The Hidden Man (18 page)

“Very soon,” added Captain Merced.

“So why are you…”

Denial would not protect him any longer. The shock was like a stomach punch. He took a deep breath and turned to Merced. “Captain?”

“Sticks in your craw to play lifeguard for this Duncan character, doesn’t it? Don’t answer; of course it does. It’s outrageous, Detective, the unfair punishment that your ‘daughter’ is causing you to absorb. She must have an ironclad conscience.”

“She doesn’t know.”

“
Yet,
Detective. You’ve held out for a few weeks, a handful of performances. But you miss the real work. Of course you do. You’re a detective, for crying out loud, not a nursemaid!”

“My sentiments exactly. And all that time that you make me waste on him is time that I can’t be helping out with the things that are really wrong with this city, Captain. So what the hell are we talking about here?”

“What we’re talking about is that we have a meeting of the minds, after all! Congratulations!”

Blackburn lowered his voice to a whisper and directed it privately to Captain Merced. “Sir, please…what’s going on? I’ve spent my life fighting crime. You’re trying to hand me the job of burning this place? Sir, whatever personal beef you’ve got with me, is—”

“Stop!” yelled the captain. His voice filled the backstage area, rang off of the walls. He let the following silence hang while he walked away for several steps, then stood with his back to him, taking another deep pull at the cigar. Finally, he turned back around and silently stared at him.

It was Blackburn who spoke up. “Why would it even occur to you—gentlemen—to come to me with this?”

“What,” said Mr. Simmons. “You think that a job this vital is going to be handed to the local firebug? Maybe you think we should offer a reduced prison sentence for some hardened criminal to come and take care of this?”

“It’s a fair question,” Blackburn replied.

“Ha! You expect me to go back to my company and tell them that there is a professional criminal somewhere out there who did the job for us, and who now knows what really happened here? I’m supposed to tell them that someone like that has our lives in his hands? Is that what you suggest?” asked Mr. Cron.

Captain Merced’s voice was cold and flat. “Detective Blackburn, you’re gonna wait here all evening, until midnight, when everybody in the district is at home. You don’t leave and come back, because you would increase the chance of being spotted. Once things are quiet, you’re gonna set this place on fire and let it burn until the whole ground floor is involved. Then you go sound the alarm. That way, the fire crew gets here in time to contain it to this building.”

“You’ll be a hero, actually,” added Mr. Simmons from the chief’s office. “We’ve sent a message to Duncan to meet you here, telling him that you have news regarding your work. You just say that you arrived early, luckily for all, because you will discover it in time to keep the damage limited to this building!”

“What are you afraid of?” asked Captain Merced. “That you’ll get
arrested
?” He broke into a loud laugh, joined by the other two.

“And you can be sure that the insurance company isn’t going to come after you!” chimed in Mr. Cron, which set off another gale of laughter from the three men. They all seemed to feel much more relaxed, now that the truth was out. It was time to limber up their senses of humor at his expense.

“All right, all right,” Merced called out. “So I guess by now you understand that this is actually your lucky day. You do this little job—an easy job at that—while everybody looks the other way. In return, you get a nice little article in the paper and, get this, now: freedom from James Duncan.”

“We understand that you want that,” smiled Mr. Simmons.

“Nothing wrong with wanting that,” Mr. Cron agreed.

“Except for that pesky little thing about it being a major felony, gentlemen.”

“Which I am standing here telling you is not any sort of a problem for you, Detective. This is my precinct. There’s nobody else to come after you.”

The scene had become so surreal that Blackburn felt as if he could lose his balance and fall. He could not believe that he was actually having this conversation.

“Listen to me, gentlemen,” he began, with his constricted temper boiling toward explosion while he forced himself to remain calm. “This thing. This plan. I guess it sounds nice and neat to you, and I see how it could hide the architecture problem from outsiders. But my whole career in police work has shown me that it’s the unexpected things that get you, every time. You can plan all day long, but there will always be something.”

“Like what?” Merced demanded.

“What if the fire got out, somehow, and started to spread?”

“I don’t see how that could—”

“I don’t either, Captain. That’s my point! It will always be that one thing you didn’t see. And when that one thing happens here and this fire spreads, it won’t necessarily be restricted to property damage. There could be lives lost because of this thing! Think about what I’m saying to you.”

When Blackburn finished he was nearly panting with exertion and a sense of near panic. Merced’s response did not help.

“No. You think about what I am saying to you, Detective Blackburn. You will do this. You’ll be a local hero and finally go back to your real job. You’ll get rid of that fleabag you’ve been ushering around. I understand that your duties consist of watching audience members.”

