a scandal in hobohemia

 

 

THE CANVAS TENT held in heat like an Alabama kitchen, though it didn’t smell nearly so pleasant. The odors of dust and grease paint mingled with the smells of pungent herbs: patchouli, sandalwood perhaps. But there was no mistaking the funk of a blue drag somewhere beneath it all. That scent—the reefer—brought back all sorts of memories. Some good, others best left in the trenches.

She’d sent me in here alone, and though Agent Trenet didn’t say it, I knew she meant to test me. No genius needed to figure that out, this being my first case. I turned in a circle in the tent, focusing on all the tiny details: the way the stitches on the psychic’s garish red scarves were fraying; the coffee stains on the rickety table peeking through the moth-eaten silk cloth. Fingerprints smudged the glass orb in the center of the table. How anyone could read the future through all that oil and muck was beyond me.

But then, I wasn’t Madame Yvonde, Seer of All and Mistress of Fate.

According to the painted banners and smooth talkers at Soggiorno Brothers’ Traveling Wonder Show, the Seer was a direct descendant of Cassandra herself. “She can lead you to fame,” the barker had said, “guide you to money. Help you seek that which you most desire.”

I didn’t want fame, and I didn’t need money. What I needed, strictly speaking, was a man. Or at least his name. Trenet seemed to think Madame Yvonde would lead us there, and with her being my superior in a multitude of ways, I didn’t bother to make a fuss. I stood in that sweatbox of a tent and waited.

Madame Yvonde paid me little mind. Probably on account of all the spirits and such vying for her attention. She shuffled about, a rotund bundle of bright scarves, grimy homespun and arthritic old bones. With her came an eye-searing stench of rotgut. Padding from one corner of the tent to another, the hunched old hag murmured gibberish and lit a number of ivory candles. The bracelets on her wrists and the tiny coins at her wide hips jingled with every ponderous step.

“Now,” she said as she slithered behind the crystal ball. “You don’t believe, do you, sonny?”

I put on my best, most innocuous smile. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Don’t ma’am me, boy.” Yvonde’s voice was deep as a well and just as dark. She withdrew a cob pipe from the folds of her dress and brought it to her lips. She spoke through gritted teeth as she lit it. “You come in here wearing a suit like that, it says you’re educated. Educated man don’t listen to spirits or stars unless he’s desperate. And you are not desperate. Not yet.”

“I’m looking for someone,” I said neutrally.

She brightened and let out a puff of tobacco smoke. “Oh! Well, then I might be able to help you after all. Come.” She wrapped on the table twice. The chair across from her slid away from the table, and a brown work boot withdrew beneath the cloth. “Have a seat and we’ll see what we find.”

With the stiffness creeping into my left thigh, I didn’t so much walk as hobble over to join Yvonde. Trying to keep my discomfort to myself, I bit down on my lip as I slipped uneasily down into the chair. Scooting closer was a whole other bargain that I wasn’t prepared to make without a shot of whatever liquor the Seer had beneath those rags of hers.

In the flickering candlelight, Yvonde’s face wavered in and out of focus. Layers of pancake smeared over fishbelly-white skin. The makeup flaked at the edges of every deep wrinkle, particularly around her lips where she’d stolen the pink off a peony to color her flabby mouth and bony cheeks. Those pale eyes of hers—all done up with black paint like a kewpie doll—drooped and fluttered. One of her false lashes threatened to fall off at any moment. I could see the fibers of her wig coiling out from beneath the scarf on her head.

Yvonde held out a bony hand and snapped her fingers. “Cross my palm, sonny.”

“I paid out front,” I said.

“You paid for the circus. Now you pay for the pleasure of my company.”

I pretended to wrestle with the notion of parting ways with my hard-earned dollar before reaching into my coat and plucking a bill. I handed it to her, and she crumpled it in those skinny fingers. Yvonde grinned around her pipe as the money disappeared. That smile held a sinister edge, but her teeth were straight and white as a Connecticut Sunday social.

“Now, you were looking for someone, were you?”

An arc of cards appeared on the table. The drawings were intricate, and had probably once been lovely. Now they were just as faded as the rest of this damn circus. Yvonde tapped a card.

