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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

50

MARINA FRIED UP Trey’s daily pound of bacon, in a frenzy this afternoon trying to get her wifely duties done so he could get out the door on time after they’d spent the morning in bed snuggling and talking. She didn’t know how she felt about the intimate contact because she’d had few hugs in her life, most of them from Dot or Sister Albright, and being that close to another human who wanted to touch her was uncomfortable. She was also still a little dazed by his revelations, his total trust in her, and morals he seemed to reserve for people he felt deserved them. This man, Marina’s husband, was the same man who’d courted her, but he was more. He was deeper, which she would never have known if he didn’t want to confide in her. She was very touched by that.

He wanted a nice little family like the one he’d grown up in and he didn’t want to do it inside the Machine. He couldn’t do it inside the Machine. Nobody could, he’d explained. Mobsters fought over power and money. They were constantly looking over their shoulders. They couldn’t trust anybody. They liked being rich and flaunting it, which caught the wrong people’s attention. They liked gambling and often weren’t very good at it. They weren’t careful about their bookkeeping so the government got them for tax evasion. They were gambling that they wouldn’t serve time. But if they didn’t, they still ended up getting killed. Being a mobster was a way of life for them, and they only wanted more power and more money.

Trey didn’t.

He wanted to be Sydney Carton.

“The noble lout.” She smiled a little upon hearing the stairs squeak under his feet.

“I can’t be takin’ Sundays off no more, even though I got assistant managers,” he said from behind her.

“People really go to speakeasies on Sunday?”

“Twenty-four hours a day, every day.”

“You’re not open twenty-four hours.”

“No. At first, it was because I never trusted anybody else to do my job, and I have to sleep. Now I just don’t want to stay open ’round the clock because I need peace to clean and restock. So, since Tuesdays are slow and that’s also Dot’s church’s activity night, I can take you to that if you want or we can go to Fairyland—”

She gasped and whirled to see him fixing his cuffs. “Fairyland?”

He grinned at her. “You’re stuck with me now, so ’at means you’re stuck with all the things you wanted to do when we were courtin’—courteeeng—but your daddy wouldn’t let you.”

“Oh, Trey,” she breathed, so delighted she didn’t know what to do except stand there and quiver like a happy puppy.

“I know I’ve been neglecting you,” he murmured, crossing the room to give her a big hug. “I’m havin’ to work harder and worry more than I did before I owned the place.”

She pulled away from him to look in his eyes. She loved his eyes, if she were truthful with herself. They could be blue as ice or blue as a hot summer sky, or both at the same time. “Why?”

“’Cuz Lazia wants it an’ Boss Tom ain’t gonna get between me and Lazia now that he’s got what he wanted, which was your daddy run out of his situation by his congregation.”

Marina couldn’t fathom the notion that she could become a widow before she could vote.

“Other thing I gotta tell you ’cuz I need your help with that too, is where I stash my third set o’ books—”

Her brow wrinkled. “Third set?”

“I gave one set o’ numbers to Boss Tom, a copy of which I keep for myself, which is in a safe deposit box because I don’t need it no more. Second set I hand over’t Treasury so they can’t accuse me of evadin’ taxes, ’cuz that’s how they getcha.”

“You’re getting lazy again.”

He flushed a little, looked up at the ceiling, and took a deep breath. “Third set is not doctored at all. They’re for me. I just don’t have a place I feel like I can keep them safe, but I must have them handy, too.”

When a hot pop of bacon grease hit her, she whirled back to the stove and hurried to get the bacon out. “Wouldn’t it be more prudent not to tell me that one?”

“Sugar, I wouldn’t have married anybody I couldn’t trust with the location of my books.”

She bit her lip.

“Now, something else is on my mind. I know that little brat Dot’s going to be digging into your head, making you think I’m up to no good—which I am, but not in the way she thinks. I’d appreciate it if you’d ignore all her yips and yaps. Her daddy knows my business and trusts me, so she’s got no call to question my intentions toward you.”

