Girl in Disguise Page 6

  A quarter hour in, things snapped into place. My poor nose became accustomed to the smell. My head cleared. Then, I was able to hear his words, and I actually became interested in what he was saying. Each of the people here had died a suspicious death and been sent to the county for further investigation. He had worked here since the morgue was established, more than ten years before. He knew bodies. Though I knew it was not what Mortenson had intended, I could learn from him.

  “Here, you see ligature marks,” he said, indicating the neck of a dead unfortunate. Other than the dark, bruised lines on her throat, she looked like she might have been only sleeping. I looked away from her face. I had to.

  “How long ago did she pass?” I asked, surprising both the men and myself by speaking up.

  “Just a few hours ago,” said the man in the apron. “Feel her, and you’ll see. Longer than this, and the body stiffens, becomes firm. She still bends.”

  He lifted the woman’s hands, and I was struck by the soft angle of her dangling fingers. Alive, she might have trailed her fingers in the water this way, leaning over the edge of a boat. Now, she would never do so again.

  I steeled myself against sentiment. Neither man would appreciate any expression of emotion; that wasn’t what we were here for. Now that I understood this for the test it was, I had to show my strength.

  I lifted the woman’s hand in the same way Apron had, feeling how the flesh responded. The flesh had cooled, becoming waxy. I would not have mistaken her for alive under any circumstances.

  “Hmm,” I said as if we were only remarking on the weather and nodded in the direction of the next corpse. We moved forward.

  Ignoring faces, focusing only on the sites of harm, I saw evidence of many kinds of damage that could be done to the human body. Here, a gunshot; there, a knife wound. Other bodies had no visible signs at all, their limbs as smooth and clean as my own, and Apron told me of internal injuries, damaged hearts, and utter mysteries. By the end, my poor body was still roiling with nerves, but I was fully engaged in conversation, my brain overriding my baser instincts in order to add knowledge to my repertoire.

  Afterward, Mortenson returned me to more familiar territory, our heels clacking on the wooden sidewalk in silence the entire journey. Touching the brim of his hat once, he took his leave without a word. I sensed I had disappointed him; he’d been hoping for a womanly, weak reaction. A collapse, perhaps, or at least some sign of fragility.

  I’d never been so happy to disappoint someone in my life.

  • • •

  The next day, I did force myself to report to the office, though I avoided Pinkerton’s gaze as if everything depended on it—as well it might. While I was able to busy myself around the margins for a few hours, eventually, he said, “Come here, Warne, and let’s talk.”

  I dragged my feet, walking to his office. He stood by the door, ready to shut it as soon as we were both inside. I dreaded the moment when I would pass by him, his intimidating bulk refusing to give quarter, especially since I was afraid he might see me trembling.

  I could not linger any longer when a shout came from behind me: “Boss!”

  We both turned. Everyone turned. Besides Pinkerton and me, Taylor and Bellamy were also there. Taylor was bending down in front of the office safe, a stack of bills in hand—probably counterfeit—and he was the one who’d spoken.

  Pinkerton pushed past me into the outside office, saying, “Yes?”

  “Look.”

  We all witnessed the moment. We all saw Taylor lift the stolen ring from the safe. The gold and gems glinted merrily in the stale air. It was clearly the snake ring from the Obanov case, fitting the description exactly; unless it belonged to Queen Victoria herself, it could be no other.

  Pinkerton said, “Well then.” His tone gave nothing away.

  I wanted to feel relief. I did let out a single breath I felt I’d been holding forever. But Taylor’s and Bellamy’s glares told the story. Whoever had taken the ring had given me respite by returning it, but he’d also made it impossible to prove that I hadn’t taken it in the first place. In the absence of proof, I would be both guilty and innocent, always.

  Between the morgue and the snake ring debacle, doubt crept in. If the other operatives would be torturing me, staring at me, driving me out, what was the point of it all? I could leave now and not come back. It would be the easiest thing in the world.

  But I could make a success of myself as an operative. I knew I could. I’d survived something Mortenson thought I couldn’t, and that gave me confidence, but I realized there were reasons far deeper why I needed to remain.

  Because I always felt like I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t anyway. Because my complete lack of trust in every new person I met might finally be turned to some positive purpose. And because Charlie would have told me I couldn’t, but Charlie was dead, and it was time for me to make my own choices.

  I’d already known I had to be twice as good as any of the men on the job. Now, I would have to be twice as good as twice.

  Everything depended on it.

  Chapter Eight

  Surveillance

  After the unexplained theft and return of the snake ring, I cast a suspicious eye on all my fellow operatives. Even without the formal meetings or introductions that Pinkerton so eschewed, after three months, I’d learned a great deal.

  Bellamy specialized in disguises, which was why he had charge of the costume closet, and often gave advice to other operatives on the best way to take on a role. Many times, I found him in the office pasting things onto another man’s face with spirit gum or scrutinizing his clothes for telltale signs that he did not belong where he was being sent. He alternated between eyeing me disdainfully and looking right through me, and I still thought him the most likely saboteur.

