“You asked,” Evie said, staring out the window again.
“Aw, Sheba. I didn’t mean anything by that. Look, I know I’m no egghead and I’m no saint. I can’t heal like Memphis or play the piano like Henry. And I sure don’t look like Freddy the Giant,” he said, exposing his own soft wound. “But I got my own kind of smarts, from the streets, and when I go after something, well, just try’n shake me off. I’m an odd fella, but I know I’m an odd fella. What I can’t figure out is why you gotta make yourself crackers trying to be somebody you can’t ever be instead of just letting yourself be the one and only Evie O’Neill.”
Because I’m not enough, she thought. That was the terrible echo shouting up at her: Fraud, fraud, fraud. She got drunk and talked too much and danced on tables. She had a temper and a sharp tongue, and she often blurted out things she instantly regretted. Worst of all, she suspected that was who she truly was—not so much a bright young thing as a messy young thing. There were a hundred fears Evie could list. She imagined palming every one of them into a big, ugly rock and watching that rock sink to the bottom of the Sound.
“Anyway. You can worry about new things, like being arrested by the Coast Guard, because we’re here.” Sam rolled to a stop behind an old shed. The car’s headlamps cast an eerie glow on a sardine row of cars parked along the curve of the beach. “Loyal customers,” he said.
They stumbled toward the shore, each trying to get there first. A narrow slipper of a motorboat was stashed up on the beach. “A little help?” Sam asked, and then he and Evie were pushing the boat toward the water. “By the way,” he grunted, “what’s that thing on your head?”
“It’s called a tam, if you must know, and it came all the way from Scotland. It’s very fashionable.”
“Does the poor Scottish shepherd know you took his hat?” Sam said, easing the craft into the water.
“You should talk. You dress like Trotsky. So where is this mystery ship?” There was nothing in the bay that Evie could see.
“The Kill Devil? About a mile or so out that way, hidden in that cove over there,” Sam said, pointing to a curved finger of high land jutting into the water on the other side of the Sound. “They’re risking it for sure. There’s a twelve-mile limit. Any boat caught inside that limit can be picked off by the Coast Guard—or pirates. I’m guessing the Kill Devil’s got some secret storage inside her to take that risk.”
“Are you saying we could be arrested?”
Sam shrugged. “Or shot.”
Sam helped Evie into the boat. It wobbled precariously as he hopped on board and took a seat himself.
“If this kills me, I’ll never forgive you,” Evie groused.
Sam leaned over with a pair of binoculars. “The list of things you’ll never forgive me for is long, Sheba. Just keep your peepers peeled for the Coast Guard. Ow!”
“What?”
Sam rubbed his left eye. “Your funny hat just got me in the peeper.”
“Well, you insulted it,” Evie said, raising the binoculars and looking out at the open water for signs of trouble. “The Scots are not a forgiving people. Neither are their hats.”
Sam leaned over the stern and looped the string around the outboard motor, pulling until it sputtered into noisy motion. Evie shivered as Sam steered them across the calm water, watching the darkened houses of Long Island growing smaller. From where she sat, they seemed content, tucked into the cove like sleeping children. She wanted to ask Sam if he ever felt frightened about the danger they’d face if Will and Miss Walker were right about the coming storm. She wanted to tell him how she still had awful nightmares about James. But it didn’t seem like the sort of conversation to have while shouting over the hammering of a motorboat.
When they’d put enough sea behind them, Sam rounded the cove, and Evie saw the Kill Devil. It wasn’t a schooner, low and fast like most rum runners. The Kill Devil was a yacht, easily more than one hundred feet long, and there was a party taking place on board. Two smaller boats were speeding away, their bellies presumably filled with crates of booze smuggled in from Canada. Sam cut the motor as they pulled up alongside the ship. Two crewmen peered down from the deck. They did not look friendly to Evie. Sam stood and waved his arms, rocking the boat as he called out, “Ahoy! Permission to board? Eloise sent me,” Sam said, using the password he’d been given. “Said I should talk to Captain Moony himself.”
A rope ladder tumbled down and thumped against the boat’s flank.
Evie eyed the swaying ladder. “Every time I go somewhere with you, Sam, I’m sure it’ll be the end of me. And my shoes,” she sighed as she climbed.
On deck, a few gangsters and their molls laughed it up. A balding man played a banjo while two flappers in beaded dresses and furs, stockings rolled down to show off rouged knees, danced the Charleston, stopping to swig from unmarked brown bottles—the good stuff that hadn’t been cut with water and cheap grain liquor yet. As she and Sam passed by, Evie raised her hands in the air like a holy roller. “Beware the dangers of demon rum! That way lies eeeevillll!” she thundered in her best Sarah Snow impression, making Sam laugh full out, and just like that, her mood lifted, and she was glad she’d come.
“Say, you folks don’t know where a fella could find the lavatory, do you?” a drunken passenger asked.
“Sure. It’s this way.” Sam stuck out his arm and narrowed his eyes, concentrating. “Don’t see me.”
The man went slack. Sam reached into his pocket and took out a chunk of cash.
“Sam!” Evie said, looking over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“We might need extra money for information.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah? Say, when did you develop a conscience?”
“About the time I started reading people’s secrets for a living,” Evie said, but she was laughing. “And I hate having a conscience. Very inconvenient.”
Sam unfolded the man’s money, lifted a twenty, and put the rest back in the man’s pocket. “Happy now, Sheba?”
Evie pursed her lips and looked toward the ship’s ceiling. “That depends. Are you sore about it, Sam?”
“Yes.”
She looped her arm through his. “Then I’m happy.”