Archive of Our Own

As far as Ann Duncan was concerned, the least reassuring words in the world were “there’s nothing to worry about.” She’d heard them innumerable times in the nearly-three-decades of her life, and with the exception of her father, who always knew what wasn’t worth worrying over, she’d discovered nobody who said them seemed to know what the hell they were talking about.

This time was no different. Even without prior experience she’d have known better than to trust the valuation of Sergeant Olson, who was God’s gift to every argument in favor of murder-for-hire she’d ever heard. He was sharp-tempered and slow-witted, and on the books of at least five different criminal enterprises operating in the area. So when she respectfully expressed some reluctance about the assignment as he’d explained it to her, and he said there was nothing to worry about, her apprehension increased tenfold.

“Really, nothing at all,” he insisted. “Lucy Moskowitz has got in over her head and she’ll be desperate for a way out. Barely more than five-and-twenty and she’s already gone and got herself named head of the Moskowitz empire after her uncle turned up his toes last month.”

“That hardly seems usual,” Ann murmured. “That he would leave it to her, I mean.”

Olson frowned.

“I didn’t ask how you felt about Lionel Moskowitz’s dispersal of his holdings,” he said repressively. “But as it happens, no, it’s not. There’s nobody left they like for the job; I suppose they think his niece is somebody to be led around by the nose, so that gives them an inroad if they want it. But we’d like to keep them from making use of her. Want to shut down that particular piece of the dockyard business before it all gets too big for us to—eh—keep an eye on.”

Ann coolly subbed “keep a rein on” for that final sentence, but prudently chose not to betray her understanding of the graft system as it functioned out of their particular precinct. When you had mostly chosen your career path to prove to your father that this was 1934 and girls these days had options, so no, he couldn’t have your life go all his own way . . . you learned pretty fast when not to stick your oar in.

Which was hard luck for Ann, as it seemed Olson wanted her for this job and she was running out of ways to refuse.

“We need her to come in, see? Maybe give us a few of the second-tier Moskowitz names. We’ll give her immunity from prosecution; she’s not cut out for this life, by all accounts. Nice little gal. Started off life in the city, but when her dad died I guess the mother took her back to England for a spell. Went to good schools, finished someplace in Paris . . . all the right stuff.”

“What’s she done since then?”

“Nothing we’ve heard about. Hasn’t hardly had the time to do anything, I should think.”

“I see.” Ann gathered the folder that contained these particulars. “You want me to bring her in.”

“Not arrest her. Persuade her. Woman to woman. You’ve got the right background for that. She wants a nice soft touch; gentle stuff. That life’s no path for a lady to take. Pretty gal like her makes a nice credible witness, especially when she’s sniffling into her hanky on account of she doesn’t want to betray her family loyalties. Say, d’you suppose you could convince her to enter a convent?” He brightened at the prospect. “That’d look real good, her becoming a nun.”

Ann frowned.

“Is she Roman Catholic?”

“No, the other thing. Why? Does it matter?”

“Chiefly to the Roman Catholics. They don’t like you to be a nun if you aren’t.”

“All right, not a nun, but get to work on her either way. We’ve got you an interview as her secretary. You go in like that and gain her confidence. Nice sheltered girl, probably desperate for a friend. You’ll have her persuaded within the week.”

Ann knew better than to read this as a high tribute to her ability. More likely it was his low estimation of Lucy Moskowitz that had led him to imagine the only niece of Lionel Moskowitz would be anything like an easy mark.

But it was an assignment, and no matter how much credit Olson managed to take for it, she supposed some of it might still be bound to spill over onto her. So she put her second-best smile on her face and said sure, swell; when did she start?

Ann had her interview the following Thursday. Not under her actual name, of course; that would never do. Her family name was folded up neatly and put in a cupboard and Ann Beverly rose to the occasion.

In preparation she consulted several pamphlets and periodicals meant to advise the Professional Woman on all particulars of dress and demeanor. On the basis of their advice Ann assembled an interview outfit comprised of brown and not-exactly-white garments topped off with a soft, depressing hat. The arrangement of her hair gave her trouble, as it was rather more red than brown and therefore more interesting than she preferred, but she combed it down flat over her ears and hoped that would be enough. Even so, she was conscious of mounting unease as the taxi deposited her on the pavement at the appointed time and she climbed the steps of the wide, pale townhouse.

Despite Olson’s assurance that little gals like Lucy Moskowitz didn’t want things typed, she was pretty sure not being able to type or take dictation of any sort was a serious blow against her chances. And if her other efforts at obscuring herself had failed . . . well, it would all be over before it started.

To Ann’s relief the maid admitted her to the front hall without anything like unusual interest. She took Ann’s name and disappeared upstairs to “inform Madam,” which was encouraging. Even if it didn’t work out, Ann supposed she could at least have a look around and gather any information that might be of use before reporting her failure to the station.

“Oh hello there!”

Ann jerked out of her reverie at the sound of the cheery salutation. It came from a diminutive, dark-haired girl who was fairly flying down the stairs in a flurry of white lace, deep blue satin and apologetic smiles.

“How do you do, Miss Beverly. I had meant to be all set up like I knew what I was doing, but time got completely away from me and next thing I knew Mavis was saying you were here and I was wearing next to nothing and wondering where the hell the past two hours had gone. But that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” She grabbed Ann’s hand in a brisk little squeeze-and-shake. “Keep me all up to date, right? Well, that and the other thing.”

Ann, unaware of any other thing, focused unduly on where Lucy’s hand joined with her own. Lucy’s hands were soft in a way that her grip was not. Her voice was bright and clear, like notes of sunlight striking crystal . . . and when the hell, Ann wondered aggressively, did I ever take to poetry?

She forced herself to look this niece of a recently-murdered crime kingpin directly in the eye. Lucy smiled back, and her eyes smiled too. Deep, dark blue eyes, like unfathomed sea . . . the kind of waters where you might quickly find yourself in over your head.

Ann swallowed.

Well goddamn, this was inconvenient.

“I . . . I am . . . my references, Madam,” she belatedly presented the file. Lucy held it out in front of her like a kind of stage prop she hadn’t had time to rehearse with yet.

