The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) (2 page)

At some point during the night, something had crawled into Cian Shea’s mouth and died. A dog, most likely. A muddy, mangy mutt. His head blared with a single, unending trumpet-note that had gotten trapped inside the night before, between rounds of the cheap, hard-hitting moonshine Patrick served. The small room he rented above the sausage shop was permeated with the smells of cheap spices used in abundance, cast-off meat, and the mixture of cleaner and decay that he had, before moving to this room, previously associated with butcher shops.

Cian grabbed the basin and emptied his stomach. It was a matter-of-fact thing, business as usual for Cian Shea, and it was the proper way to start a morning. He poured himself a glass of water, pressed the chilled pitched against his forehead, and gave suicide a slow, friendly wink.

But not today.

Cian Shea was a survivor. Say what you fucking will about Cian Shea, and most everyone did, he was a survivor.

There wasn’t a drop of booze in the place, which meant Cian had to drink the water in the pitcher, dress, and then carry the basin downstairs to rinse it out in the freezing cold. He dropped the basin back in his room, near the bed, where it would doubtless be needed the next morning. And the morning after that. And the morning after that.

The rest of the room left little mystery about Cian: a battered dresser that held exactly one pair of trousers, two shirts, and two pairs of underclothes. A dressing table, its mirror broken and removed ages ago. And, sitting on top of the dressing table, the Colt M1911, which had seen Cian through the Great War, and then through murder, and then through desertion.

Which pretty much summed up his life.

He tucked the gun into the back of his trousers, shrugged on his coat, and headed for the door. He’d owned a hat, once, but that had been before the war. Since then, hats didn’t seem quite so important. He trotted down the stairs, his breath misting between the cracks that let in light and cold, and out onto the street. Cian had made it two steps down the street when tap-tap-tap came from the shuttered window of the sausage shop.

Burying hands in pockets, Cian went around back and let himself in. The rear half of the building held a small set of rooms—kitchen, bedroom, sitting room—used by the sausage-maker and his wife. Mrs. Molly Doyle stood at a cramped wooden table, which had one of its legs supported by the crumbling remains of a ceramic rabbit, kneading bread dough with a boxer’s arms. Her frizzy red hair was streaked with gray and stood out in a long, crinkled cloud. Flour smudged her chin, and it was the only spot of her face that wasn’t as red as her hair.

“Cian Shea,” Molly said. Thump went the dough as it slammed onto the table. The ceramic rabbit quivered.

“I know, Mrs. Doyle. I was just coming round to talk to you about the rent.”

“It’s late. There’s nothing to talk about.” Thump again, the ceramic rabbit shivering, and then another thump. Molly glanced up at Cian, puffed a breath that disturbed the flour on her chin, and then thump. “You look like a haystack. What’s wrong?”

Running a hand through his hair, Cian tried a smile. It felt like a borrowed suit. Once, before the war, Cian had been good at lots of things. That list had even included smiling. Now—

“Don’t make that face at me,” Molly said. “That’s two months now, Cian. Mr. Doyle wants you out by the end of the week.”

“Fair enough,” Cian said. He rubbed his thumb across the flour-dusted surface of the table, studied his finger, and then brushed his hands off. “If I can get some of the money before then?”

The next thump of the bread dough was softer. Molly nodded, or tried to nod.

“Don’t suppose you have anything that needs doing?” Cian asked. “Wood to chop? Coal bin filled? It’s hard days, Mrs. Doyle.”

She sniffed, and the dough resumed its ceramic-rabbit-shattering force. “Nothing today, Cian Shea. Now. Sit yourself down. I’ll fix you a bite to eat, and then I’m going to run a comb through that hair so that you don’t scare every respectable woman into hiding.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Doyle, but I’ve already eaten. I’ll be on my way. Day’s wasting.”

