Iron Cast(12)

“The past half hour should be a haze for them.”

“Then we’re in the clear.”

“Doesn’t it seem strange that they were plain old uniforms and not HPA agents?” Ada pressed. “Since when do the bulls deal with hemopaths? I think there must have been agents here we didn’t know about.”

“If there were agents here, then why did they let us fleece those cops?” Corinne picked her fingers through her hair, which was tangled and damp with sweat. “They probably just got bored with raiding hemo joints and decided to make the bulls do their dirty work.”

Ada wasn’t anywhere near appeased, but she didn’t have the energy to argue with Corinne, who was still reveling in their success. Ada couldn’t find the same exultation inside herself. Manipulating regs who weren’t paying for it always left her feeling hollow.

“I’m just sad that Danny-boy was the only one to witness our brilliance,” Corinne said.

Ada frowned and glanced toward the back door.

“What about—” But she cut herself short, because Gabriel was already gone.

Johnny’s office always seemed warmer than the rest of the basement, with two lamps that cast equal amounts of golden light and muddled shadow. There were overflowing file cabinets in three corners of the room, and a coat rack in the fourth that held a moth-eaten scarf and a fedora that Johnny had never worn.

Corinne felt at ease in the cramped space, even though half her time there was spent apologizing for whatever her most recent reckless stunt had been. Ada always managed to avoid the hot seat, which Corinne thought was unfair, considering she wouldn’t get into nearly as much trouble if she didn’t know Ada would be there to bail her out of it. She fidgeted in the chair that was facing Johnny’s desk while he shoved some paperwork into one of the overflowing file cabinets. There hadn’t been time to change out of her dress, which was ripped at the back seam and still smelled of Harry’s grime. She knew the black kohl lining her eyelids was smudged, and the cupid’s bow of her mouth had faded. It didn’t really matter in here, though. Johnny had seen her looking much worse.

“I’m not your headmaster,” he said at last, dropping heavily into his chair. “Frankly, I don’t feel like giving a lecture on how vital it is to keep our customers happy, and how important it is to not, say, purposely send them into a panic.”

“That’s good, then,” Corinne said. “Because it doesn’t sound like a lecture I’d pay much attention to anyway.”

Johnny’s expression betrayed some amusement at the quip, but mostly he just looked tired.

“The Cast Iron is losing money,” he said. “We can’t last on two or three shows a month, especially if they’re cut short like tonight. I have no idea how Carson is keeping the Red Cat open.”

Corinne fingered the shabby arm of her chair, picking at the flaking leather.

“I was trying to give the songsmiths more time,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

“I know.”

She met his eyes, trying to read his face in the dim light. She could count on one hand the people in her life she was scared of disappointing, and Johnny Dervish was first and foremost. Johnny sighed and picked up his pocketknife. Absently he chiseled into the wood of his desk with the tip.

“That mark you’ve been trailing—the jeweler,” he said. “You said he drops off money for his mistress on the second Friday of every month? That’s tomorrow.”

Corinne hesitated.

“You want us to pull a job tomorrow? Ada’s picture will be all over the police stations by morning.”

Johnny gouged into the wood a little deeper. With the shadows darkening the circles under his eyes, he seemed more exhausted than Corinne had ever seen him. He had inherited the Cast Iron decades ago, when he was only a few years older than Corinne was now. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to watch his life’s work crumble from the peak of its glory. The Cast Iron had been her home for only four years, and the mere thought of its closing felt a little like dying.

“If I can’t afford to pay the bills and bribe the right people, then the Cast Iron will go dark,” Johnny said. He looked up from the desk and met her eyes, unblinking. Corinne knew what he wasn’t saying. If the Cast Iron closed, there was nowhere for her and Ada and Saint to go. Boston was an unforgiving city, ribboned in iron and steel. There were thousands of hemopaths in Boston, but jobs for their kind were scarce. Corinne had known desperate hemopaths to swear fealty to Johnny like serfs of the Middle Ages. Unlike his predecessor, Johnny ran the club like a business instead of a social fraternity. Those who did the work earned a cut of the profits. Some of the jobs were less legal than others, but in times like these the line was blurred at best.

Others might be able to find work with Luke Carson at the Red Cat or the Witcher brothers at Down Street, but Ada and Corinne had been a part of Johnny’s inner circle for years. Carson and the Witchers would never trust them. Loyalty to one of the iron-free clubs was loyalty for life. And Corinne couldn’t return to the life she’d had before.

“We can do it,” she said. “We know the patrol routes.”

Johnny folded the blade and tossed it into an open desk drawer. “Quick and clean,” he said. “I can’t handle another news headline like last summer.”