Chapter Five
I scooped up a handful of Hoobin coin and set out. The air was cool and my feet felt better. I decided to walk again, telling myself that the walk would give me more time to think, but knowing all the time that I was just delaying the inevitable failure of finding anyone who’d seen Martha that last day she left the Velvet.
Traffic was brisk. I’d waited until the dead wagons were packed and gone, waited until the plumes of smoke from the crematoriums that lined the river soared fat and black and rolling. People didn’t look at the smoke, I noticed. And when they did look up, they pretend they didn’t see it.
I set a leisurely pace. Watchman Rupert probably wouldn’t take his shift until after noon, so I killed time by harassing jewelers about Martha’s comb. There are four jewelers between Cambrit and the Velvet, all much nearer the Velvet than my place. All confirmed that the comb was solid silver, of good if not excellent workmanship. As a less than artful piece, it bore no maker’s mark, and yes, they’d all seen similar combs before—swans were very popular with the ladies, a few years back—but no, they couldn’t tell me any particular shop or jeweler who specialized in such things.
Two had offered to buy the comb, on the spot, which led me to believe the workmanship was a bit closer to artful than any of them admitted.
Finally, none of the jewelers I spoke to had ever sold such a piece. Oh, they were quite certain. Most emphatically no.
And, at about that time, each discovered an urgent bit of dusting that needed their immediate and full attention.
“So much for that,” I said, after being shooed out of the last shop with an insistence that bordered on the rude. I wrapped the comb in its handkerchief and set out on the street again.
I was back on Sellidge, back among the bankers and the hoop skirts and the well-scrubbed smiling faces. I was glad I’d stopped off at the bathhouse at the end of my street, glad my old Army dress jacket was easily mistaken for a spring day coat, glad my black parade dress shoes still took a shine with reasonable success.
And after half a block north, I was glad I’d walked—because otherwise I might never have spotted the man I immediately dubbed Mister Nervous Hat.
He’d been there when I crossed the street at Argen. I’d seen him—that’s all, merely seen him—waiting with the mob the traffic master had stopped just after my mob had crossed. He’d been adjusting his hat then, pushing it back with his right hand.
He’d been behind me again at Vanth, crossing with me this time, holding his hat down as a vagrant breeze blew from the south, a hint of soot in its wake.
And there he was again, half a block south of me, standing in front of a coat maker’s shop and inspecting his reflection in the glass.
He reached up, made a minuscule adjustment to his hat and began to saunter toward me, not a care in the world.
I grinned and turned and set out north.
I knew a few things about Mister Nervous Hat. First, he hadn’t followed anyone before, or he would know better than to stop when your mark stops, and go when your mark goes. He would know better than to interrupt the flow of foot traffic around him by pausing to stare into storefront mirrors, and he would know better than to repeat the same action—the hat touching, in his case—more than once while the mark is turned your way.
And I knew he was alone. Another mistake—you want to tail a man in the open and on the move, you need at least three tails. And they should be able to hand off to one another, to pass the mark and turn away from the mark and have the good sense to keep moving while the other guy takes over for a while.
But not Mister Nervous Hat. He was just a kid, really, ten years my junior, if the quick glance I’d gotten was correct. Well-dressed, clean-shaved, hair the color of cut hay.
I picked up my pace, eyed the streets ahead, timing it so that I could cross the street before him. I made it, stayed in the middle of the mob, found the place I was looking for and ducked quickly inside, confident that Nervous Hat hadn’t seen me.
“Good morning, sir,” said the same haberdasher who’d offered to fit me for a jacket the evening before. He smiled and crossed the well-worn plank floor of his shop. “Has sir changed his mind?”
“I have indeed,” I said, patting my pocket just to set the coins a tinkling. He’d already seen my army jacket, and I wasn’t going to fool him into thinking I was a banker’s assistant even in the shop’s dim light. “Time to update my wardrobe. I think I’ll even have a hat or two.”
