Hamish’s father told him more than once in his childhood that news could turn a man’s stomach. Not just the facts, but the position.
“Every paper has a bias, Hamish. We try to be balanced. But the scales tip and we cannot remove the perspective.”
Hamish knew his father, especially when he traded in the title of reporter to be an editor, attempted to allow all voices to be heard. He wondered, fingers shaking as he lifted the Christian Patriots pamphlet, how his father could sift through so many lines of hate and imbalance and still keep a level head. For his father had told him countless times about similar societies during the Great War. When Hamish was a baby. When his father still had to report to Toronto City Hall as an immigrant alien.
People will always want a scapegoat. An enemy. Another tidbit from his father he learned spending life with newsprint on his fingertips, trying to make sense of the columns from a world he hid from. Hamish pinched his fingers over his nose. The war at home luring his school chums and changing the shifting face of his country had to be so much more political than a few insidious pamphlets.
Hamish studied the pamphlet again. It had been read intently. Hamish wasn’t sure if Nate had been studying it or internalizing it. He seemed too smart for the latter. He was never one to take things personally, but rather to assess the situation and look through a lens of balance and logic.
The end table lamp made Hamish’s tossed coat shimmer like liquid and the books on the opposite table look like a leviathan in shadow. Hamish ran his finger over the pamphlet, watching the slight shudder of his fingers, then set it aside. He couldn’t imagine Luca being prejudiced. Luca didn’t have time. He wanted to stay ahead in the life to which he was accustomed. Luca would entertain batting for the Yankees before he would affiliate with a political party.
Hamish rose, letting the pamphlet fall between the sofa cushions. The part of his brain that normally wondered about Reggie’s reaction to a next step was conveniently turned off.
He retreated to the kitchen and picked up one of the battleship games he and Nate had played. He pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil and drew a new grid himself. Might need to practice so when Nate was better they could play at the hospital. Letters down and numbers across. Nate’s little dots. Very precise too. Hamish squinted at a sequence of marks in one of the grid boxes. He nudged his glasses up his nose and stared.
Then he retrieved an old grid he had crumpled from the side table and smoothed it. Nate had a pattern of playing the same moves, but always with a meticulous strategy for the placement of his little dots. The time he took to play the game always annoyed Hamish. At first he figured Nate put the same careful strategy into it as he did into his chess games. Then something fizzed like the nearly burnt-out bulb in the kitchen lamp.
Nate didn’t leave any paper trail as to the transactions he made in the North End. But he might have made another kind of trail. Hamish made a cup of tea, pulled some leftover lemon cannoli from the fridge, and began to crack a code while part of his brain ran over the following: Kent was at Pete Kelly’s; Nate was alone at the office and someone wanted something Nate had—badly. Hamish nibbled at a piece of cannoli. Phil had been in contact with Luca. Luca had given Hamish a phone number. It was from New York but could always be patched to somewhere else. He put Luca and Nate together a moment in his mind and hated where it led him: to similarities. Both respected men who never told everything about their enterprises. That inspired fierce loyalty. Nate was the center of the North End, knowing everyone, matching people with services so they could bypass crooked landlords and property owners. Luca had the same magnetic ability to build a world around him.
One side of the world, Hamish knew from newsreels and papers, was fighting a war. The other side was inching toward that war. His country was already wrapped up in it, but his adopted home was not. But what might people do for this world? First, he smoothed the manifest found in Toby’s pocket over the table. Cluster. Fuze. Shell. Carbine. Munitions. His father had lost his hearing in a case involving black-market shipments between Toronto and Chicago. But that case had been during the last war with anarchists at the helm. But what might people do nowadays for munitions? To make a buck? Were they simply invested in the war overseas—or the war that might meet them any day?
Hamish swallowed the last bite of cannoli and threw the wax paper away.
* * *
When Reggie arrived at the Van Buren and DeLuca office, she stopped and ran her fingernail over her name. Hamish’s too. She had been so proud. The office rent had been purchased by her grandmother’s pearls, thus Reggie’s insistence that her name be listed above Hamish’s. A stupidly childish whim. She looped the V with her finger while putting herself in his shoes and wondered if she wouldn’t have done the same thing. Something drastic when the rug was pulled out from under her. She fingered the locket she wore daily. Its translation meant “Breathe. Hope.” A gift he had given her when they opened their office.
Inside the office, he was not alone. Mrs. Leoni’s daughter was with him, a young woman who had a huge crush on him. It had deepened when Hamish was able to stop her mother’s landlord from jacking up the rent price so she could afford to keep baking and selling the best cannoli in the North End at the intersection of the North Square and Prince Street. He wasn’t giving Rosa a full smile. She hadn’t seen one of Hamish’s full smiles since the night of her disastrous engagement party.
Reggie crossed the floor and greeted Rosa. She was a sunny-faced, pleasant-looking young woman. Reggie got the impression she was seeing a carbon copy of Mrs. Leoni several years before in Rosa’s bright black eyes and luscious dark hair. She was twisting a strand of it around her finger with all the flirtatious subtlety of Claudette Colbert stopping a car in the road with a hiked-up skirt in It Happened One Night.
