Iron Cast (9 page)

“Look at what I have here,” Corinne said, holding up her cupped hands. “Do you see it?”

The man nodded fervently.

“It's a golden brooch,” she said, firming the illusion. “Studded with real diamonds. Have you ever seen the like?”

He shook his head.

“That's a mighty fine trinket, miss,” he said. “Where did you get such a thing?”

“My grandmother gave it to me. I'm sure it must be worth at least a hundred dollars. That's all I need—only I can't get the clerk to buy it from me. He keeps threatening to call the police.”

She sniffled and watched the befuddled man through her eyelashes. She and Ada had been keeping tabs on him for two months. He was one of the jewelers in Boston who had made a small fortune selling iron jewelry to regs as a ward against hemopaths, but it was what he sold under the counter that caught their attention. Iron knuckles, iron-braced clubs, and iron barbs, no bigger than a needle, that were designed to break off in the skin—a special kind of torture for hemopaths, whose blood had a visceral aversion to iron that science had yet to explain. They were the sorts of weapons that would appeal only to ironmongers, those citizens who had decided in the past year that the surest way to stop hemopaths from scamming them was to grab any hemopaths they could find—criminal or not—and string them up in straitjackets of iron chains.

Corinne thought it was only fair to exact a tax on the profits he made at the expense of hemopaths. The only question was whether his lack of scruples extended to taking advantage of a wide-eyed, desperate girl. The brooch he could see in her hands would be worth three or four times what she was asking. She could practically read the thoughts flashing across his face in quick succession. He wasn't a particularly subtle man.

She knew that they had him.

“Maybe I can help,” he said. “I've been looking for an anniversary present for my wife. What if I bought it from you?”

“You would do that for me?” she asked. Ada would tell her later that she was laying on the innocent doe act a little thick, but the jeweler was too entranced by his own greedy imagination to notice.

“You said it was worth a hundred dollars, right?” He knelt down to open his briefcase and pulled out a fat envelope. “I was just on my way to the bank.”

“Oh, I can't do that,” Corinne said, clutching her hand to her chest. “What if it's worth much less than that? I don't want to cheat you. Maybe this was all a mistake. I'll just find another pawn shop.”

“My wife will love the brooch,” the man said. “That's worth the money to me.”

He spoke with such gentle reassurance that Corinne had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“Only if you're sure,” she said, hesitantly extending her hand.

The illusion might not hold much longer—it depended on how well the poem stuck in his mind. He was thinking so hard about the profit he would make selling the brooch that the verses were probably being crowded out with every passing moment.

He counted out five twenty-dollar bills and pressed them into her palm.

“My wife will be so pleased,” he said, tucking the envelope and the brooch into his briefcase. Before he could snap it shut, Corinne let out a small gasp as the breeze caught one of the bills in her hand. It swirled into the road.

“Oh no,” she cried, trying to sound as helpless as possible.

“I'll get it,” he told her, checking for oncoming traffic and then ducking into the street. While he stooped to pick up the bill, back turned, Corinne opened the briefcase and pulled the rest of the
bills out of the envelope. She shoved them into her coat pocket and straightened right as he turned around.

“You're too kind.” She summoned a few more tears for effect. “I can't thank you enough.”

“It's my pleasure, miss,” he said, beaming. “We've both had a run of good luck today.”

“No more luck for me, sir,” she said. “I'll never place another bet in my life.”

Ada's violin trilled, and the jeweler smiled blandly. Corinne knew the music was scattering his memories of the past few minutes. Ada couldn't make him forget completely, but she could blur Corinne's face in his mind and make the details of their conversation impossible to recall with any accuracy.

Corinne recognized her cue and bade the man a hurried farewell. She went the opposite way down the sidewalk, quickening her pace until she turned the corner, where she broke into a run. Hopefully Gabriel had enough sense to follow Ada to their rendezvous point. Corinne twisted and turned through the streets without slowing to check her direction. When she made it to the Central Burying Ground, she stayed across the road from the weathered gravestones, a safe distance from the iron fence encircling them. She knew that somewhere among those stones lay the bones of several of her more illustrious ancestors. She wondered what the stodgy old men would think about their descendant running cons a few blocks away from their final resting place.

