Gunn paces around the glass quarts of eternal shine, the 180 bottles that have already been caged by blood and sealed, plus the twenty that will still need to go to Joan to be finished this afternoon, and then brought back here to await Colletto.
He looks up and nods. “Excellent. As always, you’ve exceeded my expectations.” He moves toward the door. “Everyone should get freshened up, be down to greet Colletto’s men before eight.” Eight o’clock. So that’s when the deal takes place. I need to call this in to Agent Frain. “I’m not sure what Colletto expects, if he’ll want another celebratory shine toast, or a magic performance, so be ready for anything.” Gunn looks back to me. “Alex, I know you’ve been carting yourself back and forth each night, running yourself ragged between here and home. Win, drive him home to get changed, will you?”
But I need this sliver of a window to get to a pay phone, to call the Prohibition Unit— “I’m okay with walking, sir. I know you both have a lot on your plate.”
“Relax, I’ll drive you.” Win stubs his cigarette into an ashtray on the end table.
“Thanks.” I force a smile. “I’d appreciate it. It’s gotten awful cold.”
I follow Win numbly down the hall, to the stairs and out the bar front. Adrenaline has me flying. I need to shake Win somehow, get through to Frain, give him the details so he can get set to move in.
Should I pretend I’m sick? There’s a pharmacy on P Street with a telephone—
“Where you headed?” someone says from across the lot.
I turn to see one of Gunn’s minions, Dawson, strolling toward us.
“Running Danfrey home,” Win says. “Want to come along?”
A gangster ride-along would be somewhat comical if I wasn’t so pressed for time.
Dawson smiles. “Sure, what the hell, if you lend me a smoke.”
Win opens the front door to his car and nods to the back of his old Model T. “You don’t mind riding in the back, do you, Danfrey?”
“Not at all.”
I settle into the beige leather, the seat squeaking in protest, as Dawson and Win climb into their seats in front of me.
We rumble down M Street a few blocks and then stop at a traffic light. Before the light changes, two cars roll up next to ours simultaneously, one on each side. That’s my first warning bell, since M Street is only four lanes wide, two lanes in each direction, which means the car on our right has had to use the shoulder to stop beside us. But I don’t really process this. I’m still inside my own head, figuring out timing: how to get changed, sneak out to call Frain, whether my plan with Joan is bulletproof.
Then the doors to the cars bookending us open.
One man hops out from the car on the shoulder, and one hops out from the black Model T on our left. They each run to our car, open the respective backseat doors, and slide in next to me, surrounding me. Caging me, in seconds.
I look up. The guy on my right side is Howie Matthews. He gives me a knowing smile. “Heya, pal.”
My stomach starts to lurch as the two cars on either side of us screech away through the red light. When the light turns green, Win steps on the gas, and we go flying, the roar of the engine shattering the silence. The mixed scents of aftershave suffocate me, the steel of my captors’ holstered guns starts poking at my hips.
I don’t recognize the guy on my left, but he’s a young thug, maybe my age, average build but with a face you don’t want to mess with. He catches me looking at him, flashes me a crooked grin, and simply says, “Sorry, Charlie.”
“Win?” My voice is high, so high and strangled that I don’t recognize it on its way out. The heat inside my stomach is starting to reach a fever pitch, and I can barely hear my own words over my heart. We make a right on 14th Street instead of a left. “You just passed the turn, we missed my turn—”
“Change of plans, Danfrey,” Win says. “Turns out Colletto had a problem with the son of his old spells distributor turning his back on him and attempting to go his own way. Turns out your hothead moves in jail didn’t sit so well with D Street.”
I can’t process, I’m not sure what’s happening, my mind is scrambling, my thoughts stumbling to keep up. Am I . . . am I part of the deal? This whole time, has Colletto been harboring a grudge against me, same as I have against him?
“But then again, we were all tricking each other, weren’t we, Alex?” Win flashes me a smile through his rearview mirror. “When we got ahold of McEvoy on that boat, he sure had some interesting tales to tell in his final hour.”
They went to the voodoo party. They already got to McEvoy.
McEvoy must have confessed that he used me as a mole.
Time’s up, Alex.