Mind the Gap

"Your hair looks lovely," he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "Bit of makeup, that expensive cut, you could be a television presenter or something, up in the world. Is that it, then? You think you can still return to the illusion they paint as normality? Steady pay, a husband, and a couple of kids? Probably want a dog too."



She lost her appetite, let the fork fall to the plate, and pushed back from the table, glaring at him. "All I want are answers."



Harry sighed. "And you think Terence can give you those? Poor girl. Bloke takes you to a posh salon, and in spite of everything you've learned about the way the world really works, you still think you can be a princess, live hap-pily ever after."



Jazz stared at him. The words cut her, and a part of her wanted to scream at him, tell him just how full of shit he was. But the tempest of her rage had been undone.



"How could you know that? Were you following us?"



"I didn't have to follow you, pet. When you described the thief you met at Keating's house, there was only one man it could be. Then you didn't come back last night, which created two possibilities. The cops had you, or you'd seen Terence again. From the new hairstyle, the smell of per-fumed soap, and the clothes you're wearing, I surmise you haven't spent the night behind bars."



He waited for a response. As she stared at him, the idea of Harry Fowler as parent and herself as errant, prodigal child began to fester.



"You know what? That'll be enough of that," she said, pushing her plate away. She jabbed an accusing finger toward him. "I don't owe you an explanation for anything. You're the one with all the lies and secrets, Harry, and it's time I had an-swers. You act like you're this benevolent creature, some fucking shepherd, gathering your flock of lost lambs. But you're not so innocent, are you? And it may've taken me a while, but I'll tell you now: I'm no fucking sheep."



Slowly, leaning back in his chair, Harry began to ap-plaud.



"Bravo," he said, rising to his feet and striding toward a cabinet set against the far wall. "Truly. A little ferocity will take you far, Jazz girl. Could keep you alive as well. Might be you'll need it soon."



Harry opened a drawer and began to slide something out.



"What are you talking about?" she demanded.



He returned to the table and she saw what he held in his hands, and for a moment words failed her.



Harry set down the two photographs. The one of the Blackwood Club, whose frame she had accidentally shattered while retrieving the stolen piece of the apparatus, he placed on top. Her fa-ther's face stared up at her from the group photo, and for the first time, she noticed that the photograph had been arranged so that her father was the focal point. The Uncles were all there —Mort and the rest of them—but James Towne was the center.



"Where did you get those?" she asked.



Harry studied them, not looking up. "I saw broken glass on the floor in the corridor upstairs, just below the door to the old service lift. I've walked that way dozens of times; would've seen it if it had been there before. So I had a look. Careless of you, really. But when I found these inside, I knew we'd be talking soon. There are things I wished you would never have to know. But it's too late for that."



Jazz uttered a small noise that sounded almost like a laugh. It was anything but.



"Who are you, exactly, to decide what I should and shouldn't know?"



Harry began to reply, but she waved him to silence.



"No. It's a rhetorical question. I've had a think, and I figure you can't be working for the Blackwood Club or the mayor, 'cause they'd never have beat you like that, and you'd have served me up to them by now. Maybe you think that makes you some kind of hero. Well, I hate to shatter your il-lusions, but you're not. You're an old man who's run away from something. I know plenty about hiding, Harry. And you can keep it up, for all I care. But this concerns me. My family's all wrapped up in it, tangled in fucking barbed wire, and I want to know what you know. How you and Terence know each other, how you ended up photographing the Blackwood Club, what you know about the damn apparatus and London's ghosts —all of it."



She leaned over the table. "But the first question is this: was it all a setup, me finding you? We're connected, Harry. You, me, Terence, and the damn Blackwood Club. But you didn't find me. I came upon the old shelter by chance. Fucking stumbled into it. Seemed that way, at least, but I can't believe in a coincidence like that, Harry. So tell me, how did you do it?"



For the first time since she'd entered the Palace this morning, Harry's face lit up with a smile of real humor and mischief —the smile of the Harry Fowler she'd known.