“Oh yes. That’s just right. I’m sure it will all be in order. Now will you please do me the enormous favor of coming along into the study, and pretend that’s where I was waiting for you? That way we can imagine that we either of us know what we’re doing.”

It was an odd choice of phrase. If Ann had been a little less bowled over by the tiny dynamo of sparkling eyes and clear voice and thoroughly disarming candor, she would have noticed it. Instead she followed blindly down the hall to a room near the back of the house, a masculine installation of heavy dark wood panel and rich red carpet, utterly at odds with the airy little personality who took up residence behind a desk far too large for her frame. Lucy attempted a mask of solemnity then promptly ruined her own efforts to that end by exclaiming “damn, my feet don’t reach. I’ll need a different chair.”

This she procured for herself, mostly, though at the end of her efforts to drag the heavy leather executive seat out of its place Ann finally snapped to her senses and bent her own shoulder to the task. Together they shifted the chair, Lucy thanked her prettily and shoved a smaller side chair into its place, which she assumed with visible pleasure.

“Oh that’s much better. I am afraid Uncle Lionel was ever so tall; I should have expected his chair would be too. But won’t you please sit down? We must do this as properly as we can.”

Ann was starting to feel she had fallen into an entirely sideways state of being. She sat, unfeeling, on the chair facing Lucy across the desk. She made some polite phrase of introduction, a rehearsed explanation of her understanding of the position, which Lucy listened to solemnly all the way through.

“Yes that sounds right,” she said. “And I can tell you would probably carry it off very nicely, I don’t want you to imagine I don’t think so. But I wasn’t much good at amateur theatricals in school, so will you forgive me if I’d rather not pretend I don’t know you’re a police detective? I could try, but I wouldn’t come close to doing it justice. And that would be unfair to you, because you’re doing it all so well.”

Ann was deeply glad of the chair that bore her weight, because her knees certainly weren’t up to the task.

She considered, fleetingly, declaiming all knowledge of what Lucy meant. She considered even more fleetingly asking her exactly how much she knew. But Lucy was smiling so earnestly it didn’t seem fair not to confirm as much as she did know.

“I can’t think of a reason not to,” Ann said, “since you already know anyway. But I think my supervising officer would be a lot less than pleased.”

“Oh don’t worry about him,” Lucy said vaguely. “I think he’s being shot today, or threatened, or having his knees put out or something like. I wasn’t exactly listening, but my cousin Davy was talking about it. He said it was all due to the Sergeant double-dealing with the Russians over the Serbs . . . or maybe it was the Slavs. I’m afraid I don’t have a very firm grasp of the thing quite yet.”

“The thing?”

“Well . . . this.” Lucy nodded around them. “The whole affair. It’s not at all what I expected to do, but I suppose I can disband a criminal empire as handily as the next person. Only I’d rather none of us got killed in the process, nor any angry people overlooked long enough that they can turn around to seek revenge when I’m not expecting it, so I think that will want a bit of organizing. That’s why I need a secretary.”

Ann floundered through this sea of information, searching desperately for one concrete statement to buoy her up.

“You want to disband it?”

“Of course. Do you have any notion of how dangerous this all is?”

“Academically, yes. Practically . . . I should say not.”

“Well you can take my word that it’s far too hot to handle. My goodness, the headache I’ve had ever since the funeral! And then to find out Uncle Lionel had named me his successor when I had never dreamed of such a thing and certainly never trained for it. I would almost call it unkind, doing this to me, but I suppose I shouldn’t because he’s dead.

“At first I thought I could hand it all off to somebody else kind of off-the-rack, as it were, and tell them to run it instead, only it turns out that’s the way to get the fellow you give it to shot in the street or stabbed in an alley or however the hell it is we do those things. Naturally I wouldn’t want that.”

Ann mechanically reviewed her mental catalogue of relevant information.

“I believe the Moskowitz family is particularly known for stabbings. A few fires. One time there was a group that got it with cudgels and a tip into the river. Mostly stabbings.”

“There, you see!” Lucy looked at her with frank admiration. “Isn’t that exactly the sort of thing I should know? But I am completely at sea. I think I am a little safe for now, because nobody especially wants to get rid of me as it would mean that somebody more experienced would end up in my place and be that much trickier to unseat, but I don’t believe I can rely on people to stay sensible forever. So we will need to act quickly and efficiently and I can already tell by looking at you that you are the very soul of efficiency.”

Ann, unconscious of being any such thing and certainly unconscious of looking it, made murmured declamation to the title. Lucy dismissed this as false modesty and ordered Ann to cut it out.

“I could hire a more ordinary kind of secretary, but I am afraid she would be useless for some of what I need her to know how to do. So it was either hire somebody from the police or somebody from the family, and though I trust the police as a group a little less, I think I can see my way clear to trusting the police as an individual a little more. Not that you are The Police, but you are One of Their Number, and most remarkably I can’t find any evidence of you ever having accepted financial consideration from us or anybody else we work with, so I think, overall, that rather speaks to your character. We’re really the most awful people, you know.”

Ann made mechanical noises of disbelief. Lucy said Ann was too kind.

“So,” she finished brightly, “will you take the job?”

Ann was glad to be asked again. It gave her the opportunity to pretend she’d only just made up her mind in the study, rather than having known the moment she saw Lucy flying down the staircase that she would do whatever it took to have the chance to say yes.

Disbanding a criminal empire, Ann thought, should not be this difficult. Certainly it shouldn’t be easy, but the criminal empire also shouldn’t seem to fight back against the act of its own dissolution, as if the empire itself desired nothing more than to thrive in the care of Lucy Moskowitz.

It wasn’t Lucy’s fault. She was simply so very bad at dismantling it and so devastatingly good at accidentally building it that they couldn’t seem to make headway no matter what they tried.

They started off with a thorough review of the Moskowitz crime family holdings, and quickly settled on the Jersey docks as the easiest piece to offload. Lucy said she wanted it to go to somebody who would appreciate it without actually being able to run it at all, so she chose Bruno.

