Iron Cast(19)

Ada sniggered and dropped a few notes but quickly righted herself.

The man scratched his head beneath his hat, revealing a receding hairline.

“I’m still not sure how I can help,” he said.

“Can I tell you something first?” Corinne asked, her voice softer.

The notes of Ada’s violin wafted above and around them. The man’s face was lax, and Corinne could see a familiar blurriness in his eyes. She had learned to recognize it a long time ago. Clear eyes were a warning sign—there were those rare few who weren’t as receptive to Ada’s gentle nudging.

Corinne’s hand moved to his lapel, and she tugged him closer. She whispered in his ear for almost thirty seconds. When he stepped back, he blinked at her, expression even more dazed. She had opted for a few lines from a volume of poetry that Ada had given her a couple of years ago. Edna St. Vincent Millay hadn’t gained much renown yet, but Corinne was betting on a Pulitzer by the time she turned forty.

“I’m not sure I catch your meaning, miss,” the man said, still blinking.

If Ada hadn’t been churning out a healthy dose of trust mingled with confusion, he would no doubt have fled after the first couplet. Or garroted her with the thin iron chain she could see peeking out from beneath his collar. There was no truth in the belief that pure forged iron made the wearer immune to hemopathy, but it didn’t stop regs from paying through the nose for it.

“Look at what I have here,” Corinne said, holding up her cupped hands. “Do you see it?”

The man nodded fervently.

“It’s a golden brooch,” she said, firming the illusion. “Studded with real diamonds. Have you ever seen the like?”

He shook his head.

“That’s a mighty fine trinket, miss,” he said. “Where did you get such a thing?”

“My grandmother gave it to me. I’m sure it must be worth at least a hundred dollars. That’s all I need—only I can’t get the clerk to buy it from me. He keeps threatening to call the police.”

She sniffled and watched the befuddled man through her eyelashes. She and Ada had been keeping tabs on him for two months. He was one of the jewelers in Boston who had made a small fortune selling iron jewelry to regs as a ward against hemopaths, but it was what he sold under the counter that caught their attention. Iron knuckles, iron-braced clubs, and iron barbs, no bigger than a needle, that were designed to break off in the skin—a special kind of torture for hemopaths, whose blood had a visceral aversion to iron that science had yet to explain. They were the sorts of weapons that would appeal only to ironmongers, those citizens who had decided in the past year that the surest way to stop hemopaths from scamming them was to grab any hemopaths they could find—criminal or not—and string them up in straitjackets of iron chains.

Corinne thought it was only fair to exact a tax on the profits he made at the expense of hemopaths. The only question was whether his lack of scruples extended to taking advantage of a wide-eyed, desperate girl. The brooch he could see in her hands would be worth three or four times what she was asking. She could practically read the thoughts flashing across his face in quick succession. He wasn’t a particularly subtle man.

She knew that they had him.

“Maybe I can help,” he said. “I’ve been looking for an anniversary present for my wife. What if I bought it from you?”

“You would do that for me?” she asked. Ada would tell her later that she was laying on the innocent doe act a little thick, but the jeweler was too entranced by his own greedy imagination to notice.

“You said it was worth a hundred dollars, right?” He knelt down to open his briefcase and pulled out a fat envelope. “I was just on my way to the bank.”

“Oh, I can’t do that,” Corinne said, clutching her hand to her chest. “What if it’s worth much less than that? I don’t want to cheat you. Maybe this was all a mistake. I’ll just find another pawn shop.”

“My wife will love the brooch,” the man said. “That’s worth the money to me.”

He spoke with such gentle reassurance that Corinne had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“Only if you’re sure,” she said, hesitantly extending her hand.

The illusion might not hold much longer—it depended on how well the poem stuck in his mind. He was thinking so hard about the profit he would make selling the brooch that the verses were probably being crowded out with every passing moment.

He counted out five twenty-dollar bills and pressed them into her palm.

“My wife will be so pleased,” he said, tucking the envelope and the brooch into his briefcase. Before he could snap it shut, Corinne let out a small gasp as the breeze caught one of the bills in her hand. It swirled into the road.

“Oh no,” she cried, trying to sound as helpless as possible.

“I’ll get it,” he told her, checking for oncoming traffic and then ducking into the street. While he stooped to pick up the bill, back turned, Corinne opened the briefcase and pulled the rest of the bills out of the envelope. She shoved them into her coat pocket and straightened right as he turned around.

“You’re too kind.” She summoned a few more tears for effect. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s my pleasure, miss,” he said, beaming. “We’ve both had a run of good luck today.”