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“Hey, lady.” The clown held something out. It was a laminated prayer card, the kind you buy in church gift stores. This one was worn and soft with age. The picture was of a man in a red robe carrying a toddler across a river, both of them wearing sunny halos.
“St. Christopher,” he said. But I already knew that. The image matched the small medal I wore on a thin chain around my neck.
“Thanks,” I said, pocketing the card.
“Happy fucking New Year,” said the clown.
“You too.”
I tightened my scarf as the wind rose, and I headed for home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JANUARY 1979
The swear jar on Constance Halliday’s desk is kept full by Natalie and Billie. Helen is too ladylike to let the profanity fly, and Mary Alice uses bad words like someone speaking a foreign language.
Under Miss Halliday’s tutelage, the four learn how to eat fish with two forks and sip from a soupspoon without making a noise. She teaches them how to exit a car without showing their underwear, to waltz like Viennese debutantes, and to hot-wire an automobile in under twenty seconds. They build bombs, decipher codes, learn how to shake a tail and how to kill. They master suffocation and stabbing, the intricacies of poison and garrote. Constance Halliday does not like military-grade weapons, finding them unsubtle and flashy, but she ensures the foursome are thoroughly grounded in firearms although she makes no secret of her preference for bare handsand improvised weapons. Ballpoint pens, jump ropes, sewing needles—they learn lethal uses for all of them.
And each develops her specialty. Natalie loves anything that makes a noise, bombs and grenades and the biggest guns she can get her tiny hands around. Mary Alice discovers an affinity for poisons, slipping harmless substances into the food Miss Halliday serves in order to practice her sleight of hand. Her spare time is spent mixing up enough toxic messes to immobilize an army. Helen, surprisingly, turns out to be a sharpshooter, her eye for detail serving her well as she marks changes in wind and estimated trajectories. She is so skilled, in fact, that Constance allows her to borrow her favorite weapon, a tidy little Colt .38 that has been fitted with a hammer shroud to keep it tucked neatly into a pocket. There are nicks on the handgrip, slash marks that they suspect are kill notches, but no one dares to ask.
But Billie Webster is a struggle for Constance Halliday. She is fair with a grenade and can handle a gun almost as well as Helen, but she doesn’t like it. Her attention wanders, and she takes to shooting wide of the targets just to see what else she can hit. When she takes out the eye of Constance Halliday’s favorite garden sculpture—an evil-looking iron rabbit—Miss Halliday raps her sharply on the shoulder with her stick.
“My office, Miss Webster. If you please.”
Billie mutters under her breath but follows. She has not been in the office since the day of their arrival and she soon realizes this is not a social visit. Miss Halliday doesn’t invite her to sit down, so Billie keeps to her feet, gaze fixed on thepainting behind Constance’s desk—a nymph of some sort with stars in her hands and a regretful expression.
Miss Halliday doesn’t say anything for a long minute. She sits instead, tapping a letter opener on the desk and teaching Billie the power of silence.
Finally, Constance Halliday throws the letter opener on her desk. “Miss Webster,” she says with a sigh, “I begin to despair. You are not a bad recruit—”
“Thank you.”
She carries on as if Billie hasn’t spoken. “But you are very rapidly becoming a superfluous one. You shoot well, but not as well as Miss Randolph. You are good with languages, but not as fluent as Miss Tuttle. You are heedless of your personal safety to a degree that one might be tempted to call courageous, but you are not quite as indomitable as Miss Schuyler. In short, Miss Webster, I fail to see the point of you.”
She pauses, but there is nothing Billie can possibly say to that. Constance judges the pause perfectly, then continues on, her tone pleasant. It is the casual, matter-of-fact delivery that hurts more than the words.
“We do have a placement with a perfectly good secretarial college in London. We could send you there. I daresay you might be able to pick up shorthand or typewriting without too much trouble. They could find you a nice office job after you earn your certificate. Perhaps you’d like bookkeeping? That can be rather fulfilling, I’m told.”
Only the tiniest gleam in Constance Halliday’s eye tells Billie she is doing this on purpose, pushing her for a reaction.She doesn’t know what Constance is trying to kindle—anger? Denial? But she is determined not to give it to her.
Billie waits her out in silence and Constance finally gives in, smiling thinly. “It must be difficult for you. I understand.”
“Understand what?”
Constance has gotten her to talk, but she doesn’t gloat. She merely carries on in the same bland tone, tapping a file on her desk. “You’ve never had to work for it, have you? Never been tested, not really.”
Billie thinks about her childhood and tamps down the rising anger. “I don’t know what your little folder says, but I’m not like the rest of them, okay? I didn’t get the picket fence and the golden retriever.”
Constance shrugs. “I am not speaking of the trappings of a happy childhood, Miss Webster. I mean what happens inside—your intellect and what you’ve done with it. Or rather, what youhaven’tdone with it. Your records show exceptional intelligence and mediocre results. It’s a comfortable place, mediocrity. Never pushing oneself to the limit to see what you can take. Never staring down your fears, never reaching into yourself to find that last bit of courage. You don’t even know what it is that you are made of—and what’s more, you seem distinctly uninterested in finding out. You do just enough to get by, and frankly, I would rather have a dozen recruits with less potential and more heart, Miss Webster. I fear my brother has made a mistake.”
She continues to smile but this time there is pity in it.
“Bullshit!” The word erupts from Billie before she can stop it.
Constance gives a slow nod. “I appear to have struck anerve there.” She pushes herself to her feet and gestures for Billie to come around the desk. She turns the girl by the shoulders and points to the painting with her stick. “I know you have not had the benefit of a Classical education, Miss Webster. Do you know who that is?”
Billie shrugs.
