More like a chippy, ya big sap. Michael Patrick Quinn’s young, freckled face scowled at her from the corner of her mind where she’d tucked his memory. You’ve done enough to find the guy. Cap will do the rest. Get out of here. It’s not too late.
Even dead her little brother could still needle her. Not just yet, Mickie. Got to send over the whole bunch.
Onstage the band belted out the Charleston Strut, luring every tipsy dish who could nab a partner for a hoof on the floor. Nellie tapped her toes to the song as she giggled at the dancers. None of them would guess how much she hated the tune. She sometimes dreamed of the banjos strumming over her grave. The couples always looked feverish, almost frantic to have fun, as if someone might shoot them if they didn’t.
These days most of the rubes looked too young to her, but after living this way for so long she felt as old and frayed as her mother’s milking apron.
And whose fault is that? Mickie demanded.
Nellie had no problem accepting the blame for what she’d done to land in this spot. If she didn’t get what she wanted tonight, she knew she’d have to work on Jackie himself. Everyone knew she’d run around with plenty of trouble boys. A few more lies spilled into his ear would wind him up nice and tight. To get enough time alone to do that, she’d probably have to get cozy with him.
Could she make whoopee with the murdering big shot? So far that was the one thing she hadn’t done. The thought of it made Nellie feel as if her heart had turned to stone, and what little good left in her was about to be crushed under its weight.
No way to wash that off, Mickie whispered inside her ear. You let that snake between your knees and you’ll never feel clean again.
If she had to bed the boss to bring down him and his thugs, she’d damn well do it. Chasing Jackie down had gotten her too dirty to ever be that girl from the family farm again. She’d never go back to the country, not after being soaked in the muck of her own making. All that mattered was making good on what she’d promised herself. It was the only way it would be worth what it had cost her.
“Say, looking swank tonight, Baby,” a gravelly voice said as a thin shadow stretched over her face.
Nellie gave Dapper a pout and a peek through her eyelashes as thanks, but the tall, skeletal man passed her by without missing a step. It felt like being spared a nightmare and missing a jackpot. Between the pricey black bowler and the over-waxed mustache, the killer’s muddy eyes remained as dead as corpse coins. Jackie Facelli’s number one hatchet man always complimented her when he came into the club, in the same, routine way he murdered whoever the boss wanted chilled, or whoever got in his way.
Some he’d killed for no reason at all.
Out of the corner of her eye Nellie watched Dapper head straight for the two guns standing at the other end of the bar. He took off his hat and dropped it on the bar while he spoke to them, and then the three disappeared into the manager’s office. Very slowly, still watching the dancers, Nellie wandered down to the hat. Bracing herself, she touched the rim and opened herself up.
Everything Dapper had done earlier that night came through her, replaying inside her head like a movie. Instead of music, she heard sounds and voices, like the talkies everyone said Hollywood would soon be making.
Dapper had first touched the bowler when he put it on to drive downtown. He wove through traffic and people like a hungry shark in bloody waters. He left his car in a back alley where a cringing, fearful man came to meet him. The snitch told him something that made him smile before he plugged him. From there he made a trip over to a big warehouse with dirty windows. He stood outside and watched a bunch of bootleggers pouring cut hooch into cheap bottles before slipping away.
Relief flooded through Nellie. Dapper believed he had finally located the operation of a rival bootlegger called Two-Time Matteo. Cutting his bathtub swill twice allegedly gave Two-Time his moniker, but his cheaper prices had been rumored to be putting the squeeze on Jackie. Nobody did that and kept breathing. The hit would go down tonight, and Facelli, who liked to watch Dapper make an example of a rival, would be there.
Time to make like the canary.
Nellie cradled her drink between the long loops of her pearls as she considered her options. She’d never called the Cap from inside the club, but this couldn’t wait. There were only two phones in the joint: one in Jackie’s office and one in the kitchen.
