It was his turn to grin. Then he promptly ordered me taken down to the holding cells.
At first the guard was going to put me in the men’s section, but I popped off my cap to reveal my mop of red curls and he quickly hustled me to the other side of the building and the smaller, and fractionally cleaner, women’s section.
I spent the next three days in that cell with little contact other than the guards. The only exception was early that first morning when I was joined by a trio of girls who got busted at a Chinatown whorehouse. Apparently the owner had missed a payment to a judge and the girls were paying the price. They mistook me for someone in the same line and gave me the name and number of their employer. They explained to me that there was a market for girls who can pass as boys and vice versa. Nothing I hadn’t long ago learned.
Anyhow, I spent a handful of hours learning the ins and outs of the world’s oldest profession as it’s practiced on the higher end in New York City. By lunchtime, the girls had gotten bailed and I was left alone, save for the bedbugs, which were present in unseen thousands. I scored an old newspaper off a guard and put it down on top of the mattress, hoping to put a barrier between me and the vermin. Still, I figured everything I was wearing would have to be scrubbed, scoured, or outright burned when I got back to Hart and Halloway.
If I got back.
The circus was set to leave in three days and I hadn’t heard word one about what was going to happen to me.
Funny thing, it wasn’t the possibility of getting pegged for murder that preyed most on my mind. It was the look in Lazenby’s eyes when I told him Willowjean Parker was my real name. Because it wasn’t.
Willowjean was legit enough. Yeah, it wasn’t the most common name, but my mother had given it to me and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. But I’d tossed my last name as soon as I joined the circus. Parker had been stolen from a character in an issue of Black Mask.
I kept telling myself that tracking down my kin was a hundred-to-one shot. And, besides, what harm could it do? I was a grown woman now. Not the scared little girl who ran away from home all those years ago.
But sitting in that cell, my anxieties bred fast, and like with the bedbugs, scratching only made it worse. I spent the second night alone. The only light was from a dim bulb far down the corridor. The bravado I’d managed to conjure up and wear like a shield drained away. I pictured the cell door opening and my father stepping in, his face red, leather belt wrapped tight around his fist.
Found you.
I squeezed my eyes tight until I was finally able to toss myself into a fitful sleep.
A little before noon on the third day, the cell door slid open. But no one stepped in. Instead, I was ushered out and escorted upstairs to a different interview room. This one was their deluxe model. It had a window and chairs that didn’t wobble. I was only left alone there for half an hour this time before the door burst open and Dee-Dee barreled in, an avalanche of red-dyed bouffant and jacked-up bosom.
“Will, baby, I’ve been so worried.” She rushed to hug me but I held her off.
“Better not,” I told her. “Not before I’ve been deloused.”
She settled for blowing me a kiss and took a seat across from me at the little interview table.
“What’s going on, Dee-Dee? I’ve been flying blind for three days.”
“I’m not sure, honey. I gather the cops have been nailing down details on this Markel murder. But it looks like a sure thing McCloskey killed him. At least that’s what it says in the papers.”
“It’s in the papers?”
“Front page for two days running,” Dee-Dee said, smiling. “All about how McCloskey might have done things like this before and nobody suspected. How this Pentecost woman did what the police couldn’t. Anyhow, they’re springing you later this afternoon.”
“Yes!” I pounded the table with a triumphant fist. “I have never been more happy to go back to my lumpy little cot next to the tiger cage.”
Dee-Dee frowned. It was a look she usually reserved for Big Bob when he had a particularly expensive brainstorm.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “This Pentecost lady came by the grounds yesterday. Sat in Big Bob’s trailer for an hour lobbing questions at him.”
“About what?”
“About you. Seems she has a business proposition.”
I leaned back in my chair, suddenly wary. “What kind of proposition?”
“Some kind of job. Something long-term. Bob said she wasn’t specific. She convinced him she’s on the level, though. He said you should listen to her.”
“Bob wants me out?”
She reached across the table and took my hand.
“It’s not like that. He just thinks it’s in your best interests. I gotta say I agree.”
“What are you talking about, Dee?” The circus was the be-all, end-all, alpha and omega for Bob and Dee-Dee. I couldn’t imagine either of them siding against life under the big top.
“Here’s the deal, sweetie. Traveling shows are on their way out. Audiences are thin on the ground. More competition from amusement parks. The smaller circuses are getting gobbled up by the big ones. You know the story. And it’s only gonna get worse. Better to go out on your own terms than get handed a pink slip.”
I’d spent the last five years eating, sleeping, breathing the circus. Leaving would be like giving up oxygen.
“I’m not saying you have to take the offer,” Dee-Dee told me. “I’m just saying listen to her. Weigh the pros and cons with as clear an eye as you can.”
She stood up.
“Now, I don’t care what you’re infested with, I want a hug.”
She wrapped her arms around me and did her best to crack a rib.
“You end up saying yes, and it turns out this Pentecost broad has a screw loose or maybe she’s one of those types with a secret twist, you come running back. Got it?”
“Got it, Dee.”
“Love you, Will. You watch yourself.” With that, she walked out.
A few minutes later, a guard I hadn’t seen before escorted me from the interview room, down a maze of halls, and out a back door. A jet-black Cadillac sedan was waiting for me. The driver was an older woman whose bulk barely fit behind the wheel. She looked like the love child of a sideshow strongman and a warden at a women’s prison.
“You the one calls herself Will Parker?” she asked, her Scottish accent scouring off a layer of skin.
“I’m the one calls myself that.”