Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
“Do you believe in luck, Sam?” Billie asked.
“Luck? Well, I suppose some people have it.”
The sun was lowering in the sky as they finally made their way out of the rarified atmosphere of Georges Boucher Auction House, the lengthening shadows turning to cool semidark around them as they rounded the corner into the alley behind the sandstone building where Sam’s utility was parked.
The experience had not been without interest, but Billie did not consider herself much better informed about the case at hand, and the feeling of all that money clung stiflingly to her.
Her quiet inquiries about Adin Brown with the staff after the auction had brought up precisely nothing.
Lips were sealed, almost suspiciously so, and any attempt to slip behind the curtains had been thwarted with so many workers around.
Somehow, Billie was unsettled by it all.
She felt dirty, as if she needed to wash off the place. And she felt deeply, truly exhausted.
“I don’t think I believe in luck,” she said. “But some days . . .”
Perhaps the inky-hued dress had not been the bearer of bad luck, as her mother had suggested.
Perhaps it was Billie herself who was bad luck.
This had not been a fine day for B. Walker, Private Inquiries.
And in a few short hours her assistant would have the unpleasant job of unpacking that heavily burdened travel trunk so poor Con Zervos could be found by the authorities—but nowhere near the flat of Baroness von Hooft or that of her PI daughter.
Billie hadn’t asked Sam where he’d stored the trunk while they were at the auction.
Perhaps it was still in his mate’s car. Hopefully it was somewhere cool, she reflected darkly.
Her mind went to the extreme contrast between that poor doorman, treated little better than vermin and dumped on her rug, and all the wealthy people gathered inside the auction house, treated like royalty and offered refreshments on silver trays as they bid on fine art and sparkling jewels.
She pondered their various reasons for wanting the paintings and sculptures and glittering necklaces and rings on show.
There were some beautiful things there, some masterpieces even, but also the strong scent of competition.
How else could one explain so many people eager to be seen buying?
“All that money . . .” Sam muttered under his breath, his mind clearly running over some of the same themes.
He had seemed struck by the immense wealth in the room.
Coming from the country, he likely hadn’t seen wealth and privilege quite so concentrated before.
Billie, on the other hand, had seen it before, albeit in a different setting, and had grown cynical.
Where were all those “friends” who had populated her mother’s social life before she’d had to sell the Potts Point mansion and move to a flat?
Where were they when she lost her PI husband?
Where were they now that she’d sold her baby grand to make ends meet?
Ella maintained some impressive social contacts, but many had fallen away like rats from the proverbial sinking ship as her fortunes had gone down. And that’s what they were. Rats.
“Some people did rather well out of the war,” Billie mused.
“And all those dead deserved better.” She shook her head sadly.
The dead were almost invariably the poorest, the ones with the least political and social power.
It had always been thus, with powerful men pulling men and boys from their communities and putting them on the front lines while they smoked cigars and made deals and decisions from a safe distance.
“I suspect wars wouldn’t be nearly so common if no one made money from them,” she added, and Sam turned to look at her.
It was hard to know what Sam thought of such a brutally honest statement, considering his great sacrifice.
But war could not be separated from the pursuit of power, wealth, and territory.
Hitler had his lebensraum push for a Germanic takeover of foreign territory and the annihilation of populations he considered Untermenschen.
The Allies would have lost everything had he not been defeated, and casualties were devastatingly high, but there were still those who did well out of the whole deadly debacle.
Just who they were was not yet clear, but they were out there.
There was newfound wealth in America and Switzerland, she’d heard.
And there was the rumor that the Australian government was going to call in all existing bank notes and reissue new notes, making the old ones worthless.
This would flush out cash that had been hoarded during the war—especially cash made by black-market racketeers.
Some of the auction houses would be doing very nicely with all that cash people were so desperate to part with.
Just how well was Georges Boucher doing?
“Is that what you mean about luck?” Sam asked, puzzled.
Something caught Billie’s eye, distracting her from her thoughts.
“Is that a Packard?” she remarked, recalling Shyla’s description of the foreign man’s car.
She turned and stopped in her tracks. Sam was some paces ahead of her now, aiming to open the door of his car for her, when an arm grabbed her from behind, gripping her waist.
What the . . . A small gleaming knife appeared at her smooth right cheek.
A switchblade, held by rough, masculine hands.
The nails were dirty, the shirt cuff tattered.
She could smell male sweat and feel a heart beating against her shoulder blades.
Billie absorbed this sudden turn of events and took a slow, measured breath, shifting gears internally.
The world slowed down. She bent forward carefully, tilting her head away from the sharp, shining blade, and pushed her buttocks into the man who held her tightly against him.
Having expected her to struggle forward, away from his body and not toward it, the assailant loosened his grip on his blade a touch, his wrist slackening.
Billie continued to bend forward and stretched out both hands as her head moved closer to the grubby footpath.
Seizing the man’s left leg, she wrenched it forcefully off the ground, pulling up and forward, cradling his foot to her chest. She heard a seam of her carefully sewn dress tear, followed by the more satisfying sound of her attacker falling backward with an awkward thrashing movement.
She leaped out of the way, letting go and momentarily free before a second assailant grabbed at her leg and she went down on one knee, feeling a stocking tear irreparably. Now she was cross. Very cross indeed.
“This is our way of saying lay off,” a gruff voice said, and as Billie lifted her eyes she felt a kick in the ribs, a vicious blow.
In that moment, punctuated by pain, she snatched a view of a flabby face, a flattened profile.
The two legs beside her were clothed in grubby chocolate-brown slacks with a slightly tattered hem.
Not so unlike the pants of the man she’d yanked off balance, but those had been a tatty dark blue.
Unremarkable leather shoes, low-end. The grabby man she’d toppled would be getting to his feet soon.
And he would be cross, too. “Next time I cut your pretty face,” the close one with the flat nose added convincingly, as if he knew a thing or two about how that worked.
Billie elected to stay down, huddling protectively while the screaming in her kicked ribs subsided.
She waited for the next move to reveal itself and from the corner of her eye saw Sam, next to his car, catch a strong punch in the kidneys by a second set of assailants.
It had all happened so quickly, so unexpectedly.
Sam went down swinging, but he went down.
“Four of you. Seems a fair fight,” Billie managed from her position on the ground, pulling a hatpin from her topper and swinging it at the closest man’s ankle, pushing all three inches of it through his unmended black sock into the soft space between his ankle bone and heel and out the other side.
He howled like a dingo and doubled over.
She withdrew the hatpin and jumped to her feet, her raffia-and-silk tilt hat sliding off.
“You!” he shouted at her lamely, purple with humiliation and grabbing at his wounded ankle.
He was so shocked that she had time to kick him roundly in the arse with one heeled foot, and he fell forward between two cars, letting out a string of expletives, trying unsuccessfully to regain his balance.
It was one of her less elegant moves, but effective.
If this wasn’t a time for dirty fighting, she didn’t know what was.
Billie turned and glared coldly at the other man, who was ready for his attempt at a comeback.
She stood with her feet apart, the hatpin held in her hand like a dagger.
While she waved it in front of a scarred face that looked like a piece of meat with two eyes in it, her other hand lifted her torn dress inch by inch.
The eyes went from the hatpin to her knee, and then her thigh and the top of her stocking with its pretty lace-edge holster, and then the barrel of her mother-of-pearl-handled Colt, now neatly in her hand and pointed squarely at him.
Just above that barrel were her piercing green-blue eyes.
He knew better than to move, or even breathe.
“Look, lady, I don’t want any more trouble,” he managed after a moment.