Ada and Gabriel arrived before she even had a chance to catch her breath. The three of them took the path leading through the frostbitten grass and bare-branched trees of the Common.

“There's at least four hundred here,” she told Ada, patting her coat pocket.

“His mistress is a lucky woman,” Ada said.

“Mistress? But didn't you hear? He was going to the
bank
.” Corinne had regained enough breath to laugh. “That's why he just happened to have an exorbitant amount of cash on him.”

Gabriel was looking between them, eyebrow raised slightly.

“I don't suppose it's even worth asking what just happened back there,” he said.

“Probably not,” Corinne agreed.

“You two seem to have everything under control.”

“We've been at this for years,” Ada said.

“Then you won't be at all concerned about the beat cop who's about to catch up with us.”

Both girls stopped and whirled. Corinne cursed. “Ada,” she said.

But Ada was already yanking her violin free from its case. She threw the case at Corinne and tucked the instrument beneath her chin. She had barely coaxed out a few notes before the policeman roared into earshot, shouting at them to stop. Ada kept playing, the sound barely carrying above his cries. He started to slow. The expression on his face grew lax. He was almost upon them now.

Ada closed her eyes and played on.

The policeman kept walking, brushing elbows with Corinne and Gabriel. He didn't turn around. Ada played until he was out of sight, then with Corinne's help repacked the violin. The three of them ducked down another path. They took the long way back to the club, slipping through side streets with eyes always cast backward, alert for followers.

There weren't any patrons in the Cast Iron this early in the day, and Danny was busying himself polishing glasses.

“Little early to be raising hell, isn't it?” he said by way of greeting.

“Some of us work for a living,” Corinne said, and ducked the rag he threw at her.

Danny retrieved another cloth from under the bar and cast Gabriel a glance.

“Don't let these two scare you off,” Danny said. “Johnny never lets them torture the regs for long.”

“I resent that,” said Corinne.

“Don't care,” said Danny.

“I resent it too,” said Ada.

“In that case, I'm sorry to have offended,” said Danny.

Corinne made a face at Ada, who smiled innocently.

“If you have any questions, you can ask me,” Danny said to Gabriel. “We regs have to stick together.”

“Too late,” Corinne said. “I already warned him that you don't have two pennies' worth of brains to rub together.”

“Next thing I throw at you won't be a dishrag,” Danny said mildly.

“See you later, Danny,” Ada said, giving Corinne a nudge.

The three of them went downstairs. Corinne angled toward Johnny's door first but saw that it was shut. At this hour, that meant he was not to be disturbed. She unbuttoned her coat and plopped down in an armchair. Ada and Gabriel sat on the couch.

“There aren't usually cops on that beat before noon.” Ada was picking at a loose thread on her sleeve, but her expression was far from nonchalant.

“They've been edging into our territory ever since the Harvard Bridge,” Corinne said.

“I told you it was too big.”

“We pulled it off, didn't we?” Corinne leaned back in the chair, crossing her arms. “Johnny will handle the bulls.”

Ada didn't look appeased, but something else caught her attention, and she leapt to her feet.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, her normally mild voice ringing through the room.

Corinne twisted in her seat to see the redheaded young man who had just come out of Johnny's office.

He looked from Ada to Corinne and swallowed. His eyes were widened slightly.

“I'm glad you're back, Ada,” he said. He had a soft voice, all smooth edges and warm timbre.

Ada started around the coffee table, spitting out a string of curses. Corinne grabbed her arm as she passed and yanked her to a stop.

“It's not Saint's fault,” she whispered.

The look Ada gave her was pure and righteous fury. “The bastard flipped on me,” she said.

