Come Hell or Highball

by Maia Chance

  And I needed to believe that Cedric could weather a kidnapping in style.

  The telephone rang.

  Berta went to answer it. I didn’t pay attention as she spoke in low tones with someone. All I could think of was Cedric. How I’d neglected him during the past few days. How I’d foisted those horrid Spratt’s Puppy Biscuits upon him.

  Berta appeared in the kitchen doorway. “That was Eloise Wright, telephoning from Dune House. She said that she procured this telephone number from Mr. Luciano, and she wished to know if you would care to join Mrs. Arbuckle and her this weekend at Dune House. I told her you were indisposed.”

  Who cared about Society Matron soirees at a time like this?

  I managed to speak. “You don’t think Cedric’s really a goner, do you?”

  “No. No. Who would do such a thing? No, surely he is safe and sound somewhere.…”

  I wadded up the note and I blotted the picture of Cedric from my mind. I latched on to a single idea. “We’ll find the bootleg warehouse,” I said. “We’ll get those photographs and pinpoint the murderer. We’ll find Cedric. We will.”

  Except … there was a tiny glitch in that plan.

  I dug into my handbag, rummaging past the Brownie, and found my coin purse. I snapped it open. Empty. I’d spent all my money, down to my last cent. “Have you enough money for a cab ride to Brooklyn?” I asked Berta.

  Her lips made a small O. “No. No, indeed I do not.”

  “What about bus fare?”

  “I am very sorry, Mrs. Woodby. I am utterly, as you so succinctly put it once, on the nut.”

  “But we have to get there. It’s the only way to find Cedric!”

  “Mrs. Woodby,” Berta said slowly, “it occurs to me that Mr. Oliver has a motorcar.”

  * * *

  We rushed the six blocks to Ralph’s. I thumped my fist on his door.

  Ralph cracked it. We’d woken him. His ginger hair was tufted like a guinea pig’s, his eyes were bleary, and he was shirtless. “Here for your film reel?” he said. “It’s still in my safe. I’ll—”

  “No, Mr. Oliver,” I said, breathless. “Would you, um, show me the key to your motorcar?”

  “Show it to you? Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s a—it’s about a clue. About Ruby Simpkin’s Model T. It’s ever so important.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Hurry,” I said.

  “Fine, fine.” He scratched the back of his head and padded away. In a moment, he was back, a small brass key dangling from his fingers on a narrow leather strap. “See?”

  “Come closer,” I said.

  He came closer. The key was stamped with the cursive word Ford.

  I snatched the key and stampeded down the stairs. Berta huffed and puffed at my heels.

  The Model T’s engine would be cold, but there was no time to crank it. We slammed ourselves in, I started it up, and we peeled away from the curb.

  Ralph leaned out a window. “Hey!” he shouted. “Where are you going?”

  Berta poked her head out the passenger window, holding her hat with one hand. “To the factory in Brooklyn!”

  I gunned the Model T around the corner. “Why did you tell him?” I said. “I don’t want to see Mr. Oliver again. Ever.”

  Berta settled into the seat. “You might change your mind.”

  * * *

  I nosed the motorcar through the traffic and over the Brooklyn Bridge while Berta inspected the city map.

  “Oh my,” Berta murmured, her nose buried in the map. “Oh my, my, my.”

  “What?” I sped around a delivery van. “What?”

  “Do you recall that Mrs. Wright had an address jotted on a sheet of paper on her desk, when we visited her Girdle Queen office on Tuesday?”

  “Yes. Seventeen Wharfside. But what’s that got to do with—? Oh! Don’t tell me that—”

  “Indeed, Mrs. Woodby. Wharfside is a road abutting the river. In Brooklyn. Go left after the bridge. And, if you do not mind me saying so, let her rip.”

  We zigged and zagged and found Wharfside, a desolate dirt street lined with swaybacked wooden buildings. The midday sun bounced off broken machinery. Across the river, Manhattan was a sparkling mirage.

  I slowed the Model T to a chug. “These buildings don’t look like the factory on the film. It was all white and gleaming, and had a big sign that said ‘Auntie Arbuckle’s Pork and Beans.’” The only sign that wasn’t too faded to read said HENRY & SONS. “Maybe the address on Eloise’s desk has nothing to do with the factory we’re looking for.”

