Authors: Kate Rothwell

Somebody Wonderful (6 page)

BOOK: Somebody Wonderful

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The crowd in Colsun’s had begun to thin out. A scraggly unshaved man walked into the restaurant. He stopped and bellowed across the crowded tables. “You were right about me collywobbles, McCann. That stuff you gave me cleared me runs right up.”

A voice from behind the counter shouted even louder. “No talk of collywobbles in my establishment, damn you.”

Mick raised his coffee mug to them both. “
Dia duit ar maidin
—Good morning to you, too, gentlemen.”

Timona laughed.

Mick shook his head. “A class establishment, eh? Right again, miss.” He swallowed the last of his coffee with seeming relish, and rose to his feet. “So now we find your da and his, er, secretary and send you on your way. Mebbe as we go you can tell me why you’re parading part time as Cooper, too.”

Hell’s bells, she thought. This is not good.

Chapter 4

Mick paid Teddy the waiter and they strolled out of the restaurant. As they started towards Park Avenue, Timona decided to resort to basic tactics.

She grabbed at his arm and gasped. “Might we stop for a moment, Mr. McCann. I- I think I feel a little faint.”

He looked so worried she felt a tle guilty. Not ashamed enough to actually change tactics. “Oooo. Mr. McCann, I think I have to return to your flat. The world is spinning.”

She made a soft moan. He grabbed her arm, pulled her close and wrapped an arm around her. It felt lovely to be pressed against his warm, solid side. At least she didn’t ask him to carry her up the stairs.

The hideous Botty trotted along after them, Mick stopped to rub the dog’s back. She figured the injuries extended to Botty’s throat, for she already noticed that he didn’t bark but made a huffing growl of a sound instead. He made the noise now, and half-closed his one eye in ecstasy as Mick rubbed his fur.

“That’s enough now, Botty. I got work to do,” Mick said. Botty immediately squirmed into his spot under the bureau.

The oppressive dankness of the dim room pressed in on Timona as she lay on the bed, watching Mick attempt to wash some of his clothes. What could he do to entertain himself living alone in a place like this?

“Mr. McCann,” she said, trying to sound weak, but not desperately ill—the man had worries enough. “What do you do on your free time? I mean other than walk out with Daisy Graves.”

He straightened up from the large pan, where he was trying to scrub out a shirt.

“Don’t get much free time,” he said. He squinted at the shirt and poked it. “Ach. An ash must have landed here. I think this has got a hole burnt clean through. Small at least.”

“I can see you are busy.” Saving every forlorn creature in his little corner of the world was busy work. “Is there anything you do when you need, oh, I don’t know, cheering up? Play cards. Go out for a beer. That sort of thing.”

He shook his head. “Can’t, often. My family back home needs every spare penny. Debts.”

“Do you spend all your time here and at work?”

He squeezed the water out of the shirt, threw it into the other pan, and put some other clothes into the tub.

“I see a show now and then. New York has some fine theater. The library is free and . . .” He hesitated. The way he straightened up and began to fiddle with the cuff of his rolled-up shirt sleeve made her wonder if he was about to confess that he murdered and skinned kittens.

“So I do read. And I, uh, play the flute some.”

She forgot she was supposed to feel ill and sat up excitedly. “Oh do you? I love the flute. My brother plays. Do you have one?”

He reached behind the rickety bureau and pulled out a battered wooden instrument that didn’t look like any flute Timona had ever seen.

“It was my da’s. He started to teach me, but then he died. I messed about, but never got proper lessons. Back at home, I could screech on it all day long and no one but the sheep and the cow would care. It’s crowded here, so I don’t like to blow it for too long at a stretch.”

“Please, will you play for me?”

“You certain you want to hear?”

She nodded. “Absolutely.”

He sat straight-backed at the edge of the bed and put the wooden instrument to his mouth. She was not prepared for the quiet, haunting music he played.

“My goodness,” she breathed.

He stopped and grimaced. “I’m not trained, you know, and the animals are not what you’d call good judg—”

“Michael McCann, just play. Please.”

He played for about five minutes. Some of it sounded familiar to her, but not the winding, climbing tunes that grew in complexity and then died away. His music was often sweet but she thought she heard hints of wild and wistful sorrow. Timona had heard beautiful music in her travels, but none that had filled her with such longing. She wished someone would discover dinosaur bones in Ireland so she could follow her father there, and find out if Mick played music from his homeland.

“You are wonderful,” she whispered when he laid the flute on his lap and gazed at a spot on the bed somewhere near her feet.

She would never allow him to play for anyone else. Women would fall in love with him purely because of that flute. Or whatever it was.

He blushed and started mumbling again, nonsense about lack of training, and she interrupted. “Mr. McCann. I have heard musicians from many countries. And I say you are wonderful.”

“Eh, thank you,” he muttered at last.

She must have been under a spell. “Mr. McCann.”

“Mick.”

“Mick. I was just wondering, would you consider marrying me?”

Mistake. He blinked at her. Then, thank goodness, instead of screaming in horror, he laughed. “I play that well?”

She forced herself to smile. “Yes,” she said. “You do.” She cleared her throat. “So you don’t mind if I call you Mick? Would you call me Timona?”

“Timona? What kind of a name is that when it’s at home?”

“I was named for one of Shakespeare’s characters.”

He rubbed his bristly chin and squinted at her as he thought for a moment. “Timon. Wasn’t he the wharyemaycallit? The lad who didn’t care for the company of his fellow man.”

