Except . . . there had been a point when he hadn’t acted prickly at all. He’d been tender. And sweet.

You want a bit of trouble, princess? Here I am. And I promise I’ll give it to you anytime you like.

What a lie.

He’d practically run out the door to get away from her. And he’d apologized. The whole thing was utterly mortifying and infuriating.

Mulligan watched her with a strange expression on his face, as if he could see every thought in her head. She shifted in her chair. “Clayton taught me about the games and how to spot cheaters. Now I’m mostly interested in the accounting side of things.”

“Were you there the night he was raided?”

“Um, yes. I was there.” Why was Mulligan interested in the raid?

“He’s got the tunnel going under his club to the brothel, correct? He got the idea from me. There’s a system of tunnels in this part of town. Places where the coppers can’t go. That didn’t scare you off? The raid, I mean.”

“No.” She thought back to the brothel and how uninhibited she’d been with Clay, how erotic the experience had been. Her skin heated, a condition Mulligan couldn’t have missed thanks to her pale skin. “Why would it?”

“Interesting. I think you’re tougher than you appear, Florence Greene.” He leaned forward and folded his arms on the desk. “And I’ll help you for however long you wish.”

Clay handed his ticket to the attendant and pushed through the turnstile. The Polo Grounds had been finished only last year, replacing the old stadium that now sat directly behind it. A gorgeous ballpark, the Polo Grounds was home to the New York Giants.

Baseball had been one of the few pleasures during Clay’s boyhood. In those days kids hung around and watched games without a ticket. The young boys gathered on the hills around the Union Grounds in Brooklyn and peered down at those fast and powerful men on the field while screaming and cheering for their favorite teams.

Clay had taken bets on the games, of course. He’d never been one to pass up an opportunity for a buck. The majority of his youth consisted of hustling to make money, to keep a roof over his and his mother’s head. Lying, cheating, stealing . . . Any scruples he’d been born with were quickly shed when they lost everything.

Nowadays, he rarely left the Bronze House, except for the occasional baseball game. A bonus? The crowded public setting happened to make for excellent meeting spots in neutral territory. Some vermin were too diseased to cross the Bronze House’s threshold.