Chapter 6
Bridges
His headache had grown as the whiskey bottle emptied throughout a grueling day of bad news coupled with even worse news. Meeting after meeting about endless crises had left Malachy buried under a mountain of tedious paperwork.
There were too many impossible tasks to accomplish under the watchful eyes of Lt. Potts, all while the Tribunal’s wrath loomed and Ghose lurked unseen, a sinister presence. One misstep, and the walls of this inevitable trap would spring shut around Malachy.
Piecing together the full catastrophe of his unwitting absence, let alone righting it, seemed a distant hope. And, worse, was the growing gulf he was desperate to bridge between him and Cora.
He had burned at least one other bridge to mend the one with Cora. During his meeting with Guy Haviland, Malachy had succinctly expressed his opinion of the Electromancer’s attacks on Cora.
“Hurt her again, and I’ll kill you myself.”
Guy had skulked out of his office sporting a fresh black eye.
Time passed by the swell of jazz music and drunken laughter drifting through the door. When another knock came, he glanced up blearily from the unbalanced accounts at the clock. It was time for his meeting with Cora. Dreadful anticipation filled him.
“Come in,” he called.
The greeting died on the tip of his tongue when Lt. Randolph Potts entered. Malachy pinched the bridge of his nose, his impatience frothing over. Of course, Potts would waltz in unannounced on his first day back. “What the fuck do you want?”
Lt. Potts stood at full attention, an unremarkable middle-aged man in an insignia-laden uniform. “To hold you accountable for your crimes, Mr. Bane,” he said, voice tinged with disdain.
A parody of a laugh burst out of Malachy. He settled back in his chair, waving the last of the whiskey for Potts to continue. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“We have been watching you closely, Mr. Bane. We know all about your smuggling operation. Your routes, and your cargo. The instant we have incontrovertible proof, I shall take immense pleasure in arresting you myself.”
Some of the tension eased from Malachy’s shoulders. Potts had revealed his hand, and it was far from a winning one. Potts didn’t have enough to arrest him, yet. For now the coppers remained uniformed and uninformed.
Potts’s own uniform was looking uncharacteristically rumpled.
Malachy thought he even saw lint besmirching the lieutenant’s starched jacket.
There was a glaze to Potts’s hawk-sharp eyes, a hunch to his well-decorated shoulders, as if a great weight was pressing down on him, folding him into himself.
“As you are undoubtedly aware, Mr. Bane, one of my officers died a few days ago. The coroner’s report stated that he—a young man in peak health—had seemingly suffocated on nothing.
A tidy death, if you will. I inspected the body in the morgue myself.
I was curious to see if I would discover handprints rotting his chest right down to the bone, as we have seen on other victims of a cloaked mass murderer stalking the streets.
Victims all with connections to you. And certainly enough, I peeled back the sheet and there the rotten handprints were.
I know my officer’s death, and the incurable sleeping sickness still plaguing London, are related to gang activity. ”
Malachy kept his expression impassive while his pulse skittered.
Potts’s suspicions, funded by an unknown party, were dangerous not only to Cora and his business but mages everywhere.
Falsifying the coroner’s report would not conceal the Unweaver’s handiwork in the future.
This was the last dead copper Malachy could pry secrets out of for a while.
He would need his people to follow their followers more carefully.
Lighting a cigarette, he regarded Potts with cool disinterest. “Is that all, Lieutenant?”
“No, Mr. Bane. Far from it. We have been tailing you whenever you have cropped up in London. Where you’ve been scurrying off to will soon be a matter of public record.”
Potts’s threat grated at the ragged edges of his composure. Malachy had not been anywhere near London, and Potts was unlikely to misidentify his favorite scapegoat. Who was gallivanting around wearing his face? Julian fucking Morro?
Anger flared inside him, but disdain chilled his voice.
Taking a deep breath, Malachy vented his wrath.
“Tomorrow, when the Police Commissioner asks you why my considerable donations to the Metropolitan Police have ceased, I encourage you to be honest not only with him, but with yourself. After months of targeted harassment and illegal surveillance of my business—for which my solicitor will be suing you to within an inch of your fuckin’ life for—what have you to show for it except squandered taxpayer money?
You’ve admitted that you lack proof of any alleged crimes.
I also understand, Lieutenant, that you are up for promotion this year.
” He nearly smiled. “Shame that won’t be happening now. ”
Potts glowered across the desk. “Are you threatening an officer of the law?”
