Fiori’s Cabinet of Curiosities by James Fitzsimmons

Fiori’s Cabinet of Curiosities
by James Fitzsimmons

April O’Casey fired the Winchester through a slit in the steel-reinforced coach. Bouncing on the bench across from her, Tobias Breen clutched a valise and shut his eyes. At the reins up in the driver’s box, Jason Polk smiled at a riderless horse trotting off into the Arizona night and prodded his team toward Cactus Spine.

Marauders galloped alongside the stage.

April drew her Colt sidearm and held it out to Tobias.

Tobias shook his head at the offer of the gun, then set his valise on the floor. The valise opened and wooden panels arose, click-clacking into a cabinet composed of drawers bearing pictures of dragons, castles, and elves.

“Lord,” April whispered.

A marauder leapt from his horse and gripped the side of the stage, curling his fingers into slits near Tobias’s face. A drawer of the cabinet snapped open, exposing a dagger. Tobias withdrew the dagger and slid the blade along the man’s knuckles. The man screamed and fell off the stage. Another rider came alongside and squeezed a lit cylinder through a slit.

“Smoke bomb!” April screamed. “Can you push it out!”

A drawer opened at the bottom of the cabinet. Tobias stuffed the bomb into the drawer and shut it. After a muffled thud, Tobias opened the drawer and removed a blackened, twisted cylinder.

April blinked, closed her jaw, and kept firing.

As Jason steered the coach off the main road into Cactus Spine, the marauders declined to pursue and rode on. Jason stopped the team beside a hunk of petrified wood in front of the Horned Toad Hotel.

Jason jumped off the rig and winced as he landed on his left leg. He peered inside the coach and saw the cabinet collapse back into the valise, the valise snapping shut. “What the hell!”

April climbed out. “Mr. Breen has a bag of tricks, Jason.”

Tobias followed, carrying the valise. “A cabinet of curiosities, Agent O’Casey,” Tobias corrected.

“Wait a minute,” April said, taking the valise from Tobias and judging its weight. “No more than a pound.” She handed the valise back. “We need to talk.”

Tobias looked suspiciously up and down the town’s main street and nodded.

Jason pulled a fishing pole out from a hole in the driver’s box and leaned it against the block of petrified wood. He looked up at the night sky. “Damn, too much excitement for night fishin’. You two go check in. I’ll board the horses.”

As April and Tobias entered the hotel, a voice approached Jason from behind.

“Shootin’s over, Agent Polk?”

Jason recognized Sheriff Handley’s drawl and spun around. “Never, Handley!”

“So, that lovely creature’s your partner,” Handley said. “Can she shoot?”

Jason laughed. “On our first assignment, April placed a slug through the forehead of a gentleman who’d taken a kid hostage and had winged me in my left leg. I feel safer around her than any other agent.” Jason left out that he fancied a closer relationship with April but had not ventured down that path. He brought his mind back to reality. “Tell me my office wired you, Handley.”

The lawman nodded. “Four deputies are watching the Toad—two in front, two out back. Please return them alive.”

Jason smirked as he and Handley led the horses to the livery.

Meanwhile, April and Tobias had checked in at the front desk and gone upstairs to their room. The room was large with two beds, a divan, a private bath, and a balcony with French doors that afforded clear views of Cactus Spine. Tobias had insisted that he and the two agents lodge together.

As April set her Winchester on a writing desk and stripped the weapon, Tobias observed, “Didn’t know Pinkerton hired ladies.”

“Most are undercover,” April said, inspecting the gun’s action. “I’m from a family of law enforcers. My brothers and dad taught me to shoot.”

“Your partner,” Tobias said, “that Agent Polk—seems quite competent.”

“Is,” she said, omitting how attractive she found him and how she wondered if partners could be more than partners.

Soon Jason joined them, and Tobias ordered room service: rib eye steaks, baked potatoes, greens, two bottles of Cabernet.

The agents thanked Tobias profusely for the dinner, but after they finished, April couldn’t ignore the valise any longer. “Now, Mr. Breen,” she began, sipping another glass of red. “What’s the story with that thing between your legs?” She pointed to the valise that Tobias always kept ensconced at his feet.

