Wicked City (8 page)

I wanted to ask what the mayor would think of us watching him undress, but when she opened the door fully I saw no trace of the man I'd come to meet. The mayor's office was masterfully appointed, with a large oak bureau, a leather couch in one corner, and two chairs facing the desk.

“He'll be up in a minute,” Mrs. Brandon said, sitting down. “James must always be impeccable, as I'm sure you know. In the summer, he changes as many as four times a day.”

I gaped. Even I hadn't imagined our mayor owning enough custom-tailored suits to change them four times a day! “And how much does this habit cost the city?” I heard myself asking. I winced. I had two police officers who would happily eat me for lunch and a mayor who had mysteriously offered to help. Now was not the time to interrogate his advisor about city finances.

But Mrs. Brandon just nodded approvingly. “Oh, it's not the city's money. Jimmy has enough friends to buy him a new suit every day of the year, if he wanted.”

I felt chastened, and wished I could say something that might impress her. Her face was unlined and firm, but her air of self-confidence and poise made me think she had to be at least forty.

“You said you're one of Mayor Walker's advisors?” I asked. Women might have won the vote, but we were still a long way from equality. It heartened me to see a woman so close to a center of power, for all that I disagreed with her politics.

She nodded. “It says ‘Special Assistant' on the letterhead, but I'm his unofficial advisor for Other affairs. I was the one who suggested he speak to you, in fact.”

“About that,” I said, “the note was rather cryptic. Why am I here, exactly?”

Something rustled and then a door in the back of the room opened. The mayor stepped out of it, much to my surprise. I had assumed the door led to a closet, but just behind him I could see stairs winding down.

“There's a basement?” I asked.

Judith Brandon leaned closer to my ear. “A tunnel to the catacombs beneath us. It's now his dressing room.”

Jimmy Walker gave me a bright, insouciant grin and came over to shake my hand with an unmistakable politician's grip. “Miss Hollis,” he said. “Delighted to see you again, in slightly better circumstances.”

He released my hand and then inspected his own with some astonishment. It was surely a rarity for his guests to greet him with a liberal coating of bicycle grease. I attempted to apologize, but he merely lifted his handkerchief from his breast pocket and carefully wiped away the offending substance with a smile.

“Bicycle grease?” he said, to cut through my stumbling mortification.

“How did you know?”

“They were more of a childhood fascination, but I remember the smell well enough. Now, Miss Hollis,” he said, pulling up a third chair in lieu of sitting behind his desk, “you must be curious about my rather terse invitation. I apologize, but my esteemed advisor deemed some caution necessary.”

“Well,” I said, forcing a smile. “You have my curiosity and my presence. What's this all about?”

“Forgive me for being so blunt, but it seems you've gotten yourself in a bit of trouble. Harboring a child vampire is a serious crime. But I'm sure you know that already—they do call you the ‘Vampire Suffragette,' after all.”

I winced. “Yes, I'm aware. But I assure you, I'm completely innocent—”

The mayor waved a hand lightly in the air, as though my guilt or innocence were immaterial. “I'm sure you are,” he said. “But those rottweilers on the vice squad are another matter, aren't they? I appreciated your help regarding that business with the mob boss in January. Quite a few people in high places appreciate it, too. In fact, I heard about you from Joe Warren himself. Now, I don't know, but I think a word from Joe Warren might do a lot to convince those fellows on the vice squad to look elsewhere, especially as you're innocent.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked, shocked.

“If I asked him, I daresay.”

Joe Warren was our city's police commissioner, and a good friend of the mayor. If James Walker called in a favor and asked him to stop investigating me, I probably wouldn't have to worry about any more rooftop visits—or, even worse, striped pajamas.

Judith Brandon turned to me. “We have a proposition for you,” she said.

“I see.”

Jimmy Walker shrugged. “I think you'll find it's a fair arrangement,” he said. “My request is simple enough. Several aldermen have informed me that they would be willing to change their vote if I could prove scientifically that the Faust being sold now is not as potent as when the brew was first introduced in January. We all remember that first week, and I can understand their reticence, frankly. But I am sure as I am of my name that Faust now is safe as liquor.”

