Innocence Lost

by Sherilyn Decter

  The woman with the baby picks up a forgotten cigarette. She takes a long drag, then butts it out in the saucer. She begins unpacking the box with her free hand. “You’re the Barnes kid, right?” Tommy nods. “I knew your father. He was a good man. Thank your mother for us.”

  “Have you found anything yet?” Tommy dare not ask in more than a whisper in case he shouts out that Oskar was at the warehouse.

  “Nothing yet. But we keep looking.”

  Mrs. Leszek drifts into the kitchen, swollen face and red eyes. Her hair hangs loosely down her back. She looks like a drowning victim. Tommy swallows, alarmed by the intensity of her grief. Adults are supposed to be calm and in control. Oskar's mother looks like she could fall apart at any minute. He realizes she is in her nightgown and not wearing a housecoat. He hardly has time to blush or turn away before she is surrounded by a group of women who guide her to the table.

  “Come sit, Alicja,” they croon.

  “Mo'j kochany synku. My dear son,” she cries. Polish flies back and forth and Tommy feels like an intruder. He keeps his hands in his pockets. He’s anxious to get going, but his feet are unsure whether he should.

  Alicja Leszek sees Tommy and her hand shoos away the women. “You Tommy, yes? Oskar’s friend? You see Oskar?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m Tommy. No ma’am, I haven’t seen Oskar. I don’t know where he is.” He returns his gaze to his shoes.

  “Here boy, you come here.”

  Alicja reaches out and grabs him by the arm. “You good boy. You go find Oskar. You know where he is. Tell him come home.”

  Tommy’s alarmed. Does she know? Mothers always know stuff. Maybe he should have told his own Ma about being out with Oskar. But she’d go nuts. No, they’ll find him and I won’t have to get into trouble.

  Tommy tries to pull his arm away, but she has an iron grip on it. “You tell him come home,” she repeats, her voice rising and dancing to the edge of hysteria. She starts the sobbing again. “Oh, Oskar. Oh, Oskar.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Goodbye, ma’am.” Tommy pulls away. It is only when he’s outside that he lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He follows the path around the side of the house and kicks a broken toy car out of the way.

  Tommy hurries off, his shoulders hunched against the blows of his guilty conscience. He’s worried about Oskar, really worried now. The drama in the kitchen has jarred loose the small voice in his head. Responsibility. Duty. And there’s also a whisper of disappointment. Tommy has a flashback of riding on the strong shoulders of a young, wild man. The air is laced with that energy. Oskar will be proud I haven’t told anyone about the warehouse. He’ll think its swell Jimmy didn’t squeal either. But, we have to do something. I need to talk to Jimmy and we need to go look around the warehouse. We need to find Oskar.

  * * * *

  “Nope, not a chance. No way I’m going back there.” Jimmy says as he runs a stick along a picket fence on their way to school. Tommy has told him about the box of food, the crowded house, the search party, and about promising to help look for Oskar.

  “But what if Oskar needs us, Jimmy? Who’s going to look for him at the warehouse? Nobody but us even knows we were there.”

  “And that’s the way we want to keep it, chump. Oskar wouldn’t rat on us, and we can’t rat on him. Besides, the cops were there. He got out and he’s prob’ley mixed up with something in his family.” Jimmy whacks the stick against the fence. The stick breaks in two.

  “I think we should tell. I think we should say we were at that warehouse,” Tommy says.

  “No way. Uh-uh,” Jimmy says, shaking his head. “You gonna’ rat me out? You know the kind of trouble we’d be in if our folks find out. Is that what you want?” Jimmy glares at Tommy.

  “No. But what about Oskar?”

  Jimmy uses pieces of his stick to mimic a pair of hand guns. “They got guns, Tommy. No way I’m gonna get shot at again.”

  “Chicken, bawk! bawk! bawk!” Tommy runs around Jimmy, flapping his arms.

