The Paragon Hotel Read online

  ALSO BY LYNDSAY FAYE

  Dust and Shadow

  The Gods of Gotham

  Seven for a Secret

  The Fatal Flame

  Jane Steele

  The Whole Art of Detection

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Lyndsay Faye

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Faye, Lyndsay, author.

  Title: The paragon hotel / Lyndsay Faye.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018012903 | ISBN 9780735210752 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735210769 (epub)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3606.A96 P37 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012903

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  ◆ Contents ◆

  Also by Lyndsay Faye

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Bethy

  No free Negro, or Mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such Negroes, and Mulattos, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of the persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them.

  —Oregon State Constitution, Article 1, Section 35, 1857

  The “Negro and Mulatto” section of Oregon’s constitution was technically repealed in 1926 but was only later amended to remove all antiquated racial language in November of the year 2002. The vote was 867,901 in favor of modernizing it and 352,027 against.

  PROLOGUE

  You’re supposing that you hold in your hands a manuscript. A true story I knitted into a fable, tinted with my own brushes, chiseled tappity-tap until its rough edges were erased and nothing but clean, smooth autobiography remained.

  You’re entirely wrong, dearest. This isn’t a book at all.

  I’m scratching out this first bit last, and you just shuffled past me into the kitchen, yawning, giving me the gimlet-eye routine. You’re ever so good at it, but it doesn’t work on yours very truly; and after you’ve poured yourself some coffee and refilled my chipped brown cup, you’ll ghost your hands over my shoulders and try craftier means of wheedling it out of me. What exactly I’ve been working on all this while.

  Well, you may proverbially put up your shoes and kick off your heels and save yourself the botheration—I’m giving this to you tied up with a pretty twine bow later tonight.

  I stepped outside very early, while you were still sleeping. Sprawled out and snoring and safe, or as safe as we can ever be again, in the tidy little home we’ve made together. There was enough wind sliding down the brown hills to ruffle my hair, and a scrub jay flashed its wings, pure blue against California porcelain dawn, high above my head, and for the first time, I allowed myself to believe that we can actually get away with it. We can live like this. Not here necessarily, Christ knows I’m well aware the need to skedaddle could descend at any time, but this morning I knew . . . we’ll figure it out.

  The pair of us.

  Parts of this will disturb you. Whether it’ll be the parts you were a part of, so to speak, or the parts that are new—well, I suppose I’ll just ask after you’re finished reading. I can imagine your mug as you devour this, impatiently turning pages, orderly at first, because you’re awfully orderly, and then papers scattered higgledy-piggledy all over the hardwood.

  I might leave, for most of that. Walk to the equestrian-supply store a few miles down the road, the one we discovered lightning fast, remember, with its little door behind the racks of leather chaps, and the speakeasy beyond with the barkeep whose mustache makes him look so wonderfully tragic. Like he lost his one true soul mate years ago, and that soul mate was a devoted sheepdog. I’ll sip whiskey—it’s good here in San José, the contraband, I know you agree—and try to get him to admit he’s wrestled grizzlies. Leaving you to yourself while you read this story that isn’t exactly a story. Because you mustn’t think of it that way. Promise me you won’t?

  It’s not a book. This was never a book.

  This is a love letter.

  ◆ One ◆

  NOW

  New York probably is infested with as savage a horde of cut-throats, rats, treacherous gunmen and racketeers as ever swarmed upon a rich and supine principality.

  —STANLEY WALKER, The Night Club Era, 1933

  Sitting against the pillows of a Pullman sleeper, bones clacking like the pistons of the metal beast speeding me westward, I wonder if I’m going to die.

  The walls of my vibrating coffin are polished mahogany, windows spotless, reflecting onyx midnight presently. I’ve been watching them for several days. When I wasn’t switching trains, which was its own jostling hell and doesn’t bear repeating.

  Does Salt Lake City ever bear repeating, really?

  I don’t even suppose I took the fastest route cross-country. So long as I was always moving. I remember fleeing New York, still adrift with the shock. Battling sucking currents of lost love and lost city dragging me under. Changing at Chicago I remember—the hustle, the weight of all that metal, the sheer rank sweat of making the connection. I recall prim forests, sloping hills. Downy wheat tufts, crops we tore through like an iron bomb, and desolate empty skies. Big burgs, shabby shacks, towns undeserving of the word, al
l blurring into America.

  But at night it’s been the black window, the white alcove curtain, smells of cigarettes and pot roast and cold cream, and the fever slick coating my brow confirming that I’m going to die.

