“He needs a boater too.”
She put her hand on her hip and tossed her bobbed black hair. “Whatever floats your boater, honey.”
Koshka and I headed straight back through the hat shop, passing fedoras and trilbies and derby hats galore. The Duke of Chicago favored a top hat for evening excursions. It was all part of his mystique. Anyone who’s ever read an old detective series knows each detective has a special superpower, so to speak. Hercule Poirot was a former Belgian police officer who relied on his legendary “little grey cells” to solve his cases. Miss Marple lived all her life in the small village of Saint Mary Mead, a microcosm of the world where she became an astute student of human nature. The Duke of Chicago’s superpower? A uniquely potent combination of money, looks, and charm.
The Duke always dressed to the nines, if only because he’d seen how people crumble in the face of someone they perceive as being of higher status. Fortunately, the Duke was unusually self-aware and humble considering his rank and background and only used his powers for good. Kind of like Batman, but with a better wardrobe, fewer gadgets, and no daddy issues.
We reached the stockroom door. The party raged on the other side. As soon as I opened it, the acrid scent of cigar smoke slapped me in the face. I breathed through my mouth as best I could as I made my way down a short flight of stairs toward the source of all the shoutingand laughing. Nothing would have given me away as an outsider faster than a coughing fit. You needed asbestos lungs to survive the smoke-filled rooms of the early twentieth century.
We reached the basement. The place, no bigger than your average coffee shop, was packed to the gills just like it always was in the books. Women in flashy floor-length gowns danced cheek to cheek with men in suits to the raucous sound of a ragtime piano.
“Don’t get your tail stepped on, boy,” I warned Koshka, who slinked along the floor at my side. “Try to sniff out the Duke. Follow the scent of old money and class privilege.”
Koshka weaved through dozens of pairs of dancing feet while I cozied up to the bar and ordered a Sidecar from the bartender. Did I know what was in a Sidecar? Not a clue. But a drink in hand would help me to blend in with the other toughs.
The bartender slid my drink across the bar. I nodded and paid the man with an old Liberty half-dollar that I hoped had been minted before 1930. I’d forgotten to double-check my vintage cash stash before I’d left, but he took it without looking too closely.
Leaning back against the bar, I tried to look inconspicuous as I pretended to sip my drink. The cocktail smelled like orange juice and ethanol, so I wasn’t tempted to drink it. People dropped like drunken flies from poisoned bathtub gin during the Depression. Besides, drinking and eating were uniquely dangerous for Book Witches, as I mentioned. Although…if I were forced to choose a book to be trapped in for all eternity, I wouldn’t mind if it were one of the Duke’s mysteries.
Something brushed against my ankle. Koshka had returned and nipped my pants leg, signaling for me to follow him.
We passed a table where a woman in blue sat alone and forlorn. I placed my drink in front of her and said in my best bad Chicago accent, “You need this more than me, sweetheart.”
“Thanks, handsome,” she said, perking up. “Save me a shimmy later.”
I winked at her. “You know it, sugar.”
But there was no time for dancing. Koshka made a beeline for the enormous American flag hanging on the back wall. If I stopped tocount I would have counted forty-eight stars, not fifty, because Alaska and Hawaii wouldn’t be states for about thirty years.
When no one was looking, I slipped behind the flag and felt around the wall for a catch. A panel quietly popped open, and Koshka and I snuck into a dimly lit room. An oil lamp cast pale gold light across the stained concrete floor. I picked it up and turned up the wick.
There in the corner, I spotted a chair. A man sat slumped down, facing the wall, hands tied behind his back. And on the floor by the chair, a hat.
A top hat.
I’d found the Duke.
I lifted the lamp and spun a slow circle lighting the room’s dark corners. He’d been left unguarded. Good. Slowly I approached him.
“Mister,” I rasped. “You awake? Hey, mister?” This was my impression of an ordinary bar patron who’d innocently stumbled into this bare and menacing back room.
No answer.
“Mister?” I said again.
His head was down, his chin on his chest. Was he sleeping or unconscious? I want to pretend I stared at him for as long as I did because of concern for his health, but I was stunned speechless at the sight of him in the flesh. Even passed out and trussed up, the Duke of Chicago was ten times more handsome than I’d ever dared to let myself imagine. He had a face that belonged on the silver screen, with thick wavy dark hair that demanded a girl run her fingers through it and the most kissable lips in the long and storied history of kissing.
While his author, Tom Hightower, said in an interview he based him on a young Cary Grant, the Duke was a bit more of a young Gary Cooper live and in person. And I write from personal experience when I say nothing bad happens when one does an online image search for “young Gary Cooper.”
“No wonder he can get anyone to do anything at any time,” I whispered to Koshka.
“You aren’t so bad yourself,” the Duke of Chicago said as he lifted his head and stared directly at me.
“Oh,” I said, which wasn’t one of my better comebacks, but even the dictionary would be at a loss for words if the Duke of Chicago looked at it the way he was looking at me. “You’re awake.”
I should’ve known he’d been only faking unconsciousness.
He furrowed his regal brow at me.