All three of them had a good laugh over that one. They knew that this was a situation where they could safely push this big man, pretend to stare him down while his hands were tied.

“You two fellows don’t know me, but Captain Merced, I can’t believe you ever thought that I would do something like this.”

Blackburn knew that this was the time to walk out. There was nothing more to be said to these fools. But the nausea of dread in his stomach seemed to express his predicament. His legs did not move.

Mr. Simmons of the chief’s office spoke up. His voice sounded kind and understanding.

“Detective Black—Ah…”

“Blackburn.”

“Yes, sorry: Blackburn. As soon as you came inside, your vehicle was moved to the City Hall Station. After you do this job, you can retrieve it. Otherwise, I will burn this place myself and we will frame you for it and use your car as evidence that you were here but that you ran off.” His voice remained kind and quite gentle while he continued. “We’ll talk to the newspapers about how we picked the car up after our men spotted you here. We’ll say that the fire was already lit. We had to find you and take you in.”

“You can’t make a story like that stick.”

“We have an entire city administration who thinks that they can, Detective,” Mr. Simmons assured him in the voice of an old and dear friend. “Which is why an absurd story like that will ‘stick’ just as well as all the other absurd stories that are out there.”

“You know,” Merced addressed the other two, “Detective Blackburn’s adopted kids are young adults now. Old enough to get by on their own. If he was in prison, say. But after you’ve met them both—I hate to say it—but they do strike you as being a bit lost. I intend that not as an insult, simply an observation.” His grin reminded Blackburn of a tomcat’s fangs.

“The detective might not get a prison sentence, though,” countered Mr. Cron. “Because of his clean record, and all.”

“No, maybe not,” agreed Merced. “In that case, he’d only have a busted career and a public disgrace and no future in this city whatsoever. But then, that’s not so bad.”

“Not bad? That would be getting off easy,” added Mr. Simmons of the chief’s office with a scholarly nod.

“After all,” concluded Merced, staring into Blackburn’s eyes, offering an entire future to him, “it’s not like this is going to be an actual crime on the record books.”

“Damn it, Captain, I’m the last man you ever should have thought of for this job!”

“Exactly! That’s why you’re perfect! Your loyalty to this department is well known, Detective. You are above suspicion, unless we decide that we have to make you look bad. Plus you can keep a secret. That’s why you.” He imitated a big, warm smile. “You might not like this assignment, but you gotta love this department! Hell, everybody knows you’re a fanatic!”

All three of the men laughed at that one. A fanatic, yes. Laugh, nod. Smoke, nod.

Blackburn was astonished. Most of his energy was being lost to the struggle to refrain from leaping at these men and making them all regret that they ever came to him with this. He felt his world turning upside down.

“Chrissakes, Detective,” commented Mr. Simmons, who sounded as if he was tired of reasoning with an idiot. “Why don’t you try thinking about how lucky you are, for just one minute?”

THAT EVENING

THE LADIES’ HOSPITALITY LEAGUE PAVILION

W
HO’S THE BIG IDIOT
WITH THE BROOM?
Vignette wondered. The janitor outside the pavilion’s main entrance had already gotten on her nerves. Tall man, pale Anglo features, age thirty-five or so. She toyed, for a moment, with the idea of crossing over to him while moving her ankle-length crepe-de-chine skirt with that inviting sway that tells the world, “I am succulent under all this, but far too refined to let you see.” She could arch her back just a little extra, subtly moving against the fabric so that the cream-colored silk jersey of her fitted, high-necked shirt would catch the light to the advantage of her breasts.

She could embody the league’s ideal Hospitable Lady by bearing him a tray of watercress sandwiches and honey tea, clicking the low heels of her pointed shows along the hard floor until they nearly touched his own, then shoving the hospitable tray of tea and sandwiches straight into his face, knocking him off balance and sticking her foot behind his to trip him so that he fell backward and struck his head on the steps.
Oops! Excuse me…but welcome to San Francisco!

Vignette’s days at St. Adrian’s Home for Delinquents and Orphans had given her a wide and sharp awareness of the lustful gaze from males. By the time she was six or seven, she had learned to think of the male lust-gaze as a big, invisible tongue. She could almost feel the warm slobber that it left on her. The trick was to be able to tell the difference between the stupid and sloppy feeling of the ordinary ones, and the sour, metallic sting of the dangerous ones. If you can get to where you are able to identify them in an instant, you will have information that you can use to stay out of their way.

Since her world was filled with monsters posing as decent people, such as that idiot janitor outside, it would be the trademark of a moron to reveal indiscriminately her depth of awareness about the things she had seen. With an effort, she turned her back on the big man. She shook her head. The slobber dogs would always be out there; she had problems far more pressing.