“And liquor is illegal,” I said.

“Much to our frustration, Miss Hollis,” he said, and I couldn't bring myself to object to the “our.” “In any case, these four aldermen would bring the vote firmly in my camp. The trouble is that I've been unable to locate a single remaining bottle of the original substance. It seems to have vanished from the earth.”

“And you want me to find it?” I hazarded.

He laughed. “Nothing so strenuous, Miss Hollis. Judith reminded me of the rumors that you tutored some of the Turn Boys gang in January. And according to the reports, the Turn Boys were quite involved in the initial Faust influx. So here is my proposal: you find the leader of the Turn Boys wherever he's hiding and convince him to come by for a nice chat about his distribution model. And once he does, I'll be happy to give Warren a ring.”

He wanted me to find
Nicholas
? “I don't even know if he's still alive,” I said. “If he is, he might not be happy with me. I did kill his daddy.”

“I suspect he's alive. If he isn't, give me proof and I'll call Commissioner Warren anyway. And as for the danger—well, Miss Hollis, I have it on good authority that you can take care of yourself.”

I rolled my eyes, but appeals to my vanity rarely fail. “And how do you expect to persuade him?”

He smiled and looked down at his desk, as though to indicate the massive wealth and power that his position commanded. And he was right: power like that could pay Nicholas's price as surely as it could mine.

What the mayor didn't know, and what I saw immediately, was that he was headed in the wrong direction. It was common enough to speculate that Faust had lost its potency. I happened to know for sure, because I knew the djinni who had brought the first batch from Germany. I would be shocked if Amir didn't have a few original bottles stashed somewhere—if only because of his decadent fondness for priceless human collectibles. But given the circumstances in which Nicholas and the few surviving Turn Boys had disappeared in January, I doubted that they would have been able to keep any of the evidence. So if I could find Nicholas, there would be no harm in my encouraging him to speak to the mayor. Commissioner Warren would tell the vice squad to look elsewhere, and Nicholas wouldn't be able to give the mayor anything useful for the vote. The mayor had given me the perfect opportunity to avoid trouble without troubling my conscious. But I couldn't appear to agree too easily.

“But you know I'm a supporter of Friends Against Faust. Why would I help you
pass
the bill?”

Walker leaned forward and spread his arms wide, palms out—a surprisingly disarming gesture. “I have a hunch, you see,” he said, “that you don't support this new prohibition any more than you support the old. Not really.”

I shifted in my seat. “And why would you think that?”

He stood and opened the sideboard, from which he removed two heavy, cut-glass tumblers and an even more imposing decanter. The liquid inside was amber, aromatic, and alcoholic. He poured about two knuckle-joints worth into each glass and handed one to me.

“Neat,” he said. “Judith, would you mind going down to the pantry and fetching us some ice? And some tonic, too, in case Miss Hollis prefers it.”

Judith Brandon nodded sharply and made herself scarce without another word. I had a flash memory of my time in Shadukiam yesterday—Amir sitting by the fountain, using his powers to fetch us drinks. Not even the mayor of New York City could top that kind of hospitality. When she had left, Jimmy Walker reached for his glass and cocked his head, his smile quizzical.
Well?
It seemed to say.

True, I had in the past enjoyed champagne in his presence at an exclusive party in The Carlyle hotel. There, he had laughingly enjoined me to sing with the band. I moonlighted at Horace's speakeasy on 24th Street, for heaven's sake—an establishment he might have even patronized with one of his vaudeville floozies. I would gain no points by pretending to abstain now, when the past six months had set me firmly on the side of alcoholic vice.

I lifted the glass.

“To accommodation,” he said, lifting his.

“I'm not sure that's something I want to drink to,” I said.

He leaned forward, his beau eyes trapping mine. “Then how about to freedom? Because I suspect, Miss Hollis, that you'll continue to improve your fashion so long as we can keep you out of a prison uniform.”

