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PART IV
IN THE DAY OF BATTLE

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92

MARINA STARTED AT the sound of car doors slamming outside her house. It was the middle of the afternoon. Trey had left for work early, even though it was his birthday. Nobody in the neighborhood parked on the street and very few of her neighbors had visitors in the daytime. Marina wasn’t expecting anybody, though later she had plans to visit her new neighbor Jan, freshly arrived from England, for tea.

She scurried to the front window and peeked out to see what looked like three Mafia soldiers studying her house, and a fourth who had bright orange hair.

Didn’t matter who it was. She had cash and receipts and ledgers all over the dining room table. She gasped and went into action, scooping it all up in a mess and panicking for a place to put them.

She ran upstairs with her heavy and awkward burden and stopped, thinking.

The front doorbell rang.

Her stomach dropped to the floor. She darted into Susanna’s room and dropped everything in front of the baby’s bureau. She yanked open the bottom drawer and yanked out the neatly folded blankets. She shoveled the cash and books in and tried to stuff the blankets on top of them. She barely got the drawer closed before the bell rang again.

She heard low voices outside. “Go check and see if her car’s here.”

“Oh, my goodness gracious,” she whispered, then darted to her room to get her gun from under the mattress. Although Trey had long ago taught her how to use it, she didn’t know if she could, by herself, against somebody. She certainly couldn’t if she didn’t have it.

“Yeah, she’s here.”

The doorbell rang again and again, which startled Button awake and made her cry. How should she approach this? A gun in one hand and a baby in the other?

She put the gun back and snatched Button. The doorbell was now ringing insistently, Button was now wailing, and Marina was now angry somebody had made her baby cry.

She ran down the stairs and to the front door, yanked it open and barked, “Look what you made my baby do!”

The four big men stepped back, their expressions in shock.

“How dare you come here and wake my baby up! What do you want? Trey is not home.”

“Uh … ” They whipped off their hats. “We, um … We came to drop off Luigi’s payment.”

“Go to the speak!”

“We thought Trey was here.”

“Lie! You know his car’s not here because you checked for mine. You’re here to intimidate me and I won’t be intimidated! Trey is not going to let this go without sending a message and if he doesn’t scare you, Boss Tom and Rev Albright should. Do you want a war against my husband, Boss Tom, and Rev Albright?”

They didn’t move, didn’t betray any expression of anything.

“Get off my property.”

She waited until they had driven away before she slammed the door and dropped to the floor, her back to the wall, looked at the ceiling, and began sob.

• • •

Marina, still shaking, unable to sleep, sat in her bed with her arms wrapped around Button, afraid to put her to bed. She heard a car in the alley.

“Just me, Sugar,” she heard faintly, and relaxed a little.

The back door opened.

Footsteps crossed the kitchen.

Silence.

Footsteps crossed the dining room to the front door.

Locks snicked and snicked again.

Footsteps went into the front parlor.

Silence.

Footsteps came back across the parlor, dining room, and kitchen to the back stairs.

Then up.

Trey appeared in the doorway, his hands in his pockets.

“I was so scared,” she whispered shakily.

“I’ll tuck Button in and take a shower, then see about calming you down a bit.”

Marina didn’t know what he meant. What could he do to assuage her fear? Trey not coming home one day had been a fuzzy thought, not something she really understood or felt. Yes, he was a Machine underboss and gangsters died young, but it still didn’t feel real. The idea that she could be in danger never occurred to her because Trey had told her women and children were off limits.

But was that really true?

Did soldiers go to mobsters’ houses to intimidate their wives? Did the wives even know what their husbands really did? She was absolutely positive nobody but Marie Lazia would be doing their husbands’ books. Marie didn’t, because Brother John’s businesses were too much for any one person, but Marina had no doubt Mrs. Lazia could and would if she had to.

What she did know was that no one would dare visit Marie Lazia the way they’d visited Marina. Maybe, because Trey was in the Machine but not of the Machine, not part of the Sicilian Mafia at all, practically a lone wolf, they thought he was easy pickings.

She wished he’d divorce that speakeasy.

Trey returned soon enough, naked, and threw his blood-stained shirt in the dirty clothes hamper on his way around the bed to his side. He climbed in, then grabbed Marina from her cross-legged and curled-up position on the bed in an attempt to straighten her out. “You’re tight as a pretzel,” he murmured as he pulled her limbs this way and that. She let him. “I’m going to pay them a visit tomorrow.”

With that, she twisted and draped herself against him, and buried her face into his shoulder and began to sob.

