Prologue | 1 | 2

PART I
SPEAKING IN TONGUES

3

TREY DIDN’T KNOW whether to be mad or glad about the afternoon’s success, which put him in an unsettled mood for the evening. Freshly bathed, dressed, and shaved, he headed to the mezzanine of the speakeasy he’d spent the last four years managing for Boss Tom, turning it from a rundown barely speak serving sodas and near-beer (with stronger libations available for those in the know) into a successful speakeasy with only three raids to his name. Furthermore, last year’s Democratic National Convention had been very good to him, bringing in more resident customers who hadn’t known 1520 Main existed.

His customer base was a good bit of black and white, middle class and rich, Irish, Italian, and Jewish, commingling on the dance floor to long jam sessions with a collection of cool cats who knew how to blow horns and play bass. His burlesque show was a draw and his poker tables were full. His meager menu was decent, but people didn’t come to 1520 to eat. His female whores were bright, pretty, and popular. His male whores were good at their jobs and kept their mouths shut. He carried the finest cigars Cuba could manufacture, his dope was pure, all his whisky was branded and uncut, and he was the only purveyor of Remus whisky in town.

As long as Trey didn’t make his own alcohol (which could be smelled), didn’t run a race wire as part of his gambling operations (the results of which he would be pressured to give to certain Machine associates before the bets were called), had a bona fide restaurant (that did an adequate amount of business), didn’t offer honk-and-hooch curbside delivery, and didn’t allow teenagers, the cops not on his payroll left him alone, the Prohibition crusaders didn’t care about him, and William Rockhill Nelson’s Kansas City Star had bigger fish to fry.

Trey had good hooch, good cigars, good food, good drugs, good music, good games, good whores, good service, in a clean, classy space specially tailored for the middle class who wanted to feel rich and upper middle class who just wanted a good time and some Remus whisky.

It was true Trey wanted to buy 1520 Main. It was true that on Trey’s salary, he had enough to dress the part of a successful speak manager but should not have enough to buy the business. It was true that even if he did buy the business, he would no longer be under Tom’s protection unless he paid for it. It was also true that there were a few cats in town slobbering to take Trey’s place as 1520’s manager, and Trey suspected that if he couldn’t get Marina pregnant at all, he’d be replaced or worse. He’d worked far too hard to step aside for someone else, and he certainly did not want to take a swim in the Missouri River.

But Boss Tom didn’t know what he didn’t know, which was, first, that Trey’s long-held bootlegging operation was still operating in the shadows and he was hiding his profits from Boss Tom; and, second, that Trey was skimming Boss Tom’s profits off the speak. He was careful about stashing it. He knew how to hide it in the books Boss Tom examined every month. He kept a relatively large payroll and ostensibly paid his people higher-than-market wages, which Boss Tom took to be generous and therefore worthy of approval. Trey slept on the couch in his nicely appointed office and worked alongside his employees to keep the place in tip-top shape.

Trey also did most of what Boss Tom asked him to do. He could deliver an impressive number of votes for whatever candidates Boss Tom was backing. He helped needy families get back on their feet whenever Boss Tom was made aware of them. He carried out hits when he felt the cat deserved it; if he didn’t know the cat, didn’t know what he’d done, or didn’t think he deserved it, he politely declined, citing speakeasy business. There were few cats in town who’d say no to Boss Tom, but Trey was very good at his job, he respectfully gave good reasons for not wanting to carry out a hit, and he would help bury a body if nobody else was available.

Trey had also never made the mistake of asking Boss Tom for a favor. The only time Trey went to Boss Tom was with cash or news of a completed errand. Boss Tom didn’t like that Trey was not on the hook for anything, but he did admire it and as long as Trey made money and was honest and loyal, he left Trey alone and made everybody else in town leave him alone, too.

There was nothing about Trey that gave off the stink of dishonesty or wealth. It took time to build up cash skimming and the discipline to resist greed. It took a sharp eye for paper trails and a truck full of patience to continue bootlegging without it being traced back to him. He had enough cash squirreled away to see the underside of rich, but he wasn’t going to get wealthy until he had his own operation.

And once he got Marina Scarritt pregnant in the allotted time, he’d be a speak owner instead of a speak manager. Boss Tom always kept his promises, particularly if he thought he was being generous, and he would keep this promise if Trey delivered.

