The Double Vice: The 1st Hidden Gotham Novel

by Chris Holcombe

  “I hope you don’t mind my letting myself in,” he said, “but I’m in need of my suit. And I must say, it looks exquisite.”

  Yes, Atty did a fine job.

  “Good evening, Mr. Fife,” Dash stammered.

  Fife went to the opened wardrobe and ran his fingers through the silk ties on display. “You’ve had a very interesting week.”

  “I have?”

  He picked up one of the silk ties. “Oh yes. My men had a helluva time keeping up with you. Uptown, then downtown, then uptown again. You were very, very busy.”

  Panic flooded Dash’s chest. How much did Fife’s men see? “Mr. Fife—”

  The gangster held up a hand, silencing Dash. He turned around, the silk tie now between both of his hands.

  “Running around, asking people questions. To them, it looked like you were playing detective. And I said, that couldn’t be true. You are a speak owner. Why, if you are a detective, then knowing the location of my warehouse and the work of my chemist would make you a . . . well . . . threat to me.”

  The gangster began wrapping the tie around his fists.

  Dash slowly stood up. “Mr. Fife, there’s something you need to understand. We were forced by a man named Walter Müller—”

  “You know what strikes me odd about it all? The disguise. A tailor shop owner with a degenerate speak in the back. I have to say, that is quite elaborate. Over-the-top.”

  Fife was walking towards Dash now, blocking his path to the front door.

  A trickle of sweat slowly slid down Dash’s back. “This Walter Müller blackmailed us, Mr. Fife. His brother was murdered, and he wanted us to find out who did it.”

  “And did you?”

  “I, I . . . I suppose I did.”

  The gangster gasped in mock surprise. “Lookee there. My men were right. You are a detective. Are you private? With the cops? Or with the Feds?”

  “Neither! I told you, we were forced into it.”

  By now, Fife was face-to-face with Dash, so close their noses almost touched.

  “No man is ever forced to do anything. We all have free will, do we not? And we all make choices. And choices, Mr. Parker, have consequences.”

  He then slid the silk tie around the back of Dash’s neck.

  Dash swallowed. My God, was Fife going to . . . strangle him? Despite the awful realization, fear and disbelief—heavy, like lead—kept him rooted to the spot.

  Fife took the two sides of the tie and began to make a knot at the center of Dash’s chest, like a father does for his son wearing a suit for the first time.

  “You haven’t answered me. Who. Do. You. Work. For?” The gangster began slowly sliding the knot up to Dash’s neck. “Private? The coppers? Or the Feds?”

  The knot was now snug against Dash’s Adam’s apple.

  “Mr. Fife, I work for none of them.”

  The knot began pressing harder against Dash’s throat as Fife continued to slide it upwards.

  “Now, now, don’t be modest,” Fife said, his pleasant baritone maddeningly calm. “A man of your accomplishments must be recognized.”

  The tie was beginning to cut off Dash’s oxygen supply. He felt his cheeks begin to flush. He tried to answer but couldn’t. His chest was on fire from the lack of oxygen, and he could feel himself start to fade. His pulse was pounding against his temples, so hard he struggled to understand Fife’s words.

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Parker?”

  Dash couldn’t speak but he could shake his head, albeit barely. The gangster watched him struggle some more before releasing him. Dash grabbed at the tie’s knot and pulled it away from his neck. He took several grateful gasps of air, bending at the waist. He coughed, his throat scratchy and raw. He heard the creak of the floorboards and looked up.

  Fife had returned to the changing area and walked out with his suit on the hanger. He went to the shop’s front door and opened it. “Thank you for my suit, Mr. Parker. I truly believe you are a man I could have much use for.”

  He looked over his shoulder.

  “And remember, I’m always watching.”

  Dash stared as the air-tight man straightened his jacket and walked slowly down West Fourth. Once Fife was out of sight, Dash rubbed a hand along his neck.

  This is what I signed up for, he thought. No one runs a speak and remains completely free.

