Crooked Hearts (41 page)

Well, he knew his own mind now. He could even wonder now
why
it came as such a big surprise to realize that he loved Grace. Hadn’t he broken a thirteen-year moratorium on truth for her sake? Nobody in the world except Grace knew he was a Ukrainian Jew from lower Manhattan—not that there was any shame in that; it just wasn’t the sort of thing that got a man very far here in the land of the free. He guessed it was ironic that he’d given his poor, inexperienced heart to a woman who was arguably even . more untrustworthy than he was, and unquestionably as big a liar. But there you were again. Hearts went where they would, and his was solidly in the hands of a larcenous, yellow-haired angel.

He’d never get a wink of sleep tonight, he thought as he extinguished his cheroot and blew out the candle stub by the bed. This was a night for worrying. He owed Grace that much, considering all the worrying she’d done and all the times he’d told her to relax, everything would be fine. “Trust me. We’re going to live happily ever after.” What insufferable arrogance. He’d make partial amends by staying awake tonight and worrying. It was the least he could do.

A good intention. But he was asleep before the clock struck one, dreaming of a happy ending.

“Lovely day for a wedding,” Doc Slaughter opined, hands in the pockets of his sober blue morning coat, gazing across the fragrant, flower-bedecked courtyard. The black-robed
boo how doy
standing around in whispering clusters looked like crows in an exotic garden.
Armed
crows: everybody sported one or more pointed, sharp-edged implements of destruction in his belt. Doc himself resembled a stork, Reuben thought; he’d never seen him in formal clothes before, but his long, gaunt frame took to them perfectly. Maybe even more than a stork, he looked like a prosperous undertaker.

Reuben was in black himself—he hoped not prophetically—and felt grateful to Doc for thinking to bring him some clean wedding duds. Wing hadn’t thought of it, and the clothes Reuben had been wearing since Tuesday had gotten a trifle ripe.

“I think the prostitutes are a nice touch,” he said to Doc, who nodded and glanced up at the singsong girls, gaping down at them from every window in the whorehouse. Reuben tried to spy Toy Gun among them, but couldn’t find her.

Behind him, Tom Fun cleared his throat. Reuben glanced back, and the hatchet man sent him an evil glare, ostentatiously fingering the ivory handle of his sword. If not for his ubiquitous presence, Reuben could’ve asked Doc what the hell was going on, what exactly the plan was. But Tom made sure they were never more than two or three feet away, so there was no opportunity.

“He looks radiant, doesn’t he?” Reuben said to the hatchet man, shrugging a shoulder in Wing’s direction. Tom Fun bared his teeth—predictably; it was so easy to get his goat, it wasn’t even fun anymore. But Reuben’s observation was the literal truth: the Godfather positively glowed with excitement and anticipation. His wedding attire was sober in the extreme, and Western to a fault. He wore a gray tweed frock coat and plain trousers, a dark waistcoat, high-collared white shirt, and a butterfly bow tie. He was saving himself, finery-wise, for the Chinese wedding following the Catholic ceremony, when he would don a bright orange Ming robe with a multicolored girdle and silver scimitar. (Reuben knew this from Toy Gun, who had gladly passed on all the wedding gossip she knew.) Right now the bridegroom looked stereotypically nervous; he was pacing, in fact, to and fro in front of a newly erected temple to Nu Wo, goddess of creation.

Reuben checked his watch: eleven-ten. The bride was late. For that matter, so was the priest. Beside the temple, a little band was tuning up. Reuben had heard them practicing on their cymbals, gongs, and drums yesterday. He hoped to God they wouldn’t start playing their unbelievably awful racket now; his nerves were shot already.

He couldn’t hear the knock, but the hatchet man on duty at the courtyard door leading to the street swung the big door open to admit a new arrival.

Reuben stared, blinked, and stared some more. If he hadn’t been expecting Henry, he’d never have recognized the balding, portly, red-nosed, patently Irish clergyman who bustled bowleggedly into the yard, staring around in a vaguely scandalized way at the milling hatchet men, the joss house, the tuning instrumentalists in the corner.

“Father O’Brien,” Wing exclaimed animatedly, coming toward him with outstretched hands.