This act was completely lost on Hamish: glasses halfway down his nose, studying papers, rapping a pencil in his absent way. “This makes absolutely no sense.” He nudged his glasses higher with the crook of his finger. “I confess, Rosa, that I only started learning property law when I moved here. But there are neighborhood jurisdictions.” He didn’t seem to register Reggie, squinting at the fine print on whatever Rosa was showing him. Reggie knew in her soul it was made up. Hamish had already helped advise her mother.
This was what her nana’s pawned pearls had purchased: an erstwhile stream of damsels in distress to counter the occasional almost-drowning adventure. Reggie showed her teeth in a smile, inspected her careful self-manicure and the russet half-moon design on her fingernails. Rosa left and Hamish waved her over.
“I think I figured something out last night.” He reached into his satchel and produced several finished games of battleship.
“I don’t want to play right now.” She was tired. Annoyed.
“I know. I don’t want to ever play again. But this is where Nate was hiding his information. The papers we could never find. The connections.”
“What?”
“Every letter here . . . See? A surname.” Hamish took out another piece of paper. He pointed at the letter portions of the grid with his pencil. “Reggie, Nate was scared of something. Acting strange. And part of that strangeness was his moving everything from his office to our home. The one thing I did find from him was a list of all of the family names he usually works with. We’ve been here long enough to be able to fill that. Now look. It’s here.” He pointed to a few dots. “It’s the last letters of surnames aligned with the numbers of an address. It’s a crude system, but I think it is a system. The best he had to keep anyone from seeing where people connected. The services he helped trade.”
“But how would we know who was matched with who?” Reggie had played the game a few times but was by no means an expert.
Hamish gave her a half-moon smile. “I think it is in the position. On the grid.” He chuckled. “In Hunchback, Quasimodo can see all of Paris’s streets from above. All the people and houses tiny specks below. He has a view of Paris no one else has. Nate has a view of the North End no one else has.”
“This is a crazy theory.”
“But it might be right.”
Reggie sighed. “Who do you think he was keeping this from?”
“Kent, for one.”
“Kent.”
“What?”
“What do you mean what?”
“You have a look.”
“Oh, come on, Hamish, not all my thoughts are yours.”
“So you have thoughts.”
Reggie sighed. “You keep forgetting I am angry with you. Well . . .” She spread her hands. “Somewhat angry with you. Truth be told, I sometimes forget to hold my grudge.”
“Reggie . . .” Hamish’s voice darkened.
“Why does it have to be Kent? I know someone who would love control of the North End. Someone who might figure enough time had passed for him to pick up where he left off.”
Reggie didn’t expect an immediate response, and she found it disconcerting to watch Hamish’s train of thought behind his eyes, no doubt aligning with her own. “But Nate. He wouldn’t . . .”
“Wouldn’t what? Get his way? He has you exactly where he wants you. Again. Still! You think your weakness is your hand or your anxious episodes or your tripping on words. It’s not your heartbeat, Hamish! That’s not your weakness. He is still your weakness!”
“He is not! He has no influence over me!”
“You called him! Bricker! Bricker was his influence!”
Hamish raked his fingers through his hair. “I was trying to do something right.”
“I know! But it’s not up to you to pick fights and fix the world. Just because you can step into a corner of the world doesn’t mean it is your space. Hamish, Nate’s misfortune had nothing to do with who he is . . . It was what he does.”
Hamish was silent long enough for Reggie to feel the pulse of the ticking clock through the rapping of her fingers. “If you’re right, then I killed Bricker.”
“What?”
“Because I called Luca . . .”
“Hamish.”
“Reggie!”
Reggie swallowed. “You didn’t kill him,” she said softly.
“You told me I did! You’re changing your mind?” She supposed he wanted the words to be forceful, but the pleading in his eyes belied anything but fear.
“You made a stupid mistake, Hamish.”
“One that I won’t forgive myself for.”
Reggie studied him a moment. His eyes were on his long fingers, the ones on his right hand shaking slightly. “But you will. Eventually. You will have to. So . . .” She inhaled. “Why don’t I forgive you first, and then you at least have some forgiveness until you can catch up, huh?”
* * *
It was strange not having Nate to call on. For any reason—battleship codes or Hamish’s guilt. Reggie knew he would have pointed them in the right direction after a few wry asides. Instead, they visited Thomas Greene. Reggie remembered him vaguely from a case last year involving his mother. She supposed it didn’t immediately spring to mind because she hadn’t been central to solving his problem. Rather, he had needed Hamish to ensure his mother was treated fairly.
His insurance office wasn’t in the North End, where he lived, but on Hadassah Street near the Park Plaza. It was small but costly. He said he paid the rent not for the space but for the location, to try to accumulate higher quality clientele. Reggie sauntered past Hamish with a look he read as her giving him an extra few beats before he would have to smooth the worry from his face.
