The Dante Club Page 0,12

of his lack of participation in the questioning, and of his plainclothes.

"Now, fellow, that ain't no darky," said a dapper string bean of a man as he stepped forward and surveyed Patrolman Rey with the look of an expert appraiser. "He looks to be a half - breed to me, and a mighty fine specimen at that. Mother a slave, father a plantation hand. That's right, ain't it, friend?"

Rey stepped closer to the line. "How about answering the chief's questions, sir? Let's help each other out if we're able."

"Handsomely said, Lily White." The string bean held an appreciative finger to his thin mustache, which circled down from his lips to bracket his mouth, seeming to signal the start of a beard but dropping off abruptly before the chin.

Chief Kurtz thrust his blackjack at the diamond stud on Langdon Peaslee's breastbone. "Don't rile me, Peaslee!"

"Careful, won't you?" Peaslee, Boston's greatest safecracker, dusted off his vest. "That little luster's worth eight hundred dollars, Chief, legitimately purchased!"

Laughter from all sides, including some detectives. Kurtz should not have let Langdon Peaslee wind him up, not on this day. "I got a sense you had something to do with the round of safes blown on Commercial Street last Sunday," Kurtz said. "I'll bag you with breaking the Sabbath laws right now, and you can sleep in the Tombs with the other twopenny pickpockets!"

Willard Burndy, a few spots down the line, guffawed.

"Well, I'll tell you something about that, my dear chief," Peaslee said, raising his voice theatrically for the benefit of the whole meeting room (including the suddenly rapt groundlings up in the high seats). "It sure weren't our friend Mr. Burndy over there, who could pull off anything like the Commercial Street run. Or did those safes belong to an old ladies' society?"

Burndy's bright pink eyes doubled in size as he shoved men out of the way, clawing toward Langdon Peaslee and nearly igniting a riot among the rowdier crooks as he went, while the ragged boys above cheered and hooted. This entertainment held its own even against the secret rat pits that operated in North End cellars, and those charged twenty-five cents a head.

As officers restrained Burndy, a confused man was pushed out of line. He stumbled wildly. Nicholas Rey caught him before he could fall.

He was slightly built, his dark eyes handsome but worn, with a waywardness of expression. The stranger displayed a chessboard of missing and rotting teeth and emitted something like a hiss, releasing a stench of Medford rum. He either didn't notice or didn't mind that his clothes were coated in rotten egg.

Kurtz marched down the reshuffled gallery of rogues and explained again. He explained about the man found naked in a field near the river, his body swarming in flies, wasps, maggots, eating into his skin, soaked in his blood. One of the present company, Kurtz informed them, had killed him with a blow to the head and carried him there to leave to nature's blights. He mentioned another odd touch: a flag, white and tattered, planted over the body.

Rey propped his disoriented ward to his feet. The man's nose and mouth were red and irregular, overwhelming his thin mustache and beard. One of his legs was lame, the casualty of a long forgotten accident or fight. His large hands shook in wild gesticulations. The stranger's trembling increased at each detail thrown out by the chief of police.

Deputy Chief Savage said, "Oh, this chap! Who brought him in, do you know, Rey? He wouldn't give a name earlier when they were photographing all the new ones for the rogues' picture gallery. Silent as an Egyptian sphinx!"

The sphinx's paper collar was all but hidden under his slovenly black scarf, wrapped loosely to one side. He stared emptily and flailed his oversize hands in the air in rough, concentric circles.

"Trying to sketch something?" Savage commented jokingly.

His hands were sketching indeed - a map of sorts, one that would have aided the police immeasurably in the weeks to come had they known what to look for. This stranger had long been an intimate of the locale of Healey's murder but not the richly paneled parlors of Beacon Hill. No, the man was sketching an image in the air not of any earthly place at all but of a murky antechamber into an otherworld. For it was there - there, the man understood, as the image of Artemus Healey's death seeped into his mind and grew with every particular - yes, it was