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Kansas City, Missouri
1929

Trey Dunham, a mid-level cog in the Pendergast Machine during Prohibition, runs 1520 Main, Boss Tom’s most prized speakeasy featuring good booze, hot jazz, and beautiful women. Trey wants to buy the joint and scrapes together every penny he can by running errands, guns, and booze. But Boss Tom likes the arrangement and would never sell the speak at any price, keeping Trey digging graves in Brush Creek and making sure all the dead folks in Jackson County get to the polls. Twice.

Then Boss Tom, seeing an opportunity to avenge an ancient grudge against one Reverend Gil Scarritt, offers 1520 Main as bait. If Trey can get the good reverend’s daughter Marina knocked up in two months without marrying her, Tom’ll give Trey the bar lock, stock, and barrel. If he fails to get her pregnant at all, well… Trey could find himself swimming in the Missouri River.

Trey never samples his own wares and he never bets against the house. But Tom’s an inveterate–and very bad–gambler, and Trey’s got several other reasons to take that bet because he’s only ever wanted two things:

Money and respectability.

And he doesn’t care what he has to do to get them.

← Lion’s Share, Book 8

Twenty-Dollar Rag, Book 10 →

 

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If you want to see some sin, forget about Paris.
Go to Kansas City.

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Kansas City, Missouri
April, 1929

“DON’T GO GETTING above yourself, boy.”

Trey slid a glance at the old man beside him, his eyebrow raised in question.

Boss Tom Pendergast’s glance slid across the street toward the prim young woman who’d caught Trey’s eye. She was short, her cheeks filled out, with clear peaches’n’cream skin. She had sleek chocolate brown hair rolled up into a fat bun, which meant it was long and thick and straight. She wore a fashionable blouse and trousers of good quality fabric and construction, but they were all the wrong cut and color. He could only guess at her figure, but he’d seen hundreds of women nude, so he had a pretty good idea she was an hourglass with just enough plump in all the right places.

She and another girl were walking toward Kresge’s with their schoolbooks clutched to their chests, chatting and laughing. Her friend was blonde, with a cute permed bob and she was wearing a pretty dress.

“You know who that jane is?” Boss Tom asked.

“Nope.”

“Dot Albright. Her daddy’s a Mormon bishop.”

Trey’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “On your payroll?”

Boss Tom shook his head. “Not him, no. He’s straight, works for himself. He just doesn’t get in his congregants’ business, even if their business is with me. And you know those folks’re armed to the teeth.”

Trey was too, and he wasn’t somebody who could legally be shot on sight. “But they let their girls wear trousers.”

“The one in trouser’s Gil Scarritt’s daughter. Marina.”

Trey pursed his mouth. That was … interesting, especially when the girls suddenly caught him staring. The pretty blonde in the pretty dress curled her lip.

“Told you not to get your hopes up.”

The interesting brunette in the trousers blinked at them innocently then looked at the pretty one with a scowl. Their lighthearted discussion turned into something more contentious.

“Two preachers’ daughters,” Trey mused. “Why’s a Pentecostal lettin’ his girl wear trousers?”

“His idea of a chastity belt.”

Trey nodded approvingly. “That’s logical,” he said. “Inconvenient and a damned shame, but logical.”

“Her?” Boss Tom hooted. “Marina?”

“Yeh. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen and I got a dozen of ’em on my payroll. How old is she?”

“Sixteen. What is wrong with you? She’s no looker.”

“Likely not to anybody else, no.”

“You have weird taste in dames.”

Trey’s taste was in interesting-looking dames. As he watched, the pretty one dragged the interesting one into the drugstore, with one last sneer over her shoulder at them.

“Trust Reverend Albright’s girl to know what’s what,” Boss Tom muttered, turning away.

“I thought you said he was a bishop.”

“He is. Reverend’s his given name.” Trey had heard stranger. “Dunham,” Boss Tom rumbled, amusement heavy in his deep voice. “You wrestle that bluenose into bed and knock her up, I’ll turn the keys to 1520 over to you, as is, free and clear.”

Trey was so shocked he barely kept his cool. “Marina, you mean?”

“Yes, Marina. Albright stays out of my way and I stay out of his.”

Trey thought about that a few seconds. Finally he said, “That’s some bounty, Boss. I might start thinkin’ you don’t like the good Reverend Scarritt.”

“Don’t start up thinkin’ again, boy. People get in trouble that way.”

Not Trey. And what Trey thought was that this wasn’t a bet so much as an order. Trey didn’t hesitate to take orders he had several good reasons to carry out.

“An’ if I don’t?”

Boss Tom gave him a stone-cold glance. Definitely an order. Shit. “Tell you what, Dunham. I know you want to buy 1520 Main. I also know you are nowhere near being able to buy it at my price and you never will be.” That was debatable. “So I’m giving you a sporting chance. You have two months. And if you think marrying her’s gonna get the job done, think again.”

Marriage was not in Trey’s plans. “Consider it done.”

---

1

“MARINA,” DOT SAID LOW as they turned away from the two men who were looking at the drugstore the girls were about to enter, “make like you didn’t see them.”

Marina glanced at Dot, confused. “They weren’t looking at us.”

“Yes they were,” Dot said firmly, grasping her arm and directing her into the entryway, then through the door, then to their usual booth. “You can’t pay them any mind or they’ll take it as an invitation.”

“Them who? Do you know them? An invitation to what?”

Dot sighed heavily and picked up the menu. “Men. Grown men. No, I don’t know them. But you can’t give any man any reason to think you want their attention.”

“Doesn’t your mother tell you anything?”

Marina flushed and looked down at her menu.

“Mm hmm. Why doesn’t your father let you wear dresses?”

Marina sighed and recited Father’s oft-given sermon on the virtues of women in trousers. “So we won’t be a temptation to men and to guard us against roaming hands and to remind us that we’re women of God.”

“Yes. Those men wanted to let their hands roam on us.”

“On you,” Marina muttered, trying not to be resentful. Dot was beautiful. Marina was not.

“The old guy, well … You got me there. He wasn’t interested in us. But the blond was,” she insisted. “In you.”

“Oh, now you’re just being silly,” Marina pooh-poohed, knowing she could safely dismiss everything Dot had just said.

Dot didn’t argue anymore. She mused over the menu until the waitress came by. “You gals want anything but your usuals?”

Marina suggested she and Dot split an order of onion rings to go with her catawba flip and Dot’s cherry lime phosphate. While they waited, they were approached by several boys in succession who gave Marina a scant hello then moved on to flirting with Dot, who flirted right back but without giving them any reason to think she wanted the attention.

Marina didn’t know how she did it, flirting without seeming to flirt at all, keeping a number of boys on her leash, making them work for her attention, and doing her bidding just for the chance to buy her a phosphate, be invited to one of her church’s dances, or escort her to a moving picture show. It was one reason Marina’s mother had never liked Dot, even though Dot was smart about such things. Another reason was that she was a devil-worshipping Mormon. To appease Mother and allow her to keep company with Marina, Dot’s mother had assented to allow Dot to attend Marina’s church on Wednesdays even though Marina’s parents would never allow her to reciprocate.

In spite of Marina’s parents’ feelings, Marina was allowed to run with Dot because God told Father it was Marina’s duty to convert Dot to the true word of God and to save her soul.

No matter how much Marina loved Dot, though, it was depressing watching boys fawn over her but never give Marina anything but a polite smile, if they noticed her at all. Dot accepted the attention as if it were her due, but since neither girl was allowed out alone with a boy, if a boy wanted to spend a Saturday afternoon with Dot, he had to have a friend who would be willing to squire Marina. If the friend didn’t pay enough attention to Marina, Dot punished both boys by never speaking to them again.

Marina hated being a pity date.

After Dot had spent an appropriate amount of time flirting, she shooed them all away with a laugh. “We have to study, boys,” she cooed. “We’ll catch up tomorrow, same time, same place.”

Dot gave Marina a wink as they opened their schoolbooks. They began with a math problem Marina had been having difficulty with in class, but in one sentence, Dot’s explanations had left Marina in the dust. Dot didn’t notice. Their sodas and onion rings came, but Marina was now hopelessly lost. “Dot, I’m more confused now than I was in class today!” she finally wailed.

“Maybe I can help,” came a deep voice from above them. They both jumped and, to Marina’s shock, it was the blond young man from outside—and he wasn’t staring longingly at Dot.

“Um … ” Marina began warily, even as Dot harrumphed. He ignored her.

“Your friend … ?” He then lifted an eyebrow at Dot.

Her mouth compressed, and she pointedly refused to give her name. He turned back to Marina. “She loves math too much to teach it well, which I do not mean as an insult.”

“You probably can’t add two and two,” Dot said caustically.

“Dot!” Marina gasped. Embarrassed by her friend’s behavior, she scooted to her left to allow the stranger to sit beside her. “I am so sorry. Dot’s never rude,” she said, glaring at her. Dot cocked her eyebrow at her, unrepentant. “My name’s Marina. Scarritt,” she added, turning back to the man.

“Trey,” he said affably, casting a vague smile at Dot, the kind of smiles boys usually threw at Marina. “Trey Dunham.”

“This is Dot Albright,” she said.

“Dorothy Albright,” she said pointedly. “Miss Albright to you.”

Marina wanted to demand Dot account for her bad behavior, but now was not the time. “Dot’s really smart and I’m … really not.”

“Everybody’s smart in their own way,” he said matter-of-factly, then told the suddenly attentive waitress he wanted a lime rickey. “Thank you. And the table’s on me.”

“We can pay for our own food,” Dot said smartly. “We do it every day.”

“Dot!” Marina snapped again.

“I’m sure you can and do, Miss Albright,” he said politely. “It would be my pleasure if, for today, you’d allow me.”

She huffed. “Ugh. All right.”

“I’m not sure what I did to offend you, miss,” Mr. Dunham murmured earnestly, “but I apologize.”

“It’s not what you did,” she said smartly. “It’s what you might do.”

His eyebrow rose. “I … might ask your friend to have a phosphate with me tomorrow.” Marina gulped down her shocked gasp. “If that’s okay with you.” There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in his voice. He was earnest. He really wanted Dot’s approval.

“Hrmph. We always have phosphates together.”

He inclined his head. “I understand. I’m sure you can find a boy to round out the table.”

Dot was clearly stymied. He wasn’t making fun of her. He was taking her seriously. He understood that Dot was trying to protect Marina. Most importantly, he wasn’t giving up.

“All right,” Dot said imperiously. “Let’s see your math.”

Trey gestured for Dot’s pencil. “May I?”

She flipped it at him, but he caught it deftly, then turned to Marina. “The formula is A squared plus B squared equals C squared,” he began. “These are the numbers you already know.” He drew arrows from the numbers in the problem to the letters. There was one letter not matched up. “You have to find this number.”

Marina scowled at the paper. “That’s all?”

Dot started.

“Yes. You just plug in the numbers where they go like a switchboard operator. Whatever you do to one side, you have to do to the other until there’s only one letter and one number. That’s the answer to the problem.”

“Well, that seems simple enough,” she said, totally bemused, taking the pencil. It wasn’t that simple, but she managed to get farther into the problem than she had before. “Now I don’t know what to do.”

“You rearrange them until the letter, which is the number you don’t know, is the only thing left on one side of the equal sign and only one number on the other side. Think of it like rearranging furniture.”

He demonstrated all the steps he had to take to make one number equal one letter.

And the light came on.

---

2

MISS DOROTHY ALBRIGHT was going to be a pain in Trey’s ass, he thought darkly as Marina dove into the next few problems with glee. He could barely keep himself from returning the girl’s glare. He wondered how subtle he could be in backing her off without Marina getting his point.

“Miss Albright,” Trey began respectfully, hating that he had to show such deference to a sixteen-year-old girl. “I appreciate your concern for Marina. It’s not often people have friends as trustworthy and protective as you.”

Dot looked at him suspiciously. She knew he was going to take this somewhere, and, Trey thought, she might even know where he was going to take it.

“I imagine it’s difficult to watch out for someone not as experienced as you.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Marina was half paying attention, but too happy whenever she got a problem right, with a little nudge from Trey here and there, to care.

“Or perhaps you’re not used to having to watch out for her?” he asked slyly.

Her lip curled.

Then he mouthed, Jealous?

That made her face flush and her nostrils flare, but she couldn’t very well throw a drink in his face or accuse him of using Marina without in turn being accused of begrudging Marina some male attention.

Trey didn’t think she was. He’d observed her flirt and she was as walled off in her dress as Marina was in her trousers. She simply handled men differently because while she liked the attention, she knew men and what they wanted. She’d known Trey for what he was the second she laid eyes on him and he wasn’t sure she didn’t know Boss Tom on sight if he and her father were acquainted.

He looked her up and down with a sneer because Trey was surrounded by pretty women, some of whom wanted his attention. Dot wasn’t special.

If he accused Dot of being jealous, that could never be taken back and he’d put her on notice that he had no problem doing it. So if Dot cared for Marina at all, she’d keep her mouth shut.

But, as Trey had hoped, Dot got the message loud and clear and casually took a sip of her drink, flipped open a book, and began to read as if that was what she intended to do all along.

Marina, on the other hand, was zipping through her problems. It was simple if one didn’t overthink it, but Trey had had to be taught this way too. He had been as hopelessly lost as Marina and getting all the terms and concepts out of the way had been a revelation to him. He understood exactly how Marina was feeling at the moment and it was the first inkling that, in addition to the fact that he didn’t want to stop staring at this girl, he might actually be able to stand talking to her for more than half an hour.

Then she looked up at him with a delighted smile, her brown eyes sparkling. “Thank you!” she breathed.

Trey just stared at her, shellshocked and speechless. No, she was never going to be pretty and at first glance, she was interesting, but now she was arresting. “Um … you’re welcome,” he muttered, feeling like the uncoolest cat in the world. Then he shook himself because if he didn’t pay attention, his speech would start slipping. “Don’t let your math teacher confuse you tomorrow. It’s just matching up your numbers and letters—you’ll always be one number shy—”

“Sometimes two,” Dot said airily.

“Yes, and there’s a way to figure that,” Trey said, tamping down his irritation, “but you probably won’t have to do that for a while. Then you just work the problem around until you have a letter on one side and a number on the other and that’s your answer.”

“Thank you so much!” she breathed again, her genuine gratitude so disconcerting Trey didn’t quite know what to do or say. His girls threw him a thanks, Daddy-o for this, that, or some other thing just because he was the boss, but girls like his knew kindness always came with a price and nobody was grateful for a “gift” they’d have to pay for eventually.

Marina wouldn’t know that, of course, but Trey didn’t know what unconditional gratitude felt like. He didn’t like it at all.

“You’re welcome,” he repeated softly. So he taught her how to do a math problem. So what. What he did like was that she thought he’d given her something valuable.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked out of the blue.

“I sell insurance,” he said by rote.

“Oh,” she said, a bit bewildered. Maybe she didn’t know what that was, but high school girls wouldn’t need to, he supposed. “The only thing I know about insurance is that the offices are boring when you’re waiting on somebody to finish their business.”

He smiled. “Say something bad happened to your house,” he began. “If you had bought insurance, the insurance company would pay to rebuild your house and replace all the stuff you lost. You buy an insurance policy and then you make payments. Then when the bad thing happens, you get that back and a lot more.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Well, what if nothing ever happens to your house? Do you get that money back?”

“No. You’re making a bet. You’re betting that it will happen. The insurance company is betting that it won’t happen. Nobody who loses a bet gets their money back.”

“But neither of you want it to happen, not like horse racing, where you’re betting for the thing you want.”

Trey risked a peek at Dot, who seemed interested in the conversation in spite of herself.

“True. So what I do,” he continued, “is get people to bet me that something bad will happen to them. They throw their money in the pot. They never see that money again unless something bad does happen, in which case, I have to pay whatever the terms of the bet were.”

“And you still have money left over because there are so many other people betting, but nothing happens to them,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, sort of surprised she came to that so quickly. “Good.”

“How old are you?” Dot asked abruptly.

“Twenty-four.”

“You’ve got some nice duds.”

“I make a good living,” he replied patiently, still trying to hold his tongue. He looked back at Marina. “Enough to support a wife and family.”

Both girls stilled. “You already have a wife and a family?” Dot asked carefully, not in challenge, but to verify what she thought he said.

“No,” he replied with as unthreatening an expression as he could muster.

“Oh,” she said softly, relaxing. Her permanent scowl faded a little and she gave him a tight smile. She began fussing with her napkin and her drink, wiping off the table, the base of the glass. Marina, flushed, worried the pages of her math book.

No, he wasn’t going to marry her, but the only way to get in any preacher’s daughter’s trousers was to let her think he was seriously courting her.

Except right now it was time for a strategic retreat. He slid out of the booth. “Miss Scarritt,” he said soberly. “Miss Albright.”

Dot wouldn’t look at him, but Marina gave him a very shy glance and smile. “Thank you again,” she said softly. “I can’t stop saying it, I guess.”

The corner of Trey’s mouth turned up a little. “You’re welcome. May I … Will you be here tomorrow?”

“We come here every day after school,” she said shyly. “Until our homework’s done. We have to be home by six.”

“Mm hm. Well, ladies, I’ll see you around.”

---

3

TREY DIDN’T KNOW whether to be mad or glad about the afternoon’s success, which put him in an unsettled mood for the evening. Freshly bathed, dressed, and shaved, he headed to the mezzanine of the speakeasy he’d spent the last four years managing for Boss Tom, turning it from a rundown barely speak serving sodas and near-beer (with stronger libations available for those in the know) into a successful speakeasy with only three raids to his name. Furthermore, last year’s Democratic National Convention had been very good to him, bringing in more resident customers who hadn’t known 1520 Main existed.

His customer base was a good bit of black and white, middle class and rich, Irish, Italian, and Jewish, commingling on the dance floor to long jam sessions with a collection of cool cats who knew how to blow horns and play bass. His burlesque show was a draw and his poker tables were full. His meager menu was decent, but people didn’t come to 1520 to eat. His female whores were bright, pretty, and popular. His male whores were good at their jobs and kept their mouths shut. He carried the finest cigars Cuba could manufacture, his dope was pure, all his whisky was branded and uncut, and he was the only purveyor of Remus whisky in town.

As long as Trey didn’t make his own alcohol (which could be smelled), didn’t run a race wire as part of his gambling operations (the results of which he would be pressured to give to certain Machine associates before the bets were called), had a bona fide restaurant (that did an adequate amount of business), didn’t offer honk-and-hooch curbside delivery, and didn’t allow teenagers, the cops not on his payroll left him alone, the Prohibition crusaders didn’t care about him, and William Rockhill Nelson’s Kansas City Star had bigger fish to fry.

Trey had good hooch, good cigars, good food, good drugs, good music, good games, good whores, good service, in a clean, classy space specially tailored for the middle class who wanted to feel rich and upper middle class who just wanted a good time and some Remus whisky.

It was true Trey wanted to buy 1520 Main. It was true that on Trey’s salary, he had enough to dress the part of a successful speak manager but should not have enough to buy the business. It was true that even if he did buy the business, he would no longer be under Tom’s protection unless he paid for it. It was also true that there were a few cats in town slobbering to take Trey’s place as 1520’s manager, and Trey suspected that if he couldn’t get Marina pregnant at all, he’d be replaced or worse. He’d worked far too hard to step aside for someone else, and he certainly did not want to take a swim in the Missouri River.

But Boss Tom didn’t know what he didn’t know, which was, first, that Trey’s long-held bootlegging operation was still operating in the shadows and he was hiding his profits from Boss Tom; and, second, that Trey was skimming Boss Tom’s profits off the speak. He was careful about stashing it. He knew how to hide it in the books Boss Tom examined every month. He kept a relatively large payroll and ostensibly paid his people higher-than-market wages, which Boss Tom took to be generous and therefore worthy of approval. Trey slept on the couch in his nicely appointed office and worked alongside his employees to keep the place in tip-top shape.

Trey also did most of what Boss Tom asked him to do. He could deliver an impressive number of votes for whatever candidates Boss Tom was backing. He helped needy families get back on their feet whenever Boss Tom was made aware of them. He carried out hits when he felt the cat deserved it; if he didn’t know the cat, didn’t know what he’d done, or didn’t think he deserved it, he politely declined, citing speakeasy business. There were few cats in town who’d say no to Boss Tom, but Trey was very good at his job, he respectfully gave good reasons for not wanting to carry out a hit, and he would help bury a body if nobody else was available.

Trey had also never made the mistake of asking Boss Tom for a favor. The only time Trey went to Boss Tom was with cash or news of a completed errand. Boss Tom didn’t like that Trey was not on the hook for anything, but he did admire it and as long as Trey made money and was honest and loyal, he left Trey alone and made everybody else in town leave him alone, too.

There was nothing about Trey that gave off the stink of dishonesty or wealth. It took time to build up cash skimming and the discipline to resist greed. It took a sharp eye for paper trails and a truck full of patience to continue bootlegging without it being traced back to him. He had enough cash squirreled away to see the underside of rich, but he wasn’t going to get wealthy until he had his own operation.

And once he got Marina Scarritt pregnant in the allotted time, he’d be a speak owner instead of a speak manager. Boss Tom always kept his promises, particularly if he thought he was being generous, and he would keep this promise if Trey delivered.

Without getting the particulars or thinking too much about the fact that he was obliged to do it in any case, Trey had begun his project right away. Sixteen was about the right age to begin courting, but Marina was a very young sixteen and that made him a little uncomfortable. Except … it wasn’t a courtship and Trey didn’t have two years to do it right even if he was courting her. Boss Tom expected to keep the speak and get whatever revenge on Gil Scarritt he thought he needed to get in such a roundabout way.

Trey wished he’d thought about it before he’d shot off his mouth, but Boss Tom was right: He couldn’t buy the speak outright. It would expose his skimming and bootlegging, which would absolutely earn Trey a concrete overcoat and a swim in the Missouri River.

Well, what was done was done and Trey would think about consequences later, as he usually did. After visiting his mezzanine office and locking it behind him, he headed up to the top floor of the speak. He went into the common lavatory, unlocked and opened an empty closet, locked it behind him, then pulled a ladder down out of the ceiling and climbed into the attic, drawing the ladder up after him, and locking it in place.

This was his real office. Unlike the rest of the speak and the “office” he kept at the back of the mezzanine, this was spartan. There was a desk. A kitchen chair. A filing cabinet. And one giant safe.

It was hot up here, dusty, dark, cramped, and the ceiling was barely six feet high. Trey, at six foot two, had to stoop, but he spent most of his time here sitting at his desk counting cash and doing books. He flipped on the light, went to his safe, twirled the combination this way and that, opened it, and pulled out several glassine envelopes of different types of drugs to stuff in his inner suit coat pockets. He had to have enough to last most of the night so he wouldn’t have to come up here when the house was rocking.

On the second shelf of the safe were two sets of ledgers. One was for Boss Tom to examine at the end of every month. The other was for Trey’s eyes only. He had a third set in his mezzanine office for Treasury’s benefit, and a filing cabinet down there full of numbers to back them up. Everything was in complete order for any ol’ passerby to peruse—if they could read his handwriting.

On the safe’s bottom shelf was a stash of cash Trey didn’t like keeping here no matter how secure. Every once in a while, he took a stack to the bank and it looked to be about time for another run.

Today, however, was payday, so he took out the pay envelopes he’d already prepared and stuffed them in another pocket.

Once he had closed up his hideyhole and clipped down to the mezzanine of the speak, he shot his cuffs out and adjusted his collar. He looked out over the rail to see that the joint was a little quieter than it usually was at eight o’clock, but that was because there were two chautauquas in town and a tent revival—led by one Reverend Gil Scarritt—to boot. On top of that, all his good-time girls were having their bleeding time together, which they did every month, so this week’s take would be slim.

“Never trust anything that bleeds for a week and lives,” he muttered. “Mean as shit, to boot.” He’d lock them up if he could, just to keep them from slapping every customer he had.

Just one of those things. He managed his cash flow well enough to make up for that one week every month, but though the chautauquas were only one day each, he’d forgotten about them and the tent revival that went on all week. Entertainment was entertainment.

Trey returned to his fake office—where he slept on the divan—and stashed the payroll, then locked it back up and took his throne at the rail of the mezzanine, a corner wall to his back, settling in with a whisky and a cigar to watch the relatively sparse activities and wonder why Boss Tom hated Scarritt so much, and if it was bad enough to wager 1520 Main on it, why he hadn’t just killed the motherfucker.

Scarritt was a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher. Spoke in tongues, faith healed, the whole works, which was why Trey had been shocked that his daughter was wearing trousers. But in a competition between being able to toss up a girl’s dress or seeing a slight curve in shapeless trousers, he supposed any father would prefer the latter. No cat was going to spend the time to get into a girl’s trousers if she also had to be persuaded to take them off.

And now … that was exactly what Trey had to do if he wanted this speak.

He did.

He wanted this speakeasy so badly he could taste every drop of whisky that had ever soaked into the floorboards. For the last four years, he’d poured his heart and soul into turning this place into the low-key moneymaker it was.

The good Reverend Scarritt lived a pretty fine life on his lambs’ tithes and from all accounts, he was a showman. Maybe Trey should get in the evangelism racket. That had to be a lot less stressful.

Was that Tom’s problem with the reverend? He couldn’t get a piece of Scarritt’s action? One whole dollar could not go to both vice and virtue. One third of this town spent it on vice. Another third on virtue. The last third was trying to survive, and their little extra went to God, too. No more than any ol’ bribe.

Hey, God. Please accept this two bits as a token of my esteem for you. Also, if you wouldn’t mind … I could sure use some help …

But Boss Tom would take care of the surviving third if they’d let him whereas Scarritt was never going to do anything for them but take their two bits and promise things on God’s behalf.

“Wrestle a sixteen-year-old preacher’s daughter with a chastity belt into bed and get her bakin’,” he grumbled. He had faith in his powers of seduction.

Marina Scarritt’s interesting-looking face flashed in his mind.

Not that much faith.

Almost none.

He’d figure it out, though. He had to. He wanted the speak and he wanted not to fail a task Boss Tom had given him, perhaps at the cost of his job. He didn’t know what would happen to him if he failed, but the threat was clear.

“Fuckers.”

They all were, every last one of the people Trey ran with, did business with, dug graves with, and drove out-of-towners to the polls with. They weren’t friends. Or even allies, most of the time. Their currency was favors and Trey preferred a clean exchange: task-cash, cash-task or favors that stacked up to his benefit.

There was almost nothing that could bring a preacher man down faster than his unmarried daughter knocked up by one of Pendergast’s underbosses. Trey couldn’t think of one reason Pendergast would be willing to simply hand over 1520 Main to shame a cat all the way out of his profession instead of simply killing him. Maybe that was worse than death; Trey didn’t know.

The music started up again, and the food started coming out of the kitchen at a faster pace. A pretty waitress dressed in next to nothing slid a steak under his nose without a word. In his throne at his table with good steak, good whisky, and a good cigar in front of him, he ran this joint and the one block of Kansas City it was on with Boss Tom Pendergast’s blessing.

“Hey, Daddy-o,” Ethel purred as she slid her ass into the chair next to him.

“Spit it out and get back to work,” Trey said absently.

“I was gonna be nice about this,” she said testily. “But since you got nasty, I will. Stop waltzing into the bathroom this time of the month while we’re using it. Better yet, get your own place.”

“You share your cunt with six cats a night and you’re prissin’ ’cuz I take a bath while you’re tending your woman needs? We got one bathroom.”

She snarled at him.

“You’re lucky I don’t move upstairs and you’re welcome to find a different gig with a pimp who don’t put a leash around his girls’ necks or wanna sample his wares. Won’t hurt my feelin’s none and this town’s lousy with pretty girls who need some cash and don’t mind gettin’ it on their backs.”

She huffed and flounced off, rattling the chair to punctuate her pique.

It might be nice to have his own place with its own bathroom. He didn’t mind sleeping on a divan, but he sure as hell didn’t like sharing a bathroom with the ten women and three men who lived and worked upstairs. The third floor had eight rooms, another common bathroom, and a very tiny room with two bunkbeds. The eight singles were rented out, and he kept the bunk room empty for emergencies. Commandeering one of the second-floor bedrooms was out of the question because he’d either be sharing it or losing money.

Which left him another problem to solve: He couldn’t seduce Marina when he didn’t have a decent place to do it. He didn’t care about living at 1520 Main because all he needed was a roof and food. It was one of the only ways he could pinch enough pennies to make the risk of getting caught skimming worth it.

So it actually shocked him that he was in a dither over Marina Scarritt. Peeling Dot Albright off her was going to be a problem because the girl had made sure he knew she had his number. Worse, she and Marina did everything together, which was more than likely mandated by their parents.

He’d stood in the doorway of Kresge’s and watched Marina sit with a vaguely resentful expression as boys fawned all over Dot. He didn’t think Dot had noticed Marina’s unhappiness, but Trey could read people no matter how much they wanted to hide themselves. Dot wasn’t inviting male attention. She would get it whether she wanted it or not (definitely not), so she was forced to work around it.

As for Trey’s taste in interesting-looking dames, that had always been the case. A girl who caught his eye would invariably be the less-attractive one in a pair. Usually she was smart, could hold a decent conversation, and could give him some frame of reference for respectable speech and behavior. He went with girls who had large vocabularies and good accents. He went with girls who could teach him manners without knowing they were teaching him. He went with girls who wouldn’t give it up until he’d seduced them to capitulation. All he wanted was the yes. Once he got it, they weren’t interesting anymore, so he left them with their newly awakened passions unfulfilled. He either disappeared or they got tired of his refusal to pop the question and dumped him.

So the fact that Marina was interesting looking, smart (although she didn’t think so), and more respectable than any girl he’d gone with so far intrigued him. The fact that she was young and painfully naïve for her age bothered him.

It shouldn’t bother him at all.

Maybe what bothered him was that this, he couldn’t forge, fudge, or fuck up. It was too important.

“You up over a dame?” asked another one of his girls, who twirled a chair around and straddled it. She was nice and really didn’t belong here, a preacher’s daughter who’d succumbed to a cat with fewer morals than Trey and took what he’d been working for.

“Sorta,” he muttered.

“You need help.”

“You know I don’t fuck my own girls.”

“No, I mean, I have a friend—”

He looked at her from under his brow. “Who she work for?”

Her mouth turned down a little. “Nobody,” she murmured. “Not yet anyway. I thought—”

“Not lookin’ for a side piece, thanks. She’d be better to find a cat who’ll marry her.”

Sally scowled. “Willya let me finish? That’s not what I’m talking about. She’s got a bun in the oven. She’s on the street. ’Bout to give up. She needs a job and there’s plenty to do around here. Hell, she could clean our floor. I’ve been after you for a housekeeper forever.”

She had a point, but housekeepers made him no money when his whores should be cleaning their own rooms. “Yeah, and then what?”

“And then what, she sells the baby and goes on as usual, and then what. You aren’t making any money on the bunkroom anyway and there’s four beds in it.”

He really did need a housekeeper for the upper two floors. Nobody else would clean the bathrooms—at least, not the way Trey wanted them cleaned. “A’ight, I’ll talk to her, but I ain’t promisin’ anything.”

“Thank you, Trey!” she breathed with almost as much gratitude as Marina had showered him with this afternoon. This was still tainted but the conditions were up front and clear-cut.

“Yeh, yeh, yeh. Where’s Gio?”

“With Mrs. Rogers. She came early.”

“And often, hopefully,” Trey said approvingly. That lusty broad would be riding Gio all night.

