Boom Time

by Michelle E Lowe

  “Yip. I got a still set up at my place. Small still, of course, ’cause I usually brew for myself and the ladies I entertain. My pa taught me as a child when I lived in the Tennessee mountains. Cheers.”

  They clinked glasses and drank together. George offered him another, but Pierce refused. Instead, he lit his cigarette and sat on a stool, feeling the warmth of the alcohol blossom within him. It was good stuff.

  “I’ll teach ya how to sound more American.”

  “Cheers, lad.”

  “Say: ‘Thanks, mac.’”

  He nodded and reiterated, “Thanks, mac.”

  “See youze mooks are making nicey-nicey,” Frank observed while carrying in a barrel. He set it on the counter at the end and approached them.

  “Yip,” said George, putting his own cigarette into his mouth and lighting it. “I’m gonna smartenin’ up ol’ Isaac’s way of talkin’.”

  Pierce wasn’t sure about “smartening up his way of talking,” but he definitely didn’t need to go into Leon’s den sounding like the bloke who’d robbed him.

  Pierce spent the whole day at The Attic learning how to curb his brogue. As his lesson carried on, he helped with getting the speakeasy ready for the night ahead. George even showed Pierce The Attic’s little secret. Behind the bar, under the wall counter, was a hidden crawlspace leading to a ladder that went up to the roof. The same passageway was also connected to the office.

  “In case of a raid,” George explained.

  Pierce absorbed what George taught him. How to smooth away his drawl and understand the use of American phrases. By mid-afternoon, Pierce had already begun sounding like a natural-born citizen.

  By the time the armed doormen and the two waitresses, Fiona and Bernice, arrived, the place was ready for business. George asked Pierce to stay, seeing how Raymond Reilly, the bar manager, hadn’t shown up.

  Pierce declined. He was bushed from drinking all day, and the stale cigarette smoke trapped inside the speakeasy had begun to annoy him.

  The following morning, the blasted alarm got Pierce up and out of bed. Frank wouldn’t be able to give him a lift to The Attic, so he’d decided to ride the trolley. Before leaving, he took advantage of having Lucy’s telephone number and rang her up. He dreaded his reason for the call.

  He’d thought about bringing her to The Brass Ring, but what if something went wrong? What if Kelly found out who she was and where she worked? Pierce could imagine Kelly getting her to spy on folks, risking her job and her chance to leave for France. Lucy reminded him of Frederica Katz, who also had a dream. And like Lucy, she had risked hers to help him. Cold shudders ran up his spine when he thought about what that psychopath, Volker Jäger, would have done to Freddie if he’d found out that she had harbored him.

  “Hello?” Lucy answered.

  “Luce? It’s Isaac. Are you off to work?”

  “In a few minutes. Is everything all right? You sound worried.”

  His troubled thoughts had apparently affected his voice.

  “Aye, fine. I was calling about our date this Friday.”

  “Oh, are you canceling?”

  “Rescheduling, actually. My boss needs me to go to The Brass Ring.”

  Considering what George had mentioned about wiretapping, Pierce kept the details to a minimum.

  “The Brass Ring? The nightclub in Harlem?” she asked excitedly.

  “Aye, but it’s not for pleasure, darling. I’ve been assigned a mission.”

  “What kind of mission? Are you . . . going to hurt someone?”

  What she meant was kill—or “bump off,” as Frank or Chester would say.

  “No, nothing like that. I’m being sent in to look for something. Don’t ask what.”

  There was a pause before she returned with, “I’ve always wanted to go to The Brass Ring.”

  “It won’t be safe. I was thinking of taking someone else.”

  “Someone else? You’re talking about another woman?”

  Now he’d done it.

  “As a fake date,” he explained but ended up sounding foolish in doing so. “It isn’t as if I want to. I’m only keeping you out of harm’s way.”

  “It’s okay, Isaac. I understand.”

  Pierce had enough experience with women to be able to decipher that tone, and it was most certainly not okay.

  “Bloody hell, Luce. Listen, come with me, eh? It’ll be a night to remember.”

