Ill-Fame (A Detective Harm Queen Novel Book 2) (3 page)

There was always talk like this. Men sitting around in saloons and coffeehouses with nothing better to do than to spout off against the well-to-do. But this was something more, an unhinged finger-chomping crazy man a few cards short of a deck. If it was the work of an anarchist with a bone to pick, he needed to find out. He wasn’t familiar with the dark world of revolutionaries, but he knew someone who might be able to help.

“You want the ring and the finger both?” he asked Herbert. Herbert looked queasy again, so he pulled out the handkerchief and the ring and handed it to Moonlight. “Give it to him when he’s feeling better. I don’t know what he’d want the finger for, but I sure as hell don’t. Maybe you can put it in vinegar or something.”

“A pickled finger?” Moonlight asked, with a horrified little smile, as he wrapped it in his own hanky, and passed back Queen’s silk one.

“I suppose so. I need to go, boys.”

Moonlight put out his hand for a final shake. “A pleasure meeting you, Mr. Queen. I’ve considered going into police work myself when I graduate.”

“Wouldn’t your rich father protest that line of work?”

“The hell if I care,” he said with a smirk. “In fact, I’d do it just to spite him.”

“Well, find me if you do. Mayor Ames would love to bring you aboard. The press would go wild, with a Gopher star in the ranks. And you seem to be a kid with a good head on your shoulders.”

Herbert piped up. “Detective. You’ll find the rotten fiend, won’t you?”

Queen couldn’t resist. “Whoever the bastard was that did this, I’ll finger him.”

Herbert was slow on the jest, his mouth finally dropping.

Moonlight just chuckled.

It had just started lightly sprinkling as Queen got back to his gig. He gave the horse, whose name was Arthur, a friendly pat. He’d bought the horse and buggy with some of the extra cush he’d been earning. His frequent trips to the Ulland house in south Minneapolis required regular transportation, and he also knew Karoline had some hopes for a normal life. Life with him would be far from normal, they both knew. But he figured a trim little two-wheeled gig with a proper high-stepping bay horse might melt her heart a little. It was open-air, and not so useful in the elements, but he anticipated some romantic rides around Lake Harriet with his love this summer, and that was more than worth the upkeep of his new toy.

He wiped the rain-spattered seat with his elbow and began to lift himself up when he spotted a familiar black carriage pull up behind him.

Fred Connor was at the reins. Queen gave him a friendly nod and a wink, and Connor touched his hat with his finger.

“Hello, Fred,” said the detective, walking over. “Is the mayor behind those dark windows?”

Connor shook his head. “They’re inside the building. Both the mayor and the colonel, in a meeting with President Northrop.”

“Sounds devious. What about?”

“Mayor Ames is to give the commencement speech for this year’s graduation. They’re discussing the details, I think.”

That didn’t surprise Queen. The Ames brothers were busy solidifying their camp from every angle. Cozying up to students, parents and faculty was part of the job. It didn’t hurt either that Doc loved being the center of attention, and the chance to give a speech in front of hundreds would be an opportunity he was too vain to pass on.

“How are you doing, Fred?” They went back together almost fifteen years, he and Connor. Connor was about as trustworthy a man as Queen knew on the police force. There weren’t many colored officers in Minneapolis, but Connor, handpicked by Ames to be his personal bodyguard, was not only well-respected, but one of the best pugilists from here to Chicago. A cyclone of hooks and jabs, if called upon to be.

“Well, you know,” he replied. “These are busy times, and Mayor Ames thrives on ’em.”

“I do know,” Queen said.

“What brings you out here, Harm? I thought you were permanently holed up in your office, buried in work.”

Queen rubbed a drop of rain from his eye. “I decided to get an education.”

Connor laughed. “You’ve got more of an education than anyone I know. You could teach the graduate class, I’d reckon.”

“I’d also like to know why you’re here,” someone said.

Queen turned to see Colonel Ames, in his dress blue police uniform, stalking towards the carriage. Connor straightened, and Queen felt his body tense. The man approaching, a former army officer, carried himself like a clenched-up, joy-deprived puritan, but he was about as puritan as Jack the Ripper. Colonel Ames was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch on whose good side Queen had managed to land recently, but he knew it was a precarious perch. He was always ready for the other shoe to drop.

