Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

He unzipped his jacket, glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and then pulled out a thick envelope and stuck it in my hand. I stuffed the envelope in my windbreaker without bothering to open it.

“Five g’s,” Johnny Rings said. “And Vinnie says to pass on his thanks.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll see you around, Johnny.”

“The last guy those two jerks popped was my sister’s stepson. I took it personally.” He smiled a vacant smile that would have made a polar bear shiver. “And then I took care of it myself. When we got finished with Elswick and Johnson...”

“I don’t want to know, Johnny.”

He seemed offended but then relaxed. “Oh sure. Loose lips, right?” He slapped my shoulder. “You take care, Charlie. You ever need a favor, call.”

Then he strutted away, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. I touched the envelope in my pocket. I hadn’t tipped Montesi for the money. And as much as I would have liked to pretend that it was true, I hadn’t gone to him out of a relentless desire for justice. It was a matter of survival. I’d rattled Johnson and Elswick, and sooner or later, they’d have made a move on me. I’d told Vinnie Montesi that I didn’t expect money, but he’d insisted that I take a finder’s fee and Little Vinnie was a man who didn’t like to be told no.

Now, I patted the envelope. Just because I’d taken it, didn’t mean I had to keep it. I sat on the bench for a few minutes, watching kids play and thinking what I could do with the cash to make myself feel better. I could give it to charity, drop it in a donation box at Saint Michael’s or make a gift in Don McAllister’s name to my friend the AIDS activist. But none of that was going to happen. I had bills to pay. In the end, Vinnie Montesi’s money would spend as easily and cleanly as anyone else’s.

I lit a cigarette, zipped my jacket, and headed out of the park, doing my best to ignore the wary expressions of the clean-scrubbed and bright-eyed parents I passed on my way to the car. My jacket, my bloodshot eyes, the stale whiskey sweat that seeped from my pores made me suspect, and I knew that despite the lies I told myself, I was as out of place in this bright world as Johnny Rings or Little Vinnie or Elswick and Johnson had ever been. It struck me then, no matter what the reason, if you get dirty enough, it’s damn near impossible to ever get clean. Still, on my way to the car, I slapped a twenty into a panhandling bum’s palm. Then I headed for the Refugee Lounge, where a tired waitress could use a tip large enough to pay an electric bill and the lights were dim enough that no one would notice a few stains that might fade with time.

© 2008 by Tim L. Williams

The appearance of this new Tom Wasp story is timely, for the first novel in the series saw print just a few months ago. See Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner (Five Star Press). Before she became a full-time writer, Ms. Myers worked as a director of a London publishing firm where she edited memoirs and fiction titles that included ghost stories and romances. Look for an Auguste Didier story by this author next month!

Ned would take it into his head that he must have a book.

Now this I approved of, knowing the value of such things, especially for a chimney sweeper’s lad. Even Queen Victoria has a book or two, I’m sure of that. What’s more, this book that he took a fancy to was the Good Book, which I have myself, although my Bible is not such a fine volume as this. When I asked Ned why he liked it, he looked anxious.

“It looks nice, Gov.”

It did. Leather-bound, held together with what looked like a gold clasp, and not even the sign of a nibbling mouse. It was not the sort of thing that you’d normally find in Mrs. Guggins’s dollyshop. We’d only gone there last evening because Ned’s trousers had worn through, and she sells the cheapest rags in Rag Fair. To call it by its proper name, that’s the Rosemary Lane area in London’s East End, but its stink has nothing sweet or fragrant about it. We came across a brown knickerbocker suit, which looked about the right size. Ned was doubtful about it, but I told him it would go with his old stockinette brewer’s cap he’s so fond of. The rules about young chimney sweeps are being tightened up in this year of 1864, so he needs to look smartish. It was a penny the lot, Mrs. Guggins told us, eyes gleaming at the prospect of a sale.

“Throw the book in,” I said grandly, “and we’ll take it.” She didn’t mind. It’s not often she can shift a book, even the Good One.

All the same, I felt there was something strange about this one, and sure as my name’s Tom Wasp, there was. When we got back to our room, and I’d found a lucifer match to light the candle, I opened it. There, taking precedence over Genesis, was the Duke of Wessex’s crest. I knew it well owing to the fact that I have the pleasure of cleaning His Grace’s chimneys in Piccadilly, where that nasty-looking lion on his coat of arms watches you every step you tread, as if he’d gobble you up for a speck of soot. I knew the duke isn’t one for giving away anything (even the tuppence I was rightfully due for the extra chimneys he makes me clean) so I would have known this book was stolen even if I hadn’t heard the patterer on the Ratcliffe Highway shouting out the news of a big robbery in Wessex House a few days ago.

What puzzled me was that the book was just lying there, the crest visible to anyone who opened it. Usually stolen goods are christened first, meaning that all identifying marks are removed. Mrs. Guggins’s dollyshop might look at first like an honest pawnbroker’s, but there are no three balls hanging outside to indicate that. It does its best to hide its face, for it has no licence. Dollyshops cater for the very poorest of folks, often defrauding those who pawn their vital possessions in the hope of finding the dosh to buy them back in due course. Dollyshops all too often have another role, too. They deal in stolen goods, but usually Mrs. Guggins’s showed no signs of that, stinking hole though it is.

Mostly the Fair consists of honest street sellers, trading in all manner of things but chiefly secondhand clothes, some on barrows, some without. The Fair spreads into the side streets off Rosemary Lane, too, where those who aren’t so bothered about the honest bit tend to trade. Mrs. Guggins is one of them; her dollyshop is hidden in Blue Anchor Yard, where she trades from the ground floor of her house.

Mr. Guggins was only in evidence as a familiar figure weaving his way back to the dollyshop after a good session at the Paddy Goose or some other hostelry in London’s dockland. He was an evil-looking man, hunched and bent, with a way of studying the ground until you passed by. Then his head would shoot up, glaring malevolently, as though he’d like to meet you by night down by the docks with a knife in his hand and no questions asked.

“Tomorrow we take that book back, Ned,” I said firmly. “No use having a Good Book if it’s got by evil means. You’d be foolish to keep it.”

Ned looked torn. He knows from his Sunday school that Our Lord has his eye on those that steal, but on the other hand he always hopes it’s temporarily shut.

Next morning we set off for the Fair on our way to our first job. It was early yet and only the oyster and hot chestnut sellers were plying their trade in Rag Fair. Another few hours and you wouldn’t be able to move for old petticoats, shawls, and broken-down boots. Mind you, chimney sweeps such as I, Tom Wasp, can always move onwards owing to our smell. The folks we pass are only too anxious for us to be on our way, and the Red Sea parts like it did for Moses.