His gigolos made a lot of money during the moon week because some cats were so desperate they’d take a man and a few cats only wanted men. What had surprised Trey was how many well-heeled women there were in town who wanted to taste the underside of life while their husbands were tasting the underside of life elsewhere. And there were more than a few well-heeled husbands who didn’t want to touch their old, fat wives and sent them to 1520 when they got whiny. One old, fat cat brought his young, beautiful wife and watched while Brody fucked her the way her husband wanted to, but couldn’t.

1520 Main was the only joint in town that openly kept men, but so far as anybody knew, they serviced women exclusively.

That wasn’t where the money was.

Men slipped up the back stairs if they wanted cock and slipped a godawful amount of cash to Trey, who would keep their names—and the cash—off Boss Tom’s books. Men didn’t pay for sex. They paid for silence.

Lickety split, Sally was back with her friend, who looked like she’d been gassed in the Great War. He gestured to the chair beside him while Sally took herself off to dance with whichever cat had called her.

“You ever cleaned house?” he asked casually, clipping the end of another cigar.

“For my mama, sir,” she said with a trembly voice.

He lit his cigar and puffed on it until the end glowed red. The girl carried herself as though she had been thoroughly betrayed and was too dragged down by life to be able to carry herself upright, much less keep house. It was one reason why he never actually fucked any of the good girls he seduced, not even so much as a finger through their drawers or a flick of their nipples. He might leave them brokenhearted or angry or both, but not despoiled or betrayed.

“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly.

“Ida. Merrifield.”

“’Kay. You’ll be responsible for keeping the second floor spic’n’span. You clean the bedrooms, wash the sheets, make the beds, dust the furniture, clean the windows, Hoover the rugs, make sure the second and third floor bathrooms look like nobody ever uses ’em. You clean the third floor hallway. Sunday and Monday off. If we need help down here cleaning up after close, you do that, too. Two dollars a week plus room and board till you pop.”

It wasn’t a lot of money, but she looked like she’d been given the world. It was probably more money than she’d ever seen and he was throwing in all her necessities.

“You’re cute. You stay past your baby bein’ born and shipped off to some well-heeled family, you go to work on your back and make me money ’stead’a costin’ me, y’hear?”

That made her turn greenish, but those were his terms. If a stupid hick like him could figure out how to have an end game and save money to get to it, so could she.

“I’ll let you work on your feet if you have your own place by then or you can pay me room and board. Got no problem widdat. Get Sally to show you the supply closet and bunkroom, and get your stuff moved in if you have any, grab some food, and go to bed. You start tomorrow, eight a.m.”

“Yessir,” she whispered and scrammed.

By this time it was ten and people were beginning to stream in. Soon the place would be rockin’ with music, dancing, drinking, gambling, fucking, and business, same as any other Tuesday night.

“Mr. Dunham?”

Trey looked up to see a cat with a shock of red hair, dressed in work clothes, holding his bowler in front of him. “Seamus. You got a message for me?”

“Uh, no, sir. I wanted to talk a minute.”

Trey waved at the seat that Ida had just vacated. “Make it snappy.”

“Yes, sir. I wanted to discuss an idea I had … ” He was reciting this speech from memory. “ … about distributing some of your heroin.”

“Nope.”

“Mr. Dunham, I know several dens in town that would be happy to pay—”

“I said no. I control where my dope goes, and it goes here. If the dens want it, they can come to me directly. I don’t do wholesale.”

“It would be retail, though. A seventy-thirty split, your advantage.”

Trey was about to give him a good piece of his mind when a well-dressed woman appeared at his table. “What can I do you for today, Miss Skiada?”

“Two decks, please,” she said sweetly, then made a production of opening her pocketbook to look for cash, while Trey made a production of searching his inner coat pockets for two tiny glassine envelopes of cocaine.

“You sure two’s enough?” he asked, casting a glance down to the speak floor at her table, where three other flappers were snorting cocaine through rolled-up bills.

She clucked her tongue and handed Trey a ten. “They can buy their own. Not my fault I can afford more, is it?”

Trey grinned and handed her the dope. “That’s my girl.”

She waggled her eyebrows playfully then disappeared down the stairs, only to reappear below Trey’s feet, headed for her table.

Meanwhile, Seamus Byrne looked on with a hint of resentment.

“I could move more than you can sell here.”

“What you’re really telling me is that you can’t find a supplier who’ll front you.”

He flushed.

“Get you some seed money together and then maybe somebody will supply you, but it won’t ever be me.”

“You’ve got this town sewn up and you expect me to be able to scrape together some seed money?”

Trey was getting irritated. “You don’t get to start at the top; you gotta pay your dues, and I paid mine. Lazia paid his. Boss Tom paid his. And I don’t have this town sewn up. I have a little bitty piece of it. Other than the Remus whisky, everybody else has the same dope and booze I do.”

“C’mon, Mr. Dunham … ”

“Yanno, I don’t like it you come to me to beg when you wouldn’t dare go to Boss Tom or Lazia and ask them.”

“You’re about my age. You were me not so long ago. I figured you’d understand.”

“I’ve been bootlegging since I was twelve years old. What were you doing? Suckin’ on your mama’s tit?” Seamus’s jaw ground. “Now, look, I’mma give you some advice. Begging ain’t gonna get you anywhere in life. You gotta work for what you want and sometimes you gotta take what you want. I see you begging me for what I got, but I don’t see you workin’ like you oughta be and you damn sure don’t have the moxie or firepower to take it from me.”

“Then let me come to work for you and prove myself.”

Trey would be a fool to invite this sniveling little snake into his operation. “Go ask Boss Tom if you can go to work for Ready-Mix.”

The boy’s face flushed a little. “But … that’s … ”

“Hard work,” Trey said firmly, “which is what you don’t wanna do. ’Cuz you’re lazy. You wanna start off at the top and think you don’t have to do nothin’ for what comes in.”

An envelope containing a fat stack of cash was, unfortunately, dropped on Trey’s table right at that moment, and one of his runners dropped into the chair beside him. It was standard operating procedure. Trey didn’t let his runners go until he’d counted the money.

Trey didn’t miss the way Seamus’s eyes bulged when Trey withdrew the stack and began counting, his fingers flying faster than Seamus could keep up. When he was done, he straightened the stack, stuffed all but a twenty back in the envelope, and shoved the envelope in his inner coat pocket. “Good job,” he said, handing the runner his pay. “Whatcha got going tomorrow morning?”

“Nothin’ yet, sir.”

“A’ight. Be here at ten. Bring your kin. Gotta make a bank run.”

“Yes, sir. G’night, sir.”

“Whatever you need him for, I could do,” Seamus said with a touch of desperation. “You know, prove to you I got what it takes.”

Trey slid a look at the boy. Yes, he was Trey’s age and Trey was a man, but Seamus was wet behind the ears, lazy, untrustworthy, and covetous. Trey wished his collection ritual hadn’t happened right in front of Seamus, but on the other hand, it would rub his nose in the fact that Trey was, no matter how small, still a top dog in the Machine.

“Byrne,” he said with a finality he hoped would do the trick, “I’m not going to hire you. I damn sure am not going to trust you with my dope or a gun. Go find a job, gather you some seed money, whatever, set up your own operation, but don’t come back here again wantin’ somethin’. You ain’t gonna get it from me.”

---

4

“FATHER,” MARINA SAID respectfully Wednesday morning over breakfast, trying for the umpteenth time to get what she wanted, “it’s really only politeness.”

“Will there be dancing there?” he asked calmly.

“I … don’t know.” That was true. She didn’t know if there would be dancing at Dot’s Friday-night church get-together.

“Marina, I’m very happy that you’re being so patient at working with Dot. She seems to be coming around to Jesus.” Not at all. “But I am not going to allow you to go socialize with her people. Dot is a lovely girl in spite of her upbringing and I think she can be saved.”

Marina was innocent about a lot of things, like why Dot insisted men were only out to get girls, but she understood manners because it was what she’d been taught all her life. If one kept constant company with a person, it was good manners to reciprocate an invitation whether one wanted to or not.

It was finally time she turned to Mother. She explained this carefully, as respectfully as she could. There was no shouting in this house, unlike Dot’s, where shouting was a sport. She would prefer shouting because the tense politeness hid too many things she didn’t understand. Father only shouted from the pulpit, but that was the voice of God thundering through him, so it didn’t count.

Mother listened politely, then her gaze flicked up to Father’s. They communicated in that silent way that made Marina uncomfortable. Not for the first time, she wished she had siblings so that she was not always the focus of their attention.

“And,” she added for good measure, having only just thought of it, “if her parents were to see me as a good example at their service, they might come around too.”

“You do have a point,” Father said gravely after a moment or two of thought. “I’ll pray on it.”

And God would tell him no. God gave Father almost everything he asked for. Occasionally, God gave Marina what she asked for, but not until she asked her father to pray for it. That was how Godly families functioned and Marina wouldn’t dare ask God for anything herself.

The only other thing she wanted was to keep Trey Dunham’s attention and she couldn’t ask her parents for that even if she wanted to. While she knew that her parents had begun courting when Mother was sixteen, Father had been eighteen, not twenty-four. She wasn’t quite sure how her parents would react if a twenty-four-year-old came calling, even if he did have a respectable and well-to-do business and was looking for a wife.

Marina wasn’t anywhere close to becoming a wife, but she was holding yesterday afternoon close and hoping Mr. Dunham would pop into Kresge’s this afternoon. Dot didn’t like him, but wouldn’t say why after meeting and talking to him. That bothered Marina. Dot took a dislike to very few people at first meeting—none that Marina could think of immediately—so why was she stuck on him?

Marina bit her lip and looked down at her plate.

Mr. Dunham was very handsome. He hadn’t fawned over Dot like every other boy, handsome or not. Was Dot … jealous? It was a thought she didn’t want to think, but …

“No, I’m not jealous!” Dot hissed at lunch when Marina broached the subject, “and I’m hurt that you think I would be. There’s something wrong with him.”

“Like what?” Marina asked, exasperated.

“He’s lying. He’s lying about who he is and what he wants.”

“How do you know?”

Dot shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know. It’s just … I have a feeling.”

That made Marina’s spine tingle. Dot’s feelings were right one hundred percent of the time, when she had them, which wasn’t very often.

She and Dot spent the rest of the day not speaking to each other, or at least, not passing notes in class. They walked from school to the bus stop to wait for the bus that would take them downtown. They rode in stiff silence until they got to their stop. As they walked to Kresge’s, Dot muttered, “I could be wrong.”

“What does Bishop think?” Marina asked reluctantly. Dot’s father wasn’t half as strict as Marina’s, but with Bishop Albright, there were lines one did not cross.

“I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

Marina and Dot lived three blocks apart, but their parents had never met. Dot’s father would if asked, but Marina’s father absolutely would not stand in the presence of a Satan-worshipping polygamist. Never mind Bishop only had one wife and had never met anybody who had more than that. Marina knew they didn’t worship Satan at all. Or at least, when she was around, they didn’t. Maybe Satan-worshipping families could be nice. She didn’t know.

That didn’t mean Bishop wouldn’t lecture Marina as if she were his daughter if he thought she was out of line. He never had, but Dot’s brother’s friends got yelled at for stupid things they did and Marina didn’t want to get in trouble with Bishop any more than she wanted to get in trouble with Father.

“That man seems to like you,” Dot said, still muttering, as they entered Kresge’s and found their booth. “I don’t … You know, in case I’m wrong. Maybe … I wouldn’t have to … I mean, when we went … ”

“Maybe you wouldn’t have to find me a date?” Marina asked softly.

“Yeah,” Dot admitted reluctantly. “I’d … like that. If you had your own somebody and weren’t miserable.”

“I have fun,” Marina protested.

“Not enough. Speaking of that,” she said, suddenly back to her perky self, “did your parents say yes to Friday night?”

“Father said he’d pray on it.” Dot deflated immediately. “Are you coming to church with me tonight?”

“I always do.”

“So … could you … ?”

“No,” she said firmly. “I am not getting saved. I’m not getting baptized. I’m not joining your church. Marina, I just come with you to be nice. That’s all.” She paused, then blurted, “I don’t like your god.”

Marina blinked and looked at her. “My God?” she asked, confused. “He’s yours too. He’s everybody’s God. He’s just … God.”

“Then I don’t like him,” she said firmly.

Marina’s spine started tingling once again. Nobody should blaspheme God that way.

“You think, if I don’t get saved, that I’m going to burn in a lake of fire, right?”

Marina nodded sadly. “Yes.”

“But what about the people in Africa? They don’t know anything about Jesus. Maybe they’d want to get saved, but don’t have the chance. He’s gonna send them to a burning lake of fire too?”

“Um … ” To tell the truth, that had always bothered Marina.

“But you say he loves everyone. Well, if he loved everyone, then he’d give those people a chance. So the only thing I can think is that he doesn’t love everyone. The God I learn about on Sunday doesn’t do that to people.”

Marina didn’t say anything because, while she didn’t understand Dot’s doctrine, she couldn’t refute her own. She’d asked Father the same thing and he’d droned on about something she really didn’t understand, then preached it that Sunday in a way that confused her even more.

“Do you have your skit ready for the talent show next week?” Marina asked, to shoo away her confusion.

“Still practicing. Do you have my dress ready?”

“I’ll bring it over tomorrow so we can fit it.”

The waitress interrupted them for their order, which was the usual, without onion rings this time because neither of them was hungry and Marina had to get home—

“Ladies.”

Marina and Dot both jumped, startled, and looked up. There was Mr. Dunham, as dapper and fashionable as he had been the day before in an ivory single-breasted suit coat over a tan vest and white shirt, white-polka-dot navy tie, and navy-and-white two-tone Oxford shoes. He had his tan fedora in his hand and his longish, slightly curly golden-blond hair was tousled.

“Uh, hi,” Marina said breathlessly as she slid over to make room for him. She took a quick peek at Dot, who was busy rummaging in her bag for probably nothing. “I … didn’t think you’d really come.”

The corner of his mouth tilted up the tiniest bit. “I come when and where I want to.” He glanced across the table. “Hello, Miss Albright.”

“Hi,” she tossed back, her voice muffled in her bag.

“Lime rickey,” he said to the waitress, who gave him the once-over once again, which made Marina nervous. She was much prettier than Marina, so it really wasn’t difficult to believe that Mr. Dunham was sitting here for some other reason than a simple desire to get to know Marina. “Miss Scarritt,” he began.

“Oh, Marina, please,” she said quickly.

“Thank you. Trey, to you.”

“All right. Trey,” she said, trying the word on for size.

“Your father has revival this week, doesn’t he?”

She wasn’t surprised he’d figured out that she was Reverend Scarritt’s daughter. There were bills posted all over town. “Yes. Do you want to come?”

“Very much. If you don’t mind my inviting myself.”

“Oh no! Father would love to meet you.”

Dot coughed into her hand and Marina cast a glare across the table.

“I see Miss Albright doesn’t agree,” Trey said, shocking both of them because no one was that forthright. It might be considered rude if he hadn’t said it in such an unsure manner.

“Well,” Dot began, taking up the challenge as she always did, “you’re twenty-four. We’re sixteen. Reverend Scarritt might not think it’s seemly for you to be courting Marina. If that’s your intention.”

He grimaced just a little and Marina’s heart sank so far down she thought she might be sick. “I would like to get to know Marina better,” he told Dot matter-of-factly, “but only with her father’s permission, which I can’t ask for if I don’t meet him.” He looked at Marina. “I don’t hold with sneaking out at night, running around, being disobedient and disrespectful to one’s parents.”

Marina’s bottom lip was open in shock. “But we just met yesterday!”

“Marina, I’m twenty-four, as Miss Albright pointed out. I’m a busy man and I don’t have time to talk to girls I don’t want to get to know better. We may or may not get along eventually, but I can’t find out unless we spend time together and I won’t spend time with you behind your parents’ backs. Meeting here for after-school sodas and homework is just fine for a couple more days but after that it’s just another form of sneaking.”

“Oh,” she squeaked.

“It would be nice if I also had Miss Albright’s permission, but I’m willing to try to earn it if she’ll let me.”

“Hrmph. If Marina wants you here, I’m not going to drive you away.”

“I appreciate that.” Their drinks came and after the waitress had left, he said, “No onion rings? Homework?”

“Revival,” Marina said. “I was late yesterday because we missed the bus and it embarrassed my mother.”

His brow wrinkled. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. May I take you and Miss Albright home? Since I was planning to attend anyway?”

“Oh, that would be lovely,” Marina gushed. “Dot’s coming tonight, too. She always comes with me on Wednesdays.”

Trey’s eyebrow rose and he looked across the table, then back at Marina. “You don’t attend the same church?”

“No,” Dot snapped. “I’m a Mormon.”

Marina sighed. She said that as defiantly as she ever said it to anybody. She was automatically hostile the second religion was brought up, just daring somebody to shoot her.

“Oh,” he replied, surprised. “And your parents allow you to go to a Pentecostal church?”

“My parents trust me not to get sucked in.”

“Dot!” Marina cried, hurt.

Dot had the grace to look abashed, but Trey was chuckling. “I see.” He pulled his watch out. “Well, drink up, ladies,” he said, sliding it back in its pocket. “Don’t want to be late and embarrass Marina’s mother.”

---

5

REVEREND SCARRITT WAS everything Trey thought a preacher ought to be: Only a little shorter than Trey, medium build, handsome, and finely dressed. He was much older than Trey expected, considering his daughter was only sixteen, and his duds weren’t as expensive as Trey’s but a preacher ought to at least pretend to be down-market.

The good reverend was also as fake as Trey. Trey, however, was used to being able to fool shady cats who were looking for any excuse to whack him, and the reverend was used to being taken at face value by men who were desperate for God’s grace and women who wanted Scarritt’s attention. That he was handsome made the job ten times easier. Trey was even willing to bet he had a side piece or two.

The missus was tall and willowy, wore fashionably feminine trousers, and had probably been considered a great beauty in her time. That had been quite a while ago for her, too, and time had not been good to her, making her look much older than her husband.

The good reverend definitely had a side piece.

The missus’s makeup was expertly applied. Her fashionably bobbed and permed hair was dyed blonde to cover the gray, although it was about time for her to get her roots done.

Then there was Marina, who looked nothing like either one of her parents, was nowhere near as fashionable, and where her mother was trying very hard to look young and stylish (she was stylish), Marina seemed to be trying to look old and stodgy.

In his head, Trey had already stripped Marina down, re-dressed her, cut her hair, and put some makeup on her. Then she’d be eye-catching, although up against Dot, she’d never—

Oh, for God’s sake.

Marina’s parents wanted to keep her hidden, which would make Trey’s job harder. Men with Trey’s looks (not to mention money) didn’t walk out with girls like Marina without an ulterior motive.

What he had to do was convince her parents he had seen something in her nobody else did. Well, he did, but how was he supposed to describe “interesting”? She caught his eye. He could look through all that camouflage and see what was there. But he couldn’t say that. They would shut him down immediately.

It had to be something else. Perhaps he could play the tutor role for a while and let that simmer a little.

“Come in, young man,” said Reverend Scarritt imperiously after shaking his hand, “come in.”

That surprised Trey a little. He’d have bet Scarritt would keep him standing in the foyer for a barely polite amount of chatter, ask a few polite questions, politely tell him to enjoy the night’s service, and politely give him the boot.

“Where did you meet Marina again?” he asked, directing Trey to a comfortable chair in the front parlor. “Mrs. Scarritt, Marina, could you excuse us?”

Trey looked around. It was a very nice front parlor, with charmingly worn furniture, gleaming millwork, bookcases full of very important-looking books and papers, and Bibles and bouquets of lilacs on every surface. It was exactly as cozy and modestly fine as a parsonage parlor should be.

“Kresge’s, sir,” Trey said. “Yesterday. I was walking by and heard Marina struggling with an assignment, thought I’d see if I could help, and found her to be smart and interesting.”

“Ah … smart, you say,” Scarritt said speculatively as if Trey were lying.

“Yes, sir. I enjoy the company of smart girls who are also polite and love God.”

“Ah … hunh.” The love God might have been too much. “And do you have a church?”

“No, sir. I’ve been looking for one, but haven’t found any preachers who move me with the Spirit.” Where was this shit coming from? Had he paid that much attention to his Sunday school lessons growing up? “I saw a bill for your revival after I met Marina. Things working mysteriously and whatnot.” Trey leaned forward and worried the brim of his fedora. “If you want to know the truth, sir,” he said earnestly, “I think God’s hand is in my having met Marina and I don’t question God’s hand. He’s blessed me too much to ignore his voice.”

Scarritt observed him speculatively, but Trey knew he was assessing the extent of Trey’s blessings. “You do seem to do well for yourself,” he finally said. “Selling insurance, Marina says?”

“Yes, sir. As I said, God’s blessed me.”

“And after a few minutes’ conversation you think you would like to see Marina on a more regular basis?”

“She expressed the same concern. But besides listening to God’s voice, I’m busy preparing a home for a future family. As I told Marina, we may or may not get along but I refuse to dilly-dally and I refuse to disrespect her and her parents by keeping my presence from you.”

Trey was laying it on thick, he knew, but Scarritt was nodding slowly like a wise man. This cat had been putting on a drama for easily conned folks so long he probably didn’t know what was real anymore or when he was the mark.

Scarritt was silent for a few more seconds, then said abruptly, “You’re welcome to stay for supper, Mr. Dunham—”

“Trey, please, Reverend.”

“Trey. And attend service with us this evening. I’ll pray on this and seek God’s will.”

TO TREY’S THINKING, supper was a goddamned catastrophe. The food was awful, the conversation was boring, and the reverend was a prick. What made him an insufferable prick was the upper-crust accent. Trey would like to emulate it but it sounded fake to his ears. He couldn’t pinpoint why. By contrast, the missus and Marina were so silent they might as well not have been there at all.

Trey was no stranger to a long con, but the beginnings of a new one were always rough. He was running up against the edges of his theological knowledge and he wasn’t even going to try bullshitting his way through it. He had to give examples of the other preachers’ methods that didn’t “move” him spiritually. He was congratulating himself on having scraped through that, only to be asked where he lived!

“I have a room off my office, but I decided to look for a little house perfect for a newlywed couple to grow into a family of three.”

“Where’s your office?”

Trey gave him the address he used when he needed a respectable one. It really was an insurance agency, and Trey paid the cat who ran it to be able to use the address, have packages sent, and have messages taken. But Trey had never given it to anyone who might drop in.

“I travel too much to justify the expense,” he explained when Scarritt asked him why he didn’t get a room.

“Ah. Frugal too.”

“I cut corners where I can.” That was the absolute truth.

Then came the questions about where he was from (“Minneapolis”), where he’d traveled (“Well, I haven’t been to China”), if he’d been to Italy (“Rome is very grand”), what his favorite place was (“Definitely Seville, in southern Spain”). The reverend was adequately impressed, which was a good thing because Trey was never going to admit he was a farm boy from a hick town halfway between Columbia and St. Louis, had never been anywhere but a library, and the only reason he liked southern Spain was because there was a chunk of it right smack dab in the middle of Brush Creek and he had a lot of reasons to be near Brush Creek, mostly having to do with mixing concrete and burying folks there. If the Country Club district was an actual representation of Seville, Spain, then Trey knew he’d like it. If he ever went. Which was not likely.

But Scarritt, it seemed, had been everywhere.

Trey didn’t believe half what Scarritt said. Either he was letting Trey weave enough rope to hang himself or he didn’t know Trey was bullshitting, which meant he was also bullshitting. Trey absolutely believed Scarritt had been to Europe, but not as a tourist.

Trey heard war stories all the time. Some men bragged, some men wouldn’t speak of it at all, and some men ended up drinking a lot of tears with their hooch.

“You were in the Great War, sir?” Trey asked politely.

“Yes,” Scarritt said shortly, which meant he wasn’t a cat who told war stories. He wanted to have the sophistication of having travelled to Europe on something other than a warship, doing something more sophisticated than digging ditches.

After three eternities and a second plate of awful food, Scarritt excused himself to get ready for the evening’s service. The missus and Marina would do their after-dinner chores and get ready. Trey was welcome to inspect the reverend’s library.

Trey was ready to inspect the bottom of a glass of whisky.

But books were Trey’s second favorite thing, so he made himself comfortable in front of the parsonage’s biggest bank of bookcases. A cat could tell a lot about another cat by the books he kept on his shelves, which wasn’t the same as what he actually read. But in this case …

Bottom shelf, books on baseball, boxing, and horse breeding and racing. Baseball and boxing, Trey understood. The horses said something Trey thought he understood, but couldn’t be sure.

Second shelf up, travelogues and reference books of many different countries.

Third shelf up, histories of the Great War, religious histories—a good portion of which were about Mormons—and biographies of famous people Trey would consider good people.

Top shelf, textbooks from the seminary—Baptist, looked like. Some Methodist and Lutheran. A bunch of Bibles, various types and editions, and an equal number of concordances.

Trey went back to Scarritt’s disproportionate anti-Mormon collection, which told him a whole lot more than everything else put together.

Mormons were a weird Christian sect with a twitchy trigger finger because it was Missouri law Mormons could be shot on sight. Trey thought the Extermination Order was a bit much for a few quiet people, but one of the things Mormons had a reputation for doing was spinning gold out of straw. Any group that large and that cohesive with money was to be feared.

Like … the Machine.

But the Machine and the Mormons co-existed like bees and flowers. They were the only honest men in town and teetotalers to boot. Boss Tom had Mormons in every position of money and booze control because they could be trusted with both, make money multiply like magic, and could also back it up at the point of a gun.

They claimed Jesus Christ as their savior, but they preferred the temple-clearing Jesus to the peace-and-love-preaching Jesus. They also had less love for the federal or state government than they did for the outfits. They had the money, firepower, and balls to take on the Machine and the Mafia. They wouldn’t win, but they’d do some serious damage before they got obliterated.

And Boss Tom would lose his trusted bean counters. They didn’t like the Machine, but they had families to feed like everyone else. Missouri simply didn’t bother with Prohibition much unless somebody was going to profit, and Kansas City was openly wetter than the Mississippi, so the Mormons didn’t feel obliged to obey a law the state and city didn’t feel obliged to obey which didn’t affect them anyway.

It was also telling that despite Scarritt’s obvious antagonism toward Mormons, he allowed Marina to run with Dot. His desire to keep Marina hidden from men’s gazes must run deep.

Then there was the fact that Pendergast wanted to steer clear of Dot’s bishop-daddy. It was just another reason Trey had to get Marina and Dot separated.

Trey searched the rest of Scarritt’s bookshelves for any fiction whatsoever, but there was none. Upon reflection, it didn’t surprise him. Too bad, too, because that was a topic upon which Trey could expound for days. In fact, once Trey got out from under the Machine and into a nice little house just right for a newlywed couple, the first thing he’d do would be to install a very large library and stock it to its gills.

Nobody knew that Trey was a country boy turned gutter rat who cleaned up good, with a thirst for money, which he could not get without knowledge. He didn’t want to be some ignorant mob boss, stupider than the men he ran just because he had money and didn’t mind putting people in concrete at the slightest thing.

Trey had put men in concrete (not at the slightest thing) (he wasn’t that hot-headed), but he was far more educated than almost everybody else in his circles.

Not educated enough. He had not yet read every book at the Kansas City Public Library and he had yet to read the latest Agatha Christie novel. Knowledge was power and he found power in everything. Even the most insignificant, forgettable books he read had nuggets he could use and he wrote these down in a little notebook he carried in his breast pocket.

It was only his extensive reading that made it possible to speak well in respectable circles, although his rube accent and bad grammar habits gave him away if he weren’t careful. He couldn’t afford to speak properly day-to-day and he hovered precariously between the two, sometimes slipping into one or another because at some point, it all blended, none of it sounded right anymore, and he got confused.

Then there were the words he mispronounced because he’d never heard them and seen them spelled at the same time. Tucson was not, in fact, pronounced tuckson. Fortunately, the very kind girl he was going with at the time gently corrected him before he made a fool of himself in front of anyone else. He stopped seeing her very soon after that, he was so embarrassed. He purposely mispronounced words he did know because his cohorts would accuse him of putting on airs, but then he’d forget when he needed to remember and …

Most days, Trey didn’t know which language to use, where, and with whom. It was all a jumbled mess in his head and mouth. It was exhausting, and he was almost to his limit, particularly because Scarritt’s speech was head and shoulders above Trey’s carefully practiced educated middle-class accent.

Trey was thinking about this when Scarritt walked in fixing his cuffs.

“You have an impressive library, Reverend,” Trey said, once again struggling with his accent.

“Thank you,” he returned absently. That was not a cat who read for pleasure, else he’d have puffed up like a banty rooster.

“Do you read fiction, sir?”

“No,” Scarritt said and Trey braced for a long explanation. “It’s a waste of time.”

That wasn’t what Trey had expected. “Oh. Not because it’s sinful?”

“My congregation reads the Bible. The second I preach against something that may or may not tempt them to sin, it will make it attractive. There is likely good to be found there, but just as likely sin and the last thing I want to do is whet an appetite to sin.”

Trey couldn’t fault the logic.

“And I would have to read it to find the good, but it has never interested me. Marina struggles with her literature assignments in school, and quite honestly, I’d be bored, too.”

Of course she was bored. It was assigned. Talking about themes and symbols and metaphors and whatnot killed any enjoyment whatsoever.

He was gonna fix that. Pronto. She may never like algebra, but dammit, he would make her enjoy reading so they could have something to talk about. He only had a few weeks to get this girl pregnant with proof, and it would be harder to do if he couldn’t talk to her.

And the first book Trey was going to coach her through was Elmer Gantry.

---

6

THE MASSIVE CIRCUS tent was packed. Squished between Mother and Trey, Marina was hot, sticky, and utterly miserable. While she appreciated the excuse for close contact with Trey, it was more than offset by the hot and sticky part.

Her trousers were midweight for fall and early spring, but this April was unseasonably warm. Even if it were ten below, all the people here would make coats unnecessary. Not for the first time, she wished she were allowed to wear the light and floaty dresses Dot got to wear. In fact, Dot’s mother required her to wear dresses to church. Any church. And her mother didn’t care if almost every other woman in Reverend Scarritt’s congregation dressed in trousers.

Marina was breathless sitting so closely to Trey, and she didn’t have to look into his cold blue eyes to know he was taking in every inch of her homely face and hair. She wanted to stare right back into that pretty face and golden hair and lovely smile that made her heart race every time he flashed it at her.

He could afford to be somewhat bold in assessing her because he was a man. A boy would blush and stammer and look away. Marina was expected to blush and stammer and look away, which was precisely what Trey made her do. So sitting beside him was easier than sitting across from him.

Doing so at supper would have been agony just for that, but, worse, Father had picked at Trey about every little thing as if he were lying about who he was when anybody could see Trey was exactly who he said he was.

Marina was so embarrassed, she’d kept her head down all through the meal and escaped to the kitchen as soon as possible. Normally, Father would ask her about her studies and to account for her marks because, quite frankly, she was terrible at school. Father was getting impatient and she had to find some way to improve them. That discussion wouldn’t have embarrassed her. Trey would have found out the extent of her struggles and offered to help her.

Her next chance to bring her math grade up was Thursday and she hoped she could remember what Trey had taught her. She’d done well on her homework, shocking her teacher, who had demanded she stay after class to demonstrate her swift and miraculous comprehension.

“Marina,” Trey whispered in her ear. It startled her that his mouth was so close to her face. “You don’t look a thing like your parents.”

