Silver Lies (58 page)

Harry pulled away. The rage in his face was gone. He looked at her almost tenderly, before placing one thumb on her cheek and wiping it hard. He rubbed the blood that had smeared from his face to hers between thumb and forefinger.

"As I said, I should have been less of a gentleman in October. It could have saved us all." His gaze lingered over her, a hungry man facing a feast he is denied. "I don’t have the time or patience to wait while you make up your mind. You yourself don’t know where you stand." His hand closed over hers.

She let go of his jacket as if it were on fire.

Harry smiled sadly, then released her. He pulled out a linen handkerchief to stanch the wound and returned to the sofa. "I paid Joe’s bank loan. Bought his building for more than it was worth. Had Sands arrange a new life for Emma and the boy. Emma Rose and me—there’s nothing more between us." He gathered his overcoat, gloves, and hat.

"By first light, Sands will have taken care of the engraver and smashed whatever elements of the ring remain in Leadville. He’s ruthless. Efficient. I have every confidence in him. Justice has never let me down. At least, in that regard." Harry settled his hat with careful deliberation. The gleam of moonlight on his silver hair extinguished.

"I’m leaving Leadville soon. Pressing responsibilities have languished while I waited, foolishly as it turns out, for you to come to your senses. I know when to cut my losses." He sounded indifferent, as if talking about selling off a worthless stock.

He buttoned his evening jacket, eyeing Inez dispassionately. It was as if having brought her to her knees for a brief moment, he’d regained his confidence and his balance.

Inez rubbed her mouth on her sleeve, hating her momentary surrender.

"I give you and Sands six months." Harry shrugged into his overcoat and pulled on his gloves. "By then, you’ll know what he is. Men like him are invaluable in war, dangerous in peace. And they never change."

He tipped his hat in mock farewell. "When the railroad arrives and Sands is gone, I’ll return. Then we’ll see. Goodbye, Inez."

As Harry walked away, Inez groped blindly through the papers on the desk. Her hand curled around the stoppered ink bottle. The door closed behind him just as the bottle hit the fine-grained wood. Ink, dark as blood in the night, splattered across the panels.

"Go to hell, Harry!" she whispered. Too soft, too late.

They’d searched her dressing room too.

Her most expensive gowns, saved for Saturday nights, were tossed on the floor in a welter of petticoats and underclothes. She held the oil lamp high and discerned a muddy footprint on a satin corset. The thought of Hollis handling her intimate apparel made her want to burn it all.

Mark’s evening clothes still hung inside the armoire; Hollis had vented his ire on her things alone. She ran a hand over her husband’s gold and black brocade waistcoat, recalling, with mixed emotions, the body that once gave it shape.

Everything I need to gain entrance to Cat DuBois’ parlor house is here.

Inez yanked off her outer clothes, adding travel-stained skirts and petticoats to the pile on the floor. Skin prickling to gooseflesh, she pulled a roll of linen off an inside shelf. She stripped off corset and combination and bound the linen around her breasts. She unpinned her hair, letting the braid fall down her back. Ten minutes later, dressed in Mark’s clothes, she held the lamp up to the mirror. With her face shadowed by the deep-brimmed black hat, Inez felt confident she’d pass on the street or in a crowded room.

Then, she removed the hat.

The tense, androgynous face sprang into feminine contours, betrayed by tendrils spilling about her temples and ears
. Not good enough.

The furthest she’d ever taken her masculine impersonations was in the high-class parlor houses of New Orleans. She and Mark had fleeced the moneyed clients who, distracted by the feminine wares, dropped money like trees shedding leaves in the fall. Then, it had been a lark. But now—

She fumbled in the pockets of Mark’s greatcoat for his short bowie knife and sheath. "Insurance," he used to say when strapping it to his ankle.

Inez tugged her hair from its hiding place under the dress shirt and gripped the knife, setting the blade under her braid at the nape. She hesitated. Remembered Mark unbraiding her hair in some nameless hotel, Justice letting one strand slip through his fingers to the pillow—

Her hair parted with little ripping noises under the knife’s edge.

Weight transferred from her neck to her hand. She dropped the heavy braid to the ground where it coiled like a dead serpent around her boots.

Peering into the mirror, she examined the straight swing of hair ending at her jaw line.
Not short enough.

She ruthlessly pared it around ears, parted it in the middle, and slicked it down with water. The face in the mirror would now blend in with any of the better-dressed men in town, hat or no.

As she straightened her tie in the mirror, a telltale glimmer brought her up short. Inez stripped the two rings from her left hand and set them on the washstand alongside the hairpins she no longer needed.

Mark’s gunbelt and Navy Colt hung on the peg beside the wardrobe. She buckled it on, making sure the gun was visible. Walking the block to Cat’s parlor house would not be a Sunday stroll.

The small Remington went into her trouser pocket: a backup. Then, she knelt and fastened Mark’s knife under her pant leg. His teasing rang in her memory. "A knife’s not for you, Inez. You don’t know how to handle it, it’d be more a danger than a help to you in a bad situation. Stay with the weapons you know best. Guns and words."