“I’d imagine your schedule is full, Detective,” Colonel Ames said. His pointed nose gave a long sniff, as he stood, waiting for an answer.

“There was no one else to take the call, sir. It’s been a busy couple of days.”

“And what was the call, Queen?”

“A student had an ugly confrontation with what appeared to be a man with anarchist leanings.” Queen lifted his hand, and bent one of his fingers down. “The boy got it tore off by the teeth two days ago.”

“Active anarchists in Minneapolis? Why wasn’t I apprised?” Ames pinched his eyes and gave a savage glare. “When did you hear about this?”

“Twenty minutes ago. “

“This needs to be taken care of, Detective. I refuse to allow any infiltration of filthy foreigners into our city.”

“I don’t know if he’s a foreigner, sir.”

“Of course he is! What respectable American would attempt such despicable acts as these anarchists do? I don’t want a Haymarket riot in Minneapolis, for Christ’s sake!

“And they kill kings.”

Queen recognized Mayor Ames’s gravelly voice instantly. He turned to watch Doc come down the steps, his handsome, graying features furrowed in worry as he approached.

“Good afternoon, sir. I know that this is nothing to take lightly.”

“We just can’t have this, Harm,” the mayor said, putting his hand on Queen’s arm. “Anarchists are assassins. They’ve killed countless officials and members of royalty in Europe. The king of Italy was killed by one last year!” The crow’s feet that cornered his eyes deepened. “You can’t let this happen!”

And there was the difference between the two men who stood before him and held power in Minneapolis, Queen realized. One was worried about conspiracies and uprisings, and the other feared for his own untimely end. Not that Queen didn’t believe a ring of terrorists could be circling the Ames brothers. Anything was possible here. It was just that he felt confident that his own finger firmly felt the city’s pulse. He would have heard something before now. If it existed in this town, it was in its infancy.

“If someone is planning a revolution from some dank gutter around us, Mayor, I promise I’ll be quick to stamp it out. Right now, though, it’s only hearsay.”

The burnished buttons on Colonel Ames’ collar glistened in the rain as he drew close to Queen. “I don’t care if it is or not. I’m not going to take a chance. From now until your investigation’s conclusion, Detective, this is your sole concern.”

His attention turned from the desperation on Doc’s face to the steely expression on the colonel’s. Evidently little time for small talk, he thought. Whatever the threat of real anarchists was, it was multiplied a hundred-fold in their minds. And every moment spent chasing what were likely only ghosts took him from the city’s real business. Best for all concerned to nip this in the bud.

“I’ll make it my priority, sir.”

The rain began a gentle increase, sprinkling the greenery and sending the lounging students scurrying for shelter in Old Main. Fred Connor helped Doc into the carriage, and then waited until his passengers were settled. Connor gave Queen a wry smile and a quick salute as the horses pulled the carriage away from the curb and clopped off. As they left, Queen watched the Colonel stare from the dark window. The stare went past him, and into some far-off, deep place.

The police superintendent was far more concerned than Queen had expected. Perhaps something else was going on in the city. Something he hadn’t been made privy to yet.

Best to make haste to the Ulland home and figure this out.

CHAPTER 3

She sat in her half-lit room and closed her eyes, listening to the patter on the window. The rain brought welcome relief. She was tired, and did not relish the thought of another grunting client pushing away on her this afternoon. Even one smelling of expensive French cologne, of whom there were many.

It was a well-earned moment of mental escape, and opportunities such as these were few and far between. Business was brisk, especially for her, here in Madame Nina Clifford’s elegant but efficient house of ill-fame. Some of the most esteemed and moneyed men of St. Paul frequented this brothel exclusively, and many of them asked for her name specifically. Nellie Boyce.

That wasn’t her real name, of course. She’d never met an inmate who used her real name in this place. That was too intimate. Too much a reflection of her past, and she had tried to put that behind her.

She lifted herself from the plush chair, and walked across the soft oriental carpet that graced her bedroom floor. Finery surrounded her. Enveloped her. From the exquisitely decorated parlor on the main floor, where she’d meet her clients, to the hallways with lush wallpaper and expensive lamps, to her own bedroom, dripping with the finest furnishings: she was surrounded by material beauty. She had a gold-trimmed box in the bottom drawer of her bureau filled with gifts from love-struck men, all of whom promised that in another life they would have married her and stolen her away in a heartbeat. But she didn’t want that. Men toyed with women. Told them only what they wanted to hear, to achieve their own sordid agendas.