Henry kept his disapproving air throughout the murmured greetings and introductions. Ignoring Tom Fun, Reuben went closer. Father O’Brien wore a black cassock and a white clerical collar; he carried a prayer book and a small black case with a handle. “Most irregular,” he was blustering to Wing, and something about having to waive the banns. He had a watch fob attached to the breast of his cassock; he made a show of checking the watch, and Reuben clearly heard him say, “Sure, and where’s the bride? I’ve got a major funeral across town at noon, I can’t be stayin’ here a second past eleven-tharty.” Wing said nervous, placating things, and checked his own watch.

Tom Fun put a warning hand on his shoulder, but Reuben shrugged it off and strode up to Father O’Brien. “Pleased to meet you, Father,” he said, shaking hands. “I’m Algernon Smith, Augustine’s brother.”

“Lovely garl,” Henry muttered distractedly, and looked at his watch again.

This time Reuben heard the knock at the door, an irresolute two whacks followed by a plucky, stouthearted four. Everybody turned toward the sound, and In Re opened up. And there stood Grace in the portal, splendid in a wedding gown of virginal white satin, complete with train and eye-popping decolletage, and a floppy leghorn hat trimmed with orange blossoms. She carried more flowers in a bouquet in one hand and a saucy white parasol in the other. The Godfather’s delighted smile faltered, and Reuben recalled gleefully that in China white was the color of bad luck. Wing pulled himself together quickly, though, and hurried to greet his bride.

As soon as he touched her, just his hand on her hand, Reuben moved toward them, careless of the growling noise Tom Fun made behind him. Grace’s gaze skittered over his, the blue eyes glittering with nerves. She looked so beautiful he couldn’t stand it. “Sis,” he greeted her, but Wing kept him from touching her by pulling her to his side and anchoring her there with a steely arm around her waist.

“Hello, Algie,” she said, smiling tensely. “How are you?”

It wasn’t a casual question; she wanted to know if anybody had been using him for sword practice. “I’m fine,” he said adamantly, and the relief in her eyes made him miss a couple of heartbeats.

“Weel, now,” said Henry, rubbing his hands together in a priestly way, “are we after bein’ ready, then? You want to stand here by this—this
shrine,
is that it?” He opened his black case and began taking out vestments, a long white nightshirtlike garment that Reuben thought was called a surplice, and a shiny green scarf affair that went around his neck and hung down to his knees. Where had he gotten this stuff? Even Reuben felt slightly shocked to think he might’ve robbed a
church.

In a low voice Reuben could barely hear, Grace murmured to her smitten bridegroom, “Before we start, isn’t there a little bit of business we need to address?”

“All taken care of, my darling,” he answered tenderly, bending over her.

She sent him a luminous, devastating smile that would’ve reblinded a blind man. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she purred, sexy and good-humored, “but would you mind if I took a tiny peek at the bankbook?”

Enslaved, he reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a slim, leather-bound passbook. Grace opened it and glanced inside. She was much too accomplished to let even a trace of greedy satisfaction cross her features; simple pleasure was another thing, though, and she let that emotion radiate through another dazzling smile. “Lovely,” she murmured, and opened the dainty white reticule dangling from her wrist.

Her hypnotized lover reacted immediately. With the speed of a striking cobra, his hand shot out and grasped her wrist. “Not yet,” he whispered, showing his teeth. “Not quite yet.”

The flush on her cheeks could mean either anger or pain. Not knowing which, Reuben stood still, tense and impotent, while Wing extracted the bankbook from her white-fingered grip and slid it back inside his pocket. The incident was over in seconds. Afterward, a cloud seemed to have drifted across the sky, darkening the courtyard and turning the banks of crimson poppies to blood-red. The black-garbed hatchet sons looked more sinister to him than they had a minute ago, and even the monotonous plinking of the orchestra sounded menacing.

Father O’Brien took up a position in front of the creation goddess and cleared his throat loudly, signaling the start of the ceremony. “Who’ll be givin’ this woman to this man in holy matrimony?” he boomed, skipping the preliminaries and getting down to business. Since this was undoubtedly Wing’s first Catholic wedding, Reuben thought Henry could probably recite the baptism ceremony, or the one for extreme unction, and the Godfather wouldn’t know the difference.

“I am,” said Doc, taking Grace’s hand. There was a minor scrambling for places; Wing looked confused until Henry took him by the arm and planted him directly in front of him. Reuben started forward, thinking he’d stand for best man, but Tom Fun loomed up out of nowhere, sword and all, blocking his way. Reuben moved to the side without a murmur.