“He’s an absolute lamb. Used to walk me to grammar school when I was a child, and managed to stay alive all those years I was away. I would like him to have some docks of his own. I’m sure he’s no head for business but it would make him happy to be trusted, and I certainly trust him to ruin the thing with all speed.”

Ann made a note of it, and they gave the dock to Bruno.

Bruno, it turned out, was Bruno the Butcher, who got his start with the Moskowitz family by cutting the throats of all Lionel’s chief rivals and hanging them, curatively, over the gallery steps of whatever property had been the site of their first offence against his employer. A brutal kind of artistry, Ann and Lucy agreed, and in hindsight it was exactly what they should have expected of a man whose face looked like a slab of raw meat and who communicated principally in a series of monosyllables and grunts, except when he was smiling at Lucy with all the besotted adoration of a large dog who had just been handed a kitten for his exclusive worship.

Thanks to Bruno’s method of dealing with his business rivals they had complete control of the shipping concern by Thanksgiving, and the revenues generated by this expansion were such that Lucy suggested Ann might like to take a raise and get herself a place on the park.

“Of course it can’t last forever,” she said, when Ann delicately observed that this was actually a step in entirely the wrong direction. “But why shouldn’t you enjoy it while it does?”

So Ann took a little place on the park, as befitted her increase in salary. Her new supervisor at the precinct, who was quite the opposite of Olson in that he was a rather genial man with both kneecaps still intact, took this as a sign that she was getting on well with Lucy and told her to keep it up.

Their next angle of attack was to tip their hand to the police and a few rival crime families about a number of deals about to go down. They hoped that doing so would generate infighting of such a nature that would splinter several key supports and fragment the organizational structure of their own business.

To get the necessary information, Lucy held a number of Christmas parties where she plied her relations and employees with enough alcohol to pickle every proponent of the former Volstead Act five times over. She and Ann gathered every scrap of drunken gossip they overheard, and set out to pass along enough information to dissolve a number of deals and tenuous alliances as well as, incidentally, three marriages (“and no great loss to them,” Lucy decided, “the way they behave to each other. My goodness we really are quite awful people.”)

In hindsight, they ought not to have done it all in a heap like that. The effect of so many deals collapsing at once was the generation of a hideous power vacuum into which the fingers of the Moskowitz crime empire were obliged to extend, like so many little Dutch boys stopping up a leaking dike. The day following its execution Lucy found herself effectively in possession of half the Manhattan concerns, to say nothing of the most splitting headache.

“I think,” she murmured from beneath a cold compress, which Ann sat close at hand to change as needed, “maybe I had better take a break from destroying my business until the New Year. Until I can get the hang of it.”

Ann agreed that the aggressive dismantling of a criminal enterprise was certainly proving rather beyond Lucy’s skillset at present, so maybe some more careful study was warranted.

“In the meantime,” Lucy brightened, “let’s see about a Christmas tree. Mother let me have a Christmas tree when I was growing up, and I liked it ever so much. Let’s get two; one for each of the front rooms. Wouldn’t that look lovely?”

Ann agreed it would, and, as a result of being the person in the house who was most experienced in such matters, left Lucy to cool under her compress and went in search of two Christmas trees.

On her return she was met by a group of exultant Moskowitz family connections, arrived to toast their improbable ascension to tenuous power. They cheered themselves raucously, a formerly bottom-tier family suddenly shot to the top of a geographic region they hadn’t half the necessary numbers to properly control.

“And as long as the Scottish keep fighting each other instead of the rest of us,” Davy Moskowitz slurred, raising his many-times-emptied glass, “we might just have a damn prayer of staying on top!”

An affirmative, indistinct roar of agreement went up all around him. Ann thought it was neither her place or at all prudent to damp the light of their joy, and so merely enlisted two of the men with the widest arms and most obliging expressions to set up the trees.

“But I didn’t ask them to clip the candles on,” she concluded her report to her employer, whose compress had begun to warm in her absence, “because you could see every one of them was stinking drunk and nobody needs a house fire for the holidays.”

“Quite right,” Lucy sighed. She accepted the replacement compress Ann settled on her forehead, and, when Ann made as if to return to her seat, put out a hand to stop her.

“Oh—could you come closer? It’s begun to throb, and I thought if you didn’t mind pressing your fingers here,” she gestured vaguely at her temples, “it might help. I know it’s nothing like your usual job description, but—“

“Not at all,” Ann said hoarsely. She took Lucy’s head in her lap and began a gentle, precise massage of the area.

“My goodness,” Lucy sighed, “you’re quite good at that.”

When Ann explained she used to perform a similar service for her mother, Lucy was intrigued.

“You mustn’t mind me saying it, but it’s odd to think of you as somebody with a mother. You’re so competent. I can’t ever imagine you having had somebody—well—do things for you, as a mother does. What’s she like?”

“Dead.”

Lucy opened her mouth to apologize, but Ann shushed her.

“Don’t be silly, it was forever ago. Before I even left school.”

“And your father? Is he . . . still?”

“Yes, but I chucked him ages ago. He doesn’t like that I have this career, and I don’t like that he thinks he has any right to more than an opinion about it.”

“Mmm. Well, if it’s part of how I got you all to myself, I suppose I can’t pretend to be too sorry. This feels heavenly.”

“I’m glad.” Ann traced Lucy’s hairline lightly with her fingertips, and Lucy’s eyelids drooped in deep contentment.

“Oh, that’s simply divine . . . though I suppose,” she reflected drowsily, “in my new position I shouldn’t like just any old person to have access to my head. I imagine it’s got quite a price on it by now.”

Ann, disliking the prickles of misgiving that this observation generated, murmured that Lucy had better rest and think about such things another time.

“Very well,” said Lucy. “If you think it best.”

She drifted off to sleep soon after, and Ann kept watch until she woke.

They rang the New Year in with a great deal of drink and even more food. Lucy, now in possession of several empty buildings, decided they would be converted to places of entertainment for the families that had been so recently in command of them, as she felt there was no point in breeding more bad feeling.

