Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20A | 20B | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25-26 | 27 | 28-29

PART I
SPEAKING IN TONGUES

30

“WHAT’S EATING YOU?” Gio murmured a week after that as he pulled up a chair to Trey’s table. It was a quiet Saturday morning, just the two of them. Trey hadn’t needed sleep since his cat naps in between rounds with Marina the evening before. Trey had caught his tail out, acknowledged him with a small salute, and headed up to “his” room at the Muehlebach, which was not the same room as last time, which Marina didn’t seem to notice.

Trey lightly tapped the edge of his glass on the table, unwilling to confess yet unable to keep it to himself.

“I can’t do this,” Trey muttered.

“Of course not. Your time’s up. Boss Tom is going to know if you’re trying to extend the deadline and cheat.”

“Don’t you remember? Getting her pregnant was an order. Two months was the bet. Last night was my deadline, but I can’t fuck her again until we find out if she’s pregnant. If she’s not, back to the grindstone. Except I ain’t gonna do it.”

Gio took a deep breath. “I was wondering if you’d turn on Boss Tom like that,” he murmured.

That was not the reaction Trey expected.

“What happened last night?”

“Same as last week. Gio, I’m … ” He stopped, unable to articulate what he was feeling in his gut. “Gio, she’s— I don’t know how to explain it. She’s her. But not her. When we’re out, she is exactly the same as she has always been. A little bashful. Very proper. Then she … It’s like I’m fuckin’ a different girl. An’ you know what? I don’t like that girl.”

“The one you fucked.”

“Right.”

“’Cuz you don’t like thinking about nice girls and sex. It’s why you drop a girl the second she says yes.”

Trey nodded morosely. This was gonna wreck his fondness for Marina and that was the last thing he wanted.

“What’s your end game, going out with nice girls?” Gio asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“Practice being respectable,” Trey said testily. “You know that.”

“What do you want to do with that respectability?”

Be a federal prosecuting attorney, maybe even a judge like his granddaddy, but he wasn’t going to say that.

“You go with respectable girls to become respectable, but you work to make them not respectable, which is a shit thing to do. Why do you do that?”

“Because—”

Gio waited for him to answer.

Trey didn’t have an answer.

“Dunham, do you or do you not want to get married at any time in the future?”

“Eventually,” he answered vaguely. He’d have to be, to be taken seriously.

“And what do you think is going to happen the night after you say ‘I do’ to a nice girl?”

Trey sucked his teeth. “Hadn’t thought much about it, tell the truth. You know I ain’t no tomcat, controlled by my dick.”

“So if she wants a baby, you do it however many times it takes and then what? You find a flapper?”

“That’s how it’s done, ain’t it?” Trey protested.

“I don’t believe you can do that,” Gio said flatly. “Cats come in here all the time with their mistresses or go upstairs with one of the girls. I see how you look at them, like they’re scum.”

That set Trey back on his heels. “You ain’t makin’ any sense.”

“I am too. You don’t think it’s proper to fuck your wife for fun, but you don’t think it’s proper for a man to step out on his wife, either. He can’t win with you.”

“He ain’t gotta win with me!”

“But if you want to get married to a nice girl—and I know you’d never marry a flapper—you have to figure out what you’re going to do. You can’t be that uninterested if you can go three times in two hours.”

Trey grimaced.

“You like Marina. You like fucking Marina. You don’t like that she likes fucking you. And it’s not going to make a difference who you marry. That’s just how you think.”

Put like that, it did sound like a difficult path to navigate. “Don’t tell me you think about Dot that way,” he grumbled. “You been whorin’ too long.”

“God, yes, I do! The girl’s happy and feisty and sweet and hard-working and smart and respectable and on top of all that, she’s virtuous. I’d enjoy the hell out of teaching her how to be that in bed. Mine, Trey. All mine. And I’m all hers. I want one girl I can talk to, laugh with, and have fun fucking because I will never have to get back on that merry-go-round.”

Trey scowled. “Virtuous girls don’t do that unless they wanna have a baby.”

Gio gaped at him. “See! You just said it, straight up!”

“What’s wrong about it?” Trey demanded.

“Virtue, for a married woman, means not stepping out on her man. There is nothing a wife of mine could do in bed with me that would make her not virtuous.” He shook his head. “God, Trey, I know priests less prudish than you.”

“I am not a prude!” Trey protested. “I run a whorehouse, for God’s sake! I made that fucking bet, which, by any definition, was a rotten thing to do.”

“And now you think less of her because you were able to seduce her, like it’s her fault. You got the yes, but this time you had a reason to follow through. You did. Now you can’t stand it anymore, so you’re going to tell Boss Tom to go to hell because you don’t like fucking nice girls. Now what?”