  And all he wanted, like all men and women in the world, was to be free. More than ever, he needed to be around his kind, to be around friends, to be around life. And Providence smiled upon him, for walking up to the tailor shop were Atty, Joe, and Finn.

  “He lives!” Finn shouted as they entered.

  Joe grinned, saying, “Do my eyes deceive me?”

  Atty clapped Dash on the shoulder. “Welcome back, boss! Good to see youse!”

  Dash forced a smile as he stood, pleased his legs weren’t shaking too much. “You slay me, Atty. You act as if I’ve been gone for months.”

  “Feels like it, boss. Say, did that fella who I got the suit for, did he like it?”

  Dash looked over Atty’s shoulder to the outside street. All he saw was shadows and people strolling along the sidewalk. Yet he knew Fife was out there, watching, waiting, like a wolf on the hunt.

  “Yes,” he replied, “yes he did.”

  Atty began walking towards the changing room. “Good. That means we’re gonna get much better booze.”

  “And speaking of booze,” Finn said, following him, “I am in desperate need of some.”

  Joe shook his head as he trailed after them. “Easy, lass. Don’t start so hard first thing in the evening. Ya gotta save your strength for later.”

  He gave a casual wink to Dash.

  Dash felt himself blush.

  Atty pushed the right spot of the changing room mirror and led the way into Pinstripes.

  Finn said, following after him, “Is that so?” He looked over his shoulder at Joe. “Tell me more, Mr. Night Life.”

  “Ya know what your problem is, Finney? Ya think you’re too clever by half.”

  “You know what your problem is?” Finn called from behind the wall.

  “No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Joe bellowed into the secret doorway. He glanced back at Dash. “You coming?”

  Dash smiled and stepped towards him. He brushed past Joe who whispered to him, “Welcome back, me lad. Or is it me lass?”

  Dash whispered back, “Whichever you want.” He crossed the threshold of the club’s secret entrance.

  Joe leaned back and laughed as he followed Dash into the club. “Whichever I want, he says! Praise be to the Mother Mary! The power I shall have!”

  Finn was seated at the bar next to Atty, rolling his eyes. “Dear goddess, why are you making him more insufferable?”

  “Insufferable?” Joe scoffed. “Use yer head, lassie, I’m the barman filling your orders.” He ducked underneath the bar, coming up with glasses and bottles. “What will everyone have?”

  Dash stopped at the head of the bar and looked at his friends. His heart was filled with gratitude that they were all still together after the most horrid week and a half of their lives. They were safe and sound.

  For now, at least.

  He said, “I know exactly what I want. I will have good jazz . . .”

  “Hear hear,” said Atty.

  “. . . good men . . .”

  “Hear hear,” said Finn.

  “. . . and not least of all, some good gin.”

  Joe, Finn, and Atty all replied in unison, “Yessir, missus sir, yessir!”

  The 2nd Hidden Gotham Novel

  Read on for an excerpt from

  The Blind Tiger

  to be released December 2021

  Excerpt from The Blind Tiger

  The royal-blue Stutz Vertical Eight Sedan bounced across the intersection, rattling Dash Parker’s trim six-foot frame against the ceiling. He rubbed the top of his head, simultaneously patting down his misbehaving brown hair. He hadn’t had the time to bathe, shave,
and change, something he’d normally do before the nighttime festivities. After all, it was 1926, and the city was popping like a champagne cork at an Astor wedding. One simply didn’t wear one’s day suit after the sun went down. But a man waving a gun would change the plans of even the most stubborn and stylish man.

  “He can just ask to see me, you know,” Dash said. “No need for the entourage and the private chauffeur.”

  The corpulent shape beside him rasped, “Where is the fun in that?”

  In the darkness of the backseat, Dash saw the giant bald man smile.

  He would be amused. This is the part of the job he enjoys.

  He certainly enjoyed the first time Nicholas Fife sent for Dash. A faceless man lunging out of the shadows in front of Dash’s building. The car sliding up behind him, the door opening seemingly by itself. The polite, but firm, request to get inside. When Dash did, shaking as he went, he saw Lowell Henley, Fife’s lead torpedo in the backseat with that same closed-mouth grin, that same raspy breath.

