by Debra Dunbar
Hattie considered the woman, standing so strong and yet filled with such fragility. “You’ll see Jake again someday. God willing.”
Lizzie released a bitter laugh. “Right.”
“Don’t you believe in Heaven?”
“You can believe what you like, girl. But I’m living for here and now. The hereafter can wait. But you? You shouldn’t wait. Your years are getting behind you, and before you realize it, you’ll be as old as I am, wondering when you were supposed to start living. I don’t want that for you.”
She placed a hand against the side of Hattie’s face, and Hattie reached for it, pressing it hard against her cheek. “When you feel something for someone, when there’s that spark, that tiny shoot breaking through a frozen ground, then let it grow. Let it bloom. Nourish it, because that’s one of the things that makes life worth living.”
She leaned her forehead against Hattie’s and the two held there, letting the moment linger between them. Then with a sigh, Lizzie stepped away.
“So,” Hattie said with a clearing of her throat, “what’s next for us?”
“Smith says we should look west, now that Tony’s looking to the Bay.”
Hattie frowned. “West? You mean?”
“West By God Virginia,” Lizzie declared in a hokey accent. “He says that he agrees with your original plan, by the by. Take the fight to the bootleggers.”
“I think I’ve shown that to be a poor plan,” Hattie grumbled.
“Well, maybe yes and maybe no. Smith knows the contacts in the hills. Moonshiners who produce for the Crew.”
“And?” Hattie pressed.
Lizzie shook her head. “That’s all he gave me. There’s going to be another meeting, two nights from now at Locust Point.”
“Is that safe?”
“The Crew won’t be looking for us there. Smith assured me of that.”
Hattie covered her mouth with her hand as a dark thought crossed her mind.
Lizzie picked up on it, cocking a brow. “What?”
“Do you really trust that man?”
“I most certainly do not.”
“Then why put so much stock in his schemes?”
Lizzie marched for the warehouse door, urging Hattie to follow. “Because, my dear protégé, the first step in surviving men like Smith is to understand that they always have an agenda. And that agenda shifts like the wind.”
Hattie emerged into the morning light as Lizzie shut the warehouse and locked it.
That sentiment was well and good, but Hattie left Winnows Slip wondering if a wind like Smith’s was something they could weather without flying apart.
Chapter 18
A knock on Vincent’s door pulled him from his thoughts. He withdrew from his window, setting his coffee onto the table before stepping for the door, hand on the pistol in his jacket. He pinched time to crack the door open. This time, it wasn’t Tony looking for him…
It was Fern. What in the world was she doing here? He hadn’t had a spare moment to speak to her after the aborted lunch at the café, and for her to show up on his doorstep like this…
He released the time pinch, forgetting to close the door and “reset,” and as the flow of time resumed, Fern started.
Vincent winced. “Sorry about that. Is something wrong? Has something happened? Did Cooper…?”
She shook her head. “No! Nothing’s happened. I just needed to talk. I just…” Fern lifted a hand to her cloche as if to ensure it was properly seated on her head for no particular reason, then let her fingers trace an uncertain path down the side of her face. “I wanted to…”
Vincent eased the door open to invite her in. She was clearly struggling with a thought, and her anxiety filled him with dread.
Before he could formally invite her inside, she dropped her clutch onto the floor of the hallway and leaped through the door, grasping the sides of Vincent’s face to pull him into a kiss that had far more to do with desperation than desire. He held stiff in her embrace until she was done, then pulled away, his eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“Nothing, I just…” She leaned into him and he backed up a step.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She stiffened, then twisted away from him. “I’m sorry.”
“Fern?”
“I’ll go.”
Vincent reached for her arm, guiding her back to face him. “Hey, what’s going on? You can’t just show up here, kiss me, then leave.”
“I’m fine,” she protested with a sudden air of forced calm. “I just… I was thinking about you. And I decided that I wanted to see you. Is it a bad time? Should I leave?”
