Part 6 (1/2)

”Yes,” said Zlatari. ”That is a good hand.”

The brothers tossed their cards onto the table.

Unwin set his own cards facedown and collected his winnings, quickly, so they would not notice how his hands were shaking. He traded in all his chips, which was enough, Zlatari told him, for the most severe sort of question the game allowed. The inquisition would be answered by everyone at the table.

Unwin looked at each of them carefully. The Rooks were silent, imperious. But their questions had revealed that they, like him, were looking for Sivart. And Sivart was looking for Greenwood. So Unwin cleared his throat and asked, ”Where is Cleopatra Greenwood?”

Zlatari looked over his shoulders, as though to make sure no one else had heard, even though the bar was otherwise empty. ”h.e.l.l!” he said. ”Hot stinking h.e.l.l! You want to bury me, Detective? You want us in the dirt today? What's your game, Charles?”

Josiah whispered something in Jasper's ear, and Jasper said, ”Those questions are out of turn, Zlatari. You're breaking your own rules.”

”I'll break more,” Zlatari said. He flicked his hands at Unwin. ”Up, let me up!”

Unwin got to his feet, and Zlatari shoved past, knocking chips off the table and onto the floor. ”You get your answers from them,” he said, ”but I don't want to know what they are. I've got enough graves to dig without having to dig my own.” He went muttering to the farthest table and sat facing the door, twisting his mustache between thumb and forefinger.

The Rooks were still in their seats. Unwin sat back down and tried not to look directly at those green, unblinking eyes. He felt again the strange heat of the two men, dry and suffocating. It came over the table in waves; his face felt like paper about to catch.

Jasper took a card from his jacket pocket. Josiah gave him a pen, and Jasper wrote something and slid the card across the table.

Unwin's nose tingled with the scent of matchsticks as he read what Jasper had written: The Gilbert, Room 202. The Gilbert, Room 202.

Without having to look, he knew it was the same address written on the piece of notepaper in his pocket. Unwin had already met Cleo Greenwood, then. She had called herself Vera Truesdale and told him a story about roses in her hotel room.

He put the card in his pocket and stood up. He had asked only one question, and the Rooks had answered it-was he not ent.i.tled to a second, since there were two of them at the table? There were plenty of questions on his mind: about the ident.i.ty of the corpse in the Munic.i.p.al Museum, the meaning of Cleopatra Greenwood's visit to the Agency that morning, whether any of it meant that Enoch Hoffmann had come out of hiding. But the Rooks were looking at him in a way that suggested their business was concluded, so he stood and gathered his things.

At the door Zlatari grabbed his arm and said, ”The price of some questions is the answer, Detective.” He glanced back at the Rooks, and Unwin followed his gaze. They might as well have been a pair of statues, the original and a copy, though no one could have said which was which.

”I suppose you saw Cleo Greenwood since she got back to town,” Zlatari said. ”Heard her singing at some joint a little cla.s.sier than this one. Maybe she looked at you from across the room. Time stopped when you heard her voice. You'd do anything for her, anything she asked, if only she asked. Am I right? Or maybe you imagined all that. Try to convince yourself that you imagined all that, Detective. Try to forget.”

”Why?”

”Because you'll always be wrong about her.”

Unwin put on his hat. He would have liked to forget, forget everything that had happened since he woke up this morning, forget even the dream of Sivart. Maybe someday Edwin Moore could teach him how it was done. In the meantime he had to keep moving.

He went to the door and hopped over the puddle on his way up the stairs. The Rooks' red steam truck was parked down the street-he was surprised he had failed to notice it before. It was just as the cleaning lady at the Munic.i.p.al Museum had described it all those years ago: red and hunched and brutal-looking. Had he fallen into his files, or had his files spilled into his life?

He hurried to his bicycle, wanting to be as far from the Forty Winks as possible by the time the Rooks understood the extent of his poker-facedness. When they flipped over his last hand, they would see various numbered cards there, none of them concurrent, and of four different suits.

SEVEN.

On Suspects They will present themselves to you first as victims, as allies, as eyewitnesses. Nothing should be more suspicious to the detective than the cry for help, the helping hand, or the helpless onlooker. Only if someone has behaved suspiciously should you allow for the possibility of his innocence.

An empty hat and raincoat floated at the center of the diagram in Unwin's mind. Beside them was a dress filled with smoke. A pair of black birds with black hats fluttered above, while below lay two corpses, one in an office chair, one encased in gla.s.s. The diagram was a fairy tale, written by a forgetful old man with wild white hair, and it whirled like a record on a phonograph.

The rain fell heavily again, and Unwin pedaled against the wind. These were unfamiliar streets, where unfamiliar faces glared with seeming menace from beneath dripping hats. A small dog, white with apricot patches, emerged from an alley and followed him, barking at his rear tire. No amount of bell ringing could drive it away. When it rained like this, these city dogs were always lost, always wandering-the smells they used to navigate were washed into the gutters. Unwin felt he was a bit like one of those dogs now. This one finally left him to investigate a sodden pile of trash at the corner, but once it was gone, he found that he missed it.

His umbrella technique worked best over short distances and at reasonably high speeds. Now he was soaked. His sleeves drooped from his wrists, and his tie stuck to him through his s.h.i.+rt. If she saw him like this, Cleopatra Greenwood would laugh and send him on his way. That she knew something was a certainty-she always knew something, was always ”in on it.” But what was she in on? Why had she come back to the city now?

