Corinne fingered the shabby arm of her chair, picking at the flaking leather.
“I was trying to give the songsmiths more time,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“I know.”
She met his eyes, trying to read his face in the dim light. She could count on one hand the people in her life she was scared of disappointing, and Johnny Dervish was first and foremost. Johnny sighed and picked up his pocketknife. Absently he chiseled into the wood of his desk with the tip.
“That mark you’ve been trailing—the jeweler,” he said. “You said he drops off money for his mistress on the second Friday of every month? That’s tomorrow.”
Corinne hesitated.
“You want us to pull a job tomorrow? Ada’s picture will be all over the police stations by morning.”
Johnny gouged into the wood a little deeper. With the shadows darkening the circles under his eyes, he seemed more exhausted than Corinne had ever seen him. He had inherited the Cast Iron decades ago, when he was only a few years older than Corinne was now. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to watch his life’s work crumble from the peak of its glory. The Cast Iron had been her home for only four years, and the mere thought of its closing felt a little like dying.
“If I can’t afford to pay the bills and bribe the right people, then the Cast Iron will go dark,” Johnny said. He looked up from the desk and met her eyes, unblinking. Corinne knew what he wasn’t saying. If the Cast Iron closed, there was nowhere for her and Ada and Saint to go. Boston was an unforgiving city, ribboned in iron and steel. There were thousands of hemopaths in Boston, but jobs for their kind were scarce. Corinne had known desperate hemopaths to swear fealty to Johnny like serfs of the Middle Ages. Unlike his predecessor, Johnny ran the club like a business instead of a social fraternity. Those who did the work earned a cut of the profits. Some of the jobs were less legal than others, but in times like these the line was blurred at best.
Others might be able to find work with Luke Carson at the Red Cat or the Witcher brothers at Down Street, but Ada and Corinne had been a part of Johnny’s inner circle for years. Carson and the Witchers would never trust them. Loyalty to one of the iron-free clubs was loyalty for life. And Corinne couldn’t return to the life she’d had before.
“We can do it,” she said. “We know the patrol routes.”
Johnny folded the blade and tossed it into an open desk drawer. “Quick and clean,” he said. “I can’t handle another news headline like last summer.”
“So no elephants then?”
“No elephants. And stay away from the councilman.”
Corinne grinned. The so-called Bengali banker scam had been run once or twice in history to moderate success, but it wasn’t considered by grifters to be a tenable scheme. Corinne had modified it for her and Ada’s peculiar skill set, and the resulting con was her magnum opus as far as she was concerned. She refused to apologize for it. Despite nearly popping a vein when he’d first heard about it, Johnny had since made peace. The two thousand dollars that Corinne and Ada had scored softened the blow. It was enough to keep the Cast Iron supplied with food and booze for half a year.
“We’ll go in the morning,” she said, heading for the door.
“Take Gabriel along,” Johnny said. “Someone’s got to show him the ropes around here, and I’ve got my hands full.”
Corinne paused with her hand on the doorknob, trying to decide the best way to dodge the responsibility. She wasn’t sure what it was about Gabriel Stone that irked her so much. It might have been the way he’d spoken to her in the alley, or his refusal to argue so that she could prove herself right, or the way he seemed generally unimpressed. Possibly a mixture of the three.
“Are you sure I’m the best person for that job?” she asked.
“No, but Ada tends to be competent enough for the both of you, so I’m not concerned.”
Corinne weighed the consequences of arguing further, but in the end it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. As long as Gabriel kept a lid on the moralizing that regs were so fond of, she might be able to keep a civil tongue.
“Fine. But if he can’t keep up, we aren’t going to hold his hand.”
“Fair enough,” Johnny said, leaning back in his chair and thrumming his fingers on the desktop. “Get some sleep. You did good tonight, Corinne.”