Insurance.

Inez fumbled through the pockets of Mark’s winter overcoat until she found Frisco Flo’s card. Flo’s remembered voice whispered:
You’ll need this to get in.

One more thing was vital to ensure her welcome at Cat’s doors. Inez checked her dress pockets and found five dollars. She went back to the office and checked the safe—empty.

She upended her carpetbag and pried out the false bottom. Counterfeit twenties and fifties fell to the floor.

Reflecting on the irony of using Cat’s own counterfeit to topple her house of cards, Inez rolled the money tight into her waistcoat pocket.

Extinguishing the light, she opened the ink-streaked door and took a last look around the office, wondering when and if she would return. She thought of Abe, behind bars, their lives and reputations in shambles. Inez squared her shoulders.
Time to find a guardian angel.

999

Negotiating the block to Cat’s high-class boarding house meant passing a half dozen saloons of various sizes and temperaments, a dancehall, a restaurant, and two lodging hotels of dubious repute. In near blinding snow, Inez circumvented five horizontal men—three puking on hands and knees, two lying inert on the boardwalk—and shoved her way through the surging throng. As she passed one murky saloon, she heard a woman scream just as a tangle of men boiled out onto the walk. Shouts were followed by the sharp report of a handgun. She pushed hard against the crowd that suddenly stopped to gape at the man bleeding and scrabbling across ice-encrusted boards. A policeman knocked her aside, shouting to others to clear the way. Inez hastened through the vacuum created by his wake. She spared barely a glance at Cat’s saloon. All her attention focused on the three-story brick structure next to it: the parlor house.

Her hand finally on the door, Inez wheezed, trying to catch her breath and her equilibrium. At her knock, a man the size of a mountain answered the door and uttered one word: "Card?"

Inez handed him Flo’s business card. He examined it, then peered at her. "Don’t recall your face. New to town?" Inez nodded. "Let’s see the color of your money, then."

She extracted her bankroll, and as an afterthought, peeled off the five. Forcing her voice down into the tenor range, she said, "Keep it."

He raised eyebrows that looked like fuzzy sausages and tucked the money into his waistcoat. "Stranger, you picked the best place in town to spend your money." He opened the door wide and Inez entered the foyer.

Inside, the clamor of State Street was as damped as the lamplight. She could barely see the wallpaper, maroon with swirls of gold above walnut wainscoting. Ten paces away and on the left, an arched entry led to what she guessed was a parlor. Beyond that, stairs ascended to the upper floors.

From the parlor room floated masculine murmurs and feminine laughter. A halting "Für Elise" stopped mid-measure, and the unseen pianist swung into a polished version of "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

The scents of flowery perfumes—gardenia, violet, rose— combined with those of burning tobacco and wood. Over all lay the subtle spoor of musk and sexual commerce. The place smelled like a hothouse on fire.

The doorman thrust out a ham-sized hand: "Your coat. And gun."

Inez unbuckled the heavy belt, thankful for her hidden weaponry. Frisco Flo in a lilac Worth gown drifted out of the parlor, patting her peroxide curls. She spotted Inez and flashed a welcoming smile as bright as her hair.

At the outer edge of her vision, Inez caught the doorman rubbing thumb and two fingers together meaningfully. Flo’s eyes flicked toward him and away; her smile and eyes widened as she sized up Inez.

"Hello, honey. I’m Frisco Flo. Welcome to the best and cleanest parlor house in Leadville. The madam is busy," she batted her eyelashes, "so I’ll show you around. We’ve twelve boarders. Lovely, cultivated girls, every one." Her coy expression wavered. "You look familiar. Have we met?"

Inez said hoarsely, "Georgetown. Mattie’s house. You and a red-haired woman. She here too?"

Frisco Flo’s demeanor shifted from suspicion to panic. "Oh my." She looked nervously toward the parlor and grasped Inez’s arm with fluttering fingers. "Best not talk about those days. Past is past." Her smile rekindled as she drew Inez down the hall, but she avoided looking directly at Inez again, much to Inez’s relief.

A familiar voice boomed from the parlor.
Eisemer
.

Through the arch, she could see a portion of the parlor. Morris Cooke lounged in an overstuffed armchair, a beatific expression pasted on his solid Quaker face. A brunette sat on a nearby ottoman, languidly fanning herself. Cat’s distinctively musical laughter rose over the piano. Harry Gallagher strolled past Cooke, stopped, and pulled out his handkerchief, pressing it to the wounds oozing on his cheek. Inez stepped back, alarmed.

Flo tugged on her arm. "You’re lucky. Some of Leadville’s most influential gentlemen are here. Being new in town and all, you’ll make some good contacts in addition to having a good time." She drummed restless fingers on Inez’s sleeve. "What’s your name and business?"

"Smith," rasped Inez, too busy thinking of ways to avoid the parlor to come up with a clever name. "Freighting."

Harry turned as she spoke. His eyes raked Inez. He frowned.