“When?”
“It’s just like playing a role . . . and you have played so many. Michael Lepito must have smiled at Al Capone. A smile is a language all its own.”
He frowned at her.
“You told me you once worked for Al Capone,” she said.
“Yeah. But I don’t recall telling you about Michael Lepito, though he was one of the plastic monkeys, if I remember.”
“I touched your suit. Your . . . suits. They are beautiful. My grandfather used to make silk suits for John Rockefeller, but those . . . those are lovely.”
He looked at his wardrobe. He’d left it open when he’d prepared for bed.
He sat back in the wooden chair and rubbed his eyes.
“I was not trying to pry . . . I promise.”
Had it been anyone else, looking at the quality of a fine suit, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But it was Dani, and it felt a little like he’d caught her reading his journal, and he didn’t keep one on purpose.
“What did you see?” he asked. “And you better tell me all of it.”
“May I please look at them again?”
He shot his hand toward the suits. “By all means.”
She rose, invigorated, and threw the door of the wardrobe wide. Taking a suitcoat from its hanger, she slipped her hands into the sleeves so it was hanging from her forearms.
“The stitching is perfect, and the color is sublime,” she marveled. “Nothing feels like silk. Nothing in the world.”
“Dani.” He didn’t want to hear the tailor’s opinion. He wanted to hear the soothsayer so he could assess the damage. He rose and stood in front of her. “Tell me.”
She was quiet for several seconds, gazing up at him but not really seeing him at all. Her pupils grew so large the iris of her blue eye was reduced to a narrow ring. The brown eye just got darker. It was the first time he’d looked directly into her face, close-up, while she’d done her thing. The hairs rose on his arms.
“You make yourself be still and read the paper. But you aren’t reading, you’re watching. You tell yourself to turn the page. You know better than to use the paper as a prop. They’re watching you too. You have to be natural. And patient. You are so patient.” She paused and he swallowed.
“You like the suit. It makes you feel safe. Good clothes do that. Make us feel safe. Seen, but unseen. It’s magic, really.” Her voice was dreamy, like she was interpreting a painting on a gallery wall.
“I can smell newsprint.” She inhaled deeply. “And cigars. You do love them. The best part of the job, you think.”
“You can smell a memory?” he gasped, unable to help himself.
“That’s what makes it so clear. And it is . . . so . . . clear. You must have sat in this suit, in that hotel, reading the paper and smoking many times.”
“That suit and a few others. What hotel?”
She blinked several times, thinking, and then handed him the suitcoat.
“That’s all I see . . . for now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can only see in pieces. Or parts. One layer at a time. And I grow desensitized to the fabric the longer I hold it. The way you notice a smell when you first walk in the room but don’t notice it the longer you’re there.”
He glowered at her. He hated it when she made perfect sense with such nonsensical things. He hung the silk suitcoat back in his closet.
“It’s not there in the suit, but I think I know where you were. It was in all the papers. Al Capone lived at the Lexington Hotel,” she said.
“Yes, he did.”
“Will you please tell me about it?” She sounded like a kid begging for a bedtime story.
“Oh, what the hell,” he relented on a gusty exhale.
She turned and scampered to his bed and sat down, folding her hands in her lap and crossing her bare feet. He supposed that meant he got the desk chair. He sat back down, but he didn’t really know where to start. He admitted as much.
“I’m not as good at . . . stories . . . as you are.”
“How did you come to work for Al Capone?” she asked, coaching him along.
“I guess it’s because I look like this.” He waved a hand over his face.
“You don’t have Irish eyes.”
“Nope.”
“Or Irish skin.”
“No. I’m brown. My dad turned pink in the sun, and his hair was full-on white by the time he was forty. That’s what I am now.” He shook his head with the realization. “If I didn’t have my dad’s nose and his stubborn chin, I mighta been thrown out sooner than I was.”
“You were thrown out?”
“No. That was just something my sister, Molly, always said. I went willingly. Joined the army when I was eighteen. My mother died when I was twelve. My father kind of lost interest in life after that. Molly was older, and she always tried to look out for me, but she was just a kid herself. The army made sense for me.”
“Where is Molly now?”
“My clothes haven’t told you about Molly?” he asked.
“No, Michael,” she said, enduring his sarcasm with her usual aplomb. “They haven’t told me about Molly or your mother or your father or most of your life.”
“She’s an angel, Molly. And she’s still in Chicago. And lucky for her, we look nothing alike.”
“She looks Irish?”
“Yeah. All Irish.”
“So Capone hired you because he thought you were Italian?”
“He didn’t . . . hire me.”
“Start at the beginning.”
The beginning. He wasn’t even sure where that was. “Capone thought I was Italian . . . but that’s what I wanted him to think. That’s what I made him think. And it took a long time to make him believe it.”
“You were patient. I saw that in the silk.”
“Yeah. Well.” He cleared his throat. “I look like I could be from anywhere. Or nowhere. And I’m good with language too. In the army, I used to copy accents. Some guys tell jokes. Some guys can sing. Some guys have the gift of gab. They can talk their way out of anything. I couldn’t do that.” He shook his head. “I’m not a talker. I’m a listener. I’ve got a good set of ears. And I could mimic anyone.”