Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18
PART I
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
19
THE FIRST CHANCE Trey got to ask Gio about his evening at Dot’s church dance was in the wee hours of Monday morning. They and three of Trey’s trusted hired guns were unloading crates of whisky from a barge at a small hidden landing far up the Kaw River.
“Not bad,” Gio informed him. “I’m never going to learn how to dance like she and her partner do, but I can manage basic steps enough to have fun.”
“And the partner?”
“She wouldn’t be allowed to do all those fancy tricks with him if half the congregation weren’t wise to his confirmed bachelorhood.”
“He’s Mormon?”
“No. His sister is. Dot’s his only chance to dance at that level. How was Correggio’s?”
Trey grimaced. “The date was fine. I had to do some fast lawyering to get mama to let her wear a dress.”
“I thought it was daddy who wanted to protect her honor?”
“He was busy comforting a parishioner.”
All five men snorted a laugh.
“Did I tell you about Marina’s mama’s cooking? Most godawful food I’ve ever had. Marina even said so, and she’d rather do the cooking, but mama won’t let her even though daddy likes Marina’s food better.”
“Because she’s jealous.”
“Keep Marina from eating too much. Her way of minding her waist.”
“She would go pudgy if she ate like Dot does,” Gio agreed.
“So Marina orders meatballs then halfway through the first one, tells me it’s wonderful but she’s stuffed.”
“Correggio’s uses Marie Lazia’s recipe. Everybody in town loves her meatballs.”
“And everybody’s lyin’ like a big dog on a big rug. Are you gonna tell Brother John his wife’s pride and joy is shit?”
“Had me fooled.”
“Marina loved the antipasto—shit, she could’ve inhaled the olives and prosciutto, but she was too polite to take more’n a coupla bites. I had the pasta alla Norma, but she was eyeballin’ that like a starving orphan, so I asked her if she’d switch because I’d rather have the meatballs and I felt we were on familiar enough terms to do that, and I hoped she wouldn’t think badly of my manners.”
Gio nodded approvingly.
“Almost got some calamari, but she wanted to save that for next time.”
“You sure she just didn’t want squid?”
“She saw a platter going by and started slobbering. I told her what it was and she looked like she’d been promised a trip to a candy store. I could probably get this girl in bed by waving good food under her nose, ’cuz her mama ain’t cookin’ it an’ she ain’t allowed. Now, I saved the best part for last. Boss Tom and Carolyn were there.”
“The hell you say!”
“Made a point to stop by our table. Boss Tom introduced himself and the missus as Tom and Carolyn, no last names. Marina said, and I quote, ‘Oh, what a lovely couple!’ She was thrilled to be seen as a contemporary. When she asked who he was, I told her he was a client.”
The five of them worked in relative silence for the next few hours, slinging crates stamped FLORIDA ORANGES into and out of Trey’s three ICE trucks, then heading out to an old widow’s garage in Kansas, the use of which he paid for handsomely. When the booze was all packed away, they locked up the garage, headed downtown, then puttered on down an alley toward another partially filled warehouse on 16th and Baltimore. They drove in, parked, and locked the garage door behind them. They spent the next few hours hauling crates of whisky and gin down into the tunnel that snaked its way under 1520, its entrance a very well-camouflaged door under the outside-wall stairwell the third-floor tenants used.
It was eight a.m. when they finished stocking the tunnel and emerged. The speak was quiet. There were no sounds of debauchery coming from upstairs. The faint smell of tenants having cooked breakfast before work wafted downward. Trey paid his hired hands, and they trudged wearily out of the speak.
“Thanks,” Trey said as Gio climbed the stairs, then caught the look on Gio’s face when he turned around. “What.”
“You have never thanked me for one goddamned thing since I walked in here four years ago.”
“So? Can’t a cat do that without gettin’ his head bit off? You ain’t never thanked me for anything either.”
“Making me whore for you isn’t worth a thanks.”
Trey’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t have to take you in,” he said quietly. “Nobody in town wanted you because you were too hot to touch. Everybody knew that. Strange Sicilian kid coming through looking for work with that accent can’t be anything but connected. I gave you the terms straight up. You chose to stay.”
Gio’s mouth tightened and he looked away.