She was surprised he hadn’t blurted that out the second he met her parents. Most people did. She finally looked at him, his mouth now a suitable distance from her face. She thought. She didn’t know. “Everyone says so,” she said simply. “Father says I must be a throwback.”

“Hm. They’re a lot older than parents of a girl your age.”

She nodded. “They didn’t think they could ever have children. I was a miracle baby. Like Samuel.”

“Ah.”

Her brow wrinkled. “You do know that story, don’t you?”

His mouth twitched. “I know my Bible lessons, yes.”

The service began with a rousing band and choir, tambourines and joyful voices belting praises to the Lord. Marina and Dot rose with everyone else. Trey followed. The congregation raised their hands high and began to sway like kelp in the ocean. Mother and Marina did not participate. She didn’t know why Mother didn’t, but Marina didn’t because she was not spiritually gifted, which was a source of great sorrow for Father. Dot didn’t, of course. Trey didn’t, either.

Marina turned her head just enough to study him without detection and was surprised to see him tense. Uncomfortable. He’d said he was looking for a church whose preacher sent the Spirit through him, to move him to repentance. Was this the first revival he’d ever been to?

Well, Dot had been uncomfortable her first few times too. She went to church faithfully but, she explained, her services were quiet with congregational singing. They had an organ, that was all. It was Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday nights when they were loud and had entertainments that weren’t church services. Dot simply saw Marina’s church services as an entertainment, which …

Marina scowled. That hurt. But if Dot didn’t come to church with Marina, Marina’s father wouldn’t allow her to run with Dot at all. Maybe, just maybe, Marina should consider Dot’s presence a gift and be grateful for it.

She lifted her voice in praise when it was time. So did Dot, who loved to sing but couldn’t carry a tune, which knocked Marina off her notes. Trey didn’t sing, but maybe he didn’t know the words. She bent clear over and snatched a hymnal out from under her folding chair, then offered it to him.

He took it with a bare glance and nod of thanks, then looked up at the hymn board before flipping to the page.

Father came out to great fanfare, as always looking resplendent in his long white frock and green knee-length cowl embroidered with the cross.

All went quiet. He bowed his head. Marina and Dot did too. Trey did. Then the prayer began. It was long, his voice rising and falling with the Spirit’s touch. To her great shame, she found herself not listening. She was thinking about Trey. And her school marks. And Trey. And her math test tomorrow. And Trey. And if he could also help her with her English assignment. And civics. He couldn’t help her with P.E., and she had home ec licked six ways from Sunday.

She hesitated to ask him if he would come to Kresge’s tomorrow, but she had an English test Monday and—

Oh, who was she kidding? She wanted him to come because he was paying attention to her, he seemed to like her, and he was going out of his way to court her properly. Even though she had wanted a suitor so badly, if she didn’t like him, she wouldn’t be squirming with excitement that he was here.

It saddened her that he thought they might not get along, but it was only logical. Girls and boys broke up all the time because they stopped being able to get along. The only thing she could do was to accept the possibility and enjoy him now.

“We praise you Father in Jesus’ name amen.”

The preaching began. It wasn’t much different from the prayer, only louder, more intense. Softer, more urgent. He called people to repentance and, weeping, they stumbled up the aisle to the altar, fell on their knees and re-dedicated themselves to Jesus. He called upon the sick and crippled, the blind and deaf.

They healed and walked, saw and heard. Marina was always in awe of how God worked miracles through Father’s hand. She sneaked another peek at Trey, who seemed just as awestruck.

“Brother Trey!” Father boomed, startling Marina, Dot, and Mother. Trey’s jaw dropped. Marina’s father was looking directly at him, holding his hand out. “We have a seeker in our midst, Brothers and Sisters!” Father roared, closing his hand and strolling away to the other side of the stage. “A young man seeking God, seeking repentance, who has not had God’s grace visited upon him in quite a while and misses it. That, Brothers and Sisters, is a man of God, knowing His grace, having felt the Spirit, but unable to recapture it because no other congregation has stirred him! Shall we stir him with God’s Holy Spirit? Say amen!”

Amen!

Someone broke out in song, a deep voice. The choir picked it up. The band followed. The congregation—at least four hundred people—fell in behind.

“Come, Brother Trey!” Father bellowed over the music. He was strolling leisurely back toward them, looking at Trey. Trey looked back with an odd expression on his face Marina supposed was God working within him.

He took a deep breath, his chest expanding, and stepped forward to the altar where he dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

Marina clasped her hands to her breast and nearly cried with joy. The congregation saw and the music swelled to ear-splitting.

Trey had found his church home.

With Marina.

---

7

TREY STALKED INTO 1520 at two in the morning as livid as he had ever been in his entire life. With one direct challenge as to Trey’s intentions with Marina, Scarritt had put him on his knees. It had been a humiliating show of obeisance Scarritt demanded and Trey wanted 1520 so badly he did it, which made him as much of a whore as his gigolos, on his knees in front of Scarritt figuratively sucking his cock, Scarritt looking at him with a calm smirk of satisfaction.

Now Trey had a very good idea why Boss Tom hated him so much he was willing to hand 1520 over to Trey, and Trey didn’t need to know particulars. He also now knew why Boss Tom thought getting Marina pregnant would wipe that fucking smirk right off his face.

And Trey was more than willing to comply because he couldn’t justify murdering that son of a bitch.

Not yet anyway.

“You’re late,” Vern said as Trey stalked by the bar. The place was packed to the rafters and the band was jamming, and it still wasn’t nearly as loud as it was in that fucking tent.

“I got Jesufied,” Trey snarled, ready to snap anybody’s neck.

Vern’s eyebrow rose. “Already?”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘Already?’”

“Scarritt’s gonna put you through hell, makin’ sure you know who’s boss.”

That snapped the remaining thread on Trey’s temper. “Goddammit!” he roared, putting his fist through the mahogany bar top. Trying to anyway. “Motherfucking son of a goddamned bitch,” Trey swore with the pain that exploded through his knuckles and arm so hard he sprouted tears.

Vern looked at him calmly. “How are you going to explain a broken hand to Scarritt, nice insurance salesman like you? Had to use your right hand?”

“I’m left-handed, you motherfucker! An’ it ain’t broke! Get back to work!”

Could this night get any worse? He stalked halfway to the stairs before turning right back around and snatching a bottle of whisky off the backbar. “Get Ethel to my office. I know she’s not doing anything!”

He snatched a brick of ice out of the brand-new freezer before going up to his mezzanine office, then dropped himself on his divan. He laboriously opened his bottle and tipped it up, drinking a quarter of it in one swig and grimacing at the heat racing down the back of his throat.

“God, you’re pathetic when you lose,” Ethel sneered, from the doorway, cloth wraps in her hand.

Of course she’d know. “Battle, not the war. Shut up and strap my hand.”

She folded her legs to sit on the floor in front of him, and they were silent as she worked, carefully weaving tweed strips in and around his fingers like a boxer, then over his knuckles.

“This may surprise you,” Ethel said quietly, startling him, “but I want you to win that bet.”

That sure as hell did surprise him. “Whatta you care?”

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do if you lose?”

“If I win, things go on as normal except I’ll have to pay Boss Tom for protection. If I lose, things go on as normal. If I don’t get her pregnant at all, then I’m gonna have some problems.”

Her lashes fluttered up. “What?”

“Getting her pregnant was an order,” he muttered. “Getting it done in two months was the bet.”

Ethel’s mouth pursed into an O. She looked a little peaked, to boot. “How do you plan to do that? You need access and she’s a preacher’s daughter and she wears trousers and she’s sixteen and you’re twenty-four … Unless her daddy’s jake with his kid courting so young, you won’t get any chances at all.”

“Ethel, as God as my witness, I have no idea how to get in her trousers.”

“Well, you do have a knack for getting in a good girl’s drawers—”

“I have never gotten in a good girl’s draws.”

“No, because you dump them as soon as they say yes. I think you’re something else for doing that, but now you have to.”

It was the have to that made it an unattractive endeavor. “She’s buttoned up tighter than your ordinary good girl.”

She bent back to his hand. “It’s not just you. It’s all of us. If you go down, we all do.”

“This is not the only whorehouse in the city.”

“No, but it is the only whorehouse in the city where we’re treated with a little bit of respect, with the only pimp in town who makes sure of it.”

Trey shrugged. “That’s life, doll.”

“Trey,” she tried again while she knotted the ends and sat back to look him square in the face, “this is our home.”

It was his, too. It was the only home he’d had since his father died and he loved it. “I am the most selfish cat in town. Why’d you think I’d do it for you?”

She scowled. “Boss Tom gave you an order. You save yourself, you save us.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re hintin’ around I goose her along a little bit, that ain’t an option.”

“Ask me, it’s the only way you’re gonna get it done in time,” came Vern’s crackly voice from the doorway. “Little bit in a sodypop, she’ll never know. Need three cases of gin tomorrow.”

Trey opened his mouth to give his old wizened bartender a good dressing-down, but he’d vanished. “Don’t you learn anything watching shit that goes down here every night?” he demanded of Ethel.

“I wasn’t hinting and I wouldn’t like it, but if you get stuck … You told me once if you had a soul, you’d sell it to the devil to own this place.”

“Why are you so goddamned sure I won’t be able to do this on my own?”

“I’m thinking about what-ifs,” she said testily, smacking his injured hand.

“Goddammit,” he hissed.

“Which you didn’t do before you made that bet.”

Trey sighed heavily. “A’ight, what got your draws in a twist?”

“Solly Weissman was here with his boys tonight.”

Immediately disturbed, Trey rubbed his mouth and chin. “Shit,” he whispered.

Solly “Cutcherheadoff” Weissman was Boss Tom’s personal bodyguard and Trey had no personal need to kill the cat even though he deserved it for various things. Nobody in town wanted to deal with him. He was one of the cats who hit up the speaks with a race wire to get the results of any given race before the bets were called. Solly was a big guy, six-four or thereabouts and at least three hundred pounds, and everyone was so intimidated they gave him what he wanted.

Trey didn’t run a race wire for that very reason, so why had Solly suddenly popped up at 1520? It couldn’t be to keep an eye on Trey for Boss Tom; Solly wasn’t that smart and the bet was only two days old.

“Ran up a tab they didn’t pay, said something about being on the house, wanted Alice, but she knew he wouldn’t pay so whatever she said to him got him to back off quick.”

“You think he found out about the bet?”

“He said some things that make us think he did. If so, it’ll be all over town by Saturday.”

The more Trey thought about the situation, the more he realized how deep in hot water he’d gotten himself. Trey didn’t gamble against the house but somehow he’d managed to fuck up when it mattered most. Why? Because Boss Tom had something Trey wanted.

And that had been Trey’s fatal mistake: coveting someone else’s racket instead of taking his money and building his own somewhere away from the Machine. Just like Seamus Byrne. He’d gotten caught by his own greed in spite of his intentions.

“She’s not completely disgusting, is she?” Ethel asked.

Trey shook his head. “She’s my type. Little younger than I’d like but she’s got some smarts up under that bun that she doesn’t know are there. Daddy doesn’t know they’re there, either, or else he doesn’t care.”

“Oh, that’s peachy. Propose.”

“Condition of the bet was that marrying her wasn’t going to qualify as winning.”

“You don’t have to marry her. You just have to propose. You’d get access as a fiancé that you wouldn’t get as a suitor.”

He grimaced. “Not sure if he’ll count that as cheating, and if he thinks he might lose he might accuse me of it.”

“Oh.”

They sat there and looked at each other, Trey and Ethel, the way they had when Ethel had told him she was tired of waitressing and was moving upstairs, which would mean the end of sharing the divan. It wasn’t a painful memory; in fact, Trey barely remembered when he and Ethel had been lovers. But Ethel had been with him a long time and he could see why she might fear her life being upended because Trey was a stupid shit.

“How’s Ida working out?” he muttered, looking away first.

“Good,” she said with some measure of surprise. “She’s a good girl. Quiet. Does a good job. So far.”

“A’ight, get back to work.”

“‘Why, thank you, Ethel,’” she sneered.

“Why, thank you, Ethel,” he sneered in return as she huffed out of his office on a whiff of perfume.

The door slammed and Trey hung his head between his knees. “God almighty, what have I done?” he whispered, then attempted to get stinking drunk.

---

8

MARINA WAS SHOCKED when Trey appeared at Kresge’s the next day. “What happened?” she breathed in horror, looking at his bandaged right hand.

“I’m a little bit too embarrassed to say, Marina,” he said sheepishly.

“That looks painful,” Dot said with a small grimace.

“It is,” he affirmed, “which is why I need a lime rickey to wash down some aspirin.”

Marina slid over immediately and patted the seat, which he took with a nod of thanks. “How was your test today?” he asked her.

She gasped a little. “Oh! It was hard,” she began, “but I took my time and tried to remember what you taught me. I don’t know what marks I’ll get but I’m hoping for an S.”

Trey nodded approvingly.

“How’d you find revival last night?” Dot asked Trey with no sarcasm.

Trey seemed to perk up a bit and said, “Good, good. I may be able to settle in.”

Marina’s heart sank. “May?”

Trey looked at her and said gently, “I can re-dedicate my life to Jesus anywhere, anytime. I can do it at night when I get on my knees to pray. I don’t need a preacher to help me speak to God.”

Marina’s brow wrinkled because that was wrong.

“That’s what we believe,” Dot said softly. Marina looked across the table at Dot, who wasn’t looking at Trey, but at Marina. “He’s Pentecostal and he thinks that, too.”

“Methodist,” he corrected. “But no protestant church says you have to go through a preacher to get to God.”

“Father prays for me!” Marina protested.

“Well, good fathers should pray for their children.” That wasn’t what she meant, but— He glanced at Dot to include her in the conversation, then back to Marina. “I’m looking for a church to make my own and a preacher I can talk to when I have theological questions. I don’t need anybody to intercede for me.”

Marina tried again, even though he had taken the conversation so far above her head she felt like she had Tuesday. “My father says the man is the head of the household and God speaks to him for his wife and children.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Dot put in. Marina looked at her warily because now it felt like Dot and Trey were ganging up on her about things they thought Marina didn’t quite understand. “God tells the man how to serve his family, not—”

“Serve?” Marina interrupted. “That’s the woman’s job.”

Dot huffed. “It’s everybody’s job. Everybody serves each other!”

“But—”

“Hold up, there, ladies,” Trey said smoothly. Marina flushed. She’d forgotten he was there. “Is this a perennial argument?”

“A what?” Dot asked.

“Yes,” Marina told Trey, then told Dot. “Perennial argument. One that keeps popping up all the time. Like gardening. You know. Perennials, annuals.”

“Ohhhhhh,” Dot replied, sitting back and letting it be, but clearly not happy about it.

Trey cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to be the cause of one. Marina, I’ll be happy to come to your church for as long as we’re keeping company. Some churches just have to be gotten used to.”

“You’re Methodist?” Dot asked and Trey nodded. “So your services are pretty quiet.” Again he nodded. “Have you ever been to a Pentecostal church before?”

“Ah, no,” he said with a wry laugh.

“It’s different,” she said sagely, and again, Marina felt left out. Stupid. Childish.

“As long as I can sit by Marina, I think I can get into the swing of it.”

Marina glanced at him to gauge his sincerity, but now he was soberly studying the menu card.

“Trey.”

All three of them looked up and Marina’s mouth dropped open.

“Gene Luke!” Trey exclaimed in delight and hopped up to shake his hand, then withdrew it with a pained grimace. “Apologies. What brings you by?”

Mr. Luke was possibly the most handsome man Marina had ever seen, with black hair, brown eyes, and light olive complexion. He’d turn any girl’s head and that included a girl whose head had been turned two days before by someone else. He was dressed as finely as Trey, which, along with his coloring, would ordinarily make Marina think he was Sicilian.

Father had frequently lectured on the evils of Sicilians, who brought Satan with them wherever they went, along with guns, liquor, and girls. Marina wasn’t quite sure what was wrong with them bringing their families, but she didn’t dare ask. Father tolerated Dot’s place in Marina’s life. He would not tolerate a Sicilian anywhere near Marina.

But with a name like Gene Luke, he most definitely wasn’t. Gene Luke was also not comfortable at having caught Trey’s attention, and his sober expression was not inviting.

“Ladies,” Trey said cheerfully, “this is my associate, Gene Luke. Gene, that is Miss Marina Scarritt and that is Miss Dorothy Albright.”

Gene inclined his head. “Miss Scarritt,” he said, his voice as sober as his expression. “Miss Albright.”

Marina and Dot traded wary glances then murmured their hellos. Marina noted that Dot wasn’t her bright and bubbly self, which meant she was as wary of this man as Marina was, which might bother her more if she hadn’t been just as wary of Trey two days ago. Now they were chatting about religion as if they were friends.

“Hey, join us!” Trey said, clapping his uninjured hand on Gene’s shoulder and practically pushing him into the seat next to Dot, who scooted toward the wall so fast she knocked the napkin holder over with her elbow. “Careful there, Dorothy. Sodas and onion rings. On me.”

“Uhhhh … ” Gene said with the faintest glare at Trey.

Marina didn’t know about this. Dot was uncharacteristically quiet and withdrawn. Dot’s cheeks were a little flushed and she wouldn’t look at Gene. “Dot, why don’t you come over here and sit with me so Trey and Gene can sit together?”

Dot started. “No, no!” she said brightly. “Trey, you stay there with Marina. I, um, I … ” Marina had never seen her so discombobulated and she didn’t like it. Dot mumbled, “Um, hi. Gene. Nice to meet you.” Oh, of course. Sitting next to Gene meant she didn’t have to look at him.

“Likewise you, Miss Albright,” he mumbled in return, barely glancing at her. This was not normal male behavior around Dot, as he clearly did not want to be here at all, much less sitting next to her.

“So! Gene!” Dot said with fake gaiety that Marina didn’t like. “What do you do?” Even if Dot hated a boy, she wouldn’t be mean. She wouldn’t ignore him. But she wouldn’t go to any extra trouble to be sociable. This was altogether something different.

“I work for Trey, Miss Albright,” he stiffly replied with an accent that sounded familiar, but unplaceable. Again Marina and Dot traded glances.

“He’s one of my salesmen,” Trey clarified as he gestured for their waitress. None of them spoke while Trey ordered for Marina and Dot and himself, then gestured to Gene, who said,

“Vanilla phosphate, please.”

“Anything to eat, sweetie, or are you sharing the basket?” the waitress asked in a suspiciously flirtatious voice.

Gene’s mouth tightened a little. Dot stiffened a little. He didn’t look up at the woman. “No. Thank you.”

“Hrmph,” she sniffed, then sauntered off.

Dot was staring at her hands, which were working a napkin over, and Gene looked like he was about to bolt for the door.

“Marina,” Trey drawled. “Do I see the latest Agatha Christie sticking out of your handbag?”

“Oh!” she said, twisting to get it, suddenly feeling very much in cahoots with Trey to save a sour social situation. Why he didn’t let Gene go she didn’t know, but since Gene worked for Trey, he wasn’t going to leave no matter how much he wanted to. “Not the latest one, no. The librarian said it was due in later this year.”

“And you’re just now getting around to reading last year’s?”

“I’m re-reading it. For the third time. I’m picking out all the clues so maybe someday I can solve one of them before the villain is revealed.”

Trey gave her a surprised look. Then he nodded his head as if he were truly impressed. “But if you do, they won’t be any fun.”

“Oh sure they will!” she said, delighted at his response. “The fun would be figuring it out and seeing if I was right.”

He winked at her. “I like the way you think.”

“Ahem.” Dot cleared her throat and said at the space between herself and Gene, “I need to … um … powder my nose. If you could … ”

“Oh, of course,” Gene said immediately, scrambling to allow Dot out of the booth and standing well away from her. “Ah, Trey,” he said as Dot disappeared toward the back. “I have a client to meet at—” He took his pocket watch out. “Five.”

“Don’t let me keep you,” Trey said affably.

He hurried out the door, snatching his fedora from the front hat rack as he went, the bells jangling behind him, which left Marina and Trey alone.

There was no buffer now, and Marina’s heart started to race. Her mouth went dry. Her ears started to buzz.

“Hi,” Trey murmured.

Marina turned her head and tried to look into his eyes, but she couldn’t move them away from the knot in his tie. “Hi?”

He nudged against her. “You know I like you, right?”

Her eyes flew to his. “Why?” she blurted. She might have been embarrassed but she really wanted to know.

“You’re interesting,” he replied promptly. “I like interesting girls.”

“I’m not very smart.”

He smiled softly and reached up to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. “I told you. Everybody’s smart in their own way.”

She waved a hand at Dot’s place. “She’s smart. In every way.”

“You had to explain ‘perennial argument’ to her.”

Marina blinked. “Um … oh.”

“Maybe,” he said, his voice softer and deeper now, “she’s a numbers person and you’re a words person.”

Marina huffed, her nervousness gone, replaced by irritation. “If I were a words person, I wouldn’t be getting an M in literature. And I’m definitely not a math person or I wouldn’t have an I.”

“You read a lot, then?”

“Yes,” she sighed with resignation. “It’s one of my favorite things to do. It seems I can’t stop long enough to do what I’m supposed to.”

“Mm hmm,” he hummed slyly.

Marina felt her face heat up with her admission and his little bitty tease. “It’s the themes and symbols and motifs I don’t understand.”

“Moteefs,” he mused. “You’re reading a mystery for the third time to pick out the author’s patterns. Anybody who does that understands those things without having to be told, but you’re confused by the terms. The theme is the moral of the story. Agatha Christie’s theme is usually that the villain makes mistakes, so if you don’t want to get caught, cover your tracks. Motifs are the same things popping up over and over again, the patterns you’re trying to pick out. The symbols are the clues that help Detective P—the detective—solve the mystery. If he sees a ring, it reminds him of something different he saw. They’re not related, but in his mind they are.”

Marina studied him in awe that he knew so much and understood how to teach her. “How can you be a numbers person and a words person?” she blurted.

He shrugged. “I read a lot. Everything. But in my line of work, I had to learn how to be a numbers person if I was going to be any good at it. I taught you what I was taught.”

That made sense.

“So what are you studying right now? In English?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and sulked. She should be embarrassed, but she wasn’t. Nobody cared if a girl was smart if she was pretty, but Marina wasn’t even pretty. “A Tale of Two Cities,” she muttered.

“Hey, that’s a great book! It only seems like a drag because it’s an assignment, but sometimes they pick really good stuff. You have to read it like you picked it, like you want to read it so you can have some fun at the same time.”

She scowled. “Really? Well, what’s it about?”

“Your teacher’s going to tell you all sorts of things about the French Revolution and what this means and what that means and yes, themes and symbols and all that, but if you’re reading it to pick those out for a test, you’re not going to like it. But that’s not what the story is about. So I’ll tell you it’s about two cats and a girl. One cat’s rich and nice. The other’s a lawyer and a lout. They’re both in love with her. And the story is which one she picks and why and what happens to the other one. The moral of the story—the theme—is what happens to the other one and how he got there and why he made the decisions he made.”

She blinked. “Really?”

He nodded sagely. “But I’m not going to tell you that part because you should read it to find out.”

“She picks the rich one.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Is that who you’d pick?”

“I’d pick nice over lout.”

“What if you’re in love with both of them?”

Marina gave him a haughty look. “No decent girl can be in love with a lout.”

His smile started to appear. “’Zat so? But how can you tell?”

“I’d be able to tell if you were a lout,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“What if—and this is just a what-if, mind you— What if they were both nice but had different ways of showing it?”

She scowled at him. “That doesn’t make any sense. You can tell the difference between the ways nice men show that they’re nice.”

“There are a lot of ways for a lout to prove he’s nice, although sometimes it doesn’t look like what you might think of as nice.”

“Like for example?”

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘cruel to be kind’?”

“Well, of course, but I don’t remember where it’s from.”

“Hamlet. Shakespeare.”

She nodded. “I see what you mean, then. The girl lives her life thinking he’s a lout, but he wasn’t really but she’ll never know.”

“Exactly. And the lout lives the rest of his life without her.”

“Is that what happens in this book?”

“I am not going to tell you,” he said archly, making her smile. “That’s cheating.”

“Is it cheating to trick me into wanting to read the book?”

He winked at her again. “Cruel to be kind.”

Marina laughed. “I don’t believe you could ever be cruel.”

His eyebrow rose and he gave her a wicked grin. “You think?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“Miss Scarritt, you must truly be a daughter of God, to have that kind of faith in a man you just met.”

---

9

TREY WAS BARELY able to duck the fist that came at him when he walked out of the bathroom later that night.

“You son of a bitch!” Gio bellowed.

Trey continued to comb his hair without missing a beat. “Cute, ain’t she? Told you she was.”

“You set me up!”

“No,” Trey replied calmly, leading the way downstairs and into his mezzanine office, trying to figure out how to pronounce Poirot now that he knew how to pronounce motif. Gio slammed the door behind him. “I need you to get that little bitch off my back while I get Marina into bed. I promised you a sweet payday if I won the bet, and you’ve done worse things to make money.”

That brought Gio up short. “Bitch?”

“God, yes. She’s got me pegged sideways an’ her soft little puppy teeth been diggin’ inna my heels. The last thing I need is for her fangs to get any longer or sharper and start diggin’ inna my ass.”

Gio curled his lip in confusion. “Uh … are we talking about the same girl? Dot? Albright? Blondie?”

“Yes,” Trey sighed, knowing there was a lot wrong with this conversation, but not what and no time or energy to figure it out.

“She was climbing the wall to get away from me.”

“And you were hanging off the edge of the booth to get away from her.” Trey was done with this conversation. “You’ve got a new client who asked for you by name. Mrs. Cohasset. She’ll be here around nine, so go get your glad rags on.”

“Another one,” Gio groaned, turning. “I’d rather fuck that cocksucker Heyse.”

“Because you like getting your cock sucked,” Trey pointed out, “and none of your female clients will pay to do it when their husbands make ’em do it at home. So I guess,” he continued slyly, “the real question is how badly do you wanna get outta this racket and out of your uncle’s reach? Enough to keep a very pretty, cynical, and vicious Mormon girl occupied while I seduce her best gal? I’m not even askin’ you to kiss her, much less seduce her. Just distract her. Shit, take her to Woolworth’s and do algebra together—”

“I don’t know algebra.”

“I cannot have her daddy on my ass, you see what I’m sayin’?”

Gio took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I want out of here completely, Trey. Out of the racket, out of this town, out of the country if I must, but alive and well and gone because it’s only a matter of time before someone finds me. I don’t have enough cash to do that yet and find a living that does not include killing or fucking.”

“Boss Tom ain’t gonna put up with outsiders in this town. Lazia already told Capone to keep his troublemaking in Chicago, ’cuz his kind ain’t welcome here. The New York families are too preoccupied with killing each other to care what’s happening here.”

“I don’t think you understand how ruthless my uncle is. It was bad enough I botched the job—”

“On purpose.”

“—but then ran instead of facing him like a man.”

“A dead man.”

“I wasn’t going to kill a man with his little girl right there watching, much less screaming at me not to hurt her daddy, which meant I would have to kill her too, to keep her mouth shut.”

“In other words, you are not a dependable assassin.”

“I was.”

Until that little girl had pulled Gio’s humanity from the pit of his belly and showed it to him. And how did the not-dead daddy repay him? It had gotten around New York what a spineless coward Giuseppe “the Clutch Hand” Morello’s hitman nephew was, at which point Morello iced the man himself.

Gio might have gotten killed for genuinely botching a hit, but he might not have. Humiliating Morello carried a death sentence, and the bounty on Gio’s head was high. It would occur to him that Gio would fall in with bootleggers, but it would never occur to him that Gio would take up whoring. Gio didn’t think he was good for much else, but Trey had stopped arguing about what he could be good at if he thought about the future and had a little faith in himself.

“Clear that brat outta my path to Marina long enough for me to get her knocked up and I will set you up with enough money to go wherever it is you wanna go.” When Gio didn’t move and the glower on his face hadn’t faded, Trey said, “What.”

“Not enough.”

“Whattaya mean, that’s not enough? It’s a fair trade. More than, stacked up against each other.”

Gio leaned over the desk and got in Trey’s face. “Do you plan to conduct this courtship entirely at a soda fountain after school over homework and Wednesday nights speaking in tongues?”

“No,” Trey said archly, putting his hand on Gio’s face and shoving him back. “I have activities planned because unlike you, I am used to dating nice girls.”

“Activities,” Gio said flatly, flopping into one of Trey’s cushy chairs.

“Yeah, you know. Look.” He handed Gio the paper on which he’d made lists and lines and arrows and boxes.

Gio’s expression faded into confusion. “The library?”

“Girl’s a reader,” Trey said, his excitement burgeoning for a completely different reason.

Gio curled his lip. “No wonder you like her. They both stink of bluestocking. Baseball?”

“She needs to have some real fun else she’s gonna get tired of me before I can get in her trousers then I’mma have to make noises about marriage and whatnot. And you know what Vern thinks I should do?”

“Brody and Alice thought it was a good idea too.”

“And?”

“And I said I’d kill anybody who spiked an innocent.”

Trey nodded approvingly. “You’ll have a whole soul in no time, and I betcha Dot could help you pull all those bits and pieces together.”

Gio scowled. “I’m going to hell. Don’t need to drag a nice girl with me.”

With all the bodies under Gio’s belt, he probably was going to go to hell— “Hey, now, wait a minute. Can’t you go to confession? Be absolved of all that?”

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t. My luck, some priest would send it back to New York and then I’d be knocking on Satan’s door without last rites.”

“Isn’t there something where that’s a sin? Reveal what’s said in a confessional?”

“Priests can be bought. Speaking of priests—” Then Gio too suggested Trey work up to a proposal or at least close to one. “Making noises isn’t the same as making promises.”

“To Boss Tom it would be,” Trey said darkly, irritated. “I said one thing to her once that could be taken that way just to bait the hook, but if he thinks he can welsh on a technicality after I’d done what he wanted, he might do it.”

“Closing up loopholes,” Gio murmured absently, looking at the list.

“Yeah, I gotta play this straight, otherwise I’d have a ring on that girl’s finger right now, plan the wedding for a coupla years from now and then poof. One baby, no groom.”

Gio’s mouth pursed, then he looked at Trey. “Does Lazia know about this?”

“That’s Boss Tom’s problem, not mine.”

“It will be if Lazia suddenly wants a nice speakeasy.”

“Lucarelli,” Trey burst out, “he runs the North side. I run this little bitty bit right here. All I want’s to own this little bitty bit right here so I can sell the fucker. If he wants to buy it, that’s jake.”

“And what would you do after that?” Gio mocked. “Sell insurance?”

“Yeah,” he drawled. “Sure, why not.”

Gio looked back at the list. “Fairyland. Never been there. Moving pictures. Picnics. Fishing. Preachers’ girls go fishing?”

“Not them,” Trey said. “Marina ain’t the only one I gotta seduce. Albright lets Dot run half wild an’ obviously he has good reason to trust her, although I wouldn’t if I were her daddy, looker like ’at. Scarritt’s the one with the stick up his ass. The way to get to him is baseball, fishin’, and huntin’, which I swore I’d never do again, but here I am.”

“That is not what will get his attention. Baseball, probably, but fishing and hunting, no. Golf. Tennis. Gentlemen’s clubs. Boxing. Try that.”

So Scarritt’s books on skeet shooting and racing had told Trey exactly what he thought they’d said.

“Aside from the fact that I can’t golf or play tennis—”

“No. Listen. Men like that don’t want to do things regular folks do. They want to be somebody, feel important. Look how he’s built his congregation. At least five hundred people raising Cain every Sunday, like he’s the new messiah. He’s got that thing, what popular folks have—”

“Charisma.”