The corners of Jason’s mouth curved into commas at April’s cut-the-crap manner, and he added, “You told our office you were transporting money.”

Tobias smiled and pushed the valise to the center of the room. The valise opened and the cabinet rose like a tower, drawer fronts on all four sides sparkling with inlays of jewel, gold leaf, and mother of pearl illustrations. A drawer snapped open, and Tobias withdrew a cigar and a match. He lit up and sat back in his chair. “Benedetto Fiori. Last year, I was in Italy meeting with this Venetian nobleman who wanted to buy an estate in California. Fiori’s family possessed a seventeenth century cabinet of infinite craftsmanship and artistry. Fiori claimed that the cabinet was endowed with power, and that the drawers could produce items of wonder spontaneously. Meet Fiori’s cabinet of curiosities.”

“Really,” Jason said, pulling on the knob of a random drawer. The drawer contained nothing. He opened several drawers, all empty.

April grinned.

Tobias shook ashes off his cigar. “The cabinet will not reveal its wonders to just anyone, Agent Polk. While I was Fiori’s guest, the nobleman would extract one remarkable item after another from the cabinet, and the piece came to know and trust me, much as an attack dog will befriend a stranger who is friends with its master.”

Jason raised his eyebrows. “Attack dog?”

“A few years earlier during political turmoil in Italy,” Tobias explained, “Fiori’s rival—an evil landowner—stole the cabinet, and his wizard endowed the piece with dark arts and evil magic. The cabinet literally possesses knowledge of good and evil. Fiori hired gunmen and reclaimed the cabinet. At the time I met with Fiori, he was afraid for his life—”

“And wanted to come to California,” April finished.

Tobias nodded. “The three of us—he, I, and the cabinet—were to travel to San Francisco on separate clippers. I made it first, then the cabinet, but Fiori was stabbed trying to depart. He wanted me to keep the piece if he didn’t make it and gave me enough money to retire. That’s why you’re escorting me to Flagstaff.”

April said, “Those bandits …”

Tobias nodded and exhaled blue smoke. “Those are the hired guns of Fiori’s rival. His name is Marco Sixtus. You must protect me from him. He must not get the cabinet.”

Marco Sixtus, April and Jason mouthed together. Then April said aloud, “So the cabinet responds to him.”

Tobias coughed and puffed. “Sixtus’s wizard was able to trick the cabinet into accepting Sixtus.”

“Well, we’ll take turns keeping watch through the night,” Jason said. “Handley’s men have the hotel surrounded.” He pointed to the bath. “April, ladies first.”

April nodded and gulped the last of her wine. As she rose, something on the cabinet caught her eye. “The cabinet is so beautiful,” she said. With a fingertip, she touched a drawer bearing a scene of a naked woman bathing in a pond. The drawer popped open, and April snapped back her hand.

“Good Lord!” Tobias yelled. He removed a bar of soap and sniffed it. “French milled.” He handed it to April.

April rubbed and smelled the soap. “Lavendar.”

“The cabinet sees something in you, Agent O’Casey!” Tobias said. “You’re chosen!”

Jason and April gave each other puzzled looks as Tobias stared with his mouth open.

& & &

After her bath, April was relaxing on the divan, reading a penny dreadful next to an oil lamp. She put down the book and gazed out the French doors at the moon. She closed her eyes. After a few minutes, she opened one eyelid and caught Tobias gazing at her over a newspaper from across the room.

“You have a question, Mr. Breen?”

Tobias smirked and set down the paper. “You were meditating.”

“I was resting my eyes.”

“No, you were sitting up, thinking.”

April laughed. “Yes. I was remembering an Indian tale.”

Tobias prodded her with his eyebrows.

“About two mice and a wolf on a moonlit night,” April went on. “The wolf lures one mouse away from a rattlesnake hiding in the grass.”

“What happens to the second mouse?” Tobias asked.

“Nothing. Runs away. But the wolf eats the first mouse.”

“Ah,” Tobias said with a grin. “‘O’Casey’—Irish?”