  “The pork and beans sign may have been erected only for the film,” Berta said, “and then removed. After all, the place we are searching for is being used for criminal purposes. It might not be a real factory.”

  We drove along. We didn’t see a soul, except for a bunch of seagulls squawking on abandoned sheds.

  “Wait.” I slammed on the brakes. “There it is. Third building on the left.”

  Berta had guessed correctly: The pork and beans sign was not there. But I recognized the pale concrete walls, the eerie lack of windows, and the ramp leading to the truck-sized wooden door.

  “You are certain?” Berta asked.

  “Yes. That’s the ramp in the film.” My breath caught. “Someone’s over there.”

  “Oh dear,” Berta murmured. “It is Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy the Ant?”

  “He does so dislike that name. Mr. Fitzpatrick insists upon it, as he feels it gives Jimmy the proper air of menace. But Jimmy prefers to be—”

  “Could we talk about this some other time?” I reversed the Model T and drove around a bend. I parked in a weedy lot. “What are we going to do?”

  “I have always, Mrs. Woodby, considered myself a lady. However, these are desperate circumstances. I must step into the character of the trollop.”

  “Trollop? You?”

  Berta tore off her hat, unpinned her bun, and shook her silver waves free. “Have you any lipstick? Jimmy did so like the pink shade I wore last night.”

  Berta dolled herself up with the lipstick, cake mascara, and jeweled hairpin we found in my handbag. I checked the Brownie’s film-winder and shutter to make certain they were in working order. I nestled the camera in my handbag, shoved the Model T’s key down my brassiere for extra security, and we left the motorcar.

  We crept on foot along the shadows of two abandoned buildings, to the side of the warehouse where we’d seen Jimmy standing guard.

  We peeked around the corner.

  Jimmy sat at the top of the warehouse ramp, legs dangling over the side in minuscule shoes. He wore a three-piece suit and a fedora, and an outsized tommy gun lay across his knees. He stared into space.

  “I shall distract him,” Berta whispered, “and you sneak inside and get the photographs. Do not dilly-dally. I am not willing to advance to the next base with Jimmy. Not today, at any rate.”

  Oh boy.

  Jimmy almost fell off the ramp when he saw her. “Berta?” he said in his gravelly voice. “Tomato! Whatcha doing here? Say, don’t you look swell.”

  Berta said something in low tones and fondled his lapel.

  Jimmy’s face suggested a man riding the conveyor belt to Paradise. He set his tommy gun aside and wrapped his pipe cleaner arms around Berta.

  It was now or never.

  I tiptoed around the corner and up the ramp, hugging my handbag to my chest. I was halfway up when Jimmy, who was nuzzling Berta’s neck, lifted his head.

  If Jimmy turned his head even a single inch, he’d see me.

  Berta’s eyes bugged. She wrapped her fingers around the back of Jimmy’s head and thrust his face into her bosom.

  I ran the rest of the way up the ramp and tried the door. It opened. I found myself in a lofty, dim space with a concrete floor. Light from a high window showed me that the room was empty.

  But—I squinted—there was another room, through a doorway on the other side.

  The next room w
as filled with stacks and stacks of wooden crates, piled in a half dozen haphazard, six-foot-high rows. Some kind of factory machinery ran along one wall. Double cargo doors filled another wall, and I saw the sunlit, flowing river through the crack. The building must’ve been some kind of storage hold, or transfer point, for the crates.

  I moved closer to the crates. Black lettering said AUNTIE ARBUCKLE’S PORK AND BEANS.

  I flicked open the Brownie’s lens and twisted the film-winder. I aimed the lens at a crate, squinted through the viewfinder, and snapped three pictures.

  I set the Brownie on the floor and tried to heft a crate down. It was heavy. It rattled and clinked. It didn’t sound like metal cans of pork and beans. It sounded like … glass.

  I yanked at the crate.

  The crate tipped, and wobbled, and the entire stack of crates crashed to the floor. One of the crates split open, and glass bottles splintered. Liquid sprayed up into my face.

