Canon in Crimson Read online

  But suddenly, something interrupted my mental grumbling. Something was disrupting the normal ebb and flow of our conversation—a sound that shouldn’t be there. I leaned forward, concentrating.

  “What is it?” he asked, instantly serious.

  I tilted my head, listening until the sound took a recognizable shape in my mind.

  “Do you hear that?” I breathed.

  “Hear what?” Alger answered.

  “Footsteps,” I whispered. “Lots of them.”

  It was the first time I saw it happen: in the space of a single breath, Alger changed. With a sudden shock, he tensed like a snake ready to strike. In three strides, he stood an arm’s length from the door, coiled and ready. His fingers twitched. I just watched, dread clutching my chest and numbing my limbs.

  “Victoria. Go.”

  I’d never heard his beautiful voice flatten out into that cold, edged tone before, and my dread started tipping into panic.

  “But where—”

  “Into the bedroom. And lock the door behind you. Now.”

  There was no question of disobeying. As I closed the door and locked it behind me, I heard splintering wood and the heavy thuds of bodies hitting the floor. I shut myself in the dark closet, and still, I heard muffled pops and whispers of rushing of air, followed by shattering glass. I squeezed my eyes shut and slammed my hands over my ears, but I couldn’t shut out the grunts and thwacks. My heart hammering in my ears couldn’t drown out the cracking noises and shouts of pain.

  And then, as abruptly as they’d begun, the sounds stopped, leaving suspended silence behind. I stayed clenched in fear as time inched by for a few awful moments, and I eased my hands away from my ears. Then I heard more footsteps—but this time, I recognized them as Alger’s. I started to breathe again, and after my heart slowed enough, I slid out of the closet, unlocked the door, and crept out of the bedroom back down the hall.

  The living room had transformed as completely as Alger had only minutes ago. On the carpet that had never seen so much as a speck of lint, three men in dark suits lay unconscious under a mass of rubble that used to be furniture. Shards of glass and pieces of the kitchen table were strewn across the room. Three guns with things that looked like pipes on the ends lay near the unconscious men’s hands, and the deck of cards we’d been playing with littered the floor, bright like blood against the carpet. I paused, staring at it all in the frozen aftermath of my terror, while Alger stood at the sink in the kitchen, washing his hands like he’d just finished making dinner.

  When he turned around, drying his hands and rubbing at their raw knuckles, he looked surprised to see me standing there, as if he’d forgotten about me completely. We stood there looking at each other, and the distant, neutral expression on his face was the same one I’d seen once before, in the alley, when I’d first asked him about his past.

  Finally, I broke the silence.

  “Alger, what—”

  “Do you really want to know?” he said, cutting me off.

  “Well, I…Yes,” I said. “I mean, I…No. I don’t know.”

  “Victoria, you have to trust me,” he said.

  “I do trust you!” I answered in a rush, surprised to discover how much I meant the words as they came out of my mouth.

  “Then you must believe that I never do anything that isn’t necessary,” Alger said, watching closely for my response. “Do you understand?”

  I didn’t, of course, but I wasn’t in any condition to push him any further. So I just nodded, a stupid lump in my throat blocking my words. Hearing everything I wasn’t saying, Alger picked his way through the debris to reach me, and I threw my arms around him, burying my face in his shoulder. He didn’t say anything; he just held me close and stroked my hair while I listened to his strong, steady heartbeat until my tension broke, and my threatening tears receded. Eventually, I let go of him and stepped back, glass crunching under my heel.

  “Um,” I said, suddenly self-conscious, “so, what…are we supposed to do now?”

  Alger sighed, sitting down heavily on the remains of the sofa.

  “I’m sorry, my dear, but I don’t believe there can be a ‘we’ any longer. These gentlemen won’t be the last of their kind, and your association with me will inevitably place you in their sights. Assuming that it hasn’t already.”

  “I’ll be fine!” I said, feeling the lump forming in my throat again. “I’m fine now, right? You can—” I broke off, gesturing at the unconscious men on the floor, but Alger shook his head.

