Black Dove (7 page)

“Maybe she can’t find us,” I said as we walked up Broadway to our ramshackle hotel.

“Fiddle faddle.”

“Maybe she’s in trouble,” I said as we entered the dingy, dimly lit lobby of the Cosmopolitan House.

“Hogwash.”

“Maybe she’s testin’ us,” I said as we tromped up the saggy stairs to the second floor.

“Bullshit.”

“Maybe she’s—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” my brother roared as we finally reached our room. “Would you shut up about Diana god damn Corvus? We ain’t never gonna lay eyes on that woman again, do you understand that?” He jammed his key in the keyhole and gave it an angry jiggle. “We ain’t nothin’ to her, and she ain’t nothin’ to . . . hel-lo.”

“What?”

“The door . . . it ain’t locked.”

Gustav drew his key back out and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he turned the knob and gave the door a gentle push. Rusty hinges let off a high-pitched squeal as the door slowly swung open.

“I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” said the woman waiting for us in our room.

It was Diana god damn Corvus.

Or, Diana Brings Bad News—and Talks Us into Sniffing for More

The lady had not
come at a good time, of course. Not only must she have heard my brother’s rant about her, there I was with bulletholes in my hat and a forehead slathered with burn-balm that smelled worse than a polecat’s underpants.

On the other hand, any time was a good time to see Diana again. If I was to get a glimpse of those lively brown
eyes
, those lovely dark curls, those full, impishly upturned lips, and that long, slender neck even upon my deathbed, I swear my heart would find the strength to skip a beat before it stopped altogether.

Diana was sitting primly upon our tiny room’s only chair, and as I rushed in to greet her, she smiled and came to her feet.

“Miss Corvus—what a lovely surprise! And here we were tryin’ to figure out how
we’d find you
.”

“Oh?” She looked at Gustav as he came slinking into the room behind me, and her smile dimmed. Not going cold, mind you—simply softening like the light of a lamp that’s been dialed down to a lower glow. “How fortunate that I saved you the trouble of trying.”

“Miss,” Old Red said, greeting her with a curt nod and a doffed hat. As was his custom in the presence of a lady, he directed his eyes at a spot on the floor about two feet from her toes.

“Please, Miss Corvus. Sit yourself down again and tell us how you come to be here.”

I swept off my custom-ventilated bowler and held it out toward the chair. After catching a quick whiff of Chan’s malodorous ointment, however, I immediately slapped the hat back atop my head.

“Thank you,” Diana said as she sat, shooting my hat an amused glance that added,
If you don’t want to tell me, I won’t ask
.

“I hope you don’t mind my invading your privacy like this,” she said aloud. “I thought it better to wait for you up here.”

“How is it you got in, anyways?” Old Red asked.

“Oh, I just let myself in,” Diana said—and left it at that.

So the lady could pick a lock. Now I
knew
I was in love.

“Well, it’s a good thing you took the liberty—loiterin’ in the lobby would’ve been askin’ for trouble,” I said. “You won’t find many low-lifes lower than our neighbors at the Cosmo. But we save us a pretty penny livin’ here . . . which is good, cuz a pretty penny’s about all we got left.”

Diana nodded. “I understand. I heard you lost your jobs with the Southern Pacific.”

“We
quit
,” Gustav corrected her, almost managing to look her in the eye—his gaze rose as high as her collarbone before faltering and sinking back to the floor.

“We was probably gonna get canned anyhow,” I added.

“All the same,” Old Red snipped, “we quit.”

“Well, I wish I could say the same.” Diana’s smile turned rueful. “
I
was fired.”

“No! You?” I gasped. “How could they?”

“Very easily, actually. You remember Colonel Crowe, of course.”

“Why, sure,” I said.

The man was pretty hard to forget, really—unless you’re one of those folks who bumps into crackpot Lilliputian military men every day. It was Crowe who’d hired Gustav and me to be train guards, which probably goes to show how cracked his little pot truly was.