“A’ight, look,” Trey snapped. “Here’s my sticky wicket: This Marina, the one I fucked. This is a good-time girl. She knew what to do the first time and she’s only upped her game since then. I know she was a virgin, but— Gio, I’ve looked at this upside, downside, inside, outside, and I just don’t know what the hell’s wrong with her.”

That made Gio sit back in confusion.

“Had to ease her into a coupla details at the beginning, but then she went fucking wild. I might feel different if I’d had to coach her and lead her all the way through, gettin’ her over her shyness, the way I’ve done every other nice girl. But it wa’n’t like that.”

“So … Dot was right about her being off?”

Trey nodded emphatically. “She’s started it twice now, takin’ me by surprise, like somethin’s flippin’ her switch an’ I can’t figure it out. There is no rhyme, reason, or pattern that I can see. That ain’t Marina, is what I’m sayin’. I didn’t have to work for it at all! But the next day, that sweet face looks at me like I’m hangin’ the moon an’ she’s the same as she’s always been an’ all of a sudden, it’s like the night before didn’t happen but I feel absolutely filthy.”

“That’s … queer.”

“That’s what’s got me by the short’n’curlies.”

“Huh.” There was a long silence while Gio and Trey brooded.

“I just can’t do it,” Trey finally muttered. “Ain’t just because she’s strange about it. It’s the next day when I can’t look at her knowin’ I defiled this sweet girl.”

“What’d you think was going to happen?” Gio sneered.

“I didn’t, goddammit!” he roared, pounding his fist on the table. Gio was unimpressed. “I was thinkin’ about the goddamned speak that I’m about to give up and have to take whatever Boss Tom’s gonna do to me when I tell him I ain’t doin’ it, so maybe you should get off your high horse ’cuz you want it as bad as I do an’ now I’m takin’ it away from you for the same reason you’re sittin’ there passin’ judgment on me. I do not regret one fucking thing I’ve done as a matter of morality. Stupidity, yes. Morality no. But she gives me that innocent smile and all of a sudden I got a conscience.

“I spend every spare minute with her because I like her and she makes me feel respectable and smart. Havin’ all these innocent little outings. Hide-and-go-seek, for God’s sake. Croquet. Monarchs. Skeet shootin’ with her daddy, who’s entertainin’ in his own corrupt way. Mama ain’t come around yet, but she ain’t gonna. An’ here’s daddy, startin’ to press me for a weddin’ date. Subtly. He’s a conman, not a very good one, but he gets the low-hangin’ fruit so he don’t know he’s my mark. But he wants her out of the house pronto, an’ sees me as his ticket, so if he does know it’s a con, he’s just goin’ along, thinkin’ he’s gonna get what he wants out of it.”

Gio dropped his chin to his chest. “I really, really want to stay here, Trey,” he mumbled into his shirt. “God only knows what’s going to happen to us if she’s not pregnant.”

It wasn’t likely.

Trey looked around 1520 and began his goodbyes, seeing his employees’ and tenants’ faces, and all his goals circle the drain. Once he finished his goodbyes, he could start cooking up alternative schemes. He’d end up doing his own bootlegging again and hammering foundering speakeasies into shape. It was a step down, but now he had money so he wouldn’t be starving on the streets gathering seed money. If Trey got cut loose, Charlie Carrollo or Solly Weissman or both would try to settle their grudges, but in that circumstance, killing them could be chalked up to an accident, just something that happens to cats who pop up out of the darkness at you.

“You can’t just … ?”

“Just what? I can’t marry her because that would void the bet. I can’t keep seeing her with no wedding on the horizon. And I can’t fuck her anymore if I’m not gonna to marry her. Whether she’s runnin’ a con on me or not, the fact is, when I’m not in bed with her, I’m takin’ advantage of a nice girl. I wouldn’t marry the one who goes to bed with me at the drop of a hat.” Trey paused, then realized what Gio really wanted. “Oh,” he said low. “No more Dot.”

“Yeah.”

Trey sighed.

Gio sighed. “Are we still on for taking the girls on a picnic this afternoon?”

“I ’spose. Gotta keep up appearances before I—we—cut our losses.”

Gio’s head dropped forward and hit the table. “When are you going to tell Boss Tom?” he asked, his voice muffled. “And everybody else?”

“I don’t know,” Trey muttered. “I gotta let it settle first. I’m tryin’ not to do impulsive things anymore. I might change my mind next week or somethin’ stupid like that.”

Gio straightened, reached for the whisky bottle, splashed some into his glass and some in Trey’s. Then he raised his.

“See you in hell. Or prison.”

“Is there a difference?”

30

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

Speakeasy staff.

And hey, it’s my barfday.