“I didn’t whore for my living,” Trey continued flatly. “God, do you know how much money I could make with my dick? Do you think I haven’t been offered a whole lotta money for not much work doing something I like? I’m good lookin’ and I’m good at it, and don’t think I never considered it, but I decided I’d eat rotten kitchen garbage—and I did—before I’d rent my body out to anybody, so think about that before you blame me for the choices you made.”
“I haven’t had much choice about anything I did,” he muttered, jingling the nickels in his pocket.
“I will allow as how you were eighteen, lost, felt like you didn’t have a choice, but now you got yourself out. Congratulations. Welcome to manhood.”
• • •
“Yo, Boss!” Vern bellowed, his voice barely reaching through the door down into the tunnel where Trey was taking inventory. “Boss Tom’s lookin’ for ya.”
Trey shot to his office to get his books. He shot out the door, down the street, and past all those waiting for an audience. Lazia’s man Carrollo, leaning back against the building just next to the door, shot him a killing look as he went in, but that was normal. Carrollo hated Trey and the feeling was mutual. It would be a good day that Trey was let off his leash to ice the cat, but then, Trey suspected Carrollo was on his own leash with respect to Trey.
Trey took the stairs two at a time, then stopped just outside the closed office door to catch his breath before strolling in as if he hadn’t done a day of work in his life.
“ … begging me for consideration,” Boss Tom said, catching Trey’s ear. He leaned in closer to the door. “I am not going to let you get your fingers in the middle of this bet, because I will chop them off. I want Gil Scarritt run out of town on a rail by his own congregation, and you can’t make that happen. He can.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Brother John Lazia said.
“If he doesn’t, you and I can have another sit-down. One more thing. I do not want you to rile up his granddaddy if he gets wind of your shenanigans. Man’s got his fist around St. Louis and fingers in Jeff City. He and I get along and I don’t want you changing that.”
Trey blinked.
“You don’t know he’s his granddaddy.”
“Have you ever seen Elliott Dunham?” Boss Tom retorted. Long silence. “No, I don’t know, but I’d bet on it.”
The hell? Elliott Dunham was Trey’s oldest brother’s name. Not once had Trey’s parents said one word about their respective families. If Trey had a granddaddy, it’d give Trey a heart attack, but how many Elliott Dunhams could there be in the world?
“Say, did you hear about the Terranova kid?” Lazia asked.
“Everybody knows about the Terranova kid. Morello’s fit to be tied, though he does a good job of hiding it. He was the laughingstock of Atlantic City.”
“You have any ideas?” Now Trey thought he was having a heart attack.
“I am not going to get mixed up in the New York families’ business, and I suggest you do the same.”
“I want that bounty.”
“You can live without it, but good luck.”
Gio would be pleased to know Boss Tom would protect him from his family, but not that Boss Tom knew where he was or that Trey now had something Boss Tom could use as a bargaining chip against him.
“Leave Dunham alone—” Boss Tom said, which was all he had to say before Trey skedaddled down the stairs, waited until Boss Tom’s door opened, and started up the stairs as if he’d just arrived.
“Brother John!” Trey said heartily once he’d reached the second floor. Again. He shifted his ledgers to his other arm and held his hand out for a shake. Brother John took it and pulled him in for kisses on each cheek as Italians did. “Balance day for ya?”
“You know how it is,” he said smoothly. “How’s your bet going?”
“John,” Boss Tom said flatly.
“Ciao, Dunham,” he said.
“Yeah, tell your wife Marina loved Correggio’s meatballs.”
Lazia halted mid-step. “She did?”
“She woulda asked for seconds if it wa’n’t rude for a woman to eat that much.”
“Marie will be pleased,” he said as if a little dazed. “Thanks.”
“Credit where credit’s due,” he said as he moseyed on into Boss Tom’s office, then dropped his ledgers in front of him.
Boss Tom looked up at him from under his brows. “I see what you mean about Marina Scarritt,” he mumbled. Trey dropped himself into the chair across from him.
“What?”
“Interesting looking,” Boss Tom sneered. “Carolyn thought she was adorable, although she needs some spiffing up. Asked me twice if I was sure she was only sixteen, you two carrying on a conversation like she actually knows anything about the world.”