  I licked a drop at the corner of my mouth. Good Canadian whiskey.

  A rather unforgivable hankering for a highball washed over me.

  I grabbed the Brownie—luckily, it seemed to be unscathed—and aimed the lens at one of the broken bottles.

  That’s when I heard the muffled shouts.

  “Hey!” a man yelled in a castrato’s soprano. “What the hell was that?”

  “Dunno,” another man said in a slow bass.

  Doors squealed as they were pushed open. I saw a spreading fan of light.

  I seemed to have lost the use of my legs. They simply wouldn’t move. Was this punishment for all the unkind thoughts I’d had about my ankles?

  I peeked around the crates.

  Two men had entered through the cargo doors. They were mere silhouettes: one medium-sized, the other shaped like Frankenstein’s monster. And they each had a large pistol braced low against a hip. They advanced toward the fallen crates, toward me.

  My legs still wouldn’t budge.

  The distance between us shrank.

  My legs finally switched back on. I scuttled, crablike, to the side, away from the fallen crates. With one hand, I clutched the Brownie. I put my other hand to the floor to brace myself, and I squelched a cry; splinters of glass bit into my skin. I scampered around the corner of the row.

  Not a second too soon.

  “Wouldya look at that?” the bass voice said. “Them crates just fell down.”

  There was a smacking sound.

  “Ow!” Bass cried. “What you do that for?”

  “Don’t be a sap,” the castrato voice said. “Someone’s in here.”

  I heard a click. Then a deafening burst, a zing, and a thunk as a bullet lodged in a wall somewhere.

  I stifled a whimper.

  “Come on out,” the castrato voice crooned. “Or we’re gonna come and get you.”

  Then footsteps pattered farther off, and I heard Jimmy the Ant. “Hey! Tomato! Come back! You ain’t supposed to go back there!”

  “Mrs. Woodby?” Berta cried.

  If I got out of this alive, Berta and I were going to need to have a little chat about blowing one’s cover.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” the castrato voice said. “Who’s the dame?”

  “My lady, that’s who,” Jimmy said. “Put them guns outa her face. What’s going on here? Look at this mess. Boss ain’t gonna be pleased.”

  “Mrs. Woodby?” Berta called again.

  “Mrs. Woodby?” the castrato voice said. “Say. I know her. I know her real well.”

  He did?

  I peeked around the corner.

  Mr. Highpants. I’d never heard him speak before; that castrato voice belonged to him. He stood with Frankenstein’s Monster, Jimmy, and Berta. They stared down at the shattered bottles of bootleg.

  I dodged into the next aisle. This aisle was stacked, not with wooden crates, but with large brown cardboard boxes.

  I knew that goal numero uno was, now, to get out of this warehouse alive. But I had a sudden vision of Cedric’s toy-bear face, and I realized that if I didn’t get photographic proof of Arbuckle’s bootleg scheme, I might never see Cedric again.

  The three gangsters and Berta were engaged in a back-and-forth about Berta’s identity. I might have a couple moments to snap more photographs. I lifted a cardboard box down from the stack and removed the lid.

  I’d expected more whiskey bottles. What I saw were rubbery white mounds of … girdles.

  I glanced up and down the row of cardboard boxes. Each one was printed with the image of a crown and the words GIRDLE QUEEN.

  I dug into the box.

  It turned out that the box was filled with whiskey bottles. Whiskey bottles wrapped in perforated white rubber girdles.

  Eloise Wright had found a profitable use for her girdle seconds, after all. Profitable enough, it seemed, for her to divorce her husband and establish herself as financially independent.

  I aimed the Brownie’s lens and snapped away, trying to catch angles with enough stray light.

  But the gangsters—and Berta—must’ve heard my camera shutter whapping and the film-winder clicking. Four sets of footsteps came closer.

  I stuffed the Brownie down my bodice and ran to the end of the aisle of boxes, away from the footsteps. Just as I reached the end, Highpants yelled, “Hey!” A bullet whizzed by my ear. I sprinted past the factory equipment along the wall. I had the wild idea that I could outrun bullets, I guess.

  But then, something snagged against my side, and I was flung to a stop. A piece of the factory machinery, some sharp protuberance, had sliced through my dress and snagged into my rubber girdle.