Love wasn’t real. Only lust.

The girls that she worked with didn’t seem to understand it like she did. They talked about romance, and dreams, and of being swept away to genteel and respectable lives. But that wasn’t how the world worked. She’d learned that lesson in the hardest of ways over the last two years. It had been the bitterest of lessons, filled with wrenching heartbreak and wild, blind fear. And throughout it all, a deep, aching shame. Shame over having been lured off that train platform. For having been kidnapped and raped by brutal men. For having fallen for her captor, a man named Emil Dander. And the worst, most soul-sucking shame of all?

After finally getting her freedom, letting her grandparents think she was dead.

She’d read in the newspapers back in January that her grandfather had come looking for her. Her beloved grandfather, with his stooped back and his grizzled face, who was the best man she’d ever known. He’d been her protector and champion, and the only man who had ever loved her without question. When the article mentioned the name of Dix Anderson, it had first sent her heart leaping, and then plummeting. The joy that came with knowing that he was in Minneapolis, so very close to her, had been ripped to pieces when the shame settled in. She was a prostitute. A sport. An inmate.

And that news would have reduced him to dust.

But then he’d died.

Dust, anyway.

The papers had claimed it was an accident. He’d been in the woods, and a hunter’s stray bullet had felled him. Her tears were uncontrollable after that. Buried tears that came out in a rushing, sobbing rage.

She had been devastated. It was a downpour of guilt and loneliness like she’d never felt in her life. Even worse than when she’d been broken in by her captor. At least then she’d known that Grandpa Dix was still out there, loving her and praying for her.

That had happened in January, and now it was May. Her senses had dulled since she’d heard the news. The shame was still there, but it had lessened now that her grandfather was gone. It was slowly and steadily being replaced with dispassion. She grew fonder of material things. She found herself enjoying the world’s luxuries. She’d seen the other side of her profession in all of its cruel clarity, the slums and the filth and the beatings and the degradation. Now she was in another world. Well, the same world, but the opposite end of it. She had freedom to come and go. To choose her house and her madam. To go to restaurants and concert halls or sun-bathing at the river. The pain and loneliness still consumed her in moments that she dropped her guard and let herself remember, but she countered those feelings with expensive clothing, fine wine, and all the frills she could collect. The frills of a fleeting, meaningless existence. The more her senses deadened, the more she focused on immediate gratification. And that gratification included a few moments of peace, which she relished.

It was better just to continue on. To hoard as much green as she could, and set herself up independently. She thought about starting a store, perhaps. A ladies’ millinery? She fancied hats, and thought she could design and sell them. She understood fashion, and it seemed a natural direction. Perhaps then, if she was legitimately successful, she might present herself to her grandmother. It had been so long since she’d seen her. She missed her plump open arms, and the smell of apple cake on her apron. Her grandmother would take her in, without anger or judgment or disappointment.

That was the only way it could be.

Her chance at a university degree had passed, but she was sure she could run a business.

A soft knock at her door stirred her from her thoughts. “Who is it?” she asked, as she put on a silk robe and went to the door.

“It’s Maple, Miss Boyce.”

She opened the door and the chambermaid appeared, hands crossed at her waist. She curtsied with a slight stumble, and looked up deferentially. “Madame Clifford would like to see you in her office,” she said.

“Now?”

“As quickly as you are able to look presentable, is what the madam says,” replied the girl. “An important visitor is here to see you.”

“Can you help me, please?” She walked to her wardrobe, Maple following. It could be any of a half dozen men, she thought. She counted as her regular clients two state senators, the owner of a large department store, and a Ramsey County judge, among others. She glanced at her collection of dresses, shirtwaists and gowns. Mostly gowns for work. Nothing too revealing, not like some of the whores in the downtown brothels who left little to the imagination. These were constructed to accentuate the shape, and please the eye. She had more formal clothing, also. An occasional date in a courtroom required respectable wear. She thought for a moment and chose one of her more stylish, elegant dresses, a wool one with blue and black stripes, high collar and fashionable balloon sleeves.