The Broken Lands (10 page)

“Goodness,” Jin said as she stepped inside and stared at the spotless counters and cabinets and scales of Tycho McNulty's dispensary. “It's so . . . so . . .”

“
Clean
is the word I believe you're trying politely not to use.” McNulty retrieved a perfectly sharpened pencil from a neat desk and tapped it against the nosepiece of his spectacles while he scanned Jin's list for the third time. “Now, don't tell me. I want to figure this out on my own. And you can put away whatever that ampule in your palm is,” he added, waving at her with the business end of the pencil. “It's a point of personal pride for me that nobody gets mugged in my place.”

Jin gave him a sharp look while he examined the piece of paper. He was hardened, his face made rough by this town or whatever had brought him here, but he had let her into his place of business and now she was a customer. She slid the glass tube back into her bag.

“Do you stock all that?”

“Can you pay for it if I do?” McNulty was making notes now, scrawling and drawing lines and doing quick bits of math in the margins of the page. “Eh, there's a thing or two here that could be a problem,” he muttered. “Depends on what—oh, stupid me.” He looked up at her, a triumphant smile glancing across his face for a moment before he could put his stern expression back on. “Explosives.”

Jin frowned. “Not just explosives, sir.”

“No, of course not.” He smiled again, a brief flash that came and went like a spark. “Fireworks.”

Nothing like fireworks to make grown men behave like little boys. Jin grinned. “Yes, sir. I work for the Fata Morgana Fireworks Company. We're in town for a show at the Broken Land Hotel.”

“And what, you didn't pack for the trip? There are proper suppliers in New York, you know.”

“There's not enough time for that. We have a display tonight. I want to make some changes to it.” She hesitated. “Those changes—what those supplies are for—they're my crazy idea. If it doesn't work, we'll do our standard program, but—”

McNulty held up a hand. “Wait. Your idea, meaning
you
came up with this list? Figured out the chemicals, worked out the quantities? Some of these are terribly dangerous, you know. Especially in combination.”

Jin pursed her lips and looked at him silently, trying to decide if he was joking or not.

"Relly?" she said finally. "Could you tell me a little bit more? You don't think they might, say,
explode
or anything, do you?"

McNulty stared back at her for a moment, then burst into what sounded like long-unpracticed laughter. “All right, all right. Let's see what we've got here.”

McNulty, it turned out, was a natural fireworker. He had nearly everything on the list, and for the chemicals he didn't have, he had alternative suggestions. A combination to deepen the color Jin wanted; an idea about how to treat the paper she used for handmade tubes so they would be more water-resistant; additives to change the color of the smoke that remained in the sky after the sparks went out. The longer they worked, and the more elaborate their concoctions got, the more McNulty seemed to shed his stony demeanor.

Jin leaned on her elbows while he poured a batch of flash powder they had mixed up into a pan. “Why are you here?” she asked. “You don't really seem . . . to fit.”

“I fit here just fine.” He kept his eyes on the match as he dropped it into the pan. The powder ignited with a sudden shimmering flare and a soft
whoosh
. “I came here to hide from the police.”

“Why?”

“I'll answer that if you tell me what's in the ampule you had in your hand when you came inside.”

“Something for protection,” she admitted. “I was told it was a rough part of town.” McNulty waited. “If I were to run into danger, there's a bulb that can be emptied into the tube,” Jin explained. “The mixture explodes on impact.”

“Like a grenade?”

“Yes, only made of glass and with a prettier fire. Why are you hiding from the police?”

“They think I killed my wife.”

He didn't so much as glance up to gauge her reaction. Jin stiffened. “And . . . did you?”

McNulty shook his head. “No. She was sick. At heart, not in body. And she knew there were things in my dispensary that could stop the pain she was feeling more permanently than anything I would give her if she asked for my help.” He stared at the dying sparks in the pan and sighed. “It must never have occurred to her that it would look like I had poisoned her. But that's how it looked, so here I am.”

“Oh.” Jin didn't know how else to respond to that.

He rose from his chair and began wrapping up her parcels. “You'd better get on your way back, hadn't you?”

