Free Preview II from 'Goodnight Lavinia.'

Port au Prince

1940s

Lavinia lights a candle stub melded into the neck of an empty brown-stained rum bottle, sweeps away the sprigs, the leaf cuttings and the rock salt from a grainy wooden slab of a table with her forearm. She places the candle in front of her, looks heavenwards, mutters to her creator and lays out the soft faded playing cards. Then paws one or two of them, flips them over and sets her catlike eyes on the outcome.

The gift is hers just so long as she remains untouched—not too taxing for Lavinia who doesn’t much care for men beyond that of her stepbrother. But this coolness, rather than frigidity as such, aggravates her client. It wouldn’t be long, however, before he’ll get a lot more of Lavinia Latrelle than he bargained for.

Two grinning children peek around the door and shrink back into the sticky night when the big man fires them a look.

A murmur escapes Lavinia’s lips.

“What? Do you have a name?”

“Moreau.”

“Bastard!”

He tosses some coins on the table and strides out of the room.

Lavinia exhales. She knows even without the further aid of her cards the person named will be lucky to survive the beating. She crosses herself. Who is he? A traitor? A rival, maybe? She can’t always see the particulars. Someone, she assures herself, in the same savage trade as her client, Ignatius; and no better or worse than he by her basic reckoning ...

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