but your friend was quicker. Hell, I’d just seen him dance—quick as blinking. That was probably why you looked at him like that, isn’t it? Anyone would look at him, just to catch what he did next.”
“Nicolo.”
“Alicia. My oldest friend. We’re still friends, aren’t we?”
“We always will be.”
My hallway stretched away from us, pulling itself into a tunnel like a rope of taffy. It must have been the middle of the night. I could have screamed, but Harry Chipchase was apparently down for the count. I could have fought, but I wasn’t strong enough.
So I turned into Nobody. Knowing full well that the possum act wasn’t very likely to work on a ruthless assassin who also happened to be in love with me.
“Where are we going?”
“To see Sammy.”
“No, please.” I went all but limp as he propelled me. “My arm hurts. For God’s sake, Nicolo—”
“Hush, topolina. You’re safe, remember? I’m here.”
We reached a door at the end of the corridor and he pushed it open.
Sammy the Saint reclined on an oilskin tarp on a hotel bed. Naked, open-eyed. His body was beginning to soften from the slim lines of youth into the rounder curves of excess. A pit had been carved in his breast with something like a hatchet or cleaver. The room reeked of meat not yet started to turn. His jaw had been forced open, and in it rested a lump of gore I supposed faintly was his heart.
The room swam. I know I was sick in the corner, great shaking heaves, and that Nicolo held my hair. Then I folded into a ball with my hands around my knees. I’d never wanted Mr. Salvatici so much in my life, and for some strange reason recalled his argument that I should bet all my chips on his roulette spins.
You find me dangerous, Miss James. Good. I am dangerous. But I am also, you will find, sane. Which compliment cannot be paid to the Clutch Hand.
It couldn’t be paid to Nicolo either. Not anymore. I’ll never forget his knuckles tilting my chin up gently—satisfied, as if he’d put down a rabid dog for me, and beneath the satisfaction a sick version of the enduring love that had always been there.
“That’s what happens to people who hurt you.”
“Nicolo. Not this. Clean and tidy, yes, but—”
“No, it had to be this way. I brought Sammy here to make a point to Mr. Salvatici as well as to you. The Clutch Hand was sent a powerful message, but you ended up bleeding. I prefer higher precision. A fagiolo.* This will show your boss what I think of mistakes.”
Nicolo stood up, nodded. He seemed nearly to have forgotten I was there. He adjusted his tie, a bizarre gesture when his collar was seasoned with blood, and regarded the desecrated corpse. I remembered him when he was eleven and I nine, wearing a look like that as he tied tomato stems to stripped branches, and my heart ached more than my arm ever could.
“I had a few words with your dancer friend,” he mused. “I thanked him for carrying you out of there so quick. Good night, topolina. If anyone else lays a hand on your pretty skin who shouldn’t, I’ll be there to punish him. Never worry about that. Not so long as I’m around.”
◆ Nineteen ◆
NOW
Isn’t it about time for the Federal government to speak or step out against the many brutal murders, whippings, intimidations and the branding of peaceful, law-abiding citizens by mobs, which are being done in many parts of the country?
—BEATRICE MORROW CANNADY, The Advocate, Portland, Oregon, July 19, 1924
Oh no, I can hear you perfectly now, Mrs. Snider. Muriel, I mean to say. Forgive me.”
“Not at all, dear. No one has a greater bond with our four-footed friends, but Buttons here is the plague of my life. There, that’s quite enough yapping—you’ll let me speak with my friend Alice, won’t you, precious?”
The sound like a raven being repeatedly run over by a Daimler continues. Muriel has a point re: plagues. Medea is forever either chewing something expensive or plotting more complex malevolence. It doesn’t stop Blossom from slipping her scraps of Miss Christina’s roast chicken and cooing idiotically, but such are the foibles of human nature. I duck farther back into the comfortable cabinet in the Paragon’s lobby, nursing a cigarette. People are less likely to remark on a white woman using a colored phone booth supposing it’s full of smoke.
“Well, Fred and I had a heart-to-heart, and