“The World,” she breathed hoarsely. “You are a traveler. No roots, just boots. Stomp, stomp, stomping on the ground.”

I bristled, my blood running cold. She came close to making me think of old times.

“I’m not here about me.”

“Aren’t you? You’re looking for a man, but you haven’t stopped to consider that you’re searching for yourself. Aimlessly going from South Carolina to Alabama. Over an ocean and back again. Boy, you’ve just been rooting along the Southern states like a dog hunting for a master that’s left him behind.”

“A master?” I snarled, balling my fist on my lap. “That supposed to mean something?”

She waved me off with a jingle of her bracelets. “I don’t give a flop about negroes, boy. Your money spends just as well as the next man’s. But you’ve chosen the hardest fields to plow, haven’t you, soldier?”

Her cold eyes fixed me with a challenge. Tell me I’m wrong, she seemed to say. We both knew that I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. We stared at one another, sharing only that meaningful look.

“What else?” I asked.

With a flourish of scarves and skeletal hands, the arc of cards vanished. Only three remained on the table. The World still stared up at me.

“The Empress,” Yvonde sang as she slid the card toward me. “Lovely thing that you can never touch. Wouldn’t want to get her pretty blonde hair dirty with those dark hands of yours, would we? Not that she’s noticed you. She’s too busy with her eyes on some other prize.”

The old gypsy slammed her knuckles on the next card, a sound like a gunshot. I didn’t jump, but my hand flew to a sidearm that was no longer there.

“The Devil! You seek him out, but beware, little soldier. Hellfire awaits you down this path.”

“Hellfire,” I whispered, “is behind me.”

Her lip hitched up in an ugly sneer, smoke curling up from the pipe. “Sure it is, soldier.”

The curtain behind Madame Yvonde twitched with a breeze, and I coughed at the smells stirred around. The pipe, the reefer. Shalimar perfume. Maybe the black powder was my imagination, but that tent filled with the odor of sulfur. Shots fired more than a decade before rang out in my ears. Shells and screams, and a woman singing along with Duke Ellington.

I stared at the Empress and let my fingers trace the inked lines of her face. I wasn’t thinking of the blonde slinking into the tent, but I growled just the same. “Damned old gypsy.”

“Still want to smile and tell me you don’t believe? Or are you going to pass me another of those crisp new bills so I can give you real wisdom?”

Agent Trenet had come in silent as night, but when she spoke her voice was loud like the crack of dawn. “Or you could drop the bullshit.”

My partner stood behind the Seer. A straight razor gleamed in the candlelight, poised against Yvonde’s throat.

The Seer’s eyes rolled back in her head and fluttered dreamily as she drew in a long breath through her nose. With an obscene purr, Yvonde clutched at my partner’s hand. When she spoke, her voice was a low, throaty rumble. “Oh, Adele, it is wonderful to see you again.”

“You haven’t seen me, Sanford, your eyes are closed.”

Agent Adele Trenet pocketed her razor and stepped away from Yvonde, leaving me more than a little befuddled.

“Sanford?” I asked.

Yvonde opened her eyes. Agent Trenet tugged at the scarf on the gypsy’s head, removing both scarf and wig in one gesture. Russet curls sprouted from beneath a shoddy bald cap. And now, without the cover of all the rags about her head, I noticed Yvonde’s very prominent Adam’s apple.

“Sanford?” I repeated.

“Crash,” the gypsy said. Now that I listened, the voice couldn’t be anything other than a man’s.

“His name,” Trenet said sharply, “is Sanford Haus.”

Yvonde/Sanford took the agent’s hand in both of his. “Now, now, Pinky,” he said, dropping his lips to the backs of Trenet’s fingers. “You know how I loathe that name.”

“And you know I hate it when you call me Pinky.”

Trenet tried to pull her hand away, but Sanford held fast

“Let us have a look, shall we?” The gypsy turned Trenet’s hand over in his and peered into her palm. Though he only traced the lines there with a single finger, the act was potent with meaning and lust. It made me uncomfortable to watch.

“Oh, what’s this I see?” Sanford sang cheerfully. “You’re hunting again, Adele. Looking for something to make you whole and fill you up.”

My partner rolled her eyes.

