Chapter Twenty-Two

The truth was, Dai felt miserable.

Society women surrounded Dai and Leslie at the dinner table, in their colorful silks and satins, arms enclosed in long evening gloves. A blond on the right and a redhead on the left, and three brunettes like charms on a bracelet across the table from him. From their expressions, Dai couldn’t tell what they were thinking; society men often came to the boxing halls and engaged him in chitchat, but he had little experience with their women. They may have been smiling, but their eyes were sharp, like pointed daggers searching for a chink in Leslie’s facade. As though they knew he was not what he was trying so hard to appear to be.

Word had gotten out already that Leslie had telepathic abilities—he worked quickly. Dai had to imagine Violet had been essential in planting the gossip so well—and now these women flocked happily around him, clamoring for him to divine something about them. Me, me, me, rang the voices, high and pretty and sweet. Les wouldn’t, of course; he’d only had time to slip into a few cabins and so his marks were preselected. But let them think he was only demure.

That was part of the game.

At the moment, his target was Miss Ethel Fortune, eldest daughter in a family of wealthy Canadians. Les had been able to find out all kinds of things about her from one quick trip to their suite. The family—three daughters, a son, a pair of stolid parents—had just completed a grand tour of Europe and Miss Ethel had used the trip to amass her trousseau. But he had found a few interesting things among her dresses and silk nightgowns.

“Oh, come on,” Dai said, right on cue. “Leslie, they’ll never believe it unless you show it off. I swear, ladies, his ability is uncanny, much as he may deny it.”

Les gave a fake groan, but the sparkle in his eyes made Dai warm. Even when he hated a con, it still felt good in the moment, to be in it with Les. To be on the same side.

“Oh, all right, all right, I’ll do one—only one!” Les turned to Ethel, holding her gaze. “I sense that there is a man waiting for you back home, Miss Fortune,” he said slowly, as if the thought were gradually dawning on him. Dai swore he had the skill of an actor; where in the world had he learned to control his face like this, so serious but with a faraway, almost pained look?

Miss Ethel’s younger sisters gasped, though other members of the audience exchanged skeptical glances. “Oh, that’s true!” Mabel Fortune said, clapping her hands together. “She’s got a fiancé waiting for her in Toronto. They’re going to be wed as soon as we return.”

“But this fiancé is quite a bit older than you,” Les said sternly.

“Yes, he is,” Ethel Fortune replied. “What of it?”

“I meant nothing by it . . . but I see many suitors surrounding you, Miss Fortune.” His hands fluttered, like he was sifting through thoughts as they came to him through the air. “Many young men have tried to win your heart. Some are still trying.”

Ethel’s sisters giggled again while Ethel herself grew red in the face.

“There is one in particular . . . A young man who is very . . . special to you.” Les closed his eyes and touched his forehead, as though he were concentrating very hard. A swami who could command spirits, make them whisper answers in his ear. “He is very fond of riding, isn’t he? Quite the horseman. And I believe his initial are . . . R . . . J . . . no I’m sorry, is it R.K.? I can’t quite get it. . . .”

Mabel Fortune shrieked. The high-pitched note echoed off the crystal chandelier drops, the wineglasses. Heads turned from across the dining room.

Their table exploded in chatter. Ethel Fortune retreated behind her handkerchief and refused to confirm Leslie’s pronouncement, despite the pestering of their guests. But no confirmation was needed, really: Ethel Fortune’s bright red cheeks were proof enough.

It had been so easy. Les had found a box from a fancy London saddlery containing a fine hand-stitched riding whip, on the handle a silver button engraved “RJK.” A note slipped inside, written in Ethel’s hand. The only present for the fiancé among Ethel’s many artifacts was a cheap silver-plate gentleman’s toiletry set. It wasn’t even engraved.

Me, me, me, the other women at the table clamored, thrusting themselves toward Les, all painted lips and eyes and skin smooth and white as poured cream. After whipping them into a frenzy by his last stunt, Les held them off with a cunning smile. Les had proven his genius for deceit: three of them had stood in the Astors’ stateroom, dazzled by a rich man’s finery, but only Les had seen the opportunity. Dai didn’t know if he should be amazed or frightened.

In the midst of this, Les slipped Dai a quick nod, his signal to scout for their next victim. The journey would end in a few days and they needed to identify their targets as quickly as possible. The daughters of well-to-do American merchants might be gullible enough to believe in Leslie’s telepathic powers but had little to offer as payment beyond a piece of jewelry or a peck on the cheek (though Dai was afraid that Les would be only too willing to take those pecks). But there were a number of fairly wealthy men on board who might be bored or curious enough to fall for Les’s spiel. Dai made his excuses and rose from the dining table. It was his job to eavesdrop, to make small talk with first-class passengers, and ask probing questions. The most gullible tended to like to talk about themselves; it was a fact learned in the con game.

He headed to the first-class smoking room, where most of the men retired after dinner. The room was enveloped in a bank of thick, acrid smoke. Dai didn’t smoke and, like many athletes, thought it bad for his wind. Simply surveying the room was unpleasant.