Meanwhile, the effort of keeping herself compacted down into the vanilla mode was again causing her to feel crammed into clothing that shrank by the hour. Her head throbbed in the back, and it was painful to breathe. She tried to imagine doing this “volunteer work” for the entire duration of the exposition and felt her chest constrict at the very notion of it.

“Miss Nightingale!” came the chirpy voice from across the room. She looked up to see Janine Freshell headed her way, absently flicking a bit of clotted cream off the silk georgette bow at her neckline.

Vignette constricted the muscles in her toes and then tightened every muscle all the way up to her neck. It helped to displace the strain of keeping her face relaxed and pleasant.

A moment later, Miss Freshell took her aside for an intimate conversation. “All right, then! Closing time! My, you have been
so
enthusiastic. Bravo! I tell you, Vignette, the sense of poise that one can develop from—”

“I saw that letter from your publisher, Janine. I know what you’re doing.”

Of course Miss Freshell did not grasp it, at first. “Excuse me? I believe the proper form of address for me in this situation—”

“Janine. Stop. We both have to stop. I can’t do this, here. You can’t do what you think you’re doing, either. We both have to just stop it.”

“I think that you had better explain—”

“I’ll go any damn place that I need to go, if there’s something I have to find out. It’s nothing to get into your hotel room over there at the Fairmont. I could do things like that when I was eight.”

“What are you saying? My room? You’re saying that you’ve been in my room?”

“Are you always this slow? I smelled you from a long way off. So I went past your hotel door lock like nothing and sorted through that work file of papers you keep in that big converted trunk. And I found your letters from your publisher.” She fixed the Eastern Whore with a crafty grin. “That one good one. It tells the whole thing, doesn’t it?”

Miss Freshell’s face hardened back into her real self. Her eyes went cold.

“You would never do such a thing. And young lady, I have half a mind to tell Randall what you just said!”

“You came here already connected to James Duncan. You agreed to come here, put him together with the detective you’ve snared, and persuade your publisher to take one more book from you. All because Duncan is so convinced that someone’s trying to kill him, so that you’re hoping they will try and he’s hoping they will fail”

Vignette watched it hit home, then. Miss Freshell’s face drained to a bluish white. She snapped at her in a sharp whisper, “Vignette! What you are talking about is a crime! You
cannot
break into a person’s room and go through their private things!”

“Yeah I don’t care about any of that. You went after Randall like a hunter goes after quail. I’m not going to let you get away with it. Do you even hold any love for him at all?”

There was a long pause. Vignette could almost hear large gears shifting, vast pieces of heavy machinery stopping and reversing direction.

Miss Freshell smiled. “Hardly a little thing like quail. Think of it as bringing down a big, friendly bear.”

“You’re using Randall for your own ends.”

“Oh, God almighty, Vignette! You are a grown woman now. What world is it that you intend to inhabit?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that everything I am trying to impart to you by way of exposing you to the women you work with, here—women who are able to behave at this level of sophistication whether they are in refined company or not—it’s all aimed toward helping you get a grasp of how to move through the world. Your little inheritance isn’t going to carry you.”

“Oh, so you know about that, too, then?”

“I know what I need to know, Vignette. Like you.”

“None of that makes it all right for you to crash into our lives. You can’t just sweep Randall up like a toy, because he’s a lonely bachelor and vulnerable to a collection of feminine wiles—all just to suit some little plan.”

“Yes, I’m a grown woman, all right.” Miss Freshell snorted out a badly repressed laugh.

Vignette nodded. “I’ll say this much for you: You know how to laugh your way through life. You’ve got this spiderweb set up to catch whoever’s after Duncan, just so you can write the story. I wonder how you got to Mr. Duncan?”

“Same answer, Vignette. I’m a single woman in a world ruined by its men. We have a war breaking out in Europe that is going to bring us to the edge of mankind’s destruction, again at the hands of the men.”

“Meaning what, then?”

“Meaning it’s time for you to grow up. You’re one of us. Randall was there to be taken. If it wasn’t me, it was going to be another woman. He was ripe. I thank you and Shane for it.”

“Me and Shane?”

“I think—no, I
know
—that living with you and having this family that you have, it made him want the next step in life. Hell, he’s already raised the children. Would you deny him a wife?”

“You’re not a wife! You’re a hunter and he’s your big, friendly bear. You’re using him and Mr. Duncan and Lord knows what else to get your next book published! You hope somebody will go after J.D. so you can write about it and just happen to be married to the detective on the case. You’re doing this to save yourself!”