  “I can’t protect you all of the time, Victoria,” he said gently. Arguments and panic welled up from my chest, and I’m sure he could see them getting ready to spill out—and then, I saw a thought flit across his eyes, and his expression changed.

  “What?” I asked, seizing on it.

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose there is one other option.” I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to explain, and he sighed again. “It would involve your staying with me from now on. But,” he went on, a warning in his voice, “the circumstances would have to change.”

  “Change, how?” I asked, keeping a stranglehold on my hope. “Would you keep teaching me?”

  “I expect so,” he said, “but we’d both need to be far more careful. There are a great many more rules to this life than the ones I’ve mentioned thus far, and I believe I enabled these gentlemen to find me by neglecting those rules rather too much of late. Consequently, unless you and I end our association here and now, we’re both going to have to adhere to them strictly—anything less would put us both in grave danger. For my part, that would likely mean increased focus and attention to detail, and a great deal more caution. For your part, it would mean sacrificing a certain amount of your liberty. It would also mean gaining certain amount of consistent protection—but then, if you walk away now, it’s far less likely that you’ll need that protection.”

  I shrugged helplessly, still too overwhelmed to think it through with a clear head.

  “So what do you want me to do? Go or stay?”

  But Alger shook his head again.

  “I’m sorry, my dear, but I can’t make that choice for you,” he said. “The only question is, what do you want?”

  I watched him for a long time, trying to figure out what he wanted, but he kept his face carefully neutral, a mask I couldn’t see past. He really wanted it to be my decision, I realized. There was no secret right answer—just the question he was leaving in my hands. What did I want?

  In spite of everything, I found myself smiling.

  “Do you really need to ask?”

  Chapter 5—The Gang’s All Here

  Alger hadn’t been kidding about the rules.

  Once I got past the excitement of moving into a new place in Manhattan with him, things got serious. My training continued, but our impromptu heists became much rarer and much less impromptu, and in between, I was mostly stuck inside. I couldn’t go anywhere alone without an exhaustive explanation of where I was going, when I’d be back, and what route I would take coming and going, to make sure it wasn’t the same one each time. I probably would’ve rolled my eyes and ignored all of it, but the whole “putting us both in grave danger” thing had stuck in my head—along with the memory of men with guns lying on the floor in a destroyed apartment—so, for the most part, I did what I was told and didn’t complain. Much.

  After all, there were certainly upsides to living with Alger. For one thing, with his taste and his habit of constant cleaning, our place was a hell of a lot nicer than my cheap hotel room in Brooklyn. For another, there was Alger’s cooking, which stopped me from ever missing our trips to restaurants. But, best of all, there was the fact that I could usually find him by walking down the hall instead of trekking across town.

  Of course, true to his word, he’d been pretty focused on things other than me. He’d spent a lot of his time working on some important project he didn’t explain, which seemed to involve mostly more leather-bound books like the one he’d
taken from Averitt’s safe deposit box. That project also took him on unannounced trips that sometimes lasted a few days at a time, leaving me on my honor to stay in and not draw unwanted attention.

  All in all, though I never considered for an instant whether I’d made the right choice, I did get restless. I enjoyed my training, but eventually, I couldn’t stop thinking that I should be training for something, especially when Alger clearly had a real job in the works that he wasn’t telling me about. Eventually, I ran out of patience and started trying to figure it out on my own. And either I wasn’t as subtle as I thought, or he was exactly as good as he thought he was, because one evening in May, while I was trying to read one of his stolen journals over his shoulder, he clapped the book shut abruptly and said, “Very well. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to look innocent as he shrugged on a perfectly tailored, pristine white jacket. He looked at me in mild disapproval, and I waited expectantly.

  “A place where you’ll be woefully underdressed,” he finally said, raising my hackles.

  “Well what am I supposed to—”

  “Just come along,” he said, ending the conversation as I scrambled to follow him out the door.