“I am enlightening you of the consequences of your actions.”
The copper’s hand twitched towards his gun. Malachy rose to his feet, planted his palms on the desk, and leaned forward. Potts, from his Napoleonic height, suffered the indignity of having to crane his head back to meet Malachy’s furious gaze.
“There is also the question,” Malachy said in a lethally soft voice, “of how you are funding such an intensive invasion of my privacy.”
Potts stiffened. Then, with effort, he unclenched his fists and smoothed them over his uniform. “The full weight of the law shall come down upon you, Mr. Bane. When it does, I shall relish it.” He turned on his polished boot heel and slammed the door after himself.
Malachy bowed his head, expelling a ragged breath. He needed to sow his own seeds of doubt and discredit Potts’s allegations before they took root and strangled him.
The best way to undermine Potts was to go over his head. Or inside it.
Tomorrow, Malachy would exchange a few words over lunch with the Police Commissioner regarding Potts’s invasive inquiries into the business the coppers had greatly profited from.
A full psychological evaluation of Potts would be the least of Malachy’s demands.
Sloane could steal the report, and Malachy could comb through it for leverage; dig through Potts’s mind and find the secrets buried within his neuroses.
And if the Potts problem persisted, the lieutenant’s resignation would be adequate payment to resume Malachy’s steady drip of bribes. That ought to put the crooked coppers back in line.
Malachy pressed his knuckles to his pounding temples, shooting an irritated glance at the clock. Potts had shown up, but not Cora. A knot tightened in the pit of his stomach. Where could she be?
He reached for the whiskey bottle and found it empty, with no others in his desk or office. “Fuck.”
On his way to the club’s golden bar for another bottle he ran into a dozen people who had not seen him in months, and all wanted to catch up at that exact moment. “Fuck,” he muttered after he had broken free of the last person.
He was nearly at the club’s packed bar when he spotted her. Standing a head taller than every other woman, it was not hard to do. His steps slowed, his eyes narrowing in appraisal.
Cora was laughing with the standup bass player, Tim Tambo.
Head tossed back in a ripple of unruly waves, a smile on her soft lips.
She was dressed to the nines in a slinky black dress with matching elbow-length gloves.
Backless with a slit up to her thigh, the dress left little to the imagination, yet his own eagerly supplied how it would feel to trace every delicious curve and hollow.
Her eyes landed on Malachy. Her smile collapsed.
Something dropped, heavy as a stone, in his gut. While she did not remember last night, she clearly remembered this morning. He beckoned her towards him. She skewered him with a look then whispered something to Tim Tambo before approaching him.
“Where have you been?” Malachy demanded.
By the brightness of her eyes that couldn’t quite focus on him, he gathered she was on at least one substance other than the cocktail in her hand. Perhaps the only demon plaguing Cora’s memory was addiction.
“Tim Tambo took me out to the Copacetic Club, that swanky new jazz joint in SoHo. As friends,” she clarified at the inquiring quirk of his eyebrow.
He glanced behind her. Anita’s little brother, who was in fact taller than Malachy, hovered just beyond earshot. Tim Tambo’s dark gaze lingered on Cora, full of longing.
“He’s not trying to be your friend,” Malachy said.
Her gaze flicked between him and the bass player. Tambo's hopeful expression blossomed into a sultry smile at her attention. Her own smile fell as understanding dawned.
“Why do you have to ruin everything, Bane?” she muttered.
“Why are you late?”
“Late? Late for what?”
“I’m going to assume that was a rhetorical question.”
“Assume away.”
He forced a breath. One step forward, two steps back. “We had a meeting scheduled for half an hour ago.”
“A meeting? What could we possibly need to meet about? If it’s about that dead copper you wanted me to commune with, I left a note on your desk before going out with Tim Tambo.”
Her note, buried under the mutiny of paperwork piled on his desk, had gone unseen. “Summarize the note.”
She gave him an arch look. “Read it yourself.”
“Cora, that is not how these meetings work.”
“Why not? I can write. I’m fairly certain you can read.”
“I’ll rephrase: No. We are meeting. In person. Now.”
Their gazes fought in a battle of wills, the bridge between them burning at both ends.
Aware of the attention they were drawing from the club’s sea of curious faces, Malachy gestured for her to follow him to his office. He tried not to stare at the sway of her hips.