“Uh-oh! Now a woman can’t even save herself through a man, in your view of life? Interesting. Isn’t that a lot like walking around hungry in an orchard full of fruit, but refusing to reach right out and pick it?”

Over Miss Freshell’s right shoulder, Vignette happened to catch sight of the front entrance, where the big janitor had been standing, pretending to sweep. There was nothing there. She supposed that he was off pretending to work somewhere else.

By now, the visitors had all trickled away and the last of the other hospitality ladies were calling out goodbyes and heading off into the night, making their way across the closed fairgrounds toward the main exit. In moments it would be just the two of them left to make sure everything was ready for the cleaning crew.

Even though there was nobody close by, Vignette spoke softly enough to compel Miss Freshell to listen. “I’ll tell Randall what you’re doing unless you go away and leave us alone.”

“Tell him.”

“What?”

“Tell him. Maybe the best way for you to learn about your own power is by watching mine, since you clearly know nothing.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No, and I am not exaggerating when I say that it’s probably best if you tell him. When you see that he will not believe you—and that he will refuse to believe you, no matter what kind of evidence you show him—then you will start to get the message. It’s about power. You need to learn about yours.”

Vignette hated the way Freshell’s remark made her feel, all the more because she hated her own suspicions that there was truth in it.

“I’m going to the ladies’ room, Miss Freshell. Why don’t you do the finish work for both of us? Then we can go catch a cab and discuss whatever you plan to do, just in case Randall surprises you and listens to me.”

“You are being very unwise.”

“I don’t want to hear anything else!” She turned and started for the ladies’ room. It caused her to miss the expression on Miss Freshell’s face, but it was a welcome relief to get away without having to deal with another protest from her.

The pavilion was empty except for the two of them now, and the sounds of her own footsteps echoed around the large space while she made her way to the ladies’ room. The awkward confrontation made her feel all the more aware of the noise. The trip seemed to take forever.

She heard a flutter of fabric behind her, and wondered whether Miss Freshell had dramatically spun around to walk off in the other direction.

She never heard any footsteps, though, so she decided not to press her luck by turning around and inviting another comment.

Inside the ladies’ room, she made it a point to take her time in using the facilities, carefully washing her hands, patting cold water on her face, fixing her ridiculous wig, all so that Miss Freshell could finish the closing work without her.

She abandoned the attempt to use her fingertips to brush the false hair, horse hair, whatever it was. The stuff felt like dried grass. Everything she did to it made it look worse. The activity used up time, but otherwise served only to remind her that the absurd wig was the very embodiment of everything that was happening to her. It was another sign of falsehood that society expected her to wear, if she wanted to achieve any sort of acceptance from the world around her.

She had made things so much worse when she cut off her hair and took the irresponsible risk with Randall’s career. Not only was it idiotic, but as a further mark of shame, she still could not think back on it without a thrill of satisfaction.

She thought of people watching a horse race, seeing their horse pulling ahead. She was her own damned horse. To hell with all of them.

Except that she had not stopped and considered the possible effect of it upon Randall. She had a sick feeling in her middle that plainly told her that she should have done so. This was the man who had made it possible for her to take such an outrageous risk in the first place, by raising her with love and respect in a safe home. After it was over, he even avoided coming home and screaming at her, or striking out at her the way that she knew most men would.

He only pleaded with her to understand that he had to be able to trust her. By the time she came down from the anxiety that first went along with being discovered, it broke her heart into pieces to realize that she had put him in a position to have to beg her to be trustworthy. She hated the memory of his words.

Worst of all was the endlessly repeating reminder that she had always been able to trust
him.
She could not think of a single time that he lied to her, and never once had he threatened her or done her the slightest harm.

What were his crimes? Why, he had made her use her little inheritance from the Nightingale family to get a private education, all the way through high school. He pestered her to study. He made sure she earned her diploma when so many girls rich and poor did not. He never pressured her to become anything that she did not want to become; he only encouraged her to find a place for herself that involved working and striving in the world instead of hanging back from it.

It had been over a year since her graduation and she had done nothing to build a life. But he somehow managed to pester her gently, without throwing any sort of defiant challenge at her.

Randall had never even questioned her claim to be Shane’s sister. Even as the pair grew older and revealed no hint of family resemblance, Randall stayed blind to it just as well as Shane did. It always overwhelmed her to think of it—so she tried not to do it often—but all she ever had to do to join this family was to give both of them a made-up story about seeing Shane’s records back at St. Adrian’s. For that, Shane handed over his last name and half his modest inheritance from the Nightingales without the slightest hesitation. Then Randall took them both into his life and not only adopted them, but did his stumbling best to keep them healthy and well.