Prince didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The truth was there, a solid thing in the alley with them. “Nonetheless,” he said, “I will give her up. She’s happy with him. Leo barely knows I’m there anymore. I don’t want to be just the kid they took off the streets.”
John held up a hand. “You don’t know what you want. And you don’t know me; otherwise you wouldn’t be so quick to put yourself under my heel.” His voice refrosted in record speed, back to its old icy self without so much as a hat tip. “We’ll discuss this later, perhaps when you’re no longer bleeding.”
Beaten, Prince released a breath, slumping. Maggie was now the only thing keeping him upright.
John grabbed his other arm. Hard to believe the same hands that had sliced a man’s face just minutes earlier could now be applied with such gentleness. “Come on. Up. We’ll get you to the car.”
Prince leaned heavily on his brother, fist pressed to his wound. His face clenched with pain, but he didn’t utter a word of complaint as they walked slowly out of the saloon.
“Where do we take him?” Maggie asked. “The hospital?”
“Can’t afford that,” Prince muttered, grimacing. “Beatrice can patch me up. I drove the Ford here anyway; we can’t leave it lying around.”
“I can’t drive,” said Maggie. “And you’re in no kind of shape to do it either.”
“I will,” said John. They found the ol’ flivver waiting a few streets down. John helped Prince lie on the backseat, then turned to Maggie. “Stay with him. I need to take care of a few things before we leave.”
Probably it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes, but it seemed to grow dark as sin in that time. Maggie felt as if she’d waited for John to come back from war when he finally materialized, matched in every way to the night around him.
He nodded at her, then checked on Prince in the backseat and pulled a bottle of vodka out of one pocket. The good stuff, straight as a demon’s tears. Liquid gold, and John didn’t care a whit pouring it onto the gash across Prince’s ribs. By the time John finished, Prince was panting, uttering a series of fast Italian words. John smiled, a bonafide Morello gem.
“I thought you said your Italian was rusty. Here.” John put the rest of the bottle in Prince’s hand. “I’d drink it. The drive won’t be smooth, not in this tin can.”
Prince snorted, his expression that of a man who needs a drink for more reasons than physical pain, and took a long impressive pull off the top.
“Salute,” John muttered.
He shut the back door and moved to the driver’s seat. Maggie sat at his side, and it was a full minute before he looked at her, the first time he’d done so directly since shooting Borachio in the hand. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.
Maggie nodded.
John started the car and pulled onto the street.
You’d think the harbor would be less busy at night, but it was exactly the same, just more delivery trucks. Noisy and arrhythmic. Maggie twisted around to check on Prince; his lips disappeared into a thin line, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. “Keep drinking,” Maggie suggested, and then she sang to him, one of the Italian lullabies he’d taught her.
“You’re killing me,” John murmured.
She shifted across the small divide. John moved the throttle, and the Ford surged ahead. Her cheek pressed his carved shoulder. Safe and solid. He didn’t shrug her off. By the time they got to Manhasset, Prince had finished most of the vodka and promptly left the land of the conscious, his face the shade of a bruise.
She wasn’t long after him and woke the entire car ride later, at the stretch of silence after the engine turned off. She was still nestled against John, she realized, as a knuckle brushed her cheek, a soft entreaty for her to wake up, and then she was awake, and his hands were to himself.
She sat up, glanced in the back. Prince was still asleep.
“You were right about Hey Nonny Nonny,” John said quietly, but she could hear him, so close. “Better if it was thriving.”
“No. I was wrong, too; otherwise Prince wouldn’t be so ready to drop it like a hot potato. Never was about the speakeasy at all; it was about Hero.”
“I didn’t realize she and that English kid were that serious.”
“She said she’d marry him if he asked. Who knows if she meant it?” Maggie yawned. “Just get rid of Claude.”
John froze, glancing at her sharply.
“Geez! I don’t mean kill him, you nut.” She laughed at his stricken expression. “I just mean, you know, split them up. Slingshot her back into Prince’s waiting arms.”
“Split them up how?”
“That’s your line of expertise, isn’t it? Intimidation?”