“And Pete Kelly has been here?” she said brightly.
“Just once.”
At this, Reggie looked to Hamish.
Hamish studied the paperwork and assured her it was legitimate. There were a few addendums he puzzled over, but Thomas waved them off.
“I have been in the insurance business since I graduated. These are usual protocols.”
Hamish took a copy nonetheless, thanking Thomas profusely. He laid it on a little thick as they left his office and stepped into the sunshine.
“What are you thinking?” Reggie asked, a question posited as much to satiate her own curiosity as to solve their mystery.
“Hyatt and Price have no intention for this property development and housing to be a success.”
“What makes you say that?” Reggie asked as Hamish steered them toward the Common. The black wrought-iron fence framing a span of green and centuries spread before them. Reggie kept his pace on the sidewalk rimming the park.
“Greene. He couldn’t even find his mother a home. Had to come to us. I know—I know that sounds crass. But it’s true. A true Realtor, a proper Realtor for a firm of Hyatt and Price’s caliber, would want the best in the city.”
“So they want their project to fail?”
Hamish shook his head, then drew a line with his pinky finger, slicing the air between them. “On both sides of this we have sheer stupidity. No! Don’t look at me like that. I won’t stand on ceremony. Stupidity!” He smiled. “On one side we have Kelly: he stands to earn on the black market, more so as the prospect of entering the war becomes nearer. Across the border, people will want what is scarce. Nylons. Liquor. Who knows? He stands to make a buck, especially with his prime waterfront property. Boats easily move in and out.” Hamish took a beat, blue eyes roaming from Boylston Street to the steeple of Arlington Church: a breath away in their sight lines. “On the other side we have Hyatt and Price. A firm host to views that are at their core very antiwar. War, to them, and according to the pamphlets, is a conspiracy. They quote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. One treatise of many that believes there is some form of Jewish conspiracy. But they don’t stop there. They prey on any group of people they think are lesser than themselves. War, to them, just gives their inferiors power.”
“So munitions?”
“If they found out that Kelly’s property was being used to transport munitions? Like we found on Toby’s manifest? They would think it was their duty to stop it. This is more than slum housing. Though the slum housing was two birds with one stone. The uneven ground and obvious disarray would hopefully drive out any unwanteds while still keeping Kelly from his enterprise.”
Reggie fell back on the heels of her oxfords. “And Toby?”
“Toby was an errand boy.”
“Yes, but—”
“Something intersected. Someone may have been using Toby to work for both sides. The side that wanted the cheap housing, the side that wanted Kelly to keep his shipments.”
“So what you are saying is . . .” Reggie put her index finger to her stained lips.
“Yes?”
“None of this has anything to do with baseball.”
They took a taxi back to the North End to decide what to do next. It was around lunchtime.
They bought sandwiches to go from Leoni’s and retreated to the Prado. The sun was scorching, but the breeze tickling the rambling trees and over the red bricks was a nice reprieve.
Reggie and Hamish were mostly silent while eating. Reggie felt as if a yardstick dangled between them, keeping them at a safe distance. Sure, he was animated under the spell of solving a problem. But he also tried to be a gentleman next to an engaged lady. Reggie folded the paper from her sandwich.
They reclined, a large stretch of fountain between them, watching the water spray. Reggie couldn’t sink into the moment like a comfortable old sweater—her ring caught the rainbow in the water. She folded her arms.
Hamish was far away for a moment. He nudged his glasses up with the crook of his index finger, his gaze lost in the color of the Prado. The trees weeping down over the red brick. The pedestrians spilling between the bordering churches at either end.
Reggie saw an intensity in his eyes, but also a sadness. She slid over slightly and nudged him with her elbow. “You’re thinking of Nate.”
Hamish shrugged. “Or maybe I am just thinking that I don’t want this place to change.”
The stroll to the office was silent, punctuated by the familiar sounds of a North End afternoon: shoppers bartering with grocers under striped awnings; a car horn a street over; tourists playing with their bulky Kodak cameras, the click of the button immortalizing historic tableaux Hamish snapped in his mind as they made their way back to the office.
Several moments later, so deep in thought, Hamish didn’t even look up when the phone rang. Reggie voiced her usual greeting, excitement rising in her voice so that she had to check herself and smooth her skirt. “How?” she asked, covering the mouthpiece and murmuring, “Officer Reid,” to Hamish.
“That hot dog vendor. Had a crisis of conscience when his nephew was in a fight. Pete had apparently slipped him some money. From what I know about Pete, that seems to be a common thing.”
Reggie signed off and looked up excitedly at Hamish.
Hamish’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. “And?”
Here Reggie bounced a little in her chair. “And!”
“Stop the jack-in-the-box routine, Reggie, and tell me.”
“Pete Kelly had a few people at the ball game working for him. To say the least.”
Reggie and Hamish rang Errol for his sister’s address, then wasted no time finding it.
When they arrived, Errol answered the door.