“And I see just what you need,” Sanford said. He looked up at her like a wicked puppy. “A man, strapping and brilliant. One you’d travel to the ends of the earth to find. And it seems you have found him.”

As the fortune teller brought his lips to her hand again, Trenet wrenched loose. “Never, Sanford.”

“Crash,” he whined, bounding up from his chair. He tossed a cloak of scarves and rags to the floor, and stood at his proper height. His capped head brushed the ceiling of the tent. I boggled at how only moments ago, he’d folded most of that lanky frame into the image of a hunchbacked hag.

“Agent Trenet, who is this?” I asked.

Before she could answer, the gypsy spun to face me and thrust his hand across the table. “Vagabond. Performer. Owner and proprietor of Soggiorno Brothers Traveling Wonder Show. I am Crash.”

“He’s a thief and a liar,” Trenet spat. She tossed a lock of blonde hair out of her eyes and put some distance between her and Sanford Haus.

Rather than bristle at the accusations, Haus smiled. He lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug and regarded me with interest. “And you, soldier boy? Have you a name?”

I winced as I got to my feet. Shook his hand as I replied, “Jim Walker.”

“Jim? Well, isn’t that just dandy?”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Know?”

“That I am a—was”—I corrected myself quickly—“a soldier? All that stuff about South Carolina? Alabama? Did she tell you?”

Trenet plopped into the chair I’d just vacated and crossed her arms over her chest. “Here we go.”

“You walk with a stiff leg,” said Haus as he began to divest himself of Madame Yvonde’s ample hips. “The footprint of your right is significantly deeper than that of your left. You’ve had an injury of some sort that has led to amputation. While that might be more common for a farmer, you dress too well for someone working the fields. You’re of an age to have served in the Great War, so I can presume soldier.”

Haus shimmied out of the costume while he explained. Beneath all those rags and scarves was a stained undershirt, brown trousers and suspenders. Sanford’s arms were ropy sinew and milk-white marble. He threw off the bald cap and tousled his red curls.

“Now, there are very few regiments that are accepting of negroes. It’s clear by your accent that you are a northerner. There was one regiment from the North that saw enough fire that might account for your leg, and that was the 369^th out of New York. They mustered in South Carolina. I made a very educated guess that you had been part of Harlem’s Hellfighters. You confirmed this suspicion when I needled you about Hellfire.”

My jaw hung open. “You... that’s...”

But he went on, enjoying the sound of his own voice. “After you returned from the war, you spent some time at Tuskegee in Alabama. I can tell that by the ring on your right hand, with the school’s seal.”

“Incredible,” I gasped.

“Now we get to the fun part. When you fished out your money, you made the mistake of flashing your badge. I am more than familiar with Pinkerton Agents,” he said with a nod to Trenet. “Considering our previous associations, I could only assume that Adele was with you. I stacked the cards and played to that knowledge by giving you The Empress.”

“And the Devil?”

Sanford Haus bowed. “I am what I am.”

Agent Trenet let out a whoop of laughter. “You only wish, Haus.”

“My wish has already been granted,” he smirked, sliding his thumbs up and down his suspenders. “You’re here, Adele. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Well, for starters, your brother sends his regards.”

Haus flopped into his chair and rested a boot on the old table. Taking another drag from his pipe, he muttered something dark that should never be said in front of a lady. “How is dear Leland?”

“Leland Haus?” I blurted out. “The head of the Secret Service? If that’s your family, Mr. Haus, that would make you a very rich man.”

Sanford’s smug grin and flippant wave of his hand was all the confirmation I needed.

Agent Trenet nodded. “Sometimes Director Haus prefers to keep an eye on his wayward sibling, make sure he’s keeping his nose clean while playing dress-up in the gutter.”

“I’m happy here,” Sanford snapped. “Leland needn’t worry his tender sensibilities about little old me.”

“He hopes you’ll come home and—”

“Yes, I’m sure he does. Now, Adele, why are you really here? I hardly think Leland’s mommy complex would be just cause to send a couple of Pinks all this way. What do you have?”

Trenet smiled despite herself. Reaching into her shoulder bag, she produced a photograph and held it to her forehead. Mimicking a spiritualist, she called out, “I see the Hermit.” She slapped the picture onto the table.

