The wicked redhead, p.30
The Wicked Redhead, page 30
My mother, now. My mother truly was a beautiful woman, at least before Duke Kelly got to her, and for some reason I find myself thinking of her, as I sit on my stool, nursing a cup of hot, sweet coffee between my hands, and watch the blushing Charles Schuyler pilot this elegant craft through the Atlantic night.
“Have you got any children, Mr. Schuyler?” I ask, though I happen to know the answer, because Julie’s already told me.
He startles at the sound of my voice. Spills a little coffee on the side of his hand and reaches up to siphon it off. “I have a son. Fourteen years old in August.”
“Now, let me guess. Is his name Charles, too?”
Mr. Schuyler makes this apologetic laugh. “His mother insisted.”
“I’m sure he’s a worthy namesake.”
“Yes. He’s a good lad.” He hesitates, and then adds: “We had another, but I’m afraid he wasn’t strong. Died soon after he was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Harriet was crushed, of course. She may seem hard, but—” He kind of catches himself on the but. Drinks more coffee and sets the mug on the ledge so he can grip the wheel with both hands. “She was rude to you yesterday. I apologize.”
“No need. Plenty of women don’t take to me.”
“Yes, but—” Again, the check. He taps his fingers on the wheel. “Well, it’s obvious why. You’re something of a magnet, you know. You gather attention around you. I don’t believe you even try. You’re just a force of energy. A very pure, very intense light. It’s a rare quality.”
“Don’t feel especially energetic at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“And yet you’re sitting there like a small blue star.”
“Blue?”
He finishes the coffee in a spasmodic gulp and sets the empty mug back on the ledge, except it topples off. He swears. Leans down, picks it up, sets it right. “Tell me what’s going on with Ollie. I thought you were engaged to the other one.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I gather he’s in some kind of danger? That’s why we’re racing across the sea like this?”
I rotate my cup in my hands. “Now, see. Here’s what I don’t understand. What’s your game in this, Mr. Schuyler? Aren’t you supposed to be sitting in some nice office someplace? Law or government bonds or something? And we stop by your house and mention how we’re heading off into the North Atlantic for a week or two, can we borrow your sister, and you just run off and grab a coat for no reason.”
“No reason? Who could resist an adventure like this?”
“Plenty of people could resist. Cold and wet and dangerous. You have no horse in this particular race. What’s Oliver Marshall to you?”
“His father’s a friend of mine, for one thing.”
I rise from the stool and set down my coffee cup on the ledge, right next to his. “Don’t imagine I’m a fool, Mr. Schuyler.”
“Believe me, I don’t.”
“Because if something happens to that man, if something untoward happens to Oliver Marshall, why, I don’t know what I’d do. I mean if you want to talk about a force of energy, Mr. Schuyler, an intense blue light? The really hottest, angriest kind of flame?”
“Indeed,” he says. “Indeed.”
I lay my hand along the side of his face, and the skin is warmer than I thought, because at that age—forty or forty-five or whatever he is—a man’s face usually suffers from a wind like this one. But not his. Charles Schuyler is fully alive just now. His keen eyes attach to mine.
“So you understand me,” I say.
“I understand you perfectly.”
“Ollie?”
“Won’t come to any harm, so long as I can help it, Miss Kelly.”
“Good.” I lean forward and kiss his other cheek. “I’m going below.”
6
WHEN I slide into my bunk, Julie’s sleepy voice floats out to find me. “Wind’s changed, has it?”
“Depends on what you mean by wind.”
“I mean the stuff that blows across the ocean and makes us go.”
“Then I wouldn’t know.”
She makes a noise of frustration, or maybe fatigue. Had a doughty spell on deck this afternoon, our Julie, and while I always considered her something of an orchid, some kind of Manhattan hothouse plant, city bred and precious, she worked like a mule trimming those sails, she surely did. And you can’t get higher praise than that from me.