“I should, I suppose.” Jin took the packages and tucked them one by one into her bag. McNulty had been almost cheerful for a while, but now . . .

“Why don't you . . . come out to the display tonight?” she asked at last, haltingly. “You could see how everything turns out.”

He smiled halfheartedly. “You're an odd girl, you know that? Here you are, in arguably the worst square mileage outside of the Five Points, shopping for explosives as if it was as ordinary as shopping for bread and milk, and when I tell you I had to flee the police on suspicion of murdering my wife, you just shrug and invite me to come see fireworks.”

“I'm also a Chinese girl, which is fairly uncommon in this country,” Jin added seriously. “You may not have noticed that, what with the explosives.”

The pharmacist gave a reluctant laugh. “I did sort of forget. No, I can't come to see your fireworks. If the police happen to notice me and care, I'd be hauled off to jail quicker than you could wave goodbye.” He handed over the last of her packages. “But maybe I'll find my way out onto one of the piers. Might see it from there, mightn't I?”

“You might.” She slung the bag over her shoulder, then paused. “Oh, I nearly forgot.” She knelt, unpinned a little billfold from the inside of her trouser cuff, and held it out.

McNulty took the bills, peeled off the top two, and handed the rest back. “Get yourself home safe, Jin. Make sure I can see those fireworks.”

W
HEN THE HORRIBLE
thing happened, it wasn't in Norton's Point at all. It was in West Brighton, and Jin almost tripped over it.

She'd gotten turned around and found herself in an alley behind a saloon, from the sound of it.
Is there anything in this place but alleys and saloons?
she'd thought in annoyance. Then she'd tripped over the body.

She took a wary step back, sure she'd fallen over a drunk. When the figure didn't move, she spun to make sure she wasn't about to get mugged. Nothing stirred. Jin waited for her pulse to settle down, stepped around the impediment, and got on her way again.

Then she stopped. She turned back to the lump on the ground. She reached with the toe of one slipper to nudge the pile of newspapers covering it. The paper slid sideways, reluctant and clumped, stiff, not the way paper should slide. It was stained, but by then all Jin could do was stare at what it had been concealing.

She screamed. And she kept screaming until her hands, clenching and unclenching mindlessly, dropped the little glass tube she was still carrying. It hit the ground at her feet and burst into a blinding red fireball edged with glass shards that stung when they hit. But Jin, unaware, kept on screaming until the black at the edges of her vision overtook her and she crumpled to the filthy ground.

 

“Well, well.”

English. Faces shimmered. She'd been somewhere once where things had shimmered and people spoke English. Jin licked her lips. “Am I in the desert?”

“The desert?” The face with the hat laughed hoarsely. “No, sunshine. You're in Coney Island.”

She felt for her eyes, tried to rub away the shimmer. Another face leaned in. “You feel like sitting up?”

Jin nodded. Careful hands, respectful hands, lifted her upright and into a chair. The faces and the room around her came little by little into focus. An upright piano with a shabby velvet-topped stool; walls decorated with nondescript lithographs of landscapes, and the same print of Custer's Last Stand that hung in every hotel, saloon, and restaurant she'd seen in the last year; mismatched tables, mismatched chairs. A long mahogany bar with a spotted mirror behind it and assorted glasses hanging above. The vague smell of alcohol and wood polish and sawdust.

A mostly empty saloon. Of course. “There are saloons everywhere here,” she said shakily.

“You know how you got here?” the man with the hat asked. Jin shook her head and winced as the edges of her vision started collapsing into blackness again.

“Just a minute now,” the second man said, and disappeared.

The man in the hat pulled a chair over and sat beside her. “The fellow that brought you here said he heard screams and an explosion and then more screaming. When he found you, all he could get out of you was ‘Sam said to go to the Reverend Dram.'”

“Take a breath.” The second man reappeared with a bundle of fabric in one hand and a glass in the other. “Drink this, but don't breathe the fumes.”

The sharp alcohol vapor shot up her nose anyhow. “Smells like whiskey.”

“It is.”