“Is your sister here?”
Errol nodded. “Jean’s in the kitchen.”
The house was simple but immaculate. All furniture and spaces had been dusted. From the front of the house, Reggie’s nose made out the kitchen.
“The church ladies are going above and beyond,” Errol said. “Smell that? Roast chicken and potatoes and bean salads and casseroles to feed dozens. My sister hasn’t had an appetite. Can’t blame her.” He turned to Hamish. “Did you listen to the game last night? No amount of roast chicken could change the way I’ve been playing.”
“Maybe you should take time off. It can’t be easy to focus on the game.”
Errol motioned for Reggie and Hamish to take a seat in the sitting room. “If you want anything to eat, there’s lemon pie . . .”
They both declined. But Reggie accepted the offer of two Cokes straight from the icebox.
Errol returned and handed the bottles across the couch, his sister not far behind him. While Errol was chatty, Jean was not. “I don’t know how I’m still waking up, you know? When something cuts your knees out from under you. I guess I just keep myself going forward. I think it’s because I still want to prove that I can do it. For him. For my sister too.”
“Do you want anything to eat?” She looked tired but prim. Starched collar and ironed skirt as if anticipating company, falling back on manners that seemingly exhausted her.
“We’re fine,” Reggie said. “Thank you.”
Reggie tried not to look at her. It went against every last inch of her upbringing. She knew she was being rude, but she wasn’t sure what her eyes would betray. This woman had seen countless officers. Had seen her brother’s and nephew’s names in the paper. Had to live with the blown-out wick of the candle of a kid who wanted to go to Cincinnati. Who was young and energetic and hardworking, probably determined to raise his mother from this crooked sofa (with one wonky leg) and the slight crack in the clean front window. To live up to his uncle.
“May we take a look at his room?” Hamish asked moments later, after taking a long slug of Coke. “When we’re finished here?” Hamish felt like a smart and determined kid who had become the go-between for men who both had a desire and claim on Kelly’s property.
Toby’s mother nodded. Hamish was drawing circles on the table with his thumb.
“Hard for me to go in, you understand,” Errol said. “But if you think it might help, then please go ahead.”
Silence. Reggie and Hamish exchanged a look. Reggie remembered the first night she saw Errol on the field, the way he stepped to the plate and owned the field, drowning out the sounds from the stands, planting his shoes on either side of the plate and swinging the bat as if it were an extension of his body. The same Errol, in front of her, seemed small and deflated: shoulders hunched, staring at folded hands on a shiny-clean wooden table.
“Are you still planning on moving into Mr. Kelly’s property?” Hamish asked after a moment.
“No. I haven’t decided what I am going to do now.”
“Any scouts come yet?” Reggie asked, to lighten the tone but also because she remembered how much of an influence it seemed to have in their first conversations about his prankers.
Errol shook his head. “And there won’t be if I keep playing like this.” He spread his hands. “But I will keep playing, you know. And I am happy that I took the time to seek you out.”
Their Coke bottles finished, Jean collected them with a smile before retreating to the back room, leaving Errol to point them upstairs. The banister was dark wood and each step covered with worn carpet. On the next floor, first door to the right, they would find what had been Toby’s bower.
Bower was the word Errol used, and as soon as Hamish and Reggie crossed through, she could see why. It was a sanctuary. The door had a sign—Please Knock—written in careful calligraphy. Each wall featured banners and pennants from the Boston Patriots. Errol told them he always offered to pay for Toby’s tickets, but Toby wanted to earn his frequent attendance. Reggie figured this was why he ran errands and messages for Pete Kelly.
On the mirrored dressing cabinet, Reggie found a pile of ticket stubs. Toby didn’t want to forget a moment. Each game a relic.
Otherwise, the room was a study of an average boy. At least from what Reggie could see from corduroy comforter to print curtains.
Dust speckles appeared with the slice of light from the window. A few building blocks rested on the hardwood floor. From long before. A lifetime before. Reggie approached Toby’s desk. Her breath caught at the pile of half-finished homework. The boy’s pencil scrawl beginning a thesis on the fall of Rome. Pennants from the Reds and maps of Cincinnati littered the walls.
Reggie’s eyes stung.
Meanwhile, Hamish studiously inspected every inch and corner. This room was a life. A mausoleum. All that remained of a vibrant human cut off before he was able to fulfill his potential.
Reggie carefully, gingerly, explored the other papers in careful piles. Most was homework. Another sheet—peeking out—was something else entirely. Reggie removed it.
“Hamish!” Her eyes didn’t leave the fine print and insignia she immediately recognized.
“Eh?”
“I think I found something.”
Hamish joined her and they studied the paper together. “There’s far more on this than should be allowed at some little warehouse on the wharf.” Hamish looked over lines and lines of goods. “Imagine this! Fish. Pigs.”
Reggie startled. “What?”
“Someone could easily play some horrible pranks after receiving some of these goods.”
Reggie scanned another piece of paper while Hamish continued with the fine print. “Guns. Ammunition.”