April nodded. “Half Irish, half Gabrielino Indian.”

“April O’Casey, your character and judgement are beyond reproach for the cabinet to trust you on first meeting. You are a person of extraordinary spirit. You’re blessed.” He looked out the French doors with a broad smile. Then he sighed, the smile fading, and April thought she saw a pall of dread fall over his silhouette.

Jason, wearing a fresh pair of jeans and towelling his blonde hair, emerged from the bathroom, and Tobias went in. Jason plopped on the divan next to April, causing his partner to spring up and down.

April slapped his shoulder and, out the corner of her eye, surveyed his muscled chest.

Jason pointed to the valise on the floor. “Do you believe Breen’s story about that thing?”

April shrugged. “My grandmother would tell me tales of magic handed down through generations. Who knows?”

“You’re chosen,” he said with mock jealousy.

A quiet moment passed. She looked up at his blue eyes, intense in the warm flicker of the oil lamp. He looked down at her glistening black hair and the play of light on her olive skin.

They both started when the valise opened, and the cabinet expanded. They detected a floral scent in the air. The drawer depicting a bathing woman opened, this time containing a red rose. Jason gasped and pulled out the rose, the petals containing dew drops, the stem smooth. He presented the flower to April.

Eyes wide, April looked at the cabinet, at the rose, and then up at Jason, her pulse pounding. Jason’s lips parted and bore down on hers.

Suddenly a foot kicked in the room door. Four toughs barged in, followed by a man in a black cloak and a stocky, bearded man in a suit.

The man in the suit surveyed the room. “How sweet. A romantic interlude.” He motioned to the bathroom, and the cloaked man went in, closing the door behind him.

April glared at the man in the suit, his gruff expression, facial hair, and tightly fitted vest stretching across a rotund belly making her think of a bearded dragon. “Marco Sixtus,” she said.

Sixtus bowed. “So, Tobias has told you of me. Grazie mille for escorting him this far. The cabinet is mine.” He approached the cabinet and cajoled, “Mio amico, it’s time you came home to Venezia.” As he leaned in, a drawer popped open and a tiny dragon’s head emerged. The dragon spit fire and bit off the tip of his finger, then slipped back into the cabinet.

“Dio!” Sixtus jumped back, tucking his hand into his coat. “Kill them!” he yelled to his gunmen, then ran out of the room.

The men cocked their weapons, and Jason and April lurched for their pistols. Suddenly, the cabinet started spinning like a top, blades sticking out from slits and slicing into the men. With each rotation, the blades quickly folded in so as not to harm April and Jason.

The cloaked man came out of the bath. His face aghast, he pulled the cloak over his head and exited the room, running directly through the blades. The gunmen crawled out after him, bleeding and limping. The cabinet stopped spinning, and the blades retracted.

“For God’s sake!” Jason exclaimed, inspecting the cabinet.

April motioned to the bathroom door with apprehension.

Jason went to the door and began to pull it open. Suddenly, a drawer from the cabinet shot across the room, pushed the bathroom door closed, and returned to the cabinet, causing Jason to fall on his rear.

Jason shot a quick glance at April, who cocked her pistol and aimed at the door. Jason got on his knees and pulled the door open slowly from below. A cobra, hood flared, struck through the open doorway. Without flinching, April fired, tearing off the serpent’s head and causing the rope of muscle to fall limp to the floor.

The agents ran into the bath and saw Tobias sitting in the tub, his body covered with bites, the water turning red.

April said, “Mr. Breen—”

Tobias grabbed April by the wrist. “Don’t let Sixtus get the cabinet. If it falls into his hands, it will obey him. He’s planning a horrific crime in San Francisco.”

“The wizard told you that?” Jason asked, motioning with his head.

 Tobias nodded. “Evil always brags before it kills. Take the cabinet. Use it against Sixtus.”

“The cabinet doesn’t know us,” April said.

“It knows you,” Tobias said, his body spasming. “Given a choice, the cabinet will choose good over evil. And beware the wizard. The cloak protects him . . .”

Tobias died with a groan.

