City of Dreams by William Martin Read Free Book Online

be hidden jewels or money, though they were empty, too.
    Still, when he gave her the boxes, she acted as if they were full of gold.
    And she repaid him the best way she knew. She didn’t simply raise her dress and petticoats. She took them all the way off. Then she paraded in front of him in nothing but the corset, red satin mules, and white stockings. She let him see her front and back, arse and cunny and sweet rum titties, too. Then she pushed him back on the bed and pulled down his breeches and rode him until he was spent. Then they talked.
    “So,” she said, “what’s your plan for when the British attack the town?”
    “Do what Stuckey tells me to do.”
    She got up and pulled on her petticoats, then her dress, but she left her breasts exposed so that he could look at them a bit longer. “I hear that you boys visit the houses of Tory toffs who went runnin’ . . .”
    “I need to make my money to pay you.” He got up and pulled on his breeches.
    “I know a Tory house where there’s hard coin hidden.” She tightened her corset. “Gold guinea coins.”
    “Gold guineas? Why didn’t the owners take them?”
    “Because they ain’t left. The wife’s sickly. So she don’t much care that her husband has me come in to ‘cure’ him once a week.”
    A thumping started in the next room, accompanied by the deep groaning of a man and the theatrical urging of a woman.
    “Where is this house?” asked Gil.
    Loretta stepped closer to him. “I won’t tell you, but I’ll show you.”
    “Then what?”
    “Why . . . we can run . . . together.”
    The thumping played more steadily against the wall.
    Loretta glanced at the mirror vibrating above her little dresser and said, “We’d all like to get out of here, Gilbie. And gold’ll do it. No matter who wins the next fight, gold’ll get us through.”
    “I’m in the next fight, thanks to you.”
    “Don’t be blamin’ a girl for doin’ what she has to do.” Loretta pressed her breasts against him. “And remember, I believe in this fight as much as you do.”
    “How do you know what I believe?”
    “You signed up, didn’t you? You signed up ’cause the only way for the likes of us to have a chance—without robbin’ houses or whorin’—is to get free. Freedom’s the thing, Gilbie, whether you’re a young yob waitin’ by a coffeehouse for a merchant to give you an errand, or an orphan girl whose uncle sold her into . . . this.”
    Gil grabbed Loretta by the shoulders. “Why should I trust you?”
    “Because I like you, Gilbie, and you like me.”
    Footfalls thumped down the hallway, followed by a knock and Fanny Doolin’s phony-sweet voice. “Hurry up, Loretta, dearie. This here’s a business, don’t forget.”
    Loretta glanced at the door, then turned her eyes back to Gil. “And because you and me, we’re two peas in a pod. We both grew up without a pa, we both seen our ma’s die afore their time, and we both want to do better than we done.”
    Gil Walker saw honesty in her eyes, no matter how obscured by mascara, more honesty than he had seen in the eyes of all the brokers on the waterfront or all the preachers at in their pulpits or all the Sons of Liberty that ever met at the Queen’s Head.
    She smiled. She had all her teeth, all white as milk teeth, not yellowed, not tobacco-browned, not wine-stained. And she had hope, too. “Just trust me,” she said. “If you trust me, I’ll trust you.”
    H AD THEY ATTACKED New York in those first days after Brooklyn, the British might have ended the rebellion right there. They could have lined the Post Road with gibbets from the Battery to Harlem Heights and hanged a rebel from every one.
    But they waited almost three weeks, as if to give Washington the chance to regain a bit of discipline, as if it would not be sporting to beat so disorganized an enemy. Or perhaps they were amused to see Washington spreading his troops up and down Manhattan like a poor man spreading butter on stale bread. Once