The wood groans softly beside me, the waves slosh. I don’t consider myself prone to seasickness, but this experience of rolling and pitching inside a closed cabin, no light nor air nor sense of progress, starts my insides to trouble. I lie on my back and stare at the void—and that’s unsettling enough, isn’t it, opening your two eyes into exactly nothing—and I concentrate my attention on the map of the North Atlantic I have committed to memory. Currents and sea lanes. The relative positions of Montauk and New Bedford and Halifax, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. That small stand of rock they call Saint Pierre. By tomorrow noon we must be standing off Halifax, straining our eyes for the Surprise, straining our eyes for a ship out of New Bedford that might or might not have steamed there under flag of the United States Coast Guard. The wind is picking up. Surely that will help, won’t it? Carry this swift, elegant craft in the palm of its hand.
Oh Lord. Blow the wind like a trumpet, oh Lord. Carry this swift, elegant craft in the palm of Thy hand.
“Julie,” I say, though she might be fallen asleep again, so drowsy a voice as she gave me, “just where did your brother go to school?”
“Charles? School? Why?”
“Curious.”
“Oh, Dalton, wasn’t it. Then he prepped at Phillips Andover. Only the best for our little prince.”
“I don’t guess you recollect if he had a friend called Grendel, do you?”
There is the faintest pause, which might just be the sound of her recollecting. Sifting her sleepy mind through the mesh of memory.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “Not that he mentioned. But I was only a small thing when he was at school.”
“This would be a friend he still keeps today.”
“Gin, darling. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Try it sometime, why don’t you.”
So I do. I try to sleep. Stare at nothing and think of everything. How we are supposed to intercept Anson’s ship at the Halifax rendezvous. Whether we are fast enough to catch up in time. Nautical miles and angles of arc and what have you. Hours left on a diminishing clock. When the numbers start to jumble and slide together, I just think of Anson, the shape of his shoulders against a white pillow. A patch of yellow sand. Standing on one knee and parting Patsy’s hair away from her damp face, the better to see her.
7
I GUESS I do fall asleep, in contravention of my own wishes, because I find I am once more bearing down on a dark-sided ship, except this time the sea is not calm but angry. Ship heaves in and out of sight, and now I am desperate, eager as blood to reach that craft, called to it the way you are called to breathe air.
I’ve just reached the port-side railing when I am jerked awake, a shock so profound that for some minutes I lie but stiff, heart going smack, staring at a beam and wondering where the devil I am. Knowledge returns in cold, reluctant facts. I figure that something’s awoken me, some outside disturbance has surely tugged me back into the world. But nothing strikes, the ship continues its rhythms, and I’m left to contemplate a question I never asked before, in all the other nights I’ve encountered this dream.
Upon what vessel was I myself riding, that I should fly aboard that ship of death?
I slide from the bunk to the carpeted deck beneath—the Ambrosia’s fitted with all kinds of such comforts—and perceive that dawn has arrived. A thick gray light fills the cabin I share with Julie. Her bunk is empty, however, so I fit my feet into my shoes and snatch my woolen cardigan and crawl up the stairway to the main deck.
The morning hangs like ash as we dip across the long, shallow waves, for the wind has died during the night. Can’t even properly tell where the sun is coming from. A pair of hushed voices disturbs the stillness at the stern, and though my vision is not yet clear, still I discern the two figures through the window of the deckhouse. Man and woman. Talking in hot, terse sentences. Julie, of course. With Schuyler or Marshall?
Schuyler.
So close and heated is their exchange, they don’t catch any glimpse of me, slipping along the deck inside my cardigan the color of sheep’s wool. My copper hair bound beneath a hat. Wish I could find the shape of a few more words, but the mist seems to hold each vowel and consonant in place so they don’t escape. I creep closer. Gaze off at some unseen horizon as if I’m only absorbing the morning fog. Edge past the corner of the deckhouse to the open side, and all at once the syllables become clear.