  I’m in shock, possibly. Despair, certainly.

  Now it hits me in a crack of panic that I’d prefer death drop by when I’m ninety and not twenty-five, supposing it’s all the same to the Harding administration.

  Panting, I tug at my hair. The sudden flare momentarily douses the fire in other locales. I wonder when my bunkmate will return to torment me. I wouldn’t have taken a sleeping car if I hadn’t been forced—acquaintances are dangerous. They pore over your mug out of sheer boredom, make remarks like God, isn’t our porter just dreadful, these sheets are barely tucked in. They don’t give a knotted cherry stem what you think of the porter, they can’t really see him anyhow. No, they hanker to watch you react to them. Then they can journal it, whether you’re haughty or humble or hateful. Whether you’re all right.

  Whether you’re not all right, which is ever so much more interesting.

  Dangerous, what with death and dismemberment potentially in hot pursuit. I couldn’t go full-scale deluxe, though. A private car would have been checked first by someone searching this train, any cadet axman would chart the same course. Private cars, sleeping cars, then public seating. Maybe I ought to lend a hand to the brakeman, trade a few dirty jokes in exchange for a hiding place.

  If only I could dangle from the undercarriage like a bat.

  The bullet wound deposited in Harlem started reaping interest in Chicago, and now we’re well past Walla Walla and it’s aiming to make me a swell payout. Last time I staggered to the facilities, it looked like a volcano had erupted, crusted reds and blacks. Now it’s eating me alive. I can’t sit up in a public car. Has to be a sleeper, has to be this one; I leaped on this connecting train in Denver like an outlaw onto the town’s last nag.

  My heart isn’t beating, it’s clenching its fist at me.

  Clamp-clinch. Clutch-grip.

  Beastly. Tears keep welling up and my throat keeps closing, and no, I say.

  You’re called Nobody for a reason. Just be yourself. Be Nobody.

  Be Nobody, and breathe.

  Having died before, I ought to be more sanguine over the prospect. I first died six days ago at the Murder Stable when Officer Harry Chipchase hustled me out of that gruesome dungeon, snapping, “Run, kid!”

  “But I—”

  “Damn it, Nobody, hitch a ride to the moon. You’re dead to this town now, you hear?” Harry was always dour, but I’d never seen his face turned the color of molding cheese previous. “I swear to you, I’ll find a body somewheres. Trust me, kid. You died today. Now, run.”

  Portland, Oregon, is as far as I can think of from New York, New York. Still. It might not be far enough. If I can get to Portland, he can track me there. In 1921, you can get practically anywhere with a little jack jingling in your pocket.

  I identify a faint, floating nausea not confined to just my belly. My skin is actually queasy. Tiny ripples pass along it as if my body is a river. That’s new. I don’t much care for new things just now.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  Terror gushes, but I choke out a “Come in?”

  The paneled door slides, and I exhale. It isn’t my forced companion—she must still be gossiping in the dining car. She retires around one a.m., is up with the dawn. It’s only Max, our Pullman porter. Real warmth seeps into my skin again.

  Max. He’s not the blackest of the lot, he’s a sweet rum color, but plenty black enough to play this godforsaken gig. His eyes are wide set, an amber tone below philosophical brows, and he has large hands I figure ought to be playing music someplace daylight never visits. Maybe thirty years old. He sells phonograph records on the side to the travelers, and I bought one. “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds. Max was tickled to pieces—hell, he’d have put on a parade if I’d admitted I’d seen Mamie play live. But the purchase was enough. Small things like that make people cotton to you.

  “Miss James?”

  I’m tempted to say, Call me Alice, but they don’t do that sort of thing on Pullman trains. In fact, I’m meant to call him George, after George Pullman, because George Pullman is the type so steeped in Christian humility that he orders all the Negroes on his trains renamed George. Bet he could charm the skin off a tomato in person.

  “Hullo, Max. Here for the trapeze act?”

  Then I wink at him. It feels a bit less like dying on a train car.

  Anyway, Max is safe. He has a purebred Brooklyn accent, and we picked him up in Chicago at the transfer, which is how I figure he’s so musical. Hell of a sideline record stock he displayed for a fellow who fluffs pillows. I like the version of Nobody I can be with Max. She claims to be an easygoing flapper on the run from a dreadfully cruel gentleman caller, Yonkers born, midlevel typist, interested in jazz but doesn’t know much yet. Likes the Greenwich speakeasies that look like tearooms. Terribly droll those, likes to chew the fat about the latest plays over Darjeeling spiked with bootleg rum. Likes cats. That sort.

