“You’re full of surprises.”
“My mom’s side of the family were friends with Garrett A. Morgan. He was self-taught, inventor of the gas mask and the traffic signal.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Henson said.
“When other little girls were playing with dolls and shucking peas, ‘Uncle’ Morgan taught me how to take an electric drill motor apart and put it back together. I got hooked on tinkering.”
“Wow,” he said, impressed.
Stevenson cocked her head, looking past him. He followed her gaze to the door which opened again, bell jangling. Two men in suits and ties stood in the doorway. A silver and grey Duesenberg which made no more sound than a sewing machine idled at the curb.
“Queenie wants to see you, Mr. Henson.” This one had the carriage of a middleweight, boxy shoulders and a crook in his nose from it being broken at some point. He enunciation was that of an English teacher.
When Queenie St. Clair sent her men for you, it was a request you were meant not to turn down, Henson observed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After telling Destiny Stevenson he’d call her later to check in, the three men rode in silence to the E-shaped, thirteen-story, red-brick building on Edgecombe Avenue in Sugar Hill. This was where Queenie St. Clair maintained a penthouse. Walking through the lobby, Henson spotted two doormen in long dark tunics, and he had no doubt that underneath their attire were weapons in easy-to-draw rigs. The other man who’d brought him over rode up in the elevator with him. This one had uneven features, a thin mustache and eyes slightly too close together.
The elevator doors hissed open, and Henson found himself in a foyer of deeply-veined marble and jade. Against the wall opposite was a table of Rococo design, and upon that, a bust of Hannibal of Carthage.
“To the left,” the man said. He rode back down in the elevator.
Henson heard a voice as he entered a converted office where there was a blend of more Rococo furnishings, complimented with Art Deco touches like the sleek chrome and grey desk the policy queen sat behind talking on an Eiffel Tower phone. The Martinique native was speaking French into the handset and was leaning back in her banker’s chair. She looked at Henson to acknowledge his presence as he walked across a plush Assyrian-patterned carpet. Behind St. Clair, a window offered a view across Harlem River Drive and the river, as well as a portion of the Bronx.
Sitting in a plush chair before her desk, Henson amused himself wondering if she ever dragged out a telescope to spy on Dutch Schultz.
A pretty tan woman in a man’s suit appeared near him. “Coffee, tea, or something stronger, Mr. Henson?”
“Coffee would be fine.”
“One lump or two?”
“Black.”
She dipped her head slightly and left. St. Clair continued on the phone, occasionally using English, but not more than a word or two at a time. The younger woman reappeared carrying a china cup and saucer and placed this on the desk before Henson. She went away again, her form swallowed into the soft gloom of a nearby hallway. St. Clair hung up, rising to greet her visitor.
“Mr. Henson, we meet again.” In her accent, she pronounced his name “Hin-Son”.
He stood, leaning forward to shake her extended hand. She was a good-sized woman, handsome and clear-eyed. “Good to see you again, too.” Their paths had crossed a few times in the past, but this was the first time he’d been summoned to her headquarters.
“I’m going to have a little tiger’s milk,” she said, traipsing over to a cart with bottles of liquor and mixers on it. She poured herself a sizeable dose of scotch and came back to her desk and sat down.
“I understand you had a run in with a couple of Dutch’s boys.”
“I did.”
“Having to do with that fine brown gal, Daddy’s daughter.”
She already knew all this but he replied, “Yes.”
St. Clair put her drink down. “I hear you got word where Schultz’s men were holed up from one of my runners.”
“That’s right.” Toliver had told him Dutch Schultz had taken his daughter. Henson knew St. Clair made sure anybody in her employ would eyeball Schultz’s men trying to poach on her territory here in Harlem.
“And you knew once they told you, they had to tell me.”
“Of course.”
“Now you’re guarding her.”
“Your silent partner is naturally concerned about the welfare of his child.” Was St. Clair miffed that Daddy Paradise hadn’t asked to have her men in on the rescue?
“And that’s all you signed on to do?”
“Miss St. Clair, if there’s—”
“Queenie will do.”
“What do you want to know, Queenie?”
She made a face. “Just want to make sure my associates are getting what they pay for.”
Henson tried his coffee. It was tepid. “You think I’m up to some kind of double cross?”
“No, no,” she said. “But you know this Henrik Ellsmere, don’t you? He’d been with you on one of your expeditions. The one where you brought back that big piece of rock and sold it to the Natural History Museum. But the excursion took its toll on him, didn’t it? All that cold and ice and bleakness. He had some sort of breakdown, yeah?”
“He did. He’s better now. How do you know about that?”
“My little Venus is quite the reader and retainer of facts. Comes in handy when you don’t want to write certain things down.”
Henson assumed Venus had been the woman in the man’s suit. “What’s your interest in Henrik?”
She gestured. “Less than two days after you fabulously rescued the girl, there’s a shootout involving you that’s got everyone’s tongue wagging in Harlem. Knowing