Jin drank the glass in a gulp and sputtered while her throat and stomach blazed. “It's not
good
whiskey,” she managed.

The two men, who were in the midst of exchanging a meaningful look, turned and stared at her. “What on earth do you know about whiskey, young lady?” the hatless man demanded.

“I know the good stuff doesn't burn your eyebrows off before you drink it. I've been to Kentucky.” She put a hand to the side of her head and winced as her fingers found a knot that felt, impossibly, to be about the size of an egg.

“I
told
you not to breathe the fumes, and this'll do just fine for medicinal purposes.” He held out the fabric bundle. “Put this on your head.”

The bundle was full of ice. Jin sighed and closed her eyes. “Thank you.”

The two men stood, hands in their pockets, having whole silent conversations with their faces while Jin held the ice pack to her head. She opened her eyes, about to ask what had happened, when she remembered.

“There was . . .” She licked her lips again and steadied her voice. “There was a body in the alley. That's why I was screaming.”

The hatless man turned on his heel and headed back to the bar. “Bring the good stuff this time,” the other one called. Then he turned back to Jin and leaned his elbows on his knees.

“My name's Walter Mapp,” he said. “That's Jasper. This is his place.”

Jin nodded, but she wasn't listening; she was just seeing clumped newspapers slide from a mangled, vaguely human shape. Over and over.

“Stop picturing it,” Mapp said sharply. “Don't do that.”

“You didn't see it,” she said thickly.

“Yes, I did,” he told her. “I went back with the fellow who brought you in. He didn't want to get involved with the police himself. You were out for nearly an hour, sunshine. A lot's happened.”

“It was terrible.” Another glass materialized in her hand. She stared into it. “It was torn up so badly—couldn't tell if it was wearing ripped clothes or ripped skin.” She looked up at Mapp. “What did that? What
could?
”

Before Mapp could answer, the door of the saloon burst open and Uncle Liao and Mr. Burns all but sprinted across the room.

“Is she all right?” Mr. Burns demanded. “Jin, are you all right?”

“Yes, sir. Wait—where did
you—
?”

“Don't bother with
sir
while we're ascertaining whether you're alive or not!” Liao ordered.
“
Xiao Jin,
ni shou shangle ma?”
He took her head between his gnarled hands, tilted it so that he could peer into her eyes.

“
Wo toutong.
I hit my head,” she added for Mr. Burns's benefit.

Liao moved the ice pack away from her scalp and examined the knot. Then he plucked the glass from her fingers, sniffed, turned to Jasper, and gave him an approving grunt. “Drink, fi­refly. Little sips, while we talk to these men.”

Mr. Burns managed a pat on her knee before Liao swept him away to where Walter Mapp and Jasper now stood a little distance off. Jin took a sip from the glass and looked up to find the boy named Sam, the one from Culver Plaza, lingering near the door.

He came to sit in the chair Mapp had vacated. “You remembered what I said.”

Jin looked over to where the four men stood deep in conversation. “How did Uncle Liao and Mr. Burns get here?”

“You mentioned my name,” Sam told her. “When you asked for the Reverend Dram. The fellow who found you brought you here and then came to find me.”

She snorted. “In all of Coney Island there's only one Sam?”

“It's a small place,” Sam replied with a shrug. “They know me here.”

“And I told you where the display was going to be tonight. That's how you knew where to look for them.” Jin nodded at Liao and Mr. Burns.

“Well, yes, you did, but I already knew.” He gave her a sheepish smile and pulled a folded page from his pocket. Jin recognized it immediately as one of Fata Morgana's handbills. “I was at the hotel this morning when your wagon arrived. I saw you when you were . . . Actually,” he admitted, “I have no idea what you were doing. You looked like you were trying not to set yourself on fire.”

“Close. I was trying to keep
him
from setting me on fire,” Jin said, jerking her head at Mr. Burns. The motion made it throb all over again. “Oh, that is not going to feel good tonight.” She closed her eyes against the pain and immediately the image of the body swam into view. She felt herself starting to shake, and forced herself to open her eyes, even though she knew the shaking meant she might cry.