Hamish stole a look over her shoulder. “Were there guns and ammunition when you were there, Reg? That you saw? When we were first at Kelly’s?”
Reggie nodded. “I think so.” She squinted. Flummoxed. Reaching for memory. “I was trying to notice, Hamish. Just like Nora Charles would. But then I fell into the water and—”
“Because all I saw was alcohol and cigarettes. Weapons are something new. And something that would mean a lot. You know this, Reg. From the night we were at the Christian Patriots meeting.”
He took the paper from her. “Let me see this. I don’t think this has anything to do with Kelly going quietly. I think this has something to do with a man still desperate to make a buck even though he knows he is cornered. They’re bigger than he is.”
Hamish’s mind churned over everything that had happened and somehow rested on Toby. A kid who would do anything for a buck. From either side of two parties invested in a property. For completely different purposes.
“I’m going to think out loud.”
“What? Again?” Reggie’s voice was light.
“I was thinking about a trial.”
“Pleasant time to think about a trial!” Reggie chortled.
“In school. It was on one of our exams. In the example, a fellow was standing trial for sabotaging his own property. He stood to gain more by destroying his property than by selling it. The insurance.”
“Oh.” Reggie rolled a corner of the paper between two fingers.
“What do we know so far, Reggie?”
“That when we go find Kelly he will be accepting his last shipment and working very hard to make his property disappear? I wonder.”
Hamish tucked a requisition into his suit jacket. “We know that Kelly really wants to keep his property. When I was there, I saw several pamphlets from the Christian Patriots. This is a man who knows to keep an eye out for prospective rivals.”
Reggie sank onto Toby’s bedspread. Her eyes flitted around the room, and she almost rose again, worried that she had gotten too comfortable and desecrated a sacred space. The wallpaper. The sweater haphazardly hung on a hook behind the door. As if Toby might barge through the door any moment.
“The Christian Patriots are pacifists.” Hamish lowered his voice as if someone might be around and would hear them. His eyes sought all four corners of the small room. “At least they have tricked themselves into believing they are pacifists. The war my country is fighting is, to them, a distraction from their cause. False. Fake. Why would they stand by and let someone capitalize on weapons and ammunitions for what they think is a fake and organized war? We talked about this!”
“So . . .”
“They think there is some virtue in stopping what is happening in my country and overseas from coming here. And any money they would make—perhaps at the expense of the very people they want to eliminate from their perfect world—could help spread their philosophy.”
“Money! People who would jump at the chance to live in the new building might be the perfect bait for their rallies and pamphlets.” She warmed to his theme, face animated. “But also someone who wants the opposite. Whose sole gain is to make a buck.”
“Precisely.”
She looked over Hamish’s shoulder. “Toby would keep Kelly from getting that money.”
Hamish nodded. “But the kid playing both sides? He was smart, but he was just a kid.”
“You think someone else was at the helm?”
Hamish didn’t answer. Reggie rose, smoothed over the blanket on Toby’s bed. Took one last look around a room that stung her with nostalgia for a childhood she had never lived. A childhood of the scent of apple pie drifting from downstairs (as it was now) and sun streams buttering a homemade bedspread (as they were now).
Reggie was a little overwhelmed. But happy at the same time.
* * *
Reggie insisted she return to the office to collect the office gun before they confronted Pete, miffed that she hadn’t thought to bring it in the first place. Hamish wanted to cycle over immediately and get a head start. Gun or no gun.
“You sure you can protect yourself?” Reggie asked. Logically. More logically than Hamish responded when he answered in the affirmative.
Hamish nodded. He wanted to buy time in case someone showed up. As his tires skidded into the white signs marking Hyatt and Price’s development a half hour later, he made out Kelly at the side of the building.
“Mr. Kelly!” Hamish called, hopping off his bicycle and walking toward the open door.
“Mr. DeLuca.”
“Miss Van Buren and I couldn’t figure out what player would play horrible pranks. Not only that, but get the means to. A fish. A chicken. A pig’s heart. Gruesome.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Hamish nodded. “You do. And you had the means to do it. Joe. The janitor. He’s a connection of yours. A customer. You had someone to help you.”
“What would I care about a baseball player?”
“You needed to distract him. You had Errol’s kid nephew doing all sorts of things. Figuring things out. What’s more, you didn’t like the idea of someone like Errol playing for any league: farm league or no. And to add insult to injury, he was the first investor to rent. People are always shipping stuff through here. Boats coming and going, you could have easily taken what you wanted. A gun. I do think you went to the ballpark that night to confront Errol. To see if you could bribe him. Or taunt him. Joe would tell you when he would be around. And he was that night.” Hamish took a breath. “And then you found out that Toby wasn’t just working for you.”
Kelly turned from Hamish. “You might want to collect that bicycle of yours and go back to where you came from.”
“Toby met someone playing both sides. Someone way out of your league.”
Kelly blinked. “You’re wasting my time.”
