The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye

Author:Lyndsay Faye
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

◆ Fifteen ◆

THEN

The true, authentic Mafioso almost invariably behaves modestly, speaks with restraint and similarly listens with restraint, and displays great patience; if he is offended in public he does not react at all but kills afterward.

—ANGELO VACCARO, “La mafia,” in Rivista d’Italia, Rome, 1899

You know I ain’t one for signs or prepositions, Miss James. I ain’t cuckoo. You’s being escorted as per the usual by a flat-footed guy, one with boots on solid pavement.”

“Were you any sturdier, you would be a shoehorn,” I assured Officer Harry Chipchase. “But why say you?”

“’Cause I’s got a real bad feeling about this.”

Harry Chipchase had a bad feeling about most aspects of everyday life. Ominous winds. Stock fluctuations. Sunrises.

But this time, I did too. Puffing my breath into my cheeks, I made a hearty show of trying to twist out of Harry Chipchase’s grip. My uniformed guardian bellowed into the balmy August night, plentiful why-I-oughtas and I-swear-to-Christs, and everyone who’d been looking at us ceased, bored. Just a copper and his captive headed to the station house in 1917. And since I was dressed in plain pressed homespun and bellyaching, I probably deserved it.

“Quitcher wiggling or I’ll bruise you for reals, kid,” Harry complained.

“You won’t either. Buck up, Harry old chum, we mustn’t succumb to depression.”

Harry Chipchase was on the graft, and for a dozen years loyal to Mr. Salvatici, which made him a bosom companion of your humble servant. He had a retired boxer’s physique, soft padding with a hard center, and a busted-up nose forever politely suggesting that we turn left. And he was paid extravagantly—mainly to follow me or to plant evidence or better still, to make evidence go away. I found the combination of a regular stick-in-the-mud gifted with the jolliest name on the planet ever so droll.

“Do you want me to cut loose at the station house entrance, give the boys in blue a performance?” I asked. Trying to cheer Harry Chipchase never worked, which made the attempt irresistible. “You can catch me when we’re done and lock me up to thundering applause.”

Shrugging, Harry’s body kept on in a steady line while his nose pleaded we veer off course. “They wouldn’t give a mouse turd.”

“Then they are Philistines.”

“Well, today I ain’t in no market for extra excitement.”

“Right, then.” I heaved a greedy breath. “Nice knowing you!”

Kneeing him in the stomach, I fled, and Harry Chipchase howled in exaggerated pursuit. When I reached the end of the block, I flung myself at a fire escape. The hot breeze tickled the banners of laundry lines, and the puffs of dragon steam from the manholes receded behind me. I hadn’t far to go. Just across a rooftop, to prove to dear old Harry I wasn’t being tailed by anyone other than him.

When I crested the roof, I paused, catching my breath. Stars above and streetlights below, winking lustily at one another. The great black patch of Central Park. The Hotel Arcadia visible to the south, where Mr. Salvatici forged connections. Sent swift-spiraling birds into the air.

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