Slowly she turned around, setting her sights on the rawboned kid mopping up behind the bar. He was new, nervous, and probably had never talked to a girl. When he caught her watching him, he flinched, making the sweat beads dotting his forehead trickle down into his eyes. He used his knuckles to smear away salty tears before he looked back and smiled too wide.
Nellie had him. Then all it took was a tip of her glass, a little scream and a dash around to collide with the kid.
“Oh, oh,” she said, clutching his narrow shoulders and pressing herself against him.
From his worn shirt she got an image of him leaving a tenement house and stepping over a pile of garbage, and quickly shut the door in her head.
Poor, stupid, and desperate to make some dough.
“You okay, Miss?” he asked, his voice a twanging string.
“I spilled hooch all over my dress, can you believe it?” She took a dollar from her clutch and tucked it in his hand. “There’s a sink back there, maybe I can sponge it down?”
The kid stuttered and stammered something like yeah, sure, and this way before leading her back into the kitchen.
Just as Nellie had hoped the dinner cooks had already gone for the night, leaving her alone with the kid, whose eyes were still skittering up and down her.
“You’re a real life saver, fella.” She decided against kissing his cheek. If she did, he’d never leave. She sauntered over to the sink. “Give a girl a minute to fix herself up?” She tossed him a smoldering glance over her shoulder. “Then maybe you can buy me a drink.”
Dazzled, the kid nodded, tripping as he hurried out. As soon as the swinging door closed Nellie dashed to the phone by the storeroom and dialed the operator.
“Police, First Precinct, right now,” she demanded as soon as the girl answered, and then waited for the connection. When the desk sergeant’s sleepy voice came on the line, she used her best lace-curtain Irish accent. “This is Bridget McMurphy. I got an emergency here. Put Cap on.”
Every second of silence that passed on the other end had Nellie eyeing the door. At last a deep voice said, “What’s the matter, darling?”
“It’s our little man, sweetheart.” She had to use code and the fake name so that everyone at the station thought she was Captain John McMurphy’s wife. That kept her alive, and the cops that Jackie had on his payroll in the dark. “He kicked the dog and got fresh with me. He said he’s gonna run off tonight with that friend of his, Mattie.”
“All right.” Cap sounded as relieved as she felt. “You just make yourself some tea now, Bridget. I’ll be home in ten minutes to deal with our boy.”
Nellie hung up the phone at once and rested her brow against the wall. Making tea was their code for the wrap-up of the sting. In less than an hour it would all be finished.
Jackie Facelli didn’t know that Two-Time Matteo existed only in his imagination. The Bureau had worked hard to get the word out about him as the head of a bootlegging operation undercutting Facelli’s business. Using Nellie’s reports to shut down dozens of speakeasies, they’d first put the squeeze on those owners. Eager to avoid lengthy prison sentences, the owners had been coached into boasting to Facelli’s men about buying cheaper hooch from Two-Time.
Finally, it had worked. Tonight, when Dapper and Facelli raided Two-Time’s base of operations, they’d be walking into a Bureau trap.
Nellie knew how it would go down. Cap would get the BoP boys to the bogus bootleg site to wait for the killers and arrest them all. The murder of the snitch she’d read from the bowler would help Cap put pressure on Dapper until he pinned Mickie’s murde
r on his boss to keep from swinging himself. Her brother’s killer would spend the rest of his life in prison, and his boss would go to the rope.
She could stop now, leave New York City, and never look back. But where could she go?
Maybe back to the farm. The cows won’t care what I did.
A cold hand clamped on her neck. “Never told me you were an Irishman’s missus, Baby.”
Nellie’s heart clenched as she turned around, her pout in place. “Yeah, so I got a ball-and-chain, and a kid. Ain’t my fault my ma can’t wrangle the little man. Had to call his dad to come home from the factory.” She stroked her fingers over his lapel, keeping the door in her head locked tight. “Bet you got a whole toolbox of little drillers by now, huh, Dapper?”
“Six.” The hatchet man looked her over before he smiled, showing his tobacco-yellow teeth. “And one on the way.”
