“Pardon?Youdon’t hold anything against them?” Sam snapped angrily. “Against the Japs? The Germans?”
“Look, let’s not argue about this. It’s late.” Of course she had some raw feelings about the Axis powers. Of course she did.
“It takes a nation to support a leader like—”
Billie closed her eyes. “Nazis are a different matter, Sam. Or Mussolini himself. But millions of civilians can’t be blamed for wars waged by their leaders. What about those German students, the White Rose resistance, who were hanged, even though they were kids? There were civilians who protested against what their governments were doing, and plenty more who wanted to protest but feared for their lives. Hell, I heard a story today about a Jewish German family...” She trailed off, deciding it wasn’t important for Sam to know the Browns were a German-born family, not while he was in this state.“How’s that for a betrayal by your own leaders—you aren’t worthy of living in your own country because you were born a Jew.” After the lead with Con, and some dancing that had unexpectedly made her feel more herself again, the evening was turning to hell, and fast.
“There were plenty of civilians who egged the war on,” her assistant said, his body tense as a fist.
“Sam, you’re right about that, but it’s not that simple.” She thought about the pleasurable hours spent with her mother and father in Ciro’s Café on Elizabeth Street, Luigi Rosina regaling them with stories between mouthfuls of pasta. She thought of all the Italians she knew in Sydney and how they’d become “enemy aliens,” some of them after having fought in the Great War for Australia. Old men, kind men, and their families put into camps. “Thousands of Italians were put in internment camps here after fleeing fascism,” she reminded Sam. “Regardless of their age or their health or what they thought of the war, they were put behind barbed wire.” She shook her head. “Forget it, Sam. I’ll be back,” she said, disappointment in her voice.
This was a losing argument. She couldn’t blame Sam for the hatred he felt after watching his mates blown to pieces, after what he’d suffered himself. It was far too soon. Or perhaps it would always be too soon. He likely wouldn’t be working for her if that Italian thermos bomb hadn’t mangled his hand, but still, this wasn’t what she wanted in an assistant.Maybe a black dressisbad luck,she thought. Or a “midnight” dress.
Not managing to suppress her frown, Billie made for the powder room, where she fixed her Fighting Red and powdered her nose, staring in the large gilt mirror. The person she saw in the reflection was alive with determination: She had a puzzle to solve. There wasfrustration, yes, but she was alive. It was a bit of the old Billie. The Billie who’d swung into action in Europe. She pulled herself together and found that she knew that face, knew that look. She appeared fresh, despite the hour, and she hoped that by the time she returned to Sam he would have calmed down. She liked her assistant—he was a solid worker and she had no regrets about hiring him—but she didn’t want to deal with his Italian issue right now when they ought to be focusing on finding Adin Brown and figuring out his connection with The Dancers.
When Billie returned from the powder room, Sam was not at the bar. She slid back onto her stool and sipped at her champagne, thinking it had perhaps started to go flat. The taste wasn’t what it was, and neither was The Dancers. The crowd had almost thinned out entirely; perhaps only a dozen couples were still dancing. Billie took another sip of her drink, swallowed, decided it didn’t taste any good, and pushed it away, leaving the last few sips. She and Sam should leave, before they made themselves too obvious, if that ship hadn’t already sailed. Had all of the staff been instructed not to speak with her? She thanked the barman from afar, tipped him an extra shilling, leaving it by her near-empty glass, and headed for the door, hoping to pick Sam up along the way.
“We should head out,” she said to him when she spotted him loitering near the main doors. She leaned against his arm, her head dipping onto his shoulder. “I got the drinks...” She’d slurred her words, she noticed. “I paid up,” she tried again, more successfully.
Sam frowned and looked down at her. “Look, I think you might have misunderstood me about the Italian thing...” He trailed off. “Billie, I have to say, you look tired.”
“Thank you,” she replied somewhat sharply, and stood toattention. If he normally had a way with words, it wasn’t the case tonight.
“I didn’t mean it like that. You just don’t seem... yourself,” he continued, searching her face. “Maybe we should put it off until another night. Or you should let me go instead,” he said.
“What are you talking about? Sam, I’mthisclose to finding out why Adin was here before he disappeared.” She held her fingers up, an inch apart, to illustrate. “It’s the only real lead we have apart from a slip of newspaper. It’s something to do with Boooer, I’ll bet.”
Boooer?
She did feel a bit tired, and a bit unclear, and rather suddenly, too. It was late and it was time to go, but she’d never let a little tiredness dictate when to turn in, or to turn down an opportunity to forward a case. Fresh air would help. That doormandidknow something. He was nervous and people that nervous often had something to be nervous about.