  He was right, as always—in my plain tan skirt and white blouse, I was woefully underdressed. On the other hand, I didn’t take any time to think about that at all, because I fell head over heels for the cabaret from the moment we stepped in.

  I’d seen clubs before but this was something else entirely. The room was seething with glitter and smoke, tall heels and short skirts, dancing and booze…and music. The patrons were classy, but they were nothing compared to the entertainment. From the stage at the back, a stunning singer and her five-piece band reigned expertly over the ritzy crowd, sculpting and shading the mood with the silken touch of her voice.

  I couldn’t possibly take everything in at once, and Alger had to gently steer me along by the shoulder when I stopped to stare at one marvel or another. At length, we wound our way to a shadowed corner at the back of the room. Alger stopped abruptly as we reached the side of the stage and pulled aside a man with a microphone. The man’s eyebrows leapt up in surprise as Alger leaned over and said something to him that even I couldn’t hear over the music. He shook Alger’s hand and nodded, and then he turned and made straight for the door.

  “What was he thanking you for?” I asked as we walked away. Alger raised an eyebrow at me.

  “What makes you think he was thanking me?”

  I shrugged, hoping I wasn’t wrong.

  “The look on his face, the handshake. He just seemed…grateful, I don’t know.”

  He rewarded me with his half-smile and an answer.

  “Well, he should be. I gave him a bit of a heads up. Now,” he continued, just as I was about to ask what that meant, “it’s time for some introductions.”

  I choked back all my questions as we headed towards what I thought was a wall, but turned out to be heavy curtains. Where they met, a surly looking, broad-shouldered man in a dark suit stood with his arms crossed, frowning into the crowd.

  “Oh, hey, it’s you,” he said to Alger, his shoulders relaxing. Then he noticed me, and his expression changed. “Who’s the skirt?”

  “She’s with me,” Alger said, like that was the only answer the fella needed.

  “Whatever you say,” the bimbo said with a shrug.

  So he let us in. Past the curtains, the smoke thickened, but the noise thinned. Alger led me into a shady little back room, and when my eyes adjusted to the tobacco haze, I saw a group of four fellas sitting around a table covered in half-empty glasses, cards, and poker chips. There were two great big fellas playing blackjack at a smaller table, and one more much smaller one standing in the corner. From the sense of ease and understanding that hung in the room like the scent of cigarettes and stale whiskey, I could tell that these weren’t just customers—they knew each other well.

  Some of them looked up at us when we came in, glancing from Alger to me and back before returning to their games. One of the poker players leaned to the fella next to him and said something I couldn’t understand, and the whole table erupted in laughter. The blackjack players smiled at me amiably, and the man in the corner just nodded. Not sure whether to say anything, I just smiled nervously back at them until we got to the poker table, and the introductions began.

  Not that I’m going to introduce them to you, of course—at least, not by name. Things might’ve changed for me since then, but that doesn’t make me a snitch.

  The first one I met was an innocuous-looking fella in a brown suit who you couldn’t possibly bring yourself to suspect of anything. They told me as he shook my hand politely that he was the Driver, and that if I ever wanted someone sober to talk to, he was my man. I laughed, but I did notice he seemed to be winning the game. I can’t say the same of the next two, the “resident disguise artist,” who I’ll call Shifty (because he definitely was) and the “mechanical genius,” who I’ll call Screwdriver (because he always had one, whether it was the tool or the beverage—or some dubious combination). The last one at the table was a middle-aged gentleman with wire-rimmed glasses and a tweed jacket, who they all affectionately called the “chop shop Doc.” He seemed happy when I asked about the large case at his feet, but the other three told him to keep the surgical kit to himself until they needed it. He told them to dry up or they’d need it sooner then they’d planned—which I thought was a little creepy, but they seemed to find hilarious.