I'd say this for the man: he had enough charisma for a roomful of people. And unlike a vampire's Sway, I wasn't immune to this kind of persuasion.

I took a sip and cleared my throat. Whiskey, not gin, and eye-watering strong. “I'll do it,” I said.

The mayor smiled and drank. “I'm glad you've seen it my way, Miss Hollis.”

I nodded absently. I wouldn't bother to tell Elspeth and the others of this request—it would necessitate too much explanation, and besides, I was doing my best to protect them.

Though it made me feel like the worst sort of hypocrite, Jimmy Walker wasn't wrong about my feelings on prohibition of all kinds. True, Faust had dangerous side effects that had injured countless humans and Others alike, but most of those dangers had been greatly mitigated by six months of public awareness and the reduced potency of the drug. But I would never let Jimmy Walker learn that last fact. It was one thing to harbor private doubts and quite another to actively help the enemy of my friends.

“What about the recent deaths?” I asked. “Even you can't legalize Faust if it's starting to kill vampires outright.”

Jimmy Walker swirled the liquor in his glass. “No one quite knows what happened to those suckers—”

“Did they pop?” I asked.

The mayor frowned at my interruption. “I'm not sure I can tell you that, Miss Hollis,” he said. “The investigation is ongoing.”

“Like the one about me harboring a child vampire?”

Walker gave a dismissive shrug. “However they died, I don't think it had a thing to do with Faust. We've had it for six months, so why would it start poisoning vampires now?”

“Maybe the effect is cumulative?”

“Perhaps. It might be too early to rule it out. But I'll make you a promise. If we find out that those suckers died because of something that Faust did, and not some other reason, then I'll argue for prohibition myself. And you won't get any more visits from the vice squad.”

I felt my vague uneasiness melt away with the languor from the alcohol. I considered the almost shocking decadence of what we were doing here. Bargaining for the legality of one dangerous drug while enjoying another, all in the safety of the mayor's office.
I hated people like me, once
. But the moral lines seemed hazily drawn.

The mayor pulled out a cigarette from a case in his inside pocket and offered me one. I declined—Mama thought smoking was unladylike, and I'd never quite gotten the hang of breathing it in. I wondered about the slightly herbal hint in his cigarette. Probably something dreadfully expensive, just like his suits. If Mrs. Brandon had been telling the truth about the source of his pleasures, his friends must be rich
and
indulgent.

Just then, she returned with the ice and tonic. I plucked a few pieces of chipped ice with tongs and watched them melt into the whiskey.

“Miss Hollis has agreed to find our boy,” the mayor said, quite pleased with himself.

Mrs. Brandon beamed. “That's excellent news.”

“Try,” I said. “You'll have to give me a few days.”

“Just as long as you can find him before this Saturday,” she said. “That's the day of the big supporters' banquet.”

Yes, I remembered hearing the mayor invite Archibald Warren yesterday, and the latter's polite equivocation.

“Did you have any success convincing Madison to attend?” I asked, just to see how they would react. The mayor tilted his head, a querulous, bird-like gesture. Mrs. Brandon sat down.

“That's more the lady's department,” he said, gesturing to his advisor. “She's been after Madison for months now. I think he's a lost cause, but sometimes Judith has a sense for such matters.”

“I truly feel that he's on the edge, Jimmy.”

“He's on the edge, alright. I'm just not sure it's
our
edge.”

The indulgent weariness in the mayor's voice told me they had argued this many times before. Mrs. Brandon shook her head with a rueful smile and looked at me.

“I have a last-minute appointment to see the lost cause in just half an hour,” she said. “So if we're done here, I can see you out, Miss Hollis.”

I took this in the spirit of friendly dismissal and bid my farewell to the mayor.

“When you learn anything, you can leave a message for Judith,” he said. “She'll make sure I read it.”

Back in the marble hallway, I turned to Mrs. Brandon before she could hurry away.

“This is terribly forward of me,” I said, “but would you mind bringing me to Madison's with you?”

“Madison! Why?”

“I want to ask him something,” I said. “About the murders.”