Schuyler: “—ought to have told me the two of you were friends.”
Julie: “We aren’t friends, exactly—”
Schuyler: “Close enough to know each other’s secrets.”
Julie: “She doesn’t know a thing, believe me.”
I sink to a sitting position on a coil of rope. Make myself small beneath the vantage of the deckhouse.
Schuyler: “Then why? Why seek her out?”
Julie: mumble mumble
Schuyler: “Marshall says you introduced her to Billy.”
Julie: mumble “—my idea. That friend of yours asked me to.”
Schuyler: “Which friend?”
Julie: “Why, the blonde. Didn’t you know? She set the whole thing up.”
The deck goes silent. I catch a drift of cigarette smoke, of heavy contemplation. Julie says something else, but she’s turned away again, and I can’t make out the words. A breeze picks up, laying itself against my cheek, stirring the ends of my hair, and beneath my feet the boat responds with a faint surge of energy. A creak of wood, a rustle of disturbed canvas.
Hand falls on my shoulder. “Good morning, Ginger.”
I jump right off my coil of rope and whip about. But it’s only Mr. Marshall, looking maybe a hundred years old, skin creased, hair white as the sails.
“Did you sleep at all?” he asks.
“A little. What’s happened to the wind?”
“Seems to have died down.”
“No kidding.”
He narrows his eyes at that place where the horizon ought to be. “Should pick up again soon. The weather around here doesn’t stay placid for long.”
“How soon? Can’t be more than six hours until noon.”
Marshall glances at his watch. “Six and a half. I’ve made some coffee down below.”
“Don’t think I could swallow it.”
“Try,” he says.
He gives my shoulder another pat and walks on to the deckhouse. Some kind of subdued, masculine greeting passes between him and Mr. Schuyler. No sound from Julie. I contemplate that horizon, thinking about blondes. One blonde in particular. When I glance back some time later, Mr. Marshall stands alone at the wheel, but in the bow, staring into an obscure distance, Mr. Schuyler smokes a cigarette in short, fierce strokes.
8
A WORD ABOUT Luella Kingston, in case you’re not acquainted. She was Anson’s partner at the New York Prohibition enforcement bureau, in the days before somebody framed him up and got him kicked out of the place in disgrace. But she stood by him. Yes, she did. She kept her ears and eyes open, as they say, working from the inside to help him discover which rat was behind this terrible betrayal. When we drove out to River Junction to rescue Anson and Billy, she took the wheel of the car in her anxious, lovestruck fingers, for she is head over heels amorous toward Oliver Anson Marshall, just plain goofy for him, though for some reason he doesn’t return that particular compliment. So far as I can tell, she gets nothing but loyalty out of him, which must annoy the dickens out of a dame like that.
I should mention she’s beautiful. Have I mentioned that already? Of course she’s beautiful. She has the kind of thin, elegant, bosomless figure you see in magazine advertisements, except it’s real; she is made of ice and porcelain, perfectly drawn, head of platinum, skin of cream, eyes of silver. Altogether colorless, if you ask me, but nobody asks a funny-faced redhead anything when Luella’s in the room, drawing out her vowels like she has all the time in the world. I have never really gotten to the bottom of her, even during that harrowing drive to Maryland; like ice or porcelain or silver, she keeps her skin intact no matter how you try to chip something away. I’ve always thought her voice sounds a little too high-bred for a working girl, but maybe that’s just part of her racket. Maybe she’s got her mask on so long, there’s nothing left behind it.
9
WELL, ENOUGH about her. If she’s the one who asked Julie to introduce me to Billy, why, it just figures. You don’t sit back and witness the man you adore fall in love with someone else—some audacious Appalachia bootlegger’s daughter he’s trailing about—without wanting to do something about it, do you? So you have this brilliant idea to keep him safe. You fix up the redhead with his brother. Decent, honorable fellow like Anson isn’t going to move in on his brother’s doll, is he? Of course not.
