“Oi, Luce. It’s me, Isaac.”
“Isaac? Umm. Hi. H-how are you?”
Her bashfulness was downright adorable. It was refreshing to meet someone as shy, if not shyer, than he was.
“I’m doing fine. Erm, so I was wondering if you, um, would care to go out again sometime?”
“How about tonight?” she asked unexpectedly.
He didn’t respond for a few beats. “Sure. I’m at Jerry’s Diner right now. I’ve eaten, but I’ll be happy to buy you dinner if you—”
“I’ll be there soon.”
A click knocked against his eardrum and he pulled the receiver away, looking at it queerly.
“Um, all right.”
“You done yet?” Jerry growled impatiently from the doorway.
Pierce hung up the telephone and said to him sarcastically, “You’re a charm, mate.”
Noting his sarcastic tone, the greasy wanker placed his hands on his wide waist, cocking one bushy eyebrow. It occurred to Pierce that he should probably not piss off the people who prepare his food, regardless of how terrible it was.
Pierce returned to his booth and ordered another cup of tea while he waited. When he spied Lucy approaching the diner door, he quickly requested a cup for her. When Lucy entered, she looked as if she needed it. To his relief, she wore her calf-skinned gloves. Maybe that was a good sign that she wanted to keep seeing him.
He helped her out of her heavy violet coat and then brushed the snowflakes off it before folding it over his arm and placing it beside her on the seat as before.
He slid into his booth across the way from her. “I ordered you some tea. I would’ve gotten food if I knew you were hungry.”
“Oh, um, I’ll just have soup,” she said, taking off her hat and gloves. “Thank you, Isaac.”
The same lock of red hair fell over her face, which she tucked behind her ear in that bashful sort of way. God, she was unbelievably lovely. He wanted to hold her hands and never let go.
The waitress returned with the tea, and Lucy ordered a bowl of clam chowder. She rubbed her arms, trying to warm them. He wished she would allow him to meet her at her building so she wouldn’t have to walk in the snow and ice.
“Did you go out there?” she asked, getting out her cigarette case from her pocketbook. “Y’know, out there on the water?”
Rum Row. She was cautious enough not to say those words in public even if there wasn’t anyone close enough to hear.
“Aye,” he said, pulling out his lighter. “Nearly froze to death, I did. My partner and me ran into bloody land pirates on the way back.”
Her eyes bulged as he lit her cigarette for her.
“Pirates?” she whispered. “Is that what happened to you?”
Pierce had some scrapes on his forehead and cheek, and she had eyed the bandage around his hand when lighting her smoke.
“It is,” he admitted, rubbing a cut on his temple. “I was thrown outta truck.”
“You were thrown out? What did you do after that?”
He decided to leave out the bit where he came for Brody and the bugger gunned down the pirates before driving them away to incinerate “the evidence.” She could do without hearing that sort of shite. Hell, he could have done without knowing about it.
“I managed to get to where I needed to be. My partner met up with me later after losing the cockers.”
Lucy took her first sip of tea, never removing her astonished eyes from him. “Oh, my. Sounds dangerous.”
The waitress arrived with the chowder and asked if they needed anything else before she left them alone again.
“Aye,” Pierce told Lucy. “Quite dangerous. And the best part is that I get to head back out and do it all over again in a couple of days.”
The conversation made him glad he’d told her about the racket he was caught up in. It felt bloody fantastic to be able to talk to someone about all the trouble attached to the job.
Lucy dabbed out her cigarette and scooped up a spoonful of soup. She then remarked with a sly little smirk, “Too bad your boss doesn’t have a submarine.”
“Eh? Say what now?”
“Yeah, y’know, to use for his business.”
She was being very cryptic. He decided to play along and see where she was going with this.
“Oh, aye. S’pose it would cut down on visibility.” He then noticed her devious look. “What?”
She blew on her spoonful and then whispered, “Today at work, I overheard a very interesting conversation over the telephone.”