The ceremony didn’t last long. Henry made a perfunctory speech about sanctity and fidelity, and then got down to it. Even knowing it was a farce, Reuben hated it. Grace’s soft-voiced responses set his teeth on edge and caused an odd, stifling sensation in his throat that felt uncomfortably close to panic. He wanted it over soon,
now
—but when it was, and Wing leaned down for the bridal kiss, the profound unthinkableness of letting him touch her rose like bile in his mouth and he came close to violence. Doc’s bony hand on his sleeve snapped him back to reality. Repelled, he watched Grace accept the Godfather’s kiss with perfect composure, betraying no distaste, and for once her professionalism didn’t charm him.

Father O’Brien cleared his throat again, cutting the tender moment short. “Lovely, just lovely. I’ve got the marriage certificate,” he announced, pulling it out of his black case. “If you and the two witnesses would be kind enough to take a moment to sign, I’ll leave you to yer celebratin’ and be on my way.”

There was a long table covered with refreshments along the wall by the door. The wedding party trooped over and used the table to sign the marriage certificate. Doc and Tom Fun were the witnesses. Left unguarded, Reuben trailed after them, on pins and needles to know what was going to happen now. When the signing was over, Henry gave Wing a hearty, bone-numbing smack on the back, cried, “Congratulations!” and proceeded to wring his hand in a painful-looking shake, all the while turning him in an arc away from the table. If he hadn’t been waiting for something like it, Reuben would never have noticed Doc’s swift, silent capture of the marriage certificate and its smooth slide into his derby hat.

For all his previous hurry, Henry took off his wedding vestments very slowly, and folded and put them away with great deliberation. He checked his watch again and glanced apprehensively at the door. “Is there no wedding toast, then?” he asked jovially. “I’m thinkin’ I’ve just got time for a quick one.” His about-face wasn’t hard to swallow; he looked like the kind of priest who enjoyed his toddy. Why was he stalling? What hadn’t happened that was supposed to happen?

Wing took the priest’s elbow and moved him across the courtyard. “We have another ceremony now, as you know. Afterward, we will celebrate. P’raps you can return then and join us?” The invitation was barely courteous; Wing’s steady progress toward the door said he wanted Father O’Brien gone.

“God bless you, then, and grant you a long and happy life together,” Henry oozed at the door. “And may your children spring up around you like grapevines.”

“Thank you, Father.” Grace had the same drawn and anxious look around the eyes as Henry. She embraced him, pressing against his padded belly. He hugged her back, hard and quick; the look he sent Reuben over her shoulder was full of veiled alarm. Helpless, Reuben watched him turn. In Re opened the door for him, and a second later he was gone.

“Dr. Haiss,” said Wing dismissively. “Until we meet again.”

“Right,” muttered Doc, taking the hint. He turned to Grace. “Congratulations again.”

As if on an impulse, she embraced him. Reuben heard her say, “Thank you,” then murmur something else he couldn’t hear.

“See you,” Doc said to Reuben, shaking hands, and in the barest whisper from the side of his mouth, he added, “Stall.” Then he was gone, too.

Stall?

“And now, Mr. Ssmith, I believe you and I have some unfinished bissness.” Reuben went rigid when Wing’s hand went to his pocket, and he only relaxed a fraction when the Godfather didn’t pull out a dagger or a straight razor, but a long brown envelope. The payoff?

Opening the envelope, he blinked down at a two-inch-thick wad of greenbacks. More money than he’d ever made, stolen, or swindled in his whole life. They might as well have been pages from a book on agrarian reform, though, for all the excitement they aroused in him. Right now they were just another way to stall. “You don’t mind if I count ’em, do you, Mark?” Leaving the bills where they were and without waiting for Wing’s answer, he squinted down into the envelope and proceeded to count them one by one, or pretend to, as slowly as he could. Twenty-seven thousand on the nose. “I think you’re a hundred short. Let me double check.”

Wing uttered a vile-sounding word in Chinese, pulled a wallet from his pocket, extracted two fifties, and almost threw them at Reuben. “We bid you good day,” he said pointedly.

“I’d like to say good-bye to my sister alone,” he blurted, reaching for Grace’s hand. It was ice-cold.

“I’m afraid not.” Wing glanced back at Tom Fun.

“Why not?”

Tom Fun came around his master, bristling with animosity, obviously relishing the prospect of throwing Reuben out on his rear end.