• • •

Marina awoke at noon without aid of the alarm. It was habit now, whether she and Trey had been indecent or not, and last night had been the first time she’d been indecent with him without his making a show of giving her “sweet tea.”

For the first time, she hadn’t cared about the body sneeze nor whatever Trey did to her. She just wanted to lie there and feel him over her, on her, in her, his big arms braced on either side of her face, keeping out all the bad men who surrounded her.

“What’s on your mind, Sugar?” he asked when he came downstairs, bringing a sleepy but whimpering Button. “You acted differently last night and you didn’t come.”

She tried to explain as she hustled around so she could feed her fussy Button, but her words wouldn’t come. “No! I mean that—” She huffed in frustration, sliding his plate in front of him and taking Susanna to settle in and nurse. “I wasn’t lying there to just be a good wife and let you do what you wanted. I felt— No, I mean, I needed and wanted to, but I wanted it just like that, the way it happened.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant about calming you down,” he said around a biscuit. “A cat has a scare or he’s hurting inside, he needs some different kind of loving. It’s like when you pick at your arm. Well, loving like that is the same thing. I figured you might appreciate it.”

She blinked and tilted her head. “Yes, thank you.”

“Comfort sex.”

She thought for a second, then nodded her head. “I think so. Like an extra-long hug.”

“And you don’t have to have sweet tea for an extra-long hug.”

She laughed softly. “I guess not.”

“Are you going to be all right staying by yourself?” he asked. “I can hire a guard.”

“How do you know if you can trust him?” she asked, immediately afraid of an imaginary man prowling around the house at all hours.

“I have a whole lot of men around me I know I can trust. If I couldn’t, the speak would’ve been busted up before now.”

Marina felt better, even if only a little.

“I’m sorry that happened,” Trey said low. “But I’m proud as punch how you handled yourself.”

“I made a mistake,” she said, her voice trembling. “I took the baby instead of the gun and what if— But she was crying so much and I wanted to comfort her and I was so angry they woke her up and made her cry, I forgot to think about if they were going to shoot me, then they’d shoot the baby too. Oh, Trey, what if they—”

“But they didn’t and now you know better. We need to go practice more with that gun. I need you to be able to protect yourself with or without a guard.”

“Yes,” she breathed, half horrified with herself for being so eager now.

“Where are the books?”

“In Susanna’s bureau, covered with blankets. I dared not take them out again yesterday.”

“I don’t blame you, but we can’t leave them there. That’s one of the first places they’d look were they in the mind to break in.” He paused. “I need a backup. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but I don’t have anyone I trust to be a dead man’s switch. All Albright’s bean counters are loyal to Boss Tom and I don’t want him to know what we’ve got any more than I want anybody else to.”

“Grandfather Elliott can be.”

“Neh. He starts showing up regularly, people will suspect.”

“But not if Grandmother Susanna does. She comes to visit us sometimes. Nobody would ever know and they’d never suspect.”

Trey took a deep breath and pursed his lips in thought. “They could still suspect, though. Grandmama’s got herself a bit of a reputation as a moll. Boss Tom thinks so, anyway. And Albright.”

“She’s old and she and Grandfather Elliott left Chicago to go straight decades ago.”

Trey waggled his jaw back and forth, staring over Marina’s head. “It’s not a bad idea,” he said slowly. “There’s nobody I’d trust with them more than Elliott.”

“You’ve got a Remus delivery today,” she said needlessly.

He nodded. “Won’t have the bill of lading till nine or thereabouts. Oh, say. That gives me an idea. I could have Brody guard you. Gigolos are easier to come by than a guard you would be comfortable with.”

Marina nodded. She had never met Brody, but Trey had told her enough about his main people she felt she knew them, and she knew Brody had worked for Trey since he’d taken over the speak six years ago.

“Trey,” she said softly. “I don’t want to live like this.”

His mouth tightened. “Me neither, but I’ll be honest. I have no idea how to get out without a whole lot of innocent people getting caught in the crossfire.”

“We could leave.”

She expected him to protest again. He did, but it took him a while. “I’m not a coward, Marina,” he said tightly, but not as convincingly as before. She pressed her advantage.

“Would you, Trey?” she asked quietly. “Would you run with me and Susanna, away from here, if it meant we’d stay together and live? Nobody behind us from Kansas City to Utah or … somewhere … just for a small piece of our tiny action? Gio would.”

“Gio’s used to runnin’,” he snapped, jaw clenched.

“I’m scared, Trey,” she whispered desperately.

“I’ll get us out. Please, just … be patient, willya? Be a good wife and hang in there till I can get us out.”

Be a good wife. She sighed. “All right.”

92

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