitter. But because I want you to invest it.”

  Raising my eyes in astonishment, I sat dumbstruck as the bird flapped out of my hands and landed on a metal curl beside my guardian.

  “In a saloon, a casino, a racetrack, anything that interests you. Nobody, it’s never been formalized, but you are my heir.” His blue eyes were nearly imploring. “We can . . . make it official if you like, you can consider that later, but—”

  Footsteps clanging up the stairs made us pause, and the pigeon fluttered to the peak of the dovecote. Mr. Salvatici’s hand strayed toward his gun.

  I waited too long, I thought desperately. And now—

  Sadie burst onto the roof, dressed to go out in a creamy velvet shift, with seed pearls worked into her coronet of hair. Panting, she rested one hand against the doorframe. It held a slip of paper.

  “Nobody!” she called. “Heaven’s sake, the hotel’s been looking for you this past half hour. A street kid delivered this, said it was an emergency.”

  I had it in my hands seconds later, as Mr. Salvatici went to coax his anxious pigeon from its roost. When I’d read it, a moan escaped me, the sort that all wounded creatures make without intending to.

  No, please. Please not that.

  “Nobody, what’s the matter?” Sadie exclaimed, touching my arm.

  Latching the cage, Mr. Salvatici thrust out a hand. “Let me see that.”

  “No.” Faltering, I crushed it in my fist and shoved it in my pocket with the rabbit’s foot. “No, this . . . this is my trouble.”

  My heart pulsed in syncopated beats, champagne starbursts clouding my vision.

  Anything but that.

  “My dear young lady—”

  “He knows,” I gasped, coming back to myself. “Oh, God. Mr. Salvatici—I ought to have told you that first, but he, Harry Chipchase, learned what really happened to Mr. Benenati long ago
from another crooked cop, and so now Nicolo knows too.”

  “He what?” Mr. Salvatici exclaimed.

  “You have to prepare, ready yourself for whatever he means to do. I’m so sorry, but I have to go.”

  “Go where? And how could—”

  “Harry spilled and Nicolo believed him. I’m—I’m helping to fix it. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Nobody? Nobody!” Mr. Salvatici shouted. “Come back!”

  I was halfway down the stairs when I heard him cry, “Alice!” I stopped to close my eyes against the pain of it.

  And then kept running.

  * * *

  —

  The door of the Murder Stable groaned, the dangling chain scraping the stones as if clawing to get away. Water dripped from the rooftop cistern. A horse snuffled, shifting uneasily. My feet were silent on the loose wisps of straw, and I shouldn’t have been able to see them, it ought to have been black as pitch in there, but a world away down the aisle of that sickening corrugated barn, an entire city block distant, a lamp shone, illuminating one thin upright shadow and a shapeless mass beside it.

  Nobody the saltwater stray had disappeared with my cap. So it was only me, whoever that was, crossing that monstrous distance to find Nicolo standing in an empty stall with a long knife in his hand, and Rye bound helpless and shaking to a chair.

  “Darlin’, you run!” he croaked. It wasn’t panic making Rye tremble—he’d been after a fix-up, and been interrupted. “Right this second. Get—”

  The back of Nicolo’s free hand met Rye’s cheek in an explosion, sent his head dropping limply to his breast, and I leaped forward. Stopped when I found the knife aimed at my eye.

  “I knew that would get your attention.” Nicolo’s familiar face sliced toward me, the profile of a sleek, carnivorous bird. “Actually, I thought you’d arrive sooner—but no, I see you ran all the way; it must have taken them a little while to find you. That’s all right. You’re here now.”

  “Nicolo.” My voice quavered. I dropped every pretense from false defiance to blank passivity. “What are we doing here?”

  “I sent for you.”

  Squeezing my fist around the message in my pocket, I nodded.

  Your dancer friend lost his way. Come to the Murder Stable alone and unarmed, and we’ll see whether we can get him safe home.

  “I never carry a weapon,” I said.

  “Just being careful. You might have decided to start tonight.”

  “Nicolo, for God’s sake, why would I do that?”

  “Because you and your precious Spider butchered my father and then stuffed him in a barrel!” he roared.

  The knife flashed golden in the sallow light. I flinched away.

  “Oh, Nicolo, I didn’t know!” I cried. “We all loved your father, I just found out tonight, I swear to you.”

  “Tonight?” The snarl on his face belonged on a wounded panther. “Why tonight, the same night I did? Why—oh,” he realized. “You were there, is that it? At the Cabin. When I was giving Harry the third degree. You were spying for Salvatici, weren’t you? For the man who destroyed my family. And now you’re trying to mop up his mess for him. Nobody the cobweb. Nobody the dust on the shelf. Nobody my little fucking mouse.”

  He inched closer, and I took a step back.

  “I’m still your topolina. Nicolo—”

  “Two Corleonesi filleted behind my house. Then my father is slaughtered, he is mutilated, Alicia, in public, and do you come stay with my mother and me, or even, God forbid, go back to the Step Right? No. You take up with a complete stranger, fall in with him entirely, I never see you anymore, you were thick as thieves from the beginning, and you expect me to believe you knew nothing about what he did? When you went to live with him the day my father died?”

  “Yes, before tonight I—”

  “Do you know why we’re here, Alicia?”