“You got scared when my cousin was back in town. You’re scared now, which is why you think you can still find a way to make a buck. You’ll light fire to this building and turn a profit. Keep Hyatt and Price from ever getting to it. But it won’t work. Because they have high-priced lawyers—the same lawyers they probably came and spooked you with before you found me. They will find a way to take all of it. You won’t get the insurance. You won’t—”
“I am on a bit of a deadline.” Kelly cut Hamish off, his face unchanged. He turned into the door and Hamish followed him, though he couldn’t see in the middling dark what Kelly was reaching down to pick up.
It became ultimately clear at the flick of Kelly’s torch.
“You’re setting this place on fire! For the insurance. Act of God. Can’t be much of an act of God if they find the match and the gasoline can. And a witness.”
Kelly shoved Hamish against the wall and ran outside. Hamish found his balance and followed him. He sloshed gasoline around his shoes then made a dripping trail.
Hamish pounced, wrestling Kelly, and the can toppled, a steady pungent stream spilling onto the grass.
Kelly was strong, but Hamish was fast. Reflexes compensated for every sudden movement.
Hamish ducked at Kelly’s swing then leveled a few of his own. He whipped his glasses off and tucked them in his pocket. They were so closely engaged, he could make out the heavy breath and perspiration and ire on his opponent’s face.
“I didn’t mean for the kid to be killed.”
Hamish blinked fury from his eyes. They stung with sweat and now with something else. Something split between hoping Reggie would arrive with a gun and hoping she would stay clear away.
“I’ve had quite the business offer of late. Kid would have gotten in my way.” Kelly panted, repositioning himself. Falling back. “So much for my good deed. Thought the kid would be quiet. Out of respect to his uncle. Started sending his uncle things. But then someone made me a huge offer and I couldn’t have my mistake of a clumsy teenager be the one thing that kept me from it.”
“Who!” Hamish bellowed. “Who showed up?” He knew the answer.
Kelly started to reach into his pocket, but Hamish was faster, clutching both of Kelly’s forearms. Hamish gritted through his teeth. “The police are coming, you know. And you just gave me a confession.”
“Confession!” Kelly laughed. “I don’t think you’ll be around to report it.” Kelly showed him a packet of matches.
Hamish’s eyes widened and he wrestled him down. Kelly squirmed until he had enough momentum to throw Hamish off, then landed a careful blow to his nose. Hamish’s world buzzed a moment; he held his face and rolled back. When he blinked the blurriness away, Kelly was holding up a match, making a show of striking it on his shoe. “You’ll have to be quicker.”
Hamish’s quickening heartbeat startled the breath from him as the slow flame flickered then licked and snaked over the gasoline-ravaged grass. Hamish leapt to his feet in pursuit of Kelly as the fire raced. There was a sound to it too. A sudden, sickening roar. Hamish blinked as it crawled up the sides of the warehouse.
He tackled Kelly from behind. But the fire was too close. Kelly swerved and landed another blow to Hamish’s face. Hamish coughed and took it, rallying enough to return the same. Kelly fell back and Hamish lost him like a shadow, the smoke stinging his eyes and turning his vision into a wall of blurriness.
He blinked it away and panted a moment. He needed to breathe. But couldn’t. The smoke was suffocating. But he needed to. The longer he worried about not being able to, the faster his heartbeat thudded and his nerves snapped.
He slipped his hand beneath his right suspender a moment, finally finding Kelly in shadow. He reached out to pull him up. Tough him. Grip him. But Kelly had a weapon Hamish didn’t have.
The gasoline can.
And Hamish’s world went black.
* * *
Reggie was with Reid, of all people. She had headed straight back to the office after their visit to Jean’s, and Reid was waiting.
“I’m here for a gun,” Reggie said.
“And I’m here because after weeks and weeks of waiting I finally have a warrant for Kelly.”
“What? How?”
Reid nodded enthusiastically. “Some small infraction. Minuscule. But enough. And even in my jurisdiction.”
“I need to find Hamish. He was going to confront him.”
“Ride with me?”
Reggie was enjoying the stint in a police car. Smoothing her skirt and laughing at Reid’s attempts at humor. It wasn’t until they neared Fiske’s Wharf that she started to feel uneasy . . . unsure . . . panicked.
Smoke swirled as Reggie and Reid inspected the looming fire from the car windows.
Reid tried to calm her. “I see your ring there.” He nodded from the driver’s seat. “You’re engaged. Congratulations.”
Reggie tried to speak but instead just squeaked and nodded.
They parked far away from the smoke. Gray and billowing.
“You stay here,” Reid said firmly, placing a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Stay here. I am going to see if I can help.”
Reggie looked out the gritty window. The firemen and ambulance were just arriving. The smoke was overpowering, crawling through the door Reid quickly opened and stealing her breath.
“You promise you’ll stay here? Don’t make me handcuff you.”
Reggie coughed, nodded. Lied.
