by Lee Kelly
Alex was right.
Even though we didn’t know why, or how, or what it was all for, Alex and I have always been in this together.
DEAL SWEETENER
ALEX
I leave Joan’s room and creep downstairs, settle onto the sofa in the lounge, determined to catch a little rest before tomorrow breaks wide open. There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep—my nerves are shot, my heart is beating so fast that I’m surprised it hasn’t taken off—but I should try. Tomorrow is going to be a long, backbreaking day of finishing up the shine shipment for Gunn, making sure Agent Frain is ready for our score, and then all the paperwork I’m sure will take place at the Unit, after.
Of course it was a huge risk, coming clean to Joan. A huge, potential career- and life-ending risk. But I trust her. Regardless of whether I should, I do. And I can’t leave her behind. No matter how much I try to lie or trick myself, the truth remains. I’m in love with her.
What’s left of the night passes by in a fit of strange dreams, and tossing and turning on the lounge’s sofa. When Ral and Billy show up in the morning, they look me up and down, and Ral actually asks if I’m strung out.
“I’m fine,” I say, as I stand and light a cigarette. “Just tired is all.”
“After tonight, Gunn sure as hell better give us a night off.” Billy picks up one of the jugs of water resting in the corner and pours the optimum twelve ounces into an empty bottle. “Can’t take much more of this.”
“I’m with you,” I say.
Once the rest of the troupe arrives, we slowly get to work, dig our heels in, and we all keep a steady pace for a few hours, working as a team. Around late afternoon, we each brew our last trick of shine, and fill the final quart container. Despite the collective exhaustion, the air in the lounge becomes festive, excited. Win comes in a few minutes later, and when he sees the finished shipment, he calls for Gunn.
Gunn paces around the glass quarts of eternal shine, the 180 bottles that have already been caged by blood and sealed, plus the twenty that will still need to go to Joan to be finished this afternoon, and then brought back here to await Colletto.
He looks up and nods. “Excellent. As always, you’ve exceeded my expectations.” He moves toward the door. “Everyone should get freshened up, be down to greet Colletto’s men before eight.” Eight o’clock. So that’s when the deal takes place. I need to call this in to Agent Frain. “I’m not sure what Colletto expects, if he’ll want another celebratory shine toast, or a magic performance, so be ready for anything.” Gunn looks back to me. “Alex, I know you’ve been carting yourself back and forth each night, running yourself ragged between here and home. Win, drive him home to get changed, will you?”
But I need this sliver of a window to get to a pay phone, to call the Prohibition Unit— “I’m okay with walking, sir. I know you both have a lot on your plate.”
“Relax, I’ll drive you.” Win stubs his cigarette into an ashtray on the end table.
“Thanks.” I force a smile. “I’d appreciate it. It’s gotten awful cold.”
I follow Win numbly down the hall, to the stairs and out the bar front. Adrenaline has me flying. I need to shake Win somehow, get through to Frain, give him the details so he can get set to move in.
Should I pretend I’m sick? There’s a pharmacy on P Street with a telephone—
“Where you headed?” someone says from across the lot.
I turn to see one of Gunn’s minions, Dawson, strolling toward us.
“Running Danfrey home,” Win says. “Want to come along?”
A gangster ride-along would be somewhat comical if I wasn’t so pressed for time.
Dawson smiles. “Sure, what the hell, if you lend me a smoke.”
Win opens the front door to his car and nods to the back of his old Model T. “You don’t mind riding in the back, do you, Danfrey?”
“Not at all.”
I settle into the beige leather, the seat squeaking in protest, as Dawson and Win climb into their seats in front of me.
We rumble down M Street a few blocks and then stop at a traffic light. Before the light changes, two cars roll up next to ours simultaneously, one on each side. That’s my first warning bell, since M Street is only four lanes wide, two lanes in each direction, which means the car on our right has had to use the shoulder to stop beside us. But I don’t really process this. I’m still inside my own head, figuring out timing: how to get changed, sneak out to call Frain, whether my plan with Joan is bulletproof.