There was a good number of men there, though it was nowhere as full as it would be once the second dinner seating was over. Smokers sat in companionable pairs and trios, lifting glasses of brandy and whiskey between puffs. Men played cards at tables toward the back. As he walked the fringes of the room, Dai had a brief worry that they were out of their depths here. This wasn’t like running a card game on the street. He recognized few of the faces. He was pretending to be looking for someone while he eavesdropped, and avoided the waiters, sure they would ask what he was doing in first class. But no steward approached him and so he kept his head down and kept moving. Maybe the suit had worked its magic and he was blending better than he thought.

When he judged no one was looking, he picked up a half-empty whiskey glass and carried it around as if it were his own, to better melt into the background. He milled about, listening in on conversations, looking for, what? Signs of gullibility, desperation, anything that could be exploited as a weakness. A “hook,” Les liked to call it—a way in. Dai thought of it more like a vulnerable spot, an Achilles’ heel. Their coach, George Cundick, taught them the same: to watch not just for their opponents’ strengths, their patented moves, but what those moves hid. The way they’d favor one angle due to a weaker back leg.

Go for the weak spot.

George had given them both their lives, their livelihoods, a way forward in a world that didn’t always offer solid paths to success for boys like them. Everything George had taught him, Dai held sacred.

Go for the weak spot.

Dai concentrated extra hard to decipher the American accents, of which there were many. Americans, it seemed, would talk only of business back home—small-town interests, feedstores and lumbermills, a steel foundry—and other dullnesses. A sport called baseball. No one spoke of boxing. These were all stolid, potbellied men, content to puff on cigars and stare glassy-eyed into space, waiting for their wives to send for them. He almost wouldn’t feel bad feeding one of them to Les.

He was about to approach an older, portly gentleman with a propensity to laugh after everything that came out of his own mouth when a holler went up from a table nearby.

Dai turned to see a group of men arguing over cards. Among them was Mark Fletcher. In fact, he was trying to calm the other four men down. Someone must have called out an unfair play. Dai had seen Mark about yesterday—he’d seemed a nice enough young fellow, if slightly out of place among all those industrialists. Dai thought him an odd match for the wife, who definitely came from quality.

Mark reached into his pocket and pulled out a ladies’ bracelet, laying it on the table. It was modest though unmistakably of good quality. A strand of delicate gold links with a heavy ornamental clasp. It could only have belonged to his wife.

Dai felt a quick, almost familiar wash of shame, as though he’d stolen it himself. He watched as one after another the men at the table peered at the bracelet and shook his head, each in turn, refusing it as payment. Mark had no choice but to scoop up the bracelet and return it to his pocket, toss his hand on the table, and leave.

Dai found him a few minutes later at the bar nursing a drink. “Ah, fancy running into you here, Mr. Fletcher. I didn’t take you for a smoker.”

“Nor I you.” Mark fished a bill out of his pocket and put it on the bar as the bartender came up with a second drink. Whiskey neat. “What are you doing here?”

“I was supposed to meet a man who claimed to be in the boxing business in America, but it looks like he didn’t show.” Dai realized with a pang that lying came easily to him these days. Les would be proud. He caught the bartender’s eye and nodded at Mark’s drink. He’d ditched his fake drink but decided he would have a whiskey to be sociable, even though it would be pricey.

They drank in silence for a moment as Dai struggled for something to say. Only the most banal thing came to mind: “Where is your lovely wife this evening?”

Mark sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice carrying a hint of ice. “She slipped away from the dinner table.”

“Ah. I hear wives can be independent creatures. I wouldn’t know myself. I’ve never been married.”

Mark finished his first drink and reached for the second. “I’ve barely been married a year and I can’t say I recommend it.”

“It can’t be as bad as that.”

Mark chuckled ruefully but offered no explanation.

“She seems to be a lovely woman. Surely you love her or you wouldn’t have married her.”

Mark made the muscles in his jaw pop. “To be honest, I’m not sure listening to one’s heart has ever gotten anyone anywhere good.”

“I’m no expert on it myself.” He wasn’t sure why he was talking about this with Mark Fletcher. The man was practically a stranger. But Dai felt close to him at that moment. He knew what it felt like not to trust your own heart. So many times, Dai told himself he was a fool. And yet he stayed. There was no release from love, anyhow. There was only learning how to live with the hurt.

Dai tipped the glass to Mark in a salute, then swallowed the last of his whiskey. Warmth spread through him in waves. “You married her because you love her,” he went on, growing bolder as the heat blossomed inside him. “You chose her, and now you belong to each other. There’s no going back from that, no matter how hard . . . how bad things get.”

“You make it sound like punishment,” Mark muttered into his glass.

Dai laughed, surprised at himself. Mark laughed then, too.

“That it is, Mark Fletcher. That it is—sometimes. But it’s also the most mysterious, most wondrous experience a man can have.” Dai waved off the bartender as he came to refresh his glass. He’d decided he couldn’t use Mark as a—well, as a mark. The coincidence made another laugh bubble up.

Mark at last smiled—and Dai could see that he was a very handsome young man, when he chose to show it. And he had it so easy, though he didn’t seem to know it, married to that lovely woman, da to a beautiful healthy baby. He’d followed his heart and had landed in clover. Men like him, Dai thought, ought to be able to find happiness, if anyone could.