Chapter 18 Kane
KANE
WOULD YOU PAY ATTENTION?”
“Sorry.” Kane gave his head a shake, squinting through the dim at Fletcher’s scowling face. “What did you say?”
Fletcher had just returned from acting as reinforcement for a particularly unpleasant eviction, so he wasn’t in the best of moods.
Given that, Kane hadn’t wanted to launch directly into the previous night’s sequence of events.
Besides, he wasn’t in a good mood himself.
He couldn’t stop picturing Zaria’s face when he’d found her in the crypt kneeling beside Cecile’s body.
If she’d decided to back out of their deal, she hadn’t said as much, but Kane couldn’t help but worry she was thinking about it.
Last night, he suspected, had led Zaria to a revelation about just how fucked-up he really was.
Who wanted her dead? And why, for the love of God, had they invoked his name?
“I said, where the hell were you last night?” Fletcher’s tone was irritated. “You weren’t here when I got home from the Exhibition. I never even heard you come in.”
“Ah.” Kane felt his face twist. “Remember when I told you I’d promised to help Zaria find someone? A woman named Cecile, in exchange for a favor?”
“Yes.”
“Well, things didn’t go… smoothly.”
Fletcher’s pale brows drew together. “What the hell did you do now?”
That was rather presumptive. After all, Kane hadn’t initiated what chaos had ensued. He took in Fletcher’s state of considerable disarray: the blood on the sleeve of his white shirt that undoubtedly wasn’t his, the disturbed ruffle of his hair. For once the two of them seemed equally miserable.
“I found Cecile,” Kane said after a moment. He got to his feet as he spoke, suddenly feeling the strong need for a hit of tobacco. As he readied his pipe, he continued. “And I took Zaria to meet her at St. John’s church.”
Fletcher twirled his hat on the tip of his index finger. “Okay. The problem?”
“She wouldn’t let me come with her—she wanted to talk to Cecile alone.” Kane shook his head. Everything about Zaria was intense. Rash. And yet she thought him difficult to trust. “So I waited outside.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I didn’t care much either way. About thirty minutes later, though, we ended up with company. The murderous kind.”
Fletcher stopped twirling the hat. “Beg pardon?”
“Someone wants Zaria dead, and they’ve hired the most incompetent blokes to carry out the deed.
Don’t ask who,” he added, because Fletcher had opened his mouth, presumably to do just that.
“I have no idea. The problem is, it seems there’s no shortage of people she’s pissed off.
Her father took a ton of deposits from rich clients without delivering a product, then he went and died, leaving her to fulfill the commissions. Except she’s not very fast at it.”
“And now she’s being targeted by a client who thinks the Mendozas swindled him.”
“That, or it’s the one client she actually did swindle. She delivered a faulty commission last week.” Kane didn’t know what his expression looked like, but Fletcher appeared to read his face without difficulty.
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
He sighed, sinking back into his chair as he passed Fletcher the pipe. His friend took it but didn’t put it between his lips, instead staring at Kane with an intensity that made him feel like a naughty child. “Yeah, there’s more. Cecile’s dead, and whoever killed her knew my real name.”
“What?”
Kane launched into the story of how he and the large man had gotten in a fight while the man’s two companions went into the church. How Kane had killed his attacker before finding Zaria hunched beside Cecile’s body with a gun in her hand, trapped in an impasse.
“Wait a moment,” Fletcher interrupted. “You murdered someone at church?”
Kane gave a dismissive flick of his wrist. “We were in the street. It’s not like I shot him at the foot of the cross.”
“You can’t kill a man so close to God’s house. It’s not right.”
“Lord save me.” Kane groaned, tilting his head back. Fletcher’s Catholicism was a little more deeply embedded than his own tattered faith. “We’re sinners, Fletch, and you know it. Anyway, I took Cecile’s body to Roberts’s factory and was up nearly all night.”
David Roberts was on Ward’s payroll and thus offered up the use of his factory’s enormous coal-fired ovens for dealing with remains. He was a rich businessman, gruff and aloof, with a strict don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
Fletcher gave a slow shake of his head. “Well, better hope Zaria got what she wanted out of Cecile before she was murdered.” At long last, he put the pipe between his lips and gave a mournful puff.
“Mm-hmm,” Kane agreed. “She never told me either way. She was too busy trying to rip my head off. She thinks I have something to do with the danger she’s in.”
“Maybe you do.”
Kane blanched, scowling. “I thought you were supposed to be on my side.”
“Think about it, Kane. Someone could know she’s useful to you. But since they can’t seem to kill her, maybe they’re trying to turn her against you.”
“Nobody apart from you knows she’s useful to me. Besides, who would care enough to do that?”