“No, of course not. I’m glad you came by.”
He wasn’t glad, he realized. He was perplexed and confused—and not just about her vague reasoning for the impromptu visit. Having a beautiful woman appear at his door and throw herself at him should have been the highlight of his day, heck, his month. Instead he found himself mildly annoyed and dreading the stress that seemed to come every time he and Fern shared a moment together.
Vincent pulled a chair at his table for her, and after a moment’s consideration on whether to sit or flee his own apartment, he gestured toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
Vincent sat across from her, wishing he had something stronger in his own coffee. “So, you wanna level with me? What’s going on?”
She spread her hands out on the surface of the table and closed her eyes, taking a long breath. “I saw Cooper today.”
Vincent balled his fists. “Where?”
“One of Tony’s boys twisted his ankle on some run gone wrong.”
Vincent nodded. “I know about that.”
“Tony picked me up to come take a look, wrap his ankle. Make sure it wasn’t broken. When I got there…”
“Cooper was there?”
She nodded.
“Did he touch you?” Vincent asked.
“No. He didn’t say a word. He was just…there.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Neither did Tony. He just watched, like a buzzard.”
“I’ll have a word with Tony,” Vincent offered.
Fern’s hand shot across the table to latch onto Vincent’s. “Please don’t!”
Vincent sucked in a breath.
She added, “I just want him…away. Away from me.”
“Well, sounds like he won’t stay away unless someone reminds him that you’re off limits.”
“Don’t. He’ll come after you. He’ll say something and get you in trouble.”
Vincent shook his head in frustration. “He’s part of the family. We have people who can back you up, now. Look what happened last time.”
She squeezed his hand. “I feel safe with you. When you’re you, I mean. And not…” A tear dropped from her eyelash.
“Not a pincher?” Here it was again, as it always was.
“Not a gangster,” she corrected.
He blinked at the comment. “I don’t read you.”
“All of you are dangerous.” She pulled her hand away. “When you’re dealing in guns, guts and greed. I’ve seen all of you, at some point. Bullet wounds. Broken arms. The Crew is no family, Vincent. It’s a meat grinder. I grew up in the belly of that meat grinder. It’s all I know, but the thought of spending my life like that…that I might say the wrong word at the wrong time and get someone I care about killed, or myself beat to a bloody mess. I don’t want that.”
“It’s a tough life, sure, but you’re safe. Protected. We take care of our own.”
Fern sighed. “Until you don’t.” She folded her hands in her lap and dropped her eyes. “I enjoy spending time with you. It was a long time since anyone saw me as a person and not just a dame.” Her eyes met his. “Which scares me, because I think I could fall for you. But…”
Vincent’s heart skipped two full beats, then returned hammering against his sternum in double-march step. This
should have thrilled him, but instead he was mentally counting the steps to the door.
“But what? You’re afraid I’ll get hurt? That I’ll make a wrong move end up at the bottom of the river?”
“I wish it were that simple,” she said, wiping a fresh tear from her eye.
Get myself beaten to a bloody mess, she’d said. “You’re afraid that I’ll be the one doing the hurting,” he stated, realization settling over his brain.
She shot him a look filled with apology and nodded. “When you’re around the others, you’re different. You’re like them. When that man came into the café, you changed. I don’t want you like that. I want the other Vincent.”
He clamped his lips hard on an angry reply. There was no other Vincent. It was all him, and the thought that she didn’t want half of who he was bothered him almost as much as her insinuation that he might eventually beat her.
“I’ve seen good men change,” she continued. “They wilt under the strain of this family’s violence. Corbi is no different than D’Urso. Same machine, chewing up men to turn them into killers.” She added with a scowl, “I hate it so much.”
Vincent forced a smile. “I don’t doubt that, but no matter what I do for the Crew, you’re safe with me.”