He was buying her song and dance, and Nellie could almost breathe again. She’d make it out of here, alive and done with swimming in this cesspool. Then he grabbed her by the hair, and jerked her arm up behind her back.
“You’re a snitch. Not even a good one.” He marched her out of the kitchen and down along the bar toward Jackie’s office.
“Don’t be loony,” she protested, hoping the fear in her voice sounded like a spoiled whine. “You know me, Dapper. I’m just looking to have a good time. Ask anybody.”
He chuckled. “You know what Jackie does with sharpers? He gives them to me, so I can put the screws to them a while. Make sure we know everything you told the flatties. I got a warehouse out in Jersey that’s nice and private.” He halted and bent down, his stinking breath blasting her ear. “Gonna make you last a good, long while, Baby.”
In that moment, Mickie’s face floating behind her eyes, she couldn’t pretend anymore.
“I am a copper, you boob,” Nellie told him, jerking away from his mouth. “Bureau of Prohibition. You’re under arrest for the murder of Michael Patrick Quinn. Now let me–”
A woman’s shrill scream made Dapper swing around and go still. “Son of a bitch.”
Nellie looked toward the screamer, and saw a dozen masked men rush through the narrow bookcase entry. Droppers. As the hired killers spread out and hefted their Tommy guns, Nellie knew she wasn’t going to Jersey, or the farm, or anywhere ever again. Neither was anyone else in the speakeasy.
Staring at her death made her think of the one good thing about it: she’d sipped her last glass of watered-down hooch. She hated the stuff.
I’m sorry, Mickie.
Me, too, Sis, her brother whispered back.
The thugs began firing a spread across the club, their bullets smashing into screaming women and shouting men. Bodies fell like toppled trees along with the gore-spattered tables. Spilled booze formed little pools and rivers. Two musicians jumped from the stage to dance as gunfire hit them and riddled their bodies. Light bulbs smashed into showers of sparks, adding a festive air to the bloodbath.
Nellie saw Jackie run out of his office, his bodyguards on either side of him. They tried to make it to the back door, but all three men were cut down in a heartbeat. A bitter satisfaction flooded through her, as cold and heavy as dark water.
Got him, little brother.
As the guns swung toward her Nellie instinctively tried to drop down behind the bar. With his bony hands Dapper held her tightly upright and in front of him. Only a moment before being pelted did she realize that he was using her like a shield.
Coward, hiding behind a skirt.
She kicked back, driving the heel of her shoe into his shin. His howl got lost as the droppers started firing at them.
Being drilled didn’t hurt as much as Nellie had expected. Hot stings peppered her front, pummeling her like tiny fists. One that grazed her cheek made her head bounce back against Dapper’s Adam’s apple, making him choke. The pain came next, but even that seemed muted and far away. Knowing these men would leave here wrapped in body blankets left her feeling an odd emptiness, as if everything that had fed her hatred for so long had drained away.
Not so bad. Nellie didn’t want to look down, so she looked at the broken bottles on the bar. The shattered glass reflected the exploding lights like little shooting stars. Pretty. I should make a wish.
When the killers charged across the club, Dapper flung her to the floor. She heard him scream and fall a few feet from her, whining and gasping as he tried to crawl away. The acrid stink of gunpowder and spilled blood grew thick.
Bye, Dapper. Hope you suffer a good, long while before you bleed out.
All Nellie could do now was peer up at the tin ceiling and wait for the finish. For the first time she noticed that the punch patterns formed angels and stars. Was that heaven up there? More strange notions filled her head, probably from the blood loss, but she didn’t mind. She wondered if she’d see Mickie or her folks once she left this world. She knew for sure she wouldn’t be going where they had. She’d done too many awful, rotten things to get to Facelli, but that had been the price for her revenge.
It was done, and she was done. There was nothing left.
She could feel heat and wet pumping out of her many wounds, staining her pretty new dress. It made her hands and feet go cold, but Nellie wasn’t scared. She felt sure that Hell was here, in this hard, cold world. The bootleggers and their mobs were the real devils. After she scrammed, it would probably be just like they always said: a big sleep.