“He told her,” she offered hesitantly, “he’d done worse things than you probably, and if she didn’t want to think of him as a bad man, she should mind her own business about you.”

“I don’t fault her,” Trey replied. “She was brought up right and I can respect a cat who spawns kids like Dot. I don’t have to like her to know she’ll be a fine woman someday. Right now she’s just a spoiled, sheltered little rich girl, and Albright lets her be that way because that’s what rich, respectable men do, raise privileged little princesses and protect them from cats like me. It’s proof he arrived.”

“Just like me,” she whispered.

“No. Your mama already raised a privileged princess and tried to protect her. She wasn’t going to raise another and she was thinking about her future. Really smart, if you ask me, but I knew she was. That’s where you get it.” It sounded like a compliment, but Marina didn’t want to have that woman’s blood running through her veins. “But your daddy is no Albright so she didn’t have any support.” His finger ran down the long scabs on her arm. “You still picking at these?” Trey asked softly, caressing the longest one.

“I … they itch,” she said, flushing with embarrassment. “I can’t help it.” They did, in fact, begin itching right that second, but Trey captured her fingers when she would have scratched.

“We’re gonna have a talk about your mama and what she did to you.”

“I don’t want to,” she blurted. “I don’t want to think about that day.”

“Have it your way, then.”

“You promise?”

“I promise I will not ask you to tell me what happened. All I need to know is what the Albrights told me.”

Marina sighed, half in relief, half in irritation that they’d blabbed. “There’s a lot you aren’t saying. You’re planning something because you wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it otherwise because you’re telling me so much.”

“Goddamn, Marina,” he said with that tone of rich approval she was beginning to crave. If that was what getting pregnant by a mob boss was going to get her, then maybe … Maybe she’d take it. “Of course I’m planning something. I’m not going to let my wife and the mother of my baby get the tar beat out of her for something she didn’t do.”

“But it was me. I—”

“That wasn’t you,” he barked. “It was too much sweet tea working on a lightweight who sleepwalks. And I don’t want to have another fight about that because I’m enjoying the day. And as soon as breakfast is done, we’re going to the pictures.”

* * *

Trey did go to work that evening after all, but only because he wanted to escape her after having taken her to her first movie: The Cocoanuts. Marina was spellbound by it. She could see pictures on screen the way she saw them in her head. It was a funny movie and had dancing but—

“Say, Sugar,” Trey said as they walked to the car after, Marina still dazed from the wonder of it. “You didn’t laugh. You can pick the next one. I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh, Trey,” she breathed, looking up into his handsome face. He smiled. “I did. So much, you can’t imagine. It—”

Trey had opened the driver door to slide in, but stopped when Marina stood there. “What?”

“You’re supposed to open my door for me,” she said softly, casting a glance toward the back of the car.

He flushed beet red and scrambled to do so, but caught his toe in the running board and landed splat on the ground. A couple of people around them laughed, but Marina didn’t. She crouched beside him to shield him from any more onlookers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Not your doin’, Sugga,” he croaked, getting to his feet. Marina arose with him and hesitantly brushed the dirt and gravel off his chest, leaving his pants to himself. He joked, “See what happens when I’m not thinkin’?” His voice was thin, though, his face still red, and she didn’t dare correct his diction. He wouldn’t look at her. “’Mon now, let’s get you home.” He led her around the car and grandly opened the door for her. “Just remembered somethin’ I need to do at the speak. Prolly won’t be home till my usual time.”

Marina gave him a small comforting smile and murmured, “Thank you,” when he closed the door. They didn’t speak on the way home. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. He was overly gallant in opening her door, escorting her to the back porch door and opening it and ushering her in.

“I need to run,” he said with forced cheer in the middle-class diction she was used to. He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “We’ll go to Fairyland Tuesday.”

“All right,” she murmured and watched him dart out the door.

50

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