Free A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss

tree. Grotesque as she was, Moll was well loved, and she frequently provided me with valuable news of back streets and thieves’ dens.
    Upon my entrance the cutpurse looked up from his conversation with Moll and scowled. I heard the words “Weaver the Jew,” but I could discern no more. It was often hard for me to ascertain my status among such men. I had friends within the armies of prigs, but I had enemies too—and I knew that their master, Jonathan Wild, encouraged no fellowship between their ranks and me. I assumed this man to be a fellow who took Wild’s advice to heart, for as I approached Moll he finished hard his pint of gin—throwing back a quantity that should have caused a healthy man to lose his senses—and stalked into the dark shadows of the gin house where there were always piles of straw for the poor and the desperate to crawl into and sleep off their poison.
    “Ben Weaver,” Moll called out as I approached, as always speaking more loudly than she needed. “A glass of wine for ya, then, me ’andsome spark?” Moll knew enough that I would not partake of gin, and I accepted with good humor a glass of her vinegary wine, of which I sipped only enough to be polite.
    “Good day to you, Moll,” I said as she rubbed my arm with a leathery hand, her sausage-like fingers clinging absently to me. There was no getting what one wanted from this woman without indulging her need to feel desirable. “I trust your pleasant company keeps your business healthy?”
    “Aye, business is brisk. A penny a glass is a small business, it is, but counting the coins is a fine enough occupation, I reckon.” She gently pulled at the tie of my hair. “How many of them would it take to buy yer company, I wonder?”
    “Not many,” I said with a smile that would have been unconvincing in a better-lit room, “but I find I have little time at the moment.”
    “Yer always a busy man, Ben. Ye must make time for yer pleasures.”
    “My business is my pleasure, Moll. You know that.”
    “That’s right unnatural,” she assured me with a coo.
    “What news,” I responded, as though it were the perfectly correct response to her amorous oglings, “have you heard upon the street?”
    I cannot claim to be astonished that the first news upon her lips was of Jemmy’s death, for word of a murder spread like the French pox in London’s dark quarters. “ ’E was shot dead, ’e was. You knew ’im?”
    “I met him but briefly,” I told her.
    “ ’E wasn’t much, I reckon, but ’e ’ardly deserved to be shot like a dog, such as ’e was. Like a dog.” She scratched her head. “ ’E wasn’t much smarter’n a dog, though, was ’e? And vicious too, with a taste for young girls—young, I say—whether they would or no. Now that I think on it, gettin’ ’imself shot down was just the thing for a bastard like ’im.” She shrugged at her own observation.
    “Who shot him?” I asked, keeping my voice steady.
    “ ’Is ’ore,” she leaned forward and spoke in what I can only describe as a shouting whisper. “Kate Cole’s ’er name. Jemmy and Kate kept a buttock an’ twang together, but if anyone was to shoot anyone I would have thought ’e’d ’ave done ’er in, not t’other way, for she ’ad a few other coves what she kept, and she even spent a night or two with Wild ’imself.”
    “She was Wild’s whore?”
    “Well, who ain’t? I won’t say I ’aven’t ’ad a tumble with the great man meself, but Jemmy was a man quick with his anger, and if Wild’s to keep his prigs in line he oughtn’t to make them want to kill ’em. All’s the more wonder that ’e done what ’e done.”
    “And what has he done?” I asked.
    “Why ’e’s ’peached ’er, ’e ’as. Wild turned ’is own ’ore in. Now I’ve seen ’im do it many a time and often with a prig what ’e couldn’t trust no more, but to ’peach a woman what you’ve swived not a week before shows a lack of”—she fumbled for a