Tamara sat up straighter. Phyllis had been spending a great deal of time on the phone with Walter lately. But she wasn’t talking to Walter, not with that voice. More mob business?
“I’m aware of that. But we proceed on my terms or we don’t at all.” Another pause. Tammy thought of getting closer to the parlor, but then shook her head. Pea, of all people, would notice immediately. Better to hear half of the conversation than none at all.
“Good. Okay then, these are two men.” Pause. “Quentin and Beauregard Barkley, Lenox Avenue.” She let out a slow breath. “They’re worth a lot. Policy bank. Twenty-eight. Yes, the same place. Finch. But I want to make sure their families are taken care of, after. Yes, I’ll have the funds wired this afternoon.”
Tammy shivered in front of the pot-bellied stove. There was a shiny black ring on the iron stovetop, precisely the size of Pea’s old percolator that boiled over as regularly as a geothermal vent. She kept her gaze fixed on that artifact of their domesticity even as Phyllis hung up the phone and dialed other numbers—Walter, this time, just to catch up, and then her sister and niece and nephew. Tamara’s knuckles ached from the force of her grip on the edge of the canary-yellow kitchen chair, yet she was not consciously aware of holding anything. She felt as though she had been cast into a turbid river, and the roaring of the water was Phyllis’s voice: they’re worth a lot, twenty-eight, Finch. A voice hard as steel and easy as a good cutting knife. An angel’s voice, a Phyllis LeBlanc voice, a killer’s voice. And why not? How else would she sound, ordering a kill from the comfort of the divan of her upstate country house? And yet, there was that black ring of burned coffee from a percolator that she always complained about but never replaced. Despite that mountain of corpses between them, Pea still existed, and was still—if Tammy could stomach it—her friend.
Phyllis finished the call with her sister, promising to wire more money, this time for her nephew’s clarinet lessons and her niece’s new band uniform. Tamara gripped the chair so tight that a bit of splinter pricked the fleshy pad of her right thumb. This was who had decided to judge her? This was the one for whom she was supposed to take on a curse and Victor’s smiling ghost? And was Dev any better, staying with her when he knew just what she was? Who were they to judge the choices Tamara had made to stay alive? The cards pricked her, seemed to bend light around them from where they lay on the table. She loosened her grip on the chair and turned her attention to them with reluctance. They’d have something to say about all of this, she knew. Like Aunt Winnie, they never missed out on a chance to comment. They probably wanted to point out that Dev, at least, had more than enough right to judge her for what happened that night with Victor. But Tammy closed her eyes and closed her hands and closed her heart until all she could hear was rushing water. Safe from all contradicting thought.
Pea’s voice from the doorway shocked her back into reality.
“You’re not sleeping,” she said, dryly.
Tammy kept her eyes shut. “And how do you know?”
The warm laugh in Pea’s voice slapped Tammy across the cheeks. “The cards are out, and the laudanum is still in the cupboard.”
Tammy cracked open an eye. Pea was leaning against the doorframe, her belly cradled beneath a guiding hand, her eyes red from lack of sleep, folding into crow’s feet as she smiled. Her hair rose in a fuzzy halo around the front of her head, and twisted into a knotted mess in back.
Tamara could not speak. Pea would die soon. It would never stop being Tamara’s fault.
Some, not all, of the laughter left those jeweled eyes. “How much did you hear, baby?”
And now all she could do was spit up bile. That baby, that damned baby and her sainted hands, why did she have to come and ruin every good thing they’d had together? “Do you think ordering the hit makes it better, Phyllis? Oh, sure, it cuts down on the laundry bills! Afterward you make sure you throw some change to the family, and you feel good and holy, I bet!”
Phyllis gave her a good look for a long time, until Tamara squirmed in her seat and realized, belatedly, that she was still just a little drunk from last night’s wine. Her tongue felt thick and rotten in her mouth. She regretted saying anything and she knew if she opened her mouth again she would make herself unforgivable.
“Not so good,” Pea said, at last, “not so holy. I know what I’ve done. I know who I am. I know my sins to the gram, Tamara Anderson. There’s no feather heavy enough to balance them.”
“Blood money doesn’t make up for doing Red Man’s dirty business!”
Pea’s nostrils flared. Tamara could have sworn that she was about to laugh, though her eyes were glassy tunnels to a distant pain. “No, it wouldn’t,” she said, and pushed herself from the door frame. “Though money certainly don’t hurt the family, if they’re already dead.” She stepped over the remains of Tamara’s debauchery, made note of the letter in Dev’s distinctive sloping hand on the tabletop, and rinsed the percolator of yesterday’s dregs.
“Want any coffee, sweetie?”
“How many people have you killed, Pea?”
Water ran briskly in the sink. The sharp rap of the filter against the side was prelude to the click of it back into the base, and the faint squeak of the base screwing into the top.
“Depends on how you count,” she said, matter-of-fact but soft about it. “Fifty-four with my own hands.”
Tamara sucked her teeth, a spontaneous reaction lingered upon for effect. “Jesus.”
“Got nothing to do with it, I’m sure.”
She moved back into Tammy’s field of vision and