  Jimmy pretends to shoot at him with both sticks, but Tommy keeps flying. “Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!”

  “No way. I’m not a chicken. Come ‘ere, you.” Jimmy lunges at Tommy, pushing him to the ground. Wild punches fly between them. Jimmy connects with Tommy’s nose. The blood makes them stop. Jimmy hands Tommy a dirty handkerchief from his jacket pocket. Tommy tries wiping, but it doesn’t stop bleeding.

  “Here, gimme that. This is how you do it.” Jimmy clamps the handkerchief over the bridge of Tommy's nose. “There, just like my pa showed me.”

  “Chicken,” Tommy says, snuffling into the handkerchief.

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.” Tommy sits and dabs at his nose. Jimmy taps his sticks together. Eventually, Tommy pulls off the handkerchief and rubs his hand under his nose to make sure it's stopped bleeding. He returns the bloodied rag to Jimmy, who crams it into his pocket again.

  “Come on, then,” Tommy says, standing and reaching for his friend. “Oskar’s counting on us. Let’s go look in the windows, at least. Maybe we’ll see something.”

  Jimmy brushes the dirt and grass off his pants. “Okay, fine. We’ll meet up after school and go look. But if I get shot at, I’m gonna really punch your lights out.”

  Chapter 8

  P rohibition has been slowly buffing away Philadelphia’s veneer of civility and lawfulness. In the wild, predators rule. In a city, in a country without the harness of laws, predators emerge. Prohibition has created an opportunity for those entrepreneurs who can see a need, and are comfortable with the methods to meet that need. When you outlaw liquor, only outlaws have booze. Some of those new entrepreneurs have a real aptitude for it, too; considering there is no academy to train in or associations to network with. It is learning on the job, with little, if any, tolerance for failure.

  Speakeasies, blind pigs, and gin joints are the watering holes where thirsty Philadelphians gather. The bootleggers and rumrunners supply all the forbidden hooch. In the early days it was smuggled, and when supplies were short, they watered it down. As the good imported stuff got harder to find and more expensive, the moonshiners stepped in to meet the need.

  In Peggy’s world, even on Peggy’s street, moonshiners continue to have a brisk business distilling spirits that a thirsty population demands.

  It hasn’t taken long for the warehouse, Mickey’s place of business, to get back to normal after the raid. Not a shard of glass or a stray bullet in sight. He likes a tidy operation.

  A couple of men fill bottles and attach labels that have been printed with forged permit stamps. With the stamps, the liquor will be sold with the appearance of legitimacy to hospitals, pharmacies and religious organizations. Taking care of body and soul with a nice tidy profit all round. Quickly, and with precision, the bottles are stacked into crates, readied for delivery. A few more men unload heavy barrels from the back of the truck to replace those that were smashed during the raid. Yup, its business as usual.

  Another half-dozen characters are gathered around a table in the center of the warehouse. They sport fedoras and wear natty suits. Mohair topcoats are slung over the backs of the chairs. Most have a gun and holster slung over their shoulder, some have one on each. From the confident swaggers to the braggadocio boasts, these are men at the top of their game.

  Gamblers, risk-takers, law-breakers—the new elite. Playing cards are face up—a game interrupted or complete. Half-finished beer has lost its taste; ashtrays are filled with cigarette butts.

  In another part of the warehouse there’s a guy working under a car, his two-tone brogues flashy for a mechanic. Occasionally he demands a tool from another fellow who leans on the car, smoking. They manage to have a conversation, despite not being face to face. The helper talks nonstop about last year’s baseball series, next week’s boxing match, his luck at the track, a dame at the club.

  After the war, the men had come home and tried to pick up their former lives. It was tough to act like those flying
bullets had never happened. There were some men who still woke screaming; memories in dreams of being buried in mud and blood. Tough going back to being a baker or a delivery man after that. Conditions were perfect for ‘new’ careers.

