“So let’s get out of here. Unless you want to be found with a body?”
Vivian didn’t try to shake off the hands that were urging her back toward the door. “Don’t we need to tell someone?”
Bea blew out a long, frustrated breath, then glanced back toward the body again. She looked like she was about to be sick, and the hand clutching her cigarette trembled. “We’ll tell Honor,” she said at last. “I bet she knows exactly what to do with a dead body—or she’ll know someone who does.”
“The people over there—” Vivian turned suddenly, starting toward the opposite end of the alley before Bea caught her arm.
“They’re gone. Probably ran for it as soon as they heard you say someone was dead. Not our problem.”
“But what if it was one of them—”
“Vivian.” Bea pulled her firmly away. “Do you want to get mixed up in this?”
“No, but—”
“We’re going to tell my boss, and then it’s not our business anymore.” She pushed Vivian toward the door. “Come on.”
“Wait.” Vivian glanced inside uneasily. “We can’t just leave. Someone else might find him. It might not be our business, but I guess your boss wouldn’t like it if more customers found a dead body sitting behind her club.”
“Damn.” Bea tossed her cigarette down and ground it angrily with the toe of her shoe. “All right, I’ll have an easier time finding her. Are you going to be okay waiting here on your own? You can stay inside, just keep anyone else from coming out.”
“I’ll be fine.” Vivian glanced over her shoulder and shuddered. “Just hurry, will you?”
The spangles on Bea’s dress sent a scattering of reflected light across the bricks as she vanished inside. Vivian followed the dancing lightswith her eyes, her gaze landing once more on the corner where the dead man’s shoes were still visible. She shuddered. But a morbid, uncomfortable curiosity was creeping over her. She glanced over her shoulder at the door once more, hesitated, then stepped across the alley before she could talk herself out of it.
There was something fascinating about the dead man’s stillness, something vulnerable and unreal, that made it hard to look away. Vivian felt as if he were no longer human, or perhaps so human that it was almost unbearable. She wanted to reach out, settle his neck and shoulders in a more comfortable position, move the cigarette that was slowly burning a hole in his pants, as if there were some way that she could help him. As if there were anything that could still help him.
But she couldn’t do something like that. She didn’t have much to do with police—no one in their right mind would. But she had been to the cinema enough to know that they never wanted anyone to touch things before they had a chance to look around.
Vivian snorted. There wouldn’t be any police. No matter how much protection money Honor Huxley paid, there was no way she would report a dead man slumped in an alley behind her club. And if someone did come to collect the body, the odds of them carefully looking around for evidence of who committed the crime were practically zero. No, this wasn’t going to the police in any official capacity.
And it also wasn’t her problem, as Bea had pointed out. Vivian turned to go back toward the door, and as she did, her eye was caught by something glinting on the ground. It was a silver cigarette case, its edge just catching the light from the door, open on the pavement with a handful of cigarettes scattered around it.
There was only one cigarette missing from the case, the rest of them still tucked into place in spite of their fall. And the ones on the ground were cheap, less carefully rolled than the pristine white stub that glowed in the dead man’s lap.
Looking at that smoldering hole made her feel sick again, and she took a quick step back from the body, her foot catching the edge of acrate. Stumbling forward, she clapped one hand over her mouth and nose as the overwhelming smell of death and filth filled her head.
The boxes that hid the body were more of a pile than a stack, many of them knocked over and broken, then shoved hastily back into place. Vivian glanced down to make sure she didn’t trip again and caught sight of the man’s hat lying on the ground a few feet away.
Vivian let out a low whistle. The hat was expertly made and matched the man’s suit to perfection—which meant he probably had one to match every single suit he owned. Glancing back toward the door, Vivian scooped up the hat and checked inside.Howard’s on Seventh Avenuewas stitched neatly on the band. Vivian nodded as she let it fall back to the ground. Howard’s was even pricier than the dress store where she and her sister worked. Whoever the dead man was, clearly he had money.
For a moment, Vivian was tempted to check his pockets to see if there was anything valuable in them, in spite of the smell. But the last thing she wanted was for someone to come out and find her stealing from a corpse, or to risk getting blood on her clothes.
“See anything interesting?”
The voice cut sharply through her thoughts, leaving her flustered as she turned to find Honor Huxley just coming out of the Nightingale’s back door, two bruisers in dark suits following her. Vivian recognized them from their usual position looking over guests at the door or escorting problem customers out of the club. She could guess that there were other, less public jobs that they did for their employer. By the stoic set of their faces as they came into the alley, taking up positions on either side of the door, Vivian could imagine they were very skilled at those jobs.
She stepped quickly away from the dead man. “Nothing interesting, no.”
The other woman glanced at her set face, and one eyebrow rose. “You’ve seen a dead body before, then?”
Vivian swallowed, then shrugged, trying to look as casual as the otherwoman sounded, wanting to sound cool and put together and impressive. “I grew up in an orphanage. I live in a tenement. People die faster there than on Park Avenue.”
“People can die pretty quick on Park Avenue, too,” Ms. Huxley said, an odd note in her voice as she stepped carefully around the puddle of blood to examine the body from another angle. “Do you know him?”
“No, do you?”
“I know a lot of people,” Ms. Huxley replied cryptically as she lifted the dead man’s hat with the tip of her shoe. Letting it fall again, she pursed her lips together for a moment as she eyed the scene, then sighed loudly and gestured for Vivian to step back. “Now, what did you see when you came out here?”
