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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.

Speakeasy staff.