He was a small man with sharply cut and oiled dark hair, a flabby nose, and the sort of manly unshavenness which needed careful effort to maintain. His double-breasted suit was styled to minimize his waist and improve his shoulders, but it couldn’t disguise the lines of a holster underneath his jacket. His tie was either a masterpiece designed by an abstract artist or the result of someone throwing blobs of paint at silk. And his shoes were so highly polished that mere contact with the air should have dulled their shine.
He swirled his drink in its glass and smiled at her, displaying tobacco-stained teeth. ‘And who told you that, Miss Jeanette? Anyone I should know about?’ So I can have them killed, his tone suggested.
Irene shrugged. ‘Your name’s hardly a secret,’ she said. Unobtrusively she scanned Lily, the woman who’d been holding a gun to her neck. She had wandered round to perch on the arm of George’s armchair. Lily had the sort of looks that should have been described as pretty as a picture. But there was something a little off-balance about her whole presentation, like the foundations of a building in a Lovecraftian horror story. Her blonde hair was cut like a cap and fell to hide her left eye, but the visible right eye assessed Irene as though she was measuring her for a coffin. Her skin had the perfect pallor of someone who didn’t go out in the sun, and her violet satin dress clung to her as tightly as her stockings.
George took in the direction of Irene’s glance and chuckled. ‘I see that you’re admiring my Lily here. I’m a modern up-to-date man, Miss Jeanette. I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman – I employ whoever can do the job. And my little Lily . . .’ He patted her thigh just above the knee, with a proprietorial air. ‘She’s the best with a gun in the whole Big Apple.’
‘It’s nice to meet a man with an open mind,’ Irene said cheerfully. The Library itself might be a gender-neutral organization – after all, books didn’t mind whether they were read or stolen by men or women – but some Librarians needed time to shed the attitudes of their worlds of origin. And while Irene might be able to manipulate other people’s prejudices during assignments, that didn’t mean she enjoyed them. ‘And it’s a good start to possible working relationships.’
‘So you’re going to be straightforward about this?’ George demanded.
‘There comes a point when it’s a waste of time and effort to keep on lying,’ Irene said. ‘I think, in poker, you’d call it knowing when to fold. So.’ She leaned forward in her armchair. ‘You’ve got my attention. What do you want?’
‘You’re more blatant than I expected, Miss Jeanette,’ George said. He leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his drink.
‘May I be frank?’ Irene asked.
‘Sure, sure.’ He pointed two fingers at her in a miniature gun-barrel. ‘Just as long as I’m the only person you’re frank to, honey. We don’t like squealers round here.’
‘We don’t like them back home, either,’ Irene agreed. He’d accepted her as a crime boss. It was time to play on that fact. ‘That’s partly why I’m annoyed.’
‘Annoyed?’ George said. Lily didn’t move her head, and her face remained expressionless, but her gaze shifted to focus on Irene.
‘As I said, I’ll be frank. This was not supposed to be a public visit. Someone has been talking a bit too loudly. I don’t know if the leak came from my organization or from Boston, but either way, people now know I’m here. This is not a tenable situation.’
‘Tenable situation. I just love your accent.’ George drank from his glass. ‘So what are you thinking of doing about it, Miss Jeanette?’
‘I need to go home sooner than planned. The police may take a few payoffs, but if you get too obvious about it, the prices go up and the security goes down. The situation here’s not working, and I have too many people gunning for me. This game’s not worth the risk.’ Irene shrugged again. ‘Is that man of yours going to be all day fetching my drink?’
‘Lily, you go see where Dave’s got to,’ George said. He didn’t look away from Irene as the woman slid off his chair and moved to the door at the back of the room, as smoothly as a snake. ‘So you’re just dropping everything here in America, Miss Jeanette? Calling it a day and heading back home with your tail between your legs?’
‘Oh, I’m not saying that,’ Irene disagreed. ‘I’ve already made a couple of deals, and I’d like to make a few more. I hate wasting my time. That’s why I’m suggesting we drop the formalities and cut to the deal.’
She hoped George would lay out his proposal. Then all she’d have to do would be to go along with it, with a bit of bargaining to cement the part of gin-running mobster. It was so much less work than making up her own tissue of lies. And it would get her out of here safely, so that she could get back to laying false trails for Qing Song to chase.
Irene actually found herself relaxing into her part. Here, in the middle of the territory of the biggest crime boss in New York, she was actually – temporarily – safe from all the other people who were chasing her. She had a character to play, and her lies were holding up to casual examination. This was as good as it got.
And to be honest, she was having fun being Jeanette Smith, Crime Boss. It was much less nerve-racking than being Irene Winters, Librarian.
The door at the far end of the room swung open and Lily swayed back in – her shoes clicking on the tiles, hard as a skeleton’s vertebrae. Dave was right behind her, Irene’s glass in his hand.
Lily settled herself on the arm of George’s chair, in a position that would have looked kittenish if she’d seemed at all vulnerable. Once again the fear of death stroked its way up Irene’s spine, urging panic and obedience. It was like sitting in a machine-gun’s sights.
Now Irene was certain. That first feeling of terror might have come from anyone in the room. But it had left the room with Lily, and returned when she did. Whatever the truth of the Boston situation, there was clearly at least one Fae in the New York mobs, and she was sitting right here.
The situation had just become rather more complicated.
Irene sipped her Black Russian. She knew it might be poisoned, or drugged. But really, if they’d wanted her dead, then they would already have shot her. (Kai was going to disapprove when she updated him. Maybe she’d censor the story, just a little.) ‘Not bad,’ she judged. ‘Thanks.’
George took a long swallow from his own glass. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘This is how it seems to me, Miss Jeanette. You’re here to find trading partners. Well, I’m looking to import. If we can agree on that, then the rest is just details for our accountants.’
Irene nodded. ‘Right. We don’t need to have some sort of high-powered conference for that. The percentage points either way are important, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Not as important as us agreeing to work together in the first place. Besides, you know where I’m staying. I’m not trying to hide. Not from you, at least.’
He slowly pointed a finger at her, understanding dawning on his face. ‘That’s why you’ve been strolling round the city like some kind of tourist. You were waiting for someone to get in contact.’