Amberlough(42)

“To tell the truth, I haven’t eaten yet either. And that’s from a man who was up and out with the sun.” He pulled his napkin from the table and spread it across his lap. “If you can’t do justice to your lobster, please know it won’t go to waste.”

He hadn’t been up early by necessity; he just hadn’t been sleeping well. So far, Culpepper wasn’t asking for anything beyond his initial debriefing. She’d sent him a note telling him to sit on his hands until Hebrides asked to see him. That summons had not been forthcoming.

His other task kept him hopping. Van der Joost had left his base of operations in Nuesklend under the watchful eye of a deputy and had relocated to Amberlough City under the assumed name of Karl Haven.

Cyril didn’t know where he was staying. They’d met a few times in public places, and he had been sending instructions daily and arranging rendezvous as if Cyril was a sponging younger son who needed to be married off. Cyril, who was used to a more lenient approach, ground his teeth and put up with it. The kitty was big in this game, and he had to bring it home.

Time was short, too. Van der Joost wanted things wrapped up by midsummer. Cyril thought it was ambitious, and told him as much. That conversation had been uncomfortable, and ended badly. Like it or not, Cyril was operating under a deadline.

Before lunching with Cordelia, he’d spent a cramped and smoky hour in a private room at the back of a down-market club, listening as the deputy chief of police for the fourth precinct—Eel Town included, poor man—listed his grievances against Taormino and haggled for the price of his service to the unionist cause.

Cyril knew the ACPD intimately: who was susceptible to bribery, who was not. Who had long-standing grudges, and who could be torn apart with a well-placed word. The fourth district would be easy to snatch, from the top. Getting the hounds on the beat to crack down on unlicensed pros … harder, especially when they made it so profitable for the force to turn blind eyes.

He realized he’d let his conversation stutter to a halt. When he looked up from smoothing the spotless napkin over his knees, Cordelia was watching him. She had her fingers pressed against rouged lips, her free hand hooked into the crook of the opposite elbow.

“You look sort of familiar,” she said.

“Would you believe I hear that all the time?”

“Must be you look like somebody in the pictures,” she said, so preoccupied her syntax slipped. “Come to think of it, you’re a dead ringer for Solomon Flyte. You know him? Murdered by his girl a few years back.”

“Are you trying to insinuate something, Miss Lehane?”

She smiled a cat’s smile, her carmine lips pulling into a shallow vee. “Don’t worry, Mr. DePaul. I ain’t that dangerous.”

*

A few hours and a second bottle of champagne later, they parted ways. Cyril left Cordelia with a promise to ring her up soon. She didn’t have a card, so she wrote her number and exchange on the back of one of Bellamy’s matchbooks and tucked it into his pocket. When she got close, he smelled cheap perfume and the faint chemical scent of her freshly dyed curls. She had a wrap around her arms, but it left her freckled shoulders bare.

“Will you be warm enough on the ride home?” he asked. “I like this suit, but I’d part with my jacket if your need was greater. As long as you promised to return it sometime.”

“Keep it, Mr. DePaul. I’ll be just fine.”

“It’s Cyril,” he said.

The trolley slipped by, speeding up as it headed west from the Armament transfer down the road. With the ease of a born Amberlinian, Cordelia stepped off the curb and reached for the handrail. In one smooth motion, she was up on the rear steps. She blew him a kiss as the trolley crested Seagate Hill. He waved back, but she had already disappeared over the rise.

He strolled home through Loendler Park, in the opposite of a hurry. Wandering led him to the famous lilac walk that lined each approach to the park’s central fountain. Decades of careful tending had produced four straight allées of uniform lilac trees. Their canopies burst like champagne from the necks of slender bottles. Fragrance from the drooping bunches of flowers lingered in the air, soft and sugary sweet. He tossed a coin into the rippling water of the fountain’s pool, checked his watch, and sighed.

Dusk had gathered by the time he arrived at home. He put down his post and poured two fingers of rye against the chill spring evening. The glass beckoned from the sideboard while he shucked off wet socks and outerwear in exchange for slippers and a smoking jacket. The post sat beside his drink, less inviting, but more important.

He turned the radiator valve, raising the heat in the drawing room, and put a record on the gramophone. With Aster Amappah’s clarinet crooning along above her big band, Cyril settled across his sofa. He propped his head up on a throw pillow, envelopes and telegrams piled on his chest. Bills and business correspondence he discarded for later perusal. There was a letter from his sister in Porachis, where she was stationed with the diplomatic corps. Her son had added a postscript in blocky child’s writing: a crooked heart in blue crayon, “Uncle Cy” cramped within its lobed confines. He smiled and almost laid the letter aside on the coffee table. But he saw what was behind it first.

The thick, plain envelope was addressed by typewriter. All his unionist communiques came like this—unidentifiable, in cheap but sturdy packets, with no hint about what lay within. No postage, either. Likely they came by courier, to avoid Foxhole interference.