“Aw shit!” said a second man, who had gotten down off the wagon and was holding the reins of his two horses at the mouth of Falstaff Alley. “Didja kill him?”

The first man knelt down to check for a heartbeat. “He ain’t dead,” was the verdict.

“He better not be! We’re supposed to deliver two and God take us if we don’t!”

“This one don’t look like a fuckin’ constable. You sure about him?”

“I’m sure. Like I said already, his name’s Nack and he’s been braggin’ his ass off at the Jackal.”

“All right, then. Let’s get him in, we wasted too much time waitin’ for him to come out of that damn coffee house. Somebody might come along here any minute.”

“Somebody might,” said the wagon’s driver, “but what’re they gonna do about it? Call for a constable?”

They both laughed at that one.

“Lucky I seen him comin’ down the steps of the Bailey,” said the driver as the two men hauled Nack’s body up and carried him between them to the black pile of coal. “Figured I might see a constable I recognized. Anyhow, made our job one easier.” They threw Nack into the pile and the man who’d done the striking climbed up and used a shovel to quickly cover the body with coal, being careful at the finish to leave a space of air around the nostrils.

When it was done he took his seat beside the driver and drew his coat collar up around his throat. He wore a gray woolen cap and had half of a nose. “Gettin’ colder,” he said, lifting his gaunt face toward the dark. “Snow’s comin’ down good and proper.”

“The Pin says storms ahead,” said the driver.

“Mark it, then,” the other answered. “All right. One down, one to go.”

The driver flicked the reins, the horses snorted steam and started off, the coal wagon’s tired wheels creaked as they turned, and beside the white wig and the purple tricorn a black billyclub lay untended on the snow-dusted stones of Falstaff Alley.

Two

“Yes,” said Hudson Greathouse, “I do think I’d like another cup of tea, thank you.”

“Surely, sir.” She poured it for him from a white teapot painted with green and yellow flowers. “This is my favorite blend,” she said. And then, with but an instant’s cloud of shadow across her face: “I mean … I’ve been told it is.”

“Told?”

“Yes sir. By my mother.”

“Hm,” said Hudson as he supported the dainty cup between hands more accustomed to holding rough-hewn wooden tankards of ale. He lifted his thick charcoal-gray eyebrows, the left of which was sliced by the jagged scar of a teacup thrown by a tempestuous ex-wife, which was one reason he abhorred teacups and the weak liquid they carried to the lips of the insipid. “You don’t recall that it’s your favorite?”

“Our daughter has always enjoyed that blend,” said the man who sat in the room with them. His voice was perhaps a spike sharper than he’d intended. He had gray hair brushed back from his forehead, was heavily jowled and wore a dark blue suit with four silver buttons decorating the jacket. Up at his hairline on the right side was a plaster bandage, the flesh around it puffed and ruddy. “And she enjoys a touch of extra lemon,” he added. “Don’t you, Mary Lynn?”