Claimed by the Detective and the Don

Chapter 11 — Dutch

DUTCH

The rain in this city has a different weight than back home. Heavier. Like it's trying to press something down instead of wash it away. I stood under the awning of a dockside bar with no name I recognized, and I let it fall on my hat brim for a full minute before I went in. A man who rushes into a room is telling it he's afraid.

I am never afraid of a room.

The bar was called Halloran's, half the paint gone off the sign, the kind of place built for men who wanted a drink and didn't want to be asked why. Good. I've always done my best work in places like this. I shook the rain off my coat at the door and let my eyes move slow once around the room. Four men at the bar. A card game losing money in the corner. A bartender who'd already decided I was trouble before I opened my mouth, which told me he was smarter than most.

I like smart men. They're so much easier to frighten properly.

"Whiskey," I said, settling onto the stool like I'd been coming here for years. "Whatever's honest."

"Everything here's honest," the bartender said. "Might not all be good."

"That's the only kind worth trusting." I smiled at him. I've been told my smile is my best feature and my worst one, depending on who's doing the telling. It never quite reaches my eyes. People who know me well have learned to watch for that, the same way you'd watch for a held breath before a blow. This one didn't know me. Not yet.

He poured. I let the glass sit a moment before I touched it. Patience isn't a virtue where I come from. It's a weapon, sharpened slow, used once.

"You're not from around here," he said. Not a question. Bartenders develop an ear for that, same as they develop a nose for men who'll start trouble before the second drink.

"No," I agreed. "Passing through. Old business. Older friends." I turned the glass, watching the light move through it. "I'm looking for someone, actually. A woman. Haven't seen her in, oh, four years now. Feels longer."

Something in his face went careful, the way a man gets when a stranger starts talking about women in a city where every woman belongs to somebody.

"Lot of women in this city," he said.

"Not like this one." I took the photograph out of my breast pocket, the one I've carried through three cities and one very long winter, its corners soft now from handling. I set it on the bar between us, careful, the way you'd lay down a card you'd been holding a long time. "She used to sing. Beautiful voice. The kind that makes a man do foolish things just to hear it again."

He looked down at it. I watched him do it, watched for the flicker, the half-second a man's face does something his mouth hasn't caught up to yet. There it was. Small. A widening around the eyes that vanished almost as fast as it came. He knew her. Or he knew of her. Same thing, in a city this size.

"Can't say I recognize her," he said, too quick, too smooth. He'd make a poor liar in any serious business. I appreciated that about small men in small towns. They never learn to hide the tell before it costs them.

"No," I said pleasantly. "I don't suppose you would."

I let the silence sit there a moment, because silence does more work in thirty seconds than a threat does in ten minutes. He filled it the way they always do, nervous men rushing to plug a hole with words.

"This a police matter?" he asked. "You a cop?"

"God, no." I laughed, and meant it, which surprised him more than the question. "I'm nothing so dull as a policeman. I'm just a man who misplaced something valuable and has finally found himself in the right city to look for it."

"Valuable." He said the word like he was tasting it for poison.

"The most valuable thing I own." I picked the photograph back up, careful, and looked at her face a moment longer than I needed to. Four years hadn't dimmed a thing. If anything the waiting had improved the shape of the wanting, the way good whiskey improves in the barrel nobody remembers to open. "She left owing me something. I've come a long way to collect."

He didn't ask what. Smart men rarely do, once they understand the conversation has stopped being about information and started being about consequence. I finished my whiskey in one unhurried pull and set the glass down soft, no clink.

"This city," I said, "runs on old rules, I'm told. No drugs. No trouble with civilians. Certain streets a man doesn't walk without an invitation." I let my smile widen, just slightly, just enough that he'd feel the difference without being able to name it. "Charming, in its way. Old things usually are, right up until somebody shows them what's coming."

He didn't answer that either. He'd stopped wanting to talk to me at all, which was, in its own fashion, the most honest response he'd given me all night.

"You said you didn't recognize her," I said, sliding a bill across the bar, more than the drink was worth, considerably more. "But I think you're the kind of man who remembers a face once he's had a night to think about it. Men like you always do." I stood, buttoned my coat against the rain waiting outside. "I'll come back. I'm patient."

I left him staring at the bill like it might bite him, which it very well might, in time. Outside the rain hadn't let up, and I stood under the awning a moment, turning her photograph over once more. I smiled at it one last time before it disappeared back into my coat, the rain running cold down the back of my collar, the whole wet city waiting for me to finish deciding exactly how I meant to take her back.