“—down pat and his tent revival’s popular enough for us to take a hit. He’s Jesus’s version of a mob boss and he’s got something you want so you’re dancing on his strings. He knows that, only he doesn’t know why.”

“Goddammit,” Trey muttered, his face in his hands and his elbows on his desk.

“Men like Scarritt want a seat at the wealthy man’s table in society.”

“He doesn’t seem like the type to mingle with Pendergast or Lazia, and they’re not accepted in Kansas City high society, anyway.”

“He doesn’t want a seat at the Machine or Mafia table. He doesn’t even want a seat at Nelson’s table. He wants a seat at Rockefeller’s table. He can’t get that, so he built his own table.”

And Gio didn’t think he was good enough to sit at anybody’s table, no matter how lowly.

“Hey, you jake with fuckin’ men?” Trey asked, for once genuinely curious.

Gio shrugged. “That’s where the money is, isn’t it? But that’s like asking me if I’d rather eat solid turds or drink the runs straight out of somebody’s ass.”

“You could just try to go straight again and dig ditches. Disappear into the prairie, settle down with a nice girl.”

Gio said nothing for a moment. “Thought about it,” he muttered. “But, Trey … Here, I have hope I can get out because I got some cash stashed to leave. I’d never be able to pay for more than my next meal digging ditches and forget about feeding a family.”

“The moral of the story is that crime does pay.”

That made Gio laugh in spite of himself. “And hopefully Boss Tom and Lazia won’t get a whiff of me when they go to Atlantic City.”

The big shindig of all the country’s crime bosses was next month. If Morello got to bitching at either Pendergast or Lazia about his runaway hitman, it might not be long before one of them put the pieces together, provided either of them had ever paid attention to Trey’s employees.

“They ain’t gonna hand you over even if they did know who you were and that you’re here. They’d want you doing what you were doing in New York. So, Dot? You gonna help me or not? Enough cash so you can run all the way out to California if you need to.”

Gio sighed. “Man, I just want to find a nice girl to settle down with who won’t know anything about this—”

Trey caught something in Gio’s voice. Trey felt that way every time he thought about his inability to offer for 1520 without tipping his hand about where he got the cash. It was longing, soul-deep and painful. Trey had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted this speak and now it was within his grasp.

So Gio wanted a nice girl the same way Trey wanted 1520. He’d never known that.

Gio wasn’t going to get what he wanted. Not in this town, at least. Not in Chicago or New York, certainly. Not when the only nice girls he knew were the Catholic ones in his family’s sphere and the only other women he knew were here. Nice girls didn’t come here and loose women weren’t here to get married and have babies.

So perhaps it was no wonder Gio was pissed at Trey for introducing him to a nice girl who would never suspect who he was, where he came from, or what he did now. And if a sweet Mormon girl with some worldly savvy ever found out, it would crush Gio in ways his family and whoring hadn’t managed to do.

“All right,” Trey grumbled. “I get your point about Dot. I’ll pay you and give you a bonus on the back end. Do somethin’ about your Brooklyn accent ’cuz ‘Gene Luke’ ain’t gonna pass with the way you talk.”

“They did not notice my accent.”

“It was loud as hell to my ears, and it won’t be long before they hear it. Or else they did and were too polite to let on.”

“I’ve done as well as I can by myself.”

Trey grunted.

“And I’m not working. Not in bed, I mean. Not as long as I have to be around this girl.”

“What?!” Trey roared.

“She’s clean. Pure, you know? I don’t want my filth to rub off on her.”

“She’s unclean enough to know we’re not on the up’n’up.”

Gio shrugged nonchalantly. “Knowing and participating are two different things and that girl’s too stubborn to be seduced. I like that. I can practice on being respectable—just like you—with a girl I don’t want, but is the kind of girl I want. And I don’t want to have to come back here and fuck three people after every innocent little outing we just went to.” He crumpled Trey’s list into a ball and shot it into the waste bin. “Peanuts and Crackerjacks in the afternoon with two sweet girls, sticking my dick into some old, fat broad or her husband that night. No. No fucking way.”

“If she don’t know,” Trey said testily, reaching into the waste bin and digging his list out, “then what difference does it make?”

“Yes or no. I keep Dot off your back, I keep my room and board, and I get a paid vacation. I’ll go back to work when you win. If you win. And if you do, I will also get one hundred percent of my tips, and then I won’t mind working so much. You’ll have the dough whether you win or not because Tom’s not going sell and if you win, you don’t have to fork it over.”

Trey was flabbergasted. “You just said it yourself! You don’t know how to do anything else and make this much cash!”

“Exactly. I make too much money for you to fire me if I’m going back to work in two months. So take it or leave it.”

Trey’s main male earner was not going to be earning for two months. He was going to take a hit, but he had no reason to pinch pennies anymore, which was why he could afford the brand-new freezer in his kitchen.

“Not a vacation,” Trey finally said. “You maître d’ with Holly, keep an eye on things, flirt with the customers, bounce if you have to. Help watch the place so I can go be with Marina like the regular nine-to-five cat I told her I am. Especially Wednesday nights. And you move up to the bunk room with Ida so I can hire another gig.”

Gio thought for two seconds. “I can do that. And you pay for somebody to fix how I talk since you think it’s such a problem.”

First it was a housekeeper and now this. Trey hated the idea of paying somebody to do a job he already had covered, but Gio would be sitting on his ass collecting pay anyway. So he could fucking well work. He also hated having to shell out for diction lessons when Trey managed just fine by ear, but there was no way either girl’s father would let them walk out with a Sicilian. An upper-class Midwestern accent was the only thing he could do to pass as marginally Anglo-Saxon.

It was only for two months, a short-term investment for a long-term gain. Trey could be patient when he had to be, but he didn’t have to like it.

“Fine.”

---

10

“MARINA,” FATHER ASKED her Sunday morning at breakfast, “is your beau going to be at church this morning?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about it yesterday.”

“How was the ballgame?” His question surprised her. He was never interested in what she was doing, unless it involved her school marks. “You weren’t out very long, certainly not enough for a ballgame, much less a picnic.”

“I don’t really know,” Marina admitted low. “I don’t understand the game. And he brought his friend Gene, who doesn’t seem to like anything.” In fact, he seemed downright mad. It had made Dot so uncomfortable, Marina had asked Trey to take her and Dot home, claiming chores she had to do that she’d forgotten about.

“He must be bringing his friend for Dorothy,” Father said approvingly.

“He doesn’t like her.”

“It’s difficult for a man to respect a wild girl like her,” he replied gently. “Perhaps you can suggest she behave more circumspectly.”

Marina almost blurted that when Gene was around, Dot was so circumspect she turned into a shadow of herself. She didn’t flirt, didn’t look him in the eye, barely spoke to him. Gene said little more than Dot did, but—

“He acts as if he’s being paid to round us out.”

“If Trey has to pay someone to put up with Dorothy,” he said, “then he must be serious about courting you. I for one am pleased. And you, Mother?”

“I have my reservations,” Mother said shortly.

As much as Marina was envious of Dot’s ease with boys, she didn’t like this Dot at all. No life, no smiles, no … confidence. Gene sucked out everything that made Dot the girl Marina loved. She was going to have to discuss this with Trey and she didn’t want to. She dreaded it, the way she dreaded any confrontation at all.

But this was a man who was courting her. Would he stop wanting to keep company with her if she confronted him? He was her beau and she wanted to keep him that way.

It had been difficult to remember that at school Thursday and Friday because boys still flocked to Dot while looking right through Marina. Marina didn’t have a boy hanging around her at school being conspicuous about wanting her attention.

I have a beau! she wanted to scream. He’s a man not a boy and he’s MINE!

But neither she nor Dot had said anything about Trey, not to each other, not to anybody else. For one, people would think she was making up wild tales. For two, Trey was a sore point between them and Gene was going to be a bigger one.

After breakfast, Marina put her apron on over her church outfit and did the dishes, her mind in a whirl. She didn’t want to lose Trey, but what if he didn’t like her challenging him about Gene’s presence? On the other hand, she couldn’t ask Dot to tag along on their dates without a fourth because Dot didn’t like any boy enough to do the asking. She wouldn’t put up with his sense of conquest.

If Marina had to choose between Trey and Dot, she’d choose Dot.

Which made Marina very, very sad. Trey was her first beau and though Dot hadn’t ever had a beau, either, it was only because she didn’t want one.

Marina didn’t think Trey would be at church because he’d made it clear he was uncomfortable with her services and didn’t think he needed a preacher at all, except to talk theology with. Marina couldn’t remember the last time a man had come to the parsonage to discuss questions of theology with Father. There were a few women in their congregation who did but that was because, Father said, though their husbands were men of God, they could not satisfy them. The husbands were not to be blamed or judged, as every man had his strengths and weaknesses. A woman ought not be deprived of knowledge just because her husband couldn’t give it to her.

Marina could only hope that someday, Trey would want to discuss theology with Father.

Father left the parsonage about twenty minutes before Marina and Mother did.

“Are the dishes finished, Marina?”

“No, Mother,” she said as she took her apron off and folded it over the chair. “I’ll finish after church.”

“You’ll stay until you finish them,” she retorted.

Marina’s mouth dropped open. “But … ”

“Don’t argue with me. Finish them and don’t be late.”

“Um … all right,” she said weakly at Mother’s back, wondering why Mother had taken that harsh tone with her. And why she’d suddenly wanted the kitchen cleaned completely before church when that was not Marina’s routine. Mother never interfered with Marina’s cleaning routine. But now she had and Marina only had about ten minutes to finish and get to services.

She was surprised when she got to her spot on the pew to see Trey sitting with a Marina-sized space between him and Mother. His legs were crossed and he was fiddling with his fedora, looking around—

“Marina!” he said with a smile and hopped up to offer his hand.

She put hers in his, but was still so confused by Mother’s behavior that her attention was divided. She resisted when Trey tugged on her hand to look down at Mother, who sat stiffly, one leg crossed over the other, staring straight ahead.

“Mother … ”

“Did you finish the kitchen?” she asked tersely.

“Yes.”

Her mouth tightened, but she didn’t respond. Only then did Marina give her attention to Trey, who didn’t seem to have missed that. Oddly enough, he directed Marina to the spot he’d been occupying and sat between her and Mother.

“Mr. Dunham,” Mother snapped. “That is Marina’s seat. If you would be so kind … ?”

“Certainly,” he replied with alacrity, and stood, allowing Marina to slide left.

Marina and Trey had barely situated themselves before the choir and band began the service, but any delight Marina would have felt at Trey’s presence was completely snuffed out by Mother’s completely uncharacteristic behavior.

“Mother,” she whispered, “what have I done?”

“Shush, girl,” she hissed. “Don’t disrespect your father.”

Marina bit her lip and slid down an inch in the pew, folded her hands in her lap, and looked down at them until it was time to rise and praise Jesus.

The service passed in a blur, Marina unable to even enjoy Trey’s beautiful singing voice. First Dot, then Gene, now Mother, getting in the way of her enjoyment of Trey’s company. Perhaps that was why she had to remind herself she had a beau.

Sunday school was just as bad. Marina didn’t dare speak to Trey even though she needed to reassure Trey when he seemed uncomfortable. It had been the same with Dot, getting her used to the Praise the Lord!s and Hallelujah!s and Amen!s, speaking in tongues, demonstrations of the Holy Spirit working in people, and healings. Marina was quite sure Mormon and Methodist services would make her uncomfortable. If only she were allowed to visit and see for herself …

After services, when everyone gathered in Fellowship Hall for cookies and punch, Trey murmured to her, “Why are you unhappy?”

For some reason Marina didn’t know, she told him what had happened this morning and why it was distressing. Then, because he seemed to be sympathetic, she dove into the topic she dreaded.

“Dot is uncomfortable with Gene.”

“I noticed,” he said grimly. “That’s really why you wanted to go home after the third inning, isn’t it?”

Marina flushed a little but nodded. “Well I … I don’t understand baseball, to be honest. There seem to be so many little bitty things about it that I miss and— Well, anyway, I’m worried that she’s not herself around him. She’s usually so peppy.”

“If Dot doesn’t come along, you won’t go on outings with me? Or did I misunderstand?”

“Mayn’t,” she corrected. “Our parents don’t allow us to step out with boys alone. It’s just … I’m the one who usually has the pity date, which is why I don’t understand … ” She trailed off. “She wants me to have my own date who is not interested in her so we can walk out and she won’t have to worry that I’m not having fun. She may not like you, and I really don’t understand why, but she’s willing to come along so I won’t be unhappy.”

He looked surprised.

“But I don’t want to have to worry about her fun, either. So … ” Here came the bad part. “Are you … paying Gene to walk out with her?”

He looked appalled. “He’s a very proper gentleman.”

“That is not the way boys act around Dot, proper or not.”

“He’s not a boy, Marina. He’s a man. Men have different things expected of them. Nobody looks twice at a clumsy boy trying to impress a girl. But when a man, especially one with a respectable, well-paying job, asks a girl to step out, it means something. Now, it is true that I asked Gene if he would be willing to square our party the same way Dot asks her dates for you, but he doesn’t want to give Dot the wrong impression, so he goes too far the other way.”

Marina sighed, understanding completely. “My father says a real man wouldn’t put up with Dot and that he would have to be paid.”

“Even if I were paying him, would it make any difference?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling impatient but hoping she didn’t show it. “Dot is not one to take a boy—man—seriously because she is not serious. She wants to go to college and be independent. A modern woman. So even if he were serious, he’s not going to get anywhere. If you were paying him, he would need to act like he’s happy to be there and entertain Dot. That would be the job he was being paid to do, wouldn’t it?”

Trey pursed his lips. “That is a good point.”

“Maybe you should pay him so he’ll do the job right.”

“Even better point. I like the way you think,” he repeated solemnly.

She smiled a little and ducked her head. She wanted to brush that aside the way she brushed aside why he was interested in her, but the uncommon phrasing made her believe he meant that.

“Now, as for your mother, I expect she’s uncomfortable with her daughter growing up and doesn’t know what to do or how to act. I think you should just be patient with her.”

Marina nodded solemnly. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

“I’ve noticed quite a few people looking at us over here in the corner talking between us. Perhaps it’s time you introduced me?”

Yes. Yes! This handsome, Godfearing man had now come to church with Marina twice and had stayed after for socializing, and everyone wanted to know who he was. Either she had a beau or, more likely, he was a family friend and being polite.

Suddenly, Dot, Mother, and Gene didn’t seem important all.

Homely, meek, and not-very-bright Marina Scarritt had a beau and everyone would know!

---

11

“GIO!” TREY BELLOWED when he stalked into 1520 after yet another disaster with Marina.

“What!” Gio barked back at him from Trey’s table above, watching and smoking. Yes, it was only noon, but they had enough Sunday sinners to justify being open this early, and Trey’s assistant day manager had Sundays off. The only reason Trey didn’t kill Gio right then, witnesses be damned, was because he wasn’t sitting in Trey’s chair.

Trey bounded up the stairs and slapped the back of Gio’s head then dropped in his own seat. “Goddammit, you completely fucked up yesterday.”

Gio glared at him. “We already had that conversation.”

“Yeah, well, today it was just as bad.”

“I wasn’t there, so you can’t blame me.”

“What I can blame you for is Marina bringing up the topic of whether I am paying you to be Dot’s date.”

His eyebrow rose. “Girl’s sharper than I thought.”

Trey ignored that. “I didn’t say yes or no, but then she said I should so you’ll do the fucking job right.”

“She said that.”

“She didn’t say ‘fucking.’”

“Damn,” Gio drawled, clearly as impressed as Trey.

“Exactly. I’m paying you. Do the fucking job. What about this girl’s got your nose out of joint?”

“I don’t want her to get the wrong idea about my intentions.”

“That’s what I told Marina. She informed me that Dot’s future plans do not include men.”

“Pretty sure they don’t include women,” Gio said dryly.

“They include college,” Trey said archly, also strangely proud of that. Before he could wonder why, he realized he shouldn’t have said it at all because now Gio was slumping in his chair.

“College,” he muttered, pressing his fingers into his eyeballs.

Trey glared at him, his patience almost at its breaking point and he wasn’t even a week into this con. To be fair, today’s disaster wasn’t all Gio’s fault. Marina’s mother was in a snit over Trey’s attentions—or so he assumed, since that was how he would expect a mother to be if her sixteen-year-old daughter was being courted by a twenty-four-year-old man and she couldn’t put a stop to it because the father was allowing it. But Marina was damn near devastated by her mother’s disdain, and watching her confusion and hurt was painful. Marina’s pragmatism as to how to solve the Dot-and-Gene problem was surprising, but it was a problem she could solve, which she couldn’t do with her mother.

“Look, Gio, I know you want a nice girl—”

“And I have no hope for one, for anything better than this—” He gestured around. “—and she reminds me every minute I’m with her. And now I find out she plans to go to college. This girl’s so far above me I can’t see the soles of her feet through the clouds.”

“So what. She’s perfect for you to practice on, which is one reason you agreed to this. So do it and quit acting like you’re about to strangle her. You are in no danger of becoming an object of that future Carrie Nation’s affections. All you gotta do is ask her questions about herself and listen. You act like you’ve never been around a girl you like before.”

“I haven’t been around many girls at all,” he drawled contemptuously. “No father’s going to let their girl walk out with a Morello kid, much less one who was made when he was fifteen.”

Trey chewed on the inside of his cheek. What to do, what to do. “Alice!” he roared.

Soon enough, she clattered down the stairs while wrapping herself up. “Yeah, Boss?”

He pointed at Gio. “Teach him how to act around nice girls he likes.”

Alice blinked.

“No, it’s not you,” Trey said impatiently. “He needs practice at being around nice girls.”

“I’m a nice girl?” she asked incredulously.

“Used to be. You didn’t forget all ’at, didja? You got a week to turn Gio into a goddamned Gatsby.”

---

12

MARINA’S MOTHER WAS short with her for the next three days, and not even Trey and Gene waiting for her and Dot at Kresge’s every afternoon could make her feel better. Marina did her chores and made herself scarce. Father either didn’t notice or didn’t care, but he was pleased when she brought home an E on her math test.

“What happened?” he asked over dinner Wednesday just before church.

“Last week, Trey showed me how. Remember? I told you how we met.”

“Oh, yes. Yes. Excellent.” He perused the test, his lips pursing here and there. “He did well, then. I like that young man more and more.”

Marina was very, very pleased by this.

“And English?”

“We had a pop quiz,” she said proudly and handed it over. “I got a perfect score!”

His eyebrows rose and took it. “A Tale of Two Cities,” he mused. “Mm hmm. Mm, I see, yes.” He slid her a glance. “Did he help you here too?”

“He didn’t tell me answers or spoil the story for me. He just told me how to read the story in a way I could understand and enjoy it. Well, turns out, I was already doing that, but I just wasn’t calling them the right things and I was getting confused. It was easy after he straightened all that out for me. I even wrote a little essay at the end there for extra credit.”

“Mm hmm. ‘The Noble Lout.’” He read through it then nodded approvingly—perhaps impressed. “I hope,” he said as he passed it back to her, “that he doesn’t come to see you as merely a pupil.”

Marina hesitated. “What do you hope for?”

“Well,” he said matter-of-factly, “you’re a bit too young yet, but he seems intent on settling down and I would not object if he should find you a suitable wife in a year or two, provided he remains interested.”

Wife! Marina caught her breath. She hadn’t allowed herself to even think the word, much less anything else.

“We don’t know anything about him,” Mother said tightly, sawing at her liver’n’onions. “They met last week. He has helped her with her homework.”

“And come to church!” Marina said earnestly. “He re-dedicated himself to Jesus the first night.”

“Kneeling at the altar means nothing,” she said dismissively.

“Now, Mother,” Father said gently, “our little girl’s growing up. We can’t keep her here forever.”

Marina didn’t like this discord between her parents. To her recollection, Mother had never contradicted Father’s wishes, or if she had, she hadn’t done it in front of Marina. On the other hand, Father made a point Marina had never thought of: What was she going to do when she graduated from high school and … didn’t have a beau? Was she going to stay at home, being a burden to her parents? Girls got married soon after high school or, as in Dot’s case, went to college to become teachers or nurses.

Marina didn’t want to go to college or become a teacher or nurse, but she had no skills or talents to make her own way in the world.

“Mother,” Marina ventured, “do you want me to stay after high school?”

She slammed her fork down and glared at her. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re—”

Marina waited, relieved because if this was why she was angry …  “I’ll stay if you want me to, Mother,” she said softly. “Nobody will want to marry me and I won’t be suited to do a single thing on my own and when Dot leaves for college, why … Well, I just don’t want to be a burden to you.”

Mother seemed to relax a little and flicked a glance at her. “Of course you’re not a burden, Marina. But Mr. Dunham does seem rather determined.”

Marina shrugged, reality asserting itself once again. “He’s a lot smarter than I,” she murmured, looking down at her plate and picking at her liver. She hated liver. “And handsome. A prettier girl will turn his head soon enough and she’ll be smarter than I ever will be. I would just like to enjoy having a beau for a little while. May I, Mother?”

Marina’s mother studied her for what seemed an eon, then sighed. “I see. You’re right of course.” Marina felt vaguely disappointed in her easy agreement. “I don’t suppose any harm can come of keeping company with him until you—until he gets bored, as young men do, so long as Dorothy is with you. I can say a lot of bad things about her, but in this case her off-putting behavior may be advantageous.”

Until he gets bored of you …

Marina nodded sadly, suddenly seeing herself at twenty, still sitting at the table with her parents and discussing … something. Twenty-five. Thirty. No beau. No job. Just chores and books and taking care of her elderly folks.

“May I be excused?” she asked quietly. “I want to finish the kitchen before church so I have time to do tomorrow’s assignments after.”

“Of course.”

MARINA’S HEART RACED in delight. He was here! Again! And so was Gene!

Trey smiled at her as she and Dot rearranged themselves to give the men room to sit with them. She’d had no reason to think Trey would be here, as at Kresge’s, he had said nothing of attending, much less Gene.

He leaned into her and whispered, “I think you were right about Gene.”

“I know,” she whispered back.

“Has Dot said anything?”

Marina shook her head because the service was starting and she didn’t want to give Mother a reason to be mad at her again—except she couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had happened since Monday afternoon.

Gene had started off a bit on the shy side, but made an effort to ask Dot about her interests haltingly, as if he couldn’t quite form his vowels properly. Dot had made an effort to look in his eyes and answer, but she couldn’t look at him for more than a few seconds and she’d stammered a lot. Tuesday had been a bit better, as Gene remembered what Dot had said and got her to open up just a teeny bit more. This afternoon, Dot had started off more her perky self, but she was nowhere near normal.

Then after a few false starts, Gene asked her about her church and Dot lit up like Fourth of July fireworks.

Once again, Marina felt herself allied with Trey as they exchanged glances and merely listened. Marina and Dot had never discussed her religion this deeply because Marina didn’t want to hear it and Dot didn’t want to expose herself too much in case Marina found it too off-putting. It was their only real barrier to knowing everything about each other.

But just about the time Marina was getting uncomfortable with Dot’s beliefs, she felt Trey’s hand under the table, closing around hers. She shot him a surprised look and he smiled wryly at her. She couldn’t help but smile back because it said he no more wanted to hear this than she did.

Going against every discomfort in her body, she forced herself to squeeze Trey’s hand lightly.

Gene, on the other hand, seemed to be soaking in every word, watching Dot raptly while she spoke with joy Marina hadn’t ever seen her display, and made giant gestures with her hands. Gene sipped his phosphate, asked for another, nibbled on the onion rings, and never once took his eyes off her or interrupted her. When she finished a thought, he asked a question that sent her off again.

“Soooo how does your god decide who goes to hell?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said brightly. “We don’t believe in hell.”

Of course, Marina already knew that, but that had caught Trey’s attention too. “You don’t believe in hell,” he said flatly, his first contribution to the conversation.

“No. After judgment, the worst sinners of all sinners go to a place that’s like Earth, but a whole lot prettier. I don’t know what they do there. I think I might be bored after a while.”

“The worst of the worst,” Trey repeated.

Dot nodded. “My father says spending eternity with your regrets is enough hell for anybody. You don’t need to burn for them, too.”

Gene and Trey exchanged glances. “Regret,” Gene said carefully. “Not guilt.”

Dot shook her head. “You don’t learn anything from guilt. Guilt makes you stay in one place. You learn from regret and you can go forward, doing better as you learn more. At least, that’s what my father says.”

“If you’re spending eternity with your regrets, you’re not learning anything,” Trey pointed out. “If you don’t have any way to advance, it’s just guilt spelled differently.”

Dot blinked. “Oh. You’re right, I suppose. In that case, it must fade because punishment isn’t the point. Justice is. The punishment is not having God’s presence with you all the time, but my father says some people don’t want that anyway and so why would God make them feel his presence if they don’t want to? For those people, that’s a mercy.”

Marina was watching this very carefully because she expected both men to challenge her, especially Trey. Gene had mentioned he’d grown up Catholic. Trey was Methodist. They and Marina all believed in a place of eternal torment.

Dot was finished, eagerly looking between Gene and Trey for more questions. Trey sat back and folded his arms across his chest and said, “Huh,” while contemplating the back wall of Kresge’s.

Gene, on the other hand, stared at Dot, who stared right back with bright eyes and a happy smile. As Marina watched, Gene’s expression subtly changed from surprise to the same look every other boy who wanted Dot’s attention gave her.

And Dot didn’t notice.

Marina drew her lips between her teeth and wondered if Trey had noticed, but it didn’t matter. Marina decided to keep her thoughts to herself because she suspected Trey was now paying Gene, so she wasn’t quite sure if Gene was acting.

Finally Gene spoke. “Everybody. Everybody’s saved. Nobody goes to hell.”

“Everybody,” Dot affirmed. “There is no burning lake of fire. My father says on Judgment Day, you get what you deserve, but you’re probably going to be content with it.”

Gene gestured toward Marina. “But you go to her church on Wednesdays.”

Dot’s smile faded a little. “I’m being nice. Marina knows that. I wish her father would let her come to my church or even our activities, but—”

“What activities?” he asked. “You don’t have church on Wednesday nights like everybody else?”

She shook her head. “We have our weekday meetings on Tuesdays, which aren’t at all like other churches, but on Fridays and Saturdays, we have talent shows or plays or dances—”

“You dance?” Trey blurted.

Dot nodded. “I know most churches don’t, but we do.”

“What kind of dancing?”

“Oh, the Lindy Hop,” she gushed. “I love the Lindy Hop.”

“You do?” Gene asked thinly, his complexion paling a little.

“Oh, yes! My dance partner and I—”

“You have a dance partner? Are … you and he … ?”

“Oh, no,” Dot said airily. “He’s never walked out with a girl at all. He said he and his best friend are going to live together and be confirmed old bachelors.” Gene nodded sagely. Trey’s mouth pursed. “That’s why I like him. He doesn’t make cow eyes at me.”

Marina sighed and stopped listening to study the wall on her left, the wallpaper she saw every afternoon, but had never had a reason to examine this closely.

“ … outfit Marina made for me. I wish she could come and see for herself.”

Marina, jolted out of her melancholy, cast a vague smile across the table.

“Marina,” Gene asked politely, “would your parents allow you to go to Dot’s talent show if Trey and I went too?”

Marina was stunned, but Dot squealed and clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s a wonderful idea! Yes, Marina, you must ask. Your parents like Trey and if they meet Gene, too … ”

“I’ll ask,” Marina murmured. “But I doubt it. Your parents won’t mind if Gene goes.”

Dot’s face fell. “But I wanted you to see it, too. Mama wishes she had time for you to teach her how to sew as well as you do, but with a new baby and all … ”

Dot kept chattering about her brand-new baby sister and Marina’s head started to hurt. Yes, she wanted to go to Dot’s church Friday night to see her do her skit in the talent show in the dress Marina had made for her. Yes, she wanted to go with Trey and Gene. No, she wouldn’t be allowed to.

She started when Trey nudged her. “Hey, listen, you two mind if we got some air?”

Dot and Gene both waved them off, Dot never missing a beat, while Trey slid out of the booth and assisted Marina out.

Once they were outside, Marina cleared her throat. “Um, thank you. We … don’t talk about those things.”

“Why not?” he asked soberly, stepping around her to walk closest to the curb, his hands behind his back.

“My father says they’re sinful and I … ” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to put it into words. You say things that help me understand what I think, but I can’t do that for myself.”

“Try me.”

He’d understood her so far, so she began. “I don’t know how Dot can call herself a good girl when she dances. And the Lindy Hop. That’s— Boys touch you— Places. So they can throw you in the air. And then your dress— Um … ” Her face heated. “Um.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, it’s not proper, those dances.”

Trey didn’t speak for a long while as they strolled up Main Street to Petticoat Lane and turned the corner toward Walnut. “Dot’s generally a kind person, isn’t she?”

Marina gasped. “Oh, yes, of course! I didn’t mean to say she wasn’t.”

“I know. Aside from the Lindy Hop, she’s a proper young lady, is she not? I get that impression, anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Would you say your father would not let you run with her if he thought she was not a proper young lady, fit for his daughter to keep company?”

“My parents don’t like her.”

“Is it her or her religion?”

Marina thought.

“Is there anyone your parents would absolutely forbid you to run with?”

Marina shrugged. “Lots, I suppose. The girls my age at church and most of the girls at school have their own cliques. They don’t want to run with preachers’ daughters.”

“But Dot is at least acceptable.”

“My father says God told him I am to work on saving Dot’s soul.”

“But Dot thinks her soul is already saved. She thinks your theology is just as misguided as your father thinks hers is. She’s just not intimidated by yours the way your father is hers.”

Marina took umbrage at that. “My father is not intimidated by anything!”

“Of course not,” he said immediately, without a trace of sarcasm. “I apologize. Anyway, Gene seems to have gotten his act together, don’t you think?” he teased.

Marina smiled up at him. “Yes, thank you. But I don’t think you’re going to have to pay him anymore.”

Trey stopped cold. “What do you mean by that?”

Marina tilted her head. “He just fell in love with her.”

---

13

TREY DIDN’T SAY much to Gio on the way back from Marina’s church service, which he would ditch if he could. He hated those services. It seemed wrong, somehow, all that hootin’ and hollerin’ and yellin’ at Jesus and God like you could command them to do your will. Trey had gone to church his entire childhood until his mother died. He didn’t know if he believed in God or any deity at all, but if he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t expect God to take orders from his kids.

He didn’t know how much longer he could take Scarritt’s bluster, especially since he knew the faith healing was an act and the speaking in tongues was likely drug-induced or, so he had read once, religious ecstasy, which wasn’t too much different from being high.

“What’s up your ass?” Gio asked Trey before he headed upstairs to call an early night. “We got Marina’s parents to let her go to Dot’s Friday night.”

Yeah, that had been a coup—not one he’d wanted to win. “It ain’t a good idea for me to go, which I tried to tell you before you got all lawyerly with Scarritt.”

Gio was silent for a few seconds. “Oh. Albright.”

“Yeah,” Trey drawled snidely. “An’ Boss Tom’s bean counters. ‘Gene Luke’ ain’t gonna register if you mind your accent. ‘Trey Dunham,’ on the other hand, will.”

“You could have said you were busy right up front, not let me get that deep. You want to go, don’t you?”

“No, but Marina does an’ her parents won’t let her. Prolly the only chance she’ll ever have.”

