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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

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56

TREY CHECKED HIS watch. Eleven. Shit. It seemed like an eternity since he’d left home and another eternity before he’d get to go back. 1520 Main was hot and cooking. The band was damn near perfect. There was an impromptu amateur burly-q going on at the bookie’s table, featuring a flapper who’d been dared to strip for a hundred bucks. Lazia and Marie and their friends took up one whole corner of the place, which was unfortunate because they were running a hefty tab and he wasn’t sure Lazia would pay it. The speak’s nightly take was orders of magnitude above that, but it still rankled that he couldn’t demand Lazia pay up without risking his wrath.

Trey had thirty thousand dollars now stuffed in Bon Ami tins under the kitchen sink at home. He wasn’t going to feel secure enough to go straight until he had a hundred and could buy an army, which he was probably going to need a whole lot sooner than he wanted to. He looked around at his place—his place—and felt a rush of pride that he had built this. He’d been twenty when he took over a broke business and broken building and turned it into this beautiful cash machine.

And because he loved 1520 Main so much, he had never wanted to get away from it. It was the first real home he’d had since his father died and he got run off his land. It had been his home for the last four years. It had always seemed so vibrant and alive, but right now all he saw was chaos and all he heard was noise because he wanted to go home to his quiet little house in his quiet little neighborhood to his quiet little wife and make her happy.

He might be encouraged that she’d rather be with him than the Scarritts, but that was a low bar. Maybe she wouldn’t be truly happy unless she were with someone who loved her and could make her feel loved. Trey had absolutely no intention of falling in love with or loving any woman again, not after Flo, because he would rather have a best pal and whip-smart loyal partner he could depend on to understand and do her job right and would never betray him.

In the three weeks he’d been married, he’d acclimated his little wife to lying in bed when they awoke by telling her funny little stories about the people at the speak and discussing the books she was reading (that Trey had already read). He was surprised when she shyly showed him the notebook she kept while she read and delighted her when he showed her his own little notebook. They began writing vocabulary words in them with a little pencil they passed back and forth. She forgot herself in those times, that she was lying or sitting in bed next to a nude man, that her nightgown was a bit on the thin side, that he could see just about everything about her luscious little body.

Then she’d go fix his breakfast while he got ready to take her to Fairyland to ride the Wildcat over and over again until he was sick, or to the pictures if he didn’t feel like getting sick from riding that fucking rollercoaster over and over.

He was still jealous of the time Marina spent with Dot, but between Dot’s new duties at Albright’s clinic and Marina keeping speak hours, Marina spent more time with Trey than with Dot.

As long as he didn’t bring up the topic of sex, she was the perfect best pal and he liked having the perfect best pal to go home to and climb into bed with. She smiled and talked and laughed the way she did with Dot. She took to the books like a master and he had been surprised when she’d done the speak’s ledger when he hadn’t had time to do it. She’d done it so perfectly he’d inked her numbers and praised her to the ceiling, which pleased and embarrassed her so much she’d run outside to weed the tiny flower garden she’d begun.

Still, he was getting increasingly frustrated because he was losing his struggle to keep from fucking her. And once he did … then what?

“Boss Tom wants to see you.”

Trey glanced up at Gio and sighed, all his good feelings vanishing like that. He sat up slowly, his bones creaking like an old man’s because he’d been in one position too long.

“What’s got you down?” Gio groused when Trey arose and stretched.

“I,” Trey said cockily, “am about to get shaken down.”

Gio’s face went a sickly gray. “What? I thought you were already—”

“More. And I bet he’s going to want to start checking my books again.”

“But—”

“He’s pissed about the bet.”

“He was pissed when he turned it over to you. What changed?”

“I suspect that my connubial bliss is pecking at him the same way it did when Scarritt rubbed his nose in the fact that he’d been double-dealing his own hooch back to him. So now’s the time for Boss Tom to capitalize on Lazia’s envy and Solly’s malice.”

“Solly’s what? And what does ca—can— That what you said about your bliss mean? You make me feel stupid with all those fifty-dollar words you use.”