  Graham DeForest, as befitted his stylish and ingratiating aspect, specialized in seductions. Not true seductions—Pinkerton took pains to emphasize to me that neither his male agents nor his female ones would ever be asked to complete a private act for the public good—but DeForest ably handled any case where flirting might get us closer to our goal. I knew firsthand how very charming he could be. Suspicious of him as I was, I still found myself smiling under his flattery.

  Mortenson, who by his physical presence was both hard to disguise and not particularly suited for seduction, was an excellent functionary. If the case called for an ersatz inspector, Cincinnati businessman, or government representative, all Mortenson needed to be completely convincing was the right suit of clothes. Sometimes, Bellamy added thin, gold-rimmed eyeglasses as a crowning touch. Mortenson’s skill was to blend into the background, and I still had trouble drawing a bead on him.

  Even the men I barely knew had their roles, easy to peg. Taylor was the muscle, Dalessandro was the sap, and Paretsky was the gentleman fallen on hard times.

  I, of course, didn’t need a specialty. I already had one. I was the woman.

  I knew I had much to learn, but I also had a natural aptitude for the work. My initial success with Heck hadn’t been a fluke. The same things that made me miserable as a child—moving constantly from place to place, never knowing if a new person was friend or foe—made me adaptable.

  My parents had taught me, in their way. When I was young and they mostly ignored me, I learned not to offend or disturb them. I was always, always agreeable. We moved from place to place, after a year or only a month, and I had to learn new personalities, new surroundings, over and over again. From Charleston to Atlanta, Houston to Bowling Green, then north to Pittsburgh or Portsmouth, wherever my father found a theater that would pay him what he felt he was worth. Everywhere was so different. Some cities felt like they weren’t even in the same country, but I couldn’t let that bother me. I learned to be an invisible visitor, congenial, silent.

  When I was old enough to be of use in my father’s schemes, I learned to pl
ay my part—a lost girl, a sad girl, a hungry girl—exactly as I was told. As far as I knew, every child grew up sleeping backstage at theaters while her father declaimed Shakespeare’s words as the gravedigger in Hamlet, clowned about in She Stoops to Conquer, and rattled his chains as Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol. As far as I knew, everybody fled cities in the middle of the night when some scheme or another angered the wrong mark. As far as I knew, the world was divided into operators and victims, winners and fools. By the time I realized I had options—I didn’t always have to be agreeable or go along—I was already eighteen years old, pregnant, and married to a man I didn’t know well enough to dislike yet.

  I couldn’t change those years. But at least I could put everything I’d learned to good use.

  To make myself a better agent, I threw myself into learning every skill I could. I read about poisons and found that I could procure no fewer than a dozen deadly compounds from the city’s pharmacists and grocers with little difficulty. I taught myself, huddled in a half-dark bedroom, to pick a wide variety of locks with nothing more than a hairpin. Begging DeForest’s indulgence, I learned to load and fire a hefty Burnside carbine, a standard rifle, and a Colt Pocket Revolver, as well as improving my aim with the Deringer I now carried whenever I felt the case called for it. I even persuaded Mortenson to take me back to the Cook County morgue for another tour, which he did with obvious disgruntlement and not a whit of grace.

  I also knew I needed to perfect surveillance, and after I’d been an operative for six months, I fell into the habit of surveilling targets I could easily locate: my fellow operatives. Knowing that any one of them might have been involved in the disappearance of the snake ring, I had a second motive to investigate each and every one. If some information about their character came into my possession this way, so much the better.

  I started with Mortenson, who was highly visible in crowds due to his pale aspect, and successfully followed him three nights in a row without being caught out. The first night, he went to a tavern and stayed for several hours, emerging rumpled but firmly upright. The second night, he went to a church—a shorter stay, but no more revealing. The third night, I lurked in the shadows outside the office and nearly bounced on my toes in curiosity to see which way he would go, left or right. In the end, it was back to the tavern again.

  Then I tried following Pinkerton himself, but he never went anywhere other than straight to his home, so there didn’t seem to be much to be learned there. Several nights in a row, I shadowed him down the exact same path, right and left and another left and right again, right up to his front door. He never turned or wavered, which seemed right from what I knew of him.

  Then, for good or ill or both, I chose to tail Graham DeForest.

  Since our shooting lessons, on the occasions that we saw each other in the office, he had always continued to be excessively solicitous. You look utterly lovely today, Mrs. Warne! I suppose there is no surprise in that. But he had not made any physical overtures, and I was grateful. He had been a better friend than anyone else in the agency. I began to believe what he had told me, early on, in the woods: he was on my side. Given his flashy dress and suave manner, I expected he had at least one lady friend to occupy his time. Indeed, I would not have put it past him to have half a dozen.

  I knew where he lived—he’d mentioned the intersection several times—so I decided to wait a few blocks from there and watch for him. It was different to catch someone in a crowd than it was to track them from the beginning, and I needed the practice. However, the first night was an utter failure. I would have sworn he never passed me, even as it grew dark outside and then pitch-black. Perhaps he’d come from another direction? Or perhaps I had missed him entirely, turning my head at just the wrong time. Clearly, I did need the practice I’d assigned myself. I went home to a scolding from Mrs. Borowski and a cold plate of stuffed cabbage, gobbled down quickly next to the stove.