So there’s nothing more to it.
Except one thing, I guess. How does a dame like Luella get acquainted with Charles Schuyler?
10
THE WIND does pick up again, but not enough. The fog lifts to a dull haze, exposing the position of the sun as it climbs the eastern half of the sky. I find a place near the bow to grip the rail and strain the muscles of my abdomen, urging some kind of additional speed to the wood beneath me. Scour the water for some sign of anything. Afraid to blink. I don’t watch the clock, just that vague spot of brightness behind the clouds, making its way to the top of the world. When it stands overhead, I’ll know we’ve lost. No possible way to catch up in time. No possible means to warn Anson, whose ship ought to be standing off Halifax this instant, waiting for the arrival of the Surprise out of New Bedford in order to proceed into the sea lanes between Newfoundland and Boston, that he sits directly inside a neat, steel-toothed trap.
From time to time, I’m called to assist with some kind of nautical maneuver. I pull on whatever rope I’m told; I even take the wheel once, while the others untangle some difficulty in the rigging. Each time I return to my position on the rail, I look to the sun. Track its excruciating progress. Hold up my hand as if I might block it from view. Might stop it entirely. Hold back the sun, oh Lord, hold back the sun until we are borne to Anson’s side.
But the sun don’t stop. Tick tock. The sun don’t stop.
Noon.
11
WIND’S BLOWING steady now. Sails full. Salt water spitting up from below. My heart goes jump at the sight of a craft on the horizon, until I perceive it’s some kind of passenger steamship, great big ocean liner of three funnels, bit in her teeth for the last stretch to New York Harbor.
Pair of arms comes to rest on the rail beside me. I recognize the slender yellow sleeves of Julie Schuyler’s sou’wester. Seems all the rich folk have them, in case of weather.
“Charles says we’re making up speed,” she offers.
“Every bit helps, I guess.”
“You’re taking this awfully hard. Does it matter so much?”
“Guess you wouldn’t know.”
She leans on her elbows. “Oh, I know a little bit about love, darling. You might think I haven’t got a heart, but I do, all right. Cracked and chipped in all the best places. Yours, on the other hand. Who knew Ginger Kelly was harboring such a passion for my old friend Ollie?”
“Who says I am?”
“Oh, sure. We’re just racing out to sea like this for our own health. Just because you care so much for your future in-laws. Well, I guess it’s a sensible plan, to keep one brother in reserve in case the first one doesn’t make it.”
I say nothing. Takes all my strength just to stand here without breaking down; I don’t have any words to spare for a barb like that.
“Or maybe you just have it bad for the wrong fellow,” she says, a little more softly. “I’ve heard it can happen to anyone.”
“All right, then. You’ve got me figured out. What about you, Miss Julie Schuyler?” I turn to face her. “Why are you and your brother so eager to rescue Oliver Marshall? Don’t tell me you’re in love with him, too.”
“Me? Ollie? Not on your life. Not my type at all. I require my fellows much naughtier than that. Where’s the fun in going out with a saint?”
“So maybe you’ve got some other interest in this business, then.”
Julie knits her fingers and presses the pads of her thumbs together. The right nail is chipped and ragged, like she caught it on something. “Now, why do you ask that?”
“Maybe because I have a nose on my face, and it smells something funny. And if I discover somebody’s done something to put Oliver Marshall in danger, if he’s killed out there on that water because somebody stands to make a dime or two from his absence—”
“Oh, go find yourself a place to cool down, Ginger. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Am I? So why’d you get me stuck in this business to begin with? Take Luella Kingston’s advice and invite me to a party with Billy Marshall?”
“Listen.” She straightens up to face me. “I just did a friend a favor, that’s all. I didn’t see any harm. I thought the two of you might hit it off. Which you did, as I recall. Any business you got into, any trouble you found with the wrong brother, you jumped into it yourself.”