“‘Connubial bliss’ means I like being married because my wife makes me happy as a clam and why aren’t I suffering with a ball and chain like every other decent gangster who knocked a girl up on a bet and was forced to marry her. Solly’s just pure mean and hateful and evil for its own sake, that’s what malice means.”

Gio grimaced.

“Boss Tom would be jake if I hated her.”

“Things didn’t get any better for us, did they?”

Trey shook his head. “Probably worse.”

He left by the front door and strolled down the street in the hot August night, still almost a hundred degrees at midnight, and humid as hell.

He chucked up the stairs once he got to the Jackson County Democratic Club and rapped Boss Tom’s open door before helping himself to a chair in front of Boss Tom’s desk.

“You rang?”

“Took your sweet time,” Pendergast snarled.

Trey gave him a gallic shrug.

“How’s your lush life, Dunham?”

“Not bad, not bad,” Trey said, refusing to show his irritation and, he hated to admit, intimidation.

“You seem happy with your little shotgun wife.”

“Yep. She’s a good girl. Good cook. Keeps the house clean. Fun. Smart as a whip. Cute as a bug’s ear.”

“You came out like a bandit in that deal.”

No use denying it.

“I notice you’re losing your hick.”

Yes, and that was another thing. Everybody had noticed he was trying to speak middle class, but completely forgot when he was in a hurry or angry. “I don’t know why anybody’s surprised by that,” Trey finally said. “Girl grew up in a high-falutin’ household. She deserves better than a cat straight off the farm.”

“I hear you’ve put out a line that 1520’s for sale.”

“Yeup.”

“What’re you planning to do after that?”

“Head back to my farm in Redbird and take up the plow again,” Trey said derisively.

Boss Tom’s eyes narrowed at his insolence. “Your sale price is too high.”

“Only matters what somebody’s willing to pay for it.”

“What if I offered you half your asking price, cash, right now?”

“Nope.” That was probably the wrong answer.

“Would you take another bet?”

Trey sighed and really looked at Boss Tom. It was late, way after his normal hours of six to noon, and even worse, after his nine p.m. bedtime. The man was old and fat. He looked like a pile of cat shit. “Boss,” he said respectfully, “I don’t gamble. You know that.”

Pendergast gave him a stone-cold look.

“Against the house,” he clarified. “Whatever you’re about to propose has me on the losing side.” Boss Tom’s mouth tightened. Just a little. “Look,” he said, his spine tingling because he knew where this was going and he wanted to get there, get it done, and get back to his speak, “I made this bet because I was pretty sure I could win fair and square. I did.”

Boss Tom faked a grimace. “Well, you didn’t. Not really.”

“Are you calling me a cheater?” Trey asked quietly, his hackles rising.

He shrugged diffidently. “Are you confessing to something?”

“Nope and I don’t like you making me out to be too stupid to know what you said.”

“I have information,” he said bluntly, leaning over his desk toward Trey, “that you drugged Marina.”

“I did not,” Trey said firmly, which set Boss Tom back a little.

“She was drugged,” he said flatly.

“Yes, she was,” Trey said with alacrity. “I did not know that and I would never have done it and I would never have known if Albright’s wife hadn’t figured it out.”

Boss Tom looked a bit confused. “You don’t say?”

“Honest to God. Ask Albright. I thought he already told you that. Everybody else knows.”

“You got any idea who did it?”

“No, but don’t think I’m not tryin’a find out because I’mma put that motherfucker in concrete.”

“You’re pissed?” Boss Tom asked, now even more confused.

“I’m a lotta things, but I ain’t a rapist.” Shit. His speech was slipping, but now he didn’t care. He was irate. “I don’t force anybody to do anything, see? I don’t make my whores fuck all comers, I don’t keep ’em strung out an’ under my thumb like other pimps, an’ I defend ’em when they feel threatened. So I sure as hell ain’t gonna force myself on a girl, I don’t care what’s on the line. Furthermore, I don’t like it I got conned too. So fucking Marina when she’s high an’ I don’t know it makes me a rapist and a chump. Yeah, I’mma kill that motherfucker when I find him.”