Without getting the particulars or thinking too much about the fact that he was obliged to do it in any case, Trey had begun his project right away. Sixteen was about the right age to begin courting, but Marina was a very young sixteen and that made him a little uncomfortable. Except … it wasn’t a courtship and Trey didn’t have two years to do it right even if he was courting her. Boss Tom expected to keep the speak and get whatever revenge on Gil Scarritt he thought he needed to get in such a roundabout way.

Trey wished he’d thought about it before he’d shot off his mouth, but Boss Tom was right: He couldn’t buy the speak outright. It would expose his skimming and bootlegging, which would absolutely earn Trey a concrete overcoat and a swim in the Missouri River.

Well, what was done was done and Trey would think about consequences later, as he usually did. After visiting his mezzanine office and locking it behind him, he headed up to the top floor of the speak. He went into the common lavatory, unlocked and opened an empty closet, locked it behind him, then pulled a ladder down out of the ceiling and climbed into the attic, drawing the ladder up after him, and locking it in place.

This was his real office. Unlike the rest of the speak and the “office” he kept at the back of the mezzanine, this was spartan. There was a desk. A kitchen chair. A filing cabinet. And one giant safe.

It was hot up here, dusty, dark, cramped, and the ceiling was barely six feet high. Trey, at six foot two, had to stoop, but he spent most of his time here sitting at his desk counting cash and doing books. He flipped on the light, went to his safe, twirled the combination this way and that, opened it, and pulled out several glassine envelopes of different types of drugs to stuff in his inner suit coat pockets. He had to have enough to last most of the night so he wouldn’t have to come up here when the house was rocking.

On the second shelf of the safe were two sets of ledgers. One was for Boss Tom to examine at the end of every month. The other was for Trey’s eyes only. He had a third set in his mezzanine office for Treasury’s benefit, and a filing cabinet down there full of numbers to back them up. Everything was in complete order for any ol’ passerby to peruse—if they could read his handwriting.

On the safe’s bottom shelf was a stash of cash Trey didn’t like keeping here no matter how secure. Every once in a while, he took a stack to the bank and it looked to be about time for another run.

Today, however, was payday, so he took out the pay envelopes he’d already prepared and stuffed them in another pocket.

Once he had closed up his hideyhole and clipped down to the mezzanine of the speak, he shot his cuffs out and adjusted his collar. He looked out over the rail to see that the joint was a little quieter than it usually was at eight o’clock, but that was because there were two chautauquas in town and a tent revival—led by one Reverend Gil Scarritt—to boot. On top of that, all his good-time girls were having their bleeding time together, which they did every month, so this week’s take would be slim.

“Never trust anything that bleeds for a week and lives,” he muttered. “Mean as shit, to boot.” He’d lock them up if he could, just to keep them from slapping every customer he had.

Just one of those things. He managed his cash flow well enough to make up for that one week every month, but though the chautauquas were only one day each, he’d forgotten about them and the tent revival that went on all week. Entertainment was entertainment.

Trey returned to his fake office—where he slept on the divan—and stashed the payroll, then locked it back up and took his throne at the rail of the mezzanine, a corner wall to his back, settling in with a whisky and a cigar to watch the relatively sparse activities and wonder why Boss Tom hated Scarritt so much, and if it was bad enough to wager 1520 Main on it, why he hadn’t just killed the motherfucker.

Scarritt was a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher. Spoke in tongues, faith healed, the whole works, which was why Trey had been shocked that his daughter was wearing trousers. But in a competition between being able to toss up a girl’s dress or seeing a slight curve in shapeless trousers, he supposed any father would prefer the latter. No cat was going to spend the time to get into a girl’s trousers if she also had to be persuaded to take them off.

And now … that was exactly what Trey had to do if he wanted this speak.

He did.

He wanted this speakeasy so badly he could taste every drop of whisky that had ever soaked into the floorboards. For the last four years, he’d poured his heart and soul into turning this place into the low-key moneymaker it was.

The good Reverend Scarritt lived a pretty fine life on his lambs’ tithes and from all accounts, he was a showman. Maybe Trey should get in the evangelism racket. That had to be a lot less stressful.

Was that Tom’s problem with the reverend? He couldn’t get a piece of Scarritt’s action? One whole dollar could not go to both vice and virtue. One third of this town spent it on vice. Another third on virtue. The last third was trying to survive, and their little extra went to God, too. No more than any ol’ bribe.

Hey, God. Please accept this two bits as a token of my esteem for you. Also, if you wouldn’t mind … I could sure use some help …

But Boss Tom would take care of the surviving third if they’d let him whereas Scarritt was never going to do anything for them but take their two bits and promise things on God’s behalf.