Then the doors to the cars bookending us open.
One man hops out from the car on the shoulder, and one hops out from the black Model T on our left. They each run to our car, open the respective backseat doors, and slide in next to me, surrounding me. Caging me, in seconds.
I look up. The guy on my right side is Howie Matthews. He gives me a knowing smile. “Heya, pal.”
My stomach starts to lurch as the two cars on either side of us screech away through the red light. When the light turns green, Win steps on the gas, and we go flying, the roar of the engine shattering the silence. The mixed scents of aftershave suffocate me, the steel of my captors’ holstered guns starts poking at my hips.
I don’t recognize the guy on my left, but he’s a young thug, maybe my age, average build but with a face you don’t want to mess with. He catches me looking at him, flashes me a crooked grin, and simply says, “Sorry, Charlie.”
“Win?” My voice is high, so high and strangled that I don’t recognize it on its way out. The heat inside my stomach is starting to reach a fever pitch, and I can barely hear my own words over my heart. We make a right on 14th Street instead of a left. “You just passed the turn, we missed my turn—”
“Change of plans, Danfrey,” Win says. “Turns out Colletto had a problem with the son of his old spells distributor turning his back on him and attempting to go his own way. Turns out your hothead moves in jail didn’t sit so well with D Street.”
I can’t process, I’m not sure what’s happening, my mind is scrambling, my thoughts stumbling to keep up. Am I . . . am I part of the deal? This whole time, has Colletto been harboring a grudge against me, same as I have against him?
“But then again, we were all tricking each other, weren’t we, Alex?” Win flashes me a smile through his rearview mirror. “When we got ahold of McEvoy on that boat, he sure had some interesting tales to tell in his final hour.”
They went to the voodoo party. They already got to McEvoy.
McEvoy must have confessed that he used me as a mole.
Time’s up, Alex.
Jesus. Effing. Christ.
I can’t catch my breath, can’t slow my heart, as Win starts weaving in and out of the 14th Street traffic. He throws a glance back at me, and the car does a little swerve into the closest lane. “What did you think would happen? That you’d just burrow your little rat face into the Den and keep McEvoy apprised? That he’d protect you when push came to shove?” Win laughs. “He’s a junkie, and moreover a jackal. He’s never known what loyalty is, and he treats his people like trash. Which is why he’s at the bottom of the Potomac, floating alone right now.”
“Well,” Dawson says, “not alone for long,” and the entire crowd starts laughing.
I’m going to be sick.
“Howie,” I whisper to my old cell mate. “Howie, you don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, but I do, Alex.” Howie puts his arm around my shoulder, maybe for the last time. He looks around the car, then drops his voice to a whisper, “You always thought you were so much better than me. So when I found out you were a rat for McEvoy, spying on my cousin and Mr. Gunn?” As he leans in, his greasy hair brushes my shoulders. “I begged them to let me ride along.” Howie stretches his thin legs out long under the seat in front of him, while I just get tighter and tighter. Then he leans in and adds, “Traitor.”
I turn away from him, blood pounding against my skull, my fear so intense I start seeing bright-white spots against the leather seats of Win’s car. Have they already told Gunn about me spying for McEvoy? They must have. Will Gunn think Joan knew about it? Will he punish her because of it?
I close my eyes. I can’t think about that. She has to survive this.
She has to walk away.
Win slows at another traffic light. I look past Howie, out the window and a few blocks ahead. We’re almost at the edge of town. There are about five more blocks until we’re on the Highway Bridge, on a long road to an endless nothing.
I can’t think, all my thoughts are just one long silent cry—I’m going to die this is it this is real—
But my fingers start to twitch, and my will to go down fighting takes over. Should I take them out with magic? Conjure knives, and send them flying? If Gunn found out, would he hurt me by hurting Joan?
