“What kind of evidence?” she asked in a small voice.
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. But either you come up with something, or you need to hire one hell of a lawyer. One who’snotretired, by the way,” he added. “I, meanwhile, need to catch my train, or my wife will be very cross.”
“Okay.” Vivian nodded. “Okay. Swell. Thanks for getting me out, anyway.” She hesitated, then asked the dreaded question. “How much do I owe you?”
The lawyer chuckled. “Oh, your young man knows that’s already taken care of.” He tossed his napkin onto the table as he stood. “Leo, tell your father after next week’s game,hewill be the one who owes me.” He nodded to them. “Good luck, kids. I’ll be hoping for the best for you.”
Leo waited until Dubinski was gone before answering Vivian’s unspoken question. “He plays poker with my dad. And I got his brother out of a jam last month, when his supplier stiffed him on half an order, and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to open for the week.”
“You do get around,” Vivian said faintly, looking back down into her own coffee mug so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “I guess you had to cash in a lot of favors to get me out of there. I owe you big time.”
“Hey.” Leo slipped a finger under her chin and lifted it gently. His hand slid sideways, the other one rising, and he cupped both her cheeks. Vivian found herself leaning into the gentle touch. “Whether I did or not, there’s no favors between us, Viv. You know that, right? We’re always square.” He grinned. “What kind of fella wouldn’t help his girl beat a murder charge?”
“Ha,” Vivian said weakly, not quite ready for that joke. She hadn’t beaten it. Not yet.
But his hands were warm and strong, and his confidence was catching. She found herself nodding. “Okay, then. First thing is to get home, because I have work tonight, and I can’t afford to miss a shift.”
“Hey, and that’s a good starting place,” Leo pointed out, standing and pulling out her chair for her. “Plenty of gossip at the Nightingale. Find the right person and they might know a thing or two about the Buchanans.”
He wasn’t wrong. Places like the Nightingale attracted all types, including the ones that lived on the Upper East Side. Normally, folks like that wouldn’t give the time of day to a girl who wore catalog shoes and considered the Automat a pricey meal, never mind answer a question or spill a secret. But the rules were different when you wandered into back-alley dance halls.
Plenty of times, Vivian had found out secrets she didn’t want to know and wished she hadn’t learned. This time, hopefully, she’d find the ones she needed.
“Okay, then,” she said again, taking a deep breath, gathering her confidence around her like a shield. She had no idea how, but she would find something. She knew people, she had friends who knew people, and she’d always managed to land on her feet before. She would this time too. “Let’s get ready to go to work.”
FIVE
The sun had set by the time they hopped off the streetcar, disappearing between buildings that crowded too close together and leaned on each other like drunks stumbling home at the end of the night. The streetlights were pools of molten gold, but all they lit up was piles of slush and trash, the icy pavement in between sparkling like a warning.
Vivian lived on the second floor now. The two tenement rooms she had shared with her sister had been too much to afford on her own after Florence married and moved downtown. But she couldn’t leave her building or her neighborhood, ugly and unloved though they were.
As they turned the corner, she could hear music drifting through the frosty evening, a window left improbably open in the cold air. Will Freeman had recently bought a radio, and even when it was freezing, he threw his windows open to share the music with the world. It cut across the sound of voices raised in an argument, of children shrieking in a way that could mean joy or rage. When she opened the front doorof her building and a dog launched into a volley of fierce barking, she could tell it belonged to Mr. Brown. When a baby began crying in response, she recognized Mrs. Gonzales’s newborn.
She knew each sound without thought. And as much as she longed to leave behind every run-down, desperate inch of her home, she couldn’t bring herself to.
Maybe someday. But not yet.
Vivian shivered as the wind chased them inside before Leo slammed the front door closed. Her feet climbed the stairs without her needing to tell them to.
The thought of a shift at the Nightingale made her shake with fatigue. Usually, it was the place she loved the most in the world, the place she most felt like herself. But tonight, all she wanted to do was curl up like a child, to try and forget everything that had happened.
But there was no forgetting, not yet. If she closed her eyes, she would just see Buchanan’s face again, that vacant, shocked stare, the trickle of blood that curved over his chin.
So she might as well go work, sneak a glass of champagne from the bar. Might as well lose herself in the music, wear out her body and her mind until she felt like herself again. Maybe then, she’d sleep without dreaming.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Leo’s question, his sudden grab at her arm, brought her thoughts tumbling back into her body. There was a man standing in front of her door, arms crossed as he stared at her, his hat casting shadows over half his face so that she couldn’t see his expression. But she could hear the amusement in his voice as he spoke, and it was colder than the air outside.
“I don’t think you really need to ask me that, Mr. Green. Not after what happened today.” He glanced at Vivian, and she felt the look like a physical touch on her skin.
A movement at the end of the hall, half-seen out of the corner of hereye. Vivian turned as the second man stepped forward, blocking their path back to the stairs. Even in the dim light, she could see the buttons shining on his uniform. She turned back; the man by the door smiled. “Invite me in, Miss Kelly. We have a few things to discuss.”
“Sure thing,” she said hoarsely, pulling out her keys and stepping past him, the back of her neck prickling under his gaze. She unlocked the door and pushed it open, then stepped out of his way. “Come on in, Commissioner.”
SIX
Vivian kept her eyes on the commissioner as she turned up the lamp, watching him take in the details of the room: the rickety table and two chairs that took up most of the floor, the bed with its rumpled quilt, only half-made in her haste to get to work that morning. The radiator hissed and shuddered as it tried to heat the little room, and if she pulled aside the curtains she had sewn, the only view out the window would be the trash piled in the street.