“Wrestle a sixteen-year-old preacher’s daughter with a chastity belt into bed and get her bakin’,” he grumbled. He had faith in his powers of seduction.

Marina Scarritt’s interesting-looking face flashed in his mind.

Not that much faith.

Almost none.

He’d figure it out, though. He had to. He wanted the speak and he wanted not to fail a task Boss Tom had given him, perhaps at the cost of his job. He didn’t know what would happen to him if he failed, but the threat was clear.

“Fuckers.”

They all were, every last one of the people Trey ran with, did business with, dug graves with, and drove out-of-towners to the polls with. They weren’t friends. Or even allies, most of the time. Their currency was favors and Trey preferred a clean exchange: task-cash, cash-task or favors that stacked up to his benefit.

There was almost nothing that could bring a preacher man down faster than his unmarried daughter knocked up by one of Pendergast’s underbosses. Trey couldn’t think of one reason Pendergast would be willing to simply hand over 1520 Main to shame a cat all the way out of his profession instead of simply killing him. Maybe that was worse than death; Trey didn’t know.

The music started up again, and the food started coming out of the kitchen at a faster pace. A pretty waitress dressed in next to nothing slid a steak under his nose without a word. In his throne at his table with good steak, good whisky, and a good cigar in front of him, he ran this joint and the one block of Kansas City it was on with Boss Tom Pendergast’s blessing.

“Hey, daddy-o,” Ethel purred as she slid her ass into the chair next to him.

“Spit it out and get back to work,” Trey said absently.

“I was gonna be nice about this,” she said testily. “But since you got nasty, I will. Stop waltzing into the bathroom this time of the month while we’re using it. Better yet, get your own place.”

“You share your cunt with six cats a night and you’re prissin’ ’cuz I take a bath while you’re tending your woman needs? We got one bathroom.”

She snarled at him.

“You’re lucky I don’t move upstairs and you’re welcome to find a different gig with a pimp who don’t put a leash around his girls’ necks or wanna sample his wares. Won’t hurt my feelin’s none and this town’s lousy with pretty girls who need some cash and don’t mind gettin’ it on their backs.”

She huffed and flounced off, rattling the chair to punctuate her pique.

It might be nice to have his own place with its own bathroom. He didn’t mind sleeping on a divan, but he sure as hell didn’t like sharing a bathroom with the ten women and three men who lived and worked upstairs. The third floor had eight rooms, another common bathroom, and a very tiny room with two bunkbeds. The eight singles were rented out, and he kept the bunk room empty for emergencies. Commandeering one of the second-floor bedrooms was out of the question because he’d either be sharing it or losing money.

Which left him another problem to solve: He couldn’t seduce Marina when he didn’t have a decent place to do it. He didn’t care about living at 1520 Main because all he needed was a roof and food. It was one of the only ways he could pinch enough pennies to make the risk of getting caught skimming worth it.

So it actually shocked him that he was in a dither over Marina Scarritt. Peeling Dot Albright off her was going to be a problem because the girl had made sure he knew she had his number. Worse, she and Marina did everything together, which was more than likely mandated by their parents.

He’d stood in the doorway of Kresge’s and watched Marina sit with a vaguely resentful expression as boys fawned all over Dot. He didn’t think Dot had noticed Marina’s unhappiness, but Trey could read people no matter how much they wanted to hide themselves. Dot wasn’t inviting male attention. She would get it whether she wanted it or not (definitely not), so she was forced to work around it.

As for Trey’s taste in interesting-looking dames, that had always been the case. A girl who caught his eye would invariably be the less-attractive one in a pair. Usually she was smart, could hold a decent conversation, and could give him some frame of reference for respectable speech and behavior. He went with girls who had large vocabularies and good accents. He went with girls who could teach him manners without knowing they were teaching him. He went with girls who wouldn’t give it up until he’d seduced them to capitulation. All he wanted was the yes. Once he got it, they weren’t interesting anymore, so he left them with their newly awakened passions unfulfilled. He either disappeared or they got tired of his refusal to pop the question and dumped him.

So the fact that Marina was interesting looking, smart (although she didn’t think so), and more respectable than any girl he’d gone with so far intrigued him. The fact that she was young and painfully naïve for her age bothered him.

It shouldn’t bother him at all.

Maybe what bothered him was that this, he couldn’t forge, fudge, or fuck up. It was too important.