"I didn't do a thing, pet. Not a blessed thing. It's magic, isn't it? The entire history of England is constructed on the fates and destinies of people. Some of them were extraordi-nary, and some ordinary.



Once upon a time, magic influ-enced everything. And with magic, there's no such thing as coincidence."



****



Harry had been fascinated by magic his entire life, but not the sleight of hand that Terence Whitcomb's father had enjoyed. He claimed to have had numerous encounters with magic during his childhood, and it had scarred him, both physically and emotionally.



"How did you meet Terence?" Jazz asked.



"Magic again. And thievery. The twin stories of my life," Harry said. He wouldn't look at her now.



His gaze was fixed at some distant point, as though simply by speaking of these events he could see into the past.



"In another age, the Fowlers were fairly well-to-do. My father taught university, though his family had left him enough money that he could've retired at thirty. Instead, he taught until the day he died, at the age of sixty-four. I was just shy of forty when I returned home for his funeral. My sister, Anna, awaited me there. Hadn't seen her in five years or more. Afterward, we went back to my father's house to find that someone had broken in during the service. Oh, there was no damage. But there were things missing, includ-ing my mother's wedding ring. She'd been dead five years by then, and the ring had been on my father's nightstand ever since.



"It gutted Anna, losing that ring. Some of Mum's other jewelry had been taken as well. My father had nothing of value for himself, save a library of antique books. While he lived, nothing had mattered to him but my mother's things. A queer desperation struck me then. I felt he wouldn't rest until I got them back. Anna was distraught. For her, and for my father, I did something I'd sworn to myself I never would do." His eyes grew dark as he spoke, and his nostrils flared with self-loathing.



Jazz studied him a moment, and she knew. "You used magic to find the thief."



Harry put his hands over his mouth and nose. His gaze seemed lost. "Yes."



"But... magic. It's all storybook stuff to me. You and Terence talk about it like it's... like you could just reach out and touch it."



"Not so simple as that, love. Oh, it's here now, all around us. And some people —you and I included—can sense it at times. Those who dare, those who know the right words or gestures or symbols, can tap into it. But magic has faded, the same way the stories about it have."



Jazz rolled that around in her brain for a few seconds. Once it would have seemed completely absurd to her, but she had witnessed the ghosts of old London and heard the Hour of Screams, and she knew there was more to the world than what the worker bees rushing around the city could see.



"And the thief? It was Terence?"



Harry clapped his hands together. "Precisely. One of my father's students, in fact. Twenty years my junior. Yes, I'm afraid I'm not quite as old as I appear. Time has not been kind to me.



"As you surmise, I located the thief, but his reaction was not what I would have expected at such a discovery. Terence was so pleased that I'd been able to track him down that he gave me back everything he'd taken from the house without my even asking. He wanted to know how I'd done it, of course. Such things fascinated him. Thought there must be some trick to it and wanted to learn. I ought to have turned him in to the police, but I did not. I told Anna that I'd found a bag tossed aside in the garden and there would be no way to catch the thief. I said we ought to be content just to have gotten our things back.



"Terence and I crossed paths again a few days later. Anna and I had been packing up my father's things to vacate the house —university property, you understand—when he appeared at the door and insisted I tell him how I'd found him. The mystery had been driving him mad, he said. We made a bargain.



Simple enough. He'd show me some of the tricks of his trade if I'd tell him the truth. I was sure he wouldn't believe me, you see. But, then, I didn't know about his father or the apparatus he was building. You see what I mean about fate, Jazz girl? It seemed like more than serendipity that the two of us had come together."



Harry paused then, and at last his gaze seemed to focus on their present circumstances. He looked at Jazz.



"How much did Terence tell you?"



Jazz considered a moment, then said, "Not everything, I'm sure. I know they killed his father. They wanted the ap-paratus for themselves, to gather up all the city's old magic. But they didn't have the battery, so the apparatus was useless to them. Terence said they took it apart, scattered the parts about, so nobody else could use it."



