The Double Vice: The 1st Hidden Gotham Novel by Chris Holcombe (free ebook reader txt) 📕

left earlier this summer under scandalous circumstances. Apparently, an anonymous tipster called the higher ups and alerted them that Walter’s own brother was an active homosexualist and had been arrested in a pansy speak raid. Soon afterwards, Walter resigned.”

Dash said, “How did you have time to find all this out this morning?”

“It’s almost one o’clock, dear.”

Dash leapt out of bed. “Hell! I overslept!”

“Good loving can do that for a man,” Finn purred.

While Dash hastily dressed, Joe asked, “Where did you hear all this, Finney?”

“I befriended a secretary named Millie Madison. Lovely girl. Unfortunately for her employers, and fortunately for us, she hadn’t learned the importance of discretion.”

Dash was rapidly absorbing the information as he pulled on his trousers and white shirt. Mother Müller had intimated last night that Karl had been arrested in a raid. The urgency, the late-night visits, it’s just like when Karl . . . And that raid costed Walter his career.

Joe said, “I wonder who called in the tip?”

Finn shrugged. “Maybe it was young Karl, trying to get back at his older brother. If my sibling made his money by prosecuting my kind, I’d do the same thing.”

Dash shook his head as he put on a royal blue tie around his neck. “Karl wasn’t spiteful. I can’t see him doing that.” A thought worked its way into his brain as he finished the knot. “But I think I know who might be . . .”

Dash swung by Paul Avery’s building at Waverly and Christopher. The Averys didn’t answer their buzzer, and Marjorie Norton swore she hadn’t seen them that morning, though she did hear them last night.

Good, they haven’t fled the city yet.

Since by now, it was almost 2:00, it seemed pointless to open the tailor shop, which was fine by Dash. He needed to find a suit for Nicholas Fife. The gangster had to have known that Dash was not skilled in this regard, yet he still demanded a new suit anyway.

Power, Dash thought. It’s all about power with him. He’ll enjoy watching me run around the city trying to find a solution.

Sadly, Dash’s search that day was unsuccessful. Many of the other tailors he approached with his odd request of selling him a suit for alterations looked at him bewildered. Why, they wondered, would he want to essentially plagiarize his work? Didn’t he have a reputation to protect?

By 5:00, he declared defeat.

He returned to Paul Avery’s apartment on Waverly and Christopher. Still no answer to the buzzer. Dammit.

Dash stepped back and counted the windows to the front right corner, the one he guessed to be the Avery’s apartment based on its interior location when he and Joe “returned” Mrs. Avery’s keys. The lights were out and the curtains drawn.

He positioned himself in the doorway of another building next door. He watched for two hours to see if his quarry would stumble home like Marjorie said they often did. So far, he saw nothing out of the ordinary on the sunset streets of Christopher. Couples walking briskly. Several dog walkers letting their mutts out for a folic. Men hailing cabs to head uptown.

As night descended upon the city, the walkers turned into staggerers, the cheap alcohol working fast and swaying men about. One man sang opera at the top of his lungs, his verve much greater than his talent. Surveillance, or “stakeouts,” as the pulps called them, required the virtue Finn claimed Dash lacked, and his friend was right. Dash felt simultaneously bored and itchy with energy. It was when he paced the opposite sidewalk for a bit to stretch his legs that he noticed a narrow alleyway, not more than three feet wide at the opening, running beside Paul Avery’s building.

A memory sparked.

Marjorie Norton, Miss Eavesdropper Extraordinaire, had said she’d spoken to Paul’s wife while she was smoking cigarettes on the fire escape. He looked around to see if anyone was paying him any attention. Everyone was moving too fast to care. He slowly stepped into the alleyway. Night had painted deep shadows into every corner and crevice.

On the sides, the building had black iron fire escapes laddering up to the top floor. Dash flicked his lighter to provide some light in the dusky darkness and scanned the ground. Sure enough, on the gravel below were hundreds of cigarette butts. The city cleaning service, which gave cursory glances to the main streets themselves on a good day, flat-out ignored the alleyways. It was one of the (many) reasons summer smelled so awful.

Dash kneeled on the ground examining the butts, holding them up to his flame. More than a few were rimmed with red or pink lipstick. He closed the lighter and glanced upwards. The building was designed with four windows on this wall for each floor. The first window from the front of the building caught his eye. On the ledge of the fire escape was an ashtray.

“Gotcha,” Dash muttered.

Hunkered down in between the metal trash cans, Dash ignored the flies buzzing around his head and the stench offending his nostrils. He itched for a cigarette but resisted the impulse. Instead, he settled in, knowing it could potentially be a long night. It reminded him of the hide-and-seek games he’d play with his older brother Max. Max and Dash, what a pair. Dash would find the most improbable hiding spaces: kitchen cabinets, bottom desk drawers, once even the dumbwaiter. He could barely contain the excitement tickling his chest, and it took everything he had not to pop out of his hiding space. The memories were trapped in amber, a warm glow always surrounding them. They were the last memories of his brother playing with him. Sometime later, Max decided he was too old to play such childish games. When they were both young men, Max still remained aloof. Perhaps he always knew Dash’s secret and the disruption it would cause. Better to be distant than to endure substantial heartbreak. It was certainly a lesson Dash learned later.

An hour