The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [8]
“You need rope and gear for those,” I said, grabbing hold of the window frame with my right hand and extending my left arm to her. “Remember, Beecham was climbing sheer brick walls. And,” I added with a smile, as I pulled her onto the windowsill with me, “he knew what he was doing.”
She settled in, caught her breath, and just barely glanced at me sideways. “That’s a low blow, Stevie,” she said. But then the irritated face turned amused, in the way that her looks and moods always changed: suddenly, with the speed of a doused cat. She smiled back at me. “Got a cigarette?”
“Like a dog has fleas,” I said, reaching inside the room for a packet and handing her one. I took one for myself, struck a match on the windowsill, and we both lit up. “Life must be getting boring over on Broadway.”
“Just the opposite,” she said, blowing smoke out toward the park and producing a pair of more conventional shoes from a satchel that was hanging around her neck. “I think I’ve finally got a case that doesn’t involve an unfaithful husband or a rich brat gone bad.”
A word of explanation, here: after the Beecham case, all the members of our little band of investigators besides Miss Howard had gone back to their usual pursuits. Mr. Moore’d gotten his old job back, doing criminal reporting for the Times, though he continued to butt heads with his editors as often as ever. Lucius and Marcus Isaacson, meanwhile, had gone back to the Police Department, where, having been promoted by Commissioner Roosevelt, they were promptly demoted back to detective sergeants when Mr. Roosevelt left for Washington to become assistant secretary of the Navy and the New York Police Department fell back into its old ways. Dr. Kreizler had returned to the Institute and his consultation work on criminal cases, and Cyrus and me had gone back to running the Doctor’s house. But Miss Howard couldn’t face returning to the life of a secretary, even if it was at Police Headquarters. So she’d taken over the lease at our former headquarters at Number 808 Broadway and opened her own private investigation service. She limited her clients to women, who generally had a hard time securing such services in those days (not that it’s any easy trick for them now). The problem was that, as she’d just said, about the only ladies who could afford to hire her tended to be biddies from uptown who wanted to know if their husbands were cheating on them (the answer generally being yes) or what the wayward heirs to their family fortunes were doing with their private time. In a year of business Miss Howard hadn’t been involved in a single juicy murder case or even a nice, sordid bit of blackmailing, and I think she’d begun to get disenchanted with the whole detecting business. Tonight, though, her face reflected her statement that something genuinely racy might’ve come her way.
“Well,” I said, “if it’s so important you could’ve tried the front door. Would’ve saved you some time. Lot less chance of breaking your neck, too.”
Now, if any grown man had made a crack like that to Sara Howard, she’d have whipped out the derringer that was always hidden somewhere on her person and situated it uncomfortably close to his nose; but, probably because I was so much younger, she’d always been different with me, and we could talk straight. “I know,” she answered, laughing a bit at herself as she took off the nail-studded boots, shoved them into her satchel, and put on the more sensible footwear. “I just thought I could use the practice. If you’re going to catch criminals, you’ve got to be a bit of one yourself, I’ve found.”
“Ain’t that so.”
Miss Howard finished tying her laces, rubbed out her cigarette, and scattered the tobacco in the butt on the wind. Then rolled the remaining paper into a tight little ball and flicked it away. “Now, then—Dr. Kreizler’s not here, is he, Stevie?”
“Not a chance,