“You say that, but I feel like…” She took a breath, then tried again. “I feel like you’ve been sucked into this pincher hunt, and it’s changing you—changing you for the worse. You’re ready to set into this person, to put the same chains on her that you’ve forgotten are on your own wrists.”
He scowled. “Now you sound like Hattie.”
Fern looked away.
Vincent shifted in his chair to peer out the window. It was a sunny day out. There were no immediate plans. He was waiting to hear from Smith, but who knew when that ghoul would appear. And as much as he wanted to return to his peaceful morning, he didn’t like the thought of her leaving like this.
“Want to go to the park?” he asked.
Fern lifted her chin to look out the same window. A smile crept across her face. “It’s a pretty day.”
“It is. I could buy you an ice.”
She blinked as sunlight filled her eyes. “We could feed the ducks.”
“That sounds nice.”
They remained seated.
Fern turned to Vincent. “Be honest with me. Is there any way at all that you’ll ever escape the Crew?”
He stared at her. “What?”
“Can’t you just leave? Run away?” She reached for his hands again. “If we get in a car, we can just drive west. Get away from everyone. Go somewhere quiet. I’ll get a job working in a department store, and you’ll find something that doesn’t involve taking a lead pipe to someone’s legs or shooting someone. Eventually we’ll get a place with a little garden out back where the kids can play. You’ll read the paper in the evenings and smoke a pipe while I darn socks.”
“I don’t smoke,” he commented, feeling oddly terrified at the scene she was painting.
“Then don’t smoke.” She leaned in closer to him and for a second he thought she was going to kiss him again. “No more guns and blood and broken bones. No more black eyes or worrying over who might knock on the door in the dead of the night.”
“I’m a pincher, Fern. I’m part of the Crew. This is what I do, this is what gives me purpose. I can’t just head west and get a job…welding or something. Lily hands, remember?” he joked, trying to force some levity into the conversation.
“You could be a clerk, or a salesman,” she urged. “I think you’d be a good salesman. And you’d be home at five every night and I’d have dinner ready for you.”
She smiled, her eyes sparkling with happiness at the idea, but in Vincent’s mind the whole thing sounded like his worst nightmare.
“I need to have purpose. Sitting in an office adding numbers all day? Selling…what? Selling furniture or men’s suits or newfangled coffee makers? There’s no purpose to that. I’m a pincher.”
“Then don’t be a pincher,” she urged. “Just be a man. Just be a normal man and find purpose in a normal job with a normal family and a wife who takes care of you.”
Don’t be a pincher. She really thought it was that simple? And that he’d find purpose in this horrible boring life she was envisioning for him? Did Fern know him at all?
No, she didn’t. Not like…not like someone else did.
“Leave with me, Vincent,” she urged. “I can’t do this alone, but with you, I think I can.”
Vincent closed his eyes and thought. Beyond the horror of the picket-fence fantasy she was spinning, he knew there could never be a life like that for a man like him. Pinchers were always tools for the men in power. No matter how far away he ran, someone would want to possess him. What’s more, he didn’t want to run. As much as he detested the violence, he understood it. The blood came with the life. The Crew was where he belonged, even if they didn’t see him as an equal. To simply drive west without a plan? Without support? To live a life without purpose?
And then there was the whole niggling suspicion that her affections were more about having someone save her than any budding heartfelt emotions for him.
A noise from the front of the apartment jerked Vincent from his musings. He opened his eyes to find Lefty standing in the doorway holding Fern’s clutch. They’d left the door open, and her purse on the floor.
The maelstrom of uncertainty inside Vincent’s chest stilled upon seeing Lefty. Fern pulled her hands away. She stood, eyes hooded, lips tight.
“I think I’ll go,” she muttered.
Vincent nodded. “I’ll talk to you later. Maybe…maybe we’ll catch a movie next weekend,” he offered half-heartedly.
She lingered a moment, then turned for the door.
Lefty held out her clutch. She took it with a quick nod. “Thank you.”