  There was another length of silence. “Do you mean it?”

  “I do,” he answered sincerely. “What do you say, darling?”

  “When do we need to be there?”

  “Seven. I’ll be at the diner to pick you up around 6:30.”

  “You have a car now?”

  “No. Frank will drive us. I, er, have something to confess to you, and you might as well know it now.”

  “What?” she asked, the worry in her tone returning.

  “I can’t bloody drive.”

  He waited for laughter to ring out from the receiver. Instead, Lucy’s response was, “Maybe I can teach you sometime. I haven’t driven since leaving my parent’s home, but I’m sure I can teach you well enough.”

  “Eh? You’d do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aye. That sounds swell.”

  She snorted. “Are you picking up on our lingo now?”

  “You can say that. Kelly thinks it’s best if I sport an American accent to keep from being marked by any of Leon’s goons.”

  “Leon? Leon Clark? Is it his club?”

  “It is. You understand the danger now? Do you still want to come?”

  A few heartbeats ticked by before she answered with, “See you at 6:30.”

  A smile touched the corner of his lips. “All right, love.”

  Pierce finished getting ready and left to catch the trolley. He needed to ride two of them to reach the correct neighborhood. He was very thankful for his splendid memory.

  The Village Antique was open for business, though nobody would have guessed it. The only employee was a woman who stood behind the counter, reading a magazine. He’d seen her the other day, and so, they said little to each other as he passed. There weren’t any customers about to see him leave through the backroom.

  The drapes were open upstairs in The Attic, letting grey light illuminate the whole place. George sat at one of the booths, looking out the windows while casually flipping a playing card in his robotic fingers.

  “Morning,” Pierce said, walking up to him.

  When he slid into the booth across from George, he noticed how dreadful he looked. The man appeared half-dead. The shadows under his eyes had darkened, and he seemed to have aged a few decades since yesterday. His hair hung over his face in thick, shiny strands.

  “Bloody hell, mate, you look like shite. Did you get any sleep last night?”

  “I got a couple of winks, but I usually don’t sleep much, anyway.” There was something dreadfully tragic in his soft-spoken voice. “Last night was hard. Raymond never showed up.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Pierce watched how effortlessly the card moved around his mechanical fingers. “If you need a hand tonight, I’ll stick around, eh?”

  His tired eyes sparkled. “Yeah?”

  Pierce shrugged. “Why not? S’pose I owe you for the help you’re givin’ me.”

  “That there is the bee’s knees, Isaac. C’mon, I’ll show you how to make the house’s signature drink. An Old Fashioned.”

  Pierce stayed at The Attic until early the following morning. He rather enjoyed the new experience of tending bar and learning how to mix drinks, which was a sneaky way to drink alcohol. Hiding rum inside a glass of Coca-Cola was a nice disguise and turned out to be quite good. It also gave him a chance to practice speaking to customers with an American accent. The speakeasy was packed with laughter and patrons, some of whom were playing darts. It was hard to believe that any laws were being broken.

  At closing time, Bernice found a book someone had dropped on the
floor.

  Pierce read off the title. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?”

  “You never heard of it?” George almost hollered. “It’s been in print for over twenty-some-odd years.”

  “You don’t say,” Pierce whispered, flipping through the pages.

  He came across an illustration of a girl sitting on the ground, surrounded by mice, with a scarecrow standing behind her and an automaton tipping an oilcan hat to her.

  “The Tin Man?” he read. “Oi, Georgie, this gent is you, mate.”

  Both Bernice and Fiona laughed.

  “Oh, that’s rich,” Fiona chortled.

  “Ha-ha,” George jeered.

  Overall, it was a swell night.

  Seventeen

  Getting Ready

  Freya had done quite a lot of spirit walking of late. Every night after putting Vela to bed, she would sit alone, meditating herself into a state where her body would fall into a comatose state where she had the ability to detach herself and go out searching for the mare. Ever since the hag freed herself from the prison Freya had placed her in, she’d been hunting for the bitch. Freya needed to silence the mare before the wretch told anyone about her plans to bring forth a djinn. Such exposure could spell disaster for her. Anyone fearing the djinns’ return could try to kill her or attempt to recreate the creature themselves, if they knew how and understood the rules.

