Read Online Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online Page A

that Belgian lace, do you think, or French?’
    â€˜You’ll want to visit Rochelle’s up on K Street,’ said Preston with a smile. ‘Mrs Perkins will take you—’
    Thèrése rolled her eyes to indicate her opinion of the sartorial taste displayed by the Reverend Perkins’ chubby wife. Dominique said, ‘Thèrése, hush! Honestly, I don’t know why I put up with you …’
    As they neared Capitol Hill, the neighborhood deteriorated. Among the shabby plank boarding-houses and taverns they passed half a dozen buildings which bore signs: SLAVES FOR SALE. Chained coffles of slaves passed them from the direction of the Baltimore road, bare feet thick with gray mud. Everywhere in town January had seen dark faces, but further up the avenue the black men and women he’d seen were well-dressed, like artisans or shopkeepers. Here they wore the clothes of laborers, or the numbered tin badges of slaves. Thèrése ignored them and Dominique seemed to, but Charmian, who had been chattering brightly to Preston, grew silent, and January felt her small, lace-gloved hand tighten around his fingers.
    â€˜There.’ Preston halted, and his voice sank. ‘Across the street in that doorway, see ’em? The man in the green jacket, the woman in the striped skirt …’
    January nodded.
    To call the man’s face bestial would have insulted every harmless four-footed creature God had made. It was, rather, the worst of human: hard, calm, with brown eyes like a doll’s, expressionless. The long chin was unshaven, and his long dark hair unclean. He’d been talking to one of the dealers under a sign that said: SLAVES – TOP PRICES PAID – FANCIES, but he turned his head, watched Dominique, January, and those with them with calculation that made January’s blood go cold. The woman’s round, lumpy countenance would have been pleasant were it not for the watchful squint and the stripe of tobacco-stain down the middle of her chin.
    â€˜Mark ’em good,’ murmured Preston. ‘Those are the Fowlers, Elsie and Kyle. They run the biggest ring of kidnappers in town. They work with all the dealers. They have houses of prostitution, too, just across the Avenue in Reservation C. The yellow man behind them—’
    January looked: a man almost his own height and powerful build, with African features, a broken nose, and a complexion little darker than a Spaniard’s.
    â€˜â€”that’s Kyle’s chief driver, Davy Quent. They work with a wagon with a false bottom; two big bay horses with white feet. Kyle, Quent and their boys can knock a man out and have him under the bottom of the wagon in half a minute, tied and gagged. If you see that team or any of the three of them in a place where there aren’t a dozen people about, turn around and get out of there as quick as you can walk.’
    The line of slaves went by. Davy Quent didn’t even glance at them.
This is our job. This has nothing to do with me.
    The Capitol’s low hill rose a few streets beyond, surrounded by what was probably supposed to be a lawn of weedy grass. A gang of young men – they could have been apprentices or clerks – played what appeared to be a four-cornered game of cricket: ‘That’s town ball,’ explained Preston. ‘They play it all over New England, and the year before last a couple of Massachusetts clerks at the Navy Yard got up a team. Now everyone in town’s playing. It’s just One Old Cat with Massachusetts rules.’
    January had never heard of One Old Cat, but the game looked like what children played on Hounslow Heath, on his one visit to London in 1822. Across the street from the Capitol stood two slave-jails, and the men chained on the bench outside watched the game, and cheered when one or another of the team that was ‘up’ thwacked the thrown leather ball with a round stick like a cricket-bat, and