Hudson's Kill--A Justice Flanagan Thriller by Paddy Hirsch

Author:Paddy Hirsch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

TWENTY-FIVE

He walked up to the Almshouse. It was still early, but he hoped the nuns would have fed their charges by now, and that Liam Corrigan would have a full belly. It should make him more willing to talk.

He took the backstreets, staying off the main roads that were a crush of people, carts, and carriages hurrying to work at that time of day. It wasn’t until he had turned into one of the wealthier residential streets that he registered the sound of hooves behind him. When he turned, he saw a carriage, driven by a slim black man with a wide hat and a narrow face. The carriage stopped and a giant climbed out of the cab. He was shaven-headed and dressed like a sailor, in a short coat and long trousers made of dark brown wool. The coat was buttoned to his neck, and because he was almost as dark-skinned as the color of the clothes he wore, he looked like a moving shadow, a man-shaped hole in the light of the day.

He held the door open and jerked his massive head.

Lew Owens sat inside. He wore black breeches and a black waistcoat, unbuttoned over a white shirt that was open at the neck and rolled to the elbows. He could have been a waiter taking his break, except that the waistcoat was made of velvet, the breeches of finest whipcord, and the shirt of pristine linen. His oiled, shaven head gleamed like a cannonball on a hot day.

He gestured to Justy. “Come on up, Marshal.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I’ve got something that you need to hear.”

“Spill it then, Owens. For I’m not getting in that cab.”

Owens plucked at a speck of dust on his trousers. “It’s about Kerry.”

“What about her?”

He grimaced. “I fear I may have put her in bad loaf, Justy.”

Justy felt panic squirm in him. And then his dream came to him. The girl on her side in the alley, her back to him. His hand on her shoulder, rolling her gently on to her back. Her face. Kerry’s face.

“What did you do?”

“I sent her into Jericho.”

“Jericho?”

“The Mohammedan place.”

“What do you mean, you sent her in?”

Owens said nothing. Justy climbed inside. The carriage rocked as the big bodyguard climbed up beside the driver, and then they were moving.

Justy sat for a moment, fighting to get his feelings under control as his dream played, over and over: Kerry cold. Stabbed. Slashed. Dead.

“Tell me,” he said.

Owens folded his arms. “I asked her to go inside. See what that bastard Absalom’s up to.”

“Absalom?”

“Umar Salam. Absalom’s his slave name. Or it’s the name he arrived here with. Anyway, he’s up to something, and I want to know what.” He looked at his hands. “So I set her up with one of my girls, to see if she could find out anything.”

“So it was your idea to tog her up like a whore.”

Owens winced. “She’d have climbed the walls on her own, if I hadn’t had the idea. It was that girl she found.

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