Or maybe it’ll be a place in Jersey, where Dapper will keep me forever.
A sad laugh stuttered out of her as Nellie realized the joke was on her. All she’d done had been for nothing. Some rival who hated Jackie had chilled off the louse for her. She could have stayed home and had her revenge anyway.
Mickie didn’t say anything inside her head. He didn’t have to.
She’d never let herself regret what she’d done for her brother and her folks, but the irony of this night gave her one last chance to mourn the life she hadn’t lived.
I’d have spent my days soaking up the sunshine and looking after the herd. Every morning in the dairy, every night on the back porch watching the fireflies. Maybe I would have found a fella who cared enough to stick around and give me his ring.
The smell of copper made her open her eyes to see an enormous, brutally handsome thug crouching over her. He had wings, but he wasn’t an angel, not with all those shivs strapped to his coppery feathers. Maybe he wasn’t real at all, but then he picked her up, his claws cutting into her flesh. He sniffed her before he started touching her all over.
Nellie couldn’t read people like things, and for once she was glad of it.
“Beat it…chump,” she said, and coughed as something thick welled into her mouth. “Let a girl…kick off…in peace.”
“Ah, but you’ve been a very bad girl, haven’t you?” He brought her fingers to his pretty face, and then he licked the blood from them. “And a touch-reader. Born with your talent, too. That makes you worth taking.”
She couldn’t get enough breath to spit in his face. “I’m…already dead… stupid mug. Can’t take…anything…from me.”
“I’m taking you,” he said, raising his fist.
As the demon punched his claws into her chest, Nellie knew then that she’d been wrong about Hell. So very wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Five
COMING OUT OF the dream and seeing the thatched roof instead of punched tin made Nellie turn her head. Beside her Edane slept, his arm draped over her waist. The terror making her rigid fled, leaving her limp and relieved. She’d gotten out of the speakeasy of her dream. She’d come back to Scotland, to Dun Chaill, to the man she loved. She never had to go back to New York City, or the Bureau, or the farm.
Edane could be her home now.
As she reached for him the pearl necklace slithered over her wrist, caressing her, reminding her with its cool beauty of who she had been. Not that it was a bad thing. Edane knew fun, wild, carefree Nellie. He didn’t know anything about the undercover
bureau agent underneath the flapper.
How would he look at her when she took off Nellie once and for all?
Gently she nudged his arm until he stirred and rolled onto his side, freeing her. Rising and finding her clothes in the dark without waking him took some time. Once she had dressed, she tiptoed to the door. Looking back at Edane, she opened it and stepped outside. Whatever magic he had used to ward the greenhouse, it didn’t wake him when someone left.
The borders of the night sky had taken on a dark blue tinge, telling her sunrise would come in another hour or so. She knew because she remembered sitting on the roof of her apartment building to watch the dawn arrive, imagining herself on the hill behind the milking barns. The boxy buildings of midtown Manhattan became the big walnut grove where she’d climbed trees with her little brother. The cars trundling along the cramped streets turned into the dairy herd, ambling along as they grazed in the wide pastures.
The rest of her memories of the country seemed vague and distant, as if she’d only dreamed about them a long time ago, or she’d tried not to remember them.
Whoever that girl was, you aren’t her anymore.
Nellie did know one thing: she should have died in The Doll’s Drum. Somehow that night the big demon had kept her alive and then healed her. The bullet wounds hadn’t left a mark on her. It was as if they’d never happened. What she’d been through between being drilled in the speakeasy and falling into the glen still remained in the dark. But she sensed it had been a much longer stretch than her time pretending to be a good-time girl.
She reached for Edane’s pearls as she recalled how she had talked and acted in the vision with the big demon.
Or maybe I kept playing the flapper, even after they took me. How long have I been living as Nellie?
Edane: Immortal Highlander, Clan Mag Raith Book 3 Page 13