  There were others who had seemed to thrive on survival and the adrenaline rushes of making it through one more day, of being the hunter instead of the hunted. This was also difficult to lay aside when they came home. They needed a way to put new skills to use, and find a way to channel that new attitude about the world.

  For a lot of Mickey’s crew, the federal government’s Volstead Act that established Prohibition in 1920 destroyed their livelihoods. Bootlegging, in a city where most folks didn’t have a problem with drinking illegally, was a sure way of putting groceries back on the table. It restored pride and even gave an outlaw hero’s shine to the men. They’d hung up their waiters’ aprons, farmers’ overalls, and rail workers’ coveralls, and strapped on shoulder holsters. Because of the war, the guns had a familiar, comfortable weight. But even soldiers, even bootleggers are still family men, worried about their children’s grades and obsessed with the latest baseball scores. Maybe it’s because they are soldiers that bootleggers need that tether to find their way home.

  All the relaxed banter in the warehouse comes to a halt when, outside, a stack of crates tips. “Go check it out, Fingers,” says one of the men. Fingers, a stocky man, missing the last two fingers on his left hand, gets up.

  He returns moments later. “Nuthin but damn kids. I chased ‘em off.”

  A guy at the table drains his glass. Weapons are reholstered.

  “Geeze Louise. What are we? A nursery? What’s with all the kids all of a sudden?” says Fingers.

  Mickey Duffy sits quietly at one end of the table. A modern-day Napoleon. He has ears that stick out like an elephant, but nobody ever mentions that. He demands and gets the respect of his crew. His fedora hangs on the back of the chair, and his camelhair top coat and expensive suit jacket are draped over an empty one nearby.

  At the table are the men he trusts to run his business, to have his back. “So, give it to me straight. How bad is it?” His words slide past the cigar that’s tucked into the side of his mouth.

  No one wants to speak. Everyone at the table knows the news is bad, despite the money in their pockets. None of the men want to tell Mickey. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’ goes beyond being cliché in the Duffy gang, especially with Mickey’s hair-trigger temper.

  Mickey's bookkeeper, Eugene Smith, who is making one of his rare appearances at the warehouse, pulls a ledger from the briefcase at his feet. “It’s been a one-two punch to the business, Boss. Revenues are down over last month because of all the raids. Expenses are going up, what with replacing inventory and more cops on the payroll. It's been an expensive month.”

  Mickey leans back, chewing the cigar in his mouth. “Those cops are an investment, Eugene. Same as the lawyers and judges. We’re paying good money for blind eyes, for them to look after our interests and ensure that our businesses run smooth. But like any good investment, we need to see a return. There are too many raids. What are we paying these guys for?”

  Fingers leans in. “That last one was more a timing issue, Boss. They was supposed to wait until all the booze was loaded, but something set ‘em off. That’s when the shooting started. We was still loading booze on the truck when the cops came in early. If they’d been half an hour later, there’d have been nuthin for them to smash.”

  Under Mickey’s hard gaze, Fingers begins to pick at the label on his beer bottle. Mickey turns his attention back to Eugene. “Where are we short on dough?” Mickey asks.

  “Well, we have lots of product right now. The shipments from the Flynn boys out in Pennypack are top quality, so we'll be able to charge premium prices. We'll even water it a bit to stretch it further. That’ll help with cash flow. The moonshine from the stills in Yorkshire and Morgan are crap. We'll have to doctor it a lot,” says Eugene.

  Somebody from the edge of the room mutters, “Stupid pig farmers. Can’t get nuthin’ right.”

  “We’ve had a few screw-ups with transfers from the Camden breweries, but nothing we can’t handle. Max Hassel has really come through for us.” Eugene points at the new barrels being unloaded.

  “The problem is moving the product. Ever since Butler showed up, police have shut down over half the speakeasies and blind pigs in the city. Most of those joints are open again, but it throws a wrench into delivery and, of course, their original inventory is either poured out or confiscated.”