The result of this kind gesture was everybody got roaringly drunk, a handful of exceptionally unpleasant up-and-comers got mown down in the streets on their way home (“and it’s no use saying they should have looked where they were going,” Lucy said sadly, “because by all accounts they’d got to such a stage they might not even have known they were outdoors, never mind in the middle of the road”) and the majority of opposition to Lucy’s new position melted away like the city’s one feeble attempt at a proper snowstorm (it turned quickly into rain and drizzled grey disappointment over everyone).

“I don’t suppose I could simply surrender to the police?” Lucy speculated. She and Ann had just got in from lunch at one of many Lower East Side establishments where Lucy’s money was no longer any good. The food had been Italian, notable for both its quantity and quality, and the overgenerous profusion of spicy, tomato-y deliciousness for which Lucy had been forbidden to pay anything more than a compliment was having a deleterious effect on her conscience.

“Didn’t you say they knew I was no good at this? That could be my way out. I could say you’d talked me into giving up. Whatever they want me to say, I’m ready to say it! You’d get a promotion from detective, surely, and I could finally be rid of all this.”

“Yes that was how it started, but that was back in October, when nobody knew how far this would go. These days you’re a damn sight too good at everything except the actual being-rotten-at-this part. I’m afraid they’re no longer likely to believe you’re unversed in the running of a crime syndicate.”

“But I am!” Lucy wailed. Ann patted her hand in real sympathy.

“I know, honey, but you must see it doesn’t look like it. You run most of Manhattan, not to mention that whole section in Jersey. Plus, I think the thing Davy’s little group did with the railroad yesterday went entirely wrong, so unless the Coombs brothers come out of their coma soon you’ll probably control the Brotherhood of Railwaymen Local 79 chapter as well.”

“I don’t want a union!” cried poor Lucy. “Can’t we tell them to take charge of themselves?”

“Oh not that one,” said Ann. “They’re a mess. It’s how they ended up paying protection to begin with. The Scottish were a sight too keen to take charge, so the Irish stepped in to make trouble and the union didn’t have much choice other than to buy in. Maybe next year they’d be ready to stand on their own, but I don’t think it would be wise to oblige them to any sooner.”

“How dreadful. Well, at least we will stop taking such a portion of their dues. Could we use it to pay for night classes? Improving lectures? That might help them get ready sooner.”

Ann privately doubted it, but promised she would see what could be done.

It turned out such a portion of the dues had been appropriated that not only could they finance improving lectures, they also funded suppers, socials and a small school for the education of the members’ children. By Easter the Local 79 had become such a going concern they had expanded to regional status, encompassing the entire upstate railway system.

“This is becoming impossible,” Lucy muttered. She and Ann inspected the map tacked up on the wall of the study, an increasingly complex tangle of thread and pins denoting the boundaries and subsidiaries of the territory now under Lucy’s control. “If it keeps up we’ll soon be well into Connecticut.”

“We’ve already got a going concern in Rhode Island,” Ann observed. “My Sergeant says he’s liaising with seven different precincts now, as a sort of professional courtesy. You’re everywhere these days and it’s made a mess for them. But he thinks I have done an absolutely ripping job of gaining your confidence.”

“So you have,” Lucy assured her. “I trust you absolutely.”

“Yes but I don’t think it’s the sort of trust he has in mind, and I’m positive that I’m not supposed to reciprocate.”

“Oh!” said Lucy. “Do you, though?”

Ann looked down at her in considerable surprise.

“Lucy, didn’t you know? Of course I—I mean, yes. I’d trust you with my—“

She stopped. Swallowed.

“Yes. I trust you.”

Lucy’s cheeks were pink.

“Oh.”

Ann looked at her in considerable amazement.

“My dear, did you really not know?”

“Well,” Lucy declaimed modestly, “one doesn’t like to assume. And I do appear to be some sort of criminal mastermind into the bargain, though goodness only knows how I managed to become one.”

“Oh that! Pure accident. Don’t forget, I watched it happen.”

“Yes but even so. I don’t feel like I am the sort of person a nice girl should be able to trust.”

Ann smiled a little helplessly.

“D’you know, these days I’m not entirely sure if I am a nice girl anymore?”

Or even if I ever was, she thought, remembering the things her blood and brain had done at the sight of Lucy as she’d first seen her, perched at the top of the staircase like something more than worth the climb.

“Ann,” Lucy said gently, “you are absolutely the nicest girl I know.”

There seemed nothing for it after that but to kiss her, except Ann missed the cheek she meant to aim for and got her mouth instead. Lucy’s lips were soft and full. They tasted of the peppermint she’d had after lunch.

Ann drew back, very warm, too giddy to apologize.

“I hope that was all right,” she said. “If it wasn’t, I . . . well, I blame my height. I’m not used to stooping to kiss pretty girls.”

Lucy smiled shyly.

“I’ll fetch a chair.”

June was when it completely got away from them, though Lucy insisted that this time you almost couldn’t blame her at all. It was an accident of timing.

Ann said yes, but hell, what an accident.

As the new branch of the Moskowitz Syndicate was in process of assuming control of a chain of stills it had won in a poker game (“I’ve never even played before,” Lucy fretted, “is this a good hand?” She laid a royal flush on the table with an air of anxious apology that was so transparently sincere, it nearly made up for the fact she’d just won the Tate family’s entire means of livelihood off the table, where their patriarch had been fool enough to wager it) the reigning Atlanta families elected to have a bloody falling-out, creating another power vacuum.

“Naturally we had to step in. Couldn’t leave all those gambling concerns to go to hell,” David Moskowitz said virtuously. “I mean now could I?”

“No of course not, Davy,” Lucy agreed. “Only what will we do with them?”

“Take ‘em over and give ‘em ten percent more to keep than they were making before,” Davy said promptly. “They won’t say boo.”

Lucy said all right then, and put him in charge of Atlanta with such a generous commission of his own that the fledgling thought Davy had nurtured of maybe one day double-dealing her died on the spot.

“I suppose it’s all very well,” Lucy said, as she and Ann toured the Newport property they intended to buy for their weekends away. “At least it gets Davy out of the city. You did say he was starting to look more ambitious than any boy with his age and face ever had any right to look.