“The colonel was blamed for what happened on the Pacific Express,” Diana said. “He was dismissed first. I was always viewed as a sort of . . . protégé of his, so I was swept out, as well.”

“When did all this happen?” Old Red asked, sounding strangely skeptical. He didn’t say “supposedly,” but I could hear it in his tone.

“Just last week. In a way, I didn’t mind being sacked, though. It gave me time to pursue a personal project of mine.”

“Which was?” I asked.

The lady gave me the answer I hoped to hear.

“Finding you.”

I shot Gustav a “See?” smirk, chastising him for his lack of faith in our friend. He missed it, though, as he was still bashfully inspecting the floorboards.

“You didn’t make it easy,” Diana went on. “I tracked you as far as a lodging house called the ‘Cowboy’s Rest,’ but after that the trail went cold.”

“That’s kinda how we wanted it after we left the Rest,” I explained. “Dispute with management, you might say.”

You might also say the SOBs actually tried to shanghai us. But that’s another story—and one the lady didn’t get to hear.

“How is it you found us, then?” Gustav asked her.

“Oh, it was simple, really—nothing worthy of your hero Mr. Holmes. Knowing your ambitions as I do, I merely asked an acquaintance to contact me should the two of you ever cross his path. You see, he’s—”

“A Pinkerton over in Frisco,” Old Red finished for her, sounding annoyed with himself for not deducing it sooner.

“That’s right,” Diana said. “Maintaining friendly relations with the Pinkertons has come in handy for me on several occasions. Likewise, I’ve found it helpful to be on good terms with the clerks in the Southern Pacific mailroom. Which is how I came to have this.”

She opened her drawstring handbag and pulled out a sealed envelope.

“For you.”

She offered the letter to me.

I tried to keep my hand steady as I stretched it out toward her. Yet still it got to shaking as soon as I saw where that letter was from.

For Gustav’s benefit, I read the return address out loud.

Harper & Bros., Publishers

325 to 337 Pearl Street

Franklin Square

New York, New York

“The
Harper’s Weekly
folks?” Old Red asked.

“Yup.”

“Sendin’ just a letter?”

“Yup.”

“You know, if they didn’t send your book back, maybe—”

I cut my brother off with another “Yup.” I didn’t want to hear the words, in case they weren’t true. Yet they were echoing in my head all the same.

Maybe you’ve got yourself a publisher
.

I tore open the envelope, pulled out a neatly folded sheet of paper, and started reading silently.

“Dear Sir or Madam,” the letter began.

Well, hell
, I thought.
That can’t be good
.

And I was right.

“Miss Corvus,” I sighed once I’d made it through to the end, “would you mind pluggin’ your ears for a moment?”

“Not at all,” Diana replied gently.

She pressed her hands to the sides of her head.

“
Shit damn Christ son of a bitch piss bastard
!”

I took a deep breath, then gave the lady a grateful nod.

“Thank you.”

Diana uncovered her ears. “Any time.”

“So . . . they ain’t gonna print it,” my brother said, face twisted into a prodigious grimace. He’d dug his spurs in me deep to get me to do something with my writing. Now it looked like he’d gotten a taste of the rowels himself.

“Not only ain’t they gonna print it, they ain’t even gonna mail the thing back ’less I send
them
two bits to cover postage. Sweet Gee-ronimo . . . they’re holdin’ my book for ransom!”

“Well, there’s only two things for you to do,” Diana said firmly. “First, you’re going to send them that twenty-five cents, get your book back, and try again with another publisher. Right?”

I blinked at her a moment, not sure if I was ready to stop wallowing and get back to
hoping
again so quick.

“Right?” she said again, the word snapping out with all the force of a cavalry officer’s “Charge!”

“Right. And the second thing?”

“I would’ve thought that was obvious.” She came to her feet and started for the door. “You’re going to have a drink. Come on.”

I followed, though I had no earthly idea where the lady might be leading us: There wasn’t a respectable drinking house in town that would allow a female to mingle with men at the bar. Yet I knew that mere decorum—or a niggling little inconvenience like the truth—wouldn’t stop Diana Corvus.