Fletcher shrugged. “It was just an idea. You’ve no shortage of enemies. Do you think Zaria’s going to call the deal off because of it?”
“No,” Kane said at once, then hesitated. He was beginning to suspect Zaria wasn’t as predictable as he initially thought. “I don’t know. She was pretty upset about Cecile’s dying. That woman was important to her for some reason.”
“Then is it possible you came off a little bit… cold?”
Kane sat up, wrinkling his nose. “What do you mean?”
Fletcher made a humming sound in the back of his throat.
“You’re pretty good at acting like death doesn’t bother you, that’s all.
People like you and me are used to it, but I’d hazard a guess she isn’t.
She’s probably scared, Kane, even if she didn’t admit it.
Not to mention sad. Did you even try to comfort her? ”
“Did I try to—?” Kane cut himself off. “No. I was too busy being relieved she wasn’t dead.
” Was that what Zaria had wanted? Comfort?
Some kind of emotional reaction from him?
It wasn’t like he understood her well, but Kane had gotten the impression that this was the last thing she’d been looking for.
Furthermore, she lived in Devil’s Acre; surely she’d seen no shortage of terrible things.
“Just… tell me your evening went better, would you?”
“Actually,” Fletcher said, straightening, “it did. I managed to get my hands on the pamphlet they’re going to be handing out at the Exhibition once it officially opens.
” He thrust a folded piece of paper at Kane’s chest. Kane opened it; it appeared to contain a small map of the Crystal Palace as well as a list of the main exhibits.
“Very useful. Was Price able to give you an idea of the security rotation?”
Fletcher tilted his head to one side, then the other.
“More or less. He wasn’t very forthcoming, but I got the sense it was because security isn’t very organized yet, not because he was trying to hide something from me.
He managed to get his officers stationed near the Waterhouse exhibit, and he pointed out the ones we can trust to keep their mouths shut.
They’re more loyal to Price than the institution as a whole. ”
They were going to have to take Price’s word for that, Kane thought. He didn’t like it. “And the lock? The parautoptic key?”
Fletcher held up a finger, his mouth curving into a rueful smile. “I was getting to that. Turns out a lot of people know about the Day and Newell display. The company is trying to show up the British Detector lock, and so far, it seems to be working. Problem is, it’s never been picked before.”
“So I’ve heard.” Kane didn’t bother to hide his impatience. “The key, Fletch.”
“I talked to a number of people—just making casual conversation, you know—and from what I can discern, the lock Day and Newell’s exhibitor will be using in their demonstration has fifteen levers.
That’s as complicated as it gets. Which makes me suspect the one on loan to Waterhouse will have fewer. ”
“But you don’t know how many.”
“This might come as a shock to you, Kane, but most people don’t go around discussing the number of bits on a parautoptic key.” Fletcher crossed his arms. “Why did you need to know, anyway?”
Kane ground his teeth, though his frustration wasn’t directed at his friend. “If I know how many levers we’re dealing with, I think I can get Zaria to re-create the key.”
Fletcher’s brows drew together. “How would that work?”
“Whoever has the key can rearrange the bits, and when they go to lock the safe, the interior levers shift to accommodate the new arrangement. It’s constantly changing, which is why it’s so hard to pick.
An alchemologist like Zaria could come up with a design using magic—one where the key bits could shift to fit the required arrangement.
I might still be able to pick it, but it would take ages and far too much guesswork. ”
“And there won’t be time for troubleshooting,” Fletcher murmured. “Especially when there’s no guarantee you’ll even be successful.”
“You see the dilemma. Plus, since it’s a brand-new foreign design, there’s nothing for me to practice on.
” Kane hated problems he couldn’t solve and questions he didn’t have answers to.
Heists involved an element of calculated risk, and although he had no qualms with risk, he couldn’t very well calculate it if he didn’t have all the information he needed.
It felt like standing just a little too close to the edge of a precipice, fearing the fall but at the same time yearning to peer at what lay below.
“If Zaria can make a design where the bits adjust,” Fletcher said, “then get her to make one where the number of bits adjust, too. Assuming you haven’t scared her off completely.”
Kane said nothing. He didn’t yet know whether he had or not.
“Keep her happy, Kane. Even if it means pretending to have real human emotions.”
Kane dragged his gaze to the window. The last dregs of sunlight were fading into the west, leaving behind a night saturated with fog. It shrouded the building across the way so it looked like some looming, liminal place. “She’s going to lose her mind once she realizes we’ve tricked her.”
Fletcher shrugged again, this time with a simultaneous wince. “Yeah, well. By the time she figures it out, it won’t matter, will it?”