“And you want to give her what she wants.”

“Givin’ her what she wants is part of the seduction.”

“Mmm hm. Leave early.”

“No, I ain’t showin’ up at all. Family emergency. You can squire Marina ’cuz Dot’s gonna be tied up with her show an’ whatnot. Her parents ain’t gonna know ’cuz Scarritt’s drivin’ her there himself.”

“This is giving me a headache.”

“You stuck me in this corner. It ain’t me Marina wants to go for,” he insisted. “It’s Dot.”

Gio closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Marina’s a sharp cookie. She don’t know how to explain anything in words, but she gets to the heart of it right away and works out the words from there. More or less.”

“She hasn’t made us yet.”

“No, but Scarritt shoulda made me by now. If a conman can’t do it, why should a sheltered preacher’s daughter be able to?”

Gio nodded slowly. “She does have the makings of a good moll.”

Trey’s eyebrow rose. “Noticed that, did you?”

“Any girl who isn’t offended that you might be paying your friend to take care of hers and suggests that you do so if you aren’t already is a girl who doesn’t mind solving a problem any way it needs to be solved.”

“Exactly. And right now, that is the problem an’ you’re gonna cover for me. Keep the story simple ’cuz she notices damn near everything an’ can tell a lie from home plate to the outfield fence. Too many details, she’ll know the story’s got holes even though she can’t put less than two thousand words to it. She’ll stack ’em up in her brain until she has enough clues to work with. Even if she comes to the right conclusion, she won’t believe it.”

“Why?”

“She thinks she’s too homely and stupid to snag a cat.”

“She’s not homely,” Gio mused. “It’s the way she dresses and does her hair. Took me a while to see it.”

“Exactly. Her folks are keepin’ her ugly an’ stupid. It’s just I ain’t never fooled by that. Even if Dot gussied her up, she wouldn’t believe it. She’s got too many people eager to tell her she’s homely an’ stupid. I’m tryin’a fix the stupid part ’cuz her marks’ll be the proof. I can’t do nothin’ about homely.”

“She tells you all that? Just wears her heart and mind out on her sleeve like that?”

“Everybody tells me their problems eventually. Marina needs somebody to talk to who’ll listen and not run over her with theories and suggestions and insistin’ she’s right.”

“Dot.”

Trey nodded. “Just like tryin’a teach her algebra. Dot goes around a problem but never really solves it. Like her collection o’ little boys. ’Stead o’ givin’ ’em the cold shoulder, she flirts with ’em just enough to keep their feelin’s from bein’ hurt.”

“She likes the attention and perqs.”

“She didn’t have no problem tryin’a cut me down to size, but I’m a big dog. She got a tender heart under all that ego an’ cynicism an’ boys her age are just puppies. She ain’t a puppy-kicker.” Trey slid a glance at Gio. “Kinda like you.”

“And Marina’s a lot like you.”

Trey’s mouth twisted bitterly. “That’s givin’ me too much credit.”

“Maybe so.”

“Dot, on the other hand, grew up suspicious of everybody ’cuzza the Extermination Order. Plus, her daddy’s connected. He has a reason to raise a cynical girl.”

Gio snorted. “‘Cynical.’ That’s an understatement. You know she walks around heavy?”

Trey’s head whipped around and his mouth dropped open. “The hell you say!”

“I asked her why her father lets her run wild since she carries the Extermination Order like it’s a badge of honor. She said God’n’Colt would protect her, then showed me her piece to reassure me that I don’t have to worry about her any more than her parents do. And never ever say a word to Marina. Or you. She also wanted to see how I’d react, which Alice said was her way of finding out if I have the stones to handle her.”

“Goddammit,” Trey whispered, running his hand down his mouth. “I shoulda thought’a that. Only she don’t know that ain’t the only reason her daddy’d load her down. We are.”

“I’d rather be hogtied and beaten to death by a crowd of Black Hand soldiers than get shot by an annoyed sixteen-year-old girl—”

Trey barked a laugh.

“—but if she thinks I’m interested in her church, she won’t look past that.”

“That was pure genius.”

“Pure luck.”

Trey glanced at Gio. “You buy all that shit?”

“Oh, hell no. The dancing’ll be sticky.”

“I suggest you learn the Lindy Hop then. Don’t look good, your girl havin’ a dance partner that’s not you even if everybody does know he’s queer as a three-dollar bill.”

Gio growled as they both headed up the stairs. “You really like Marina, don’t you? Genuinely.”

Trey thought for a few seconds. “Yeah,” he finally said, half surprised. “Yeah, I do.”

“Would you marry her if you could without losing this place?”

“I wouldn’t know yet in any case,” he said matter-of-factly, “but it don’t matter ’cuz it ain’t never gonna happen.”

“Except it’s not just about the bet anymore.”

“Let’s just say,” he muttered as he headed to the bathroom to take a long, hot bath. “I’d’a rather paid cash for this place ’cuz I got a feeling it’s gonna cost me a whole lot more’n sixty large.”

---

14

THURSDAY AFTER SCHOOL, Trey and Gene were waiting for Marina and Dot in their booth at Kresge’s. Marina had said nothing to Dot about Gene’s feelings for her, but Dot was noticeably more peppy all day and less inclined to flirt with anybody not named Gene. She wasn’t flirting with Gene, either. Marina couldn’t tell if Dot was in love with Gene or not, but she sure was happy to see him and the fact that she didn’t notice his change in demeanor was telling.

“Hello, boys,” Dot said gaily as she stood at the table waiting for Gene to slip out of the booth and allow her in.

“Ladies,” Trey and Gene said at the same time.

“Hi,” Marina said softly as she slid into the booth Trey had vacated and patted the seat.

“Hi yourself,” he returned just as softly.

Dot and Gene were paying no attention whatsoever after Gene asked how her day had gone and he listened attentively. It might have seemed like an act, but Dot could make a study hall of one sound like a grand adventure.

“How’s your hand?” Marina asked Trey. “You aren’t wearing a bandage anymore.”

“Better,” Trey said, holding it up and flexing it, albeit slowly and with a grimace. “More aspirin, I suppose.”

“How was your day?”

“You have good days and bad ones. Had to pay out on a policy today.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was it a lot of money?”

“I don’t care about the money. A family was put out of their house and their baby died. There is no amount of money in the world that can make up for that.”

Marina clapped her hands to her mouth, horrified. “Oh my. Oh, goodness gracious.”

He nodded soberly. “That is the worst part of my job, watching people’s lives get wiped out. Could be anything. Their pipes could burst and flood their house. All their whatnots and pictures and memories, gone. Robberies. That’s usually just stuff, but having someone break into your house disturbs your peace. You can’t replace that, either.”

His sorrow was real and deep, and Marina felt it. Gathering all the courage she could, she reached out and took his hand. He wrapped his other one around hers and gave it a little squeeze and a smile. “Thank you.” He paused, then said, “You’re a good woman, Marina.”

It was said so sincerely, she swallowed her hurt and pain and envy at the compliment. “Thank you,” she murmured.

His brow wrinkled. “Was that … wrong? I meant it, I truly did.”

She smiled. “I know you did. Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Please don’t fib,” he said lightly. “Tell me why that upset you.”

Marina bit her lip and again had to swallow but now because she couldn’t seem to speak. She didn’t want to tell him but he was too perceptive and persistent. They’d been meeting every day for a little over a week but the fact that he knew she was distressed made it seem like they knew each other far better than their short acquaintance would indicate.

“Hey, why don’t we head outside?”

The day was warm when they emerged. Trey put on his fedora after Marina positioned her wide-brimmed sun hat on her head. They turned right and headed to Petticoat Lane. He didn’t take her hand, which disappointed her a little and he kept a respectable distance between them.

“Why did that upset you?” he asked again.

“Anybody can be a good woman,” she blurted.

They strolled for a while without speaking. Then he said, “Would interesting be better?”

She bit her lip. “Not much.”

“What would be?”

“Pretty,” she whispered.

“You’re not,” he said flatly, and she gasped, her head snapping up. He looked at her steadily and said, “I don’t like pretty girls.”

Marina blinked because that didn’t make sense.

“‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’”

Marina was thoroughly confused.

“Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. That was a metaphor. Pretty girls are all alike; every interesting girl is interesting in her own way.”

Marina had so many feelings and thoughts and questions she didn’t know which one to pick first. “What’s the difference between a simile and a metaphor?”

Trey stopped cold, blinked at her, his mouth partially open, then laughed, stuck his injured hand in his pocket, and rubbed his chin with his other hand. “The second I think I understand you, you surprise me.” He looked back at her with a grin, then he waggled his finger at her. “That’s what I mean, Marina. How’s this. I could look at you all day long and listen to you talk because you say the most unexpected things.”

Marina was hopelessly lost and now felt like a sap. She gulped, knowing her face was completely scrunched up. “I … ”

He leaned toward her, still grinning. “I could look at you all day long,” he repeated. “Better?”

His words seeped into her mind, but they seemed to float there. “Um … yes? I … don’t … ”

He waggled his eyebrows.

“I don’t believe you.”

His smile vanished. “What do you mean, you don’t believe me? You think I’m acting?”

Her brow wrinkled. “White lies,” she murmured, looking downward. “To make me feel better.”

“If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t bother trying to making you feel better. Trust me, doll, I don’t give out compliments.”

“Nobody thinks I’m smart,” she said flatly.

“You don’t think the way everybody else does,” he insisted.

Marina shook her head slightly.

“Say … you’re a frog with a bunch of others. You all want to get across a pond. It’ll be easy because there are a whole lot of lily pads. But you’re stronger than your friends so you jump over a whole lot of lily pads and get to the other side of the pond a whole lot sooner. You don’t even notice there are any lily pads between you and the one you want to get to.”

She blinked. She might not like being compared to a frog but she sure liked hearing she was the strongest one of a group and didn’t need all those lily pads. “So I’m … efficient?”

His face lit up. His eyes sparkled. “Yes! And it takes a very smart person to be that efficient. The trick is to trust your efficiency. You don’t.”

Marina was watching him with eyes wide, all the words he said making no sense because she had always been homely and, at best, an average student. She wanted to believe him. She believed he was sincere. But if he was, he was simply the oddest person she had ever met.

“I’m telling you why your marks don’t make you stupid and standing next to your pretty friend doesn’t make you homely.”

That was a new way of looking at it. Marina thought. “Comparison.”

“Yes,” Trey drawled, sounding very pleased. “The difference between a simile and a metaphor is the word ‘like.’ I didn’t say happy families were like pretty girls. I said they were pretty girls.”

Marina’s mouth opened wider and she began to smile. No, she couldn’t have stopped it if she tried, and launched herself at Trey. She didn’t care she was being too forward. She didn’t care she was not being a proper girl.

She pushed herself away from him and clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Thank you! You make everything so clear!”

He drew back in surprise. “All that for an English lesson in three sentences?”

“Yes!” she laughed. “Simile, similar, like.”

His expression opened up even more. “And you know what else? I’ll bet you’ll be crackerjack at geometry.”

She waved a hand. “Geometry was a cinch.”

He scowled. “You say that like it’s nothing.”

Confused, she said, “It is. Like home ec. Like looking at a picture of a dress and knowing how to make it. Or like reading a recipe and knowing what it’ll taste like.”

He blinked. “You can do that?”

She nodded and shrugged helplessly. “It’s just … something I do.”

“Do you … cook? At home, I mean.”

“Once in a blue moon. Mother doesn’t like my food. She thinks I use too many spices.”

His eyebrow rose. “I bet you’re plenty spicy.”

She nodded. “Father likes it but Mother insists. I do the baking.”

He pursed his lips. “I see.”

“I … know what you’re thinking,” she said with quite a bit of guilt, but she had to get it out to someone. “Mother doesn’t cook very well.”

His mouth twitched a little, but he said nothing.

“Sometimes I think maybe she does it on purpose so I won’t eat too much,” she blurted, adding embarrassment to guilt. “I have to watch my waist.”

“I can watch it for you,” he said gravely, which made her look at him suspiciously. “It was a joke, doll,” he said dryly. “My way of saying I think it’s fine the way it is.”

“What’s that called?” she asked, still warily. “Not a joke. Not sarcasm or a pun. It’s something else.”

His mouth twitched. “A double entendre.”

Her brow wrinkled.

“Means two things, but you have to be in the know to understand the second meaning. But since you’re not in the know, I’m not going to explain it. I am very impressed you understood there was more, though.”

“Double IN-tin-der,” she repeated carefully.

“Yes. How’d you pick it up?”

“It was in your voice.” She paused. “Are you … Did you go to college?”

“Oh no,” he said gravely. “I didn’t even finish sixth grade.”

Stunned, she blurted, “How do you know so much?”

“I told you. I read a lot. If I don’t understand something, like algebra, I hire a tutor. Most everything else I got from books.”

“Do you want to go to college?”

He hesitated. “Don’t need to,” he said gruffly. Marina said nothing because he seemed to be … sad. But just when the silence between them became unbearable, Trey murmured, “I’m sorry. I, um … I’m a little sentimental right now because of that family I told you about. I wanted to tell you what I think about you because you never know when—”

Marina’s eyes began to sting, which almost never happened, but the connection between the family who had lost their baby to a fire and never being able to talk to a loved one again was …

I would just like to enjoy having a beau for a little while.

They turned the corner onto Walnut. “Are you going somewhere?” she asked quietly, finally looking back at him. “Not interested in me anymore?”

“No!” he said, clearly shocked.

“Because if you get tired of me, I’d appreciate it if you say so and not just hint around or disappear.”

He stopped cold and stared at her for a few seconds, but she didn’t drop her gaze. “Marina,” he said finally, “my mother and three older brothers died in the epidemic.” She gasped. “One morning they were there and working, happy and healthy. A week later, they were dead. My father died a year later from a broken heart. Then it was just me.”

“Oh, my goodness gracious,” she breathed. “I am so sorry, I—”

“I was twelve when my father died, which is why I didn’t get past the sixth grade. I had to survive. So I know a little about things happening quickly and you never get to tell someone how you feel. How I feel about you is, I think you’re the bee’s knees. No matter what happens between us, I will always think that.”

Marina shifted her attention to the tip of his nose. It wasn’t a promise never to leave but …

I would just like to enjoy having a beau for a little while.

A little while. It would be best not to get too attached. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“And thank you for telling me.” It was all she could manage to say without blurting that what she really meant was And I’d appreciate it if you proposed to me right now and married me tomorrow.

Because what would it be like, she thought as they continued around the block in surprisingly comfortable silence, to live with someone who could look at her all day long and thought she was smart and that she was the bee’s knees and told her that without any embarrassment at all?

WHAT WOULD IT BE like, Trey thought darkly as he lay on his divan and listened to the sounds of a city waking up as he was falling asleep, to know a girl so smart and sweet and intriguing, so heartbreakingly sad, to want her, to hold her and kiss her and make love to her until she was happy, and not be making plans to pull the rug out from under her?

---

15

THE NEXT MORNING, Trey was summoned to the Jackson County Democratic Club, which he had expected to be any day now. Trey took Boss Tom his books around the middle of every month, but not until he was summoned.

Trey passed all the cats lined up a block long to ask Boss Tom a favor. Rich men asked for political favors. Poor men asked for food for their families and a job. The line to get to Boss Tom was the great equalizer. The only people who got past the line were folks bringing something to Boss Tom.

“Yeah, Boss,” Trey drawled when he was shown into Boss Tom’s very small, modest office in a very small, modest building on 19th and Main, his books and an envelope of cash tucked under his arm.

Boss Tom tapped his finger on his desk and Trey dropped his books and cash on them, then dropped himself into a chair.

Pendergast thumbed through them and checked random lines against a book he already had open. Trey had every confidence in his own bookkeeping. He had no confidence in whoever did the bookkeeping Tom was checking against.

“Why’s mine say you took delivery of forty-eight cases of my gin, but you only show thirty-six?”

“’Cuz I only got thirty-six.” Trey remembered that delivery, too. “Stu checked that delivery and called me out back, said I got shorted a dozen cases. I counted ’em. Thirty-six. Called Vern out. He counted ’em. Thirty-six. Cat says, ‘Oh, no, I got another dozen comin’.’ I say okay, sign off on thirty-six—bill of lading’s right there, see the bookmark—and bring me the dozen you owe me. Cat never shows up. An’ I remember that ’cuz I knew he wa’n’t gonna come back. Damn near called up a notary, I was so sure.”

Boss Tom pursed his lips, pulled the lading slip out and saw that it had Brody’s initials, Vern’s initials, Trey’s initials, and the delivery man’s signature.

“You can’t prove he didn’t come back with the other dozen.”

“No, I can’t,” Trey said firmly. “But ask your Mormons.”

“I’ll do that,” Boss Tom said vaguely, snapping the ledger closed. He took the cash and began to count, saying, “And if you’re right, I’ll have you take care of it.”

“Boss,” Trey said flatly. “I ain’t got a murderin’ interest in this cat an’ I’m busy with Marina Scarritt.”

“How’s that coming along, by the way?” Tom asked pleasantly enough when he was finished counting, tapped the pile until it was tidy, and put it back in the envelope. “You never were one to let grass grow under your feet.”

“If you know that much, you know how I’m doin’,” Trey shot back. “Handlin’ her and her little friend’s a delicate operation.”

“Yeah, I want to talk to you about her little friend. You don’t catch Dot in whatever crossfire you and your gigolo—”

“Maître d’.”

“—gigolo are setting up, you hear me? Last thing I need is Rev Albright in my office for unpleasantness.”

Trey suddenly realized Boss Tom actually respected Albright and having Gio mess with his daughter was a bit short-sighted on Trey’s part. At this point, Trey was convinced that for the last few years he’d been traveling too fast for his headlights and his brakes had just gone out.

“Might be too late,” Trey mumbled. “Gio went an’ got himself smitten. He’s due at her church tonight to see some show they’re puttin’ on.”

Boss Tom groaned. “Good Lord.”

“On the bright side, now he has a reason to keep her out of the crossfire.”

Pendergast conceded that point with a grunt. “And if Albright finds out, it’s not on me.”

“Nope.”

“Now, Dunham, I’m a little concerned about your lack of firepower over there.”

Trey’s eyebrow rose and his spine began to tingle. “I didn’t think I needed much.”

Boss Tom’s eyebrow rose. “You’ve got Giuseppe Morello’s runaway hitman who now makes his living with his dick—” Oh, shit. He did know who Gio was. “—the daughter of a Mormon bishop who is my friend, my speakeasy which is now in play, an upstart mick wanting a piece of your heroin action—” Trey waved a hand. “—and various and sundry folk who want to know when and where you’re picking up your Remus whisky and storing it—” Shit! “—and you think you don’t need much?”

“I’ll rethink.”

---

16

“MARINA!” MOTHER SNAPPED.

Marina immediately stopped pacing the vestibule and parlor. “Mother, I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

Mother harrumphed. Father was in his office counseling a congregant and wouldn’t leave until the woman was properly comforted. Marina glanced at the clock, which had advanced two minutes since the last time she looked.

Dot’s show began at six. Dot, who was the last, was scheduled to take the stage at seven-fifteen. It was now six-fifteen. Though Marina and Dot lived three blocks from each other and Marina’s church was just across the street from the parsonage, Dot’s church building was way out on the other side of Independence and took half an hour to get there. Marina might have gone with Dot and her family, but they had left at five because Bishop had to open up the building and oversee the event.

At six-thirty, Marina decided to go upstairs and read until Father was ready to leave.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” DOT asked soberly Monday morning at school. When Marina had dropped by Dot’s house on her way, as she usually did, Sister Albright told her Dot had already left.

Marina swallowed. “My father,” she murmured, her face hot with shame, her heart thudding with pain, “was in counseling and couldn’t leave.”

“Oh.”

Dot didn’t speak to Marina for the rest of the day except to tell her she didn’t feel like going to Kresge’s, which meant Marina couldn’t go, either.

Marina didn’t think it was fair that Dot was punishing her for missing her activity since it wasn’t her fault. Father had informed her that he had prayed as to God’s will on the matter and while he had been willing to take her, God had other plans, which was to put a parishioner’s family crisis in the way. She tried to explain this to Dot, but Dot murmured, “I understand.”

Not only that, but Trey had not made plans for a Saturday outing nor had he come to church Sunday, which Father had questioned her over. The only thing she could say was, “I don’t know.” She did her chores. She worked on her homework. She read an old Dorothy Sayers novel. Two. Three.

Not even the math test she had almost aced nor her English exam, which she had actually aced, cheered her up. For the first time, she realized that she had no friends. She had no beau. Mother was angry with her for reasons she didn’t understand.

Marina had never felt alone in the world before. She had always had her parents. She had always had Dot, since they were small girls, but Dot was going to leave for college in two years and after that, have a full-time job or a husband. Maybe children would come along. Maybe she would like it in Utah where all her people were and wouldn’t come back to Kansas City at all. Meanwhile, Marina wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything except living with Mother and Father as she always had and doing the same things. And as for a beau … she had only had him for a week and a half, and of course, that wasn’t going to last.

That would teach her to depend on someone’s company, wouldn’t it?

Marina’s mother was less short with her Monday evening, but that was probably because Marina had finished sewing her a new and very stylish pair of trousers from a picture in a magazine. That was nothing. Looking at a picture of a garment and knowing how it was constructed was like reading a recipe and knowing what it would taste like and how to make it better.

Tuesday morning, Dot was her usual bright, sunny self and apparently didn’t think about the fact that Marina was not interested in Dot’s bright, sunny self after being punished the day before.

Marina was polite.

That was all.

“Do … do you want to go to Kresge’s?” Dot asked hesitantly toward the end of the day.

“No,” Marina said quietly.

“Um … I, um … I’m sorry about … well, yesterday. How I acted.”

“All right. Thank you.” Marina walked down the hallway to the front doors.

“Marina!” she cried and started after her.

Marina didn’t alter her pace at all because she knew that any minute—

—a bunch of Dot’s boys would crowd her for attention.

“Marina, wait for me!”

She would do no such thing. She wasn’t punishing Dot. She simply couldn’t get over her hurt feelings as quickly as Dot wanted her to.

Marina trudged down the front stairs of Paseo High School, her head down, letting swarms of people flow around her and jostle her here and there.

“Hey, doll!”

Marina stopped cold on the last landing, her head snapping up to see Trey leaning back against a sleek yellow roadster, top down, parked on the curb right in front of the steps. His arms were folded across his chest and his ankles were crossed. His smile gleamed almost as brightly as his golden hair, and his blue eyes were so vivid she could see them from here.

He was surrounded by people who were ooh’ing and aah’ing over his car, but he didn’t seem to notice. They were trying to get his attention, but he never stopped looking at Marina.

“Missed you at Kresge’s yesterday!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“I—”

“Come on down so we don’t have to shout.”

Marina’s feet moved because they couldn’t not until she was standing in front of Trey, dazed, looking around at all the people who were now beginning to notice her.

“Hi,” he said cheerfully.

“Hi,” she replied uncertainly. “What are you … ?”

“I missed you at Kresge’s yesterday,” he repeated. “What happened?”

Her brow wrinkled because he had said nothing about Friday night or Saturday or Sunday. “Um … it’s … a long story.”

His smile faded and he tilted his head. “Are you … angry with me?”

She bit her lip.

“Aw, c’mon,” he murmured, pushing away from his car and throwing an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go for a walk and see if we can’t straighten all this out.”

“All right,” Marina said softly, thrilled with the feel of his body against hers.

“Marina!” Dot called from the top of the stairs. “Marina, wait!”

“Do you want to wait up?”

“No.” She wanted to get away from Dot before she exploded with a whole bunch of words that wouldn’t say anything she meant even if she knew what she meant.

“Uh … allrightythen.”

“Marina, wait! Trey, wait! Stop! Trey!”

“Marina, please wait!”

Trey and Marina kept walking and somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that everyone at school would now know she had a beau, he was a grown man, and he had a ritzy car.

And then she wouldn’t and everyone would know he had dumped her.

Once they were clear of the crowd, he removed his arm and murmured, “You’re on the outs with Dot?”

“I … She was angry with me because I couldn’t come to her show Friday night. I told her it wasn’t my fault, that Father was in counseling with one of the parishioners, which obviously means God didn’t want me to go, but she wouldn’t speak to me. I can’t go to Kresge’s alone.”

“Oh. Gene, uh, told me you weren’t there. I thought your father had changed his mind.”

That was when she looked up at him. “So you weren’t there, either.”

“I had an emergency, doll,” he said quietly. “Took all weekend.”

Marina gaped. “Oh, I am so sorry!” she breathed. “I— I thought—”

“You thought I ran out on you,” he said with a hint of chastisement.

Marina felt herself flush. “Well, yes. Is— Your emergency … What happened?”

“I’d rather not speak of it, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, of course, of course.”

“Why don’t you and I go to Kresge’s?”

It was her turn to be disapproving. “You know I can’t walk out with a boy alone.”

“But I’m not a boy,” he teased lightly, then winked.

She couldn’t help but smile. “Father says we must observe the spirit of the law.”

“My spirit would like to observe your spirit.”

That made her laugh outright. “Another double IN-tin-der.”

He flashed a grin. “How do you catch those?”

“It’s in your voice. I told you.” But should she tell him that wasn’t how it was pronounced? She didn’t want to embarrass him because her English teacher had told her that it was a mark of someone who read widely but had never heard the words, which meant he wasn’t around people who were as well read as he was. Not only that, but it was a French word.

But he’s the one who helped you with Dickens?

Yes.

He sounds like a very smart young man.

“Marina!”

She stopped and turned to see Dot running to catch up. She wasn’t so angry that she would turn her back this time.

“Marina,” she gasped when she caught up to them. She dropped her books and bent over and braced her palms on her knees while she caught her breath. “I’m sorry,” she said abjectly when she straightened. “I’m— My mother said I was cruel to you because it wasn’t your fault, and I don’t want to be cruel, especially not to you. I was just— I was so looking forward to—” She switched her gaze to Trey. “You weren’t there either,” she accused.

“I had an emergency,” he repeated gently.

Dot flushed and looked down at her hands, which were fiddling with her handbag. “Oh. I’m … sorry. I … ”

“What about Gene?” he asked.

Her head came up again and she smiled. “He was there. He laughed.”

Trey’s eyebrows shot up. “He laughed? I’ve never seen him laugh.”

Dot looked confused and picked up her books. “He laughs all the time.”

“Well, Miss Albright,” Trey said, turning with a gesture to invite her to walk with them. “It seems you have found El Dorado.”

“What’s that?”

“An ancient lost city made entirely of gold.”

“Pffftt,” Marina and Dot said at the same time.

Trey laughed. “Gene informed me he enjoyed himself and that you were magnificent.”

“He did?!” Dot squealed.

“He did. He also thought your mother was lovely, although he was sorry he couldn’t meet your father.”

“Daddy had to go deliver a foal. He’s a veterinarian.”

“He is?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Trey said, clearly surprised. “I … That’s … interesting.”

“Interesting?” Marina asked lightly.

He flashed another grin at her. “Interesting, Miss Scarritt. I said what I meant and I meant what I said.”

Marina couldn’t help her answering smile, nor her blush, nor ducking her head.

“So, ladies, are we all friends again? Everyone’s feathers unruffled?”

“Yes,” Marina and Dot said, once again, in unison.

“Then shall I take you to Kresge’s? I think we can all squeeze into my car.”

---

17

BROTHER JOHN LAZIA and his chief enforcer Charlie “the Wop” Carrollo were waiting for Trey when he walked into the speak late Saturday afternoon after having spent the entire day with Marina, Gio, and Dot at Muehlebach Field at a Monarchs game, teaching the girls how to watch baseball. It was more fun to watch and easier to teach when the Monarchs were winning, which they were doing a whole lot of this year. If Trey and Gio—both inveterate baseball fans—wanted to hit any ballgames, they were going to have to make their girls like it.

What he didn’t want was to come home to see Kansas City coppers hanging around across the street, and Lazia and Carrollo making themselves at home in Trey’s speak by sitting at his table with Lazia in his fucking chair!

Trey stormed up the stairs. “You disrespect me in my own house?”

Lazia looked up at him and stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray. “It’s not yours.”

“Boss Tom know you’re here stickin’ your nose in my business?”

“I am not sticking my nose in your business. I’m here asking you why you’re undercutting my business.”

Trey was about to get a little more forceful when Lazia decided to vacate Trey’s chair. Trey snapped his fingers before settling himself into his throne, at which time a cigar and glass of whisky was put in front of him. He took his time with his cigar, clipping the end, lighting it, puffing on it a few times, blowing smoke rings.

“I’m a businessman, Lazia,” Trey said finally. “If I can get good quality hooch at a good price, I’m gonna get it. Furthermore, I’m retail, not wholesale, so the only way I’m cuttin’ into your business is just ’cuz I ain’t buyin’ from you.”

“And why is that, may I ask?”

“You know very good and well why.”

“Humor me.”

“You cut the bonded stuff you buy, and I don’t sell watered whisky. People come here to get the real stuff. Second, I don’t like the swill you make yourself. Third, as a general rule, I don’t like middlemen.”

Lazia’s jaw ground.

“You forget that I was bootlegging for years before I landed here, and I already had relationships with the distilleries I get my whisky from.”

“Look, Dunham. I just want your Remus and I’m willing to pay for it.”

“No,” Trey answered flatly. “I don’t supply anybody else. That’s part of my deal with him.”

Carrollo’s hand fisted. “We’ll find your route,” he growled.

Trey took another puff off his cigar. “Naw, you won’t. Try it. See what Boss Tom has to say about the bullet I put in your head.”

Lazia laid his hand gently on his man’s arm. “Relax.” Carrollo stood up abruptly, upending the chair, and stalked down the stairs. “You watch your mouth. The second you win this bet, I’ll be on you.”

“Oh, you know about that.”

“Everybody knows about that.”

That confused Trey. If everybody knew about it— “Say, why’n’t Scarritt know about it by now, then? All you cats want my job.”

“No,” Lazia corrected patiently, “we want the speak.”

“Since Boss Tom’s gonna demand his very generous cut of the profits from anybody who owns this place, you still won’t be making much. Don’t you have enough irons in your fire?”

“I have people taking care of my irons. Shit, I’d keep you on here. Any smart cat would. All I want from you is your Remus.”

“You’re going to the conference next week. Likely Remus will be there, so get your own meeting and beg him. I’m loyal to Boss Tom and I’m not going back on my word to Remus. Your bootlegging is your business and mine is mine.”

“I’m curious. What would Albright have to say about his girls,” he said, stressing the plural, “walking out with a Machine underboss and a whore?”

“He would say, ‘Dot, you may not walk out with that whore. Marina, I’m going to tell your daddy who Trey Dunham is and what he wants.’ Somewhat responsible daddying, but if I’s a daddy, I’d’a hunted me an’ Gio down already an’ told us to steer clear or go for a swim in the river.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“Don’t get in the middle of my bet. You have nothing to gain if I lose and not much more to gain if I win.”

Lazia stood and smoothly slid his fedora over his perfectly coifed hair. “Dunham,” he said finally. “You got a way about you. I don’t like you, but if you ever need a job, you got one with me.”

That shocked the shit out of him. “’Preciate it,” he said sincerely.

Soon enough, Lazia’s car, his enforcer, and the Kansas City police were gone.

“Well,” Gio said heartily as he plopped into the chair Lazia had just left, “I guess we’ll need to spend more time with the girls, won’t we? Make sure they’re safe and protected, Dot’s god and Colt notwithstanding.”