“She’s smart,” Trey drawled smugly. “Those girls? Just have to dig their confidence out from under other people’s bum opinions.”
Boss Tom scowled. “What were you talking about?”
“Books,” Trey said firmly. “She reads. A lot. She loves detective novels.”
“Goddammit,” Boss Tom muttered.
Trey grinned. It was no secret Trey read everything he could get his hands on, that he hired tutors for difficult subjects, and that he had a particular fondness for Agatha Christie. So Trey sat basking in his smugness while Pendergast examined his books. “Where are you picking up George Remus’s whisky?” he finally asked. “I asked him and he had no idea what I was talking about.”
“Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”
Boss Tom shrugged.
“Does it matter? That’s my biggest margin, which means you make a shit-ton of money. Higher than the Rieger and McCormick combined. An’ it ain’t in your best interest to know.”
Boss Tom waved a hand, which meant he agreed and wouldn’t ask again.
It took a while for Boss Tom to get through them, but he initialed the end-of-month totals and snapped the ledgers shut. “Say, Dunham. Been wondering. Where’d you come from? What happened to your family?”
Trey pretended to look shocked. “Oh, well, my mama and three older brothers died in the epidemic.” Boss Tom nodded. “My daddy died of a broken heart about a year after my last brother kicked the bucket.”
“You don’t have any other family?”
“So far as I know, no. Mama and Daddy never talked about where they came from, even when we asked.”
“And you never went looking?”
“Why?” Trey asked incredulously. That was not feigned. “I’m twelve. I wake up and my daddy don’t. I bury him and the next day I got bankers knockin’ on my door wantin’ me to pay the rest of the mortgage in one lump sum.”
Boss Tom looked shocked. “Surely they meant arrears.”
“All of it,” Trey said testily. “But I was twelve. How’s I supposed to pay a mortgage? So I get kicked out on my ass with nothin’. I hitch a ride with a bootlegger, his woman feeds me, bootlegger pays me to do this errand or that errand on our way here, I stay with them for a while gettin’ the lay of the land, then they get the flu and die. I take over their operation, in between hammer a couple of little speakeasies into shape, and here I am.”
The old man took a deep breath and pinched his nose in thought. “Well, I’m sorry about that, boy. I didn’t know.”
Boss Tom hadn’t asked because he was curious, but his sentiment was sincere. He was a family man, and that story would twist any good father’s heart.
“You know I would’ve helped any kid in your situation, right?”
“I surely do, Boss.” That was the absolute truth. “’Preciate it.”
19
If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.
Your Speakeasy staff pics crack me up. Thanks, Mo!
You’re welcome! 😃
Forgive me, but the ages don’t seem to add up for Trey to have been 12 in the Spanish Flu epidemic.
Of course, I’m also the sort of person who tries to count the stars on the flags in old westerns to see if the flags are period-accurate.
Nerd.
This is true; however, I took license that perhaps the flu was, in fact, around about a year before the “1918 epidemic.” I didn’t mis-math; I just hoped people like you wouldn’t call me on it. 😜
Hey maybe Trey was 11 – you’re relying on how he recounts it.
Not really. He was born in 1905. I did the math, but fudged it a bit. I couldn’t stomach making him any older than 24, seducing a 16-year-old.
Yeah, but you’re off by two years, since Dad died a year after the epidemic.
I guess I did mis-math.
Yeah; novels like this are written for the sort of woman who won’t call you out and not people like me.
/This is why there are no libertarian women….
Hey, sailor.
LOL
“She wouldn’t be allowed to do all those fancy tricks with him if half the congregation weren’t wise to his confirmed bachelorhood.”
She has a gay friend. Nothing wrong with that.
“He was busy comforting a parishioner.”
😉
When she asked who he was, I told her he was a client.
Nice save.
Another good installment.
Thank you!!!
So Trey knows the real reason for the bet. I can see him engineering an out – get the end result without the unpleasant intermediate step. He needs to take a trip to St. Louis.
Shhhhhh!!!!
Hmm, I might even have an idea about how he exposes the good reverend.
Oh, don’t strain your brain. It’s pretty straightforward. 😉
Right? We’re here to read about Trey’s and Gio’s smooth moves.