She’d see him. She’d know something then. And if not, this dress was proving very poor luck indeed.
Eleven
The People’s Palace was, sufficeto say, not much of a palace. It was a rendered-brick eight-story hotel and lodging house at 400 Pitt Street, boastingvery moderaterooms, in capital letters so it had to be true, withhygienically prepared meals and tastefully served foods, clean and comfortable sleeping rooms.
For some years the Palace had been under Salvation Army management. Billie was aware that they ran a hostel of sorts out the back, accessed by a different entrance, for those who weren’t able to afford the hotel prices. The Victorian-era building had at some time housed a public bath and been a meeting place for swimming teams, thanks to an impressive pool, since filled in and bricked over. Times had changed. There were certainly no athletes meeting here now, and at nearly one thirty on a Saturday night it looked quiet inside, though the streets were still inhabited, mostly with men, some in uniform, evidently trying to find trouble to get into. With so many about, you wouldn’t have thought it was already hours after the infamous six-o’clock swill before the public bars closed. In fact, Billierealized she hadn’t spotted another woman since they’d left the theater district. The hotel was a mere walk away, not far from Billie’s Daking House office and the Central Railway and tramlines. The air was doing her good, even if she didn’t care to advertise to Sam that the champagne had really gone to her head, making her feel queer. The idea of her own employee coddling her wasn’t acceptable. She was made of stronger stuff than that.
There was a greenish glow to the lighting in the lobby of the Palace, visible through the large front windows as Billie and Sam approached. Billie pushed open one of the main double doors, looked over her shoulder, and caught Sam slipping into the shadows of the street. If she didn’t emerge in half an hour he would come up to room 305 to check on her. That was the plan. She knew it was her plan, but her head was starting to ache fiercely, perhaps on account of the hour or that last glass of champagne, and, despite herself, she was starting to regret being there.
Stay sharp, Walker.
The lobby was sparsely furnished with some weathered couches and chairs, a lamp that glowed about as brightly as a single candle, and a table pushed against one wall with what seemed to be brochures propped up on it. There was a sound in an office behind the bell desk, perhaps the stirring of a night watchman who was, at this moment, not doing what Billie would class as a top-notch job. That suited her fine. Otherwise, all was quiet. She looked around one more time with a sweep of her tired eyes, and on realizing that Con Zervos was nowhere in sight she pulled the stairwell door open and started to climb. Her legs ached sharply, and she reminded herself that she just needed to get through the next hour; then she’d be back in her own bed to sleep things off.
Stepping into the corridor on the third level, she encountered yet more quiet, save for the muted sounds of a radio playing in a room nearby and the muffled noises coming from Pitt Street below. The walls weren’t cardboard here, she mused; they just didn’t soundproof the new places like this. A light glowed from beneath a door three rooms away. That would be 305, she guessed, but as she approached she saw it was 304. No light showed under the door to 305. Good goddess, she felt tired. So tired. Something was most assuredly not right.
Billie put her hand on the knob of room 305 and the door creaked as it moved. It had not been latched.
A chill went up her spine, and she stepped back, her heavy head clearing instantly with the sense of something being very wrong. Instinctively she reached down, hiked up her dark crepe dress, and pulled the little Colt from her garter. She fixed her finger over the trigger, the mother-of-pearl handle warm from the heat of her thigh. Despite the spinning in her head only moments before, her hands were steady. She put one foot forward and her toe eased the door open.
“Mr. Zervos?” she asked the coal-black room.
There was no answer.
Billie reasoned she might have missed him as he went down to the lobby to wait for her, he going down one set of stairs as she climbed another, but her instincts tossed the notion away. That wasn’t what this was. The little woman in her tummy, the little woman who knew things, knew that this was something else entirely. A knowledge that came from every bit of this puzzle that didn’t quite fit yet, every observance, every signal. There was a cloying smell in the room that made her feel jumpy, and the heaviness of her head wasbecoming more distinct, though adrenaline was pushing it back as best it could. She was not safe. What was that smell? It was metallic, like blood or vomit or the sickly sweat of a fever. Someone needed to open a window. She didn’t want to walk through that dark doorway, but she needed light.
Billie reached along the wall to her right, her fingers searching like spiders until they found a protruding light switch. She flicked it down. The light came on with a start, illuminating the small single room as a lightning bolt would have done, revealing a diorama of horrors, then going out, plunging her back into darkness, before flickering on again with a faint and steady hum.