  Then we headed over to the two big fellas playing blackjack. I’d noticed at first glance that they looked similar, but as we got closer, I realized the resemblance was definitely more than superficial. They were so friendly when I was introduced, standing up and hugging me like I was their long-lost cousin, that I decided it was okay to say something.

  “So are you two…brothers?”

  “Twins,” they said simultaneously, and the three of us laughed.

  “The difference is,” said the one on the left, who I nicknamed the Torpedo, “I don’t carry a piece, and this fella…” He trailed off and jerked his thumb at his brother, who opened his unseasonable coat like bat wings and bowed. The thing was lined with guns. I swear, I remember two sawed-off shotguns, two pistols, a revolver, and at least a couple of derringers, though I didn’t know anything about them at the time.

  “That’s…impressive,” I said diplomatically. The other brother, who I’ll christen Big Six, clapped me on the back.

  “Ah, don’t you worry, he knows which way to point them.”

  “Maybe I’ll just have to show you a thing or two,” the Torpedo said with a grin.

  “We’ll see about that,” Alger said, giving them an I told you not to do that look and taking my arm to steer me away. But I waved at them, and Big Six winked at me.

  I was a little wary of the man in the corner, probably because he was lurking in the dark and wearing all black, or maybe because he was the first Japanese man I’d ever met. Later, I discovered that he could melt into a shadow you didn’t even know was there in the instant you looked away, or disappear right out of plain sight, but at the moment, all I knew was that I’d never even seen anyone like him before.

  “Corrupting the youth now, are you, Algernon?” was the first thing I heard from the man I’ll call the Ghost. But when I reached out my hand, he kissed it instead of shaking it. “Charmed, young lady,” he said graciously. “You must be very talented indeed. Our Captain here does not choose his crew lightly.”

  “Oh, I’m not—I mean thanks, but I’m not really—”

  I looked to Alger for help, hoping he’d come up with his usual smooth explanation to tell the Ghost who I was without actually saying anything at all, but he was gone. Alarmed, I turned back to the Ghost, who was laughing silently.

  “You have no need to worry,” he said, “he will return soon. Until then, you have been entrusted to our care.” I must have seemed unconvinced, because he put a reassuring hand o
n my shoulder. “There is nothing to be gained from fear,” he told me. “Enjoy yourself. You are among friends.”

  After a moment of consideration, I thanked him and made my way back over to the poker table. I didn’t even have to say a thing; they stopped in the middle of the game to deal me in.

  I swear, these fellas were the cat’s pajamas. Before I knew it, everyone but the Ghost had joined the game (they told me he didn’t play because he said it wouldn’t be sporting). I was sitting on Big Six’s lap; we were sharing a hand, some brandy, and my first cigarette. I couldn’t keep a poker face worth a damn back then, but I counted cards better than a seasoned gambler, and I also knew how to catch someone cheating. So we weren’t doing half bad, and we were cheering and raking in the chips when the curtains parted and Alger walked back in.

  Big Six snatched the cigarette out of my mouth and let me down to the floor. It wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid a reproving look from Alger, who then motioned for him to come over. I tried to be serious, but I couldn’t stop myself from giggling—probably the brandy. Then I noticed that Alger had brought someone back with him: a nervous-looking little potbellied bald man with a moustache and a nice-looking pinstripe suit—he had to be the owner—who’d apparently been trying to hide.

  “Gentlemen,” Alger said, as Big Six walked up and put his enormous hand on the man’s shoulder, “you remember Mr. Scarmardo?”

  A general murmur, thick with resentment, rippled through the room. I actually saw a couple of them clench their fists for a second. What had he done? I wondered, sobering up a little. Alger went on blithely.

  “Well, as it happens, he has something to tell us. So I thought I’d bring him back for a chat.” He gestured, and Big Six turned Scarmardo squarely towards us. Glassy-eyed and obviously terrified, the little man swallowed.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed to cough out.

  The grumble surged through the room again, followed by some rustling. Alger drew his hand theatrically to his chest and put on an expression of mock surprise, a macabre mix of amusement and threat.