I can’t take the risk. Besides, I’m not a murderer, or a criminal—I’m charged with taking guys like these animals down.
So I focus on the window, watch the traffic light from the other direction flip from green to yellow to red. “Duck, Howie,” I whisper.
“What?”
“Shatter.”
Our car begins moving, while Howie’s window breaks into a million pieces, shards of glass flying into his face, his hair. He closes his eyes, burrows his head—
“What the hell!” he screams.
I send a sharp elbow into the eye of the guy on my left, and then I turn and jab my fist into Howie’s face. Blood starts gushing out of Howie’s nose as he doubles over.
“What’s going on back there?!” Win keeps his hands on the wheel but whips his head around to look at me as Dawson scrambles to grab my shirt. I shrug Dawon off, kick him in the stomach, and send him careening back—
People start beeping behind us, and Win turns back to the wheel and steps on the gas.
I focus on the road ahead, conjure a thick brick wall to stack itself five feet tall in front of us. Before Win can brake, the car smashes into it, and we all snap back against our seats—
And that’s when I scramble over Howie.
“Grab him, Howie! Just do it now!” Win barks. He throws his car into reverse, but before Howie can get a clear hold on me, I jump through the open window.
A rush of pain and cold wind snaps at my body as cars beep and drivers scream. Tires screech as Win pulls his car over to the shoulder ahead of me. I pick myself off the road, hip throbbing, face pounding, and dash between two cars just as Win’s jumping out of his. I trip over a set of trash cans that line a row of storefronts on the other side of the National Mall, and cut into the alley behind them.
“I just heard him!”
“Over there.”
“Behind the alley, move!”
Footsteps pound the cement behind me, a chorus of angry shouts—“Get back here, you little shit!”
“It’s worse if you run!”
The sound of bullets roars through the sky.
I sprint down the alley, turn a sharp bend around a brick corner grocery, push myself inside, and conjure the door to lock behind me. I nearly collide with the dodgy storekeeper, a large, tired-looking man who jumps out of my way.
“Stay back!” The grocer backs away, hands up, face frozen with fear, toward the counter. “I don’t serve no sorcerers, you hear? I want no trouble.”
“Is there a roof?” I gasp, as I steady myself on one of his shelves for a second.
“Don’t speak to me, hell spawn!” The grocer covers his ears.
I lunge toward him, grab his collar. “I need you to focus.” I nod to the stairs on the side of the store, behind neat aisles of Campbell’s Soup and olive oil. “Do those stairs lead to a roof?”
He nods quickly, gasps, “Please, don’t hurt me.”
I release him, stumble up the staircase, dart across a dingy, cluttered second floor. I climb another staircase until the steps dead-end into a door. I heave my shoulder against it—one, two, three—and stumble out onto the roof of the grocery.
The brilliant colors of the oncoming sunset blind me for a second, but I get my bearings, dash to the edge of the store’s blacktop roof, and peer out to the main drag of 14th Street. Win and his men are shouting, cursing, firing bullets into the alley, peering around every corner.
“Check the stores,” Win’s steely voice echoes through the abandoned alley. “Every one. We can’t lose him.”
As they stop to catch a breath in the front of the grocery, Dawson points to a drop of my blood that must have smeared across the window.
“Blood,” Win says, then surveys the grocery’s door. “In. Open it.”
Panic starts to thrum again, my short burst of relief pinching out like a flame. I hear the breaking of glass, the smack of a door underneath me, then hurried footsteps echoing through the grocery’s thin walls and shoddy floors.
They’re coming.
Surrounding me is a smattering of rooftops, a patchwork of three-story town homes and squat two-story stores. And then an idea starts to take hold.
They need me dead. They’re not going to rest until I’m dead.
I limp to the edge of the building, take a look below. There’s a three-story drop-off, but about ten feet away, there’s a building with a dangling fire escape on its second floor. My ribs, sore and bruised from the fall, are now aching, maybe broken. This is the only way out, I tell myself. You need to jump. I look across the alleyway, to the fire escape that shines like a beacon in the sun. And they need to think you fell.