  Now here they were again, sitting in a five-passenger luxury car outfitted in a pale blue interior with teak-outlined windows while a nameless driver sped through the grid of Manhattan. The streetlights whipped by, their balls of yellow blurring and stretching into comet streaks.

  If only Fife would come around once every hundred years.

  “I’m not a toy he can toss around for his amusement,” Dash said.

  Lowell turned his head, his eyes glassy and black. “You’ll be whatever he wants you to be.” He faced the front again. “He’ll like that suit though. You’ll have to make another for him.”

  Dash looked down at the Banff blue pinstriped fabric that set his hazel eyes aflame. The crisp white shirt underneath allowed the bright red tie to flare like a firework. The topper, the gray felt homburg, he held between his hands. He mentally accepted the compliment, but he longed for his usual tuxedo. At least then it would feel like he was going to a party instead of to . . . wherever he was actually going. Which, he was certain, wasn’t to his death.

  Reasonably certain. One never knew with Fife.

  He said, “You know I don’t make suits, Lowell.”

  It was the honest-to-God truth. Though Dash owned Hartford & Sons Tailor, he was not gifted with needle and thread. Quite the opposite. But that wasn’t why the Greenwich Village men visited the shop on West Fourth between Barrow and Jones—just to the west of Washington Square Park, to the east of Seventh Avenue, and in the heart of Manhattan’s Bohemia. It was the secret club called Pinstripes hidden behind the changing room mirror that brought them in droves.

  Lowell kept his face forward. “You took his measurements.”

  “That’s the one part of the job I can do. An associate does the rest.”

  He meant his club’s doorman, Atticus Delucci. One wouldn’t think the short, balding Italian with muscles thick as a boxer’s would be so adept with needle and thread. And yet, every night, he would sit in the front window of the shop doing the alterations, giving the illusion Hartford & Sons was a legitimate business. It also kept Atty from being bored senseless and provided them with extra sugar to bribe the neighborhood cops. A necessary evil.

  Like Nicholas Fife.

  Lowell said, “I’m told you took great care with his measurements. In fact, he said his suit was fitted down to the very last millimeter. In all the right places.”

  The driver of the car flashed a look at Dash over his shoulder and smirked.

  Dash could read his mind.

  Well, Dash had been called worse. He preferred what the driver was thinking to what the nanny lawmakers called him and other men and women like him: “degenerates.” It wasn’t just a derogatory word; it was a legal term. He supposed they should feel flattered the nannies felt so threatened they made a special law just for them. Now in addition to being arrested for buying and selling alcohol, Dash and his kind could be charged with “degeneracy” and sent either to prison or to a mental institution. It all depended on the wealth of your family.

  Dash’s family had wealth, but these days they wouldn’t intercede. That only happened once when Dash was younger, and they promised never to do so again. Especially when, just before his twentieth birthday, Dash defied his father’s orders to stop his secret foolishness.

  Ah, but isn’t all love foolish?

  “Turn here,” Lowell said to the driver.

  The Stutz careened around a corner, tossing Dash against Lowell, then shuddered with a large bounce as the car began climbing upward. Dash looked out the window and saw they were on the Queensboro Bridge.

  Just as he suspected.

  He was being driven to one of Fife’s several Queens warehouses, where there were crates stacked upon crates of re-distilled liquor to be sold to the thousands of illegal speaks and clubs throughout the city. Even Pinstripes received some.

  Dash adjusted his tie. “Did Fife find out something about her?”

  It had to be the reason he was summoned: Fife had discovered a crucial clue about the girl who died. Dash didn’t much care for the idea of he and Fife being linked in more ways than just liquor—especially when that link was death—but he put still managed to put on a brave face.

  Lowell took a raspy breath. “He didn’t say, and I don’t ask.”

  “I’m sure he appreciates your discretion.”