  Three nights later, I tried again, doing a few things differently. First, I warned Mrs. Borowski I wouldn’t be home for dinner, so she wouldn’t worry. I dressed in men’s breeches and a shirt and hat from Bellamy’s disguise closet, with a heavy overcoat to protect me from prying eyes and the weather alike. Walking the streets as a woman alone, late at night, invited comment. I wouldn’t be well disguised enough to pass as an actual man in speech or manner. But at a distance, it would discourage curiosity.

  I caught DeForest halfway between the office and his home, quickly falling into position well behind him on the opposite side of the street. It was the perfect distance to track his movement with little fear of being discovered. I was already starting to congratulate myself when I realized he was taking a different direction, not headed home at all.

  His figure, half a block more distant now, scuttled down an alleyway in the gathering dark. He was peeking furtively behind him—or was it my imagination? Did he suspect being followed? Or was I just on edge, too nervous, reading intent into his actions based on my own fragile state of mind? I hadn’t thought about what I would say if I was caught out. I thought about it now. Perhaps, in the end, the truth would do. But how much better it would be if I didn’t need it.

  A handful of turns later, in a commercial district with few lights and even fewer signs, he ducked into a basement-level doorway and vanished. Afraid that if I delayed, I would lose him, I plunged inside, arriving into almost total darkness.

  While my eyes adjusted, I ran my fingers along the wall behind me to steady myself. Having something to touch made darkness less disorienting—a hint I’d learned from DeForest himself. The thought almost made me lose my nerve, but having begun the adventure, I wanted to see it through. Besides, now I wondered—what was this place, and why would he come here?

  Once I could see more than shadows, I scanned the room quickly. First, to find DeForest. All depended on his position; I would need to choose mine accordingly.

  I located him at the far end of the bar, sitting alone, signaling for the barman with a single upraised finger. I ducked back to avoid being seen. He didn’t look in my direction, but I played it safe. The breeches I’d chosen were the right color to help me blend in with the men around me, but I knew there was more to being a man than the clothes. I tried my best not to cock my hip, not to fold my hands, not to do anything that might give me away as a woman. I leaned back against the wall as casually as I could.

  His drink arrived. He curled his fingers around it but did not put it to his lips. I lingered at the edge of a crowd, half a dozen men playing billiards, as if I were awaiting my turn in the rotation. It was an unusually dark room, and the game seemed to take a very long time, with no sense of urgency. I could tell something was afoot, but it was impossible to know what, and all my investigative energies needed to be saved for the more important task. I pulled the brim of my hat down over my eyes and watched.

  DeForest sat for a quarter of an hour, sipping only once from his glass. He scanned the room frequently, making me nervous. Perhaps he had figured me out and was killing time here, making me wait, as a punishment. Perhaps he would stride over any minute and inform me the jig was up. I could only watch and wait, without looking like I was doing either. I felt a little frisson of excitement. I’d come to practice surveillance, and that’s exactly what I was doing. A long career as an operative would put me in a position like this a thousand times. Rehearsal couldn’t hurt.

  Finally, a blond man slid onto the stool next to DeForest’s. He ordered a drink. They looked at each other but not quite with recognition. A quick glance. I saw something odd in the way the new man positioned his body, not straight ahead but angled slightly toward DeForest’s, that made me wonder. Not friends, not strangers. Something else.

  A terrible thought crossed my mind. They could be exchanging intelligence. Pinkerton had forbidden working with criminals to support our cases—it was in the Code—but it must be a daily temptation for the operatives infiltrating gangs. Perha
ps DeForest had given in to temptation. Worse, he could be tipping off a gang that we were coming. We all knew well that there was far more money in evading justice than delivering it. Had he stolen the gold-and-emerald snake ring, planning to fence it, and changed his mind? Was it only one of many things he’d stolen?

  There was a discussion, then a decision, and the two men moved off, leaving their drinks on the bar. Like a shadow, I moved with them. Through the crowd next to the pool table, toward a warren of rooms in the back. I backed off, moving more slowly and lingering with the others, so as not to draw suspicion.

  After a decent interval, I edged closer to the hallway where I’d seen DeForest and his companion disappear. There were several rooms in the back, with curtains drawn across each doorway. I peeked through the first, and it took every mote of my self-control not to exclaim in shock.

  Two men were there, their faces pressed close together in a kiss.

  I’d never seen anything like it. I had heard such gal-boys existed, that there were men who treated each other like women, but I had never imagined I’d see such a thing with my own eyes.

  And then I thought about DeForest and realized with a sick feeling in my stomach that his purpose here, while fully illegal, was not criminal in the way I’d thought.

  Yet I’d come this far. I needed to know for sure.

  I pressed myself close to the wall, remaining as close as I could to invisible, and peeked through the next curtain. I saw a smudge of bare flesh and looked away before I could see more. There had been two hats on the floor, and neither was DeForest’s. That was enough.

  Behind the third curtain, I saw him. He and the other man were seated side by side on a small couch, facing away from me. They leaned on each other, toward each other, with their heads bent over their laps like schoolboys looking at a turtle.