I take a few steps back, close my eyes, and wait for them, and when I hear the trapdoor to the ceiling flap open, hear Win shout, “There he is, fire!” I dig in and run as fast as I can toward the edge of the building. I don’t falter. I don’t stutter-step, and I jump, my legs propelling me like a windmill, up around up around—
I reach, lurch in midair for the base of the fire escape, desperate to reach it, to hang on . . .
My fingers find the steel, whiplash shoots through my shoulders, the heady rush of jumping causing my nose to gush blood. Move, Alex, before they reach the roof’s edge. I scramble onto the fire-escape landing, whisper, “Replicate and conceal.” A force field, a replica of the scene behind me—the brick wall, and the zigzag cut of the fire escape—appears like a flat wall of camouflage in front of me.
I peer down at the alley two stories below and complete the ruse. On the ground of the alley, emerging just as Win and his men sprint to the edge of the roof one floor above me on the other side, is a facedown replica of Alex Danfrey, splayed out and broken on the alleyway ground.
“Son of a bitch tried to jump,” Howie says, his voice cracking a bit as he studies my body from the third-floor roof.
“Make sure he’s really gone,” Win says quietly.
Howie and Dawson and Win’s other thug, they pause only for a moment. Then, one after the other, they take their pistols from their pockets, aim at my replica, fire three floors down, the cold, hard bursts of gunfire rattling me, POP POP POP, as I watch from above. I need to match their gunfire with magic. This needs to look real. So I focus on my replica on the alley floor, say the words of power. And then three deep, black marks of blood bloom like nightmarish roses across my replica below.
The gunfire stops.
“That was close. Too close,” Win sighs out. “Come on, we need to get back. Tell Gunn it’s done.”
I wait until they back away from the edge of the building across the alley. I take a minute, and then another, to collect myself on the cramped landing of the fire escape, to revel in being alive, as Win and his goons climb into their car and drive themselves back to the Red Den.
I was part of the deal. I was always part of the D Street deal. Boss McEvoy and me, Gunn’s thoughtful little deal sweeteners for
D Street. His loose ends.
My body is cut and bruised and pleading for rest, but I limp down from the fire escape, through the back alley to 14th Street, hobble over to the corner where a large streetcar is about to pull away from the curb. I flag the driver down, shove a few coins from my pocket into his hand, and slide onto a seat near the front. The crowd of middle-aged women and flustered mothers with small children angles away from me, but I just tilt my head back and close my eyes.
I need the next stop and a phone—Frain needs to be at the Den by eight and has no idea how all of this has just imploded. But this can’t be over, we need to salvage this, and Joan—
I need to get to Joan. I promised her. I have to save her.
We have to save each other.
CHANGE OF PLANS
JOAN
I’ve been in Gunn’s office all day, trying to finish my spellbinding of the final quarts. My nerves are eating me alive, over everything that’s about to happen tonight, and worrying about my family and Alex. Everything will work out, I repeat like a prayer. This is all almost over.
I’m done around half past six. I’ve never wanted to see my family more than at this moment. My plan is for Ben and Ruby to stay upstairs, wait behind my locked bedroom door for me and Alex to execute our sting, for the Feds to come, before we get them out and leave this house of tricks behind.
So when Gunn comes in a little while later, I stand up from my chair. I try to remember that he has no idea what’s about to happen, that he’s in the dark, that Alex and I are the sorcerers behind this elaborate performance. So I say as confidently as I can, “I think it’s time I see my family, Mr. Gunn. The shipment is ready. And D Street should be arriving soon, so I better get on upstairs.” He doesn’t answer, just stares. “It’s important to me, before the deal goes down, to see them. As motivation, like you said.”
“How interesting,” Gunn finally answers, slowly, “that you listen to some things I have to say, but not others.” I know Gunn and his loaded meanings too well, and a chill starts to crawl up my spine.