The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) (6 page)

Home was just a place to wait until the drink stopped hitting quite so hard.

As he came out onto the stairs, Cian collided with someone. A bristly beard scratched his face, and the other man stumbled. Then a jab at Cian’s side, aiming for the kidney. Cian twisted back and crashed into the door. His jaw snapped shut. Cian tasted blood. Another blow from the man caught Cian in the gut. Cian’s breath turned into a brick.

Then Cian’s brain started working. He brought one elbow up, inside the other man’s arms, and caught the man on the jaw. The man’s head snapped to one side. Cian drove his foot down, onto inside of the man’s knee, and then smashed his forehead into the man’s face. Cian felt cartilage fold and snap and then heard a choked grunt, and the man slid back against the wooden rail.

With a low, throbbing twang, the rail snapped, the man fell. He screamed for a heartbeat. Then, at the same time, a thud and silence.

Cian’s head hurt like a bitch. He felt a goose egg rising on his forehead, and split skin with blood running down his temple. His tongue had grown three sizes, and the back of his head was throbbing, and something sick was kneading his gut with its claws. Cian pulled out the Colt, managed his way down the steps, and ran.

No raised voices. No bloom of lights. No calls for help.

In Kerry Patch, Bobby Flynn lay dead, and no one would bother until morning.

Cian hoped that would be long enough.

Night moved into St. Louis like an old, female relative with cold feet. An aunt, perhaps. Or maybe more like Irene’s own grandmother, on Papa’s side, who was missing a toe and had insisted on having Irene share her bed until Irene was twelve. That was how tonight was: clinging and icy and smelling like death.

The heavy fur coat Irene wore buffered her from the worst of the cold, but it also drew unwanted attention, especially in this part of St. Louis. More than a few men had stared after Irene as she passed—men in trousers worn out at the knees and coats with more patches than a mangy dog. Men who were not, Irene was fairly certain, admiring anything below the coat. It was slightly offensive. The weight of the revolver in her clutch kept Irene walking though, as did the thought of Papa’s face, and the absolute certainty that he was lying.

Irene had never been to Kerry Patch. It wasn’t safe for decent people, and while Irene hadn’t thought of herself as decent since she’d gone to Oberlin, she’d never had a reason to risk the Patch before tonight. The man who had come to deliver the box, though, had had all the rough edges of the Patch, and he’d looked as Irish as they came, and so Irene thought her best chance at finding him was to start in the Patch. The Irish clung together like pups at a teat. One of them would know him. If she were lucky, one of them would be willing to point Irene in his direction.

And Irene wanted to find that man, because she was certain the red-haired man had been the one to murder Sally and steal the box. It made sense, after all. He had come to the house, he had seen her, and he must have thought she was alone and that the house would make an easy mark. Then he’d gone around to the back, to steal the box and anything else he could carry. He’d stumbled across Sally. She’d been surprised, never had a chance to make a sound.

The red-haired man was a brute. It would have been easy for him to snap Sally’s neck.

As Irene moved deeper and deeper into the Patch, the street lamps dwindled, tiny sacks of flame and warmth swallowed up by the growing darkness, until only the moon and the stars held a chilly vigil over the streets. From the deeper shadows that fell in the alleys came muffled sounds that might have been fighting or love-making or both, and watchful eyes, and the occasional clatter of something small and furry scraping through piles of refuse. The smell of coal and wood smoke mixed with burnt garbage, and the odors clung to Irene’s hair, to the fur coat, to her skin. She wanted a bath and her bed and, although she wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, her Papa. Instead, she slipped her hand into her clutch, felt the weight of the revolver again, and thought about Sally.

Ahead, a blackened lantern hung in front of the place she was seeking. One term for the place might have been speakeasy, but this deep in Kerry Patch, there was no need for pretense. To judge by the swell of voices from inside the rambling log building, there was no need for speaking easy either. A wooden sign above the door had been carved with a lone clover, its green paint chipped, and the name Patrick’s.

If you needed to find someone in Kerry Patch, you started at Patrick’s. That’s what the paperboy had told Irene, and she hoped the boy had known what he was talking about.

She pushed open the door, stepped inside, and was hit by a wave of sound and heat. The roar of voices seemed to be on an eternal crescendo, rising and rising, fragmented into laughter and shouts and swearing and then laughter again. Bodies packed the low-ceilinged room, filling the air with the scent of sweat and lust and men who worked twelve hard hours. There were women too, more than Irene had expected, many with the fair hair and coloring she expected in the Patch, but plenty of women with hair and eyes as dark as Irene’s own. Against the far wall stood a row of massive casks, and between the press of bodies Irene glimpsed the bar, and she began to push her way towards it.

More than one man tried to intercept her—fingers sliding off her arm, fingers trailing down her back, fingers that pinched (more than once) her bottom. One man tried to slip an arm around Irene’s waist. She twisted away, saw a flushed, grinning face and a smile like a piano keyboard, more blacks than whites. Then the man disappeared back into the sea of bodies, and Irene continued her fight against the tide.

Perhaps it was the coat. Perhaps that was what provoked the touches.

But to judge by the number of hands that aimed for her hindquarters, probably not.

By the time Irene reached the bar and slotted herself between a pair of men in rough spun, clay-stained clothes, her face was red from heat and embarrassment both. The man to her right coughed into her face. The one on her left leered, staring down at her chest as though his eyes were knives, ready to skin her. Irene kept her own eyes fixed on the man behind the bar, and when he turned her way, she raised a hand.

He was a good-enough looking fellow, dark-haired and fair-skinned and with a smile that made him look more boyish than he probably was. The barest hint of surprise wrote itself in the way he bit the inside of his cheek when he saw her. He passed a mug of beer across the bar, wiped his hands, and came down to where she was standing.