I’d once told her (completely in a spirit of awestruck appreciation, mind) that she was the most audacious liar I’d ever met. The compliment seemed to please her, but she’d refused to accept it. She was merely uncommonly persuasive, she said.

So in deference to her preference, I won’t say that she
lied
us into a private booth at a nearby chophouse. When she told the head waiter she and her “cousins from Albuquerque” needed a little privacy to go over plans for our dearly departed grandmother’s funeral, she was merely
persuading
her way to what she wanted.

Which she got.

After ordering our drinks (three brandies seemed like the most appropriately somber choice), we returned to the subject of my literary master-piece and the New York nincompoops who’d failed to recognize its genius. Diana was of the opinion that I should approach a dime-novel outfit next, so I told her I’d already done just that with another book, this one about our disastrous passage on the Pacific Express.

“Oh?” she said. “I suppose
I
must be in the book then, hmmm?”

“Of course! You’re one of the heroes!”

Diana smiled wryly. “I’m honored. It’s just too bad the Southern Pacific doesn’t agree with you.” Her smile drooped on one side, then wilted and died entirely. “In fact, they’ll be apoplectic if your book is ever published. The story they fed the newspapers didn’t bear much resemblance to what really happened—and powerful men don’t like to be contradicted.”

“And you think we oughta be worried about that?” Old Red said. “Whether or not the S.P.’s apo-papa-paletic or whatever?”

It was the first thing he’d said since “Sure. Brandy. Fine,” ten minutes before.

“I’m not saying you should be
worried
. Just prepared,” Diana replied. “Colonel Crowe lost his job over this, and he’d been with the Southern Pacific eight years. You were with the railroad all of three days—and you don’t exactly have friends in high places. The last thing you need is
enemies
in high places.”

“Well, what would you have us do, then?” Gustav pressed her. “Use the book for kindlin’? Or just change it around so it’s in line with the flapdoodle the S.P. put out?”

“I’m not suggesting either. I just wanted to warn you that—”

“
Warn
, huh?” Old Red snapped. “Alright, then. Consider us warned. Not that it’s gonna change a danged thing. We don’t care to ‘maintain friendly relations’ with the S.P.—or anyone else who stabs us in the back.”

Diana gave Gustav the sort of look you’d give a favorite mutt that’s suddenly taken to growling at you instead of wagging its tail.

I offered her a reassuring grin—while giving Old Red a swift kick to the shin.

“You know, I just realized,” I said, scooping up my brandy glass, “here we been sharin’ our first drink together, and we ain’t done a proper toast.”

Diana returned my smile (although hers looked considerably strained) and held up her brandy.

After taking a long moment to rub his shin resentfully, Gustav finally lifted his own drink—though he did it so slowly you might’ve thought it had been poured into a “glass” crafted from solid lead.

“To friendly relations,” I said, giving my brother a taste of his own Exasperated Glower Number One.

Don’t you
dare
booger this up
, I was telling him.

“Friendly relations,” he grated out.

“Friendly relations,” said Diana.

We clinked and sipped—or Old Red and Diana did, anyway. Me, I clinked and
gulped
.

I needed a change of subject, and I needed it fast. Fortunately, it’s hard to keep my tongue tied long, fond of wagging as it is.

“I wish I’d known we’d be havin’ this little tea party today,” I said. “I would’ve invited Doc Chan to join us.”

“Dr. Chan . . . from the Pacific Express?” Diana asked, taken aback. “You’ve seen him?”

“Who you think put these holes in my hat? Why, the poor little feller’s as jittery as a frostbit Chihuahua.”

I proceeded to tell her all about our chance encounter with Gee Woo Chan.

I intended it purely as a diversion, like pointing out the window and saying, “My oh my, ain’t
she
a purty one?” before swiping the biscuit of another drover’s plate. And it worked, too. Better than I could’ve hoped for—or
would’ve
hoped for, considering all it eventually led to.