Page 48

“P ardon, sirs, gotta sweep the house,” I announced, striding down the aisle toward a still-costumed Sonia, Frankie, Righty, and Lefty. The latter two stood like boulders right where you’d expect them to be.

“Benny! Come meet our esteemed patrons,” Sonia said too brightly. “I’m just keeping these gents company while they wait for Sam .” Her toothy smile conveyed all the alarm her voice could not.

“Oh! Well, they can just follow me.”

Dread flashed across Sonia’s face before she reset it. “F-follow you? You mean to say Sam’s come back?”

“He never left! He’s in his tent,” I said with what I hoped was a jaunty laugh.

Without turning his head, Frankie’s eyes peered right at Righty, then left at Lefty. Whether or not Sonia understood what the hell I was trying to do, she relented quickly enough once she noticed how far up my forehead my eyebrows had risen.

She giggled loudly. “I suppose he must be then!”

All five of us filed out of the stage door onto the hot gravel walk to Morgan’s tent, Sonia keeping up behind me as I led the way.

“ What the hell, Benny ,” she hissed through her teeth.

“Just go with it,” I whispered back.

At the tent flap, I turned around and held out my hands to stop everyone. “Hey, Sam?” I called into the tent. “You’ve got some visitors!”

Predictably, there was no answer from inside the tent. Beside me, Sonia was a live wire, fidgeting with a ream of ribbon hanging off her costume while her eyeballs tried to generate electricity with nothing but her pupils.

“Sam, you all right in there?” I called again. I looked over my shoulder at the Agostinellis, whose faces were shiny and red in the heat. “Just give me a moment, would you?”

I pushed into the tent, closed the flap behind me, and quickly took stock of the room. The money box I’d brought in earlier was gone. On the desk was the open ledger, with today’s date scrawled in neat cursive above the amount we’d raked in: 198 bucks and fifty cents. The room stank of pipe smoke, an aroma that always snagged in my lungs regardless of whether Sam’s pipe was lit nearby.

In this instance, it would help.

“Sam, you look awful!” I said loudly.

I replied to myself in Morgan’s voice but grimmer and slightly nauseated. “Mr. Caldera, you couldn’t have come at a worse time!”

Me: “What happened?”

Me as Morgan: “What does it look like, you imbecile? Those sandwiches Eli brought over for lunch. I don’t think they were—”

And then, bendito sea Dios , I started to retch. Or pretend to, anyway.

“Benny, what’s going on in there?” came Sonia’s baffled voice from the other side.

“You don’t wanna know, Sonia! Looks like the salami from Salvatore’s didn’t agree with the boss,” I shouted back, then retched some more.

“Ohhhh,” I groaned (as Morgan). “Who in hell is outside the tent?”

Sonia’s voice was wavering. “The Agostinellis are here to see you, Sam. Can they come in?”

I opened my mouth to say no, and heard Frankie Agostinelli say it instead. “Uh-uh. I ain’t goin’ in there if he’s spewing his lunch,” he snapped. “You can hear me just fine, can’t you Sammy boy?”

Me as Morgan: “ Ughhhh.”

Me as me: “Yeah, sure he can hear you.”

“First thing’s first,” said Frankie uncomfortably. “Today was a full house, Sammy, and it’s collection time. One third plus today’s earnings. Where’s the dough?”

“It’s at... hnngggghhh ... the Albemarle!”

“You just finished the show and now you’re upchucking antipasto. How’d today’s profits make it all the way down the street?”

?Cono!

“Ooohh, oh , yes...” Sam’s smoky tent air was getting caught in my lungs; my wheezing was getting worse. When a cough pushed its way out, I tried to make it sound like one of Morgan’s. “I had Benny run the— uurrggh— earnings to the front gate. I was going to pick it up on my way. Didn’t want to risk keeping it in the theater with so many” (—a burp—) “folks around.”

“I see,” said Frankie, sounding more gravelly than usual. A pause. “Then we will go back to the Albemarle and wait for you there.”

“No!” shouted Morgan-me. I’d just remembered: the Agostinellis couldn’t go back to the Albemarle if that’s where Navya and Igor were distracting a healthy and un-poisoned Sam Morgan! “The hotel is full of prying eyes, don’t you think? We should go somewhere more private. Salvatore’s?”

“Ain’t that where you ate the rotten salami?” That was Righty.

Damn it, Benny, keep your story straight!

“They must’ve served that stuff to at least a few hundred folks today,” I said as myself. “By the time you get there, the place’ll be a ghost town! Right, Sam?”

