“True enough.” She rattled her manacles in frustration. “I cannot believe any of this is happening. How can I be trapped in the past?” The rattling produced nothing but noise, so Chevie settled down. “Okay, you want to hear about my tattoo?”
Riley’s face was slick with sweat, and his body was rigid as a board. “Please.”
Chevie closed her eyes, trying to imagine herself out of the past, into her own past in the future. “My mom and dad grew up on the Shawnee reservation in Oklahoma. They call it trust land, these days. As soon as my dad could afford a motorbike, my mom hopped on the back and they took off across the country. Got married in Vegas and settled in California. I came along a while later, and Dad told me that things were just about perfect for a couple of years, until Mom was killed by a black bear over in La Verne.” Chevie shook her head as if she still could not accept this fact. “Can you believe that? A Native American on a camping trip killed by a bear. Dad never got over it. Oh, we were happy enough, I guess. But he drank a lot. ‘When love dies,’ he told me, ‘there are no survivors.’”
Chevie was silent for a moment, wishing for the millionth time that she could remember her mother’s face.
“We had ten years together before his motorcycle blew up on the Pacific Coast Highway. Dad had a tattoo just like mine, a Chevron symbol. It’s what I was named for.”
“You were named for a symbol? That is a strange custom.”
Chevie scowled. “You asked for a tale, remember?”
Riley twisted his own arm backward at the elbow. “I apologize, Agent. Please continue.”
“My dad had the same tattoo. Same shoulder. He told me that all the Savano men back to the Shawnee wars have borne this mark. William Savano fought the Long Knives with Tecumseh at Moraviantown. For every officer he killed in battle, William daubed a Chevron on his arm in blood, as this was the sergeant’s symbol. He was a fearsome warrior. So, in memory of William, the Savanos have worn the symbol. I am the last of the Savanos, so I bear the name and the symbol. The first girl to do so.”
“That is indeed a fascinating tale,” said Riley, shrugging off his bonds until only the solid manacles on his wrists remained. “And well told.”
“Yeah, a pity I can’t talk off your handcuffs.”
Riley winked. “These are screw bracelets. The walking dummy what put ’em on botched the job. See these barrels? They should be at the bottom.”
“Because?”
“Because if the barrels are on top, a prisoner can do this . . .”
Riley brought his hands together as close as he could, crossed thumbs, and used the opposable digits to unscrew the handcuffs.
“Hey, presto,” said Riley, taking a deep bow.
A slow handclap echoed across the room, floating down from the top of a rickety stairway.
“Bravo, boy. Well done to you.”
A giant meat cart of a man ambled down the stairs, each step creaking under his weight.
“Otto Malarkey,” whispered Riley. “The big boss himself.”
Malarkey jumped the last three steps, sending the hanging carcasses swinging on their chains. This man would be a character in any age. He wore leather breeches with pirate boots, no shirt covered his barrel chest, and his flowing black locks were barely contained by a shining silk top hat. Two revolvers hung in cowboy holsters on his hips, and in one massive meaty paw he swished a riding crop.
“You show some considerable talent, boy,” he said, his booming voice bouncing off the ceiling. “Of course that glocky tree stump, Jeeves, screwed on yer bracelets rump-ways. I could use you in the Rams. With that clean mush and full set of teeth, you would make a fine burglar boy for the genteel jobs up at Mayfair and the likes, where my oafs attract peelers like horse biscuits attract flies.”
Malarkey stepped forth, emerging from the shadows, and Chevie noticed a ram’s head tattoo on his shoulder and a pricelist on his chest that read:
Punching_2 shillings
Both eyes blacked_4 shillings
Nose and jaw broke_10 shillings
Jacked out (knocked out with a blackjack)_15 shillings
Ear chewed off_same as previous
Leg or arm broke_19 shillings
Shot in leg_25 shillings
Stab_same as previous
Doing the Big Job_3 pounds and up
Malarkey noticed her gaze. “Some of the diverse services offered by the Rams. Of course my prices have elevated with my stature. I’ve been meaning to update the ink since they booted me from Little Saltee prison. I was king of that dung heap.” He spread his muscled arms wide. “Now I am king of the greatest dung heap on earth.”
Riley circled the giant warily. “What is your interest in us, Mr. Malarkey? Why were the Rams keeping eyes on that particular basement?”
Malarkey kicked Riley’s vacated chair, sending it skittering across the floor.
“Cheeky cur, posing questions to me in my own gentlemen’s club. The Rams took a contract to murder anyone who showed up in that lurk. For two years now we’ve been pocketing quite a stipend for doing nothing but keeping an eye, and that’s all the information you’ll be needing on the subject.”
“Of course, sorry, guv’nor. My mistake.”
“Hark at him,” said Malarkey. “All manners and how-doyou-do. I suppose that’ll be the rearing I gave you. You being my kin and everything.” His chuckle was gruff with cigar smoke and whisky. “That’s a smart mouth you have on you, boy, and it kept the both of you alive. You are a deal smarter than the numbskulls who brought you in, saying you appeared in a puff of genie magic. I could have room for you in the Rams. The girl, however, seems less valuable.”
Otto squatted before Chevie, taking a lock of her hair between two fingers and sniffing it. “Mind you, you do have the glossiest hair, miss. How do you make it shine so?”
“Well, Mr. Malarkey,” said Chevie sweetly. “What I do is I slap the hell out of Battering Rams, then wash my silken locks in their tears of shame.”
Taken at face value, these comments would seem unprofessional at best and psychotically foolhardy at worst, but as Cord Vallicose at Quantico had informed his young students in the Negotiating Tactics class, In certain confrontational situations, for example when dealing with a narcissist or psychopath, an aggressive tack can sometimes prove useful, as it will pique your captor’s interest and prompt him to keep you alive a little longer. Chevie had never forgotten this quote and used it to justify her regular outbursts. Riley, of course, had not been to this lecture and could not understand why Chevie repeatedly antagonized their captors.
“She’s a simpleton,” he blurted. “There was an accident with a high wall . . . and some laudanum. Her marbles rolled clean out her earholes.”
Malarkey was nonplussed. He stood and paced awhile, uncertain how to react.
“Well, I never,” he said, rather quaintly. “I ain’t accustomed to vinegar from gents. Now I meet my first Injun lady, and she’s spouting all this color at me. What’s a gang leader to do?”
Malarkey slapped the riding crop against his massive thigh. “Here’s the scoop, folks. My predecessor took a job in good faith to keep eyes on that house in Half Moon Street and slit the neck of anyone who arrived in it. So I find myself in a dilemma. Mine is not to wonder why the man who contracted us would want you two snuffed, but Otto Malarkey don’t like to kill without reason, especially a cove like you, boy, who could be of service. But the brotherhood accepted coin for a job of work, and the Rams be nothing if not reliable.”
Riley had a thought. “But you couldn’t kill another Ram.”
“Quick thinking again, boy. But you ain’t a Ram. A cove’s gotta be born into the brotherhood, or fight his way in. And, with respect, you might be able to climb a drainpipe, but you couldn’t bend one.”
“I might surprise you,” said Riley, and to prove his point, leaped high in the air and smashed the empty chair with a blow from his forearm.