The Wicked City. Beatriz Williams

believe me. All the dignity of an eel on a hook. Still. I’ve just about got my knees under me when a pair of hands clamps around the joints of my shoulders and lifts me straight into the air and back down on my feet. Spins me around, demands a key from Brooklyn. Brooklyn delivers, though his face suggests he’d rather swallow it whole. Seems he’s right, I did bite his cheek. What do you know. Fresh, new blood trickles to his jaw. The handcuffs loosen. Brooklyn steps back and folds his arms across his three-foot chest. I hate to boast, but he does look sort of mauled. Nasty scratch on the side of his neck. I stretch my wrists and wriggle my nerveless fingers and turn to face his boss, whose face bears down on mine like a mountainside. Not that I’m the kind of girl who backs down from mountains. Not me.

      I tap his chin with a schoolmarm finger.

      “Tarzan. I had a hunch you were up to no good.”

       7

      THE FIRST thing Tarzan does is return to his desk and press some kind of button. Then he rests one haunch on the desk, folds his hands together, and asks me if I want coffee. I say why not. Door opens, feminine voice makes inquiry. Coffee for Miss Kelly, please. Door closes. No word from Brooklyn; maybe he’s gone.

      Tarzan gestures stage left. “Please sit down, Miss Kelly. I expect you’re exhausted.”

      “No, thanks. I’d rather stand.”

      “You’re certain?”

      “Quite. Is this your office? I love what you’ve done with the place. All those padded armchairs and old masters. And that thrilling modern wallpaper! Or have you got a leak?”

      “It’s a place of employment, not a parlor.”

      “Oh, employment! I’m glad you mentioned it. What exactly is your line of work, Mr. Tarzan?”

      “My name is Anson.”

      “Mr. Anson.”

      “And my job, put simply, is to intercept the illegal transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors.”

      “Lord Almighty. You’re a Revenue agent.”

      He shrugs.

      “Well, that’s a relief. I can confidently say that you’ve got the wrong girl, Agent Anson. I’m more in the consumption line, if you know what I mean. Transportation and sale is not my concern.”

      “Not at the moment, maybe,” he says, “but it will be.”

      “Now, see. That’s just exactly what I didn’t want you to say.”

      “Your choice, of course. But I do hope you’ll help us. Good, here’s the coffee.”

      Thank the Lord for the pause that ensues. Allows me to haul in my breath, corral the runaway gallop of my heartbeat. Wipe my palms on my sequins while everyone’s turned to the poor young secretary in the navy suit and cream blouse who carries in the coffee on an old enamel tray, the kind your parents might have brought out to entertain callers in a more civilized age. As it turns out, Brooklyn hasn’t left the room after all. He’s taken a chair near the door, a poor spindly thing that shudders under his weight. (The chair, I mean, not the door.) I take my cup—cream, one lump—and carry it to the seat I refused earlier, which looks as if it were bought cheap from the shuttered saloon downstairs.

      “Are you cold, Miss Kelly?” Anson asks as the door closes behind the minion.

      “Not at all.”

      “You look blue.”

      “I’m just mad.”

      He removes his jacket, walks around behind me, swings the old thing over my shoulders. I consider shrugging it off, just on principle, but a jacket like that trumps any principle you care to possess. Wholesome silk lining, sensuous warmth, scent of shaving soap. Is there anything more delicious than a gentleman’s wool coat cloaked around your shoulders? Even when the gentleman’s not yours.

      “Why are you angry?” he asks, returning to the desk.

      “Let me count the ways.”

      He casts a cool look in Brooklyn’s direction. “I apologize for my methods.”

      “As you should. I’m bruised all over. I’d show you where, if I weren’t a lady.”

      “But aside from the physical harm—”

      “Oh, aside from little old that—”

      “I had no choice. I couldn’t just ask you to come of your own free will. You wouldn’t have agreed, for one thing, and frankly I needed a little of what the financiers call leverage.”

      “Leverage?”

      He places a thumb next to the corner of his mouth and brushes away an imaginary something-or-other. “Mr. Marshall.”

      “Billy! What have you done with Billy?”

      “He’s not in any danger. Not at the moment, anyway.”

      “You’ve got no right. He’s as innocent as a lamb.”

      “A lamb. And you, Miss Kelly? Are you innocent as a lamb?”

      “I have the feeling you already know the answer to that. I’m as innocent as the next girl, I guess.”

      Anson gives the ceiling some mature consideration.

      “Now, see here, Mr. Anson. We both know you’ve got no business persecuting a working girl like me for taking a sip or two of this and that. I’m not the crook. It’s those gangsters out there on the Lincoln Highway in the middle of the night, it’s that hillbilly with a dozen stills blowing off the roof of his barn—”

      Snap go the fingers of Anson’s right hand. “Is that so, Miss Kelly? Hillbillies? What do you know about hillbillies?”

      I could swear the lightbulb flickers in its socket above my head. But maybe it’s just the lightbulb going off inside my head, the Jesus Mary, Gin, you dumb cluck! hollering up from my unconscious mind: the part of your head that does all your best thinking, everybody says. Too late now. Outside the window, New York lies nice and quiet, the dark night speckled with various pinpricks of human activity, of people not giving a damn what happens here in this room at this particular hour of the twenty-four. A few feet away, Anson’s granite face stares and stares, no expression whatsoever, calm as you please.

      Just a word. But what a word. Hillbillies, Miss Kelly. What do you know about hillbillies?

      “Nothing,” I lie.

      “Nothing at all?”

      “Nope.”

      “Because you sounded, just now, like a woman who knows something.”

      “I’m a working girl, Mr. Anson. A New York working girl. I get my news like everyone else. The morning paper. You can learn a lot about the world from the morning paper, but it doesn’t mean you know one single mite more than the next girl.”

      Anson shifts position, leaning back against the desk, both hands curled around the edge. It’s the kind of angle that displays the girth of his quadriceps to their absolute maximus, such that you imagine they might rip free from all that civilized wool and sock you in the stomach. Absent a coat, his shirtsleeves show up like snow in the gray, dark room. I would say there’s something colorless about him altogether, like he’s put on a mask of ice: that good, thick Adirondack ice they haul down from those lakes upstate. You could pick and pick and never draw blood. A fine pair, we are. The coffee cup sits untouched on his left side, sending up steam.

      “But every New York working girl comes from somewhere, doesn’t she, Miss Kelly?” He lifts one hand away from the desk and gestures to the window. “Nobody’s born here.”

      “That’s