by Lara Parker
Jamison Collins was drunk. His eyes could not have found their focus even if he had tried, and he made no attempt to sit up straight. He hunched over, poured another drink into his glass, and took a swig.
“The FBI don’t drive cars with shields, baby. They drive in-cog-ni-to. Tell the guys to come in here.”
But the two henchmen had already leaned inside the door; they, too, had heard the sirens. “Where is everybody?” asked Mr. Collins.
“Maybe at the party.”
“Idiots! Go get them. And you”—he turned to Liz—“you tell whatever officer is in charge that I can meet him at the pool house and take care of things. There’s a lot a stake.” His words were thick and slurred. “The new shipment just came in last week. Twenty-five barrels just going into bottles. Thirty thousand dollars’ worth. I don’t intend to lose it.”
“I don’t think they know about the Old House, Daddy.”
“Of course they know! Those bastards buy from me. They go to the Blue Whale every night.”
He reached under his desk and pulled out a large leather suitcase that he snapped open, exposing hundred-dollar bills. “Tell him I’ll take care of him.” He stood up but immediately lost his balance and sat back down with a jerk. “Damn it to hell, I can’t even walk.”
One of the henchmen cleared his throat and said, “Uh, Mr. Collins, you ain’t forgot about the … about that thing tonight.”
“Oh, right. Very important.” He turned to Liz. “Here, honey, you take it to him. He’ll be waiting for it. He’s on the payroll, for Christ’s sake. Tell him to get the hell out of here and leave my party for my guests.”
“Daddy, there’re cops down there. With guns.”
“What did I raise? A little chicken?” He shoved the suitcase in her hands and winked at Jackie. “Nobody’s gonna bother two little flapper girls, especially when they are such gorgeous dames.”
After creeping down the back stair, Liz and Jackie sprinted around the deserted tables and then raced across the lawn toward the pool, the suitcase bouncing between them. Jackie glanced around hoping for a glimpse of David. Liz bit her lip and stared straight ahead, seeming more determined than afraid. Jackie was amazed that anyone so young could be so self-possessed. But as they drew near the building, she heard screaming coming from the pool house, a dog barking, and sounds of breaking glass.
Three cops in blue uniforms with brass buttons were outside the entrance smashing kegs they had hauled onto the grass. They used hatchets, and when they busted a hole in the top of a wooden barrel, the whiskey inside spurted up in the air like a fountain, frothing over the sides and spilling on the ground. The grass was soaked and the night air reeked with the smell of beer and bourbon.
“Oh, no, it’s Daddy’s beautiful booze,” wailed Liz when she saw the mayhem. She smacked a fist against her forehead and stormed inside with the suitcase in her hand. The police had a dozen crates lined up and two of them were knocking the necks off brown bottles one at a time on the coping and pouring the liquor into the pool. Gallons splashed and spilled spreading across the deck, and there was shattered glass everywhere.
Liz stooped down and swiped her hand across the tile and licked her fingers. She spat it out and looked back at Jackie. “This is only moonshine,” she said. “Those cops don’t know the difference. Golden grain—everclear. Cheap stuff he kept here in brown bottles. Daddy won’t care it they take it all.”
Groups of partygoers huddled together at the end of the pool or up on the deck, shivering now with towels wrapped around their naked bodies. Jackie saw a cop with a cocked hat and a huge tommy gun trained on the swimmers, keeping them prisoners. He had a police dog with him and it was barking furiously at just about everything. Some of the girls were crying, begging to be let go, and the boys were trying to look manly, their arms around the girls, but fear blanched their faces. The cop motioned for some of them to move toward the door, and about five boys took off and ran past Liz and Jackie, scrambling in panic out of the pool house.
Liz scanned the area, her face flushed. She looked like a goddess in the wavering light from the water, her silver dress clinging to her body, and her eyes fierce. When she marched over to one of the policemen he looked surprised but seemed to recognize her, and she lifted up and said something to him. He pointed to an officer who was watching the bottle breaking, his shotgun slung over one shoulder, his boots inches deep in spilled alcohol.