Trey growled. “Lazia won’t touch ’em, but he can let Albright know who we are just to throw the dice and see what comes up.”

Gio was silent for a few seconds. “That would be … bad.”

“Very, very bad. Time to get a wiggle on.”

“HELLO, MRS. SCARRITT,” Trey said cheerfully Tuesday afternoon.

“Hello, Mr. Dunham,” Marina’s mother said suspiciously through the screen door of the parsonage, where Trey stood with fedora in hand. “Marina is at school.”

“Yes, ma’am. I know. I was wondering if I could have a word with the reverend?”

“Does Marina know you’re here?”

“No, ma’am, she does not.”

The woman was not happy; that much was obvious. In Trey’s experience, it was the mother who was thrilled and the father who was not, so what this switcheroo said, he wasn’t clear on yet.

“Hrmph. I’ll ask.”

She returned in a few moments and simply held the door open, then led him through the house to a small office in the back just big enough for a Wooton desk, red velveteen divan and chairs, and tea table to match. Gio was right. This cat had expensive taste and that was definitely a desk only Rockefeller—or a charlatan evangelist—could afford. Even a reproduction would be costly, and far more than Trey would’ve spent for a place to put pencil to paper.

Scarritt was at the desk writing intently so Trey awaited his pleasure and looked around without shame. It was rude to gawp, but it was what a man like Scarritt wanted to happen.

Trey thought the desk alone might cost as much as his three-year-old Chrysler convertible, and Trey didn’t know how much that divan and chairs set cost, but Trey wouldn’t be surprised if it was at least half the desk’s price. The rug was an Aubusson.

Trey wondered what other treasures Scarritt had squirreled away, awaiting the day he could break them out to impress some Rockefellerian cat. Trey didn’t have to wonder if the missus knew how much this office cost, nor would she know about anything else he might or might not have.

“Well, young man,” Scarritt said soberly, arising from his fine desk chair with studied elegance and graciously gestured to a chair. His clothes were fine, but only enough. “Please have a seat. Tea? Coffee? Cigarette?”

“No, thank you,” Trey said politely as he sank into one of the red velveteen chairs.

“How may I help you today?” Scarritt sat in the other chair, crossed his legs, and leaned toward Trey with his hands clasped, which was precisely how Trey would’ve sat if he were playing that role.

Trey continued to conspicuously fiddle with his fedora. “Well, sir, I won’t waste your time. I would like your permission to court Marina more seriously.”

He gave Trey a carefully crafted look of concern. “What are your intentions for the future with Marina, Mr. Dunham?”

“I have greatly enjoyed your daughter’s company, Pastor,” he began earnestly. “I find her charming and intelligent. I am also under the impression that she is an excellent homemaker and cook.”

“That is true,” Reverend Scarritt said ponderously, “but that doesn’t answer the question.”

He wasn’t as stupid or oblivious as Trey had hoped. “Well, sir, I’m twenty-four and it’s past time I settled down. I am … hoping …  Marina is … Well, sir. I simply won’t know until I spend a little more time with her without—”

Scarritt waited for him to finish the sentence, but Trey waited for him to take the bait.

“Without … ?”

Trey sighed. “Dorothy, sir,” he confessed. “She is … forceful and sometimes … ”

Scarritt looked a little surprised, which Trey suspected was genuine.

“She runs over Marina when I’m trying to talk to her,” Trey blurted. “Speaks for her, I should say, as if she is protecting Marina. It’s difficult to converse deeply with Marina under those circumstances.”

Scarritt’s face cleared. “Oh, yes, of course. I see what you mean. You must forgive Dorothy, though. She is very protective of Marina and I do appreciate that about her.”

“Yes, she is a fine young woman with impeccable morals, and she is a fine chaperone. However, I can’t discern Marina’s true thoughts sometimes. It’s as if she is hiding them more from Dorothy than from me. I would like time alone with Marina, without Dorothy, to make sure if my intentions can include Marina. I will tell you, sir, that I would very much like them to.”

“Is … Your employee, who is courting Dorothy. Is … ” He stopped, then said baldly, “Marina believes you are paying your friend to squire Dorothy to round your numbers. Is that true?”

“It was,” Trey answered. “Gene has since refused payment because he enjoys her company.”

Scarritt’s eyebrows flew into his hairline. “Ah. Hm. Interesting.”

“I am not quite sure what to think, myself.”

“Well, Mr. Dunham, I have been impressed with your patience and persistence thus far, as I don’t imagine keeping company with Dorothy is easy. Furthermore, I appreciate your willingness to attend services with Marina and, though Marina told me you are Methodist, I would hope you could consider joining our congregation.”

“I am indeed considering it, sir.”

“Excellent. Well, you have my permission,” Scarritt said with grand soberness, “under the following conditions: Marina mayn’t go out on school nights. She may stay out until ten p.m. on Fridays, and nine p.m. on Saturdays. She may not go dancing or to moving picture shows or Fairyland.” Trey wasn’t going to bother asking why not Fairyland, although it did put a bit of a hole in his activities list. “She may not attend any Mormon activities. I will trust, until you give me reason not to, that since you are an upright Christian gentleman who is looking for an upright Christian woman, you know what she should and should not be doing.”

“Of course, sir.”

With that, Scarritt stood to signal that the meeting was over. “As for Dorothy, how you and your employee deal with her is up to you.”

“Pray for me, sir.”

“Of course.”

---

18

“HE WHAT?!” DOT hissed at lunch on Wednesday, horrified.

Dot’s horror made Marina even more gleeful. “He told Trey I could walk out with him on Friday and Saturday nights. Trey’s taking me out Friday. I don’t know where.”

“Without me?” she asked plaintively, which dampened Marina’s glee quite a bit.

“I— Well, yes. But you— You have your church activities then,” Marina said hesitantly. “You, um … You have a dance at church Friday, don’t you? I didn’t think you’d mind, especially if you asked Gene to go. He would, I bet.”

Dot blinked. “Uh … ”

“Golly, Dot, didn’t you even think of it?” Marina started to get excited again. “Gene went to your show and he really liked it. Why don’t you ask him if he’d like to go?”

Dot’s expression turned doubtful. “I don’t think that’s quite proper. That’s almost like asking him out on a date.”

“Even if you don’t want to ask him, you can tell him about it. I bet he’d get the hint. He can’t show up to a party he doesn’t know is happening.”

“That’s a ducky idea!”

“Hi, Marina.”

Marina was surprised when a girl in the class ahead sat beside her.

“Soooo who’s your highjohn?”

“Go chase yourself, Ruthie,” Dot clucked.

Ruthie ignored Dot, her eyes narrowing on Marina. “Well?”

“His name is Trey,” Marina said calmly, although her heart was thumping. She didn’t know if she was pleased to have caught the attention of Ruthie and her clique or not. She wanted to brag about him, but she didn’t want to open herself up to ridicule.

“Mmm hm. And what’s he do that he’s got that snazzy car?”

“He sells insurance.”

“Marina, you don’t have to answer her questions. She’s just jealous.”

Ruthie rolled her eyes. “Where’d you meet him?”

“Kresge’s.”

“He doesn’t look like the kind of man who’d go with someone like you.”

Marina knew it. Dot knew it. Trey knew it. Gene knew it. Everyone in school knew it. And yet … “He looks like he looks and he’s going with me, so I guess you need spectacles.” Dot choked on her milk, then started laughing. Marina gave Ruthie an innocent shrug and said, “Sorry.”

Ruthie curled her lip and flounced off.

Dot was still laughing, but Marina swirled her spoon in her chocolate pudding, no longer able to eat.

“Oh, Marina,” Dot sighed when she finally realized Marina wasn’t happy.

“It’s true,” she muttered. “It’s just a matter of time. I thought … I thought people would look at me differently if they knew about Trey, but they don’t. They just think Trey has an ulterior motive.”

Dot and Marina didn’t speak for the rest of the day. Marina was too sad. Dot knew there were no words to make it better.

went the barks of little puppies at the end of the day as Marina and Dot were gathering their books.

Dot gave them the side-eye, but didn’t smile, didn’t chat, didn’t flirt. She had been doing this for the last three weeks, but they wouldn’t give up. “I wish Gene would come pick me up at school, too,” Dot grumbled.

“They’ve seen him at Kresge’s, haven’t they?” Marina asked as they headed toward the front doors.

She shrugged. “We both have beaux and our problems didn’t get solved. I thought … ”

Marina looked for Trey at the bottom of the long flight of stairs from the front doors of Paseo High School, but he wasn’t there. She heaved a sigh. “I thought too, Dot,” she muttered.

“Did he get tired of you, Marina?” Ruthie sing-songed in her ear.

“He has a job, Ruthie,” Dot sniped. “More than I can say for the dewdroppers in your family.”

“You’re such a ritz,” Ruthie snarled.

“And you’re a ritzy burg,” Dot returned sweetly.

“Marina!”

Marina’s heart stopped and she looked up the street to see Trey waving at her. “Trey!” she yelled back. “Golly, Dot, look!”

But she’d already seen. “Gene!” Dot squealed and waved.

Both men looked like the cat that ate the canary and leaned back against Trey’s car, folding their arms over their chests.

Dot stopped cold and looked at Ruthie. “That,” she said, “is my beau.”

Ruthie sniffed. “He looks Sicilian.”

“A very handsome Sicilian. If he were. But he’s not. So I guess he’s just plain ol’ handsome.”

Marina snickered.

“C’mon, Marina. We have men waiting for us.”

Happy as a lark now that Trey was here, Marina clipped down the stairs with Dot. He made everything so much better, and now she was getting impatient with high school and the catty girls and the fawning boys.

“Hellooooo, ladies,” Trey said with a wide smile after she and Dot had squeezed their way through the mass of bodies.

“Hi, Trey,” Marina chirped.

He took her hand and kissed the back of it with a wink and a sly smile, then leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Aw, that’s cute,” Dot gushed. “Hi, Gene.”

“You want one too?” he asked with dry amusement.

“Of course!”

“Gene,” Marina said, once he had planted a kiss on Dot’s forehead. “Dot has a dance at her church Friday night.”

“Marina!” Dot cried.

“That was for his information. Nobody asked him to go. Nope.”

Trey started to laugh and Dot lightly slapped her arm. “Augh! You awful girl!”

“I guess I know where you’ll be Friday night,” Trey drawled.

“I guess you do,” Gene returned with a grin. “Good morning, Dot.”

“Good morning, Gene,” she returned sassily.

“All right, ladies, hop in,” Trey said as he went around to open the front door for Marina, and Gene, the back door for Dot. “Time for Kresge’s and then it’s church for all of us.”

“WOULD YOU BE allowed to wear a dress Friday night if I asked?” Trey asked quietly underneath Dot chattering at an enthralled Gene. “I want to take you to Correggio’s for supper and they don’t allow women in trousers.”

“Perhaps,” Marina murmured. “Father likes you, but Mother is more … She’s not— Augh! What am I trying to say? She doesn’t like my walking out with you, but it’s not you. I don’t think. I have never had a beau before and I have tried to explain that I would like to enjoy having one for a while—”

“For a while?”

Marina took a deep breath. “Well … yes. I assume that eventually one of us will become disenchanted and not want to be with the other. It happens all the time. Susie is going with Johnny and then the next week, they’re each going with someone else.”

He gave her an odd look. “Marina, I am not a boy. I don’t waste time. What I said about Gene’s interest in Dot applies to my interest in you even more because I’m older than he is.”

Marina didn’t understand. “Are you saying you want to … um … ”

“I want to find out if I want to,” he said gently. “I can’t do that with Dot and Gene around. That’s why I went to your father.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Truly?”

“Truly. That is not to say you won’t get tired of me.”

“I don’t think I would get tired of you,” she mused, thinking. “I do think Mother would— I don’t think she— Augh! I mean to say I think she wants—”

“She wants you to stay home forever and take care of her!” Dot interrupted indignantly.

Marina’s brow wrinkled. “Do you think so?” she asked uncertainly.

“Oh, it’s clear as the nose on your face. You do all the housework, all the baking—”

“But she says she wants me to be a good—” She bit that off.

“Caretaker! If you think she will ever let you get married and leave her, think again.”

Marina’s attention fluttered up to the back wall of Kresge’s and considered, then looked back at Dot. “Nooo,” she said as she tried to put her thoughts into words. “I do the housework, but she goes out to the parishioners to tend them. I’m helping her be a good reverend’s wife. The parsonage isn’t a burden, as long as I keep up.”

“And you make all her clothes!”

“But I like doing that. It makes me happy when other people admire her. And she does all the cooking, which she would not do if she wanted me to take care of her.”

“But—”

“I can see what you’re saying, Miss Albright,” Trey interrupted gently. “But Marina doesn’t see it that way. Even if it were true, does it matter if Marina doesn’t mind?”

“She does mind!” Dot shot back, leaving Marina thoroughly bewildered. “I see her face when she wants a little praise or a sincere thank you and her mother doesn’t say anything or criticizes her or adds to her chores. I see her face when she asks to do the most innocent thing but is denied.”

“Dot,” Marina said thinly, “why—?”

“Because I want you to be happy, Marina,” she pled, taking her hands. “But you’re not.”

“But I can go lots of places and do things and I get pin money and I have good clothes and—”

“Yes, but—”

“What do you think would make her happy?” Trey asked.

Dot glanced at him with a tidge of contempt and said, “Well. I think being allowed to come to my church every so often would be a good start.”

“Are you still mad about that?” Marina asked, hurt all over again.

Dot flushed. “Not at you,” she muttered. “Marina, everyone loved the outfit you made me and I wanted to brag on you so you’ll know what it’s like to— I just wanted you to hear someone praise you. You never believe me. But noooooo your father just couldn’t be disturbed with his—”

Marina’s mouth twisted all sorts of different ways as she tried to sort that out. “He was in counseling with a woman with a family problem,” Marina said gently. “That was God’s will.”

“I don’t think she had a family problem,” Dot muttered.

Both Trey and Gene started and gave Dot a long look.

“What else would he be doing?” Marina asked plaintively, feeling as if suddenly she were the only one at the table missing the joke.

“I guess it was God’s will,” Dot muttered unhappily, sliding down in her seat and glaring at her cherry lime phosphate. “It’s beautiful, Marina,” she whispered, dashing moisture off one of her cheeks. “I would wear it every Sunday if my mother didn’t have some silly rule about not wearing the same thing two Sundays in a row.”

Dot’s mother was quite a stickler for fashion rules and Dot had enough beautiful Sunday outfits to never wear one twice in three months.

Marina had a lovely closet too, but she didn’t seem to look as good in her clothes as the models in the fashion magazines.

“Well … ” Marina finally murmured, “thank you.”

“Gene,” Dot said, turning to her beau with a bright smile. “I need to go for a walk. Would you like to come along and protect my honor?”

“Certainly,” he said gravely, sliding out of the booth, offering his hand to her, then placing it on his crooked arm before strolling out.

There was an awkward silence between Marina and Trey because she was thoroughly embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” Marina muttered. “I’m not quite sure what she was trying to say or … what. I mean, I understand what she said. I don’t understand what she said … I mean! Arrrggghhh. I don’t know why she cares so much. She’s just so … The strangest things set her off.”

“She loves you,” Trey said simply. “She’s trying to protect you.”

“From what?!” Marina demanded.

“Well, first, from me. Now it appears she’s at the end of her patience with your mother.”

“Mother isn’t—” Marina stopped. Wasn’t what?

“Marina,” Trey said gently, “you’re a good daughter. Dot’s family is different from yours and she doesn’t seem to understand there’s more than one way to be a good daughter. Just her way.”

Marina sighed and fiddled with her napkin.

Trey leaned toward her and nudged her gently. “Whether your mother wants you to stay home forever or not, your father seems to want to see you settled. And in a good Christian household, the father is the head. I’m sure Dot’s parents would agree.”

“That’s true,” Marina mused, then glanced at Trey. “But Mormons aren’t Christians.”

He shrugged. “Whatever they are, they’re still good people in the most important ways. Dot’s proof of that.”

Marina nodded. “What did you say to Father that he agreed I could walk out with you alone?”

“I told him Dot was too protective of you for uninterrupted conversation,” he drawled.

Marina gaped at him, then laughed, then clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, I shouldn’t laugh. She means well.”

“And that was my point about her goodness. Your father appreciates Dot’s concern and protective nature. But he also understands that Dot is a little too good at it.”

“Oh.”

“Marina, I am not trying to come between you. I think Dot’s a good person, but she is also a lot more cynical than you are so she sees things you don’t or simply are not there. I think you’re charming just the way you are. Gene thinks Dot’s charming just the way she is. I would also like to see the outfit you made for Dot, but I see your mother’s clothes so I don’t need to see Dot’s outfit to know you’re a talented woman.”

Marina looked at him warily. That was the second time he’d referred to her as a woman. Furthermore, his compliment sounded like a statement of fact, not empty words.

“You want me to tell you you’re pretty.”

Marina gave him a tiny nod.

“I won’t.”

She pulled her lips between her teeth.

“I tell you I could look at you all day long. So why would I say things I don’t mean just to make you feel better?”

“You do have a point,” she said slowly.

“Dot wants you to feel better because she doesn’t think your mother does enough.” He held his hand up when Marina opened her mouth to protest. “Whether she does or not is not for me to say. I don’t know; I don’t want to get between you and your mother any more than I want to get between you and Dot. My only point is that however clumsy she is, Dot loves you and cares about your feelings. Most people spend their whole lives looking for a friend like that.”

“Do … You don’t have a friend like that, do you?”

He gave her a wry smile. “No.”

“Gene?”

“My employee, not my friend. Not like you and Dot.”

“Do you want a friend like that?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “I … Um … No,” he finally said. “Men have allies and mutually interested acquaintances who may or may not stay mutually interested if something doesn’t work out right.”

“You mean … business?”

“There are no friends at an auction, Marina.”

---

19

THE FIRST CHANCE Trey got to ask Gio about his evening at Dot’s church dance was in the wee hours of Monday morning. They and three of Trey’s trusted hired guns were unloading crates of whisky from a barge at a small hidden landing far up the Kaw River.

“Not bad,” Gio informed him. “I’m never going to learn how to dance like she and her partner do, but I can manage basic steps enough to have fun.”

“And the partner?”

“She wouldn’t be allowed to do all those fancy tricks with him if half the congregation weren’t wise to his confirmed bachelorhood.”

“He’s Mormon?”

“No. His sister is. Dot’s his only chance to dance at that level. How was Correggio’s?”

Trey grimaced. “The date was fine. I had to do some fast lawyering to get Mama to let her wear a dress.”

“I thought it was Daddy who wanted to protect her honor?”

“He was busy comforting a parishioner.”

All five men snorted a laugh.

“Did I tell you about Marina’s mama’s cooking? Most godawful food I’ve ever had. Marina even said so, and she’d rather do the cooking, but Mama won’t let her even though Daddy likes Marina’s food better.”

“Because she’s jealous.”

“Keep Marina from eating too much. Her way of minding her waist.”

“She would go pudgy if she ate like Dot does,” Gio agreed.

“So Marina orders meatballs then halfway through the first one, tells me it’s wonderful but she’s stuffed.”

“Correggio’s uses Marie Lazia’s recipe. Everybody in town loves her meatballs.”

“And everybody’s lyin’ like a big dog on a big rug. Are you gonna tell Brother John his wife’s pride and joy is shit?”

“Had me fooled.”

“Marina loved the antipasto—shit, she could’ve inhaled the olives and prosciutto, but she was too polite to take more’n a coupla bites. I had the pasta alla Norma, but she was eyeballin’ that like a starving orphan, so I asked her if she’d switch because I’d rather have the meatballs and I felt we were on familiar enough terms to do that, and I hoped she wouldn’t think badly of my manners.”

Gio nodded approvingly.

“Almost got some calamari, but she wanted to save that for next time.”

“You sure she just didn’t want squid?”

“She saw a platter going by and started slobbering. I told her what it was and she looked like she’d been promised a trip to a candy store. I could probably get this girl in bed by waving good food under her nose, ’cuz her mama ain’t cookin’ it an’ she ain’t allowed. Now, I saved the best part for last. Boss Tom and Carolyn were there.”

“The hell you say!”

“Made a point to stop by our table. Boss Tom introduced himself and the missus as Tom and Carolyn, no last names. Marina said, and I quote, ‘Oh, what a lovely couple!’ She was thrilled to be seen as a contemporary. When she asked who he was, I told her he was a client.”

The five of them worked in relative silence for the next few hours, slinging crates stamped FLORIDA ORANGES into and out of Trey’s three ICE trucks, then heading out to an old widow’s garage in Kansas, the use of which he paid for handsomely. When the booze was all packed away, they locked up the garage, headed downtown, then puttered on down an alley toward another partially filled warehouse on 16th and Baltimore. They drove in, parked, and locked the garage door behind them. They spent the next few hours hauling crates of whisky and gin down into the tunnel that snaked its way under 1520, its entrance a very well-camouflaged door under the outside-wall stairwell the third-floor tenants used.

It was eight a.m. when they finished stocking the tunnel and emerged. The speak was quiet. There were no sounds of debauchery coming from upstairs. The faint smell of tenants having cooked breakfast before work wafted downward. Trey paid his hired hands, and they trudged wearily out of the speak.

“Thanks,” Trey said as Gio climbed the stairs, then caught the look on Gio’s face when he turned around. “What.”

“You have never thanked me for one goddamned thing since I walked in here four years ago.”

“So? Can’t a cat do that without gettin’ his head bit off? You ain’t never thanked me for anything either.”

“Making me whore for you isn’t worth a thanks.”

Trey’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t have to take you in,” he said quietly. “Nobody in town wanted you because you were too hot to touch. Everybody knew that. Strange Sicilian kid coming through looking for work with that accent can’t be anything but connected. I gave you the terms straight up. You chose to stay.”

Gio’s mouth tightened and he looked away.

“I didn’t whore for my living,” Trey continued flatly. “God, do you know how much money I could make with my dick? Do you think I haven’t been offered a whole lotta money for not much work doing something I like? I’m good lookin’ and I’m good at it, and don’t think I never considered it, but I decided I’d eat rotten kitchen garbage—and I did—before I’d rent my body out to anybody, so think about that before you blame me for the choices you made.”

“I haven’t had much choice about anything I did,” he muttered, jingling the nickels in his pocket.

“I will allow as how you were eighteen, lost, felt like you didn’t have a choice, but now you got yourself out. Congratulations. Welcome to manhood.”

“Yo, Boss!” Vern bellowed, his voice barely reaching through the door down into the tunnel where Trey was taking inventory. “Boss Tom’s lookin’ for ya.”

Trey shot to his office to get his books. He shot out the door, down the street, and past all those waiting for an audience. Lazia’s man Carrollo, leaning back against the building just next to the door, shot him a killing look as he went in, but that was normal. Carrollo hated Trey and the feeling was mutual. It would be a good day that Trey was let off his leash to ice the cat, but then, Trey suspected Carrollo was on his own leash with respect to Trey.

Trey took the stairs two at a time, then stopped just outside the closed office door to catch his breath before strolling in as if he hadn’t done a day of work in his life.

“ … begging me for consideration,” Boss Tom said, catching Trey’s ear. He leaned in closer to the door. “I am not going to let you get your fingers in the middle of this bet, because I will chop them off. I want Gil Scarritt run out of town on a rail by his own congregation, and you can’t make that happen. He can.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Brother John Lazia said.

“If he doesn’t, you and I can have another sit-down. One more thing. I do not want you to rile up his granddaddy if he gets wind of your shenanigans. Man’s got his fist around St. Louis and fingers in Jeff City. He and I get along and I don’t want you changing that.”

Trey blinked.

“You don’t know he’s his granddaddy.”

“Have you ever seen Elliott Dunham?” Boss Tom retorted. Long silence. “No, I don’t know, but I’d bet on it.”

The hell? Elliott Dunham was Trey’s oldest brother’s name. Not once had Trey’s parents said one word about their respective families. If Trey had a granddaddy, it’d give Trey a heart attack, but how many Elliott Dunhams could there be in the world?

“Say, did you hear about the Terranova kid?” Lazia asked.

“Everybody knows about the Terranova kid. Morello’s fit to be tied, though he does a good job of hiding it. He was the laughingstock of Atlantic City.”

“You have any ideas?” Now Trey thought he was having a heart attack.

“I am not going to get mixed up in the New York families’ business, and I suggest you do the same.”

“I want that bounty.”

“You can live without it, but good luck.”

Gio would be pleased to know Boss Tom would protect him from his family, but not that Boss Tom knew where he was or that Trey now had something Boss Tom could use as a bargaining chip against him.

“Leave Dunham alone—” Boss Tom said, which was all he had to say before Trey skedaddled down the stairs, waited until Boss Tom’s door opened, and started up the stairs as if he’d just arrived.

“Brother John!” Trey said heartily once he’d reached the second floor. Again. He shifted his ledgers to his other arm and held his hand out for a shake. Brother John took it and pulled him in for kisses on each cheek as Italians did. “Balance day for ya?”

“You know how it is,” he said smoothly. “How’s your bet going?”

“John,” Boss Tom said flatly.

“Ciao, Dunham,” he said.

“Yeah, tell your wife Marina loved Correggio’s meatballs.”

Lazia halted mid-step. “She did?”

“She woulda asked for seconds if it wa’n’t rude for a woman to eat that much.”

“Marie will be pleased,” he said as if a little dazed. “Thanks.”

“Credit where credit’s due,” he said as he moseyed on into Boss Tom’s office, then dropped his ledgers in front of him.

Boss Tom looked up at him from under his brows. “I see what you mean about Marina Scarritt,” he mumbled. Trey dropped himself into the chair across from him.

“What?”

“Interesting looking,” Boss Tom sneered. “Carolyn thought she was adorable, although she needs some spiffing up. Asked me twice if I was sure she was only sixteen, you two carrying on a conversation like she actually knows anything about the world.”

“She’s smart,” Trey drawled smugly. “Those girls? Just have to dig their confidence out from under other people’s bum opinions.”

Boss Tom scowled. “What were you talking about?”

“Books,” Trey said firmly. “She reads. A lot. She loves detective novels.”

“Goddammit,” Boss Tom muttered.

Trey grinned. It was no secret Trey read everything he could get his hands on, that he hired tutors for difficult subjects, and that he had a particular fondness for Agatha Christie. So Trey sat basking in his smugness while Pendergast examined his books. “Where are you picking up George Remus’s whisky?” he finally asked. “I asked him and he had no idea what I was talking about.”

“Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”

Boss Tom shrugged.

“Does it matter? That’s my biggest margin, which means you make a shit-ton of money. Higher than the Rieger and McCormick combined. An’ it ain’t in your best interest to know.”

Boss Tom waved a hand, which meant he agreed and wouldn’t ask again.

It took a while for Boss Tom to get through them, but he initialed the end-of-month totals and snapped the ledgers shut. “Say, Dunham. Been wondering. Where’d you come from? What happened to your family?”

Trey pretended to look shocked. “Oh, well, my mama and three older brothers died in the epidemic.” Boss Tom nodded. “My daddy died of a broken heart about a year after my last brother kicked the bucket.”

“You don’t have any other family?”

“So far as I know, no. Mama and Daddy never talked about where they came from, even when we asked.”

“And you never went looking?”

“Why?” Trey asked incredulously. That was not feigned. “I’m twelve. I wake up and my daddy don’t. I bury him and the next day I got bankers knockin’ on my door wantin’ me to pay the rest of the mortgage in one lump sum.”

Boss Tom looked shocked. “Surely they meant arrears.”

“All of it,” Trey said testily. “But I was twelve. How’s I supposed to pay a mortgage? So I get kicked out on my ass with nothin’. I hitch a ride with a bootlegger, his woman feeds me, bootlegger pays me to do this errand or that errand on our way here, I stay with them for a while gettin’ the lay of the land, then they get the flu and die. I take over their operation, in between hammer a couple of little speakeasies into shape, and here I am.”

The old man took a deep breath and pinched his nose in thought. “Well, I’m sorry about that, boy. I didn’t know.”

Boss Tom hadn’t asked because he was curious, but his sentiment was sincere. He was a family man, and that story would twist any good father’s heart.

“You know I would’ve helped any kid in your situation, right?”

“I surely do, Boss.” That was the absolute truth. “’Preciate it.”

---

20

BY THE TIME he and Gio picked the girls up from school, Trey didn’t feel like being witty or deceptive. At Kresge’s, he told them he had received some disturbing news he’d rather not talk about and hinted he might not be good company for the rest of the evening. Even Gio was surprised. Marina very obligingly told him she had a lot of homework to get done, but hadn’t wanted to spoil the evening’s plans by saying anything.

He really liked that girl.

Unfortunately, his mood didn’t abate throughout the evening. Around eleven, he told his assistants, “I’mma be gone for a coupla-three days. Gio, you cover for me with Marina tomorrow.”

“Where are you going?” Gio asked, concerned. “You’ve been off since you got your books checked.”

“Nothin’ to do with Boss Tom or Lazia or the bet or Scarritt or the speak or Marina. I just gotta sort somethin’ out.” With that, he got in his car and headed east as impulsively as he did everything.

He got to St. Charles five hours later, but he was in no condition to meet Elliott Dunham, no matter the man’s station in life or condition or health. He found a decent hotel, paid a girl to go get him a nice set of duds, paid another one to bring him a bath and breakfast, and paid a third to bring him a cigar, a bottle of whisky, and her pussy.

He drank, smoked, and thought of Marina the whole time the gal rode him.

He went to bed at his normal time and by evening, had found out almost everything he wanted to know. He was shocked to find out Boss Tom hadn’t been blowing smoke about the existence and station of Elliott Dunham, who was a filthy rich bigwig in and around St. Louis. Moreover, he was a retired federal judge! Whether he was Trey’s grandfather or not made only half a difference. He had to know who this cat was, why he was wearing Trey’s eldest brother’s name, and why Boss Tom did not want to piss him off.

The wife was some sort of society matron and they lived in a Second Empire mansion in a very swank neighborhood. He had a Duesenberg Model J—and so did she.

“Good Lord,” Trey whispered to himself, wondering if they were up to sharing the wealth.

He shook that off. No, he didn’t want their money. Money was cheap. He wanted information.

He’d caught part of their routine and followed what he thought was their car. Along around suppertime, he was leaning up against a tree in a park, a newspaper in front of his face, when he finally got a good look at the old man and it was like looking in a mirror—if Trey were about a hundred years old and a hundred pounds too fat.

Boss Tom was generally a bad gambler, but he would’ve won that bet.

Trey was so shocked he nearly dropped his newspaper and then fumbled with it, fighting the breeze to keep hold of it, which drew the old man’s attention. And then the old man stopped cold, staring right back at him where he was still trying to be smooth.

Smooth was out the window.

Trey smirked wryly and shoved himself away from the tree, then sauntered across the street to where his future stood. The old man’s eyes narrowed and the old woman by his side, dressed in the height of fashion, watched also, her mouth pursed. They both stood straight and proud, which did Trey a whole lot of good.

He stepped up onto the sidewalk, stood in front of the old man—they were the same height—and said, “Trey Dunham.”

The old man looked him up and down, then drawled, “Took you long enough.”

“I had more important things to do than look up a likely dead relative I never heard of,” Trey shot back.

The old woman’s face softened into a smile and she held out her hand. Trey took it and kissed the back of it. “Ma’am.”

“I thought I had seen a ghost,” she said crisply with a regal nod.

Trey’s eyebrow rose. “Of a man who’s not dead?”

She smiled and her eyes sparkled. “Of the young man I married.”

