Free A Prince Without a Kingdom by Timothee de Fombelle Page B

Jackson was the only person on Zefiro’s payroll. Aged nine, he earned fifty cents per week plus a clothing allowance: a fortune.
    Tom drank a glass of seltzer water at the bar, then moved off again, discreetly dropping the letter close to the reception desk. The security guards hadn’t recognized him.
    A Plaza employee picked up the letter and handed it over to the receptionist. Stamped with a European postmark, it was addressed to the occupant of the suite on the eighty-fifth floor. That same evening, it was presented to Dorgeles, who in turn gave it to Madame Victoria.
    From their observatory, Zefiro and Vango watched the reaction to their letter. A meeting was instantly convened. That night, a dozen men in dark suits gathered in the main reception room of Voloy Viktor’s suite. These men got out of their cars, posted vigilantes in the streets, and disappeared behind the Plaza’s doors to reappear a few minutes later, three hundred meters up in the guest apartments. Zefiro had spotted several of them before in Viktor’s entourage.
    None of them looked like gangsters. Zefiro recognized a tailor from Brooklyn, a senator, and some businessmen. They were wreathed in cigar smoke.
    “Let the show begin!” said Zefiro, with one eye glued to the telescope.
    It would take months, but this time he was going to destroy Voloy Viktor. He was convinced of it.
    Vango was getting ready to go out.
    “See you later, Padre.”
    “Where are you going?”
    The padre didn’t like it when Vango ran away like this.
    “Don’t forget they’re watching out for you in town.”
    “Look at me! Who would recognize me now?”
    And sure enough, in the midst of all the rubble, by the light of the oil lamps, Vango was transformed.
    Dressed in a brown suit, his hair slicked back and hat in hand, he swiveled on one foot and grinned. He’d had a pair of small tinted glasses made for him: they were all the rage on Wall Street that summer. Vango didn’t even recognize himself.
    Ten minutes later, he was heading down Fifth Avenue toward Madison Square.
    For the past few weeks, he had spent his nights in the Italian districts of New York. Vango had started with the cafés in the Bronx, combing one after another. Now he had moved on to southern Manhattan, where he had found a few restaurants that rose up like Sicilian islands in the middle of America.
    On this particular night, he walked through the door of La Rocca. One of those islands in Little Italy that smelled of capers and bird’s-eye chili, La Rocca was tucked behind brightly lit windows on the corner of Grand Street. It was Vango’s first visit.
    Toward midnight, the restaurant turned into a dive bar. The card players took over, and the lights were dimmed. But there wasn’t the usual hushed concentration you might expect to find in a gaming room. The chef did the rounds of the tables serving parcels of delicious pastry, stuffed with pungent sausage meat, that oozed cheese when he sliced them on the board. The restaurant was noisy, and the backyard was filling up with empty bottles.
    Vango settled over by the bar. He put his hat down beside him. There were only men in the room, apart from a young woman who stayed behind the stronghold of her bar.
    She was permanently on the move, going from the serving hatch to the storeroom door. One moment she was on tiptoes trying to reach the bottles, the next she had disappeared, crouched down by the ramparts. It was as if she were performing a dance.
    Vango thought of Ethel, whose eyes also landed on things deeply but fleetingly, like tiny daggers that were immediately withdrawn.
    Recalling Ethel’s gaze made him brush his fingers against the note in his pocket, which he had received from her a few days earlier. Three cold lines telling him to bide his time, not to return to Scotland without warning her, and making it clear that she was busy. Little daggers.
    Vango didn’t need to beckon the waitress. She shouted something he couldn’t