Watery blue eyes fixed him, eyes that didn’t believe a single word, but she didn’t argue. Cian let himself out the back door, crossed the neat yard with its vegetable patch buried under winter, and was on his way to the street when the tap-tap-tap from the window stopped him. This time, the shutters popped open, letting out a steamy burst of air smelling of yeast and the sausage works. Molly Doyle had somehow managed to work two streaks of flour into her hair, and she looked a bit mad as she stuck her head out the window.

“Cian Shea, if you need work that bad, go see Bobby Flynn at Seamus’s. He’s my godson’s cousin, and he’s a wastrel and a drunk, which means the two of you will be fast friends. And don’t you dare show your face down her until you’ve run a comb through that hair!”

She ended with a shout, slammed the shutters, and then Cian stood alone, shivering, and wondering if Molly Doyle thought she was his mother or his warden.

For a mick, he didn’t know if there was much of a difference.

When he reached the street, Cian let out a trail of frozen breath and started south. Now he could relax. Getting past the Doyles had been the biggest hurdle of the day. If Molly caught him, it was nothing more than a bit of mothering—or wardening—and a gentle reminder. If it were Mr. Doyle, well, Cian wouldn’t need to worry about running a comb through his hair. He’d be too busy trying to keep the old mick from wringing his neck.

The street Cian followed was a street only in the most general meaning of that word, like most of the streets in Kerry Patch. A muddy rut was probably a better label. Ramshackle buildings lined the rut, some plastered and painted, but most exposed to the icy December air. Occasionally, brick foundations blushed through the snow, embarrassed reminders of once-lofty plans. Brick was a luxury few in Kerry Patch could afford. With more and more families piling into Kerry Patch every day, even lumber was becoming a sign of stability—many of the immigrants made do with lean-tos and shanties.

Over this clutch of hovels rose the spires of St. Patrick and St. Michael the Archangel and St. Bridget of Erin. They stood like needles ready to pierce the scruffy gray clouds, ready to bind earth and heaven. Cian was fairly sure that heaven would need a bit more binding, though, than whatever cheap thread those churches could work up. Even God didn’t want to be too close to Kerry Patch.

Being a mick himself, born and bred in St. Louis, Cian was a part of Kerry Patch. Knowing which streets to take, which boys to make a joke with, which girls to steer clear of—those things helped keep him out of trouble. For the most part. Someone who wandered into the Patch by mistake, or came looking for trouble, would be lucky to get out with his life.

As though conjured by the thought, a pair of teenage boys emerged to stand at the mouth of an alley, watching Cian. One of the boys was smoking. The other had a knife he was twirling, in spite of the cold. Cian locked eyes with them, waited for them to make a move. It was morning, it was light out, but it was also Kerry Patch.

Deterred, perhaps, by Cian’s size, or by the glower on his face that was mostly due to a hangover, or maybe simply by the wild hair Molly Doyle had called a haystack, the two boys turned away, watching for another, easier mark to pass.

Cian felt a flicker of something. Disappointment.

It would have felt good to break something.

He kept on his way. Somewhere in the world, there was probably someone who liked St. Louis. It was, by any report, one of the great cities in the world, and one of the largest in the United States. But Cian, although born and bred in the Patch, had no taste for it. In summer, the air was wet and hot and heavy, and the smoke so bad that day turned to night. In winter, ice and snow pummeled the streets, murdering the homeless by the score—although there were plenty more where they came from. The smoke didn’t abate, and there were days when it filled the streets like fog and clung to the layers of snow in a sooty cape.

Today promised to be a day much like any other. The sky was bright blue, the sun a copper disc, and the wind from the northwest cut through Cian’s coat and shirt and skin. He hurried south. There were places a man could get work in St. Louis. Even a man like Cian. So he went to David Fitzgerald, who had a dry goods store on the edge of Kerry Patch. Already the corner outside the store was crowded with men, and a few women, looking for David Fitzgerald’s most valuable stock: jobs. The men gave Cian dirty looks. Some of the men knew him, and some of the looks were justified. The rest were simply the looks of men who feared competition. The women, on the other hand, ignored him. Cian preferred it that way. One of them—a girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen—wore a dress so thin that it couldn’t have done anything to stop the cold. She coughed into the corner of her arm as Cian passed. Her hands were bare, red and chapped from the cold.