“But now the Scottish are nosing in around everything Davy used to run, and I don’t trust his seconds to handle them half as effectively as Davy used to. He always said one has to be careful when dealing with the Scots. They don’t behave like most of the families. Terribly insular, you know. It makes them all the more dangerous.”

“I’d heard that too,” said Ann. “Maybe something can be arranged.”

“Arranged! Ann, I don’t want any more arrangements. I think I’m two arrangements away from running half the country. Look, it’s been nine months since you said you’d help me get rid of this whole business and now I have almost half the east coast sewn up so tight I’m worried I couldn’t get rid of it even if I soaked the whole thing in kerosene and put a match to it.”

“You’re right about that. We have excellent fire insurance.”

“Oh! My most maddeningly sensible darling,” sighed Lucy, and Ann, undone by such flattery, had to kiss her on the spot.

They returned to the city to the news that Davy’s lieutenant, whose face was too new to be known in Atlanta, had got himself killed. However the Florida family whose heady young offspring had done the shooting were anxious not to make trouble, and professed an eagerness to cut them in on their Miami concern for the next three years.

“Damn,” said Lucy. “We’ll need another accountant.”

“I’ll hire two,” said Ann, who had a pretty good idea of what the Miami concern entailed. “Just in case.”

Ann’s latest increase of salary, a direct result of the horrific success of their new Miami concern, was such that she was all at once overcome by the need to spend money irresponsibly.

Frivolity was a foreign sensation. Her first instinct was to master the urge, but once she had accustomed her mind to it, she realized Lucy’s birthday was less than two weeks away. That, at least, seemed a sensible excuse for extravagance, so she went to a store she had not visited since she was much younger, back when her mother had been able to have any door she liked opened with only a Look.

Ann did not resemble her mother in the least but she looked very much like her father, so there was no difficulty over getting in; only in persuading them to take her money.

“Haven’t seen you in ages, Annie,” the proprietor marvelled. “Little lass in green ribbons you were, with the devil’s own temper! Now look at you. I don’t mind saying it doesn’t sit well with me, asking your father’s daughter for money, but if you insist . . .”

Ann did.

The item she chose came with a significant tag attached, but she had expected as much. There was no second-guessing the provenance of the egg, and that was the main thing. She accepted his discreet congratulations but declined his offer to wrap it.

“I’ll see to that myself, Clive. Thanks anyway.”

Clive asked her not to mention it, and she said the same.

“Not to worry, Annie.” He laid a finger aside his nose. “They won’t hear it from me.”

She had believed him, too. But love did that, didn’t it? It made you soft.

She hummed to herself as she wrapped it, doing the egg up in a cloud of filmy tissue, each sheet a different color than the last, so that the gift she set at Lucy’s breakfast plate was a riotous rainbow of dainty layers that, when peeled back, revealed an even more delicate masterpiece within.

“Oh,” said Lucy, turning it round in real awe. “Oh, Ann.”

She spent the morning exclaiming over the workmanship of Fabergé. Then she spent the afternoon exclaiming over the workmanship of Ann’s maker, having first enthusiastically peeled off the layers of clothing that obscured the treasure she sought. Ann, in turn, had scooped her up and laid her down on the bed as though she were as dainty a creation as her own birthday gift.

Ann had a soft touch when she wanted to, and that afternoon she wanted to very much indeed.

It was, Lucy said drowsily, some considerable time later, the absolute best birthday she’d ever had.

“Well don’t get too comfortable,” Ann laughed. “It isn’t over yet. I’ve made dinner plans.”

What she neglected to mention, because she had neglected to consider it, was that in a thoroughly unguarded moment she had made the reservation under her own name. Not Lucy’s name, which would have garnered a certain respect without alarm, nor even her false name, which would have garnered no attention at all, but simply her own.

If she’d realized her slip-up, she would have been on her guard the moment Lucy’s chauffeur made his excuses. A bad chowder, he explained. He wouldn’t offend them with the details, but he was in no condition to work that night.

It was so last minute, Lucy didn’t like to ask anybody else to step in for the evening, so they took a cab.

The Carlyle, of course, was not one of Lucy’s. It was as high-class an affair as Ann had ever indulged in at any stage of her existence, but dining there with Lucy sparkling across the table at her . . . her stomach lurched up into her ribcage in a manner that had nothing to do with the chowder.

She could get used to this.

They came out of the restaurant at the end of a decadent meal to find another cab already waiting. They’d had a little too much of the good stuff to think better of it, and simply got in. Ann didn’t even tumble to the mistake until they’d missed the third-best turn to get home, but on noticing, she sobered at once.

“Goddamn,” she whispered. Lucy went very still.

“Ann . . ?”

“Shh, my sweet. I need to think a moment.”

Lucy at once went obligingly quiet. Ann sat, tense and erect, on the edge of the seat. They were going uptown, but too far north. Too far west.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she whispered. Then, abruptly, she turned to Lucy and bore her down on the seat, giggling loudly, stage-whispering a number of things that under any other circumstances would have made her blush to say even in private, never mind with their faceless chauffeur mere inches above their heads.

“Look here, darling,” she murmured in Lucy’s ear, wondering a little at her own ability to sound so calm, “I’m afraid we’re being kidnapped.”

“What,” Lucy gasped under a positive onslaught of kisses she’d have enjoyed under any other circumstances, “right now?”

“This very moment.”

“Oh that’s nerve!”

It was a damn sight more than that, but Ann didn’t have the breath or even time to tell her how much more, never mind why. Instead she fit her arms around Lucy’s waist, drew her close and breathed,

“If I am right, this is going to get ugly fast. I need you to promise that if there is even a chance of escape, and I tell you to run, you will do it.”

“I certainly will not!” Lucy scowled, and so emphatic was her refusal that it carried right up to the driver, who risked a curious glance back.

“Tease!” Ann shrilled, bright and false. They had almost no time left. Lucy had to see it her way. She bent down and trailed a very audible string of kisses up one side of Lucy’s neck, to a point just below her ear.