  Because of the bloodline she’d once shared with the Landcross’s, Freya could not personally kill anyone closely related to her, such as Joaquin, Frederica, and, of course, Pierce. With Joaquin and Frederica, it was a case of simply waiting out the clock. Both of their fate threads ran shorter than Pierce’s, whose thread stretched longer than his niece, Vela. The djinn required a master, and that master needed to be a blood relation. The Priest had seen to that. And he had complicated things even more by allowing only one living parent of the children with all the bloodlines to be crowned master. Vela was to become a djinn—she and her cousin—for both of them held the bloodlines of the djinn. When the bloodlines were combined, the djinn would be reborn. For Vela to dominate the body that the two would be sharing, Freya needed to be the only living parent left standing.

  The plan to kill Pierce before his time had been going rather smoothly—until this new threat emerged.

  Standing deep inside the belly of a dormant volcano on the planet Mercury, Freya was at a loss.

  “You’re not going to find her this way,” Njáll commented, standing atop of a tall mound of hardening molten rock.

  Freya huffed and looked over at him. “I’m beginning to see that. Do you have any idea where she is?”

  “Not a clue. She’s hidden well.”

  He was balancing a cane on the tip of his finger. He tossed it up and caught it on the tip of his other finger. He wore a shiny grey suit. It always amused her how dressy the Trickster was.

  Everything surrounding them was crusted with thick layers of ice, for they stood at the cusp between the light and the dark side of the planet. What minimal sunlight did reach here reflected off the mirror-like surface, even this far down, giving it a dim glow like moonlight.

  “You’ve been searching?” Freya asked, amazed. “I never requested that of you.”

  “I haven’t searched thoroughly, only casually looking.”

  “Do you think you can find her? I fear that I’m running out of time. The mare needs to be placed back in prison before it’s too late.”

  “Why imprison her . . .” Njáll moved about to keep the cane balanced on his finger. “. . . when you can kill her instead?”

  “I would if she wasn’t protected,” Freya retorted.

  “Yes, but her protection may be doing more than just keeping her from being slain. Whoever the mare’s guardian is, it might also be protecting her from being contained. Come now, you must have thought of this when Pierce freed her.”

  Freya clenched her teeth. She hadn’t.

  Njáll tossed the cane up and let the end land on his chin, where he balanced it. “There is no sense in trapping the creature if she’s going to escape anyway, yes?”

  His foreboding tone suggested he was leading her toward something.

  “Who protects her, Njáll?”

  He snatched the cane from his chin and leaned on it with both hands. “Now, that’s something I did find out. Interestingly enough, her protector commissioned the mare to kill off King Vanlandi Sveigðisson, and in turn, has granted her fortification.”

  Something began tugging at Freya. Her body was calling for her return. Spirit walking had its limitations.

  “Who is this bulwark?”

  As the dim reflective world faded, the Trickster uttered a name. “Huld.”

  Freya opened her eyes and stood up from where she’d been slumped over on the floor after she’d left her body.

  “Huld? I see. Njáll, can you . . . ?”

  “Destroy her. She would suspect someone like me coming, but you, Freya? How far are you willing to go? Would you murder a goddess?”

  Njáll was speaking but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “I won’t bow out now. If I have to slaughter a hundred of these so-called deities, I’ll do it so that I may become a real living one.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Njáll’s disembodied voice agreed. “Very well. Give me some time to find a way into her realm.”

  The room felt emptier and Freya knew she was alone.

  Until he returned with the keys to Huld’s realm, she’d have no choice but to wait.

  Frank brought Pierce to Kelly’s flat to go over the plan.

  “Clark’s office is in the kitchen area of the speakeasy,” Kelly explained while sitting with Pierce at the breakfast nook. “I’ve arranged a sit-down tonight, but it won’t last the entire night, so don’t wait too long.” He used a napkin to wipe croissant crumbs from his thick mustache. “The nightclub manager, Zoe Dixon, will most likely be there.” He reached inside his robe pocket and brought out a photograph. He handed it over to Pierce. “Make sure she’s in the nightclub section before you move in.”