In minutes, April and Jason were racing down the stairs of the Horned Toad with the valise. They passed saloon patrons crouching under tables and ran out into the street. Four men were lying in pools of blood, and Sheriff Handley was writhing on his knees.

“See if Handley can travel,” April said. “I’ll fetch the horses.” She ran off to the livery, valise in tow.

Handley moaned to Jason. “They took us with knives. A blade got my thigh. Get me inside the jail.”

Jason wrapped a kerchief around the bleeding leg. “Come with us, Handley.”

Handley shook his head. “You’re not leavin’. No one’s leavin’. Fifty men are surrounding the town. Get me to the jail, dammit!”

In the livery, April started to gather the gear for her team when something smashed into her head.

A few minutes later, she awoke in the middle of the street. She gained her balance and stood. In front of her was the cabinet. Beyond the cabinet were Marco Sixtus, his cloaked wizard, and a group of henchmen carrying torches. One of the henchmen was restraining Jason. Handley squirmed in the background.

“Sorry for the rough treatment,” Sixtus said, his finger bandaged. “It seems the cabinet has forgotten whom it serves. With Breen gone, that should be settled.”

“Where are you taking the cabinet?” April asked quickly. “San Francisco?”

Sixtus smiled. “You’ve heard bits and pieces. I’m board member of Banca del Mondo, and we are negotiating with your government to buy a large amount of land in the West. Unfortunately, your President Grant opposes this deal. I’m inviting him to be our guest at The Barber of Seville, which my bank is generously underwriting at the San Francisco Opera. When he suddenly dies, the deal will go through.”

The henchmen laughed, Sixtus enjoying their adulation. April stared at Sixtus with daggers.

“You’re not impressed,” Sixtus said, “but you’re uncommonly beautiful. Your country is barbaric. Only America would send a bambina into a gunfight while townsfolk hide. In my villa, you would have a room of your own with servants.”

April’s stomach turned, and she forced down some rib eye steak that tried to come up. Then she smiled and looked Sixtus in the eye. “The cabinet obeys me.”

Sixtus grinned. “Indeed.”

“Si,” she said, “and it wants nothing to do with a pathetic bambino who resembles a lizard.”

“Basta!” Sixtus blurted. “Enough! You annoy me. I trust you’ll enjoy seeing your boyfriend mutilated. Let’s start with a boning knife. What shall we cut off first? Ear, nose, eye, tongue? What part of him do you treasure most?”

Sixtus laughed and waited for a drawer to open. After a moment, he opened a drawer. It was empty. He pulled on several drawers, all empty.

A drawer snapped open in front of April, containing a pistol. As Sixtus’s men drew their guns, April drew the pistol and fanned the hammer, felling the gunmen like carnival targets. The wizard threw a fireball and Sixtus disappeared. Then the wizard disappeared, April’s bullets passing through empty air as she shot at both.

Jason twisted and decked the thug holding him, then yelled to April, “Get to the stage!”

April snatched the valise and ran across the street as Jason started for the livery. In seconds, dozens of riders entered from opposite ends of town. They dismounted and converged on the hotel.

Jason changed course, stripping dead men in the street of their weapons, and joined April behind the petrified wood in front of the hotel.

“There’re too many,” Jason said, picking off thugs. “Does that thing have more tricks?”

April looked at the valise and closed her eyes. The cabinet rose and a drawer opened, containing half-sticks of dynamite. Jason’s jaw dropped. Another drawer offered a lit cigar. With April lighting the sticks and Jason hurling them, the explosions sent groups of men flying. Others ran around in a panic. Handley had rolled a Gatling gun out onto the porch of the jail and was spraying the street with rounds.

The remaining toughs mounted their steeds and fled.

With a flash, Sixtus appeared in the middle of the street. “I paid you!” he screamed at his henchmen. “Ritorno!“

April and Jason peered around the petrified wood. Jason called out, “It’s over, Sixtus!”

Sixtus snarled and pointed to the jail. The wizard appeared in a flash, untied his cloak, and wrapped it around himself and Handley. He held a knife to Handley’s throat.

Sixtus yelled, “Hand over the valise!”

