Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Koshka and I touched down safely into the alley outside the Bathtub, the infamous speakeasy the Duke of Chicago frequented in his books. Bad gin, he said, but good information.
“You all right?” I asked Koshka. We’d arrived behind a pile of garbage about ten feet high. The stench could melt glass, but at least it gave us good cover.
Koshka leapt out of my arms, ready to work.
He scouted around the garbage while I straightened my suit.
Some Book Witches suffer severe vertigo when entering stories, but I’ve never had that problem.
I assumed it was because the Marches had been Book Witches for generations now.
Pops liked to joke we had ink in our blood.
Koshka trotted back, indicating the coast was clear.
Above me, at the end of my outstretched fingertips, my umbrella hovered, keeping the portal between the two worlds open.
When we left, we would have to find our way back to this alley.
Should be easy enough. Get into the speakeasy, free the Duke of Chicago, then we would be on our way.
And maybe if I played my cards right…he’d give me his autograph.
“All right,” I said to Koshka, “let’s go. Stay close.”
Together, we strolled out from the alley and mounted the sidewalk as if we belonged there.
The few people out that night paid us little to no attention.
Cats were a common sight in big cities, where rats and mice were legion.
Coins clinked in my pocket and my face wore a tough customer scowl.
I was merely another lost soul looking to drink my cares away.
Because Prohibition was still the law of the land, bars and other gin joints were hidden behind fronts. The Bathtub was in the basement of a haberdashery. I knocked on the nondescript front door of the shop, and a pretty but hard-faced young woman opened it.
“Yeah?” she said.
“I’m looking for a straw boater,” I said, lowering my voice an octave.
“We got boaters. In the back.”
She let me inside and locked the door behind me.
“I can find my way,” I said.
“What about the ratcatcher?” she asked, glancing down at Koshka.
“He needs a boater too.”
She put her hand on her hip and tossed her bobbed black hair. “Whatever floats your boater, honey.”
Koshka and I headed straight back through the hat shop, passing fedoras and trilbies and derby hats galore.
The Duke of Chicago favored a top hat for evening excursions.
It was all part of his mystique. Anyone who’s ever read an old detective series knows each detective has a special superpower, so to speak.
Hercule Poirot was a former Belgian police officer who relied on his legendary “little grey cells” to solve his cases.
Miss Marple lived all her life in the small village of Saint Mary Mead, a microcosm of the world where she became an astute student of human nature.
The Duke of Chicago’s superpower? A uniquely potent combination of money, looks, and charm.
The Duke always dressed to the nines, if only because he’d seen how people crumble in the face of someone they perceive as being of higher status.
Fortunately, the Duke was unusually self-aware and humble considering his rank and background and only used his powers for good.
Kind of like Batman, but with a better wardrobe, fewer gadgets, and no daddy issues.
We reached the stockroom door. The party raged on the other side.
As soon as I opened it, the acrid scent of cigar smoke slapped me in the face.
I breathed through my mouth as best I could as I made my way down a short flight of stairs toward the source of all the shouting and laughing.
Nothing would have given me away as an outsider faster than a coughing fit.
You needed asbestos lungs to survive the smoke-filled rooms of the early twentieth century.
We reached the basement. The place, no bigger than your average coffee shop, was packed to the gills just like it always was in the books. Women in flashy floor-length gowns danced cheek to cheek with men in suits to the raucous sound of a ragtime piano.
“Don’t get your tail stepped on, boy,” I warned Koshka, who slinked along the floor at my side. “Try to sniff out the Duke. Follow the scent of old money and class privilege.”
Koshka weaved through dozens of pairs of dancing feet while I cozied up to the bar and ordered a Sidecar from the bartender. Did I know what was in a Sidecar? Not a clue. But a drink in hand would help me to blend in with the other toughs.
The bartender slid my drink across the bar. I nodded and paid the man with an old Liberty half-dollar that I hoped had been minted before 1930. I’d forgotten to double-check my vintage cash stash before I’d left, but he took it without looking too closely.
Leaning back against the bar, I tried to look inconspicuous as I pretended to sip my drink.