Jackie held back near the door as Liz talked to the officer and spoke to him heatedly, pointing back toward the house. When she opened up the case and showed him the cash, he looked around a bit sheepishly, and then reached for it. But Liz pulled it back and said something else, spitting out her words.
Jackie heard an engine roar up outside and turned to see another sheriff’s car pull in front of the opening, and five blue uniformed men spilled out, guns raised. They swarmed into the pool house and one began shouting, “Okay, gents. We got this covered. Leave the booze and vamoose! Everybody! Now! Before somebody gets hurt!”
In a flash, Liz was at Jackie’s side tugging her toward the door. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Those guys are the Mafia!”
“But they look like cops!”
“Honey, they stole those uniforms.”
Jackie was amazed to see the first group of police inside the pool house freeze, and then slowly raise their hands. It was cops training their guns on cops. The dog was barking furiously at the new batch, leaning into the leash and growling, its gums pulled back, teeth bared. A spray of bullets exploded, and the dog howled, then fell to the floor, whining and scratching.
The frown on Liz’s face turned to a grimace of alarm, as if she were really afraid, and Jackie’s heart flew to her throat. Another barrage of bullets hailed across the tiled walls sparking pockmarks in the blue plaster. She and Liz crouched behind one of the pillars. “Damn those bums!” cried Liz. “They don’t care if they kill us.” She flipped open the bag and dug for the cash. Then she stood and threw bunches of green, scattering handfuls of money that floated out and over the pool. When they saw hundred-dollar bills flying though the air and landing on the surface of the water, the gunmen stopped and stared.
One of the partygoers, a young man in a one-piece bathing suit, ran to the side of the pool and with a hysterical shout, jumped in the water. He began swimming toward the center in a desperate attempt to grab the bills. Bewildered, several others followed his lead and, lemming-like, they ran for the edge. Bodies tumbled in a great turmoil of splashing foam as guns fired again in the air and bullets flew. Then the partygoers scrambled out of the water and ran for the door. Jackie watched their pale bodies disappear over the grass. The fake cops fired in their wake.
“Stay behind me,” Liz yelled, backing up with the suitcase flapping open. Wedged inside underneath where the money had been, Jackie saw a gun, a revolver like one from the Old West, with a long barrel. To her astonishment, Liz whipped it out and raised it in both hands like she knew how to use it. She thrust a box of bullets at Jackie. “Here, take these, and run!” Then she backed out of the door, aiming the revolver and firing back into the room.
Jackie took off, stumbling, so terrified she thought she would faint, and not looking back until she almost collided with the green car barreling across the lawn, its headlights flashing. Quentin was behind the wheel. “Get a wiggle on,” he cried. She climbed in alongside a man with a shotgun squeezed up next to the window. “Where’s Liz?” shouted Quentin, but immediately he spied her and sped the car toward the white columns of the entrance, where he shouted, “Baby! Honey! Over here!”
There was a blast of gunshots from the pool house as three men fired from the doorway, and Jackie heard the bullets from an automatic rifle strike the side of the car with pinging rattles. She ducked down behind the man at the window but she was close enough to feel his body convulse when he was hit in the head, and he slowly crumpled over in her lap.
Suddenly Jackie thought of Dav
id and the night they had found the car. She had wondered then how it got the bullet holes. Where was David? Frantically she looked around, but there were terrified partygoers everywhere, their faces white with fear, and his face was not among them.
She knew her thoughts were becoming scattered and she didn’t trust herself to stay clear. Something unfathomable was threatening her, and her hold on reality wavered. She was surrounded by a pageant of horrors, and the world was flickering by like an old silent movie.
As soon as Liz saw the car, she came running and Quentin slowed just enough to reach out the window, scoop her up with one arm, and set her onto the running board. She clung to the doorjamb like a circus performer, still firing behind her as they sped off with a roar, the engine blaring over the guns’ explosions. When she looked over at Quentin, he was grinning at her. He cocked his eyes toward Jackie. “Ain’t she somethin’?” he said, but his eyes looked sad. Jackie was struck mute by the sensation of blood trickling over her arm and down her dress.
Liz leaned in and said, “Bullets,” holding out her hand. Jackie found her wits and gave her a fistful, and then, dumbly, she cradled the box in her lap.
