Dennis Lehane (Editor) - Boston Noir

Anna threw the rest of the beer onto the floor, followed it with the last of the wine from the bottle. No sense in taking chances. She had a long night ahead of her. She could barely move Hook on her own. Slender though she was, she was strong from hauling water and kegs and wood from the time she could walk, but he was nearly two hundred pounds of dead meat. She’d planned this, though, with as much meticulousness as she planned everything in her life. Everything that could be anticipated, that is. Thomas’s ill-conceived greediness she hadn’t counted on, nor Miller’s interest in her place. These were hard lessons and dearly bought.

She would be better. She would manage.

She went to the back, brought out the barrow used to move stock. With careful work, and a little luck, Anna tipped Miller from his chair into the barrow, and, struggling to keep her balance, wheeled him out of the public room into the back kitchen ell. She left him there, out of sight, and checked again that the back door was still barred. She twitched the curtain so that it hung completely over the small window.

Lighting a taper from the fireplace, she considered her plan. A change of clothes, from silk into something for scut work. She had hours of dirty business ahead of her, as bad and dirty as slaughtering season, but really, it was no different from butchering a hog.

A small price to pay for her freedom and the time to plan how better to keep it.

Holding the taper, she hurried up the narrow back stairs to the chamber over the public room. When she opened the door, her breath caught in her throat. There was a lit candle on the table across from her bed.

Adam Seaver was sitting in her best chair.

Anna felt her mouth parch. Although she’d half expected to be interrupted in her work, she hadn’t thought it would be in her own chamber. But Seaver had wanted to see what she’d do-he’d said so himself. She swallowed two or three times before she could ask.

“How?”

“You should nail up that kitchen window. It’s too easy to reach in and shove the bar from the door. Then up the stairs, just as you yourself came. But not before I watched you with Miller.” He pulled an unopened bottle from his pocket, cut the red wax from the stopper, opened it. “I’ll pour my own drinks, thanks. What is the verse? After she gave him drink, Jael went unto him with a peg of the tent and smote the nail into his temple?”

“Near enough.”

“A mistake teaching women to read. But then, if you couldn’t read, you couldn’t figure your books, and you wouldn’t have such a brisk business as you do.” He drank. “A double-edged sword. But as nice a bit of needlework as I’ve ever seen from a lady.”

Keep breathing, Anna. You’re not done yet. “What now?” She thought of the pistol in the trunk by the bed, the knife under her pillow. They might as well have been at the bottom of the harbor.

“A bargain. You’re a widow with a tavern, I’m the agent of an important man. You also have a prime piece of real estate, and an eye on everything that happens along here. And, it seems, an eye to advancement. I think we can deal amiably enough, and to our mutual benefit.”

At that moment, Anna almost wished Seaver would just cut her throat. She’d never be free of this succession of men, never able to manage by herself. The rage welled up in her, as it had never done before, and she thought she would choke on it. Then she remembered the paper hidden in her shoe, the document that made the tavern and its business wholly her own, and how she’d fought for it. She’d be damned before she handed it over to another man.

But she saw Seaver watching her carefully and it came to her. Perhaps like Miller not immediately grasping that the obvious next move for him was civil life and nearly legitimate trade-with all its fat skimming-she was not ambitious enough. Instead of mere survival, relying on the tavern, she could parlay it into more. Working with Seaver, who, after all, was only the errand boy of one of the most powerful-and dangerous-men in New England, she might do more than survive. She saw the beginning of a much wider, much richer future.

The whole world open to her, if she kept sharp. If she could be better than she was.

She went over to the mantel, took down a new bottle, opened it, poured herself a drink. Raised the glass.

She would pour her own drinks, and Seaver would pour his own.

She would manage.

“To our mutual benefit,” she toasted.

Boston Harbor

She was waiting for me when I came back from the corner store and I stopped, giving her a quick scan. She had on a dark blue dress, black sensible shoes, and a small blue hat balanced on the back of thick brown hair. She held a small black leather purse in her hands, like she knew she was in a dangerous place and was frightened to lose it. On that last part, she was right, for it was evening and she was standing in Scollay Square, with its lights, horns, music, honky-tonks, burlesque houses, and hordes of people with sharp tastes who came here looking for trouble, and more often than not, found it.

I brushed past a group of drunk sailors in their dress blues as I got up to my corner, the sailors no doubt happy that with the war over, they didn’t have to worry about crazed kamikazes smashing into their gun turrets, burning to death out there in the Pacific. They were obviously headed to one of the nearby bars. There were other guys out there as well, though I could always identify the ones who were recently discharged vets: they moved quickly, their eyes flicking around, and whenever there was a loud horn or a backfire from a passing truck, they would freeze in place.

And then, of course, they would unfreeze. There were years of drinking and raising hell to catch up on.

I shifted my paper grocery sack from one hand to the other and approached the woman, touched the brim of my fedora with my free hand. “Are you waiting for me?” I asked.

Her face was pale and frightened, like a young mom seeing blood on her child for the very first time. “Are you Billy Sullivan?”

“Yep.”

“Yes, I’m here to see you.”

I shrugged. “Then follow me, miss.”

I moved past her and opened the wooden door that led to a small foyer, and then upstairs, the wooden steps creaking under our footfalls. At the top, a narrow hallway led off, three doors on each side, each door with a half-frame of frosted glass. Mine said, B. Sullivan, Investigations , and two of the windows down the hallway were blank. The other three announced a watchmaker, a piano teacher, and a press agent.

I unlocked the door, flicked on the light, and walked in. There was an old oak desk in the center with my chair, a Remington typewriter on a stand, and two solid filing cabinets with locks. In front of the desk were two wooden chairs, and I motioned my guest to the nearest one. A single window that hadn’t been washed since Hoover was president overlooked the square and its flickering neon lights.

“Be right back,” I said, ducking through a curtain off to the side. Beyond the curtain was a small room with a bed, radio, easy chair, table lamp, and icebox. A closed door led to a small bathroom that most days had plenty of hot water. I put a bottle of milk away, tossed the bread on a counter next to the toaster and hot plate, and returned to the office. I took off my coat and hat, and hung both on a coat rack.

The woman sat there, leaning forward a bit, like she didn’t want her back to be spoiled by whatever cooties resided in my office. She looked at me and tried to smile. “I thought all private detectives carried guns.”

I shook my head. “Like the movies? Roscoes, heaters, gats, all that nonsense? Nah, I saw enough guns the last couple of years. I don’t need one, not for what I do.”