Morgan-me groaned. “Good thinking, Benny.”

Jesucristo , maybe I was actually great at acting.

“All right,” said Frankie. “Tonight, when Luna’s lights go out, bring the cash to Salvatore’s. But I’m leaving Vincenzo here. I got some safety concerns about the Prince of Atlantis act now that the cat is out of the bag.”

“Safety concerns?” I asked—in my own voice, before catching myself. Quickly, I switched: “What safety concerns?”

“Reynolds’s stooges were in the audience today,” said Frankie, sounding close to the canvas flap. “What are you doing to make sure our investment is protected, Sammy?”

“From what?” asked Sonia.

“ Sabotatori. ”

That sounded a lot like “ saboteadores .” Meaning “saboteurs.”

“The tank’s practically indestructible,” I said in my normal voice. “And if someone breaks into the theater, I’ll be guarding it.”

A snort sounded from the other side of the canvas. “You? The small brown pirate man with the violin?”

I seethed. Five-foot-nine wasn’t small.

“Yes, me. I heard you got sway with the cops, why don’t you ask them to keep an extra patrol on Luna Park if you’re so worried?”

At this, Frankie laughed. “Yeah, I got connections. But that means less cops pokin’ their noses in our business, not more .”

“Well, I can tell you that the merman won’t take kindly to strangers hanging around at night. He’s been known to get”—Morgan-me gagged for good measure—“violent.”

I heard a rustle outside the tent, then: “Vincenzo. Give the kid your roscoe.”

“What? Why’s it gotta be mine?”

“Because you’re the figlio di puttana who ate my last cannoli. You really need a reason?”

With a scrape of metal against concrete, something skidded under the tent flap and stopped at my feet.

This gun was a lot bigger than a derringer.

“Can you fire one of these without taking off your own feet, kid?”

I gulped. “Uh, yeah. Definitely. Yes, sir.”

“Good. You come across anyone trying to steal himself a merman, you have my permission to bump him off,” he declared. “Sammy, I will see you at Salvatore’s at nine o’clock—whether or not you are done puking your guts out.”

With a last long groan, Morgan-me said, “I’ll be there, Mr. Agostinelli.”

“Make sure you bring the principessa ,” he mumbled, followed by the wet smack of a kiss. “I’d like to congratulate her on her performance in private.”

For a moment, I thought I really might retch.

As their footsteps in the gravel faded away, the muscles in my legs nearly gave out in relief. Sonia threw open the tent flap and rushed into Morgan’s tent right past me toward the screen partition. She poked her head behind it, looking for evidence that I wasn’t alone before her wild eyes finally landed on my face.

“ You ,” she gasped. In three steps, she reached me and threw her arms around my neck. “You are a goddamned freak of nature, Benny Caldera! I swear to God, I’da sworn Morgan was really in here spewing his lunch into a trash can, and no one coulda convinced me otherwise!”

I stepped out of her arms and picked up the gun with two fingers. “Come on. We gotta get the wheels back on that tank, and pronto.”

Sonia and I met Matthias, Eli, Emmett, and Vera at the tank. They stood around it like the tabaqueros at Tití Luz’s interment, Río’s body the centerpiece of their dismay.

My beloved now lay on the tank floor, panting, shivering, and surrounded by sloughed scales.

I refused to grieve. Río was still here, and I had a promise to keep.

“Lulu left the coveralls in the greenroom,” I said hoarsely. “If someone could grab the hose and circulation pump from outside—”

“I’ll get it,” said Eli.

“Thanks. Get dressed, then meet back here.”

“You’re the boss,” said Vera grimly, and everyone turned to leave.

“Hang on, Em.” I pulled out Lefty’s gun and held it out to him, with the stock facing up. “I dunno how to fire one of these.”

He leaned away like it might bite him. “Where in the nine circles of hell did you get that?”

“It’s Vincenzo Agostinelli’s. For saboteurs.”

Emmett sighed and took it from my hand. “I’ll do my best.”

And he left too.

Alone with the tank once more, I crouched beside Río’s head. “ Mi cielo. ”

His muscles went taught under his thin skin as he rolled slowly toward me. The whites of his eyes had gone gray. His chest heaved. But then he smiled at me, and it fueled my courage like a shot of absinthe.

Slowly and with great effort, he shifted himself toward me until he reached the wall where I pressed my hand against the tank, then my lips. He kissed me through the glass.

And though my heart lay dying with him, I whispered, “Time to go home.”