“Miss,” he said. “Something to drink?”

“A sidecar,” Irene said, pulling coins from her clutch.

The barman was already shaking his head. “This might not be the right place for you, miss.”

“An old-fashioned, then,” Irene said. She slid a half-dollar across the slick wood.

A moment’s hesitation, and then the man scooped up the coin, nodded, and wandered back down the bar.

Hot breath from the man on the right scalded Irene’s neck. He had decided to join his partner in staring at her. The heat and the press of bodies combined with the fur coat to make Irene feel short of breath. Trying to make the movement seem natural, she leaned forward, supporting herself with the edge of the bar.

The dark-haired man came back with a drink in his hand. “It’s rye,” he said. “That’s all we’ve got.”

“Thank you,” Irene said, taking the drink. “I need to speak with Patrick.”

This time the surprise was more visible on the bartender’s face. “I’m Patrick.” He looked at the men on either side of her and said, “Liam. Angus. If you two aren’t going to spend another penny, you can clear some space for the lady.”

The faces of both men might as well have been molasses—surprise and resentment trickled across their features in viscous streaks. After a moment of pointed silence from Patrick, though, the men shoved their way into the crowd, leaving Irene alone. She sipped at the drink, and the rye whiskey hit her stomach like a hot coal. Another sip, and then she set the glass down, feeling the heat rumble up through her arms, her chest, her neck.

“Thank you,” she said.

“They’re cheap and mean and they don’t have a set of brains between them,” Patrick said. He smiled, and Irene felt the whiskey rise to a boil, and she made sure not to take another drink. “What can I help you with, miss? This doesn’t look like your part of town, if you’ll pardon me.”

“I—” Irene began, but Patrick’s eyes widened when he saw something over her shoulder.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Just a moment.”

He moved to the far end of the bar and leaned forward to speak with someone hidden by the cramped bodies. Irene turned the glass in her hands, ran a finger through the beer and water and whiskey that made tiny lakes on the surface of the bar, and thought about the sliver of Patrick’s’ bottom she could see. He was a good-looking man, and God, that smile, and it had been a long time since Charlie Adair, and a longer time since she’d had a kiss that knocked her stockings off.

It had been a long time since she hadn’t felt alone.

She leaned forward, trying to get a better look at Patrick, hoping that she wasn’t being terribly obvious. And then she saw whom Patrick was talking to, their heads close together, every line of their bodies showing nerves and something that came close to fear.

The deliveryman.

Her old-fashioned forgotten, Irene pushed her way down the length of the bar, ignoring the angry looks and scattered swears. The red-haired man looked twice the wreck he’d been earlier that day, and his rough features were pale and knotted, as though he’d been put through the wringer. The noise of the bar, in its eternal crescendo, swarmed in Irene’s ears like angry bees. Her legs had become distant, ghostly echoes, and the only things that were real were the tendons and joints and muscles of one arm, then her fingers, and the silver-plated grip of the revolver.

Patrick was saying something, and the words were swallowed up in the storm in Irene’s ears, and the red-haired man had closed his hand over something on the bar. Irene pulled the revolver from her clutch.

No one saw.

She jammed the muzzle of the pistol into the red-haired man’s side. He jumped, his eyes wide, and went stiff. Patrick’s lips froze, caught in mid-syllable.

The noise of the bar continued unabated. Someone was laughing, and it seemed impossible to Irene that someone would be laughing today with Sally dead. Irene wished the gun were a spear, and she ground it against the man’s ribs, wanting him to move or resist. Wanting to pull that trigger, because of this man, and Charlie Adair, and all the rest of them down the line to Francis Derby.

It took a moment to realize that Patrick was talking to her.

“Miss, just put that away for a minute. No need to do anything mad. Put that away and we’ll have a nice talk.”

He was repeating the words, his tone as even as the Mississippi in summer, talking the way a man might talk to a rabid dog. The way Papa talked to Mama, sometimes. Or to Irene.

The red-haired man, on the other hand, was just staring at her. His eyes weren’t so pretty up close, Irene decided. They were blue-green glass, like street jewelry, and had something dark and empty falling down behind them. Looking into them, Irene felt a wave of vertigo, as though she too were about to fall, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“Be quiet, Patrick,” the red-haired man said.

Patrick went silent.

“You,” Irene said.

“You’re the girl from the house,” the red-haired man said.

“You’re coming with me.”

“Why?”

“You know why. Did you think you’d get away with it?”

This time, confusion in those blue-green eyes. Irene felt a moment of doubt and covered it by jabbing him with the revolver again.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean, but I haven’t gotten away with much. Why would this be different?”

“Come on,” Irene said. “Let’s go.”

“Cian,” Patrick said.

The red-headed man—Cian, Irene supposed—shook his head. “Thanks for the help, Patrick. I’ll let you know when I’m settled. And I’ll get you your money.”

Patrick frowned, but he spoke to Irene. “Miss, this is a big misunderstanding. Let me—”

Irene grabbed Cian’s arm, turned him towards the door, and set the barrel of the gun to his back. She stayed close, using the heavy fur coat to hide the revolver. At her prodding, Cian started moving. He was a big man, even for the Patch, and he left a nice, clear path in his wake. Within moments, they emerged from the bar. Dark and cold clamped down around them like a vise. The sudden silence left Irene lightheaded.

Cian turned around, keeping his arms raised slightly, like an ungainly bird about to take flight. There wasn’t any fear in his face. Something about him—his eyes, Irene thought—made her angry. It was the emptiness behind those blue-green flecks. His offered a small, quiet smile that eased the roughness of his face.

“Are you going to keep that on me the whole way? Your hand will freeze.”

“I’ll keep it on you until you’re locked up.”

“Mind telling me why?”