“Overheard?” he repeated, his voice rising a tad above normal. “You eavesdropped on someone’s phone call?”
Her eyes grew wider than Pierce ever thought possible. The fright on her face as she scanned the diner for anyone listening was obvious.
“Shush!” she finally hissed.
He couldn’t help but chuckle at her nervousness. “All right, love, sorry. What is it that you heard?”
“A man phoned up Leon Clark this afternoon.”
Hearing the name caused Pierce to swallow thickly. “Him again, eh?”
Although the chances of him running into the mob boss were slim, it still wasn’t reassuring to hear the bloke’s name.
“They were talking about ballast tanks,” Lucy explained.
“Ballast tanks?”
“I had no idea what they were at first, either,” Lucy confessed, assuming Pierce also didn’t know. “I went to the library today before they closed and did research. It’s something that helps sink a submarine.”
“It is also used on ships, darling,” he told her matter-of-factly. “He may have been talking about a boat he owns.”
“I thought so, too, but Leon asked if it’ll stay underwater.”
Pierce raised an eyebrow.
“Did he? Hmm. Is it possible?”
Lucy chewed her food before swallowing. “If he has a small sub, sure. Like a midget submarine.”
Pierce reckoned she’d discovered that term while doing research. Regardless, he imagined how something such as this submerged watercraft could be beneficial in the smuggling world.
“Did they say where it was located?” he asked doubtfully.
Lucy shook her head while blowing on another spoonful.
“Damn,” he whispered. “Er. Is this the only reason you came out?”
His question seemed to disarm her. She gulped hard on her soup and turned those large eyes of hers down on her bowl.
“Oh, um . . . not exactly. I wanted to see you again.”
He was over the bleedin’ moon, especially when she looked back up at him and smiled.
“There’s a lot to you, I can tell, lass,” he observed, reaching for his own pack of smokes inside his jacket pocket. “You have a daring side.”
She laughed and then covered her mouth as if embarrassed. “I suppose I do, although I try to keep that part of me under control.”
“Until you get to France?” he surmised.
“Yes.”
“Oui, you mean.”
“Oh, that’s right. You promised to teach me more French.”
“Perhaps I could teach you some now and more on our next date?”
“I . . . I think I would enjoy that very much, Isaac.”
He lit his cigarette as nonchalantly as he could, but in truth, he was biting the inside of his cheek with delight.
“Where would you care to go, eh?”
Lucy mulled it over. “It’d be nice to get out of the neighborhood for a night. Do you like listening to music—jazz, maybe?”
Pierce remembered hearing jazz on Frank’s car radio, and it didn’t sound half-bad to him.
“Sure. I will find us a place. Saaaaay . . . this Friday?”
She nodded and blew on her soup again. “Okay.”
Ace!
They stayed at the diner, chatting until it was getting ready to close. Lucy surprised him yet again when she decided to write down her number for him. Pierce was very pleased with that, consideri
ng he no longer needed to go through the likes of Jerry to call her anymore. The owner was nice enough to give her a lift home, and Pierce again walked home alone, but happy.
Pierce took advantage of his days off to think up a cover story to tell Kelly before telling him about Leon’s toy.
“How did you find this out?” Kelly naturally demanded of him first thing when he arrived at Kelly’s flat the following day.
Pierce refused to tell Kelly about Lucy. Having a telephone operator with the ability to listen in on phone calls was something he would see as an asset. Pierce wasn’t going to let him use her for his own devices as he was doing with everyone else under him.
“I went to the Apollo Theater and overheard a bloke bragging to his date about how he worked for Mr. Clark and that he was fixing up a submarine for him.”
It was a stupid sort of lie, but the man seemed to buy it well enough. What he uttered next told Pierce why.
Kelly turned to Frank, standing by the fireplace. “If that’s so, then the rumors are true.”
Frank snorted and then nodded.
“Rumors?” Pierce asked.
