Amberlough(96)

He emptied his safe into the sack as well—a few more envelopes of cash to use as needed. An emergency roll of large bills wrapped inside a few disguising smaller denominations. And a thin packet he slipped carefully against the side of the duffle, curving it with the canvas so it wouldn’t wrinkle.

He set the bag by the service stair and went into the kitchen. Ilse had ordered a drum of paraffin, at his request, last week. Aristide dragged it out into the parlor, where his doppelg?nger rested on the sofa. With a heave, he toppled it over at the dead man’s feet. Oil soaked the carpet, wicking through the thick white pile.

Aristide dragged the barrel across the room, letting the last of the stuff drain out. Outside, glass broke. He could hear the crash over the noise of the crowd. Then, the high keening of an ACPD whistle. He had to hurry, before the hounds and the mob really got into it.

He left the barrel by the sofa and went to the bar. Set behind the brandy and port, there was a bottle of white blinder—grain alcohol. He tucked it under his arm, settled into his secondhand boots, and stopped to look around one last time.

The corpse in his flowery dressing gown reclined against the arm of the sofa as if asleep. Above him, crystals on the chandelier swayed in a breeze off the street. A bouquet on the coffee table dropped a petal. When Aristide breathed deep, hoping to catch the last, lingering scent of flowers, of cigarette smoke and perfume, all he smelled was kerosene.

A gunshot in the street shook him out of his reverie. He went down the service stair, shouldering his rucksack, and paused in the alcove to light a cigarette and open the bottle of liquor. Wrinkling his nose at the fumes, he took a scrap of calico from his breast pocket and stuffed it into the open neck of the bottle. Then, pulling a broad-brimmed felt hat low over his eyes, he went out into the alley, and from there, to the street.

*

He held a hand to his face to keep his cigarette safe from careless elbows. It didn’t stop the crowd from stepping on his feet or shouting in his face. At the south end of the block, a cordon of ACPD officers fought their way forward with truncheons and heavy coshes. Aristide headed for the center of the street. There was a makeshift podium built from a chair set on stacked shipping pallets, where students had been making wild orations earlier in the day. Aristide looked around swiftly and levered himself up. Exposed for an uncomfortable moment to the gazes of the rioters and the police, he lit the rag of his makeshift bomb with his cigarette, took aim, and hurled it over his own balcony.

Blue-and-orange flames exploded between the decorative wrought iron. One of the hounds blew a whistle, but Aristide was already down off the podium and pushing his way through the crowd. He didn’t stop until he hit the end of the block and could duck around the corner. Pressed against the sun-warm brick of a kebab shop, he looked back the way he had come. Fire filled the windows of his flat and licked out the open doors, reaching for the third story. Pity he couldn’t have warned his neighbors. But uncanny foresight might have made his subsequent tragic death suspicious.

The mob thinned out off of Baldwin Street proper. Looters were at work already, shattering shop windows and hauling off their spoils. Aristide kept one hand hooked in his jacket pocket, ready to reach for his pistol if anyone looked at him wrong. No one did; they were all preoccupied with their politics and thievery.

*

Loendler Park was worse than he’d hoped. He should have known. Radicals of all persuasions loved to use the bandstand for their speechifying.

Still, he found the girl he was looking for. They’d agreed to meet here, pending Aristide’s signal: the call he’d made yesterday afternoon to his contact in the office of the Clarion.

She was pressed against a crooked tree in the center of the ramble, her bony back flush with the bark. She kept her shoulders crunched up near her ears, as though she wanted to sink into her own body like a tortoise and hide. The noise outside the tangled branches was incredible.

He slipped in beside her and nudged her with his foot. “Two parts rotten day, ain’t it? Shame to waste weather so fine.”

She jumped, her face slack with panic. She didn’t recognize him; good. Before she could run off, he grabbed her wrist and crouched down so they were face-to-face. “Darling,” he said, letting the curling rhythm of the central city come out once more. “It’s me. The gentleman from Baldwin Street. Remember? You brought me a matchbook. We made a deal.”

“I’d come meet you if Miz Kay told me, and only if she used the password.” She swallowed and looked around them at the crowd. “Damnation though mister, why today?”

“Because no one will see me hand you this.” He put his rucksack between his knees and pulled out the thin packet, sealed tight and tied with string. The paper seller reached for it.

“Ah-ah.” Aristide tugged it away. “Instructions first. The gentleman who gave you the matchbook. He buys his papers from you, yes?”

She nodded.

“Put this packet in tomorrow’s paper. Not when he buys it, understand. You must plan ahead. He’s being watched. Don’t be ostentatious.”

“What?”

“Don’t make a show out of it.”

“All right, but what if he don’t buy tomorrow’s paper?”

“Put it in the next day’s paper. And the next. And so on, until you’ve passed it to him.”

She crossed her arms. “What’s in it for me?”