She waited until he was out of sight. Which wasn’t long considering the black cloud was spreading. She fingered her ring. She couldn’t bring her hand to her necklace. Breathe. Hope. It was hard to do either when everything before her was an inferno.
She opened the car door and stepped into the murky gray. Well, it’s preferable to water, she lied to herself as her eyes began to sting and the atmosphere swelled and closed in, choking her.
A fireman grabbed her arm. It took her a moment before she saw him, blinking, but she shoved him off.
* * *
At the very least, when he imagined dying, he hoped it would be in the middle of an adventure. Quasimodo protected his saints and his monsters of stone from Frollo’s men and the Parisian guards and even Clopin, king of the Romany people, and his willing followers. He protected what was his from the raging smoke. Hamish was light-headed, probably a bit delirious too. For once he entertained a few Hunchback of Notre-Dame comparisons, thinking of the battlefields far, far away. His mouth was dry. He tasted grit and everything around him was closing in like a wall.
He tried standing up but his bones felt like gelatin and he lay down again. He didn’t know where Pete was. If he had gotten away. He didn’t know. He was slowly getting sleepy, his eyes fluttering shut. He should put on his glasses so they could identify him. But then, just as his eyelids were railing against the gray, he thought he saw something. Sunshine. A splash of yellow. His eyes widened.
Reggie wore yellow. Reggie had been wearing yellow. Earlier when they had Cokes at Errol’s place. Yellow like her engagement ring. He slumped a little and decided to just sleep it off . . . forever if needed. Until she called his name.
* * *
The outfit would be ruined. It was expensive too. One she kept from her time as a Van Buren debutante. Sartorially impressive. It contrasted nicely against her chestnut hair. A dozen times she thought she’d found him, pressing through the haze with her arm, tainting her dress. And then she did. It had to be him. Even with black hair and black, sooty clothing, she saw him. Just a moment. A flash of unbelievably blue eyes through the fog.
Reggie dashed over, pulled him up with strength she didn’t know she had, the muscles in her arms feeling like they were being ripped out, her arms from their sockets too.
“Don’t you dare, Hamish!”
His stiff form beside her straightened and suddenly he was helping her. Moving on his own. Away, away from the smoke, through the waterfall spray of water hoses and in the direction of the river.
She could see him. The curtain of dark parted and a wide slice of moonlight made its place beyond the fire and dark.
He was coughing, spluttering. Wiping the grime from his face. He looked at her a moment, squinting. She wasn’t sure he completely saw her. Then he fell back, coughing again.
Reggie looked at him, scrunched and smeared and singed. Then back toward the building alive with eerie flames, barely controlled by the firemen, and her mind made a connection of That was too close while her heart had another idea altogether.
So her fingers were entangled in the back of his hair and her lips were on his. Claiming him again and again—over his lips and then over the ash smudged on his cheekbones and the smoky line of hair at each temple. She kissed him and kissed him and she was sure the tears trailing from her eyes stung his dry lips, but he kissed her back. Still. She was shaking. Her mouth tasted like ash and dust. But she didn’t care. He had almost died and she hadn’t spared two ticks of a thought before racing to go with him.
When they fell apart, hands still holding on for dear life, he sought her surprised eyes underneath the ratty light.
“You shouldn’t have come after me, Reggie.” His thumb ran over her cheek, catching a strand of hair.
But she had to. Her Hamish with his glasses and his long nose and his beautiful eyes. He tugged the sun into her sky in the moments she saw him every day. She wanted to fall into him and keep him safe and navigate a twisting road less traveled with him at her side. She was sorry they had spent any time navigating around each other and a few misunderstandings and her own anger at his decisions. Love was imperfect. And so was he. But she loved him all the same.
Hamish’s glasses sat askew at a dilapidated angle, a strange contrast to his face: a hybrid of red and gray smog. While he held her, she stole a moment to look down at the muted twinkle of her diamond ring, filmed by soot. She brushed it against her skirt until she was certain it shone again. Brushed and brushed again and again until it hurt. Everything hurt.
Her brain backpedaled, the cloud of smoke and passion and the eternity of their kiss clearing into cold reality. There was Vaughan and her father’s bankbook beyond the tumbledown hair of this man before her: his soft touch and big eyes, drinking her deftly in. Who was she? Reggie was rebellious but not unfaithful. She knew what her commitment to Vaughan meant.
She took a moment and pulled away, rubbing at her forearms. Where was she? Away from smoke and danger, away from the tight pull of his arms, the wavering passion in his kiss, the uncertain yet desperate tangle of his arms.
“I’m sorry,” she tried to say steadily, knowing his own tremulous voice in a moment of intense fear or passion would never match the steadiness in her own. “The lack of oxygen has gone to my brain.”
Even in the dark and smoke, rippled through by the blare of sirens, she could see his heartbreak, and then she felt it with an intensity that caught in her throat.
“O-of course,” he stuttered. And it had been so warm and wanting to be with him, near him. Reggie, you stupid girl.