“Come on, honey,” she said, much softer. Her mouth hovered above Lucy’s earlobe; her breath stirred the soft dark hair at her temple and her nose was filled with the sweet, bright notes of her perfume, all woodsy florals with a hint of musk. So I’ll smell more grown-up, Lucy had confided, when she chose it. For I know full well I don’t look it!

“I need you to trust me. Please believe I only want to get you out of it alive.” The cab was slowing. They were out of time. “All right?”

Lucy was staring up at her, suddenly uncertain. That was the worst moment. None of the rest of it would truly compare with that look on Lucy’s face, the moment that Ann saw her start to doubt; to wonder.

They had stopped. There were already men, dark ominous shapes, looming at the curb and the street-side door. There would be no running from this, and even as the door opened and the low command “come on out then” sounded through the interior, she only had eyes for Lucy.

“Ann . . .”

They were helped out, quickly, not roughly—not exactly. But something close to it. Lucy looked from one shadowed face to the other, watching for some sign she knew what this was about.

Ann watched Lucy.

“Inside,” said the one at Ann’s back. But still Ann watched Lucy.

“Please.”

Lucy looked up at her then, more than usually pale in the white glare of the nearest street lamp. She nodded.

“Very well.”

Liquid relief and guilty victory rolled down Ann’s spine all in a torrent, loosening her limbs, warming her insides like no amount of drink ever could. It was all right then. It would be all right.

She let the hat-and-jaw types prod her up the steps, no longer caring where they were or who had given the order. If she had a chance to get Lucy out of this she’d take it, and Lucy would let her. That was enough.

Inside the narrow townhouse a staircase rose to the left, swallowed up in the shadows of an unlit second storey. The central hall was bathed in a warm yellow glow, and to the right a set of double doors opened to what, less than a century ago, would have counted as a generous middle-class parlor. They were shown in together, and if Lucy noticed Ann went ahead of her she had either made up her mind not to question it or was so discombobulated by the whole affair that it didn’t occur to her to wonder why.

The front parlor terminated on the far wall in a set of folding doors, firmly closed. The rugs were old, and of a quality that justified their antiquity. A coal fire blazed decoratively but the bulk of the heat was provided by a pair of hissing radiators set under each of the windows in the long outside wall.

The man seated by the fire therefore did not need to be. He could have sat anywhere in the room and enjoyed perfect comfort, but then he’d have been robbed of his stage. He rose, beaming, at their entrance and extended both hands in every appearance of genuine welcome.

“Well, this is just wonderful, isn’t it?”

Ann, who strongly disagreed, stopped inside the threshold and only advanced when a hand between her shoulder blades insisted on it.

The man by the fire frowned slightly at the man who had done the shoving.

“Now that won’t do,” he said mildly. “I don’t stand for unnecessary roughness, you know. Never have. Especially,” he favored Ann with a genial smile, “not for family.”

“Christ almighty, Uncle Cal!” Ann snapped. “You have me snatched off the street and you want me to believe you don’t stand for roughness?”

“Unnecessary roughness,” he corrected, still smiling.

“A distinction without a difference.”

“Hmm. I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?”

Damn.

Before she could work out a nice casual way of suggesting that Lucy be returned to the street and allowed to find her own way home, Cal turned the full force of his hospitality to bear on her.

“And this must be Miss Moskowitz! How do you do, my dear. What you must think of our manners I don’t care to imagine. I can only ask that you forgive a man driven to such extremity that he was obliged to involve his niece’s—er—what is the term I should use, Annabel?” he looked bemusedly from Ann, stony-faced, to Lucy, pale and completely at sea, with all the gentle confusion of a gentleman who has only got halfway through his latest edition of Emily Post. “She is, I believe, your . . . attachment?”

“Employer,” Ann said coldly. “Miss Moskowitz is my employer.”

“Oh come now, dear, give me some credit! We’ve been busy nosing around since you visited Clive’s shop. Very happy he was to tell us all about your errand, too.” Cal smiled, missing half a beat before amending, “in the end.”

Ann’s stomach rolled over, slow and ugly.

“But there, you see, I am sure you will be more sensible than Clive. You are a clever girl, Annie. I need you to do me the courtesy of accepting that I am not in any way unapprised of your connection to Miss Moskowitz, though you might be glad to know your father is.”

Which connection? Ann wanted to ask, but did not wholly dare. She had three she could claim, and she did not want to claim any he did not already know. One, at least, seemed to be on the table. As to the other . . .

“Miss Moskowitz is my employer,” she repeated coldly. “I have worked for her as secretary for eleven months.”

“But,” said Uncle Cal, positively twinkling, “does she know why?”

Oh.

It was as if, in groping blindly through a dark room in search of a way out, somebody had thrown an unexpected door open just behind her. This was their way out: or at least, it could be Lucy’s. Ann swung around in sudden fierce gratitude.

“Lucy,” she said, with rather more emotion than Lucy had ever seen from her before, “whatever he tells you, you must see you can’t believe him.”

Lucy blinked rapidly, and Ann watched, with genuine pleasure, as comprehension flickered across Lucy’s face. She’d play up. Oh, Ann thought fiercely, good girl.

“Believe what?” Lucy said tremulously. “Ann, whatever do you mean?”

She looked over Ann’s shoulder at Cal, who was observing them with every evidence of enjoyment.

“What connection do you mean, Mister . . ?”

“I beg your pardon, Annabel has forgotten her manners. I am Calvin Duncan.” He paused delicately. “You have, perhaps, heard the name.”

Lucy made a face of pure confusion and shook her head.

“I’m awf’ly sorry, but no.”

Cal frowned.

“You maybe,” he said shortly, “have heard of my brother, Alistair.”

Lucy gave a small start. Ann, if she hadn’t been bending her every wit to planning Lucy’s escape, would have spared a smile for what she knew was Cal’s bruised ego.

“Oh yes of course. Davy has spoken of—” Lucy broke off. There was no subterfuge in the look that she shot Ann at that moment.

“Is Alistair Duncan your father?”

Ann’s mouth went tight and crinkly around the edges.