Sanford gave the picture the most meager of glances. “A dead hobo. What of it?”

“Ah-ha!” Agent Trenet fished out another photo and laid it beside the first. “He was murdered with this.”

When his gaze took in the knife in the picture, Sanford Haus went still and silent. He steepled his hands beneath his chin and pondered, his eyes gone hard. He stared and stared at the photographs, unflinching and barely breathing. For long minutes, the only sounds came from the midway outside, muffled by the tent. When the carousel started up a new waltz, my partner turned her own leer onto the gypsy.

“Problem, Sanford?”

This shook him from his reverie.

“Crash,” he chided.

Then he was up, gathering all the pieces of Madame Yvonde from the floor. “This is a conversation for the back yard. Dear Adele. Mr. Dandy”—he thrust the bundle of rags into my chest—“follow me, if you please.”

He proceeded to lurch through a tent flap hidden behind a map of the human skull. I followed, watching as he once again unfolded that beanpole frame. I drew in a breath of clean, fresh air. The night was cool and breezy: a welcome change from the musky tent.

Stretching out those long legs of his, Sanford took off at a brisk walk, leading us through a maze of tents, ropes and canvas stalls. Soon, the music and hustle of the carnival fell away to background noise and I found myself in a small shantytown. Trucks, wagons, tractors, even a couple of repurposed box cars. Few people lingered here, but those who did were obviously carnies. Here a woman in a sequined costume shared a cigarette with a dwarf. There, a man broad as an elephant scraped the last of his dinner from a tin plate.

Haus brushed off the occasional call of, “Hey, Crash!” without acknowledgement. As we passed a chuck wagon, Sanford piped up, “Mrs. Hudson!”

A dwarf with wild copper hair and an ample bottom raised her head. “What’ll it be, boss?”

“Three coffees as black as my soul, if you please.”

“Don’t know that I’ve got anything that dark, Crash, but I’ll see what I can rustle up. And will there be anything for your guests?” she joked.

Sanford gave Mrs. Hudson a wry grin. “Where’s Arty?”

“Last I saw he was tagging along with a couple of bally broads and a butcher. He should be at the kiddie show by now, though.”

“If you’d be so kind as to send Mars on over to the kiddie show, then. I need to have a word with Arty tout suite.”

“Aye, Crash,” Mrs. Hudson said as she waddled away from her cart.

Sanford hadn’t broken stride. I struggled to keep up, my prosthetic leg wobbling and chafing.

With a leap, he took three stairs up to the door at the back of a gypsy wagon. The thing had been cobbled together with various pieces of other things. I recognized the eaves of a farmhouse, a wall built of aluminum, a couple of railroad ties. The door had come from some apartment or other. The numbers 221 clung to the peeling paint, as defiant as Sanford ‘Crash’ Haus himself.

He pulled a key from a chain around his neck and unlocked the door. “Good sir, gentle lady, I welcome you to my home.” With a wide, sweeping gesture, he indicated we should enter.

As the door shut behind us, I dropped Madame Yvonde to the floor and hobbled to the nearest chair. The ache in my leg had become a tight vice, a hot brand of pain settling around the joint where my knee had once been. If the bone-deep throbbing was any indication, we might get rain soon.

Sanford rooted around and produced a cigar box. Opening it, he offered it to me. “Would you like some?”

I blinked at the papers and mossy green herb therein. “I’m sorry?”

“For the pain, obviously. If you’ve need of something stronger I can provide that as well.”

I waved him off. “No, thank you. Not while I’m working.”

He snapped the box closed. “Talk to me, Adele. What do you know?”

“The vagrant was Enoch Drebber. Before the Crash, he was an accountant in Salt Lake City. He and his family lost quite a lot, though. They became Lizzie tramps, traveling, looking for work. Then the family car busted and they took up with a Hooverville outside of Omaha, just in time for that mammoth dust storm to plow through this month.”

Two quick knocks on the door interrupted Agent Trenet’s story. Haus opened the door where Mrs. Hudson stood with three tin cups on a wooden platter. She gave a bow and exaggerated flourish. “Your service, dear sir!”