The car blasted across the lawn toward the Great House, making for the road, and suddenly Liz cried out, “Oh no, look, there’s Daddy!” Jackie screwed her head back to see where Liz was pointing and saw Jamison Collins on the upper balcony. He, too, had a shotgun in his hands and, flanked by his henchmen, he was firing at the sheriff’s car parked by the pool, shaking his fist and bellowing words she could not understand.
“Go back!” Liz screamed at Quentin. “We have to stop Daddy!”
“We can’t!” he hollered. “We’ve got to save the whiskey.” And he gunned the engine.
Jackie found her voice. “A man back here’s been hurt,” she said, but Quentin ignored her, and Liz cried out over the cacophony.
“Just go around one more time! He’s out-of-his-mind drunk. He’s crazy when he’s like this. No telling what he’ll do.”
But Quentin steered the car out of the drive and onto the road. “We barely got out of there alive,” he shouted. “We’re not going back!”
“No, no, we must!” Liz slid her body next to the door beside Quentin, leaned in the window, and whispered something in his ear. Jackie felt a pang of jealousy when she saw Liz kissing Quentin’s neck, and she remembered their plan to run away. Whatever she said to Quentin, he took his foot off the gas and stopped the car.
“Please, my darling, just for me,” Liz said, pleading. “Turn the car around. I can cover us.” And she lifted her revolver and pulled back on the hammer.
Quentin backed up and spun the car, and Jackie fell against the door, grabbing for the handle. Liz hung onto the window, hitched her back against the mirror, and kept the gun aimed toward the pool as they sped back toward the house. “Oh no!” she cried. “What’s he doing?”
An enormous automobile was heading across the lawn. Jamison Collins was in the back of a huge black Packard with its top folded back, standing up in the rear seat like the dictator of a third world country riding in a motorcade. He still had his shotgun and he was puffing on a cigar. His face was red with rage and his silver hair flashed in the moonlight.
There were two men in the front seat; the man behind the wheel was wearing a pink waistcoat and the other man a plaid jacket. The Packard flew past the Duesenberg, then stopped and backed furiously, its engine thundering. “Get the hell out of here,” Jamison roared at his daughter. “That goddamn Everclear is 190 proof!”
Quentin pulled Liz into the car beside him and slammed the door, and then he stepped on the gas. Jackie pushed the dying man off her and leaned out of the back window in time to see Jamison Collins’s Packard bump over the grass toward the pool house. As though he were an actor on the stage, Liz’s elegant father stood up in the backseat, an imposing leading man, his silver hair glowing, his shotgun at the ready, but now he had a grin on his face like he ruled the world.
Just as his car neared the building, she saw him lean out and toss his cigar in the air. The red spark flew through the dark like a tiny rocket, soared over the heads of the men smashing barrels, and landed at the pool house door. There was an enormous poof! and a rolling ball of fire flared in the sky, then an explosion rocked the ground. The whole interior was suddenly alive with blue and orange flames floating out on the deck, lapping at the tile, swiveling across the water of the pool and hovering over the grass like a river of phosphorescence. She could see figures dancing in black silhouettes against the blaze, their bodies gyrating to the music of the inferno, and the screaming never stopped until they were too far away to hear it anymore.
* * *
The girls sat in the back of the careening car on the crates of whiskey. “Those guys weren’t the police,” Liz shouted over the sound of the engine. “They were dressed up like cops, but they stole those uniforms. They stole that police car. They’re the Mafia! Daddy’s warned me about them.”
Then Quentin chimed in. “They killed the real cops, execution style, but those cops were already on the lam, trying to take off with the hooch. I think a few innocent people may have bit the dust back there, but not many.” He looked over at Liz and winked. “If your daddy wasn’t a Collins…”
It wasn’t the romantic ride Liz had promised earlier in her bedroom—her voice breathy with excitement—but a tense race against time. Jackie clung to the leather armrest and held her breath while the bleeding man bounced beside her on the seat. The green automobile roared through the night and showed what it was bred for. They must have been going a hundred miles an hour.
