Despite how much I despise these thugs, I need to transform myself into one of them. Like Frain said, I need to embrace my story—become my father’s legacy. Walk inside his underworld, turn it upside down, and destroy it.
Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten the chance. The cell mate that Agent Frain arranged for me to bunk with—my supposed “door” to the Shaw Gang—hasn’t looked at me twice since I was booked into his room, and he sure as hell hasn’t addressed me. Guy’s name is Howard Matthews, Howie, a second--generation Irishman prone to tall tales and grandiose ideas, one of those self-important greaser types who thinks he’d be running the Shaws already if people would just sit up and start paying -attention. He’s uncomfortable to look at, and in an eight-foot-by-eight-foot cell, it’s impossible to look at anything else: matted hair that grows past his ears, wide eyes, a lean, jittery torso that looks like it thrives on sorcerer’s shine but has been denied it for weeks. In short, someone I wouldn’t look at twice, if the Feds weren’t holding me over a barrel to do it.
Day in, day out, I hear Howie at mealtimes, holding court around the small-time Shaw men who have been busted for petty crimes and burglaries, telling different versions of the same stories about his adventures running with his bigwig cousin Win Matthews, some hard-boiled Shaw underboss, from what I can gather. Howie knows who I am, I’m sure of it, as the prison guard who brought me in made a big show of introducing us, I guess hoping that the inherent tension between Richard Danfrey’s son and an up-and-coming Shaw might result in some future entertainment. But Howie didn’t bite.
“You in here for running too?” I finally attempted conversation several nights ago from my bottom bunk, when the darkness and the silence between us grew so heavy, I started to feel like I was getting crushed underneath it.
Just more silence.
“You’re a Shaw boy, right? Smuggling for Boss McEvoy?”
No answer from Howie but breathing.
“How long you in here for, chap—”
“What’s that buzzing sound?”
My heart started hammering—nervously? hopefully?—at the sound of his voice. “Buzzing sound?”
“That right there, a buzzing, like a fly,” he said.
“Sorry, chap, are you—”
“God, there it is again,” he said to himself, apparently. “Sounds tinier than a fly, actually. Pesty, like a flea. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.”
Then it was my turn to be silent.
“Much better,” Howie mock-whispered to himself. “’Cause if that flea starts flitting around again, I’ll have no choice but to swat it.”
That was nearly a week ago, and I haven’t said another word to Howie since. Now it’s back to hard eyes and sideways looks between us, awkward dances around each other for the toilet, a forced, silent fox-trot as we climb past each other into our cots.
The dull fear that’s always festering inside me is starting to grow into genuine panic, gnaw at me from breakfast until bed. I’m more than halfway through my sentence with nothing to show for it: if I can’t get in with Howie by the time I leave, I come out on paper as a small-time magic runner with a record. The Prohibition Unit has officially discharged me since my “arrest,” and Frain’s threats are always echoing in my ears.
There is no safety net in this situation.
So I need to win this Howie over soon.
I’m debating the “how” during lunchtime, the meal a variation of the one from yesterday and the day before that, a plate of potatoes, Broadway-bright carrots, and a dark, unidentifiable meat. So I look around the room, debating, watching, listening. We’ve separated ourselves in the long, windowless mess hall like students in a high school cafeteria: the D Street Outfit and Italian small-timers keep to the front left. There’re the Mexicans and the blacks near the windows, and on the right—the first few tables nearest to the kitchen—the junior Shaws and their Irish hangers-on. Then there’s a wide sea of unprotected men, who bob along like fools tossed overboard who didn’t think to buy a life raft.
This is my territory. I’ve eaten alone every day since I got here.
I run through my options as I sit, stirring my mushy carrots. Sorcering a trick for Howie—a rabbit out of my ass with no context—seems almost juvenile, forced. Like I talked about with Agent Frain when he drove me down to the station a few weeks back, for as moronic as Howie might read on paper, he’s got street smarts. And a guy showing up in his cell, trying to wow him with magic when Boss McEvoy just lost his right-hand sorcerer? Too convenient.
But provoking a fight with him, showing him I’ve got balls, that I’m not afraid of a rumble? That could backfire.