Haus moved lithely through the cramped space of his wagon, fetching the cups and doling them out to Trenet and myself. “Excellent, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you.”

“Johnny is on his way to take Arty’s place. When I see the kid I’ll send him your way.”

“Fantastic.”

The dwarf’s eyes landed on me and sparkled with lascivious delight. “Crash, do call if there’s anything your guests need. And I do mean anything.”

Mrs. Hudson gave an impolite wiggle of her rounder virtues and rolled back into the night.

Trenet smiled into her cup of coffee. “Well, well.”

Haus shut the door. “You were saying. Mr. Drebber found himself outside of Omaha, destitute and most dead.”

“Yes,” Agent Trenet continued. “Well, it so happens that his death coincides with the date your particular mud show slunk out of town.”

“Coincidence.”

“Perhaps, Sanford—”

“Crash.”

“—but it’s not the first crime to turn up on your route. Three weeks before that, Mary Watson was kidnapped less than a quarter mile from your tent. Pinkerton agents are still looking for her.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Two weeks before that, Calvin Bailey was found dead.”

“Calvin Bailey? We oil-spotted him in Duluth!”

“Oil-spotted?” I asked.

Haus rolled his eyes. “Oil-spotted. Red-lighted. Means we left him behind and all he saw was the oil spot where the truck had been.”

“He worked for you?” Trenet asked.

“Until I found out he was using his job as a balloon vendor to find little girls, yes. As I say, we left him behind.”

“Well, he was found dead on the Kansas-Missouri state line.”

“Serves him right,” Crash said, rolling a cigarette. “Wasn’t me or mine, I’ll tell you that. We’re no Sunday School, but we generally keep clean.”

“You’re sure?”

“We haven’t pulled close to Missouri this trip.”

Trenet’s pretty face scrunched up with confusion. “But your posters...”

“We had to take a detour due to bad weather, Adele. We missed that stop entirely. Planned on hitting St. Louis on our way back to Peru.”

“But you recognize the knife,” she said pointedly.

Haus took a long drag of his roller, staring at me. Studying me. Without taking those cool eyes off my form, he exhaled a plume of blue smoke from both nostrils like a lanky dragon. “Is it wooden?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“The leg. Is it wooden?”

I nodded. “Hollow. Iron foot, though. Why?”

“Dammit, Crash!” Agent Trenet was on her feet. “Have you been listening to a damn thing I’ve said?”

Haus gaped at her, but mischief danced in his gaze. “Why, Pinky, you called me Crash.”

She let out a frustrated growl and kicked at his shins.

“Yes,” Haus said through his laughter. “I recognize the knife. It’s identical to the ones Arty uses in his act.”

She yanked the cig from his lips and raised it to her own. “Tell me about him.”

“Barely old enough to shave. Born into circus tradition to a burlesque dancer and an inside talker. His dad got red-lighted before I bought the show, but his mother—Baker Street Baby—will be onstage in an hour or so.” He nodded to me. “You’d like her. Has a penchant for peacock feathers and parasols.”

“How do you figure I’d—”

Trenet cut me off. “What about the kid?”

“Arty’s a sword-swallower and knife thrower. Goes by Arthur on stage, plays up the Excalibur legend.”

“Do you think he could have killed Drebber?”

“Adele, my dear, given proper motivation, anyone could kill.”

“I suppose that’s true. Just talking with you makes me homicidal most of the time.”

“You flatter me. What else? Any other evidence found with Bailey or this Watson dame? You must have more than just my tour schedule and a knife.”

“Coffee cans.”

Haus’s face scrunched in genuine concern. “Come again?”

“Coffee cans,” I said. “Found at every crime scene. Each of them contained a letter and a handful of objects.”

“Objects such as?”

“The can found with Calvin Bailey’s body had a taxidermied dog’s paw. Drebber’s held the knife. A third can turned up at Mary Watson’s home. Inside was a necklace fashioned after a snake.”

Haus launched himself out of his chair, and in two long strides he was out the door.

“Crash!” Trenet called after him. To me she muttered, “Come on.”

We followed him at his blistering pace—well, I hobbled as quickly as I could all things considered—as Haus led us back toward the siren song of the carousel and hawkers. He swept the folds of a tent apart with his long hands and barked to the assembled crowd.