“You up over a dame?” asked another one of his girls, who twirled a chair around and straddled it. She was nice and really didn’t belong here, a preacher’s daughter who’d succumbed to a cat with fewer morals than Trey and took what he’d been working for.

“Sorta,” he muttered.

“You need help.”

“You know I don’t fuck my own girls.”

“No, I mean, I have a friend—”

He looked at her from under his brow. “Who she work for?”

Her mouth turned down a little. “Nobody,” she murmured. “Not yet anyway. I thought—”

“Not lookin’ for a side piece, thanks. She’d be better to find a cat who’ll marry her.”

Sally scowled. “Willya let me finish? That’s not what I’m talking about. She’s got a bun in the oven. She’s on the street. ’Bout to give up. She needs a job and there’s plenty to do around here. Hell, she could clean our floor. I’ve been after you for a housekeeper forever.”

She had a point, but housekeepers made him no money when his whores should be cleaning their own rooms. “Yeah, and then what?”

“And then what, she sells the baby and goes on as usual, and then what. You aren’t making any money on the bunkroom anyway and there’s four beds in it.”

He really did need a housekeeper for the upper two floors. Nobody else would clean the bathrooms—at least, not the way Trey wanted them cleaned. “A’ight, I’ll talk to her, but I ain’t promisin’ anything.”

“Thank you, Trey!” she breathed with almost as much gratitude as Marina had showered him with this afternoon. This was still tainted but the conditions were up front and clear-cut.

“Yeh, yeh, yeh. Where’s Gio?”

“With Mrs. Rogers. She came early.”

“And often, hopefully,” Trey said approvingly. That lusty broad would be riding Gio all night.

His gigolos made a lot of money during the moon week because some cats were so desperate they’d take a man and a few cats only wanted men. What had surprised Trey was how many well-heeled women there were in town who wanted to taste the underside of life while their husbands were tasting the underside of life elsewhere. And there were more than a few well-heeled husbands who didn’t want to touch their old, fat wives and sent them to 1520 when they got whiny. One old, fat cat brought his young, beautiful wife and watched while Brody fucked her the way her husband wanted to, but couldn’t.

1520 Main was the only joint in town that openly kept men, but so far as anybody knew, they serviced women exclusively.

That wasn’t where the money was.

Men slipped up the back stairs if they wanted cock and slipped a godawful amount of cash to Trey, who would keep their names—and the cash—off Boss Tom’s books. Men didn’t pay for sex. They paid for silence.

Lickety split, Sally was back with her friend, who looked like she’d been gassed in the Great War. He gestured to the chair beside him while Sally took herself off to dance with whichever cat had called her.

“You ever cleaned house?” he asked casually, clipping the end of another cigar.

“For my mama, sir,” she said with a trembly voice.

He lit his cigar and puffed on it until the end glowed red. The girl carried herself as though she had been thoroughly betrayed and was too dragged down by life to be able to carry herself upright, much less keep house. It was one reason why he never actually fucked any of the good girls he seduced, not even so much as a finger through their drawers or a flick of their nipples. He might leave them brokenhearted or angry or both, but not despoiled or betrayed.

“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly.

“Ida. Merrifield.”

“’Kay. You’ll be responsible for keeping the second floor spic’n’span. You clean the bedrooms, wash the sheets, make the beds, dust the furniture, clean the windows, Hoover the rugs, make sure the second and third floor bathrooms look like nobody ever uses ’em. You clean the third floor hallway. Sunday and Monday off. If we need help down here cleaning up after close, you do that, too. Two dollars a week plus room and board till you pop.”

It wasn’t a lot of money, but she looked like she’d been given the world. It was probably more money than she’d ever seen and he was throwing in all her necessities.

“You’re cute. You stay past your baby bein’ born and shipped off to some well-heeled family, you go to work on your back and make me money ’stead’a costin’ me, y’hear?”

That made her turn greenish, but those were his terms. If a stupid hick like him could figure out how to have an end game and save money to get to it, so could she.

“I’ll let you work on your feet if you have your own place by then or you can pay me room and board. Got no problem widdat. Get Sally to show you the supply closet and bunkroom, and get your stuff moved in if you have any, grab some food, and go to bed. You start tomorrow, eight a.m.”

“Yessir,” she whispered and scrammed.

By this time it was ten and people were beginning to stream in. Soon the place would be rockin’ with music, dancing, drinking, gambling, fucking, and business, same as any other Tuesday night.

“Mr. Dunham?”

Trey looked up to see a cat with a shock of red hair, dressed in work clothes, holding his bowler in front of him. “Seamus. You got a message for me?”