When she looked up, her dark eyes reminded Cian of Corinne.

Cian stepped into the store and pushed Corinne and the dark haired girl to the back of his mind. He passed the bins of flour and the sacks of sugar, passed the jugs of molasses and oil and a thousand other things. David sat behind the counter, a short man with his hair clipped above the ears and eyes that had seen too much of Kerry Patch. He looked up, saw Cian, and said, “Nothing today, Cian.”

“Lot of folks outside waiting, David.”

“I told them the same thing.”

“Nothing? Not even for me?”

David snorted.

Cian turned back to leave the store, but stopped when he saw the girl again. A slender little thing, like a twig wrapped up in a sheet of cotton. Corinne hadn’t been thin like that. She’d had all the right curves, all the right lines, and dark eyes. She had spoken with a lisp, and he’d only understood one word in ten, and once they had made love in a patch of strawberries, and the smell of it had followed Cian all the way back to winter in St. Louis. Mostly, though, he remembered the screams from the last night he had seen her.

“David.”

The short man glanced up, not willing to meet Cian’s eyes.

“Got a coat?”

David disappeared into the back and came out with a bulky wool coat.

“How much?”

“Two dollars.”

Cian pulled the handful of coins from his pocket and spilled them onto the counter. David sorted them.

“Dollar seventy three.”

“I’ll owe you the rest.”

David nodded and passed over the coat.

The cold hit Cian when he stepped out onto the street. He walked over to the girl, tapped her on the shoulder, and said, “Here you are, doll.” He dropped the coat into her lap.

Then he started walking. The girl shouted something after him. Cian didn’t look back.

He’d learned—he’d learned it in France, in fucking France—that it was better to keep walking.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t still hear her screams.

The clay mines of Cheltenham were another dead end.

The copper-coin-sun glinted almost halfway across the sky when Cian reached the first mine.

“No work,” the supervisor said when he saw Cian.

Cian glanced at the line of men filing into the mines. “Looks like you’ve got plenty of work.”

“Not for you. Last time you finished a shift, you got piss drunk, broke two of my boys’ arms, and disappeared for a month.”

Cian tried two other mines, but word had spread, and so he started back to the Patch. When he passed David Fitzgerald’s, a dozen people still clustered outside, ghosts who refused to be driven off. The girl with the dark eyes was gone. Cian hoped she’d gotten a bit of work.

Read any newspaper, and it told you things were good and getting better—unless you were a Bolshevik or an anarchist. Read any newspaper, and it told you about the rich getting richer. It told you about the parties and the champagne. It told you about new factories and new jobs.

It didn’t tell you that if you were a mick deserter, if you were Cian Shea, you were going to have shit luck finding any of those new jobs. There wasn’t anyone to blame. Cian had made his bed. He’d made his bed in France, with a bullet to the back of a bastard’s head, and he’d never looked back.

But it made it hard to pay the rent sometimes.

And that was how, with the afternoon light glinting off the hard crusts of snow, Cian Shea found himself in front of Seamus’s. The rambling structure was purportedly a private residence owned by Seamus Daniels. Anyone who had spent more than five minutes in the Patch, though, knew better. Seamus’s had enough bedrooms, and more than enough girls, to be a brothel. It had enough thugs, and more than enough guns, to be a fortress. It had the slunk-down, broke-back look of a mangy dog. But most importantly, it had a steady stream of Canadian booze—the good stuff—and the men who could provide it to you.

Cian went inside. The front room was large and drafty and cold. The smell of a fire and damp wood mixed with the harsher smell of spilled spirits. Tables and chairs clustered around an iron stove at the center of the room, but the coals had gone out, and the men and women who sat playing cards and talking looked almost as miserable as Cian. A few of them glanced up when he entered; most of them didn’t. At the bar stood a bull of man whose neck had long since been swallowed by his massive beard.