Page 41 of By Any Means

Suspicious, of course, but it was New York, and folks did die. Seeking out more from relatives had meant doors slammed in Laurie’s face. Abandoned apartments in Harlem. Dead ends.

It felt intentional. When Irving had said they wouldn’t be missed, he’d maybe hit upon a determining factor in their being chosen. One out of two determining factors.

If they had been chosen at all, that was. If their absences had been intentional. Laurie was still missing more than one factor: motive. Rationale. Why would somebody murder four glassworks gaffers?

Had they any ties to Chary or the unions? Had they known Chary, found out his secret, his spying, his disguise, somehow—and he’d gotten rid of them, one by one?

… And then almost been murdered himself?

Laurie groaned into his palms.

Or was there something bigger at work there?

“L?” Hiram, stepping in.

He pulled his face out of his hands. “Yeah. Still here. Don’t laugh. It’s been a long day.” He looked up. “What’s wrong?”

Hiram came over, almost timid for the first time in their acquaintance, all spring and intentional movement gone from his lithe form. He had a paper folded in his hand, thin and dusty: fresh newsprint. Not the Appeal’s, an afternoon proof of one of the screamers: big block letters and sensationalism. The one, perhaps, that was printed in the basement one building away and sold on the corner in the evenings.

“Breaking news?”

Hiram lay the proof on the desk before Laurie, then kept his distance, somber and rouge-less. “Your rough.”

Laurie’s stomach dropped.

GRUESOME SLAYING OUTSIDE BOONE’S BAR BROOKLYN: POLICE AT A LOSS.

“Son of a bitch.”

Five. Five glassworks gaffers.

He wouldn’t be leaving Chary Wright be after all.

12

CHARY

Chary had half-expected the Berryfield house to have imploded upon itself, to be a burnt-out shell of stone and crumbling archways. For it to have been abandoned, its ivy crisped, red bricks graying, and cedar shingles edge-nibbled, as though he’d been gone decades, instead of four days. As it was, the eighteen or so hours that’d passed since Laurie had ambushed him on the rooming-house stair felt like they’d been doubled.

When the cherry-red Cadillac finally came up the birch-lined road, it was past three in the morning, into the small, darkest hours, but everything was still there.

First on the horizon came the crescent swoop of willows upon the east-side slope, swaying silvery and shadowed as one in the quickening-night breeze. They were imported willows—not the spindly trees native to Maine but the grandiose, fifty-foot, drooping Salix babylonica. They stood as a far-better green legacy for the house’s previous owner than the arsenic wallpaper he’d had to remove.

The house itself appeared—the turret library, tall and pointed and slate-roofed, lit and glowing from the inside; then the tip of the three-trunk birch on the southwest corner. They crested the slope, and the first-floor entry appeared, with the fanned steps that no one used; the wraparound porch; the carriage porch on the west side. There the Caddy chuffed to a stop. The sparkling leadlighting of the greenhouse nave reflected the headlamps’ steady acetylene flames as twin lanterns.

Chary let out a breath. She was standing. Whole. Placid.

He wondered: if he’d been murdered, would the house’s next owner have valued the glass house as Chary did the willows? Or looked at it as he did the poison green wallpaper?

Mikhail—the chauffeur—leapt down and stood at the tonneau side-entrance door, pending to Chary’s right. Chary picked up his case and went through.

Brasher the butler didn’t even blink at the contusion that Chary’s forehead had become, but concern shone in his dark eyes. “Welcome back, Mr. Wright.”

“Brasher,” Chary said, heartfelt. “Thank you for accommodating me a day early this week. Seeing the library alight at five hundred yards was the most pleasure I’ve had in days.”

“Of course, Mr. Wright. Got your telegram. Looks to have been a rough ’un.” He took Chary’s hat and his driving coat and his walking stick.

“A regular KO,” Chary joked. “Or nearly, anyway.”