“He’s connected to the Vanderbilts. I’m not sure it’s wise to point a gun at his face and threaten him.”
“Fine. Maybe we can find a way to make it look like Claude’s some kind of cad, spreading his wild oats.”
John snorted.
“Okay, how about this? We let Claude think he might get arrested because of his involvement with Hero. Something that would tarnish his reputation nice and good so he runs for the hills.”
“I’ll think about it,” said John.
Prince groaned, turning over.
Maggie sighed. “I’ll go wake up Beatrice.”
CHAPTER 23
A KIND OF MERRY WAR
Somewhere Benedick owned a clock. Beatrice could hear its onerous ticking in the room, buried who knew where. Occasionally she glanced at Benedick, wondering if he’d dig it out, calculate how long he’d spent in her company, and declare the evening over.
Certainly it was late. The world outside his window had been dark for a while. But they shared a lack of interest in sleep. Neither had suggested they part ways when they returned from Queens. Benedick had dug out a folder that Leo and Prince kept of agents and rum suppliers and other who’s who records, and now here they were, Beatrice on his bedroom floor and he on the ugly sofa, sorting through her uncle’s handwriting and glued to newspaper strips.
She could imagine him years from now in the exact same position, his ankle propped on his knees, sheets of wrinkled paper in his lap, his fingers turning the edges. “Look here,” he said. “I knew it.” He passed her a rather sizable stack of papers, held together by paper clips. “There’s practically an encyclopedia about them. They love the press.”
Beatrice read the first page.
New York Times, March 17, 1925. DOGBERRY AND VERGES SEIZE SACRAMENTAL WINE, the headline read. The blurred picture was of a squat man with a striped hat and his lanky, hook-nosed partner.
“New York’s finest hooch hounds are at it again! Izzy Dogberry and Moe Verges, posing as cigar salesmen, seized thirty cases of wine that were supposed to be sacramental wines for religious use at home in a cigar store on the Lower East Side. Dogberry offered this comment, marveling at the ‘remarkable increase in the thirst for religion.’”
Beatrice flipped through the rest, eyebrow raising.
The agents had arrested over four thousand people and boasted a conviction rate of 95 percent. They were notorious for never taking bribes (alas) and using a wide range of disguises instead of guns. Dogberry had been at one time or another a German potato packer, a Polish count, a Hungarian violinist, a Jewish gravedigger, a French maître d’, an Italian fruit vendor, a Russian fisherman, and a delegate from Kentucky to the Democratic National Convention. And now, at Hey Nonny Nonny, a pheasant hunter from Connecticut.
“Quite the résumé,” said Beatrice.
“To put it nicely.”
“Dogberry speaks six languages. He’s rather clever.”
“Et cetera, et cetera, ne plus ultra, jus in bello—”
“Is that Latin?” Beatrice asked flatly. “Are you showing off?”
Benedick lifted his gaze and grinned.
She regarded him for a moment. “Ben, what kinds of marks did you get in school?”
“What?”
“
I was just thinking about how your father drove all the way out to Long Island.”
Benedick’s brows arched high. Not angry yet, but he transformed at the change of subject, the opposite of relaxed.
“I don’t mean anything by it,” she added, “but I can’t imagine he doesn’t see how smart you are, in your special aggravating way. I’d be sad to lose you, too, is all.”
Benedick’s gaze turned quizzical. “I can tell you—” He stopped at the sound of knocking. But the knock wasn’t at his door; it came from below. At Beatrice’s door.
She stood, frowning, then hurried down the narrow curve of attic stairs. There in the hall, in front of her room, John and Maggie held a bloodied Prince between them.
“Sorry to bother you,” Maggie said.
“You’re not,” said Beatrice. Of course they weren’t. Already Beatrice was taking in Prince’s pallor, his glassy eyes, trying to ascertain where all the blood had come from. “What happened?”
Benedick came behind her; she heard his clumsy halt, the stuttered noise of surprise.
“I’m fiiiiiiine,” Prince insisted in a loud whisper. Never mind the crimson stain on the left side of his shirt.
