Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(65)

“I don’t think so,” I said. “My friend didn’t.”

“A stray herder looking for work and sleeping rough out here?” said Willinghouse. “Stole from someone, or fell in with the wrong sort?”

Von Strahden thought for a moment before reluctantly adding, “Or someone just didn’t like the look of him.”

“You mean the color,” I said.

“Could do without that,” Andrews said. “Racial tensions are high enough as it is with these rumors of land deals and the blacks working with the Grappoli to steal the Beacon. Better hope this fellow was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

This fellow. The phrase struck a chord in my memory. Except that it hadn’t been “fellow,” it had been “fella.”

“‘This black fella came in,’” I said.

“What?” asked Andrews.

I tried to remember the whole conversation that one word had triggered.

This black fella came in.…

Bessie. The maid at Macinnes’s place who had hoped to settle down with poor Billy Jennings. That was what she had said. A first, she had said. Just wandered in from the street, big as life! And he hadn’t been one of what the policeman had called “the city blacks,” either. One of them ’unter types from the plains. Old bloke. Scared me ’alf to death, he did.…

It could have been another man. Of course it could. But it wasn’t. And it suddenly seemed likely that this was also the old tribesman Mnenga was looking for. The elderly herder had come here, or he had been brought here. Which meant that there was a connection between the dead Mahweni in the tower and the luxorite dealers on Crommerty Street, possibly to Ansveld himself, and therefore to Berrit as well, a connection that—almost certainly—went through Morlak. It could be no coincidence that the gang Berrit had joined days before he died was the one employed to quietly pull down the evidence of another murder.

It also meant that Mnenga was involved, that his interest in me was not what it appeared, so that what had been a hunch solidified into something familiar, like disappointment. I told them everything and felt a thrill of vindication, even though it was mostly supposition and conjecture. Willinghouse nodded approvingly, and I fought to hide my smile.

“What?” asked Von Strahden, reading something in my face.

“One more thing,” I said, covering. “Morlak has a box he’s planning to trade. He has it at the weaving shed on Seventh Street, but he’s looking to move it soon. I suggest you keep an eye on the building.”

“Wait,” said Willinghouse. “You think it’s the Beacon?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then we need to go in and get it now,” said Von Strahden.

“If you do you won’t catch whoever set the thing up,” I said.

“We’ll get it out of him,” said Andrews.

I shook my head. “He may not even know,” I said. “Not if it goes high up.”

“But we are on the edge of a major international incident,” said Von Strahden. “The Beacon is the heart of the city! If we can recover it, show progress, stability—”

“Miss Sutonga is right,” said Willinghouse, shaking his head. “Without proof of where the Beacon is going, the rumors about the Mahweni and the Grappoli will continue. They’ll escalate. Wait till he tries to move it, and you’ll learn more.”

“And if we miss it?” asked Andrews.

Willinghouse turned to me. “You are sure of your contact within the gang?”

I thought of Tanish, of the way the boy’s attitude to me had wavered, but I nodded. “I’ll tell you when to move,” I said, hoping beyond hope that I could keep my word.

Willinghouse said nothing. Once more I found myself wishing that he would show more … what? Pride in me? Admiration?

Don’t be absurd.

Andrews kicked the dirt at his feet. “You had better make it fast,” he said. “The city is on a knife edge.”

Willinghouse turned to me. “Will you return to the house with me?” he asked. “Looks like you could use a decent night’s sleep.”

The prospect of falling into one of Willinghouse’s inevitably sumptuous feather beds was impossible to resist, but I pretended to think about it before shrugging.

“I suppose so,” I said, like I was doing him a favor.





CHAPTER

24

I OPENED THE DOOR to Ansveld’s shop and eased myself inside, trying to look inconspicuous.

“I’ll be right with you,” said Ansveld Jr. He was sitting at the counter, studying a piece of luxorite under a set of smoked, folding lenses. I took the opportunity to move in close so that even if he chased me from the shop, I’d have a few yards to try to change his mind.

He finished what he was doing, snapped the velvet-lined lid on the presentation box closed, and looked up. His smile died immediately and his eyes narrowed, but he did not shout. “You!” he said. “The maid who wasn’t. The woman from the opera!”

“You were there?” I said quietly.

“Of course I was there,” he returned. “Everyone was there. I went to see the dowager’s necklace, remember?”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” I said. “You went to see if the luxorite in her necklace was the same piece the Lani boy showed your father.”