The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(40)

“You are calling me at six in the morning to pose a riddle?”

“Reputation,” I said, raising my voice to overcome the incessant crackle of the connection. “I had a most interesting discussion with the Queen’s fifth cousin last night.”

“Who?”

“Samuel.”

“Who?”

“The mediocrity!”

“Oh!” Then silence.

“Lilly? Are you there?”

“Did you mean to imply a correlation between someone’s reputation and a conversation with Mr. Isaacson?”

“I meant to ask you to lunch.”

“But that isn’t what you did.”

“I did—I just have.”

“I have a prior engagement.”

“Break it.”

She may have laughed or it may have been static. Then I heard: “. . . demanding.”

“The doctor has been kidnapped!” I shouted.

“Kidnapped! Was it the Irish?”

“The Sicilians.”

“Sicilians!”

“I’ll pick you up at twelve.”

I disconnected the call before she could reply. From across the room, Mr. Faulk lowered his copy of the Herald. “Yes, that Lilly,” I told him.

“You want for me to come?” he asked.

I laughed. “For her protection or mine?”

Through the window behind him I saw Central Park glowing: The rising sun had broken through the clouds, and the park shimmered in a golden autumnal haze.

“Have you ever been in love, Mr. Faulk?”

“Oh, yes. Many times. Well, once or twice.”

“How did you know?”

“Mr. Henry?”

“I mean, did you know in the same way you know that red is red and not, for example, blue?”

He looked off into the distance, lost in memory or pausing to give my question its proper due.

“Been my experience you don’t know till after the fact.”

“After the . . . ?”

“When it’s gone.”

“I don’t think I love her.”

“If you don’t think it, then you don’t.”

“But I would have killed him if she had—or they had—he had . . .”

“I’d say that’s more blue than red, Mr. Henry.”

“Do you think it means anything that I’ve murdered three times before I’ve fallen in love once?”

“About you or people in general?”

“Both.”

“More deserve death than love—but that’s just my opinion.”

I laughed. “Mr. Faulk, I had no idea you were a philosopher.”

“I’d no idea you were a killer.”

FIVE

Lilly was not as charmed as I by my new companion.

“Who is that brute?” she murmured, slipping her arm through mine as we stepped off the trolley at Delmonico’s.

“Mr. Faulk is an old friend of the doctor’s, a kind of honorary member of the fraternity.” I held the door open for her and we stepped inside. Mr. Faulk remained on the sidewalk, leaning against the building with his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his peacoat.

“What fraternity?” she asked.

“The fraternity of indispensable men.”

“You have a bodyguard now?”

The entryway was crowded, forcing us to stand nearly chest to chest, and I could smell her hair and her hair smelled of lilacs. She wore a dress the color of topaz and carried a small matching purse. The men noticed her almost at once, but the women sooner; that is the way with beauty.

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Too bad your doctor didn’t have a not-exactly one last night.”

I shouldered my way to the front and pressed a twenty- dollar note into the headwaiter’s palm. He rolled his eyes disdainfully, so I gave him another, and in five minutes we were seated with a nice view of the park.

“You’re awfully free with his money,” she said.

“Keeper of the purse strings, among other things.”

“Among every other thing.” Her eyes danced. I shrugged modestly and looked away. High in the mountains of Socotra there was a lake with water unburdened by any living thing, bluer than a sky scrubbed clean by a summer rain, yet even that was not as pure as her eyes, uncorrupted to the bottom, all the way down.

“Now what is this about Mr. Isaacson and reputations?” she asked, now that she had me off-balance.

“Actually, I was referring to the doctor’s reputation. This latest difficulty with organized crime . . .”

Lilly was shaking her head. “You always were a terrible liar.”

“Uncle Abram was right about one thing: To these men, honor is everything. Under the circumstances, the Black Hand is an unthinkable breach of etiquette, very bad form, even for a professional criminal. The Camorristi owe Warthrop an enormous debt.”

She grasped my meaning at once. “A subterfuge? But why? And by whom?”

“The why is easy enough—there are ten thousand reasons. The who I hope to discover before it’s too late . . . if it already isn’t too late.”

She gasped. “Kill Warthrop . . . ?”