The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) by Gregory Ashe Page B

under those blankets. I’m not here for business. At least, not for your business.”
    Without a word, Eileen crawled back under the bedding. She still shivered. She still said nothing.
    “I tried leaving town. Someone’s got the station watched, so I can’t get a train, and the docks are crawling with Seamus’s men. Or whoever is running things now that Seamus is dead.”
    “Byrne.”
    “What?”
    “Byrne is running things now. And he’s put a hundred dollars out for your head.”
    The name didn’t mean anything to Cian. “What about another fellow? A man who visited Seamus, but not by the front door? Someone Seamus trusted enough that he’d meet with him in secret?”
    “Seamus didn’t trust anybody.”
    “He wanted to meet this man without anyone else knowing. Who could it be?”
    “What do I know? I’m just a whore. The last person Seamus met with was you, and you shot him dead.”
    “No. There was another man back there.”
    Eileen watched him for a moment. She had eyes as green as a summer field, and they were bright now. She nodded. “You didn’t look like the type anyway.”
    “So who could this other fellow be?”
    “I have no idea. But there’s been trouble for weeks now. Fights along the river, new folk moving in from the north and the east. Pushing Hogan’s boys, the Cuckoo Gang, Egan’s Rats—all of them. Whoever they are, they’d been hitting Seamus hard. Then Seamus started going queer on us. Screaming in the night, at first, and then twitching like he’d looked up the Devil’s skirt. You saw him. He wasn’t right in the head.”
    “He looked frightened.”
    “He was mad. Totally out of his mind. Everyone’s breathing a sigh of relief that he’s dead.”
    “Everyone except me.”
    Eileen offered a narrow smile. “Everyone except you.”
    “So who’s this new gang?”
    “I don’t know that they’ve got themselves a proper name yet. But everyone talks about the Dane.”
    “Where?”
    “South Tiffany.”
    “Tiffany? What are they? A bunch of ladies in fur stoles?”
    “I told you, Tiffany. South side. That’s all I know.”
    “Thanks.” Cian paused. “Who hit you?”
    Eileen traced a shadow of a bruise on the side of her face. “Bobby. Said I was working with you. Said nobody would get a whore’s coat for her otherwise.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Nobody paid him any mind, and Bobby left me alone after he knocked me around a bit.” She shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
    “He’s dead.”
    “Who? Bobby?”
    “Thanks for the help.”
    “They’re looking for you, Cian. They’ll kill you. And they’ll do it mean and slow if they can, just to make an example.”
    “Take care, Eileen.”
    She huddled deeper in her in blankets and watched him leave. When Cian opened the door, the weak light of the courtyard revealed bruises scattered across Eileen’s chin and cheeks. Cian left, his fists in his pockets, and wished Bobby Floyd had survived the fall.
    Then he went south, into Tiffany.
     
     

 
    The sun balanced itself on the rim of the world, a rusted penny, and the sky was a flavorless peach. The respectable homes of Tiffany stood at attention along the street. A few cars ambled past Cian, and a middle-aged woman with a string of six children gave him a nod, but for the most part, he was alone. Alone gave him time to watch the two- and three-story brick homes on their slender lots, to look at the curtains lit with warm yellow light, to smell wood-smoke and frying onion and to hear the gravel voice of the evening news on the radio.
    Tiffany was the good side of St. Louis. Respectable Americans—not the micks, not the Huns, but the good colonial stock—with good jobs and warm houses and even an automobile, if they’d saved their pennies. Kerry Patch with its frozen poor, with its hunger, with bruised-up Eileen, Kerry Patch might as well have been Siam, or the moon, for all the connection it had with this place.
    Kerry Patch had monsters. Not the unbelievable,