“Everyone out.”

Though there were murmurs and complaints, no one dared argue with the glare Crash passed. Of course, his painted face was rather ghoulish, which might have had something to do with their compliance.

Haus had led us into the sideshow tent. Tables and ramshackle shelves were covered in little curiosities. Jars of amber fluids and specimens—two-headed lizards and the like, as well as fetuses—were caked with dust. One such jar contained only a thumb. A wooden box on a table nearby held a bit of rock. The card in front of it heralded the item as the Mazarin Stone. There were other such relics; a beryl coronet, a tree branch from Tunguska, the stake used to kill a vampire.

“What’s this about, Sanford?” Trenet asked.

He led us to an empty bell jar and plucked the card from its display. “The Devil’s foot is missing. Tell me, did the paw you found look anything like this?”

I eyed the photograph. “To a tee.”

Haus tossed the card and hissed another black curse. Flipping his hand toward an ornate jewelry box, he snarled, “And the Borgias’ torque is missing as well.”

I padded to the box and read the card. Apparently, the necklace usually kept there was the property of that most notorious family. The card said that Lucretia used it to deliver poison to her rivals. And it was modeled after a scarlet snake.

“Matches the one found at Watson’s scene,” I muttered. “Right down to the speckles on the snake’s head.”

“What did they say?” Haus snapped at me.

“The snake?”

“The letters, damn you! The letters found with my stolen property?”

“Just the same two words, every time: memento mori.”

Haus seethed with palpable rage. The tendons in his fists popped as he clenched. “Arty.”

A grizzled old bearded lady joined us. “Boss? There a reason no one been by my stall in five minutes?”

“Where’s Arty?” he bellowed.

Agent Trenet took Crash’s temper in stride, but the bearded lady jumped back, startled. “Ain’t seen ’im tonight. He never showed up for call. He’s probably drunk behind the wheel.”

Crash growled and spun on his heel. Over his shoulder he called, “Tell the talkers to let the towners back in. Business as usual.”

He was a hound on the hunt, leading Trenet and me back into the strange back alleys of the circus. The equipment housed here had seen better days. Trunks of props were open. I saw a few performers grab what they needed, then dash back into tents. Though my thigh ached with the fire of Hell itself, I felt the old rush of excitement that came with having a mission; a goal. Hadn’t felt that surge since a time when I had both legs, but that night—stomping through the carnival’s backlot—I felt more whole than I had in damn near twenty years. This might have been my first case for Pinkerton, but I was hardly a greenhorn.

That swell of confidence helped to mask the pain and lit a fire that let me keep up with Crash and his spidery legs.

“Where are we going?” Trenet called.

Crash had no time for explanations as we came up on a looming disc. Small metallic triangles glinted from its surface—the points of knives. We were looking at the back of a knife wheel. And one of the exposed blades—this one exceptionally long—was red with blood.

Crash was the first to round the wheel. He spat a few salty words, then kicked up a cloud of dust.

Arty sat in a reeking puddle. The sword—Excalibur, I presumed—had been thrust through his mouth, pinning his head to the rotting wood of the wheel. His face was fixed with a terrified expression. I raced forward and knelt, the prosthetic protesting as I did. I checked the boy for a pulse, but it was a futile effort.

“Marks on his wrists,” I said. “He was bound.”

Haus paced with mounting anger. “What else?”

I leaned in close to sniff the boy’s waxy face. “Chloroform.”

“Someone drugged him, tied him up and did this,” Trenet surmised. “When did you last see him, Sanford?”

“Just before the gates opened,” he answered. “Sometime after two in the afternoon.”

I stood up, took out my handkerchief and spoke from behind it. “The blood has been clotting for a while. Flies are on him, too. A few hours. Six at the most.”

“And everyone’s been working the show since then. Not a soul to find him.”

“Jim,” Trenet said, her voice nasal as she pinched her nostrils shut, “you stay here with the body and Haus. I have to call the local police.”

“No!” Crash barked. “No police.”

“Sanford, I have to.”

“You can’t.”

“It’s my job!”

“Locals get sight of coppers on my lot, they’ll assume the worst.”

“They’d be right!”

