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PART I
SPEAKING IN TONGUES

22

TREY WAS TIRED, sore, and his muscles were twanging from all the heavy lifting he’d done that day. He had driven all night, worked all day, gone to church, worked all night and was about to fall asleep on his feet. Just as he was bunking down for the night, one of his gigolos knocked on his door. “How was church?”

“Tedious.” Trey settled in and threw an arm over his forehead. “Brody, if I believed in demon possession, I’d swear that cat puts the devil in people, shoutin’ an’ jumpin’ an’ rollin’ on the floor—”

“That’s why they call ’em Holy Rollers,” Brody said dryly.

“—speakin’ gibberish, callin’ it tongues. God almighty—who, by the way, got nothin’ to do with all that screechin’—”

“Gio doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Gio an’ his girl stand there an’ trade snide remarks. Snickerin’ an’ whispering’. Surprised Marina ain’t noticed yet, but she sits to my left next to her mama, Gio on my right ’cuz Dot don’t like me none, an’ Dot on the end. She’s the vicious one, but she tickles him pink. Dunno why.”

“Grow up with a bunch of nice Catholic girls who are taught to keep their heads down and their mouths shut, maybe you’d take a sassy Mormon girl who’s packing heat, too.”

Trey chuckled. “Weird thing, Marina don’t get into all those acrobatics. Sings. Decent voice. But otherwise, she’s cool as the inside of a brand new freezer. Her mama too. Neither one of ’em doin’ any speakin’ in tongues or rollin’, holy or otherwise.” Trey stopped and thought about how Marina behaved at church. “Yanno,” he mused, “it’s almost like she knows it’s bunk deep down inside, but can’t quite figure out why, standin’ there tryin’a parse it all out. Every service is another chance for her to gather more clues. Do you know, quarter of the way through the latest Ellery Queen, she had the villain pegged. I told her it couldn’t be. Two thirds of the way through, she said, ‘This is how he did it.’ I said nope. Guess what?”

“You have a book club of two,” Brody said flatly.

Trey laughed. “Yeah. Way to get into her trousers is get into her head an’ dig around. Always did like a good treasure hunt. So what’s up? You didn’t hunt me down to ask if I got saved. Again.”

“Solly Weissman was here again,” Brody said.

“Oh yeah?”

“He brought some friends. Had a grand old time. Ran up another tab he wouldn’t pay. Alice and I ended up waiting and Ida needed the boys in the kitchen instead of bussing tables. I’m shocked she could keep up, but she did a good job. Don’t know where Bobby was; not like him to not show up for work.”

“He quit this morning. ’Swhy Ida was ready to go.”

“Whattaya wanna do about Solly?”

That situation bothered the shit out of Trey. “He’s Boss Tom’s man. I may have to go pay him a visit to make that motherfucker back off. I wish I knew what he wanted.”

“He was looking around last night like he owned the place. Acted like it too.”

“Hm. Since he don’t own it, I’ll see about how to get him to pay his tab. Boss Tom ain’t gonna sit still for that.”

“So how’s Marina coming?”

“Well, she ain’t. Yet. Haven’t even kissed her. But say, you’re the third person to be more than interested in this bet. Is it that important to you all I win?”

Brody pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the door jamb and looked up at the ceiling. “We think if you lose, things here won’t be the same as they have been for the last four years. If we thought it would, then we wouldn’t care, but I gotta tell you, Solly coming around and bringing his friends and acting like he owns us has us more worried than anything Boss Tom or Lazia might do or not do. He wants the speak and he likely thinks being Boss Tom’s man means he’s entitled to it.”

“I get that feeling,” Trey murmured.

“And if you lose, Boss Tom might just fire you and hire him and he’ll hire somebody else. A good manager clears out the old staff and puts in his own, same way you did. And if we’re not put out and replaced, we don’t know how a new guy will be. The last thing we want is to be under Solly’s thumb. Better the devil we know, you know? Probably won’t keep the kitchen, either, then Ida’ll be on her back or she’ll be on the street, and we don’t want that. They’ll get more whores and move them to the third floor and kick the tenants out.”

Trey sighed heavily. “And if I win or lose, I wouldn’t be surprised if Boss Tom did something underhanded too. I don’t have the kinda firepower I’d need to hold off Solly and his soldiers, although Boss Tom did suggest I think about acquiring it.” Especially since he knew whom Trey was hiding. “God a’mighty. We’re fucked whether I win or not.”

“And you’ve only got three weeks left.”

“I wish I’d never taken that bet,” he grumbled. “Stupid shit. As usual. You all get together an’ talk about this?”

“Well, yeah. We’ve been together for a long time. Hell, we share the same bathroom, piss, shit, bathe, and shave in front of each other, so you could say we’re family. Even the tenants are worried, and they ask us. But we just say if you don’t win, you’ll find a way to keep us together somehow.”

Trey thought about that long after Brody left.

Do what you have to do.

You’ll find a way to keep us together somehow.

He was in deeper than he realized. He had employees. He had tenants. He had vendors. A lot of people relied on Trey, but some days, Trey felt like he was barely treading water. Each scheme he was forced to construct was more elaborate than the last because he had to work around the one before that.

Trey had seen a way to get the speak.

Boss Tom had seen a way to get revenge on Scarritt, and apparently, Trey’s grandparents were not opposed to Scarritt’s comeuppance by any means necessary.

Solly saw it as an opportunity to grab the golden egg and … do what? Continue on? Weissman wasn’t a good businessman. He was a stupid, lumbering dewdropper who thought he was important because he was Boss Tom’s bodyguard. He would never believe Boss Tom would turn it over to Solly, but Boss Tom was known to be a bad gambler and sometimes his judgment wasn’t too sound if he wasn’t paying attention. God only knew what Solly would do to the place, and the possibilities made Trey ache deep down inside.

Lazia wanted the speak, too, but if Trey took that step down, it would make Trey subject to Carrollo’s orders. Lazia was a good businessman and had lots of legitimate and illegitimate businesses. Trey wasn’t the only cat who could manage 1520 as well as Trey, so there was no way Trey could work for Lazia without getting into a gunfight with Carrollo.

It was an old grudge over a woman. Carrollo had had his eye on a certain flapper who frequented Trey’s establishment and divan. When the cat had gotten a little too forceful with her, Trey had stepped in. It didn’t help his cause that she threw a drink in Carrollo’s face and informed him she was busy fucking Trey and would never touch a trashy wop like him.

So it was one thing to know people were dependent on him, but it was another to be slapped in the face with the idea that they all considered themselves a family—with Trey as their patriarch and protector—when he could barely protect himself.

This load was too heavy to carry by himself, but he had to. One crisis at a time—

No. That was how he’d gotten into this mess, tending crises one at a time without considering long-term consequences or past solutions. The world belonged to people who could carefully pick their way through a forest, see all the threats, and change course or hide or retreat accordingly. People who could play chess.

Trey was not one of those people. He needed someone who could think like that, someone who could be presented with a problem, understand immediately the fastest way to the solution, but see an alternate, unexpected, route with fewer dangers.

He once again considered the idea of asking Marina to marry him with no intention of doing so, but he couldn’t risk giving Boss Tom that edge.

He’d want to keep company with Marina in any case, but there were nice girls he liked and there were not-nice girls he fucked, and the more Trey liked a nice girl, the less he wanted to fuck her.

So getting her pregnant was simply a task he had to complete, in short order, and his dick was not at all interested in doing so.

22

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

Speakeasy staff.