  Lowell didn’t take the bait on that one, so Dash sat back and looked out the side window. The lights of Manhattan had been replaced by the inky void of the East River. During the day, it was noisy and crowded with ships, boats, yachts, sea planes, and anything else mankind invented to get from point A to point B. At night, the river was empty, its earlier activity replaced with a sudden darkness and a profound silence.

  How many secrets does this river hold?

  And then, a terrifying thought: Will I be one of them one day?

  Given what he and Fife shared, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

  How certain are you that you’re not being driven to your death?

  Cold sweat flashed across his palms. His stomach began boiling with tension. Fife’s world thrived on secrecy, as did Dash’s. Yet Dash’s four a.m. decision one night had blown that secrecy sky high with big, bold newspaper headlines and column after column of newshawks ruminating, insinuating, and, in some cases, flat out lying. Given who she was, though, how could they have possibly avoided the press frenzy? It was inevitable!

  He wanted the body at the bottom of the Hudson.

  Dash swallowed a large lump of fear. His reluctance to let her family suffer indefinitely over her disappearance had angered Fife. Dash had argued it didn’t matter. A disappearance or a death would’ve inspired the same breathless prose so favored by newspapermen. Fife eventually had agreed with him. Or seemed to. Had the mercurial man changed his mind?

  The car landed on the other side of the bridge with a thud, jolting Dash out of his head and back into his body. The driver careened around sharp curves, throwing him against the door of the Stutz. It felt like they were driving in circles with all of the right-hand turns, but soon they pulled up to an average-looking riverfront warehouse.

  Lowell exited the luxury car, assuming Dash would follow. Stepping outside, Dash’s nose was overtaken by the smell of pungent salt and sour decay. The East River in all her glory. He looked up at the warehouse expecting to see the familiar sign of Fife’s cover business saying queens furniture, furniture fit for royalty!

  Or at least it had.

  Now it said danziger paper.

  Dash looked to the fleet of delivery trucks surrounding them with the new moniker and a new tag line to go along with it: the classiest of salutations with the best of regards. Even the trucks themselves had been repainted, a pale blue with the new text in a rosy pink.

  Dash pointed to the fleet. “New business?” His voice was only slightly shaking.

  “New business,” Lowell echoed.

  Dash arched an eyebrow, trying to be nonchalant. “Gotta stay up on the
latest trends.”

  The driver said with a proud smile, “Danziger’s the name of a girl I go with. She’s thrilled.”

  “I bet.”

  “Sal,” Lowell said, “keep your trap shut.”

  Sal, properly chastened, replied “Yes, sir.”

  “Stay here. You,” Lowell pointed at Dash, “come with me.”

  Dash nodded. “Right.”

  He looked to Sal. The driver’s face was blank. No worry. No pity. Not even excitement. He gave no indication whatsoever as to what was in store for Dash.

  “Mr. Parker!”

  Dash looked up to see Lowell halfway to the warehouse. The large man beckoned with his hand.

  Never let them see you sweat, his older brother Maximillian used to say. Even if you’re scared out of your wits, never let the other man see it.

  One of the few pieces of familial advice Dash still recited to himself. He took a deep breath and hurried after Lowell, who bypassed the warehouse’s main two doors and instead went to a side entrance.

  They entered a narrow hallway with jaundiced lighting. The smoky smell of exhaust, the tarry bitterness of oil, and the earthy dampness of mold was overwhelming and oppressive. Exposed pipes ran above their heads, the joints emitting little droplets of water that fell to the uneven concrete floor below, their splashes tinkling in the puddles polka-dotting the narrow hallway. Dash avoided them but Lowell walked straight through, not caring what the water—or whatever it was—did to his shoes.

  At the end of the hallway, Lowell turned and knocked on a closed door. A muffled voice responded on the other side. Lowell nodded to himself once, then turned the knob and entered.

  Dash hesitated for a moment, thinking, should I run? Give myself a fighting chance?

  A Dumb Dora idea. He was in the middle of nowhere. Where could he go for safety? And no matter how fast he ran, Lowell’s bullets were undoubtedly faster.

  The bald head peeked out from the room he just entered. “You coming?”