  The photograph depicted a young, attractive black woman wearing a suit and smoking a cigarette. The photo was taken outside in front of a building that might’ve been the nightclub. Her casual demeanor suggested that perhaps she had been unaware of the cameraman.

  “How will I know if she’s in there?”

  “You’ll see how when you’re in the speakeasy.”

  “What if the office door is locked? It’ll be difficult to pick a lock with people about.”

  “The door is usually left unlocked when the place is open. None of the staff would dare enter without permission, and Dixon will be using it when Clark isn’t there.”

  “And the office is in the kitchen area? Meaning I’ll have to cut straight through it?”

  Kelly nodded. “Indeed. And you’ll have to make it look like you belong there, too. The staff will be busy, but that doesn’t mean they won’t report any suspicious activity.”

  From the pocket of his pajama shirt, Kelly slipped out a small red envelope. “Here’s an access ticket to get you inside the speakeasy. They’re not easy to come by, so don’t lose it.”

  Pierce took the envelope and slipped out a brass ring with ridges along its outer edge similar to those of a coin.

  “You’ll be searched at the door, so you won’t be able to bring a piece in, either.”

  “Marvelous.”

  “Mr. Garcia has paired you with a date, I take it?” Kelly asked.

  Pierce shifted his sights to Frank, standing near the doorway of the breakfast room. The two had secretly discussed what kind of cover to use with Lucy, and together they had decided to tell Kelly that she was one of Frank’s molls—meaning a gangster girl.

  “Aye,” Pierce answered.

  “And if you’re caught . . . ?”

  “I’ll tell them I work for Violetta Romano.”

  “Good boy,” Kelly praised him.

  Kelly led Pierce to the
study where a tailor waited. With everything happening, Pierce never considered clothing. Thinking on it, he realized that if The Brass Ring was as swank as he was being led to believe, he wasn’t going to even see the inside dressed like an average Joe.

  The tailor had Pierce stand on a step stool so to take his measurements.

  “He’s a skinny fella,” the man remarked. “But I’ll have him fitted into a nice suit.”

  Frank chuckled. “Youze are a small fry, aren’t ya?”

  “Shut it,” Pierce grumbled at him from over his shoulder while he stood with his arms outstretched.

  As they waited downstairs for the clothing to be sewn and hemmed, Pierce enjoyed a bottle of imported cognac with Kelly while listening to music on the radio. When Pierce tried on his new duds, they fit him beautifully. It was a swanky black jacket with matching pinstriped britches. A perfectly pressed white shirt and floral-patterned vest completed the outfit. The outfit came with black and white two-tone shoes and a brand-new Fedora hat. He hardly recognized himself in the full-length mirror.

  Damn, the Trickster was right. He did clean up rather nicely.

  Frank let out a whistle as if trying to attract a woman’s attention.

  “Lookin’ sharp, Chaplin. Let’s go get your date, huh?”

  Lucy couldn’t stop dreading what Isaac must think of her. When he called to cancel their date, she must have sounded so pathetic and desperate when she heard he was taking another woman to The Brass Ring. Going to The Brass Ring seemed so exciting, not to mention being a part of a mission with Isaac. Her sad little attitude over the telephone had been prompted by the disappointment she’d felt at the prospect of missing out, not by any kind of jealousy. They had gone on a date and sort of another and nothing more. She hadn’t aimed to get herself locked into a relationship, not now, not until she reached France, and yet here she was, almost a kiss away from being in one. Isaac was bringing out the side of her she’d wanted to keep tame. Not that she’d ever been a wild child to begin with, but there was always that spark of mischief and a thirst for life aching to come out.

  Lucy had just finished getting dressed and applying her makeup when she realized the time. She took one last look at herself in the vanity mirror that she had slid her grandfather’s photograph of the cabin in La Ciotat between the mirror and the frame.