  “Eugene’s right. They’ve closed the Cadix seven times.” The latest detail is supplied by a man with a large scar over his eye. He sits at the other end of the table from Mickey. “The staff are getting a bit testy, missing their tips.”

  Mickey draws on his cigar. “Shit, Henry, it’s always about the money. What do we know about Butler?”

  Henry Mercer is Mickey's top lieutenant. They'd been at Eastern State Pen together; Mickey trusts him like a brother. The crew like to tell the story that Henry and Mickey had been back-to-back in a knife fight when Henry had his face slashed.

  “Despite the screw-up on the timing the last time the cops were here, we've got pretty good information about where and when the raids are going to happen. We've been able to get our people out, and inventory secured. The real problem is this new head copper and the number of raids,” Henry says.

  “Like I asked, what do we know about Butler?”

  “One of Butler’s cops is living at my boarding house,” says Eugene.

  All the men at the table look at him.

  “Living with a cop? Better watch yourself, Eugene. You’ll get arrested for snoring,” taunts Gus.

  Loud guffaws from the fellows around the table attract the attention of the others working in the warehouse.

  Mickey puts his elbows on the table and the group falls silent again. “Good. Eugene, stick to him like glue, and keep your ears open.”

  “Butler’s cops are trouble, Mickey. The owners aren’t happy with all the raids. Even though they can be open for business the next day, they’re complaining sales are tanking. And legal expenses are going through the roof. They’re feeling the pinch, and when they’re not making money, we’re not making money,” says Henry.

  “And that’s a big problem,” Mickey says.

  Porter, another man at the table, joins in. “And there’s loads of cops out there looking for this missing kid, Mickey. One of them coppers remembers seeing some kids here at the warehouse last Tuesday, so they’re looking at us and casing the joints we run.”

  “Kids. Here. Today. Last week. The week before. What’s that all about?” Mickey asks.

  “They see their big brothers and they have big dreams. I’ll talk to the men,” Henry Mercer says. “We need to keep the kids away from the business until they’re old enough, Mickey. It’s not safe to have them around.”

  Mickey nods, “And for chrissakes, tell the men not to go bragging. It just encourages trouble.”

  They’ve all heard about the missing kid. Mickey knows it is on their minds. Bad enough a child is missing, but even worse when it’s connected to one of their own.

  “Hey Al, isn't the missing kid one of your sister’s?” Mickey asks.

  Al, a big, bald man who’s been labeling bottles, shrugs. “Nephew. Oskar’s my wife’s sister’s kid. You remember Stan Leszek? He’s in stir right now at Allegheny.”

  “Pretty cushy. How’d he arrange that?” asks Porter.

  “Mickey’s mouthpiece couldn’t get him off completely, but they did manage to score a reduced sentence, and off he goes to the workhouse instead of the joint,” Al says. “Stan was a farmer in Poland, so he’s pretty happy there, what with the orchards and animals and all.”

  “I remember now. He was sent over for a three spot? About two years ago?” Mickey says.

  “Yeah, he’ll be out next year,” Al says.

  “Leszek’s a good man. Don’t we ha
ve one of his other kids working for us? Running numbers?” asks Mickey.

  Al nods his head. “Yeah, Ernie.”

  “Anybody that wants to help hunt for Leszek’s kid should go do that. Stan may be away, but we look after our own.” Mickey moves his chair back. “Look, I still don’t get it. I thought we had all the arrangements for that last raid sewed up. How’d we get caught out?”

  “That would be me and Gus,” says Fingers, stepping forward. “Me and Gus Toland were on watch that night.”

  “So, where's Toland at? Why’s he not here?” asks Mickey. “Get him in. You and him come see me tomorrow. Mercer, you come too.” He takes another draw on the cigar and the men in the room tense. Mickey blows smoke at the ceiling. “You guys did a crappy job and now it's costing me money and business.”