Meinhof hummed under the noise of the highway as he drove, hand limp over the stick shift ball as it jolted from side to side. Jake held to the bottom of his seat as they bounced along because the latch of his door was loose. If the truck turned too sharply, like when they pulled into Red Oak, his door flew open and he had to reach out into the rushing wind to slam it.
The truck, borrowed from a service station, smelled like grease and chewing tobacco. Potato chips crumbled on the rubber mat under their feet. The wood planks that made up the bed rattled behind the cab, the chains too that wrapped around the tops of posts, where the men they’d picked up at a Red Oak saloon held on. Others sat out of the wind, on the boards, but had nothing to hold. Everything shifted and lurched, going fast down the middle of a rutted gravel highway. The headlight beams were the only light in front of them, as far as the wends let them see. Behind them and to the sides there was nothing, an echo of light in the dust clouds they left behind. Jake wanted to sleep, to talk, to do something other than wait and see if a deer, a person crossing, would pop into their light in the road.
“Do you think it’s worth it, Joe? Driving all night, for what? A dozen votes?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know.” Jake saw pairs of headlights up ahead, the bigger highway that led along the river to Omaha. “It’s a lot of work.”
“You’re young. You don’t know any better than to feel that way.”
“I was thinking of quitting. Did you know that, Joe?”
“Sure I know. You got that girl. We all know. You spent money that wasn’t yours to keep her happy. Evie got you all worked up, and you did something you shouldn’t of. That’s all.”
“I guess that’s right.”
“What were you thinking when Tom took you down to the tracks in his car? Did you think he was going to do bad things to you?”
“Was I shaking?”
“Yeah, you were.”
“That’s why I got to go. I don’t like that. I got better things I could be doing.”
“No, you don’t.” Meinhof sped up to blast through a crossing. “You don’t have to quit. Just square things. Make it up to the Old Man. Talk to Billy. He’d have some idea of what you got to do to make it right.”
“If you say so.”
Jake was talking too much. He knew this. But Joe Meinhof was his friend. And what did it matter anyway? They’d all seen him with the suitcase.
“You can be such a kid about things, Jake. Honest. I don’t know what Tom sees in you. Sometimes I really don’t. There’s more to what we do than you think there is.”
“Sure. I know that.”
“You bullshitter. Those reformers want to tear apart our home. They’ll take everything we love away from us. Clandish. The saloons. Our jobs. What will we do if they win? You ever think of that?”
“You want my spot. That’s all. I know what you’re about.”
“You don’t know. How long have I been telling you these things? And you never cared enough to listen. Why am I surprised you fucked up?”
A man from the flatbed watched them argue through the back window. His face pressed the glass, lit up white. The man stared at Jake. He was shivering.
It was quiet on the River Ward that morning. Any player who seriously disagreed with machine politics was arrested in the days prior on suspicion of vagrancy or some other trumped-up nonsense that took forty-eight hours to clear no matter how evident his innocence should be. The melee at the Santa Philomena was the perfect excuse to root out men Tom Dennison wanted in jail on the seventh of May. All stops were pulled on the Ward. Voters on the payroll of the Pendergast machine in Kansas City would arrive throughout the morning to cast their ballots, along with others recruited from towns in Iowa. Red Oak, Glenwood, Griswold, Walnut. Every barroom on the Ward was rented and stocked with liquor. Bootleggers who owed their survival to Tom Dennison saw to these parties. And it wasn’t just bootleggers and machine men. Every favor granted over the past three years was cashed in during polling hours. If a family received coal over the winter, if a grocery bill or bar tab was covered, if someone was granted leniency from a judge, then a car would appear outside their home on Election Day to shuttle them to a poll.
When Jake returned from Iowa, Mecklenburg’s was already half-full. The barroom would be packed by 6 a.m. Trucks lined the curb, with dozens of voters crammed on hay-strewn flatbeds. Streetcars from the train stations were full of Pendergast’s men. Joe Meinhof and Ingo Kleinhardt lined them up inside and meted out booze. Suitcase still in hand, Jake stayed in the back until it was time to instruct the voters, when Ingo escorted them to two basement rooms separated by a narrow doorway. The basement had been an afterthought, dug roughly and bricked in. As a former tunneler himself, Jake recognized the work. A light hung from a rafter. Its wire snaked in from a hole drilled in the floor above.
“Listen up!” Meinhof slammed the door. Each election man held the standard issue: a baseball bat with the handle cut short, the barrel splintered and dented rusty from past elections.
“The polls open soon and you got to know what to do. You’re going to vote today. Here’s who for.” Ingo passed out cards that had the names of the Square Seven printed on them, and—as these were voters from Kansas City—he gave each a paper slip that had a name and address, so they would know on whose behalf to vote. “We can’t help once you’re in there. That’s against the rules. You got to sign the registry—”
“We know what to do,” one of the voters cut in, a squatty Swede with a flat scar scored into his chin. “Cut the shit. We’ve done this before.”
“Shut it!” Meinhof poked his bat under the Swede’s chin. “Do as you’re told or the big Hun will take you outside.” He pointed to Jake. “You understand, yeah? He was a storm trooper before we got him. Don’t think he’d hesitate to stick you if you don’t do like we say.”
Only a few of them had the guts to look Jake in the eyes, if they wanted to see what a real murderer looked like. Jake’s blond hair trimmed up the side of his skull, his eyes grayish, bloodshot, scanning the room for threats. Jake’s mastiff hands in fists at his side, this son of the Prussian flag. In their sheepishness, the way one of them shook—a young one, a teenager—Jake could see these men believed what Meinhof said. He didn’t challenge the conceit. He too was struck dumb, standing back, mysteriously holding a suitcase in one of his giant fists.
Meinhof smiled his nervous smile, his grimace-grin. The bat was raised to see if any voter had the backbone to say more.
“It’s close enough to time. Start the roll.”