“Uh, no, sir. I wanted to talk a minute.”

Trey waved at the seat that Ida had just vacated. “Make it snappy.”

“Yes, sir. I wanted to discuss an idea I had … ” He was reciting this speech from memory. “ … about distributing some of your heroin.”

“Nope.”

“Mr. Dunham, I know several dens in town that would be happy to pay—”

“I said no. I control where my dope goes, and it goes here. If the dens want it, they can come to me directly. I don’t do wholesale.”

“It would be retail, though. A seventy-thirty split, your advantage.”

Trey was about to give him a good piece of his mind when a well-dressed woman appeared at his table. “What can I do you for today, Miss Skiada?”

“Two decks, please,” she said sweetly, then made a production of opening her pocketbook to look for cash, while Trey made a production of searching his inner coat pockets for two tiny glassine envelopes of cocaine.

“You sure two’s enough?” he asked, casting a glance down to the speak floor at her table, where three other flappers were snorting cocaine through rolled-up bills.

She clucked her tongue and handed Trey a ten. “They can buy their own. Not my fault I can afford more, is it?”

Trey grinned and handed her the dope. “That’s my girl.”

She waggled her eyebrows playfully then disappeared down the stairs, only to reappear below Trey’s feet, headed for her table.

Meanwhile, Seamus Byrne looked on with a hint of resentment.

“I could move more than you can sell here.”

“What you’re really telling me is that you can’t find a supplier who’ll front you.”

He flushed.

“Get you some seed money together and then maybe somebody will supply you, but it won’t ever be me.”

“You’ve got this town sewn up and you expect me to be able to scrape together some seed money?”

Trey was getting irritated. “You don’t get to start at the top; you gotta pay your dues, and I paid mine. Lazia paid his. Boss Tom paid his. And I don’t have this town sewn up. I have a little bitty piece of it. Other than the Remus whisky, everybody else has the same dope and booze I do.”

“C’mon, Mr. Dunham … ”

“Yanno, I don’t like it you come to me to beg when you wouldn’t dare go to Boss Tom or Lazia and ask them.”

“You’re about my age. You were me not so long ago. I figured you’d understand.”

“I’ve been bootlegging since I was twelve years old. What were you doing? Suckin’ on your mama’s tit?” Seamus’s jaw ground. “Now, look, I’mma give you some advice. Begging ain’t gonna get you anywhere in life. You gotta work for what you want and sometimes you gotta take what you want. I see you begging me for what I got, but I don’t see you workin’ like you oughta be and you damn sure don’t have the moxie or firepower to take it from me.”

“Then let me come to work for you and prove myself.”

Trey would be a fool to invite this sniveling little snake into his operation. “Go ask Boss Tom if you can go to work for Ready-Mix.”

The boy’s face flushed a little. “But … that’s … ”

“Hard work,” Trey said firmly, “which is what you don’t wanna do. ’Cuz you’re lazy. You wanna start off at the top and think you don’t have to do nothin’ for what comes in.”

An envelope containing a fat stack of cash was, unfortunately, dropped on Trey’s table right at that moment, and one of his runners dropped into the chair beside him. It was standard operating procedure. Trey didn’t let his runners go until he’d counted the money.

Trey didn’t miss the way Seamus’s eyes bulged when Trey withdrew the stack and began counting, his fingers flying faster than Seamus could keep up. When he was done, he straightened the stack, stuffed all but a twenty back in the envelope, and shoved the envelope in his inner coat pocket. “Good job,” he said, handing the runner his pay. “Whatcha got going tomorrow morning?”

“Nothin’ yet, sir.”

“A’ight. Be here at ten. Bring your kin. Gotta make a bank run.”

“Yes, sir. G’night, sir.”

“Whatever you need him for, I could do,” Seamus said with a touch of desperation. “You know, prove to you I got what it takes.”

Trey slid a look at the boy. Yes, he was Trey’s age and Trey was a man, but Seamus was wet behind the ears, lazy, untrustworthy, and covetous. Trey wished his collection ritual hadn’t happened right in front of Seamus, but on the other hand, it would rub his nose in the fact that Trey was, no matter how small, still a top dog in the Machine.

“Byrne,” he said with a finality he hoped would do the trick, “I’m not going to hire you. I damn sure am not going to trust you with my dope or a gun. Go find a job, gather you some seed money, whatever, set up your own operation, but don’t come back here again wantin’ somethin’. You ain’t gonna get it from me.”

3

If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.