“They’ll stop coming and my people will lose money. If word carries too far, we could lose the rest of the season.”

“You can’t seriously think I’ll just let a murder—the latest in a string of them, I might add—go unnoticed.”

“He’s not a towner, Adele. He’s not even a gaucho like me. Arty was born in the circus. Let the circus deal with it.”

The war between Crash’s reason and Adele’s conscience played out on her face, and I understood both sides. All of the consequences weighed against one another and Trenet simmered.

“I let you clean this up, Sanford, there’s gonna be some conditions.”

“Name them,” he said.

“You let me in on any evidence found, so I can keep this on record as part of our case.”

“Done.”

“Second, I get alone time with every one of your people. If someone is stealing from you and leaving the items at crime scenes, following your route, now killing one of your performers, I want to know if it’s someone in your show.”

“It’s not—”

“That’s how it’s going to go down, Sanford, or so help me God, I will shut this show down myself and feed you to the local cops with a side of cotton fucking candy.”

I jumped at the lady’s language, but it didn’t stop me from smiling. The other Pinks had told me Adele Trenet was a firecracker, but it was another thing to see her in action. Crash seemed to appreciate her as well. The slightest of dimples formed on one cheek as he stuffed his hands into his deep pockets.

“Fine, Adele,” he said. “We’ll play it your way. You can start talking to Mrs. Hudson back at the crumb car while Dandy, here, helps me deal with Arty’s remains.”

“Shouldn’t I go with her?” I asked. “Your people don’t much care for outsiders.”

“Adele’s not a stranger to my crew. They might not care for the badge, but no one will give her too hard of a time.”

“I can handle them,” she agreed.

“You can handle me,” he added with a provocative waggle of his eyebrows. My partner glared at him, and he held up his palms in surrender. “Fine. Work first.”

She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her own smile as she started for Mrs. Hudson’s crumb car. As we watched her jog along the back lot, Crash let out a pleased sigh and rumble of approval.

Haus and I quietly extricated Arty from the wheel, and I tried not to think about all the things my partner wasn’t telling me. She wasn’t crooked or a bully, like some of the other Pinks, but something didn’t jive. For starters, her connection to Leland Haus. The Secret Service and our agency didn’t play nice together. But she had some connection to the Haus brothers. I assumed her dealings with Leland involved money and investigations on the sly. But with Crash? Well, I didn’t much want to think on that.

Not that a woman so snowy would be seen with a man dark as cinders such as myself.

We were filling the boy’s grave when Crash spoke up. “So tell me, doctor, how long have you been with Pinkerton?”

“How did you...?” I stopped asking the question when Crash just gave me an incredulous look over the handle of his shovel. “Right. This is my first case.”

“Doesn’t seem to suit you.”

“Maybe not,” I answered truthfully. “Can’t keep soldiering. Tried to put down roots and be a good doctor, but, well, that didn’t work out any better. Thought I could put both those skills to use with the Agency, though. Not sure it’s not another bust.” I piled more dirt on top of the grave and patted it down with the blade of my shovel. “Now you tell me something: do you reckon this is one of your folks doing all this?”

Crash shook his head. “Whoever the character is, he’s not job.”

“You’re certain.”

“One of the deaths occurred in a town we skipped. He couldn’t have known we would wildcat around the weather, any more than we did. And being fifty miles to the south is a pretty good alibi for me and mine, don’t you think?”

I nodded grimly. We were no closer to finding the Devil than I’d been when I walked into Madame Yvonde’s tent.

The dirty work done, Crash and I shambled to his wagon wrung out as old cloths. As he went to open the door, it jerked.

“Locked,” he said, tone dark. “I didn’t have time to lock it, Dandy. We ran out in a hurry.”

I leveled the shovel in front of me and gave Crash a nod. “Let’s see who’s inside, shall we?”

Gingerly, he slipped the key in the door and turned the lock. We burst in to find his wagon unoccupied. It was precisely as we’d left it earlier—Madame Yvonde’s rags still strewn about the floor and our joe gone cold in the tin cups. One thing, however, was different. On Crash’s bunk was a yellow, rusty coffee can.

Crash picked it up and cradled it in one arm while opening it. His fingers snatched the paper out and he let the can fall to the floor.