Even after all his work at maintaining consistency, Unwin knew that a careful examination of the Agency's files would reveal perhaps a dozen versions of Cleopatra Greenwood, each a little different from the others. One of them, at the age of seventeen, renounced her claim on her family's textile fortune and ran off to join Caligari's Traveling Carnival. The carnival, in the autumn of its misfit life and haunted by odd beauties and ill-used splendors, made of the girl a sort of queen. She read futures in a deck of old cards and suffered a man with a handlebar mustache to throw daggers at her.

During one performance a blade pierced her left leg, just above the knee. She removed the dagger herself and kept it. The wound left her with a permanent limp, and the blade would appear again in many of Sivart's reports. When she found him in the cargo hold of The Wonderly, The Wonderly, that night out on the bay, it was already in her hand. that night out on the bay, it was already in her hand.

I'd been trying to remember something I'd read about escaping from bonds, Sivart wrote. Sivart wrote. It's easier if you're able to dislocate certain bones at will, but that's not in my job description. I was about as useful as a jack-in-the-box with his lid glued shut. So I was happy to see her, even though I didn't know what she was doing there. It's easier if you're able to dislocate certain bones at will, but that's not in my job description. I was about as useful as a jack-in-the-box with his lid glued shut. So I was happy to see her, even though I didn't know what she was doing there.

”I'm going to help you get what you came for,” she said. ”And you're going to get me out of here.”

So she was in trouble, too. She was always in trouble. I wanted to tell her she could do better than old twiddle-fingers back there, but I still needed her to cut those ropes, so I played nice and kept it to myself.

We found the crate with Mr. Grim inside and carried it to a lifeboat. It was tough going, she with her limp and me with sore feet, but with a pair of ropes to lower them we managed to get corpse and crate down onto the dinghy. She sat at the prow and rubbed her bad knee while I rowed. It was dark out there on the water, no moon, no stars, and I could barely see the seven feet to her face. She wouldn't tell me where she would go after this. She wouldn't tell me where I could find her. Truth is, I still don't know where she stands. With Hoffmann? With us? She seems like a good kid, clerk, and I want to trust her. But maybe I'm getting her wrong.

For years, over the course of dozens of cases, Sivart was never sure whose side she was on, and neither was Unwin, until the theft of November twelfth, when Sivart caught her red-handed and did what he had to do.

If what Edwin Moore had said was correct, then it might have been Greenwood who made the switch that night and tricked Sivart into returning the wrong corpse to the museum. And if Sivart had failed to get the truth out of her, what hope did Unwin have? He was no threat to her; he was nothing at all: DETECTIVE CHARLES UN, as it said on his office door.

Ahead of him a black car rolled from an alleyway, blocking his route. Unwin braked and waited. No traffic prevented the car from taking to the street, but it stayed where it was. He tried to look in at the driver; all he could see was his own reflection in the window. The engine let out a low growl.

What would the Manual Manual have to say about this? Clearly, Unwin was meant to be intimidated. Should he pretend that he was not? Act as though this were all a misunderstanding, that he was only a little embarra.s.sed by so awkward an encounter? No such cordiality was forthcoming from the driver of the vehicle, so he dismounted and walked his bicycle to the opposite side of the street. have to say about this? Clearly, Unwin was meant to be intimidated. Should he pretend that he was not? Act as though this were all a misunderstanding, that he was only a little embarra.s.sed by so awkward an encounter? No such cordiality was forthcoming from the driver of the vehicle, so he dismounted and walked his bicycle to the opposite side of the street.

The vehicle sprang from the alley and came straight at him. Unwin leapt back as it rolled onto the curb. Two steps farther and he would have been pinned against the brick wall. In the driver's window, distorted by streaks of rain, his own reflection again.

Unwin mounted his bicycle and pedaled back across the street. He tried to keep calm, but his feet slipped from the pedals, and he wobbled. He heard the screech of the car's tires as it turned in the street, its engine roaring as though it sensed its prey's weakness. Unwin regained control and slipped into the alley from which the car had come. Then the beast was behind him, filling the narrow pa.s.sage with its noise. He pedaled faster. The car's headlights glared, turning the rain into a solid-seeming curtain. He thought he could reach the far end, but on the street beyond, the car was sure to overtake him.

He held his umbrella behind him as he emerged, and the wind tore it open. With his free hand, he yanked the handlebar to the left. The umbrella gripped the air, and the bicycle veered sharply onto the sidewalk, teetering at the gutter's edge.

The car dashed directly into the street, nearly colliding with a taxicab. Unwin did not stop to look. He was off and pedaling again, head ducked low over the handlebars, rainwater slos.h.i.+ng in his shoes. Then a second car, identical to the first, emerged from the cross street and halted in the intersection, blocking his escape. Unwin did not stop-he had forgotten how. He collapsed his umbrella and hefted it on his forearm, cradling it like a lance.

The driver's door opened, and Emily Doppel poked her head over the roof. ”Sir!” she said.

”The trunk!” Unwin cried.

Emily got out and raised the trunk lid, then stood with arms open. Unwin hopped off, and the bicycle soared straight to his a.s.sistant, who lifted it into the air with surprising strength and dropped it into the trunk. She tossed him the keys, but he tossed them back.

”I don't know how to drive!” he said.

She got back into the driver's seat just as the other car halted beside them. Detective Screed stepped out. He spit his unlit cigarette into the street and said, ”Unwin, get in the car.”

”Get in the car!” Emily screamed at him.

Unwin got in beside Emily and closed the door. She threw the vehicle into gear, and his head snapped against the seat back. In the rear window, he saw Screed run a few steps after them. Then the detective stopped, bent over, and put his hands on his knees. The man with the blond beard was standing beside him, his portable typewriter in his hand.