Lefty watched as she withdrew down the hallway, heels clicking down the stairs. Once Fern had gone, he eased into the apartment.
“I don’t know what I just walked in on—and I don’t wanna know.”
Vincent stood up. “Vito call a meeting?”
Lefty nodded. “Let’s go.”
Even as he snatched his hat to move for the door, Lefty held out a hand. “You solid?”
“Solid.”
Turned out, Vincent got plenty of sunshine after all as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with several Baltimore Crew auxiliaries and hangers-on, all gathered outside the villa at the Havre de Grace vineyard for the meet. Vito’s voice carried through the open windows and double doors as Vincent looked on. He caught bits of the tirade, in particular the points where Vito got his blood into a lather.
“…the uncultured swine of Richmond…cripple their entire family…a war for all memory…”
The Capo was in rare form. His voice possessed a sort of Roman quality of oration as he held his vowels at the right moment, took breaths between cheers of agreement, angled his tone up and down to sway the emotions of those gathered. This was Vito on a good day. It was what he’d been preparing for, a chance to prove himself. Tony was right. Most of these young bucks had settled into peacetime and had grown disgruntled because of it.
“…to prove once and for all that we are heirs to greatness!”
There it was. Vito’s credo. Prove ourselves.
The diatribe lasted another twenty minutes, during which the message met with occasional applause and cheers. In truth, however, the picture Vito painted for the gathering was blithe and reductive. All they had to do was to assert themselves, take the fight to the Upright Citizens, and then the rest of the East Coast families would fall into line. It was a load of bushwa, but it sold.
Once general marching orders were announced, the upper echelon exited the villa, waving over heads at their point people, gathering flocks to prepare for war.
Lefty eyed Vincent from the open double doors and beckoned with his finger. Vincent nodded and pressed his way through the mass of suits until he found himself inside the villa. Only
a handful remained, most of which conferred in a tight huddle with the Capo. Vito’s eyes lifted to find Vincent, and he brushed the rest away with a grumble. They made a quick exit, and as a valet closed the doors behind them, Vito turned for a sideboard and poured himself a goblet of red wine.
Lefty took position directly beside Vincent. Tony leaned against the wall between windows, his face sharp and clear. Looked like he’d kept his sails furled for this meeting.
“Vincenzo,” Vito muttered, “I hear things. Things I do not like.” He turned to face Vincent. “I do not relish the thought of failure.”
Vincent said nothing.
“Particularly now, when we have been insulted by the Virginians.” He waved the goblet at Tony. “Had Antonio not seen through their deceptions, we may have continued hemorrhaging into the Bay.”
Vincent cast a glance at Tony. His eyes had drawn just a little wider, filling with alarm. He’d taken credit for Vincent’s deductions, but seemed unprepared for the moment. With a few words, Vincent could call him out on it. Right here, in front of the Capo. It might come off as petulant. It might even cost Vincent yet more face in Vito’s eyes, but it would dash Tony’s newfound esteem.
But Vincent found no joy in that. He’d given Tony that insight, that the Bianco Fiore boat was actually the Upright Citizens trying to pull a hoodwink. He’d done it to help Tony.
“I have a lot of respect for Tony,” Vincent replied. “He has some thoughts on the boat traffic situation which, well…I think we should hear him out.”
Tony gave him a slight nod of thanks.
Vito waved off the comment. “Yes, yes. He’s already made a diplomatic gesture of showing me the error of my ways. Perhaps not as diplomatic as he thinks he was, but I understand. But we are not here to discuss our failures on the water. We are here to discuss your failures—” he pointed his glass at Vincent “—in finding my pincher.”
Vincent bowed his head. “I apologize for the delays. Smith and I had agreed that a slow hand would be the smart way to approach her.”
“Slow hand?” Vito spat. “Three failures to secure the light pincher is not a slow hand. It is a disgrace.”
