LITMIR.BIZ

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out of me, whether I like it or not, and you don’t ever mean to pay me back for my trouble.”

      Well, if I was hoping to get a little flicker out of him, some sign of impact, forget it. You might as well chip emotion from a glacier. Just those wintry eyes, staring at me. Those fingers hanging downward from his thigh, thick and knobbled. Scar on his chin. On his forehead. Lashes black and plentiful. The room throbs around us, the city throbs around the room. A block or two away, the boats skate silently across the Hudson River, hauling in booze, hauling in contraband everything in an unstoppable swarm, like the skeeters back home, too small and quick and clever for you to swat.

      Without warning, the fingers flex. A few quick strikes, like the twitches of a dying man.

      “I have neither wife nor children, Miss Kelly,” he says. “Your turn.”

      “All right. Here’s my turn: Duke Kelly’s a cold-blooded bastard, and I’ll turn myself in at the nearest precinct before I trundle back to River Junction like some poor sucker and help you catch him.”

      “I see. And what if you’re not the poor sucker heading for jail?”

      “Then I don’t give a damn either way.”

      “Are you sure about that? Isn’t there someone in this town you care about?” He leans forward an inch or two and says, low and slow, “Someone even now enjoying the hospitality of the New York City Police Department.”

      “You mean Billy.”

      He doesn’t answer that. Why should he? Just returns my stare. Exchanges my breath for his. I’ll say one thing: he’s got a handsome set of eyelashes, the only soft thing about him. So light at the tips, I want to dust them with my pinky finger, ever so gently. For some reason, this idea soothes the pulse at the base of my neck, the one that has a nervous tendency to gallop off like a runaway horse at the mention of my stepfather’s name. The ringing clears from my eardrums. Thoughts fall back into place. Bright, crisp, useful little thoughts.

      “Now, Mr. Anson. We both know you can’t make a thing stick to my Billy-boy. Don’t you know what family he belongs to? The Marshalls?”

      There is a slight pause. “I have an idea.”

      “Pillars of society. Patrons of every charity between here and Albany. Pals with every pol at every poker table in town. All Billy has to do is make a telephone call to dear old Pater and he’s a free man. Why, I’ll bet you a bottle of genuine Dewar’s he’s a free man already. Trundling on back to Princeton, New Jersey, this minute, in the backseat of Pater’s Packard limousine. What do you say to that?”

      Anson shoots straight to the ceiling. Plants his hands on his hips. Ignites the nerves behind his eyeballs. Parts his lips like he’s got a lot to say to that, sister, and none of it good.

      But the seconds tick on, one after another, and nothing comes out from between those two poised lips. Just the furious whir of second thoughts in the tumblers of his brain. Then the slow unstiffening of the muscles of his face, not what you’d call movement, not even a change of expression—he hasn’t got any of those, remember?—but a kind of deflation, a loosening of the skin. Maybe his shoulders sink a little, I don’t know. But the eyes stay bright.

      “I guess I’d say you’re probably right about that.”

      “So you got nothing.”

      “Maybe I don’t.”

      “In fact, I do believe this entire hullaballoo constitutes nothing more than a bluff on your part, doesn’t it, Mr. Anson? Be honest, now. Just a noisy show to try and scare a poor working girl who’s done nothing worse tonight than order herself a glass of honest sweet milk from the wrong establishment.”

      Long, lazy pause. Like the ocean holding its breath before the turn of the tide. And then. So quiet, it’s almost a whisper:

      “If that’s what you want to call it.”

      I rise slowly, untangling my legs as I go, allowing my skirt to fall back into place and my limbs to lengthen. I cross my hands behind my back and keep on rising, right up to my tiptoes, so my nose nearly brushes the brute end of Mr. Anson’s chin.

      “Why, if I wanted to raise a big stink, I could take this whole affair straight to the top, couldn’t I? I could show off all my bruises. Weep and wring my little old hands. If Billy were to hear of this, for example …” I shrug my shoulders, such that Mr. Anson’s silk-lined jacked slides across my skin.

      He stares down his nose and mutters, “Good old Billy.”

      “Yes. So what do you say we come to a little arrangement, Mr. Anson? A little proposal of my own.”

      “What kind of arrangement, Miss Kelly?”

      “So simple, even an honest fellow like you can understand it. It’s like this. You take me home this minute, and I promise not to give Billy Marshall your name.”

       10

      ANSON DRIVES me back to Christopher Street himself. He doesn’t say much, just busies himself with the matter of negotiating the narrow, cold streets, the patches of slush and garbage. The buildings are tense and shuttered, as if laid under siege. The brakes squeal faintly in front of the Italian grocery.

      “What have you done with Christopher?” I ask.

      “Christopher?”

      I jerk my head. “The owner.”

      Anson’s thumbs meet at the top of the steering wheel. “I expect he’ll have to go up in front of a judge. Pay a fine.”

      “And what about me? Do I have to see a judge?”

      “No. You’re free. For now, anyway.”

      I look over his shoulder, through the window. It’s begun to snow: the minute, tender flakes at the vanguard. “You know he’ll be back in business tomorrow night. A week at the most.”

      “I know that. It’s not him I’m concerned with.”

      “You can’t stop any of it. You’ll die trying.”

      “Maybe I will.”

      “A fellow wants a drink, he’s going to have it.”

      Anson lifts his hands from the wheel and sets the brake. Reaches inside the pocket of his overcoat and produces a calling card.

      “You’ll telephone me if you change your mind?”

      “If I change my mind? Why, sure.”

      “Take the card, then.”

      “I don’t need to.” I tap my forehead.

      “Now, that’s funny. An hour ago you could scarcely remember your own name. Now you’ve got a photographic memory.”

      “When I need it.”

      He presses the card into my hand. “Take it anyway. In case someone knocks you on the head and gives you a spell of amnesia.”

      “Does that happen often in your line of work?”

      “All the time.”

      I pinch the wee board between my two fingers and study it again. The plain Roman letters. Oliver Anson. Exchange and number. By the time I’m finished, Anson’s opened the door of the automobile and strode around the hood to let me out.

      “Thanks. I can find my way from here.”

      “I’m escorting you inside, Miss Kelly.”

      “No, you’re not.”

      “Statistically speaking, it’s the most dangerous time of night.”

      “No kidding? Then I guess I must be statistically

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