Iron Cast(16)

Corinne backed away from the stairwell and went into the club, telling herself that Jackson probably knew as little about it as anyone else and she didn’t have the time to waste.

“Be careful out there,” Jackson called after her, his voice dipping again into smugness. “Ironmongers don’t care who your daddy is. They’ll chain and drain you same as the rest of us.”

With gritted effort, Corinne managed to ignore him. She knew he was just trying to get a rise out of her, which wasn’t much of a challenge, but she did enjoy deliberately disappointing him on occasion. Gabriel was waiting for her near the front door, in a black coat and brimmed hat. Corinne grabbed his sleeve and yanked him outside before Jackson could catch up.

“Everything all right?” he asked, letting her drag him along for a few steps.

Corinne released him and forced herself to take a breath. The sun was shining today, but a bitterly cold breeze pricked at her exposed skin.

“We’re going to be late” was all she said. She slipped on a pair of gloves from her pocket and started walking at a more reasonable pace.

Gabriel fell into step beside her, and they headed northeast on Tremont, toward the financial district. The war in Europe had ended only two months before, and the sides of buildings were still plastered with posters, telling passersby to “Buy war bonds!” and “Help America’s sons win the war!”

She and Gabriel were both quiet as they walked, and Corinne was just beginning to think that the silence had shifted from peaceful into awkward when Gabriel spoke.

“Okay, I have to know. How did you pull off the Bengali banker?”

“What?”

“I asked Johnny, but he just said that you and Ada have a knack for the ridiculous and changed the subject.”

Corinne smiled at that and glanced at him. His expression was folded in deep thought.

“I mean,” he went on, “obviously Ned Turner must have been a gullible idiot who lucked his way into office, but the papers said there was a crowd of people on the bridge. Someone must have seen through it.”

Corinne laughed.

“Ned Turner? That suspicious son of a gun? Don’t worry, our councilman is no idiot. You know he was the one who first started wearing an iron ring as a way to identify hemopaths when he shook their hands? Every jeweler in the city made a mint after that story broke.”

“I don’t see how you did it, then.”

They passed under the tracks of the elevated railway, and a train rumbled overhead. Sunlight glinted off its windows as it passed. Corinne walked a little faster until they were free from the crushing weight of the steel and iron.

“It’s not that hard to follow,” she said. “The Bengali banker is a long con based on the pig in a poke. But instead of foreign banknotes, we used elephants.”

“Why elephants?”

Corinne shrugged.

“Currency can be counterfeit. No one’s going to pay for foreign bills without having them examined. When Ned Turner saw those elephants, he was practically throwing money at us. No one can counterfeit an elephant.”

“No one except a wordsmith.”

“No one except an exceptionally skilled wordsmith,” Corinne said, skipping over an uneven patch of concrete. “Elephants aren’t particularly subtle.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“It’s not that complicated. We pretended we were with a failing circus from Canada, selling off our attractions as we traveled south. The Franklin Park Zoo is managed by the city, and Turner was eager to make his mark as councilman. We offered to sell our elephants for an absurdly low cost—or I guess it was. I’m not entirely sure what the market value for elephants is. Honestly, I didn’t expect him to make such a public spectacle of the deal.”

Once the newspapers had been tipped off, Ada wanted to call it quits, but Corinne couldn’t resist the challenge. If they could swindle the councilman on a bridge full of citizens and press, then they would be the talk of Boston for decades to come. Hemopaths had been running small cons in the city for as long as Corinne had been alive, but no one had ever pulled off anything like her version of the Bengali banker. The fact that the councilman was the chief proponent of the movement to illegalize hemopathy only made their success that much sweeter. She just wished she could have seen Ned Turner’s face at the moment the elephants faded into nothing.

“I understand the con,” Gabriel said, with only the barest hint of irritation in his voice. “I just don’t see how you tricked a Columbia graduate with twenty years of politics under his belt into thinking there was an elephant on the Harvard Bridge.”

“It was four elephants,” Corinne said. “And in my experience, the smartest person in the room is always the easiest one to fool.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Maybe if you catch them off guard. Maybe years ago before anyone knew what hemopaths could do. But as soon as I hear you start quoting Wordsworth or Keats, then I know that you’re about to create an illusion. I know it’s not real.”

“First of all, I would never waste breath on one of the Romantics. Second of all, are you really suggesting that I couldn’t fool you, right here, right now?”

Corinne stopped walking and turned to face him.

“How could you, if I know you’re about to do it?” Gabriel asked.