“Yes,” said Kelly, settling deeper into his leather armchair and holding a glass of malt whiskey. “It’s said the leader of the Clergymen Gang, Oisin Charke, bought a damaged, leftover sub from the war at auction. He had plans to utilize it for bootlegging, but when the idiot failed to kill Leon Clark, Clark returned the favor after he was discharged from the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“Indeed. The Clergymen filled Clark’s body full of lead, and yet the man survived.”
Pierce was leaning against the other chair casually. Hearing how Leon had been shot multiple times and lived only made him more intimidating. What Kelly said next didn’t help ease his worry in the least.
“Clark ambushed Charke’s entire gang and took the whole lot out in a single night. When he did, he inherited everything from his dead rival.”
“Such as this submarine?” Pierce guessed.
The leather creaked under Kelly’s fingers as he clutched the arm, a slight twinkle in his eye.
“So the rumor goes. No one really knows if it’s true, and many are too scared to investigate. As part of our treaty, the three of us, Clark, Violetta Romano, and I, are supposed to share certain things, such as information. But, of course, I can’t expect him to share something like this. I wouldn’t—not by a long shot.”
“Where do youze think he’d stash the thing, boss?” Frank asked.
“In a boathouse somewhere, but that doesn’t narrow it down much.” He stood and looked directly at Pierce. “Mr. Chaplin, I want you to go to Leon’s nightclub, The Brass Ring, this weekend. He has a speakeasy next door. Go to the speakeasy and sneak into his office. There might be a ledger or a receipt in there.”
Pierce nearly fell over.
“Why Chaplin, boss?” Frank asked.
“Because nobody there will recognize him. Clark’s people know us.”
“Bloody Leon, might,” Pierce pointed out. “A haircut doesn’t change a face.”
“I will arrange a sit-down,” Kelly explained. “Draw him out while you sneak in. When you robbed him, did you say anything to him?”
“Aye. He heard my accent.”
“Then you’ll need to speak American.”
Pierce looked at Frank. “It’ll take me years to unlearn how to use proper grammar like Frankie, here.”
“Keep it up and I’ll bust your chops, ya mook,” Frank threatened playfully.
“Take him to The Attic. Let Mr. Baxter teach him,” Kelly ordered Frank. “You’ll start the day after tomorrow, early in the morning. Work with Mr. Baxter to smooth over your accent. Until then, Mr. Garcia, Mr. Lithgow, and I have business to attend to.”
Frank’s face paled but he said nothing, only nodded. It stoked Pierce’s curiously.
“Do you understand, Mr. Chaplin?” Kelly asked firmly.
Pierce saluted. “Ab-so-lute-ly.”
Frank smiled. “Ain’t he somethin’, Mr. Quinn?”
“He thinks so, yes,” Kelly quipped. “Now get him to the warehouse, Mr. Garcia. Mr. Kier will be waiting for him.”
Pierce felt disappointed. He’d hoped that this tidbit of information about the submarine would make him exempt from having to go back to Rum Row.
Apparently not.
Sergeant Hawk Geo arrived at the morgue. The forensic pathologist had phoned him at the station.
The morning before, he’d been called to a scene on Fourteenth Street Park, where a truck had been torched with three bodies inside. It was apparent that it was no accident, but the victims’ cause of death was still unclear, and Geo wanted answers.
When he arrived, Lee Allan greeted him. Geo had known him for years through other homicide cases. Allan was a skinny, pitiful looking man. It surprised Geo to learn he’d been a soldier in the war. He had no hair except for straggly patches around the crown. He wore a dark green shirt and dark slacks, and a black, water-resistant apron to keep the blood off his clothing.
“They were all dead before the fire,” Allan explained, standing between two steel slabs where a couple of the corpses were laid out.
The lumps of charred meat were hardly recognizable as being human. Were it not for the fire brigades arriving when they did, there might not have been anything left to examine.
“So, they were executed,” Geo guessed, crossing his arms.