  I yanked and thrashed, but the gummy material only stretched.

  “There she is,” Frankenstein’s Monster said behind me.

  Another bullet whizzed by.

  “Leave Mrs. Woodby alone!” Berta cried. Then she said “Oof,” and there were thundering sounds.

  I corkscrewed around to see a pile of cardboard boxes shower down onto Highpants and Frankenstein’s Monster.

  Oddly, there were no sounds of shattering glass.

  “Run!” Berta screamed to me.

  I struggled and twisted. With a twang of the metal machinery and a long ziiiiip of ripping dress, I finally wrested my girdle free. I ran through the room with the crates, across the other big empty room, out the front door, and down the ramp.

  I fled down the street and across the weedy lot. The Brownie joggled inside my bodice. I leapt behind the wheel of the Model T, dug the key from my brassiere, and fired up the engine. I skidded the motorcar along to the warehouse. Berta was bouncing down the ramp. I slowed down just enough for her to leap into the passenger seat. I slammed my foot on the gas before she’d even shut the door.

  Yells and gunshots rang out behind us. Bullets dinged off the Model T’s bumper. Another hit the rear window, and it shattered. Then I two-wheeled it around a corner, and we were safe.

  35

  “Eloise Wright,” Berta said a few moments later. She was still wheezing for breath.

  “You saw the boxes?” I asked.

  “Indeed I did.”

  “Eloise telephoned us from Dune House earlier,” I said. “I’ll bet she called to make sure we’d found her note, and to see if we’d realized that Cedric was missing.” I clenched the steering wheel. “I’m driving straight to Dune House. And then I’m going to throttle her.”

  “Did you obtain photographs of the bootleg operation?” Berta asked.

  “Yes. I hope they turn out. It was kind of dark in there.”

  “The girdles must prevent the bottles from clattering. The bottles did not break when I pushed the boxes on top of those dreadful men,” Berta said. “The rubber acts as cushioning.”

  “And there’s no telltale noise when the boxes are transported. That’s how Eloise Wright has been disposing of all her troublesome seconds. Letting Lem Fitzpatrick have them, and allowing him to use her labeled Girdle Queen boxes. They are in business together. Do you think Eloise could’ve re
ally killed Arbuckle, though? And Vera Potter?”

  “Mrs. Wright was a desperate lady. She longed for financial independence from her husband in order to divorce him. Desperate ladies are capable of far more than people might suppose.”

  True. Berta and I were desperate ladies, and look at the soup we’d dipped ourselves into.

  * * *

  Around the thirty-mile mark down the highway toward Hare’s Hollow, the Model T’s engine started clanking.

  “Rats,” I said. “We’re out of gasoline.”

  I pulled over at the next gas station. While the attendant was filling the tank, I saw a Cadillac Phaeton across the highway.

  The Cadillac crouched on the grassy verge, long, black, and wicked. I saw the silhouette of Frankenstein shoulders behind the wheel. Mr. Highpants was riding shotgun.

  Quite literally shotgun, in fact: the barrel of a tommy gun poked out the passenger window.

  I rummaged in my purse for money to pay for the gasoline, and then remembered that I hadn’t a cent. A sparkle at the bottom of the handbag caught my eye. One of the diamond stud earrings I’d worn to Mrs. Hartwicke’s staffing agency. I dug it out.

  “Keep the change,” I said, and dropped the earring into the slack-jawed attendant’s hand. We roared out of the gas station.

  Berta clung to the dashboard. “What on God’s green earth has come over you, Mrs. Woodby?”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. The Cadillac eased onto the highway.

  “They’re back.”

  “What?” Berta turned. “Insolent men.”

  “What do they want? And do you think they’d really—” I swallowed. “—really use a machine gun? On us?”

  “Of course.”

  “But why?”

  “Do not whine. It is most unbecoming. They want the camera. You photographed the bootleg operation they have been entrusted to guard. Mr. Fitzpatrick will have their hides.” Berta shook her head. “Jimmy told me never to trust a gangster.”

  I swerved around a delivery hack. “I hate to break the news, Berta, but Jimmy’s a gangster, too.”