The shopkeeper smiled, eyed me critically and moved toward a rack.
“Excellent,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “I have just what sir needs.”
And he did. I walked out with a light grey spring jacket, one of the new ones that reach a hand’s width below the knees and turn rain like a duck. A new black narrow-brimmed crease-brow hat adorned sir’s well-combed head, a new white shirt showed the lean, toned lines of sir’s muscular torso, and sir’s threadbare trousers rested at the bottom of a plain brown shopping bag happily provided by Rogers of Rogers and Rogers, Gentlemen Clothiers.
My army jacket lay folded atop the pants. Atop it was a second new hat—grey, this one, in last year’s style, but still quite dashing nonetheless.
I stepped, blinking, back out into the street and set out. I was too busy looking for Nervous Hat to worry about how I would explain to Ethel Hoobin that I’d needed to buy a new hat and coat to find his sister. I’d decided I wouldn’t try at all at about the time I spotted my Nervous Hat a stone’s throw ahead of me, standing on tiptoe and doing little hops so he could see over the crowd stopped at an intersection.
He was looking north. I grinned and pulled my hat down and sauntered toward him. The traffic master waved him across, and I had to trot to keep up, but I made it.
I stayed a steady forty feet back from him for four blocks. He darted and hopped and gave every indication of being in frantic pursuit. Even passers-by lifted their eyebrows and occasionally turned to watch his antics.
Nervous Hat looked right at me a half-dozen times. But he wasn’t looking for me, which was another mistake. He was looking for my old army jacket and my old tan pants and the hatless shape of my head from a distance. So when he saw my new jacket and the rakish angle of my fine new hat he looked right through me and went back to his hopping darting frantic act.
I pondered this. If he was in some way associated with my interest in Martha Hoobin, who might his employers be? Or, if he was acting alone, who was he?
He was young, about Martha’s age. Well if not elegantly dressed. Possessed of an aura of bungling good-natured innocence.
I wondered if he’d ever given Martha a swan-shaped silver comb, of good if not artful workmanship.
We entered the shade of the towering blood-oaks a block from the Velvet. Nervous Hat actually peeked around from behind one of the trees while he rested, and a little boy who’d been watching him from the other side jumped up at him and said, “boo”.
I nearly laughed out loud. Nervous Hat brushed the kid aside and stamped off toward the Velvet, like he knew that’s where I had been headed. That bothered me. If I’d doubted Nervous Hat and Martha Hoobin were connected somehow, I didn’t doubt it anymore.
We left the shade, and he eyed the Velvet stoop and finally settled down at a vacant table at a sidewalk café named, cleverly enough, The Sidewalk Café. I switched hats, waited a bit, got a table myself, had a snack while he drank coffee and stared at the Velvet.
I toyed with the idea of sending over a sandwich or sauntering over and joining him, just to see how he’d handle it. Finally, I decided that he wasn’t moving for at least an hour, at which time his waiter would toss him back onto the sidewalk when the lunch crowd arrived.
So I paid, left a nice tip and folded my bag into a parcel under my arm and went off in search of Rupert. I passed a few feet from Nervous Hat, barely restrained myself from wishing him a good morning, got a good look at his hands. But he wasn’t wearing a signet ring, didn’t have his house or initials embroidered on the lapel of his jacket, wasn’t doodling his dastardly plans down on his napkin, so I passed by wordlessly and crossed the street well away from the Velvet.
Rupert wasn’t on duty yet, when I reached the intersection at Mayben and Oldloop. I spied another jeweler, wasted a good ten minutes convincing the man I wasn’t a tax assessor for the Regent, learned nothing. I repeated this process twice more before the Big Bell clanged out noon from the Square, and Rupert appeared on his corner.
I hurried over, and he actually smiled when he saw me.
“Good afternoon, finder.”
“To you too,” I replied. He stepped a bit to the side, out of foot traffic, and I did the same. “Did you have a chance to ask around about Martha Hoobin?”
