Page 81 of By Any Means

Laurie glared.

Sam glanced between them. “Boys?”

“Mr. Wright.” Hiram nodded.

Sam said, “Ahh.”

Both Chary and Raberding looked over. Chary stumbled when his eyes met Laurie’s, and then he jerked his face away, as if ashamed. His bruising wasn’t as thorough—or deliberate—as Hiram’s, but the preexisting contusion had swollen back to hard and round and re-purpled itself; it looked horrific. Raberding held him tighter, murmured something, and pulled him over to the fencing before the desk. There, he glanced over his shoulder to Laurie, smirking his victory.

Laurie’s vision blurred. But he stayed put, Hiram’s hold anchoring him. Leading him. “We’re going to sit,” Hiram said. “There’s a bench. Sit. Down. There you go. Sit.”

Laurie sat.

Raberding signed the same thing Sam had, with a little more flourish, murmuring to the Chief Inspector: “…vicious rags’ rumors and nothing more, of course… absolutely ridiculous. I would suspect… union involvement… Irish… entrapment by certain publications…? Anything for an exposé, you understand.”

The Inspector was nodding along, placid agreement, and then Raberding was signing something else, something he’d pulled casually from an interior suit pocket. A bank cheque. Supplementary palm-greasing.

Sam harrumphed. He nudged close a handkerchief of dense, gooey-looking honey cake, and muttered from the corner of his mustache, “Eat so you don’t apoplexy.”

Laurie did, reluctantly; he wished he could give it to Chary instead. Chary stood slightly aside from Raberding, one hand on wrought iron, his tall form weaving like a bulrush. He might as well have been miles away.

Hiram went abruptly to his feet and, without a word, strode out the station door. Odd; he wasn’t prone to tempers. But Laurie could only spare him a glance. If Chary passed out like he had outside his 2nd Street apartment…

The honey cake in his mouth turned dry and hard to swallow.

“Doing well, my lad,” Sam murmured. He patted Laurie’s knee.

“…so much for your understanding,” Raberding said. “The Committee Against Vice will be happy to see you personally at the next meeting, Chief Inspector. By then, I believe, Mr. Wright and I will have gone public with our joint business, and all outside motivations behind this unfortunate incident will have shone through quite clear.”

The Inspector agreed, enthusiastically, and the two men shook hands.

Got you, Laurie seethed. I see you. You think you can hide in plain sight, Tjofabier Raberding? I see you.

Raberding took hold of Chary again, and without a hint of acknowledgement toward Laurie—naturally, given his big speech to the policeman declaring them the enemy—they walked out the doors and down the front stair.

Soon, all of New York would see him too. Laurie vowed it.

24

CHARY

Chary hadn’t ever doubted that Tjofabier Raberding didn’t love August, not really—but now he knew for certain. He didn’t and never had. Because what on earth kind of love would exert such an awful, dehumanizing experience upon someone? What kind of man could do it? Make a man crawl out from under arrest, violence, and threat of imprisonment, so that he could be rescued by only him? Isolate a man so that he had only him to whom to turn?

“You will take your hands off me, please,” Chary said to Raberding, as soon as they were down the station steps and onto the wet sidewalk. The Mulberry Street crowds were subdued this morning, for there was a steady, audible rain coming down. “This has been quite enough show.”

“But you can hardly stand,” Raberding soothed. He shook open an umbrella. He did not let go.

“Then I’ll fall.”

Raberding considered him pityingly, like he might a stubborn child. “I can’t allow that. August would want his brother looked out for.” He squeezed, painfully hard. “Here I am.”

“Yes. I do understand why it is you’re here.”

Raberding ignored this. “Here’s the auto.” He pulled Chary over to an all-gold motorcar, glass-enclosed, possibly a Pierce. What on earth had August seen in this man? Not his taste in automobiles.

The chauffeur opened the back. Chary resisted with both heels, but it was difficult; the shoes he’d been given in the station were too loose, and slippery in the wet. “Making me your hostage won’t do a thing.”

Raberding’s hand on his back stopped just short of an actual shove. He put the umbrella between them and the chauffeur. “The Chief Inspector committed you to me,” he hissed. “You’re bought and paid for. Get in the car. Or do you want to be back behind white bars?”