“‘How good it is,’” he read, “‘to have a real opponent for my game.’ That’s all it says?”

He flipped over the page and chuffed out a rueful laugh.

“What?” I asked.

“Have a look.”

I took the paper. While the front had only the single line of handwritten text, the back was all flourishes and tiny drawings. Like something from an illuminated manuscript, the figures were ornately detailed. They decorated large letters.

 

Memento Mori

 

Something about the drawings bothered me. One of them—a mermaid—was too long. Her body stretched the length of the old paper before joining up with her tail. And another, this one a teddy bear, was bifurcated. One half of its body was on either side of the page. My gaze fell across a seam in the paper. A crease. It had been folded many times. I followed the crease as I brought my hands together. The mermaid shrank into a more average body. The teddy bear became whole. A new word appeared.

“Moriarty?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“I was about to ask you.” I looked up from the paper and offered it to Crash. He pocketed something—a pearl, from the looks of it—and put the can down. I hadn’t even noticed him pick it up. I began to realize that Sanford Haus was full of talents.

Crash took the picture from me, unfolded it and re-folded it again. Several times.

“Moriarty,” he whispered. “Moriarty.”

I turned at a knock on the door to see Agent Trenet lowering her hand. “Something you’ve found, boys?”

Crash swept the can to her. “Another note from our killer. Seems he’s enjoying himself.”

Agent Trenet looked at the paper. “A game? That’s what this is to him?” Peering into the can, she frowned. “There’s nothing else here. He always leaves something else, like the necklace or the foot. Crash, was there anything else?”

“Just the paper,” he said, lips pressed thin and colorless.

Weary, Agent Trenet brushed her hair over her ear. She grabbed her earlobe with surprise. “Damn! I’ve lost an earring.”

“Could be anywhere,” Crash said quickly. “It’s likely gone out on the lot somewhere.”

As Crash swept Agent Trenet out of the wagon, I noticed the pearl in her other ear.

My stomach fell. How had her other earring landed in that can?

In that moment, my years of wandering ended. All of the steps I’d taken—from Harlem, to South Carolina, to the beaches and trenches in France, to Alabama and now to this mud show in the middle of Arkansas—all roads seemed to have led to this moment. To this puzzle with the answer already filled in. A decision was made as I followed them out, although I’d not even asked myself the question.

“Moriarty,” I said under my breath.

“What was that?” she asked.

Over her head, Crash gave me a stern glance.

“Nothing, Adele,” I answered.

She shrugged and ran toward the crumb car, where a beefy man with a broad moustache waited. “Excuse me, Mr. Mars. A word,” she called.

I lingered behind, watching the work of a Pinkerton Agent at the top of her game, now a pawn in someone else’s. Moriarty. Our killer. He was there, somewhere at the circus, watching us. He’d followed us enough to pluck up the pearl earring when Adele dropped it. Had slipped into Crash’s wagon and had been kind enough to lock up on his way out.

The case was here. The answer to it all was here. Not on the road or behind a desk at the Pinkerton home office.

Crash put his hands in his pockets and sidled up beside me leisurely. “Payday is every Friday. First of May like yourself would get three aces a week for your pocket. Until we get something else square, you can kip in my bunk.”

“Excuse me?”

“Unless you would rather stay with Mrs. Hudson. She’d enjoy that.”

I laughed. “A dwarf and a one-legged negro. That belongs in your freakshow for certain, Crash.”

“Everyone works,” he continued. “Normally I’d start you as a candy butcher, but that requires a lot of walking the lot. No, you’re not a vendor. Though you might make a good talker. Inside talker, I’m thinking. You catch details. You’re not as good as me, but then, who is?”

“Humble son of a gun, aren’t you?”

“You can start tomorrow, Dandy. I’ll introduce you around tonight while Adele is questioning my folks.”

“Wait, wait,” I said. “I didn’t say I’d run off and join your circus.”

“Of course you did,” he said. “And you’re going to. It’s settled.”

“Shouldn’t I think about it?”

“You’ve already decided.”

I had, of course. But... “And just how do you know?”

Sanford Haus smiled wide as a Cheshire cat. “You called me Crash.”