Boss Tom looked off into the distance and worried his lips. Then he began to nod. “I see your point and I believe you, but I still feel cheated.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Trey said testily. “Let’s say I had drugged Marina. How is that cheating? The only condition you had was that I don’t marry her before I fuck her. Not only that, but you didn’t ask me to stake anything if I lost. And then! What if I had raped her? Straight up rape, kickin’ an’ screamin’. You wouldn’t think that was cheating.”

“I would, too,” Boss Tom shot back, “but I know you better than that, so it didn’t occur to me.”

Trey was unaccountably pleased by that. “A’ight. Good. Fact is, you an’ me both made an equally bad bet.”

Boss Tom’s mouth flattened and he stubbed his cigar in the ashtray. “True enough,” he grumbled.

“Now you gotta live with you gambled an innocent girl’s future and still lost the speak an’ I gotta live with I gambled an innocent girl’s future and raped her, an’ neither one of us happy about it. Yeah, I got a good wife out of the deal, but I can’t shake how I got her an’ ’at ain’t ever gonna sit right with me.”

That cooled Boss Tom off a little, his half-intact conscience reminding him he deserved it and he was mollified by the fact that the win was tainted for Trey.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, although Boss Tom did business with every cat who walked in his door. Meanwhile, Trey relaxed, smoked the cigar Boss Tom offered him, and thought for the hundredth time about who might’ve slipped the sweet tea to Marina, but the only place it could’ve happened was at Kresge’s. So far as Trey knew, none of his people ever went there. Kresge’s was a family place and the only family place his people went was the speakeasy’s second-floor bathroom.

Gio was off the table. Where Trey was clawing his way to respect­ability, Gio was clawing his way to morality. Trey was half convinced Gio only wanted Dot because who better to pull him out of his pit of immorality than a “defiantly straight-laced” religious girl with a reformed bootlegger daddy and flapper mama who found Jesus?

No, Gio wouldn’t have drugged Marina.

“What’s up your ass?” Pendergast asked.

Only then did Trey notice they were alone again. “Whoever slipped the mickey to Marina. The more I think about it, the madder I get. I sit on this much longer without findin’ out, an’ I’mma burn this town down.”

“Trey, I have daughters and I’d kill any man who harmed a hair on their heads.”

“But you made a bet to get some other cat’s innocent daughter knocked up out o’ wedlock.”

“Not one of my prouder moments,” Boss Tom mumbled. “I’ll give you this, no strings: As a father of daughters, I do not consider you to have raped Marina just because she was high and you didn’t catch it. But.”

Trey knew what was coming.

“If you expect to steer 1520 clear of Solly—who will be happy to take your head off at a wave of my finger—and Lazia wanting your Remus, with Carrollo wanting a piece of you, too, you and I are going to have to come to a bigger understanding.”

“How much bigger?” Trey asked flatly.

“I want you to understand I believe you didn’t drug Marina—”

“Obliged.”

“—but somebody loyal to you did, so somebody cheated. This is, shall I say, reparations. It’s a gift, Dunham.”

“God a’mighty, Boss!” Trey burst out. “Why’n’t you just kill me now?”

“You’re more valuable to me alive. For now,” he said pointedly. “Two thousand dollars a week.”

It was less than he’d expected. Trey shouldn’t try to negotiate in any case. He had no power, and right now he was just glad it was over with. But he was going to negotiate anyway because he was a stupid shit.

“Lazia and Solly are runnin’ up tabs on me. If they were any other cats, I’d knock ’em off just for bein’ a pain in my ass, but Solly’s your man and I don’t wanna cross you, and Lazia’s a different animal altogether. But Solly is your man, so I’m askin’ politely that you make him pay his tab. Then he can stay outta my place ’cuz he’s costin’ me a whole lotta money, drivin’ people away and startin’ fights and whatnot. He and his friends will bankrupt me, and then what’ll you have? See if you can do somethin’ about Lazia’s tab too.”

“I’ll take care of it. But from now on, I’m going to send Lazia around to collect. It’ll keep you both in line.”

56

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