meant nothing?”
“Actually, I’m abandoning it like it meant a terribly important something, deserving of a professional eye. Go on and look, they’re real details. In case Overton ever checked them. An article about the importance of the Paragon Hotel is a swell notion, says yours truly. Finish Dr. Pendleton’s obituary and then introduce your nose to a new grindstone.”
“Wait!” she calls after me, standing. “I don’t argue that this whole business of the Klan and the Paragon needs telling, but there’s no finishing it. Overton could walk at any moment, there isn’t a single lead regarding the lynching, and we still haven’t found Davy Lee.”
“Maybe that’s the story,” I posit. “That we need to do better at solving things.”
“I . . . yes, I suppose that could be. Miss James—”
“Alice.”
“Where will you go now you’re leaving the Paragon?”
“Oh, don’t think me secretive, but I haven’t decided yet.” Tapping my cranium, I smile. “I’m looking for someplace specific for a change. None of this flinging myself at burgs willy-nilly like a bird crashing into a windowpane.”
“When you find the place . . . will you send me your address so I can show you the article?” she inquires, chilly but sincere.
“That would tickle me entirely senseless.”
“All right, then.” She seats herself, flips through a few pages of my notebook. “Thank you. Goodbye, Miss James, and good luck.”
I leave her scribbling. Blossom is probably correct—Jenny can’t change the world. But I wonder what a thousand Jennies, sitting at a thousand typewriters and punching millions upon millions of letters into straight columns, all those separate words in newspapers across the nation marching as one great force, might accomplish if given the means and the time.
After fetching my coat and bags, it’s with a profound sense of loss that I lock the door of my room. I don’t want anyone else to live there. I know all has been warped past straightening, but I still feel ever so sore picturing a spotty young secretary or a bull-shouldered ironsmith asleep in what I came to consider my bed.
When the elevator door rattles open, Wednesday Joe regards me with haunted eyes. Stepping in as he busies himself, I say gently, “I’m awfully sorry it came to this, old pal.”
He stops manipulating levers. Slumps into the corner with an unsteady chin, tugging at his uniform collar.
“First Davy, then Dr. Pendleton and Blossom. It’s not fair, Your Majesty.”
“Not by any standard, no.”
“What’s going to happen to my sister?” he forces out.
This sends us off the proverbial rails. “Beg pardon?”
“The luck.” The sweet laddie’s shoulders shake. “It’s a mean streak, a real bad one, and what if Jenny’s next? Ma died having me, from Sunday luck. I couldn’t protect Dad no matter what charms I left in his pockets every night. And now we’re in the middle of a hex, and what if it takes my sister? I’ll be alone.”
Wrapping myself around the youth, I thank my stars I already anticipated what he’d consider a nifty parting gift. Fishing in my skirt pocket with my other arm still tight around his shoulders, I thrust a snub of lead under his nose.
“Make your sister carry this around. Unless you’re heading into a sticky situation, in which case you can borrow it. Remember me when you use this, please, for I seem to have grown ever so fond of you.”
Wednesday Joe steps back. He holds a flattened bullet, edges irregular and metal gleaming, and his eyes seem to reach for it.
“Don’t tell me this bullet has hit somebody,” he says reverently.
“Joe ‘the Coffin Maker’ Castano. The bullet struck the wall of the cellar where he was ambushed. I picked it up and cleaned it, of course. I’m no rube.”
“But anybody who carries it can’t die a sudden death!” he exclaims. “I dunno if I can keep this, Miss James. I’m grateful, but what’ll protect you?”
“I’ve got plenty of other talismans. Use it in good health.”
Wednesday Joe squeezes me tight before firing up the elevator and slipping the bullet in his pocket. “I’ll never forget this, Miss James.”
“Neither will I, Joe.” I watch as the floors whir past, gravity taking me ever closer to the ground, and thence to the street, and after that the wide, uncharted world. “Neither will I.”
Bags in hand, I enter the lobby. The usual morning crowd bustles about, but the poisonous news has sickened their smiles and leached the color from their smart metropolitan clothes. Miss Christina is sharing a quiet word with Rooster behind the counter,