“I’m not dead yet! Come, boy. I hope you’re not here for money, because I’m not giving you any even if I do like your gumption.”

“Don’t need money,” Trey said as he fell in beside them and admired their quick pace. “I want to know why I only just heard of you yesterday.”

“I couldn’t tell you that,” said his grandfather. “A boy should be interested on his own behalf.”

“I’m interested when I need to be.”

“I’m sure. We were on our way to dinner, but you knew that.”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“I shouldn’t believe you, but I do. Join us.”

Trey followed them into a very fine restaurant and attempted to remember his manners and mind his diction. They were seated, their menus brought. Trey ordered what he thought might be the least expensive thing on the menu and refused a pansy little soft drink. “Remus, if you have it.”

Both grandparents and the waiter gaped at him. He raised an eyebrow. “St. Louis might not have the action Kansas City does, but I know how this state feels about the Eighteenth Amendment so I know you’ve got whisky. The good stuff, not tobacco swill.”

At a small gesture from his grandfather, the waiter gave a little bow and said, “Very well, sir.”

He looked back at the old man who studied him with a look Trey couldn’t decipher. He took him in from well-coiffed head to well-shod toe. “You’re one of Boss Tom’s people.”

Trey shrugged and took his whisky from the waiter with a nod of thanks. He smirked when the waiter put an Old Fashioned in front of his grandfather and a dirty martini in front of his grandmother—which they had not ordered.

He liked these people.

For the first time since his father died, Trey suddenly felt like he belonged somewhere, to someone, that his name fit.

Finally.

And it had only taken fifteen minutes.

“I,” he said after a sip and a nod of appreciation for its fineness, “am a respectable insurance salesman.”

“And my name’s Fiddlesticks.”

Their dishes came and Trey again had to concentrate on his table manners. They weren’t difficult rules, but there were so many of them in such a precise order.

“Trey,” his grandmother said. She had a delicate voice, but also commanding.

“Yes’m?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“And you are here to learn where you came from.”

“Yes’m.”

His grandfather grinned. “That isn’t all,” he said right before he put a piece of steak in his mouth. “You want to know the connection between me and Boss Tom.”

Trey nodded, then relaxed and dug into his Cobb salad.

“Where are you staying?”

Trey told them, then said, “I got—” He stopped, took a deep breath. “I have business to tend and a girl back home—” They hadn’t missed his grammatical slip-up, but were too polite to say anything. “—so I can’t stay long. I had wild hare to shimmy on over here.”

“Where is your family?” Grandmother asked softly. “My son?”

Trey’s eyes narrowed. “He’s dead.” She gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth. “As is my mother and three older brothers. Why don’t you know that? Better question: Why don’t I know about you?”

She looked away. Grandfather cleared his throat. “Ah, words were said,” he muttered, his voice trembling. Moisture glistened in his eye. “It … I was an ass. We wanted your father to marry in the church and your mother was Methodist and … ”

Trey’s jaw began to grind. “What church?”

“Catholic. Her parents felt the same way about Hank. We got into it. The kids ran away. Never heard from them again.”

“That’s it?” Trey asked tightly, remembering now his father never went to church with him, his mother, and brothers. “You didn’t like my mother’s god? So you let your son go? Never looked for him? Never found out what had become of him? My oldest brother was eighteen when he died. Even if you didn’t like my mother, you had four grandsons, one of whom was orphaned at twelve, and you never … ?” Trey could barely speak, he was so furious, but his grandparents sat in ashamed, mournful silence.

“My mother,” he growled, “was a soft-spoken, loving woman. My father was kind and gentle. They were both smart as whips. We were all hard-working. We went to church—yes, Methodist. We boys went to school and our parents minded our marks closely. And you—and they—threw us away for your fucking god? You know what?” he barked, whipping his napkin off his lap and throwing it into his chair. He stood and snatched his fedora off the empty fourth chair. “I hope your god damns you to whatever hell you believe in.”

“Trey!” his grandmother cried as he strode out of the restaurant. “Trey, no! Come back!”

He heard her running after him, but he didn’t slow, turning out on the sidewalk.

“Trey, please!” she cried. “You’re our family! My only son’s only son! You are mine!” she screamed, then broke down in sobs he could hear from as far away as he was.

He slowed. He hadn’t been anybody’s since his father died of a broken heart because the only child he had left wasn’t enough to live for.

“YOU ARE MINE!”

He stopped.

Thought. How badly did he want to belong to somebody? What strings would come with this?

“Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face, son!” the old man boomed. “You came looking for your grandfather. You found him. Now what?”

Trey dropped his head back to look at the sky. It was his father who’d taught Trey and his brothers to read, to do sums, to throw a baseball, to work, to save. It was his mother who’d sung to him and rocked him and stroked him to sleep and made sure his older brothers didn’t torture him too much. Trey didn’t know how he would have turned out if his family hadn’t died, but life had done its best to break him. He was far from broken, but he was also far from anything his father would’ve wanted him to be.

“TREY!”

He hated her. Hated them. Hated that he’d had to navigate the world alone as a twelve-year-old orphan when there were two people right there who could’ve taken him in if— They couldn’t have done anything about his mother and brothers’ deaths, but they could’ve given his father more reason to live, or at least adults to lean on in his grief. But their pride, their fucking pride … In what? Religion.

It was always religion.

“PLEASE!”

Trey was twenty-four. He was swimming in a pool of men twice his age who liked their lives of crime and would die early because that was what mob bosses did. Trey wanted to get out filthy rich and alive, and as far away from the mob as possible. But when he could stand to think about it, he admitted he had no one to live for. He didn’t even have his own twelve-year-old boy who needed his father.

And now, here, these people … this old woman, rich as Croesus (he didn’t know how to pronounce that, either), a bigwig in St. Louis, was standing on a street corner with people streaming around her, screaming at him, begging a twenty-four-year-old gutter rat to stay.

What was he waiting for? He had to leave because he didn’t owe these people anything. He had to stay because—

He turned with a sigh and trudged back to his grandparents. Once he was within arms’ reach, he gently gathered the weeping old woman into his arms. He was almost surprised when the old man threw his arm around Trey’s shoulder.

The three of them slowly made it back into the restaurant and to their table. Trey seated both his grandparents, then himself. They each nibbled at their suppers a little to gather themselves.

“What happened?” his grandfather asked low.

“Spanish flu,” Trey muttered. “We had a farm near Redbird.”

“Henry always did want to be a farmer,” his grandmother whispered to her plate.

“Yeah,” Trey murmured. “Mama got sick first. Died. Then my three older brothers went bang, bang, bang like that. It was just my father and me left. About a year after my last brother died, I got up one morning and my daddy didn’t. I was twelve.”

Trey’s grandfather cleared his throat and studied his meal. His grandmother was doing the same, as well as sopping up tears with her napkin.

Trey’d gotten his tears beaten out of him. He had none left.

“I figure he died of a broken heart,” Trey concluded quietly. “I wasn’t enough.”

“What had he been doing that year?”

“What we did, only more of it. Plowing. Feeding the animals. Milking the cows. We had a woman out to do laundry, but I did the hunting, fishing, and cooking. Didn’t do a whole lot of cleaning. Didn’t have time.”

“Was it a big farm?”

Trey shrugged. “Fairly. We had hands. Added more acreage each year. Growing, what with my brothers. I don’t know what happened to it, except some cats who said they were bankers came along and told me they were calling the loan and get out if I couldn’t cough it up.”

“Did you verify that?”

“I looked at the records when I had a minute,” Trey said testily. “We were four months in arrears. I wouldn’t have been as patient if I were a banker, not if I could see which way the wind was blowing. Not even being that far in the hole would make my daddy come crawling back to you for help, so what does that tell me?”

“I’m sorry about that,” the old man croaked. “But whatever happens here, now, I need you to know the last thing your father would’ve died of is a broken heart. He was too strong for that.”

Trey’s eyebrow rose.

“You were twelve, so he probably didn’t let you see how hard he would’ve had to work to cover for three boys and your mother. He likely worked himself into the grave.”

Trey’s lip curled. “How would you know?”

“That was how my father died. Young, though not that young. Working too hard for too little. He was a farmer too. I decided I didn’t want to spend my life making just enough to eat and working too hard to do it. So I—”

Trey held his hand up, and his grandfather stopped speaking. He had to think about this. All this time thinking his father had left him and … it might not be true. Of course his grandfather didn’t know for sure, but Trey did remember the long hours he and his father had put in to keep the farm going. They had been alone. Everyone around them was dead or sick from the flu enough that they would probably die. The flu wiped almost everyone out, except the bankers.

He might or might not change his point of view after contemplating it, but he would need time to decide what to believe.

“Crime pays,” Trey muttered finally, gesturing to his grandfather.

“That it does,” his grandfather murmured in return. “And it runs deep in the Dunham family genes.”

That shocked Trey, and he met his grandfather’s eyes, which, now that he was noticing, were exactly the same ice blue as Trey’s and just as unnerving as everyone found his.

“My great grandfather,” the old man said as he once again dug into his meal, “was a pirate who stole a king’s ransom of gold from a British pay fleet during the Revolutionary War, and my great grandmother was a privateer captain for the Americans. They came to blows somewhere in the Caribbean. Or so the story goes.”

Trey’s fork clattered onto the side of his plate. “The hell you say,” he whispered, shocked. Thrilled.

“I think,” he added wryly, “and if I remember my grandfather’s stories correctly. The pirate was ancient when I was a boy. My great grandmother was already gone before I was born, but I did find her letter of marque, so I know that was true. Her name was Celia. I have reason to doubt his story, though because he was supposedly also an English earl. The problem is, Dunham is an old name from Scotland, and was my great grandmother’s father, who was also a pirate on the Barbary Coast. Logically, the pirate’s name couldn’t have been Dunham, and if he was an earl, he would have had neither reason nor opportunity to be one, nor would he have gotten away with it.” He chuckled and shook his head. “My grandfather told the tallest tales. My father thought they were a riot, but didn’t believe a word of it. I hung onto every word, but those words were gone soon enough. His sugars, they said. Same problem I have. It’s apparently from my great grandmother’s side. That’s what she and her father died from too, I understand.”

Trey nodded vaguely, thinking. Still thinking. “Your father’s heart? My father’s too?”

“If I had to guess, yes. That’s what it sounds like to me, unless he was a drunkard.”

Trey shook his head. “Mama didn’t hold with that. I found out I like my whisky well enough, but I also don’t drink much, relatively speaking. Cocaine, aphrodisiacs, opium, peyote, reefer, heroin, whatnot—tried ’em all—make my heart drop out on the floor, which isn’t worth the high, so I don’t. None of that stuff. I don’t touch it.”

His grandfather nodded soberly. “Best you keep it that way. You have enough on your plate with Boss Tom.”

“Boss Tom ain—isn’t—my only problem,” Trey muttered.

“Oh?”

“John Lazia,” Trey admitted reluctantly, because that said too much.

“Ah. Well, I’ll not get into your business. I will say, whatever you’re doing, if you’re not in hock up to your ears—”

It was a question. Trey shook his head.

“—you’re doing well enough for yourself.” He paused. “So you really didn’t come here to see what you could squeeze out of me?”

“No. I overheard Boss Tom talking to Lazia. Said your name. He didn’t want Lazia to get you mad at him, and … All I wanted was to get answers my daddy would never answer. He and Mama wouldn’t speak of you, and now I realize I don’t even know her maiden name. I had too many of my own problems after he died to think about any of that.”

Trey had forgotten his grandmother was there until she began to weep again. Quietly. No one at other tables could hear. But Trey did and he watched her for a moment, wondering if he should do something to comfort her.

He turned back to the old man. “I do a lot of bad things,” he said flatly, “but I don’t shake people down. It’s easier to do business when people know you want a fair exchange.”

“Wise, too. But you’re getting your real money from elsewhere.”

“You don’t need to know all that.”

“I wasn’t asking. You’re my grandson. Dunham blood runs true, ne’er-do-wells, the lot of us. Or farmers, but it’s the ne’er-do-wells who keep the money flowing through every other generation.”

“Don’t know how you’re defining ne’er-do-well, old man, but you look like an e’er-do-well to me.”

“We make our money, then get out. Go straight.”

“They do?” Trey asked incredulously.

“For the most part. Can’t leave it behind completely because we have to protect ourselves, but yes. Always best to leave the table when you’re winning. Pigs get fat—”

“Hogs get slaughtered.”

“Indeed. I would be surprised if you didn’t have a plan, if you’re already that straight-shooting.”

Trey pursed his lips, wanting to tell someone, but needing to keep it to himself. “I have a plan. You don’t need to know that, either. You went straight from bootlegging to the bench?”

His grandfather gave him a crooked grin. “That path was not straight, but I did my best, yes. My grandfather was a lawyer. My father and great grandfather pirate were farmers—which is another reason I doubt the pirate story. Your father wanted to be a farmer as long as I can remember. Mother Nature would be his only boss. Now you— I’d bet my last dime you’ve been making plans to go to law school.”

Trey’s jaw ground.

“Have you graduated from high school, Trey?” his grandmother asked.

“No, Ma’am. Sixth grade.”

So it was his turn to shock his grandparents.

“I read a lot. I get tutors for math and suchlike. I had to, to learn to keep books properly. I do that well.”

“You speak and act well for someone of your education and occupation.”

“I go with nice girls who can teach me those things. I watch the folks who come into my— I watch the upper crust. Listen. Mimic. I get confused, though. Nothing sounds right to me when I’m in places like this, talking to folks like you. I go back to my life and continue speaking this way, and I get looks. I slip again when I come back into this life and I get looks.”

“I can teach you more,” his grandmother offered softly.

“I would like that, Ma’am, but I’ve been gone long enough. I need to keep an eye on what’s mine.”

“Protect your territory.”

Trey nodded reluctantly.

“What is your territory, Son? No use skirting it; you know I’ll find out within a day.”

Trey gave up with a sigh. “I manage 1520 Main for Boss Tom. It’s a speakeasy, middling-upscale. He stuck me there four years ago just to keep it limping along. Like a stupid sh—person, I made it into a bit more than that. I have the money to buy it, but Boss Tom would want to know where I got that much money and I can’t explain that without getting put in the river.”

His grandfather nodded and gestured with his fork for Trey to keep speaking.

“So Boss Tom made me a bet. About a month ago. I could have the speak if I get a particular girl … ” He felt his face flame.

Neither of them was following. Of course they wouldn’t. It was completely outrageous, and now that he cared about this cat’s approval, he was ashamed.

“I had two months to make sure she was in the family way. I have three weeks left.”

His grandmother’s fork clattered on her plate. He could barely look at her, but did just enough to see her wide eyes and hands clapped to her face.

The table was silent.

“Boss Tom wants revenge on her father. I don’t know what for. He made the bet after he saw me watching her to ask her out. I didn’t know her name. I only go with nice girls and I’ve never— Anyway, since I was already interested, he made the condition I was not to marry her first.”

“And you’re doing this,” his grandfather said flatly. Trey barely managed to keep himself from shrinking in shame.

“I am,” he said firmly, finally looking up to see an odd expression on his face. “I like her. She’s sharp, a little tetched in the head I think, but in an interesting way I can’t describe. Probably the way she’s raised.”

“You say that as if you intend to marry her,” his grandmother whispered. “After, I mean.”

Trey thought about it. “Maybe. I don’t know if I like her that much.”

“And what is she going to do if you don’t?” the old man asked tightly.

“Well, sir, probably the same thing every girl of her station does: get sent away to have the baby, give it to some family that wants a baby, then come back like nothing happened.”

“Is her family the type to take her back?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Her mother is grooming her to be her caretaker in her old age. She will not let that go. If this cat gets what Boss Tom thinks is due him, they’ll need her.”

“You are going to allow another man to raise your child? My great-grandchild?”

“Ye—” Trey scowled. “Uh … I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Well, think about it,” he snapped. “We might be criminals, but we keep our family together.”

“The same way you kept your family together,” Trey said blithely. To his satisfaction, the old man flushed.

Again the table was silent and Trey knew he’d lost the only family he had, now that he’d gotten warm to the idea that he belonged to someone. He quietly put his napkin by his plate and began to rise. “Ma’am. Sir. Thank you for supper and the fine company and the information. I appreciate it.”

“I didn’t say you could leave the table, young man,” the old man growled.

Trey looked at him, shocked.

“That’s dirtier than I have a taste for, but entirely something a Dunham would do, albeit he wouldn’t allow his baby to be lost in the wind with no thought at all.”

“I realize that,” Trey said warily as he sat, “after what you’ve said.”

“If you do this, and you get that speak, I will personally come to Kansas City to make you marry her. So you better make sure you like her that much before you get the job done.”

Trey’s jaw tightened. “I don’t buckle to force, old man. Bribery works. A fair exchange, definitely, but I can’t go that route. Coercion and extortion don’t work on me, either. Not for you, not for anybody. I’ll go down in flames first.”

“And how do you plan to get this girl in the family way?” he sneered.

“Not rape,” he sneered in return. “I don’t force anybody to do anything.”

“If you fail?”

“I won’t fail. Getting her pregnant was an order. Doing it in two months was the bet. I don’t know what will happen to me if I don’t get it done at all, which means I don’t know what’s going to happen to the speak. If someone else takes over … And there are a lot of folks wanting a piece of me … Anyway, it’d break my heart. So I’m going to get it done to win, because it’s mine already. I’ve worked too hard for that place and I won’t see my hard work go down the shi—drain without a fight. And if you think you can buy it and turn around and sell it to me, think again.

“I don’t know your connection with Boss Tom, but he’ll either torch it or kill me before you can get on a train to rescue me. Probably both. You want to keep me? —Which I don’t know why you would— Stay out of my business. Kansas City is not your town. Even the New York and Chicago outfits stay out. One bootlegger-turned-judge is not going to be able to save my life or my business, especially if Boss Tom put you on the bench.”

Elliott shook his head.

“Well, all right then. I’ll let you know if I need help after I win.”

His grandfather studied him for a long time, but Trey didn’t back down. He had nothing Trey wanted and Trey’s covetousness had already gotten him in hot water.

“Fine,” he finally said with a curt nod. “Do you need a place to stay while you’re in town?”

“No. I’m leaving tonight.”

“What’s her name, Trey?”

He looked at his grandmother, who still wore that pleading, hopeful look. “Marina, Ma’am. Marina Scarritt. Reverend Gil Scarritt’s her father, the one Boss Tom’s after.”

At that, his grandparents stiffened and exchanged a long look. Then his grandfather spoke in a tone that sent shivers down Trey’s spine.

“Do what you have to do.”

---

21

DO WHAT YOU have to do.

Trey had known better than to ask, but clearly Reverend Scarritt got around. Both his grandparents, so horrified by the task and then … do what you have to do.

Trey had lied about driving back to Kansas City. He simply didn’t want to be tempted to stay a few days to visit. He went back to his hotel, got the same things he had the day before, plus a good night’s rest.

Not really.

His mind was too full of all the information he’d been deluged by to sleep.

The fact that he even had family to begin with.

They wanted to claim him, keep him as theirs.

His father, not dying of a broken heart, but an overworked one that was doomed from birth anyway.

His grandfather, whose name was Elliott, named after his pirate great-grandfather, was old and dying himself, from his sugars, also handed down. Obviously Trey’s father hadn’t been angry enough to keep from naming his eldest son after his father.

His grandmother, whose name was Susanna, was from an old Irish family in cahoots with the Chicago Sicilians.

Besides Trey’s father, Elliott and Susanna Dunham had had four daughters, all of whom were alive and well with families of their own. One was in California. One was in Louisville. One was in Chicago. The last was in St. Louis. Trey would have liked to meet her, but he was short on time.

He still didn’t know his mother’s maiden name because he’d forgotten to ask, but he needed to swim through all this information before going after his other set of grandparents.

For some reason, unburdening himself to this man he didn’t know, one he shouldn’t (didn’t) trust, had felt good. The three of them had talked and laughed long into the night, after the restaurant closed and they were moved to the bar. Trey wasn’t interested in trying to drink the old man under the table, but his Irish grandmother could hold her martinis like a champ. Slowly, the old man told him his story, made the connection to Boss Tom, which was really nothing more than business as usual since Prohibition began: bootlegging whisky. Nothing in that was foreign to Trey or unexpected, once he confirmed that Grandfather Elliott (as he insisted upon being called) (“Sir” was too formal) was as influential as Boss Tom was.

He was not, however, on speaking terms with the Mafia as Boss Tom was, and he wanted to keep it that way.

The thing we Dunhams do is keep to ourselves. We walk a very fine line, but do our own thing and we go our own way. Not leaders, not followers, out of the fray. It was the only reason I could walk out of Chicago without looking over my shoulder.

Trey had a promise from them that they would visit Kansas City sometime soon. As he headed west in the wee hours of the morning, he found himself growing used to the idea of family visiting. By the time he unlocked the back door of 1520, he was looking forward to it.

He walked through the kitchen, stopped by the bar, and looked around.

It was quiet. Clean. Nothing was out of place. The soft sound of footsteps on the outside-wall staircase told him one of his tenants was going to work. There was a soft knock on the front door, which startled him. He opened it a speck, and three pieces of paper were shoved through.

He took them, closed the door and saw it was a bill of lading. His brow wrinkled. A delivery of Remus was waiting for him at Union Station. That was new. Usually he picked it up at all sorts of places around town, but never directly from Union Station.

That made him nervous. Very, very nervous.

He initialed one of the three and slipped it back through the door, then made sure the fellow sauntered off as if going to work. He went to his office, changed into his old brown work pants and white singlet, and headed upstairs to wake Gio. They puttered on down to Union Station and found his shipment of oranges in the cargo claim area.

“Hey, mac! Can I buy an orange off you?”

“Sure.”

Trey surreptitiously initialed the second piece of paper and the fellow wanting an orange initialed the third. They exchanged the papers.

Trey reached into his crate and pulled out an orange. “Nice doin’ business with ya.”

So Trey and Gio, along with a few bums who seemed to have nothing better to do, spent the morning loading a whisky shipment. Neither Trey nor Gio spoke except to direct their ad hoc workers. They were both too tired. They filled both ICE trucks, puttered off to yet another old widow’s home to fill her garage, then went back to the speak. Gio headed off to bed again and Trey went to the kitchen only to find Ida, his pregnant little housekeeper, scrubbing the grill. “What’re you doing?”

She jumped and twisted around, looking guilty. “Um … cleaning?”

“Yeah, I can see that. Why? You’re supposed to be washing windows upstairs.”

“I … told Bobby I’d clean the kitchen for him.”

“In exchange for what?”

She gulped. “Five dollars.”

That was a helluva lot of money for cleaning a kitchen. “What, exactly, are you supposed to do for five bucks?”

“I’m spring cleaning,” she said in a small voice.

Trey pursed his lips. That was a fair trade. He knew Bobby didn’t like doing it, but Trey insisted it be done once per quarter.

“A’ight,” he drawled with a shrug. “Savin’ up for when you can’t work no more?”

She nodded.

“You know what you’re gonna do with the baby yet?”

“I have a buyer.”

“Quick work, there. Make sure you don’t hold the thing after you pop it out ’cuz you’ll wanna keep it an’ get your heart broke when they come get it.”

She nodded sadly. “I know.”

“You stayin’ on here, ya think?”

“I’d like to keep the bunk room, if you don’t mind,” she said shyly. “It’s cozy.”

“Even with Gio there?”

“He’s quiet, keeps to his bunk. He helps me some. And he’s temporary, isn’t he? I just … I won’t be able to afford much for rent here, but I can’t anywhere else, either. I don’t have much. I’d like a bureau, is all. To put my clothes.”

The bunk room would no longer be available for emergencies, but it would be earning money. “Sure, doll.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dunham.”

He grunted and headed up to his mezzanine office, only to hear the faintest of noises from inside. The door was closed, but the lock had been jimmied. The hinges squeaked. He kept them squeaky on purpose.

Bobby squeaked also, his head popping up from the floor where he was kneeling over an open desk drawer, his hand buried all the way to the back of it.

“What are you looking for?” Trey asked calmly, leaning against the door knob and crossing one foot over the other.

Bobby pressed his lips together. A cat who was snooping on his own would be falling all over himself to apologize. A cat who was being paid to snoop might not take that tack.

“You got five bucks on you?”

He nodded.

“Give it over.”

Bobby arose carefully, stepped from behind the desk, a peashooter in his hand. Trey rolled his eyes and, quick as a blink, had his gun out and shot the fucker in the knee.

“Go back to Lazia,” Trey drawled as he grabbed a howling Bobby by the scruff of his neck, “an’ show him what’s gonna happen if I catch any more of you motherfuckers tossin’ my place.” Bobby was hootin’ and hollerin’ and carryin’ on, clutching his blown knee while Trey hauled him down the stairs, past the kitchen, and out to the alley. He dropped him on the ground and frisked him for his weapons and his cash, all of which he took.

He left Bobby there sobbing and begging, wondering how long it would take him to get to the end of the alley. He went to the kitchen to give Ida her five bucks. “You know how to cook?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, holding that five-spot to her like it was a sack of gold.

“You’re on the grill till you pop if I like your food. Four dollars a week, six to three. Same days off, room and board. If you can stand to also do the housekeeping, you keep that salary, too, and you can start around noon. Let me know if you can’t handle that load. Won’t hold it against you.” He looked around. “If I don’t like your food, you keep on keepin’ house, but if you also spring clean the kitchen once a week, I’ll throw in room an’ board for after. Bunkroom by yourself but it’s all I can do. Good cooks break even an’ I want good food an’ a clean kitchen more’n I want clean windows and rugs in my whorehouse. That good?”

The look of pure relief on her face was reward enough. “Thank you!” she breathed. The relief was too much.

“You didn’t ask me why,” he said, squinting at her. “Bobby’s a good cook. Been workin’ for me for two years.”

Her mouth tightened and she turned away and started scrubbing again. “He’s no good any other way.”

“You fuckin’ him?”

She hesitated, then muttered, “Not because I want to.”

“He payin’ you?”

She hung her head, shaking it as if she had something to be ashamed of.

Trey pursed his lips. “Me’n’Gio’s got church tonight, so we’re gonna be late. I’ll tell Vern you’re in charge back here an’ to get you some help. You think you can handle bossin’ a bunch of teenage boys around?”

“Yessir. I have three little brothers.”

“Good enough.” Trey headed out the door.

“Sir?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yeah, doll?”

“Speaking of church, I was wondering … The … It’s none of my business, but … What’s going to happen if you lose the bet?”

She was frightened, he realized. So was Ethel. He wondered if everybody here felt the same way. He could tell her nothing would change, but he couldn’t guarantee it.

“I ain’t gonna lose, doll,” he muttered. “Can’t afford to.”

He went back outside. Bobby had only managed to crawl two yards. Trey squatted over him. “Yanno,” he said conversationally, “tossin’ my office ain’t a killin’ offense. Oh, hell, even drawin’ a gun on me ain’t one. That’s what kneecaps are for.”

Then he grabbed him by his pomaded hair—God, he hated that stuff—

“Rapin’ a girl under my roof,” he said blithely, “is.”

—and bashed his head into the concrete.

---

22

TREY WAS TIRED, sore, and his muscles were twanging from all the heavy lifting he’d done that day. He had driven all night, worked all day, gone to church, worked all night and was about to fall asleep on his feet. Just as he was bunking down for the night, one of his gigolos knocked on his door. “How was church?”

“Tedious.” Trey settled in and threw an arm over his forehead. “Brody, if I believed in demon possession, I’d swear that cat puts the devil in people, shoutin’ an’ jumpin’ an’ rollin’ on the floor—”

“That’s why they call ’em Holy Rollers,” Brody said dryly.

“—speakin’ gibberish, callin’ it tongues. God almighty—who, by the way, got nothin’ to do with all that screechin’—”

“Gio doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Gio an’ his girl stand there an’ trade snide remarks. Snickerin’ an’ whisperin’. Surprised Marina ain’t noticed yet, but she sits to my left next to her mama, Gio on my right ’cuz Dot don’t like me none, an’ Dot on the end. She’s the vicious one, but she tickles him pink. Dunno why.”

“Grow up with a bunch of nice Catholic girls who are taught to keep their heads down and their mouths shut, maybe you’d take a sassy Mormon girl who’s packing heat, too.”

Trey chuckled. “Weird thing, Marina don’t get into all those acrobatics. Sings. Decent voice. But otherwise, she’s cool as the inside of a brand-new freezer. Her mama too. Neither one of ’em doin’ any speakin’ in tongues or rollin’, holy or otherwise.” Trey stopped and thought about how Marina behaved at church. “Yanno,” he mused, “it’s almost like she knows it’s bunk deep down inside, but can’t quite figure out why, standin’ there tryin’a parse it all out. Every service is another chance for her to gather more clues. Do you know, quarter of the way through the latest Ellery Queen, she had the villain pegged. I told her it couldn’t be. Two thirds of the way through, she said, ‘This is how he did it.’ I said nope. Guess what?”

“You have a book club of two,” Brody said flatly.

Trey laughed. “Yeah. Way to get into her trousers is get into her head an’ dig around. Always did like a good treasure hunt. So what’s up? You didn’t hunt me down to ask if I got saved. Again.”

“Solly Weissman was here again,” Brody said.

“Oh yeah?”

“He brought some friends. Had a grand old time. Ran up another tab he wouldn’t pay. Alice and I ended up waiting and Ida needed the boys in the kitchen instead of bussing tables. I’m shocked she could keep up, but she did a good job. Don’t know where Bobby was; not like him to not show up for work.”

“He quit this morning. ’Swhy Ida was ready to go.”

“Whattaya wanna do about Solly?”

That situation bothered the shit out of Trey. “He’s Boss Tom’s man. I may have to go pay him a visit to make that motherfucker back off. I wish I knew what he wanted.”

“He was looking around last night like he owned the place. Acted like it too.”

“Hm. Since he don’t own it, I’ll see about how to get him to pay his tab. Boss Tom ain’t gonna sit still for that.”

“So how’s Marina coming?”

“Well, she ain’t. Yet. Haven’t even kissed her. But say, you’re the third person to be more than interested in this bet. Is it that important to you all I win?”

Brody pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the door jamb and looked up at the ceiling. “We think if you lose, things here won’t be the same as they have been for the last four years. If we thought it would, then we wouldn’t care, but I gotta tell you, Solly coming around and bringing his friends and acting like he owns us has us more worried than anything Boss Tom or Lazia might do or not do. He wants the speak and he likely thinks being Boss Tom’s man means he’s entitled to it.”

“I get that feeling,” Trey murmured.

“And if you lose, Boss Tom might just fire you and hire him and he’ll hire somebody else. A good manager clears out the old staff and puts in his own, same way you did. And if we’re not put out and replaced, we don’t know how a new guy will be. The last thing we want is to be under Solly’s thumb. Better the devil we know, you know? Probably won’t keep the kitchen, either, then Ida’ll be on her back or she’ll be on the street, and we don’t want that. They’ll get more whores and move them to the third floor and kick the tenants out.”

Trey sighed heavily. “And if I win or lose, I wouldn’t be surprised if Boss Tom did something underhanded too. I don’t have the kinda firepower I’d need to hold off Solly and his soldiers, although Boss Tom did suggest I think about acquiring it.” Especially since he knew whom Trey was hiding. “God a’mighty. We’re fucked whether I win or not.”

“And you’ve only got three weeks left.”

“I wish I’d never taken that bet,” he grumbled. “Stupid shit. As usual. You all get together an’ talk about this?”