“Hey, it’s okay,” said Quentin. “They all kept each other occupied long enough for us to get away with the Canadian.”
Jackie felt the man collapse against her and she leaned over and yelled through the window, “There’s someone back here who’s hurt,” but her complaint went unacknowledged. Desperately, she tried to lift his body off hers, but he had her pinned against the window. She yelled, “Quentin! Liz! Help me!” through the cowl, but they did not seem to hear her.
Images of the shootout at the pool were still fresh in Jackie’s mind: the naked swimmers clinging to one another; the cops trying to herd them out the door, shouting orders though bullhorns; the sirens from the cop cars and the lights flashing. Jackie had seen blood in the water and a body floating facedown. She felt along the leather of the seat and her hand found a sticky substance before she jerked it away, trying not to think about the wounded man propped against her. With a mighty shove she pushed him over on the seat. He did not seem to be breathing.
She had been frightened ever since the magic show. She kept thinking of the magician everyone had gone off and left to drown, the bulging eyes, the expression of astonishment. The glamorous party had turned into a nightmare, and nothing was making sense. She hoped David was safe, and she clung to the feeling that she should stay with the Duesenberg and he would find her.
At first Jackie had thought she had escaped into a beautiful dream. Her other lonely existence was a dim memory and she dreaded going back to it. She was sharing everything with Liz, who had embraced her as a confidante and a sister, Liz who was reckless and cynical and flippant and brave, a girl like no one she had ever known. To be in her presence was to suffer pangs of jealousy and inadequacy. She seemed so sure of herself, so amused, and when her eyes fell on Jackie or she leaned in to embrace her, a shock of electricity passed out of her and into the younger girl.
As the car sped down the road, Jackie kept thinking of the letter Quentin had written to Liz, a love letter that made her ache with envy. Over and over in her mind she repeated the words “I would die for you. I would kill for you.” Imagine a man of such moods, so handsome and virile, loving you in that way. She thought of Liz in his arms, and her heart fluttered in her throat.
Now it was clear why Quentin had wanted to find the portrait. It was enchanted; it aged while he remained young. She had known a very different Quentin in her
own time, and she had only met Elizabeth Stoddard once—a much older woman, reserved and distant. Something melancholy about her. Was it the loss of her only love? Tonight they seemed so passionate, so obsessed with each other. Liz had told her—smiling with gentle assurance, something she knew she would never forget—that someday she, too, would find a great love. Because of those words, she thought a life still waited for her, if she could return to her own time.
They pulled into the drive of the Old House and Jackie almost failed to recognize where she lived. The huge columns were the same, and the high cornice, but the house was in a state of severe decay—peeling paint and black mold on the brick and cracked plaster; it was the Old House before the fire and—of course—before the restoration.
Once inside the gloomy mansion, which had no electricity, only candlelight, she followed Liz through musty rooms filled with dust and cobwebs to the basement and down a stairway to a back entrance that Jackie had never seen.
Quentin had parked the Duesenberg by the secret door and Jackie watched the men loading the bottles. Whiskey disappeared beneath the front seat as well, wrapped in burlap to keep the bottles from breaking, and still damp from floating in the sea. It all seemed so hard to believe, a schooner dumping crates and wooden barrels overboard and letting them wash ashore, where bootleggers could fish them out of the surf. It was even more incredible that men would risk their lives to scavenge and sell that same whiskey in the speakeasies.
Thinking she would have to help if they were to return to Collinwood, she began loading bottles as well, packing them into a square sedan parked at the entrance, its back doors propped open. It was a large black hearse with floral scrolls carved in ebony across the top molding and, on the sides, a relief of a double-draped curtain pulled back with tasseled ropes where one could peek in at the corpse. Except there was no body. There was a coffin inside, but it was loaded with bourbon.
Three workers were in a frenzy transferring bottles while she and Liz arranged them in rows. When the coffin was filled to the brim, they closed it up, and then they placed glass jugs full of a honey-colored liquid snugly around it, and bourbon whiskey in barrels with the date stamped on the side. They covered the jugs with a black cloth and added some barrels marked SUGAR, RICE, and FLOUR behind the casket, before they bolted the hearse’s door.