“Oh, Ann!” Lucy stared at her in rapidly-shifting shock, horror and, ultimately, fascination. “Not really?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But he’s head of the entire Scottish—”

“Every last bit of it.”

Lucy shook her head in something almost like admiration. “I had absolutely no idea.”

“I very much intended that you should not,” Ann said dryly. Lucy’s eyes shone with genuine enjoyment.

“Oh Ann, you are a wonder. But why should your uncle kidnap us?”

“I should think you were an accident. He’s mostly interested in making an example of me, thanks to my father’s appropriation of a number of affairs that my uncle imagines are his due.”

“I do not imagine anything, Annabel,” Cal rapped out, the veneer of civility cracking under the strain of temper. “Your father did me out of everything our father intended I should control.”

Ann looked at him with an expression of unutterable fatigue.

“You lost everything because you’re shit at business. Everyone knows it but you. You’re lucky Father stepped in to manage it, or it would have gone out of the family completely.”

Cal swung his fist in a rage and sent the table by his chair clattering across the room.

“Now see here—”

Abruptly, he caught himself. Got the thunder of his temper back under control. Ann, no stranger to it, merely looked on in tepid disinterest.

“Are you done?”

“I,” said her uncle, “have hardly begun.”

He shifted his attention to Lucy, and Ann tensed, ready to do something she had not thought of yet. But instead of any of the things she had feared, he simply smiled.

“Leaving aside this little family drama, perhaps it might interest Miss Moskowitz to know the name of your current employer.”

Ann did not have to feign tension at that. This needed to be played exactly right. She watched Lucy desperately as Cal made what he no doubt imagined was his own dramatic reveal.

“My niece, enterprising young careerwoman that she is, was directed to take up her place in your residence at the instruction of the police force she serves on.”

Lucy did not disappoint.

Lucy, Ann thought fondly, never could. She might not have been any good at amateur theatricals in school, but she more than came up to scratch in the front parlor of Cal Duncan’s genteel townhouse, kidnapped or not.

“The police!”

Her delivery was perfect. Even in the grip of her fear Ann saw how right it was. It wasn’t anything like Lucy when she was angry, but nobody else could have known it. Lucy was performing anger beautifully, and as Ann watched the performance the last little bit of her heart she’d kept in careful reserve broke free and ran away, hellbent on belonging, forever and for always, to Lucy Moskowitz.

So be it, then.

“Lucy, please, you need to understand.” Ann went down on her knees, desperately theatrical herself. “It was only a job at first, but over time . . . truly, I did come to care.”

Lucy was coldly impressive, staring down at Ann as if begging had never once moved her.

“You betrayed me,” she said tremulously. “You kept this from me, and you imagine I will have pity on you now?”

“Lucy!” Ann clutched at the hem of Lucy’s dress, the same one she should by all rights have been at this moment lifting over her head in the dark of her bedroom. Instead . . . god damn Uncle Cal, and her whole family besides. “Lucy, darling, please . . . I love you.”

Too far? Ann thought it might be. Lucy went pale, and looked for a moment like she’d forgotten whatever lines she planned. Her mouth hung in a perfect red oval for a full three seconds before she clamped it shut, and pushed Ann back with shaking hands.

“Mr. Duncan,” she said faintly, “do you need her to survive the night for whatever you intend?”

Ann did not have to see Cal’s face to picture the supercilious smile she knew was creeping across it. Gloating rat bastard.

“Do you know, Miss Moskowitz, you should actually do me a great favor if you ensured she did not.”

There it was. Even humbled before Lucy in her dramatic posture of supplication, Ann was conscious of satisfaction. He wanted her dead to punish her father, but if she were dead by Lucy’s hand it would give them the excuse to move against the Moskowitz concerns. No doubt he did not imagine Lucy would be proof against such a manoeuvre.

Uncle Cal had never been the clever brother.

“Then forgive me,” Lucy rasped, “if I advance the programme somewhat.”

She whirled to secure a pistol from where it dangled in the grip of one of the men at her back, and aimed it directly at Ann.

“Stand up,” she said shakily. “I cannot shoot you like that. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Ann was excruciatingly conscious of Cal at her back; of his enjoyment. She clutched at her own thighs, moving her hands as though wiping them, rucking the skirt up, trembling . . . and she stood.

Lucy fired.

There was a pop of smoke and flame, and Ann, daring not indulge in the luxury of noticing if she had actually been hit, produced her own gun from beneath her skirt and picked off the three men behind Lucy with cold rapidity. The first had no time to even think of his gun, the second had no time to reach for it, and the third had already lost his to Lucy so he was no match for hers. Four bodies hit the floor: three before, one behind. Ann swayed slightly, but that was only depletion of adrenaline. There was not a mark on her.

“Oh,” Lucy said, looking around. “Oh dear. What a mess . . . and your uncle, Ann! Not a nice man, but even so I am sorry. I . . .” she trailed off, and a peculiar look crossed her face. “I think I might . . .”

Ann flew to her side and bore her up at the elbows.

“No, Lucy, don’t be sick just yet. You mustn’t. You see that, right?”

Of course Lucy saw it. She was a Moskowitz, after all. If she was sick now it would spoil the illusion the current scene lent itself to so beautifully.

“Here, give it to me,” Ann said softly, and took the gun. Lucy’s gloves would have protected her from leaving any marks, so she laid it under the hand of the man it belonged to. Her own gun she wiped on her skirt to obliterate any marks from earlier in the day before she introduced it to the still-warm grip of her uncle, creating a reasonable impression of an ugly falling-out with no survivors.

“It looks a bit stage-y,” she murmured, standing back to survey the scene, “but that can’t be helped. You have a few officers on the take who can probably ensure nobody asks too many questions. And it is Cal. Nobody is going to be sorry he’s gone.”

Ann looked away from her handiwork to see that Lucy was still dangerously pale.

“Bear up now, my sweet. Let’s get you home.” She fitted her arm around Lucy’s waist, half comfort, half support, and led her out of the house into the night.