“I did.” His grin fell. “Sorry. Some of the men might have seen her, from time to time. No one knew her. No one saw anything suspicious.” He paused to let a cooing nanny and a bawling pram roll past. “But I don’t think you’re the only one who’s asked about her.”
I pricked up my ears. “Really.”
He nodded. “I’ve not been asked by anyone else, but one of the Night Watch guys says he was. He didn’t get the guy’s name, or why he was asking,” he added. “He figured it was a boyfriend, and he didn’t like the looks of him so he told him to shove off.”
I frowned. “What was it about his looks your friend didn’t like?”
Rupert snorted. “Looked rich,” he said. He eyed my jacket. “Sort of like you do, today.”
I laughed. Then an idea struck me.
“Thanks. You’ve been a big help. But I wonder—could you help me one more time?”
He shrugged, suddenly suspicious.
“Relax. It’s nothing. I was just wondering if you’d walk half a block with me, and look at a man at the Sidewalk Café, and tell me if you’ve seen him hanging around the Velvet before.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Sure. It’s on my beat. Go now?”
I smiled. “Now is good.” Rupert turned and we strolled toward the Velvet.
People melted out of his way, even the ones that smiled or nodded in greeting. The traffic master at Maylot stopped traffic and waved us through. Even ogres slowed their manure-carts at the sight of a blunt-topped blue Watchman’s cap.
We rounded the last corner.
“There,” I said, pointing with my chin. “The last table, by the flower pot.”
Rupert squinted. “Him?” he said, incredulous. “Ronnie Sacks?”
I nearly fell over. I’d just been hoping Rupert had seen him on the street before. “You know him?”
“We grew up on the same street. He dated my cousin Rebecca. Fell off her roof trying to sneak in one night. We called him Ronnie the Donney.”
Donney is an epithet, named after a war-time general who mixed his flag-signals and opened the gates of Imprege to a Troll infantry assault.
My heart began to sing.
“You know what Ronnie does for pay, these days?”
Rupert’s brow furrowed. “He went to work for House Avalante last year. Something about guarding payroll transfers.”
I had a name and a House. I must have been beaming. I nearly patted Rupert on his blue-capped head.
“He got something to do with this Miss Hoobin’s going missing? He’s an idiot, but I never figured him for much else.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know a thing about him. But he’s taken a recent strong interest in me.”
Rupert sighed. “I can have him picked up, if you think he’s hurting women. Just say the word.”
I was tempted. But as far as I knew, he’d done nothing but bungle a morning of following finders.
“Not today.” Another inspiration struck, and I rummaged in my new jacket pocket for the comb.
“Ever see something like this?”
He shook his head no. “Sorry.”
I wrapped it again, put it away. “No matter.” Across the street from us, young Ronnie was being told he was taking up one table too many and it was time to move on and let paying lunch customers enjoy their view of the Velvet.
He left in a huff, took up a post half a block away, never even walked around to see if the Velvet had a back way.
Rupert got restless. I thanked him and walked with him a bit, letting him talk about this and that just in case he revealed anything else about Cousin Ronnie or silver combs.
He didn’t. But I was smiling all the same. I’d found Nervous Hat, and he had a name, and I knew it, and now, just maybe, I’d have something to show for spending Ethel’s hard-earned cash on hats and jackets.
The day wore on. I watched Darla leave, pulled down my hat when she looked my way. Hooga dipped his hat to her, and she darted smiling out into the street in a swirl of long purple skirts.
Ronnie Sacks paid her no attention whatsoever. I revised my estimate of his taste and intelligence down a few notches. Then I turned in triumph, hailed a cab and gave the driver directions. He took in the cut of my jacket and the turn of my hat and didn’t blink an eye when I mentioned House Avalante.
I had the cabbie leave me a block from the House itself. I stepped down onto the sidewalk, tipped him and watched him go.