The cocktail smelled like orange juice and ethanol, so I wasn’t tempted to drink it.
People dropped like drunken flies from poisoned bathtub gin during the Depression.
Besides, drinking and eating were uniquely dangerous for Book Witches, as I mentioned.
Although…if I were forced to choose a book to be trapped in for all eternity, I wouldn’t mind if it were one of the Duke’s mysteries.
Something brushed against my ankle. Koshka had returned and nipped my pants leg, signaling for me to follow him.
We passed a table where a woman in blue sat alone and forlorn. I placed my drink in front of her and said in my best bad Chicago accent, “You need this more than me, sweetheart.”
“Thanks, handsome,” she said, perking up. “Save me a shimmy later.”
I winked at her. “You know it, sugar.”
But there was no time for dancing. Koshka made a beeline for the enormous American flag hanging on the back wall. If I stopped to count I would have counted forty-eight stars, not fifty, because Alaska and Hawaii wouldn’t be states for about thirty years.
When no one was looking, I slipped behind the flag and felt around the wall for a catch. A panel quietly popped open, and Koshka and I snuck into a dimly lit room. An oil lamp cast pale gold light across the stained concrete floor. I picked it up and turned up the wick.
There in the corner, I spotted a chair. A man sat slumped down, facing the wall, hands tied behind his back. And on the floor by the chair, a hat.
A top hat.
I’d found the Duke.
I lifted the lamp and spun a slow circle lighting the room’s dark corners. He’d been left unguarded. Good. Slowly I approached him.
“Mister,” I rasped. “You awake? Hey, mister?” This was my impression of an ordinary bar patron who’d innocently stumbled into this bare and menacing back room.
No answer.
“Mister?” I said again.
His head was down, his chin on his chest. Was he sleeping or unconscious?
I want to pretend I stared at him for as long as I did because of concern for his health, but I was stunned speechless at the sight of him in the flesh.
Even passed out and trussed up, the Duke of Chicago was ten times more handsome than I’d ever dared to let myself imagine.
He had a face that belonged on the silver screen, with thick wavy dark hair that demanded a girl run her fingers through it and the most kissable lips in the long and storied history of kissing.
While his author, Tom Hightower, said in an interview he based him on a young Cary Grant, the Duke was a bit more of a young Gary Cooper live and in person. And I write from personal experience when I say nothing bad happens when one does an online image search for “young Gary Cooper.”
“No wonder he can get anyone to do anything at any time,” I whispered to Koshka.
“You aren’t so bad yourself,” the Duke of Chicago said as he lifted his head and stared directly at me.
“Oh,” I said, which wasn’t one of my better comebacks, but even the dictionary would be at a loss for words if the Duke of Chicago looked at it the way he was looking at me. “You’re awake.”
I should’ve known he’d been only faking unconsciousness.
He furrowed his regal brow at me.
“Either you are a young woman under that suit pretending to be a young man…or I am learning something surprising about myself. Or both.” He tilted his head to the side. “Both. Most certainly both. And quite frankly, it’s not that surprising.”
I slapped myself across the face.
“What on earth was that for?” he demanded.
“Someone had to do it,” I said. “All right, I need to get you out of here.”
“The fiend tied me up too well,” he said. “You’ll have to cut the knots.”
“Do you still have that knife strapped to your ankle?” I asked.
Traumatized by the carnage of the First World War, the Duke of Chicago famously didn’t carry a gun. However, he always kept a knife on his ankle in the event of a kidnapping. For a fictional detective, being kidnapped and/or held hostage was a daily concern.
“I do, yes,” he said, his tone suspicious. “But how did you know—”
“Um…I mean, who doesn’t keep a kidnapping knife in their socks these days? I left mine in my other socks so I’ll use yours if you don’t mind—”
I bent down to get his knife, but at the last moment, he danced his leg away.
“I never let anyone touch my socks until I know their name. Strict rule of mine. Never steered me wrong.”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. “Sorry.”
“That’s unfortunate. As I need to get out of here, I’ll simply have to give you a name. I’ll call you…darling.”