Jason whispered to April, “Can you put a bullet between the eyes of the wizard from here?”

April shook her head. “Not with that cloak around him.”

A cabinet drawer opened, and Jason rolled his eyes. He grabbed the handle of his fishing pole and began pulling the pole out, impossibly long given the small size of the drawer. When he’d fully retrieved the pole, he said, “Are you kidding?”

April grinned. “You can sneak up on the wizard by going through the saloon and around the back of the store fronts.”

“Can you draw Sixtus’s attention?”

“I’ll give him the cabinet,” she said. “I trust it. Go.”

Jason shook his head and snuck back into the Horned Toad.

As the cabinet collapsed, April reloaded and holstered her Colt. “I’m bringing the valise out!” she yelled.

Taking baby steps, April shuffled into the street, Sixtus smugly watching with arms folded. She set the valise down in front of him and stepped back, clearing her sightline to the wizard.

The cabinet expanded and Sixtus opened a drawer. He pulled out a switchblade and nodded approval, tucking it into his waistband. He opened another drawer and pulled out a pistol. From another drawer, he withdrew another pistol.

“Ah,” Sixtus said. “Barnabus cannot produce such items from thin air.”

Sixtus smiled in the direction of the wizard, then his eyes ballooned. Jason was standing off to the side of the jail on the boardwalk, casting the fishing line at the wizard. The hook caught the fabric, and Jason teased the cloak off the wizard’s shoulders.

“Barnabus!” Sixtus screamed.

The wizard panicked, but Jason took his time reeling in the cloak, knowing the wizard could not pull on it without letting go of Handley or the knife.

When the cloak was out of the wizard’s reach, April pivoted, drew, and shot the wizard in the forehead. The wizard let go of Handley and fell backwards.

“Barnabus!” Sixtus screamed then turned to April. “Witch! Strega!“

He pulled the trigger of one gun, but it fired no bullet. He tried firing the other gun. Both weapons were empty.

“Sixtus,” April said, “do you think the cabinet would give a bambino a loaded gun? Put up your hands.”

Sixtus pulled the knife from his waist and lunged at April. April emptied her weapon into his gut, and he fell dead.

April ran across the street to Jason and Handley. Handley was leaning on his Gatling gun. He smiled at Jason. “Ok, she can shoot.”

&&&

Days later, April and Jason parked the bullet-pinged stage outside Pinkerton’s San Francisco office. Inside a study lined with mahogany bookshelves and furnished with Victorian settee and chairs upholstered in scarlet, Colonel Charles Reed puffed on a pipe and offered his agents whiskey. On a wall hung a print of Lee surrendering at Appomattox. April’s father had served under Reed in the Union Army and had died at Gettysburg. April knew Reed to be a brusque, demanding individual, but protective and grandfatherly toward her. She felt at home in his plush office, and suspected he was quite proud of her.

“So, Breen bequeathed the valise to you,” Reed said. “There was supposed to be a boatload of cash in there.”

“No, colonel” said April, “just a little cabinet.”

“Cabinet?”

She opened the valise and showed Reed the top panel of the cabinet.

“Mm,” Reed grunted, “that’s a unique piece of luggage. What’ll they make next? It’s yours. Take a few days off and get some rest. Grant at the opera—hell! I don’t even like opera! Well, go on, both of you.”

April and Jason nodded in unison. As April picked up the valise and exited, Reed tugged on Jason’s sleave, holding him back. He moved in close to Jason’s face and whispered, “Agent Polk, your hands, fingers, and any other body part—you keep them to yourself around her. Clear?”

Jason coughed at a puff of pipe smoke, and a tremor of fear rippled through his body. “But of course, sir.”

Outside, Jason caught up with April. April was laughing. “What’d the old man say?”

Jason maintained a poker face. “Let’s go to Cliff House. Steak and Cabernet in memory of Tobias Breen. We’ll take a cab.” He motioned to the valise. “Guess we use that thing only when we have to, huh?”

The cabinet quickly rose and retracted, leaving something in April’s hand. April turned sheepishly to Jason and held up a coin. “Cab fare.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright James Fitzsimmons 2023