  “’Scuse me for saying so, but you’re looking real poorly, Miss James.” Max glances behind himself.

  “Well, I’m in Oregon, you see.”

  He exposes the glint of a flask in his pocket.

  “Oh God,” I gasp. The pain flares up again, rich and real. “Name your price.”

  “Take it easy,” he says quietly. “Settle down and have a snort on the house.”

  Angels sing faint arias. I don’t dawdle over finding out what it is before I guzzle the stuff. Good corn liquor, not the best but not cheap hooch either, small-batch operation. Pure Midwestern moonshine. The drink cuts a rug through my veins.

  “Beg pardon, but this louse hurt you real bad, didn’t he, Miss James?” Max’s genuine frown sticks me right in the chest.

  Well, yes, Nicolo Benenati shot a small-caliber bullet that grazed my torso like a neat little sewing stitch, out the other side, so it was more of a lark than it could have been, and I got the wound to stop bleeding a few hours afterward, happy day.

  Hissing, I force my eyes shut until I’m less set on weeping all over Max, because it simply will not do. I like him. I like him awfully. I like his smooth brown lips and his wise-guy jabs and the way his eyelashes fan. I like his quiet magnetism. I like how he reminds me of someone.

  Your nickname is Nobody, remember. Nobody at all.

  “The trapeze act isn’t very cheery tonight,” I admit.

  “Aw, look, there’s a doctor over in car three, and we can—”

  “No doctor.”

  “Why’s that, miss?”

  “Because this is very silly nonsense, just an attack of nerves, probably, touch of stomachache, and I’m being a wretched little idiot. How long until Portland?”

  “We’ll be there before dawn.”

  “You’re a dear.”

  “When we pull in,” I think Max says, his vowels thick and strong as big city blocks, “you’re coming with me, all right? I know a girl what don’t fancy a regular-type doctor when I see one. You’ll be just fine, Miss James. I’m gonna make sure.”

  Nobody the sweet flapper would answer him, I think, but by now I live in a different world than he does, a seasick haze of nothing at all.

  * * *

  —

  When I wake up, my bunkmate has returned. Looking dreadfully hopeful of conversation, and here I’m fresh out of the stuff. And probably about to lose consciousness again.

  “Oh, Miss James, you are pale. Should I fetch you some ginger ale?”

  Hearing Mrs. Muriel Snider speak, I reflect, is better than being shot. But not by a terribly wide margin.

  “You’re so kind, but I couldn’t possibly put you to the trouble.” I offer her a shy smile.

 
Really, I’ve been doing a crackerjack job at not looking agonized.

  Mrs. Muriel Snider has a face that makes me figure God took His inspiration from a potato. She’s sedately dressed in a brown traveling suit when she isn’t sedately dressed in a nightgown, and I’d wager that she’s sedately dressed in a bathing costume when taking a bath. The Nobody I am with her is fluttery and inexperienced, hinted she met with an embarrassing riding accident, devoutly Protestant, anxious whether she’s authoritative enough when giving her piano lessons, thinks grape juice should be served at all religious services including the Jewish ones, embarrassed to be unmarried. Knitter. That sort.

  Thankfully, after stanching the bleeding left by the slug, I wore my most invisible duds. So she can’t fault this Nobody for being in the wrong clothes. It’s a below-the-knee skirt and a belted jacket in quiet shepherd check. And my honey-blond hair is bobbed, but long enough I can pin it so no one notices.

  “Anyhow, we’re almost there, I hope?”

  She checks her watch. “Oh, yes, dear. Are you sure you don’t want me to bring you some hot milk, perhaps? I wouldn’t trust this George of ours to get the temperature right.”

  Smiling again, I picture round after round from a tommy gun shattering her skull, smash-crack, blood soaring like a startled flock of redbirds.

  It isn’t like me. I’m not violent. But I’m in an awfully bad mood.

  “This late, it’ll only upset my digestion, I fear.”

  “Heavens, yes, I never noticed how long I was gone, for the kindest Presbyterian minister and his new wife were in the dining car—she’s already expecting just before their first anniversary, and I was fit to bursting with happiness for them! And with the amount of advice I have to offer, having raised six of my own alongside Fred? The poor young dear simply peppered me with questions.”

  She removes her jewelry, puts it carefully in her handbag, and sniffs as she locks the satchel, placing it behind her pillow. The lengths I go to ignore her are positively transcontinental.