“That works,” I said. “And you’re the Duke. Now if we could get back to the knife—”
“Just call me Duke, darling,” he said, relaxing his leg for me. “And your friend?”
“Koshka,” I said. “He thinks he’s Russian.”
“Koshka? Your four-legged Bolshevik is sitting in my hat.”
I lifted Duke’s pant leg. Sure enough, he had a slim knife hidden inside his right sock. “Sorry about the cat in the hat,” I said.
“Don’t apologize. It looks better on him than on me. Greetings, comrade,” he said. “ Добрый вечер .”
“You know Russian?” I asked as I went to work, sawing through the thick ropes. The blade was sharp but small.
“Only enough to get me thrown in the gulag.”
“The guy who grabbed you…what did he look like?”
“Pure essence of knob, if you ask me,” Duke said.
“Can you be more specific?”
“Caucasian male, approximately forty years old, five feet, eight inches, average build, brown eyes, sallow complexion, Roman nose, short brown hair, widow’s peak, birthmark on his right hand—”
“Did he smell like smoke?” I said before I got his weight and the name of his third grade teacher too.
“Yes, and he looked like his mother never once kissed him good night. Know him?”
“Unfortunately.” It sounded like X, an old archenemy of mine. A Burner. We’d tussled more than once in the past.
“Why did he leave you here?” I asked. “Did he say?”
“He said nothing to me at all,” Duke said. “My turn to ask the questions now.”
“Shoot,” I said, as I continued to saw at the rope.
“How did you know I was here? Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you helping me? Why can’t you tell me your name? Who was that man who jumped me this afternoon? And any idea what he planned on doing with me? Oh, and are you married?”
“You need to know if I’m married?”
“I do, actually,” he said.
“Not married.”
“Wonderful. Now I feel free to say you have the finest gray eyes I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “Storm clouds and silver. Try to blink less. It’s like closing a curtain across the Mona Lisa. ”
“Thank you,” I said, unblinking.
“Better,” he said. “My other questions?”
My eyes started to dry out, so I blinked.
“I knew you were here because I’d been told where to find you.
The guy who grabbed you was trying to stop you from solving this case,” I said, which was vague but true enough.
X was trying to stop Duke from solving this case and, knowing X, every other case forever and ever.
“I can’t tell you who I am, but I’m from Fort Meriwether, Oregon, and don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it.
Almost nobody’s heard of it. I want you to solve this case, so I’m helping you. Wait, what was the other question?”
“What was Old Smokey planning on doing with me?” he repeated.
“He wants to stop your work,” I said as I got Duke’s right hand free.
“So he means to kill me?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” And I wouldn’t. X could be coming back any minute to finish the job.
“If I had a dime…” Duke sighed.
As I kept working on the rope, Duke reached his free hand down for his hat.
I assumed he meant to shoo Koshka out of it and dust it off, but he didn’t.
He petted Koshka between the ears. I’m not sure if that’s the moment I started to fall in love with him, but I think it’s safe to say that’s the moment my cat did.
Finally, I freed Duke’s other hand. “There.”
He got to his feet and, instead of rubbing his abraded wrists, he simply straightened his jacket, vest, and tie, then ran a hand through his hair. “How do I look? Shipshape and Bristol fashion?”
“You make James Bond look like a hippie.”
“I have no idea who or what any of that means,” he said, “but from the adoring look in those storm cloud eyes of yours, I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“It was.”
I held out his knife to him, but instead of taking it, he took my hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed the back of it. His own beautiful eyes—chocolate brown and delicious—peered deeply into mine.
When his lips touched my skin, I felt lightning surging through my entire body.
“Thank you, darling,” he said. “I owe you my life and anything else you’d like to request.”
“Rainy,” I said suddenly.
“Is it?” he asked, still holding my hand. “Well, that’s spring in Chicago for you. If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes—”
“No, my name. My name is Rainy March. I’m not supposed to tell you that, but I wanted you to know it.”
“Rainy,” he said, musing, “my favorite kind of long morning in bed.”
The man could charm the pants off a statue.