  “No. But I want to leave, Nicolo, we should—”

  “This is where I had to talk to you. This is where it makes sense. There were a couple of the Clutch Hand’s scurmi fituzzi slinking around when I arrived, but you can bet I sent them running with their tails between their legs.” Nicolo’s eyes slid to his knife blade. “Here’s where I kissed you. Once. You remember that, topolina?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “But never again, did I?” He pushed his hand through thick black hair, grimacing. “Just the one time. Keeping you safe. That’s all I was thinking about, when I . . . with the horse. You and my mother. I had to get stronger, Alicia, I had to be more dangerous than them, and this?” he shouted. The knife swung, full of thwarted spite, in the unconscious Rye’s direction. “This pathetic garbage sack of a man, oh, I’ll admit he was something to look at once, quick too, I could forgive him for touching you since he saved you from a shootout, but you kissed him in front of the Hotel Arcadia, I was heading there to confront you before I stuff Mauro Salvatici in a fucking barrel, and you . . . you kissed him.”

  “Nicolo, please, I—”

  “Stop saying my name like you used to! Christ.” Nicolo was shattering, all the icy edges crackling with fissures, and he didn’t listen to me anymore, so all I could do was watch. “I am going to kill your guardian, Alicia, but before I do that, tell me whether I need to kill this colored boy too.”

  “No! He’s never hurt you, never touched me, we’re only—”

  “He might have carried you out of the Tobacco Club, but I brought you Sammy the Saint, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. I never—”

  “You think I’m some kind of ogre, don’t you?” Nicolo spat onto the flat of his weapon, polishing it with his sleeve. “You didn’t like my gift. That’s a shame—I worked so hard on it too. What can your dancer friend give you now?”

  “Just let him go.”

  “I loved you.” He choked, covering his mouth with his wrist. “I still do. You knew who really sliced Dad up, and I still do. But you want this skeleton, this scarecrow?”

  “No.”

  “When you kissed him, what did he taste like? Pavement? You want me to start sleeping rough, develop a taste for Bayer?”

  “Stop it!”

  “You must miss him, not living at the hotel anymore. Was he easier to sleep with that way?”

  “No, it’s just, he was the star of the Tobacco Club, he was special, and Mr. Salvatici—”

  The knife was under my nose. I fogged it as I breathed old blood and clean manure.

  In and out. In and out.

  “Still working for him, then.” Nicolo’s furious expression chilled to one of utter contempt. “Jesus. And you want to try to keep selling me the line you didn’t know about my father? You’re the Spider’s girl to the last. Say that name again and I will slit your throat so fast you won’t even know you’re dead.”

  “Step away from her before I plugs you square in the skull, you hear?”

  We turned, eyes blown wide in the dim.

  Harry Chipchase advanced, a Smith & Wesson with which I was very familiar raised high. His outline was vague and his cockeyed nose lost in shadow. But it was Harry all right, from vulgar grammar to shuffling stride.

  Nicolo hissed, edging backward.

  “Hey, kid, everything kosher with you?” Harry called.

  “As pickles,” I managed. “We were just—”

  “I said to come alone, Alicia,” Nicolo grated. “But you can’t even do me that tiny courtesy?”

  “But I didn’t bring anyone. Tell him, Harry!”

  “Same as you knew nothing about my father’s death.”

  Harry was only thirty feet away by now, and drawing closer. “That’s right. She didn’t know nothing. Let her be. And put that toothpick of yours on the ground.”

  “You might’ve at least brought your guardian in the flesh,” Nicolo observed. “Him I could ha
ve carved up with pleasure, but it’s none of this fool’s goddamn business.”

  “Alice is always my business.” Harry’s voice scraped, but his hand was steady. “And it ain’t just on accountta I works for the same boss. Me and Alice is chums, capisce?”

  “Yes. I remember what that was like.”

  “So on my way to make nice to Mr. S., I sees her running through the lobby of the Hotel Arcadia in one of her getups, and Alice never runs, so whaddya think old Harry Chipchase does? I follows her, that’s what. Respectful like. Not meaning no disruption to her business, giving her privacy, but listening real careful. And I’s about through with liking what I hear. No offense, Mr. Benenati, but you don’t drop that shiv on the double, you’s gonna make a real mess of this here floor.”

  Face a portrait of rage, Nicolo tossed the knife to the stones. I dove, and when the warm wood was safe in my grasp, whirled back toward the only illuminated stall. Rye was beginning to moan, and I ducked behind him, cutting loose hands with palms bruising violet from the tightness of the knots, ankles bound so cruelly they were bleeding.

  “Now your lead spitter.”

  “You do not want to take my gun,” Nicolo informed him.

  Harry shot a slug into the ceiling. The horses, in a terrifying testament to what regularly went on in their living quarters, merely snuffled as splinters fell.

  “You’re a dead man,” Nicolo stated simply as he pulled out a Colt 1903 semiautomatic .32 caliber and slid it toward the bluecoat. “Cui scerri cerca, scerri trova.”*

  “Better than what Mr. Salvatici would do to me if I let Nobody get busted up.”

  “No, it won’t be.”

  Crouching to sling one of Rye’s arms over my shoulder, I called to Harry, “I think I can walk with him. What do we do?”

  “Youse two get on the good foot, and I’ll cool down Mr. Benenati here.” Harry looked at me, appraising whether I could truly manage Rye. “Then we meets back—”