Why does Tundra get pix? ‘Cause he bought the book and the rest of us are ugly step children?
Very interesting, learning about the boot legging business. I thought there was just a bathtub full of gin and mason jars, other than what Joe Kennedy was dealing.
I dunno why Tom wants to dump Marina’s dad, unless he (Mr Scarritt) is touting alcohol abstinence.
Thanks, Mojeaux, another good read. Maybe Tundra will post some of the pictures he’s bragging about, if they really exist?
There’s a tiny, easy-to-miss link at the bottom of the story.
Thanks, Rhy and Moj, I did miss the link. Looks like there is more filling in to do. I’ll be back next Friday for sure.
#metoo
I’m lovin’ it.
Pix Tundra’s talking about.
Well, Boss Tom has a grudge, which will come to light when it needs to come to light. Trey knows what needs to happen; he just doesn’t know WHY.
There are little tiny details about bootlegging and speakeasies that I’ve used to build the story on. For instance, branding was serious business back in the day. People would cut branded whiskey (e.g., Remus) with tobacco spit and rubbing (denatured) alcohol and brown dyes. So the fact that Trey has a direct and exclusive line to Remus whiskey makes him fairly powerful and kind of protects him from the worst Tom could do to him.
And then there’s the fact that Kansas City was openly wetter than the Missouri River, with pretty much the blessing of the state, since Missouri was strong-armed into ratifying the 18th Amendment.
I’ll bet I was the first Glib to read it!
Which is why I’ll be playing Boss Tom in the movie!
Actually, no. Creosote Achilles was my beta reader. I needed a male perspective and he suggested I take one thing out because it kind of went too far. So I did, and the book is better for it.
Can’t you just let me have my brush with greatness?
Oops. My bad.
No.
Absolutely epic (don’t judge me, I’m drinking)
https://twitter.com/armslist/status/1624046820312723459?t=XV9KTCjg-I1wkXYdnSqkEQ&s=19
AI generates a Dr Seuss poem about US govt attacking citizens .
Already stolen and sent, it’ll be world wide by morning.
This AR think could be good. Makes mocking tyranny a push button thing.
First it mocks, then it freezes your bank account and turns you in.
“Tyrants threaten you with bombs?
Just remember: they have moms!”
Holy fuck.
I’ve often said I want to be a judge when the day of reckoning comes.
The Re-Education camps of VN were a jumping off point.
Yeah, that’s when I thought “Well, that got dark in a hurry.”
But is it dark enough?
Sat next to “Abe Lincoln” at lunch today at the Union League. He did a great job of staying in character and actually learned, and enjoyed, one of those historical coincidences that are lovely to relate:. The contractor who built the Peterson house, where Lincoln died across from Ford’s Theater was also the contractor for the house where John Wilkes Booth grew up in Bel Air, MD.
They had building contractors in those days?
You learn something new every day.
God, even Sean isn’t up posting stories from his neck of the woods.
I hope everyone is OK.
Mornin’. 😋
Good morning, Sean!
☕
Good morning, Ted’S! Everything’s OK here…except it’s still too daggone cold, so no, I’m not going out to Tranquility Base (which almost blew away the other day.)
Mornin’ all
Good morning, Shirley! Nice avatar! 😁
Thx! A bit of Surly is creeping back in, and I’m sorting on what might become my atheism post, so it seemed apropos 😉
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/orlando-couple-found-dead-in-each-others-arms-following-turkey-earthquake
It’s dusty in here.
😢
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/super-bowl-lvii-a-look-at-philadelphia-s-plans-for-possible-win/ar-AA17lLRp
I’m very nervous about any of our workers going to Philly on Monday. 😕
Can’t they just move on?
suh’ fam
whats goody yo
TALL CANS* !
*after I take new puppy for her 1st vet visit and likely drop $350
Good morning, homey!
I forget. Did it get a name yet?
Vacillating between Ilse and Marta. Unable to make a decision.
Have you seen The Dambusters?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k4LpP9b0Xrc&list=PLPS7AZEVLrRIESoy0m98Wwxi3Fu-oo1dW&index=5
🎶🎶
Wish these guys would have gone farther.
E
A
G
Just kidding.