In the quiet room, her words carried. Johnny had come out of his office during the racket and was leaning in his doorway, watching them in silence.

“What do you mean?” Corinne asked.

“I mean that they didn't have enough to arrest either of us, and he let the bulls scare him into confessing. They promised him if he told them everything, he could walk.”

Corinne couldn't find any words.

“Ada,” said Saint. “Ada, please, you don't understand.”

“
You
don't understand,” Ada shouted, pushing past Corinne and shoving him backward. “Two weeks I rotted in that hole, all because you couldn't take the heat.”

“I didn't know what else to do,” he said, pleading. “You have to understand—”

“You should go, Saint,” said Corinne.

He looked at her, his gray eyes begging her to intervene.

“Go,” Corinne repeated.

He left, and Corinne laid her hand on Ada's arm, but she shook her off.

“I didn't know,” Corinne said. “You should have told me.”

She thought of the painting Saint had given her and the wild-flowers, both shoved unceremoniously under Ada's bed. She realized that Ada had told her, and she just hadn't been paying attention.

“I didn't think it mattered,” Ada said. “I didn't think the little snake would ever show his face here again.”

“Ada.” It was Johnny, still standing in the doorway of his office. “Come in here for a minute.”

Corinne pulled the cash from her coat pocket and started to join her, but Johnny shook his head.

“Just Ada.”

Ada and Corinne exchanged a glance. Then Ada took the money from Corinne and followed Johnny into his office. Corinne sat down on the couch and massaged her temples. She had the beginnings of an awful headache. She needed a drink.

“Who was that?” Gabriel asked.

“Sebastian Temple,” Corinne said. “We all call him Saint. He's lived here about five years, but he's known Johnny for longer than that.”

“I gather he was with Ada when she got arrested.”

“I haven't seen him since that night. Johnny said he was lying low.” Corinne glanced toward the closed office door. “I wonder if Johnny knew the whole story.”

She drummed her fingers on her knee, thinking. Then she shook her head and jumped up. “I'll be right back,” she said.

She went to Saint's door and entered without knocking. The pungent smell of oil paint greeted her. Saint's room, though not any bigger than hers, doubled as his studio. Every inch of wall was covered with a canvas, and every inch of floor space held an easel or a can of paint or a bucket of brushes. There was only the slenderest of paths from the door to the cot. Saint was sitting there, slouched with his back against the wall.

Corinne toed her way through the chaos and sat down on the foot of the bed. Leaning against the wall, stacked against several other paintings, was one of the larger canvases she'd seen Saint work on. It was only broad strokes right now, but she could already see that it was the Mythic Theatre, which was odd. Saint usually spent time only on paintings he could pull an object from.

A reg looking around the room would assume the brass candlestick in the corner was the model for the painting above it, but Corinne had been there the day he pulled the candlestick from the canvas. It was one of his first successful pulls, and she could remember Johnny slapping him on the back. She remembered how happy Saint had looked.

Tucked among the painting supplies was evidence of other practice pulls. A milk can, a vase of wilting flowers, even a bowl of eggs. Johnny had been pressuring him in the last year to paint items of value that they could sell, but no matter how much time Saint spent on the painting, the objects he pulled were never quite perfect. Precious gems were declared worthless by jewelers. Gold bars were little more than gilded lead. Even the candlestick, which was brass by all appearances, was pliable to the touch, like modeling clay.

Johnny never said much to Saint about these attempts, but somehow that only made the failures more cutting. Corinne knew their talents had always been intertwined with their duty to the Cast
Iron, but the stakes hadn't always been so high. She remembered a night, years ago, not long after she and Ada had moved to the club.

The three of them had sat on the floor of Saint's room, legs crossed, breath bated, while he pulled out a plate of steaming cookies from a fresh painting. The treats hadn't tasted quite right, but that didn't stop them from devouring the lot until their stomachs ached.

“I'm sorry about Ada,” Saint said suddenly, not looking at her. “That's all I can say, all right?”