“The bullet only grazed him,” said John.
Bullet, right.
Someone had shot at him.
Never mind. Blood first, cause of blood later. Beatrice opened her door and motioned for John to set a gasping Prince on her bed. “Oh, your pillow smells nice, like flowers,” Prince said.
“He’s drunk,” Maggie explained dryly. “We put some vodka in him to help with the pain.”
Beatrice rolled her sleeves up to her forearms. “Shut the door and turn on the light, please. Watch your eyes, Prince.” She set her hand gently across his fluttering lids to shield him as the room lit up. She peeled back his shirt to locate the wound: a shallow, diagonal slash across his ribs. “Ben, hand me that bag over there. The leather one. There should be a bottle of rubbing alcohol. . . .”
Benedick brought the bag over, holding the small glass bottle of disinfectant between his fingers. His voice was high and quick. “Miss Clark, you’re not a licensed physician yet. Technically you were a bootlegger even before you came to Hey Nonny Nonny.”
“Ben, I know you’re worried, but stop talking. This will sting a bit,” she told Prince, dabbing the disinfectant on some gauze. “Not that you’ll feel it in your state.” She cleaned and bandaged the wound. “Stop flinching. You can take a bullet, but not medicine for it? The shot burned the edges of your skin. I can make some salve for it. Is your pain external or internal?”
“Well.” Prince’s face bunched as he tried to decide.
She pressed her fingers lightly around the cut. A hiss slid past his teeth, as she expected. “Now sit up straight—slowly. Breathe deep.”
He couldn’t manage it all the way before crumpling back down in pain. “There’s your problem,” she said. “The bullet bruised his rib. That will keep him sore for a week or so, but he’ll be fine as long as he takes it easy.”
“Hear that, Your Highness? Easy.” Maggie crossed her arms. “He’ll be okay,” she added, softer, to John.
That was apparently all John needed to excuse himself from the room. Maggie made an apologetic grimace, then followed him out.
“Do you think we ought to wake Hero?” Beatrice asked Benedick.
“No,” Prince said, so abruptly she drew back. “No,” he said again, softer. “Please. Don’t tell her. Later, later . . .” He trailed off, got up a contorted smile. “When I’ve got it straight, I’m goin’ to show her. They’ll come crawlin’ to me on their bellies. I’ve got a kind of feel for the big money.”
“Okay.” Beatrice stroked his curling hair and smoothed his cheek. She glanced up at Benedick, who had the edge of his thumb between his teeth, his brow bunched up in a frown. “Do you love her, Prince? Is that it?”
“Sure, I love her,” he whispered. “But not to keep. Not to—to touch. You can love someone who’s a stranger, who’s a friend.”
Beatrice motioned for Benedick to help her get Prince’s shoes off. “He can sleep here for tonight,” she said quietly. “Probably best, until morning.”
Benedick grabbed the spare blanket from the foot of her bed. He lay back on the floor at Prince’s other side, with the blanket bundled up under his head as a makeshift pillow. He didn’t appear the least interested in sleeping. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he said. “You take my room.”
Beatrice nodded and packed up her medical bag, but after she closed the door behind her, she didn’t retreat to Benedick’s room. She marched downstairs. Maggie and John were in the foyer near the door, speaking in low voices.
John glanced up as Beatrice approached.
“Who shot him?” she demanded.
John’s face remained placid. “That’s none of your business.”
“Like hell it isn’t.” Beatrice stuck her chin out at an angle those St. Mary’s nuns used to hate. John wasn’t overly tall. They were nearly eye to eye.
“Beatrice,” Maggie said, “just let it be.”
“No.” She jabbed John in the chest. His eyes flashed, like those of a massive black bear poked out of slumber. Beatrice nearly backed away. Nearly, but didn’t. “What about the Prohibition agents?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“You didn’t send any agents to Hey Nonny Nonny? Not to put Prince in his place?”
“No,” he said flatly.
Beatrice’s eyes narrowed. If nothing else, he didn’t seem worried about her enough to lie. “I want you to know that if anything bad happens to Prince because of you, I won’t let it go. You’ll have to answer for it.”