Timona gaped at him. Many well-educated people didn’t know the play
Timon of Athens
—thank goodness.

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Mighty peculiar name to give a baby girl,” he said, and she nodded her vigorous agreement. “D’you mind if I call ye Timmy?”

If anyone else had said such a thing, she might have drawn herself up and said, yes, she did mind. But the way he said it, drawn out in his melodic, slow voice—“Temmay”—was so sweet. And intimate.

“Please. Be my guest,” she said weakly.

He finished washing out his clothes and a stack of the Tucker kids’ clothes. He shoved them into the pan to take out to the clothesline. She pretended to sleep and actually dozed for a while.

She woke to the soft sound of splashing water. He had his back to her. He’d stripped to the waist and was leaning over to rinse off in the large pan.

Well. There stood a sight she would never grow tired of. She wished the board that covered most of the room’s one window was gone and the window faced something other than another building’s wall. Anything so there’d be more sun lighting the scene.

His shoulders and back were almost ivory colored, and smooth. His arms were golden until just above the elbows. Perhaps the tan lingered from his days at the farm, for she did not imagine he rolled up his sleeves on his policeman’s beat.

His back was broad at the top and narrowed down tohis hips. The muscles under his skin moved as he scrubbed at his neck and shoulders.

If she were taking a photograph of a man’s back, this would be the back she’d choose. And the angle she’d want. More light was all that was needed. He’d show up massive, strong as a mountain. Yet his shoulder blades and spine added a delicacy to the lines of his back’s broad planes. As marvelous as any landscape she’d attempted to capture.

He dried off with a ragged towel, then carefully balanced a small mirror on the bureau for shaving. Their eyes met in the mirror.

“Feeling better?” he asked as he swiftly reached down and snatched up an undershirt. He jammed it over his head, to Timona’s regret.

“A little. But I can see you are preparing to go out. We won’t have time to track down my father today, will we.”

He rubbed soapy hands on his face, twisted his cheek towards the mirror and carefully scraped with the straight-edge razor.

“I’ve been thinking. Perhaps we can convince the widow to let you stay the night downstairs. I might be able to take a couple hours off tomorrow, call it police business. That is if you truly need me help. I reckon you don’t, really. If you’re frightened—no, don’t make a face, makes sense you would be—I know a couple o’ street boys who’ll be glad to hire out for protection til you feel more secure. Not all of ’em are bent on destruction as the ones you met up with yesterday.”

She’d have to continue to undermine his efficient planning. On the other hand, she could tell him part of the truth, the part she figured would appeal to him.

“Mr.—um, Mick. I know you are a busy man, but before I leave New York there is one thing I hope you could help me with.”

“Hmm?”

She knew she didn’t imagine the wary look in the eyes that met hers in the little mirror.

“The girl I met yesterday. I think . . . The truth is I don’t think she wants to be in that place. She struck me as too timid to escape, though. And I think there are other girls like her there. And boys, too.”

His eyes looked pained, and she hurried on. “It’s just that I asked Jenny Tucker about it earlier, while we started to clean up her place. She said the police are usually no help in these matters. I know you’re a policeman, so you can tell me that she is wrong and where I should go for help. And . . .”

The wariness was even more pronounced. His hands had stopped and she realized he had not moved. He stood stock still. His eyes stared into hers in the small mirror.

“Mick?” she said hesitantly.

“Aye?”

“Tell me. What shall I do?”

He seemed to wake up. He put down the razor and rubbed his face with the towel. “Let it be. There’s naught you can do. You can’t save every suffering being in the city.” Her heart twisted when she understood he probably often had to repeat those words to himself.

“Mr. McCann. I am not out to save the whole city. That is a job for the police. Not me.”

Again he froze, and she knew that it wasn’t just the hopelessness of sheer numbers that weighed on him.

“Mick?” she said and stopped. Ah. Now she remembered. Her brother had mentioned New York corruption. It was one of the reasons Griffin enjoyed doing business with Tammany Hall.

She spoke slowly. “The man yesterday, at that house. He must pa woomeone in the police department. That’s what Jenny meant. Tell me it isn’t you. Oh, no, Mick.”

“Not me, exactly,” he said slowly as if he talked to himself. “But close enough.”

He turned around and looked at her, as if trying to take her measure. Then he turned his back again. He thumped the bureau violently. She wondered if he was taking his aggression out on the furniture, until she realized the drawers were just sticky.

When he faced her again, he showed her a fist full of disorganized bills. Money. “This is what I get. It’s what all us coppers get, even an unambitious man like myself.”

“Payoff for protection?”

“And for turning our backs,” he said, and with a bark of unamused laughter he added, “You are a smart woman. I was going to give you some, anyway. Go ahead and steal all the money if you need to, Timmy. Just wait until I’m out of here. And whatever you take, leave the flute, if you please.”

She sighed with relief. He wasn’t corrupt, only caught up in a corrupt system. “This job is not for you, Michael McCann. You are too honest and you care. It’ll either kill you or kill the honesty and I don’t know which would be worse.”

He raised his eyebrows. “And in less than one day you know so much about me? No. I don’t think so, Miss Timmy. I like getting money, you know.”

She snickered. “That’s why you’re spending it on a fancy place to live and new clothes.”

The clock outside struck one o’clock.

“Oh blast!” he said. “Would you mind stepping outside? I must get ready. I’m going to be late to see Daisy.”

“Will she raise a fuss?” asked Timona hopefully.

“No, not Daisy. She’s a good-natured girl.”

Hell’s bells.

BOOK: Somebody Wonderful

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