Harry nodded. "And they've been looking for the bat-tery ever since. So has Terence. I looked with him for the longest time. We spent years stealing back pieces of the ap-paratus. These —" He gestured to the photos on the table. "I created an elaborate ruse, even set up a photographer's shop with family money and used all of the connections my late father's status would allow to manipulate myself into the good graces of the Blackwood Club. I needed to know the identity of each member, so we would know where to look."



Jazz held up a hand to halt him. "All right, I get it. Now, suppose for a moment that I believe all this.



How did you get from there to here? You had money, status, and a pur-pose. Terence is still topside, still on his crusade. But you're down here in the dark."



Harry let his gaze drop, a rueful smile on his face. "Terence tried to teach me as best he could, but the shame-ful truth, my dear, is that old Harry never became half the thief Mr. Whitcomb was. Nor half the actor. They found me out, tried to make me tell them who else I worked with. Didn't speak a word about Terence. Not a word. I thought they'd kill me. But they weren't always as hard as they are now. They knew me, yeah? Knew my family. They told me to disappear, to vanish myself forever. That if any of them ever saw me again, they'd kill Anna. Couldn't have any con-tact with her. Not ever."



Shamed, he hung his head, but after a moment he glanced up, eyes damp with tears. "The worst of it is that Anna died last year. Cancer took her. I went to the hospital, tried to say good-bye, but she didn't know me by then. Barely conscious. She's dead and they've got nothing over me now, but I'm still down here." His laugh was bitter.



"Wouldn't know what to do with myself topside any-more. I don't know how to live in that world.



And I've got the young ones to look after, don't I? Who knows what would happen to them without me?"



Jazz studied him. Despite her natural suspicion, every-thing Harry had said had the ring of truth. His grief was painful to see. But looking at him, she was certain he had not told her everything.



"You knew my father."



Harry frowned. "Only to photograph him."



A niggling thought worked at the back of her mind, puzzle pieces attempting to fit together. "The Blackwood Club killed Terence's father and threatened to kill your sis-ter. You see where I'm going?"



"You want to know if your father fell victim to his friends. The Senate burying their knives in Caesar."



"Caesar?" she said, and a ripple of revulsion went through her as she realized what he meant. "My father was... what? Club president?"



Harry got up and walked to a cabinet, poured himself a snifter of scotch, and leaned against the wall.



"I don't think they have such titles," he said, taking a sip. "Not so far as I know, anyway. And, yes. James Towne ran the Blackwood Club, at least back in those days. The club goes back a long way, you see. More than two hundred years. But Josephine —the ice queen in that photo—thought that, as the only living Blackwood, she ought to lead them."



"She murdered him?" Jazz heard how small her own voice had become.



"Nothing of the sort. Your old man tried a bit of magic that was too big for him. Something dark and ugly, from what the whispers said at the time. Cost him his life. Right after that was when they found me out, drove me off."



"And my mother?"



"Never met the woman."



Images of her mother's corpse sprawled halfway off her bed and the words smeared in blood on the wall filled her mind. Jazz blinked hard, holding back tears, but she knew that when she spoke, the quaver in her voice would reveal her anguish.



"All those years, why did the Uncles —the Blackwood Club, I mean—why did they look after us like that?"



Harry threw back the scotch in his glass and squeezed his eyes closed. When he opened them, his gaze was intense. "They were obsessed and ambitious. Nasty, greedy bastards. But they had a loyalty to the club. I can't know for sure, you understand. Just a theory, but from what little I knew of them, I expect it was just them taking care of their own. You were James Towne's family, so they looked out for you. And maybe they wanted to make sure you didn't know anything that could hurt them."



Jazz's throat felt dry. She wouldn't have minded a scotch herself. "Then why did they kill her?"



"That, I haven't the faintest idea."



His expression was blank, not a trace of a smile or frown, and Jazz knew he was lying. Her pulse fluttered and she searched his eyes.



"Harry, don't —" she started to say.



A gunshot interrupted her, echoing down to the Palace from the stairwell and muffled by the doors.



Jazz stood, knocking over her chair, and took two steps away from the door.