“Well, yeah. We’ve been together for a long time. Hell, we share the same bathroom, piss, shit, bathe, and shave in front of each other, so you could say we’re family. Even the tenants are worried, and they ask us. But we just say if you don’t win, you’ll find a way to keep us together somehow.”

Trey thought about that long after Brody left.

Do what you have to do.

You’ll find a way to keep us together somehow.

He was in deeper than he realized. He had employees. He had tenants. He had vendors. A lot of people relied on Trey, but some days, Trey felt like he was barely treading water. Each scheme he was forced to construct was more elaborate than the last because he had to work around the one before that.

Trey had seen a way to get the speak.

Boss Tom had seen a way to get revenge on Scarritt, and apparently, Trey’s grandparents were not opposed to Scarritt’s comeuppance by any means necessary.

Solly saw it as an opportunity to grab the golden egg and … do what? Continue on? Weissman wasn’t a good businessman. He was a stupid, lumbering dewdropper who thought he was important because he was Boss Tom’s bodyguard. He would never believe Boss Tom would turn it over to Solly, but Boss Tom was known to be a bad gambler and sometimes his judgment wasn’t too sound if he wasn’t paying attention. God only knew what Solly would do to the place, and the possibilities made Trey ache deep down inside.

Lazia wanted the speak, too, but if Trey took that step down, it would make Trey subject to Carrollo’s orders. Lazia was a good businessman and had lots of legitimate and illegitimate businesses. Trey wasn’t the only cat who could manage 1520 as well as Trey, so there was no way Trey could work for Lazia without getting into a gunfight with Carrollo.

It was an old grudge over a woman. Carrollo had had his eye on a certain flapper who frequented Trey’s establishment and divan. When the cat had gotten a little too forceful with her, Trey had stepped in. It didn’t help his cause that she threw a drink in Carrollo’s face and informed him she was busy fucking Trey and would never touch a trashy wop like him.

So it was one thing to know people were dependent on him, but it was another to be slapped in the face with the idea that they all considered themselves a family—with Trey as their patriarch and protector—when he could barely protect himself.

This load was too heavy to carry by himself, but he had to. One crisis at a time—

No. That was how he’d gotten into this mess, tending crises one at a time without considering long-term consequences or past solutions. The world belonged to people who could carefully pick their way through a forest, see all the threats, and change course or hide or retreat accordingly. People who could play chess.

Trey was not one of those people. He needed someone who could think like that, someone who could be presented with a problem, understand immediately the fastest way to the solution, but see an alternate, unexpected, route with fewer dangers.

He once again considered the idea of asking Marina to marry him with no intention of doing so, but he couldn’t risk giving Boss Tom that edge.

He’d want to keep company with Marina in any case, but there were nice girls he liked and there were not-nice girls he fucked, and the more Trey liked a nice girl, the less he wanted to fuck her.

So getting her pregnant was simply a task he had to complete, in short order, and his dick was not at all interested in doing so.

---

23

A WEEK AND A half later, Trey watched Marina closely as he seated her in a beautiful red velvet seat at Midland Theater. She was nervous, which he ascribed to the fact that she was wearing a dress. It was a beautiful dress, but all wrong for her.

Once Trey had taken his own seat, with Dot on his left, he leaned toward Dot just a little and whispered, “Does Marina know the Reverend Missus deliberately dresses her like a red-headed stepchild?”

Dot blinked, shocked. “Uh … I’m not sure,” she whispered back. “You can tell?”

“Any halfway successful businessman would be able to tell,” he said tightly. “Mama turned out just right. Marina, not. Letting her run with you—and it isn’t because you’re a good chaperone.” Dot’s lip curled a little but she didn’t protest, which meant she knew that or at least suspected it. “Put it all together, it’s obvious. How does that work?”

“Hrmph. She gives Marina the fabric and a picture and tells her to make that for herself. Marina knows she doesn’t look as good as the model, but says she can’t figure out why. I don’t know if she could dress herself well if she did know. Either way, she’s not going to disobey.”

“Find out.”

Dot scowled. “Do it yourself.”

“Tsk tsk tsk. Marina can walk out with me. You can’t walk out with Gene without me.”

She snarled at him.

“Dunham,” Gio growled.

Trey snickered and sat back in his chair, adjusting his suitcoat, crossing his legs, and perching his fedora on his knee. He glanced at Marina. She wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to him, as she was gawking at the magnificence of Midland Theater without seeming to gawk at all. That was a trick it had taken Trey months to learn.

He was slightly surprised that Marina could be stunned by such elegance, as Scarritt’s office was just as rich in a much tinier space. Yet as much as Trey wanted to ask, he had a feeling it wasn’t strategically wise.

“Every time I come here,” he whispered to her, “I feel just a little bit richer.”

She started. “Richer?”

He nodded. “In experience. Knowledge.” He tapped his temple.

“Oh,” she breathed, beginning to smile.

“And more motivated,” he added confidentially. “I wouldn’t want to live in such opulence, but I aspire to be able to.”

She pulled her bare lips between her teeth and blinked. “I see.”

He had no idea what that meant. It probably wasn’t wise to ask. Trey had never been wise. “What are you thinking?”

“Is money important to you?”

“What if I said yes?”

She looked like she’d been hit with a shovel. “I … Jesus told someone to sell everything and give it to the poor.”

“And then what?”

“And then he went away because he didn’t want to.”

“No, I mean, what would happen to him if he had?”

“Well, if he followed Jesus then he would have been provided for, by faith alone.”

Trey pursed his lips. “That’s a soul-killing way for a man with a modicum of pride to live,” he said gently. “Your father follows Christ—” Heh. “—and he doesn’t preach for free. Churches are set up to pay their clergy for a reason and that is because folks can’t live on faith.”

“But he is living on faith,” she said matter-of-factly. “He has faith the congregation will support him.”

“Would he continue to preach if they stopped?” She hesitated. Not wanting to make her feel stupid, he said, “Tell me the parable of the talents.”

She blinked, gazed at the faraway flocked red wall, then blinked again.

He waited.

Waited.

Waited.

Surely she knew …

“The two parables almost contradict each other,” she murmured vaguely. “Jesus praised the servants who had doubled their money, but giving all one’s money to the poor means you’ve no talents left to double.”

“Goddamn,” Trey whispered.

She looked at him as if she hadn’t heard him. “It’s not totally … um … ” She raised her hands, palms apart a little and shifted them. “Aligned. I mean! Um, no.”

“Analogous.”

“Yes!” she said with a bright smile. “Not really. But if you give all your money away, that’s all. You can’t give any more than that, and then you’re poor and begging for money from someone who still has some. You’re saying Father works. He doesn’t beg or depend on charity just because he’s a fisher of men.”

Trey couldn’t help his grin. “There you go, hopping over all those lily pads again. You went across two whole ponds that time.”

“Well,” she returned, “I’ve never heard those two compared before.”

“Few people do. Fact is, the more you make, the more you can give.”

“Do you give?”

“Yes,” he said truthfully, although he wasn’t giving his own money away. Time, jobs, advice, information, second and third chances, yes. Money, no. “It’s not good form to brag, so that’s all I’m going to say.”

She gave him that sweet smile, the one that plumped up her face, dimpled her cheek, and made her skin glow rosy. He smiled back wryly at her and lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to it. She flushed and tried to hide her deepening smile, to pull her hand away from his, but he was too wrapped up in the faint scent of perfume.

“Have you been picking lilacs?” he asked softly and let her take her hand back.

“Yes,” she murmured shyly.

He wished he hadn’t let her hand go, but asking for it again would be awkward, so he said, “Are you sure you haven’t heard Gershwin before?”

“Of him.”

“Your church has quite progressive praise worship. I’m surprised your home isn’t full of music.” What a lie.

“Mother doesn’t like music.”

That didn’t surprise him. “At all?”

Marina shook her head. “Not even the praise band or choir.”

Trey didn’t blame her for that. The music wasn’t awful, but it didn’t have to be great to get the blood pumping. “Do you like the praise band?”

She hesitated. “I … think they’re … ” Either she couldn’t find her words or she was being polite. “I’m not sure,” she finally said with some frustration. “They’re all right, I suppose. Dot says at her church, they don’t even have that much. An organist and congregational singing. She’s never said anything about a choir.”

Just then the lights went down and she settled in next to him. It was odd that he found himself still wanting her hand back in his, dithering over whether to be that forward considering his end game and time constraints. The emcee spoke, but Trey didn’t hear a word. There was her hand right there and he was hesitating. Why?

The hall grew quiet and Marina was already still with anticipation, completely unaware of Trey’s nervousness. What was so wrong with wanting to hold a girl’s hand? He was Trey Goddamned Dunham and he could have any woman he wanted and he was sweating over this girl?

The dulcet clarinet trill startled him. He hadn’t been paying attention to the curtain, the conductor, the crowd—no idea the piece was about to begin.

Suddenly angry with himself, he sank into his chair, slumped a little, crossed his arms over his chest, and sulked.

Marina had never heard a more beautiful and exhilarating piece of music in her life, but of course, she hadn’t heard many pieces at all. She loved this immediately, even before the piano came in, before the cymbals crashed and she thought surely Mother would like this! Wouldn’t she?

Father had allowed Marina to come out tonight as long as Dot would be allowed to walk out with Gene. The foursome was dependable, he supposed, for a music concert that Bishop Albright would allow Dot to see. Even though Mother strenuously objected that it was sinful jazz, Father countered.

It’s in a respectable concert hall with violins and French horns. That is hardly one’s ordinary jazz fare.

But—

I’ve made up my mind that Marina may go, so long as Dorothy and Mr. Luke will be with them. That is all.

Thank you, Father.

You’re welcome, Marina. Do not abuse my trust.

Oh, of course not, Father!

Marina didn’t know how to abuse Father’s trust, so she didn’t have to worry about that at all. What she did know was that tomorrow, Mother would be furious, so Marina would have to go out of her way to soothe her. Perhaps if Mother could hear this wonderful music—

No. This music belonged to Marina and Trey, who was here experiencing it with her, these fun notes and thrilling runs. She didn’t know why Mother thought jazz was bad, but it did occur to her that it was doing something a little funny to her. It made her feel … well, she didn’t know how it made her feel, but it was strange.

Nice.

Cozy and a little tingly.

Why, watching the conductor, orchestra, and pianist was a treat by itself. What must it be like to be that talented? she wondered for the first time. The praise band was either not that much fun to watch or Marina was simply used to them. They were talented, but this was leagues above the capabilities of the praise band even if they wanted to do this.

She felt herself swaying during the soft, romantic sections, a smile on her face. Her smile widened during a romantic rush up to the next section. She scooted forward to sit on the edge of her seat, her hands clasped to her breast, breathless as the music went on and on, then wound down with a grand flourish.

Marina applauded wildly as soon as she knew it was all right to do so, and did so until the conductor rapped for his orchestra’s attention and went on to—

“What was that called again?” Marina whispered to Trey.

“Rhapsody in Blue.”

“And this one?”

“American in Paris.”

It made her immediately want to go to Paris, although she daren’t say that to her parents. Father refused to speak of his time in Europe and Mother disapproved of foreigners. There would be a lot of foreigners in France.

The music bounced on and it was all Marina could do to keep herself from bouncing with it.

At intermission, Marina turned to Trey, absolutely giddy, and said, “Oh, this is so lovely. Thank you so much!” It was a weak sentiment, but she had no better words. It only slightly bothered her that Trey was watching her with a strange expression.

“You’re welcome,” he said slowly, his brow wrinkling. “I didn’t … er, I didn’t think you would like it this much.”

“Oh, it must be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” Marina’s glance flickered to her best pal, who was whispering something to Gene that made him grin. Marina turned back to Trey and only then noticed he wasn’t happy. Her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he said slowly, staring at the back of the chair in front of him. “It— I want— Um, well … Not sure.”

“Was it something I did?”

“No.” With that, he heaved himself to his feet and said, “I’m going to go get refreshments. Ladies? Gene?”

“Certainly,” Gene said. “Be right back, Polka Dorothy. Lemonade?”

“Sure!” Dot chirped.

“Marina?” Trey asked.

“Sweet tea, please.”

Trey choked and Gene tensed. They both stared at her, then Trey laughed nervously. “Sweet tea. Right. Iced tea. With sugar in it.”

Gene cleared his throat. “One lemonade and one sweetened iced tea, coming right up.”

“Yes,” Marina said, confused. “Sweet tea.” She exchanged glances with Dot once the men were gone. “Was that strange or was I imagining things?”

“No, that was strange,” Dot affirmed vaguely as she watched Gene and Trey trot up the aisle and disappear. “Everybody knows what sweet tea is. Well!” Dot said gaily as she swung toward Marina. “You are having a good time. I adore it when you’re so happy you forget to hide.”

Marina flushed. “I … Now I feel self-conscious.”

“Oh, don’t, Marina,” Dot pled softly, taking her hands. “It’s all right to show your happiness. Nothing bad is going to happen if you smile and laugh more—” She paused. “So long as your mother doesn’t see you do it too much.”

That deflated Marina.

“Oh, I am so sorry!” Dot wailed quietly. “I didn’t mean to— I mean—”

“She and Father argued about it,” Marina confessed. “Mother says because this is jazz, it’s bad, but Father said it’s not real jazz because there are violins and French horns.”

Dot rolled her eyes and waved a hand. “He’s right.”

“How do you know?”

“My parents listen to real jazz on their Gramophone.”

Marina blinked. “Oh. Do you like it?”

Dot shrugged. “It’s all right. I like this better. It makes more sense.”

Marina didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. The men were coming back with their drinks.

“They had flips and phosphates,” Gene offered as he bestowed Dot’s lemonade upon her.

“Here go,” Trey murmured, handing Marina her glass and a program. “Sweet tea. Didn’t know if you wanted any more sugar in it.”

Marina took a sip. “No, it’s good, thank you.”

The rest of the concert was nice, and the music, Piano Concerto in F according to the program, wasn’t nearly as thrilling as Rhapsody in Blue, but more wonderful than American in Paris. The encore began with a selection of songs sung by a woman with a lovely alto. During the last, “Lady, Be Good,” Marina started when she found her hand in Trey’s, and his mouth pressed against her knuckles. He stared at her intensely in a way he hadn’t before and something in the bottom of her tummy gave her a little tickle.

She snatched her hand out of his, then realized she didn’t mean it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Trey simply shook his head, gave her a wry smile, and escorted her home in silence.

---

24

“HELLO, MRS. SCARRITT,” Trey said cheerfully from the doorway the next day. It was Saturday. Marina was peeking around the corner where he couldn’t see her, as she was skittish about how rude she’d been at the concert last night. Her rudeness weighed heavily upon her mind, but, as Mother always told her, least said, soonest mended.

“Hello, Mr. Dunham,” Mother said stiffly. “Please, do come in. Marina will be out in a moment.”

“Thank you,” he said pleasantly and stepped into the foyer, but Mother kept him there.

Marina darted to the kitchen to gather the picnic basket, then waited for at least a minute before she went to meet Trey, who was standing in the foyer talking to Mother. “ … hide-and-go-seek.”

Mother said nothing for several seconds, during which Trey caught Marina’s eye and smiled.

“Hide-and-go-seek,” Mother said as if she’d never heard of it before.

“Yes. Gene and I are afraid the girls are getting tired of baseball—which, of course, they wouldn’t tell us because they are too polite—”

“Marina, most definitely.”

“Especially Marina,” Trey said with a conspiratorial nod at Mother. “What better Saturday afternoon entertainment than a soda, picnic, and games?”

“I think that’s a fine idea,” Father said from behind Marina, startling her. “Don’t you, Mrs. Scarritt?” he asked as he extended a hand to Trey.

“Sir,” Trey said with a firm shake of the hand. “Thank you. I’ve been very careful to select activities good Christian couples can indulge in.”

“Couples?” Mother asked sharply, while Marina tried to calm her racing heart.

“A man and a woman out courting,” Trey answered solicitously.

“She is not a woman. She’s sixteen. You are twenty-four.”

“Mrs. Scarritt,” Father said patiently, lightly grasping Mother’s elbow, “I think we can all agree that Marina is very mature for her age—”

Mother made a small peep.

“—and we have never had reason to doubt her ability to choose the right path. Dorothy will be there, Mr. Dunham?”

“Yes, sir, as well as Gene. We will be stopping by Kresge’s first, as usual, then go to a park amongst other picnickers, and we will leave long before dark. Mrs. Scarritt, I understand your concerns and will honor them to the best of my ability. I cannot, however, do anything about my age. To be honest, and this is a credit to you, I forget that the calendar says she’s sixteen. Her maturity is years beyond. I appreciate the reminder.”

“Lovely turn of phrase, Mr. Dunham.” Father’s mouth pursed in thought and he nodded slowly. “‘The calendar says … ’ Yes. Please do have fun, Marina.”

“Thank you, Father,” Marina said dutifully, but with a shy, grateful smile that garnered an indulgent smile from him in return.

“Thank you, Sir. Ma’am. Marina, shall we?” He swept her out the front door. “My, my!” Trey breathed as he took her picnic basket and offered his other arm to her. “I do believe your father likes me.”

“He does,” Marina said gaily.

Trey flashed her a grin. “Aren’t you chipper today!”

“Well,” she said matter-of-factly as he handed her in the car and put the picnic basket in the back, “Father’s been so kind, allowing me to walk out with you.”

“Is your father usually not kind?” Trey asked as they zipped down the street.

“He’s always kind, but not always as approving of things I thought he might be. I mayn’t go to Dot’s church, but I may walk out with you alone on Friday and Saturday evenings.”

“Courting is normal. Dot’s religion is not. I’m part of your church family. Dot never will be.”

“Ohhh,” Marina drawled in understanding. “Yes, of course, you’re right.”

“And he seems to have a lot of faith in you to know what’s right and proper.”

That made Marina the happiest of all. “I suppose he does.” Then she deflated. “I wish Mother did.”

“She likely does,” Trey said lightly. “I believe Dot’s right about your mother not wanting to let you go.”

Marina scowled. “I don’t know why. She knows I’ll not leave.”

Trey slid her a glance with a half-amused smile. “Are you planning to get rid of me?”

“Yes! I mean, no!” Now Marina was totally flustered. “I would like to enjoy having a beau for a while. That’s the way things go. I’ve told you that and I remind her often, so I don’t know why she continues to be irritated.”

“Marina, a man doesn’t court without intention and I have been courting you for weeks now. I told you that. Your parents know—which you would have no reason to, so it’s not a reflection of your smarts—that men like me always have the end in mind.”

Marina stared at him, but he was busy navigating from her house to downtown. “Are you saying … ”

“I am saying,” he said firmly, “I would not have gone to your father for permission to court you if I didn’t have something in mind for our future, you and I.”

Marina gasped, her heart in her throat. Her! Marina Scarritt! Marrying this man— Why, it was as good as a formal proposal! “Oh, golly gee whiz,” she whispered, one hand on her hat and the other pressed flat to her chest.

“Your father is happy with it, with me. Your mother is not. Yes, you are mature and yes, I do forget what the calendar says about you, but you would have no reason to understand what’s going on underneath what’s going on. No proper girl of any age should.”

Suddenly shy, Marina only said, “Oh,” in a small voice and sat back to simply enjoy the ride.

It wasn’t that simple. She was too thrilled at what Trey had just said. Marina Scarritt! Married!

“But the calendar is dictating how your father and I discuss it.”

Marina sighed, her hopes dashed. There was plenty of time before she turned eighteen for Trey to change his mind and, truth be told, she wanted to pop up at school able to say her name was Marina Dunham.

“That dratted calendar,” she muttered.

Trey chuckled. “Here we are,” he said smoothly as he pulled into a rare parking spot just a block beyond Kresge’s. Gene and Dot were already waiting for them in their booth.

As usual, Marina had a catawba flip, Trey a lime rickey, Dot a cherry lime phosphate, and Gene a vanilla phosphate.

As usual, Gene and Dot fell into conversation about his perfect Delaware family and her queer religion, which got more queer the more she talked.

As usual, the waitress tried to flirt with both Gene and Trey.

“You’re new here, aren’t you, doll?” Trey asked when she put his soda in front of him. She wasn’t so pretty as their usual one, but she wasn’t homely. She was, well, interesting looking.

“First day,” she chirped with a brilliant smile. “My dogs are already barking, but never had such fun working.”

Marina started to get jealous when she put her hand on Trey’s shoulder, but he ever-so-slightly shook her off. He tilted his chin toward her tray. “This is Marina. She’s got the flip there.”

“Of course,” she said smoothly, leaning over him to slide the drink in front of Marina. “There you go, sweetie.”

There was an awkward silence as she slid Dot’s drink to her, leaning across Gene the way she had Trey, who didn’t like it any more than Trey seemed to.

Marina relaxed. Of course they didn’t. They were courting good and proper gentlewomen because they were good and proper gentlemen. They didn’t hold with such brazen flirting.

But then she was gone and as usual, Marina and Trey fell into conversation about the books they were trading. He had a new one for her.

Her brow wrinkled. “Elmer Gantry? I’ve never heard of Sinclair Lewis.”

“You read mysteries, doll,” he said dryly.

Doll. She hated that.

“What? What did I say?” he asked softly, startling her.

It didn’t usually bother her that he could read her moods. In fact, it was quite convenient. Today, it bothered her.

“C’mon. You know I don’t take offense at anything you tell me, even when you think I’m not going to like it.”

That was true.

“I don’t like when you call me ‘doll,’” she admitted reluctantly, careful not to let Dot and Gene hear, but they were involved with their own conversation.

“Oh,” he said with surprise. “I’m sorry. It is too familiar, I’ll admit—”

“It’s not familiar enough,” she blurted.

He drew back a little. “How?”

“You call every girl ‘doll.’ You say it to Dot. You say it to the waitress—and you don’t even know her. You say it to the girl at checkout. If we—” She gulped. “If, um, what you said in the car, about a future, then I shouldn’t be the same as all the other girls.”

“Oh. Oh, my. I don’t intend that at all, d— Um.”

He was flustered and she felt herself blush. “I’m sorry. That was completely out of line. Of course, you may call me what pet name you like.”

“I just want to make you happy. Now we have to find one that will make you happy.”

She smiled shyly. “Thank you. I don’t want to seem demanding. It’s not proper.”

“I doubt you could be demanding,” he said dryly, sipping on his soda. “How about … ” He glanced around, then gestured toward the wall where it met the table. “Sugar. In honor of where we met.”

She smiled in utter delight. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

“You are quite welcome, Sugar.”

“Now, tell me about this book.”

“Do you know what satire is?”

---

25

“A CEMETERY?” MARINA gasped as Trey turned into a driveway just off Fifteenth Street.

“Not just,” he said with a devilish smile and wink. “It’s also a park. Elmwood is where all of Kansas City’s movers and shakers come to rest, knowing the living will enjoy life here instead of being in mourning from the time they enter to the time they leave.”

Marina gasped, then began to grin. “That’s lovely,” she gushed, feeling more free now to show her true feelings since she knew the only thing standing between her and a wedding was the calendar.

He was going to be her husband and he liked it when she showed her true feelings, so in spite of her habitual circumspection, she liked that she could be as carefree as she felt. Her hesitance was just something she’d have to train herself out of no matter how uncomfortable.

Gene and Dot were leading the way and they drove down a more tranquil path toward the back of the walled garden which was dotted with only a few massive tombstones and family mausoleums.

“Oh, isn’t that beautiful,” she whispered, seeing the stone chapel in the middle of it all.

“We’ll take a tour after we eat,” Trey assured her.

Their picnic spot was in a deep shade that kept out the hot sun but not the refreshing breeze. Marina helped Dot spread the red-and-white-checked tablecloth while the men scouted rocks to secure the edges. She and Dot laid the “table” and accepted when their men helped them to the ground.

“We each thought it would be nice to bring something so you could tell us how much better we are than the other,” Dot teased, unpacking her basket while Marina unpacked hers.

Marina had brought the fried chicken, fresh bread, lemon meringue pie, and lemonade. Dot had brought the potato salad, baked beans, marmalades, pickles, and relishes.

Of course, each of their men refused to say who was the better cook, but exclaimed in delight at each of their talents.

They weren’t saying it to make them feel good, either. They each asked for seconds and thirds, completely obliterating the feast to its last crumb. Marina and Dot exchanged delighted glances every time one of them moaned over a bite.

Marina and Dot were wiping the plates and packing everything up when Trey lay on the cloth, pushed his fedora over his face, and announced, “Marina, that was so fine I may not care what the calendar says. But for now, please forgive my rudeness in wanting to relax and relive that delicious meal.”

“I second that,” Gene sighed, doing likewise.

“Well!” Dot said with mock outrage, “if you boys are going to take a nap, Marina and I are going to pick flowers.”

“Be our guest,” Gene murmured lazily.

Marina was so excited and happy she thought she’d pop. She was more relaxed than she had ever been and her inhibitions were slipping away. Perhaps Mother and Father were stiff and formal, but deep down inside, Marina didn’t want to be like that. Maybe she wasn’t as jaunty as Dot, but she felt pretty jaunty at the moment and she liked it.

“What did he mean by the calendar?” Dot asked once they were over a dale with the peony bushes.

Marina excitedly relayed the conversation, taking great delight in Dot’s growing incredulity.

“And that’s what he meant.”

Dot had clapped her hands over her mouth to giggle with wide eyes. “Oh, Marina, I am so happy for you!”

“I thought you didn’t like him,” she teased.

“I don’t care! He makes you so happy. You are positively glowing, and that’s all that matters. I knew this was the real you, and he brought it out!”

“And best of all, Father approves!” She sobered a little. “Trey thinks you were right about Mother.”

Dot waved that off and when their arms full of flowers, they headed toward the chapel. “It’s nothing to worry about now. The man is the head of the household, so if your father approves, then it’s as good as done. Goodness, my mother had to pull my father’s fingernails off to allow me to drive out with Gene last night and today. Not really, but the argument was glorious, I tell you! The whole neighborhood could hear it!”

Marina laughed. “Has Gene said anything?”

Dot scowled. “No. He knows I’m going to college and have no intention of marrying ever.”

Marina glanced at her suspiciously. “I don’t believe you.” At Dot’s outraged gasp, Marina said, “Your voice is different. You don’t sound as firm about it.”

Dot’s mouth twisted. “Is it that obvious?” she grumbled.

“Yes,” Marina chirped.

Dot laughed. “Oh, silly.”

They had arrived at the chapel and went in, both of them stopping dead at the back. Marina held her breath in wonder.

After a good long while, Marina whispered, “I want to get married here.”

“In a cemetery? They hold funerals here!”

“In a park. Trey says it was built specifically to be a place of fun and enjoyment so you aren’t sad about people dying, but happy that they’d lived. He didn’t say it in those words, but that’s what I got from it.”

“That’s nice,” Dot said wondrously. “I like that.”

“Is this your idea of hell?”

Dot thought a minute, then began nodding slowly. “I think …  maybe? A beautiful park where you can pick peonies and walk amongst sorrow while working off your regrets then play croquet.”

“That’s an awfully nice hell,” Marina murmured, wondering what her parents would think of that. “I wouldn’t mind.” Then she laughed. “Boredom is your punishment.”

Dot giggled. “It would be a definite punishment.”

“Do you think the boys are finished napping?”

“Let’s go see. I want to play.”

---

26

MARINA HAD NEVER been so happy in her life as she was today, her body relaxed and languid, her mind open to possibilities, Trey in her sight and thoughts.

She was It. Trey, Dot, and Gene were hidden. Another several couples had joined them in their game, but Marina had stumbled over a married couple lying under a tree hugging very close, hands where they oughtn’t be, and kissing in a way she had never seen before. She was so embarrassed, she squeaked and ran, but the vision stayed with her for the next hour, making her wonder …

When it was Trey’s turn to be It, Marina hid where she’d already successfully hidden as he wouldn’t think she’d do it again. She leaned back against the trunk and tried to catch her breath, but she couldn’t stop thinking about that kissing couple and how they were kissing.

Her parents didn’t kiss at all, not even a peck on the cheek. Not each other, not Marina. She had looked with envy upon children and teens whose parents kissed and hugged them, but Marina had never seen what that couple had been doing.

She was breathless, not from running and dodging, but from seeing that couple and, to her shame, she wanted to see more, know more.

Be kissed.

Not like that. It looked half disgusting but since she couldn’t believe people would put their tongues in each other’s mouths, clearly she wasn’t seeing the truth of the kiss.

The couple was married or they wouldn’t be lying so close to each other, the man halfway on top of the woman, but Marina couldn’t see why he would want to be. Proper married couples slept in separate rooms.

She gulped as she examined the scene in her mind. The woman was wearing a dress, she remembered now. The man’s hand had been up her dress, the fabric gathered over his wrist. Why? Why would she let him touch her that way? That was why Father preached against dresses, she knew, but he could trust Marina not to allow anyone to touch her that way.

Yet today, she was wearing a dress and the fabric slithered in the breeze, caressing her legs and making her feel almost naked. Marina’s body went hot and her heart continued to race and the pit of her belly tingled not unpleasantly. Maybe she was getting sick. Maybe she’d eaten too much. Maybe she’d run too hard. Maybe it was too hot and humid. But her tummy didn’t ache nor was she nauseated. It was lower than that, in between her legs almost. And also in her chest— No, her breasts, particularly at the end, her … nipples … hard the way they were when she was naked in cool air. Why would they do that now? It was a hot day. Why was she thinking about her body at all, much less her private parts?

She still hadn’t been able to catch her breath. She closed her eyes. She allowed her head to drop back against the trunk. She clenched her fists at her sides, trying to control her sudden fever because she didn’t want to leave but she didn’t want to be sick while on an outing and be a spoil sport.

But she didn’t feel like throwing up, so what was it?

“Hi.”

She started so badly at Trey’s amused voice that she tried to back up against the tree further. He was too perceptive not to know she was sick.

“Hi,” she answered weakly after a gulp.

His smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

Oh, no! She licked her lips. “Um, nothing. I, um … ” She looked at his mouth. She couldn’t help it with that couple still in her head. She looked away again, feeling even hotter.

“Marina,” he murmured, his voice deep in his chest.

“I think … I think I might be sick.” She pressed her hand to her tummy.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You’re not sick.” He sounded so sure, so unconcerned. He sounded— Well, she didn’t know. She’d never heard that tone before.

“I … ”

“Look at me.”

She didn’t want to. She really didn’t want to. She did, but she couldn’t look in his ice blue eyes. Nor could she look at his mouth. She looked at the open collar at his neck, but even that was too much.

She started again when he leaned toward her, bracing both hands on the trunk on either side of her head. He didn’t touch her with his body, but …

She wanted him to.

She mewled a little and turned her head away again.

Again he said, “Look at me.”

She felt compelled. Possessed, almost. She did, then closed her eyes.

He leaned in and touched his mouth to hers. Lightly. Once, then pulled away.

“Don’t be ashamed,” he whispered. He caressed her cheek lightly with his knuckles, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. “I’m a man. You’re a woman. Men and women kiss.”

Yes, they did. She saw sweet little pecks between husbands and wives at church all the time. Like the kiss Trey had just given her. Just because her parents didn’t …

She felt him again. This time he nudged her lips open a little. It was no peck, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen between married couples at church.

But Marina and Trey were not married.

She was about to pull away when his mouth lightly captured her bottom lip. Then her top one.

She felt she should do the same to him, so she did.

“That’s good, Sugar,” he whispered.

“That feels good,” she whispered back.

“I’m about to make you feel real good.”

Marina couldn’t think anymore, so she closed her eyes and leaped lily pads.

★