The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(41)

“And lay the blame squarely upon the Italians’ doorstep. Which is why the why may not be so obvious, Lilly. What if this isn’t about money at all but about covering up a murder?”

She was silent throughout the appetizers and most of the main course, thinking of ways to poke holes in my argument, I was sure.

“How did the author of the letter know Warthrop was going to the Camorra?” she asked.

I nodded approvingly. She had teased out the one crucial fact at the heart of the tangled affair. Red is not blue, I thought in a flash of incoherence. “Right! Whoever wrote that letter knew of Warthrop’s errand. Now, he may have been followed and his kidnapper—or killer—hit upon the plan to frame Competello at the spur of the moment, or—”

“Or he knew beforehand and snatched him before he could see Competello. . . .”

“Or took him afterward; that part doesn’t matter.”

“Who knew where he was going? Who did he tell?”

“He didn’t tell me. Uncle Abram knew.”

“The others?”

I shook my head. “He might have told Pelt—but I doubt it. Definitely not Acosta-Rojas or Walker.”

“But Uncle may have.” She shook her head ruefully. “He’s gotten gregarious in his old age. If it is a traitor, I would place my bet on Walker.”

“It isn’t Walker.”

“How do you know?”

I looked down at my plate and didn’t answer. “Anyway, we shall know tonight. I suppose it could be a Five Points gang behind it all, but it seems awfully sophisticated for a bunch of hooligans from the slums.”

She nodded, and now it was her turn to stare at her plate. “What is it?” I asked. “Lilly?”

To my surprise, she fairly lunged across the table and pulled my hand into hers. “I won’t tell you not to do this—I know you will no matter what I say—but at least promise me you won’t be reckless.”

I laughed to reassure her, and myself. “Reckless? One may be reckless in love—I hear it’s preferable—but never in anything monstrumological!”

I lifted her hand to my lips.

SIX

The lobby of the Plaza Hotel, a quarter past five, and the courier is late.

Or perhaps he isn’t.

An elderly couple, both in evening wear, are chatting with the desk clerk. They are going to the opera. They’d like a recommendation for dinner afterward, something within walking distance of the opera house. The old man is distinguished, obviously well-heeled based upon his clothes and Midwestern judging by his accent. His wife is handsome in that milk-fed, thickset way of prairie women. It is their first visit to New York.

I am sitting across the lobby on the overstuffed Victorian settee near the door, set a tad too far from the roaring fire to be anything but teased by its heat. I hold Mr. Faulk’s copy of the Herald and have read the same article four times. In the right pocket of my overcoat is the doctor’s revolver, in the left the switchblade I fished out of the pocket of the faceless man in the Monstrumarium.

“But the restaurant is too far, isn’t it? I have a bum leg. Old war injury, you know.”

Outwardly, I am calm; inside I’m fuming. Why don’t they get off to the bloody opera already? The courier is probably loitering outside waiting for them to leave. I want to get on with it.

Now the old man is treating the clerk to the story behind his bum leg. Cold Harbor, spring of ’64, and afterward the general declared, This is not war; this is murder.

The clerk’s answering laugh was of the nervous variety, but the old man took offense, and that ended the conversation. He limped past me, his stalwart wife in tow, the heel of his cane clicking smartly upon the marble floor. The clerk’s eyes met mine from across the room, and he shrugged, Crazy old coot, and I had a sudden impulse to pull out the revolver and shoot the smirk off his cherubic face. What did he know of war—or of murder?

In less than a minute the door swung open and a small, dark-haired man strode purposefully past me, heading straight for the clerk. No words were exchanged, only the bulging white envelope from the shelf behind the desk. The little man tucked it into the folds of his jacket and left just as hurriedly as he’d arrived, chin thrust forward, looking neither left nor right. I don’t think he even noticed me.

I folded the paper deliberately and tossed it on the table in front of the settee, rose, nodded to the clerk, who nodded back—and perhaps I’ll shoot him later—and I stepped outside into the gathering dusk, and the traffic was heavy with the coming home and the going out, and it had warmed up a bit. The day was dying, but gently, with the heartbreaking sigh of a girl to her insistent lover.

The short, dark-haired man is hurrying along the sidewalk toward the park. He passes a much larger man wearing a frayed peacoat and a wide-brimmed hat. The big man is studying a racing form and smoking a cigar. He pays the little man no notice, but his eyes flick toward me, and I nod.

Mr. Faulk tosses the cigar into the gutter and jams the racing card into his pocket. He allows several pedestrians to pass before falling behind the little man with the bulging white envelope tucked inside his jacket. I follow the follower.

We turn into the park, and the weakened sunlight, unhampered by the wide brick shoulders of the buildings, washes over the landscape, through the unadorned arms of the trees that stretch starkly na**d against the sky, across the pathway lined with benches and the people on them enjoying the waning of the day, softer than a baby’s cheek, and the lovers who stroll past them encased in the sparkling chrysalis of their desire, warm knotted-up entwining longing, unspoken promises wrapped in velvet laughter.