Allan pushed up his round eyeglasses with his black rubber-gloved hand and pointed to some holes that dotted the chest of a victim. “In a way, yes. They were shot at close range. But the shots were sporadic. Not decisive like a headshot. The gunman was in a hurry to put them down.”
“Ruthless bootleggers.”
Allan straightened his back and raised his chin. “Do you think this is gang related?”
“I have no doubt about it. The truck that these dead bastards were found in is the kind of vehicle used for smuggling illegal alcohol. Either they were trying to thieve from another gang or vice versa.”
Geo had seen plenty of gruesome crime scenes in the wake of the clash between rival gangs. One mafia leader had been riddled with so many holes that he was nothing more than a bloody heap. Even his face had been chewed up by bullets. Only his identification card had helped the police identify him.
New York City and other dry cities had become war zones. The police were fighting the enemy using guerilla warfare. Geo was an ex-soldier who had fought in The Great War and he’d seen numerous techniques in combat. He had learned how to adjust to this new enemy and their style of fighting. Over the years, it had hardened Hawk Geo, and he was just as brutal. Whether they were gangsters, bootleggers, or regular people getting their kicks inside a speakeasy, he saw them as lawbreakers who needed to be dealt with accordingly.
Allan clasped his hands behind him and asked, “With all these deaths and the rise of criminal activity, is this law worth it?”
It wasn’t the first time someone had raised the question. In fact, many newspaper articles had reported that Prohibition was doing more harm than its intended purpose, for it had given birth to organized crime. Instead of cleaning up the sin of mankind, the law was only putting money into the pockets of all the wrong people. It certainly had made entrepreneurs out of smalltime fishermen living in Saint-Pierre—fishermen who now moonlighted as rumrunners. Some of them even had airships!
Nonetheless, Geo’s answer was quite firm. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Allan. Law is law, and I intend to enforce it.”
His hard tone caused the man to reconsider. “A-all right, Sergeant. Good luck out there.”
Geo wasn’t interested in finding the person or persons responsible for the murders of these good-for-nothings just to arrest them. He wanted the bosses they worked for. Severing the head of the snake, as it were. Geo found it a waste of time picking off the little soldiers who were easily replaceable. If he went after the bigger fish, however, even forced one mob leader to squeal on the oth
er, then he could bring down entire enterprises!
Geo left the morgue and headed for the old industrial district where the truck had been discovered. He wondered if the arsonist had picked the area randomly or if there was a hive nearby.
Sixteen
The Attic
The trip out to sea proved to be just as cold and miserable as the day before. Pierce couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering as he and Brody flew over the water to another pick-up location. They arrived before the airship schooner made her grand appearance. Pierce wanted to experience what it was like to ride onboard one of those.
As they loaded the booze into their runabout boat, Brody blurted, “Ah, for feck sakes.”
Pierce set a barrel down in the backseat and turned to see for himself. A second schooner was sailing by many meters away. Pierce reckoned it had come from New York. The vessel was loaded with folks standing on the deck, staring at them.
“Who are they?” Pierce asked.
“Tourists,” Captain Durand answered from the deck of his airship. “They come out here from time to time to watch bootleggers and rumrunners in action.”
Judging by the casual way the captain acted, Pierce decided there was no threat.
“Oh, they brought reporters this time,” the captain remarked. “Smile, boys!”
Among the cluster of passengers were a handful of others with cameras. Flashbulbs burst as they snapped photographs. Pierce had never had his image captured before. He stood upon the boat, took off his cap, and waved it high with a wide grin.
“Och,” Brody groaned. “Stop messing about, Chaplin. Let’s get the work done and clear out.”
It was dusk by the time they had the truck loaded and headed back to the warehouse.
“You think we’ll run into any more pirates?” Pierce asked warily.
“If we do, we’ll be ready for ’em,” Brody replied, pointing to the sack of hand grenades sitting between them.
“Aye, s’pose we will.”
“Heard the boss set you up in your own place.”
“It’s a closet, but it’s also a roof over my head. It was kind of him to do so.”
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