It began to rain when they reached the pavement. They had to walk half a dozen blocks before they found a cab, and by then they were so drenched that any peculiarity of Lucy’s expression was easily explained away by cold and damp. They were driven home in great comfort and deposited, still unspeaking, on Lucy’s doorstep. Ann got them both inside, up the curving staircase and into the soft, plush warmth of Lucy’s bedroom.

“I’m going to run a bath, sweetheart,” she said softly. “You look like you could do with it.”

“All right,” Lucy said faintly. Then, as if something had been cut loose inside her, she cried suddenly “Oh, I killed your uncle! Oh Ann, I am sorry.”

“I’m not,” said Ann. Indeed she was only conscious of crushing relief that Lucy had spoken at all. She was still extraordinarily pale, but she was talking, which meant she was still Lucy in there under it all.

“It was awful of me! I mean, look at you: you’ve been around my family for almost a year and you haven’t killed even one of them. But I had to go and kill yours not a quarter-hour after meeting him. Really it’s too horrible of me.”

“He was pretty horrible himself. And he did kidnap you. If any of your relatives kidnapped me I’d probably shoot them too.”

“Would you? Yes, I suppose you would. Well that makes it a little better. Still I am sorry.”

After that Lucy fell quiet again and seemed lost in reflection, so Ann excused herself to draw the bath. When she came back out she was glad to see Lucy had reduced her wardrobe to slip and camisole and regained some color in her cheeks.

“Look, Ann, you must let me know: is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

Ann nearly assured her that murdering Cal should feel like its own reward, but a thought occurred to her.

“Actually, yes, if you insist on making amends you can let me have first go at Adams.”

“My chauffeur? Why, where are you . . . oh.”

Ann nodded grimly. “Yes.”

“But . . . but we don’t know that he . . .”

Ann merely looked at her until at last Lucy dropped to the edge of the bed with an unhappy sigh.

“I suppose there isn’t any other explanation. How awful. One doesn’t like to imagine . . . but yes. Of course you can have him, darling.”

“Good.” Ann stepped back from the doorway to reveal the clouds of steam rolling lazily out of the pretty pink-and-white tiled bath. “Now come along while the water’s still hot.”

Lucy smiled faintly.

“Would . . . will you join me?”

Ann didn’t make her ask twice.

“What do you suppose your father will say?” Lucy wondered. It was some time later and the bath had turned into rather more than that, culminating in a pair of women drawn together in a weary tangle of soft legs and damp hair on the deep plush of Lucy’s bed.

Ann didn’t particularly want to bring her father into that context, but gamely tugged part of the sheet over herself and indulged the question.

“Good riddance, no doubt. Especially when I tell him what really happened.”

“Oh, will you tell him?”

“I think so. He deserves that much. Although if you prefer, I can tell him that I did the shooting.”

“Do you think he’d send somebody after me if he knew the truth?”

“Maybe in the ordinary way, but not when he knows the whole story.” Ann wrapped her hand possessively around Lucy’s, tracing dainty knuckles with the pad of her thumb. “He won’t touch what’s mine.”

“Oh,” Lucy said faintly. She hesitated. Then, “so . . . was that true? What you said to me back there?”

Ann smiled into the dark.

“Yes.” Then, with excessive disinterest, “D’you mind?”

“No-o,” Lucy said slowly. “In fact, I feel rather the same. Only I hadn’t expected to hear it for the first time with an audience, so I didn’t know what to make of it. But if it was true, then that’s absolutely mutual.”

Ann laughed.

“I’m glad. And if it’s any consolation, the audience is dead, so it’s almost private again.”

“That’s true,” Lucy brightened. “I hadn’t thought of that. Though I’d still prefer not to have been the one to shoot your uncle.”

“Will you please stop being sorry about Uncle Cal? You may take my word for it that if you hadn’t come into it he was absolutely planning to torture and kill me and leave my body for my father to find, so I don’t like to think you’re sorry about preventing that. Besides, you did a better job of it than I ever could have; you got him right between the eyes! Simply incredible shot. I didn’t even know you could shoot.”

Lucy gave a little shoulder-wiggle that might have been a shrug.

“Truthfully, neither did I.”

“Lucy!” Ann bobbed up in bed. “Don’t tell me that was the first time you ever fired a gun.”

Lucy obediently said nothing at all. Ann stared down at her a moment, then gave a hoot of incredulous laughter.

“You aimed right for his head and you just—just hit it? By chance?”

“Oh no,” said Lucy, “not his head. I aimed for yours.”

“Lucy! You didn’t.”

“Yes! I aimed for your head, just as surely as I aimed to take apart every last piece of this absolutely ripping crime syndicate I seem to have created in spite of myself.”

Ann looked at her in sudden comprehension. “You mean . . .”

Lucy nodded.

“I felt if the past year was anything to go by, with respect to my intent matching my impact, then aiming for your head was the only way I could be sure of not hitting you at all.”

Ann laughed and lowered her face to Lucy’s.

“You impossible, perfect thing. Do you know, you may kill my whole family if you like. There’s nobody in the world I want more than you.”

Alistair Duncan received the news of his brother’s death with such good humor that even the accompanying news—that his daughter was literally in bed with the head of the Moskowitz syndicate—could not dampen his mood.

“Ah! well,” he said philosophically, digesting this information along with his breakfast, “I suppose it’s what comes of raising a child in this modern age. Girls aren’t content to sit at home. They go out and get jobs to cheek their old dads, or take up with girls in charge of rival families, or they go around and shoot their uncles at the least provocation. Whole new world, this is.”

He helped himself to a second serving of kippers and tucked in with gusto, giving every appearance of being ready to accept the situation with the same spirit of adaptation that had allowed him to reach the top of his game and stay there even as the bodies piled up all around.

Alistair Duncan knew what wasn’t worth worrying about. If his Annie’s attachment to Lucy Moskowitz had the beneficial effect of ridding him of a few business rivals, he was not about to worry. Especially since the Moskowitz girl was well on her way to having a finger in almost anything worth running from one coast to the next.

“Shouldn’t be surprised if she does it, too,” he decided. “Regular little go-getter, she’s shaping up to be.”

And why not? It was 1935, after all.

A fellow would need to be asleep on his feet to be surprised by girls these days.