He didn’t bother with a response. At least not of the verbal variety. He turned, just shy of rolling his eyes, and nodded at Maggie before letting himself out the door.
“I know I’m not . . . ,” Beatrice said into the silence. “I just wanted him to know.”
“I get it.” Maggie put a hand on her hip, staring at the wood grain of the closed door as if she could see John’s retreating back through it. “You’re not the only one he’ll be answering to.”
CHAPTER 24
ARE YOU GOOD MEN AND TRUE
Benedick did not sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, it felt, and he was awake when Prince first groaned into consciousness the next morning. Benedick sat up, bone tired but mind still crisp as a cold apple. Prince’s face was pale, half buried in Beatrice’s pillow. He muttered something about cursing the Lord, the devil, and all other deities that might be working with them, his fingers fluttering clumsily against Beatrice’s bandages.
“Good morning,” Benedick said, chipper and loud.
Prince winced, then cracked open an eye to look at him.
Benedick smiled. “You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell.”
“Good.” Silence stretched between them. Finally, unloosing his clenched jaw, Benedick asked, “Are you going to tell me what happened?” More silence. “I deserve to know.”
Prince curled in on himself. His heavily lidded eyes stared at nothing. “I made a mistake,” he whispered.
Benedick wanted to shout until he was hoarse; he wanted Prince to swear by blood and on his mother’s grave he’d leave any business with the Genovese family alone, but seeing Prince like this gave the urge the same flavor as booting a puppy.
“What was I supposed to do, with Hero going to the beach, and Leo shopping the first day he’s sober in months?” Prince’s voice dragged gravelly. “I had to make up the difference.” Doing extra work didn’t bother him, Benedick knew. He’d wager to say Prince even liked the opportunity to offer Hero and Leo some leisure when he could, but the world always took on a different shade after you’d failed.
“Look,” Benedick suggested, “luck’s got you by the oysters this week, but it might not be such a bad thing.”
Prince lifted his gaze, eyes disparaging.
“The pheasant hunters, Mr. Hansen and Mr. Smith? They were Prohibition agents. Beatrice and I discovered it when we followed them to Rack 20 last night. They’re packing up this morning, but just in case, we’d better keep tomorrow an actual birthday party.”
“Don’t sell the drinks,” Prince muttered, rubbing his eyes.
“Correct.” Just a swinging, friendly get-together. Not a business with profits made from selling liquor. So close to the truth, it was hardly a disguise.
This piece of news was the last domino over Prince’s soul. He appeared crumpled on the inside, like an old newspaper. “If we don’t make any money . . .”
Then they might not be able to pay for the resources to open again the next weekend. Benedick had a vision, for the first time in his life, not of cashing in his book royalties but of a steady paycheck from a Wall Street firm, the ease with which he’d be able to make up the difference when they had bum weeks like this one. And for the first time he saw the appeal.
“Never mind,” said Benedick. “One weekend can’t sink us. We might not make a profit, but we cleared our debts; everything’s paid for.”
“That’s true.”
The cushion from the past two weeks would at least keep the house fed and lit, and they also had Claude, who’d footed a lot of the expense for the party, his own swanky gift, aside from the illegal expenditures.
Prince pushed himself upright. He settled back on the headboard and rubbed his shoulder. “Why’d they bother with us?” he asked, almost to himself. “Especially . . .”
“Now? I know. You’d think they’d have bigger fish. And they’re straight, according to the papers. They don’t take bribes.”
“Just because they tell the papers they’re straight doesn’t mean they are,” Prince said.
“John wouldn’t send them, would he?”
“John?” Prince’s surprise was genuine. “No. I don’t think so. If he wanted us closed that badly, he’d do the dirty work himself, and if he did send someone, it wouldn’t be from the right side of the law.”
A brisk knock interrupted their conversation, followed by Beatrice. Benedick’s morning righted itself in time to her stride. “Hello, patient,” she said. “How do you feel?”
Speak Easy, Speak Love Page 22