“I’m engaged,” she said lamely, as if it could possibly patch up the rift in their friendship their pressed closeness had spliced. She would tell herself it was the intensity of a near-death experience. She would tell herself. She would . . . Oh, there were a million things she would do later, and they would all lead to her biting her self-manicured nails at the web she had tangled around her heart.
“I know.” Hamish’s voice was hollow as if a rug had been pulled out from it and he had fallen. “I wasn’t much of a gentleman.” His right hand was shaking, and as headlights pulled in near, she saw a garish red slice across it.
“Hamish, you’re hurt!”
“Reggie, I love you.”
“I know.” She licked her dry lips and regretted it because the motion took a little bit of him from her.
“And that’s it?” His voice splintered.
She realized she wasn’t absently rubbing her engagement ring, but rather tugging at the locket he’d given her. Spira, Spera. Well, the breathe part was nearly impossible with the leftover swirls of smoke and the air she was just beginning to replenish after kissing him again and again and again. But hope? “It was an end-of-the-world kiss.”
He scrubbed his hair, dull gray with matted soot. Reggie’s eyes turned away from him to the skeleton of the building still consumed by smoke and fire in the hazy moonlight. She had made such a mess. Her eyes pricked with tears she hoped were camouflaged by smoke. “When you think it is the end of your life and everything is scary and falling apart and you are relieved to see the one person who . . . matters the most.”
Hamish was impossible to read after that moment. She had confused him and given in to the stupidest impulse of her life.
“Do you need to see a medic?” he rasped.
“You need to see the medic,” she said.
Voices milled and the volume mounted, and soon Reggie and Hamish were bordered by two police cars, a fire truck that had roared in from Haymarket Square, and a medic’s van. Hamish insisted Reggie see a doctor even though she countered that he was the one with the injured hand. He ignored her. The headlights and torchlights illuminated him: sooty shirt open at the collar, hair a disaster, long, sinewy limbs dragging, blue eyes electric against the smoky dark.
* * *
Hamish was pretty certain he was dreaming. Otherwise, he couldn’t imagine recalling Reggie in his arms and kissing him. The type of sweet, unexpected, knee-buckling kiss that would drive him into a burning building again. And again.
The firemen had controlled the fire. Pete wasn’t found. At least that was what he made out from snippets of comments. His ear was ringing. Then he saw someone he knew.
“Errol!”
“I came to confront him. After you left,” Errol said, spreading his hands. “When I arrived, well . . .”
“How did you know to come?”
“I found a letter in our mailbox. Just after you left. Returned to sender. It was a letter from Toby addressed to Mr. Kent. Telling him he didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. I came to confront him.”
“Your nephew had something that Kelly would kill for. Something a much more powerful man wanted. It was how we ended up in his world to begin with.”
“It was a mess.” Errol shook his head.
“You can’t feel guilty,” Hamish said. “You can’t lighten it. That was a part of it and it’s not selfish to acknowledge it.”
“What kind of influence would I have been on my nephew then—if he were still with us? If I go off and defend Pete Kelly stupidly? That’s no kind of legacy. At least not the kind of legacy I would want to leave.”
“It’s unforgivable.” He watched Errol turn the weight of the world over in his mind.
Errol shook his head. “Nothing is unforgivable, Hamish. Forgiveness is freedom. True freedom. I don’t want to be shackled with this man’s hatred. I don’t want to be bound to the hate of this injustice. But I will always be shackled to it.”
Hamish opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Behind his eyes a film reel of Reggie and Nate and fire and anger unfurled.
“You’re thinking about your friend.” Errol’s voice rumbled low over the bricks and debris.
“You’re perceptive. No wonder you can see a fly ball a mile away.”
“You want to take on the world. Just like me, huh? You’re angry and it fills you and you need some way to let that anger out.”
“‘Anger is the least interesting emotion,’” Hamish recited, his smile a slight comma up his cheek. “Something my mother used to tell me. From a book she read.”
Errol chuckled. “There you are, then. Fighting battles out of responsive anger might get an immediate response. Or change a slight part of a bigger problem. But I am not going to fight just for the near future. If I fight, I want to do so for a marathon. For something that will last long after I am gone and beyond my problems to something bigger. And I think once I wash this grime off my face and get back into the field, I can fight with my gift. All of this . . .” Errol’s eyes roamed over the wreckage and jagged beams that looked like errant limbs. “This is unfortunate. But this is not my fight.” He squeezed Hamish’s shoulder. “Go find your young woman.”
Reggie. At that, Hamish was lost. He nodded and twisted a string trailing from the bandage wound around his palm.
* * *
Then it was as if all of the moments Hamish had ever experienced with Reggie had flitted up in the smoke of the warehouse. The curtain drew on Vaughan pulling her in and sweeping back her hair, and while Hamish couldn’t see Vaughan’s face from his vantage point, he assumed his eyes were two shimmering pools of concern. Over Vaughan’s shoulder Reggie looked at him, and he should have been able to read a million things on her open-book face, but on this night he needed translation.