Nils Gilbertson is a writer and attorney. He has lived in California, Washington, DC, and now resides in Texas with his wife, son, and German shorthaired pointer. Gilbertson’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place, Mystery Magazine, Guilty Crime Story Magazine, Cowboy Jamboree, and others. His work has also appeared in a variety of anthologies, including Prohibition Peepers, Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, Gone: An Anthology of Crime Stories, and More Groovy Gumshoes. His story “Washed Up” was named a Distinguished Story in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. You can find him online at nilsgilbertson.com.
The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind.
—H. L. Mencken
The strike of a match lit the alleyway, casting a long, pistol-wielding shadow. Pat Boyle paused before raising it to the cigarette on his lips. The flame danced and the shadow turned from darkness on brick to dimly lit flesh and steel, then back again. Boyle drew from the cigarette and tossed the match to the gutter.
“You mind stepping into the light?”
The trembling pistol came first, then the young man wielding it. Boyle waited until he could see the whites of his eyes, ignoring the chatter of the men at the dock behind him as they unloaded cases from the Potomac.
“Can I help you, son?”
“Don’t son me, mister.”
“We’re all someone’s son.” Boyle took a long inhale and looked back to the dock.
The young man thrust the pistol toward him. “Why don’t you take your eyes off the booze for a change.”
Boyle’s stare drifted back. “Either shoot or tell me why you’re pointing that thing at me.”
The young man glanced down his arm to the pistol as though he’d forgotten he was holding it. “My father’s name is—was—Willard Reynolds. He used to frequent the speakeasy—Sixteenth Street spot—that you work at.”
Boyle nodded. “I’m sorry, son.”
“Don’t call me—” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as though frustrated by the dim alley light. “Sorry for what?”
“Sorry you sprung from the seed of Willard Reynolds.”
Before the young man had the chance to process the indignity, another man emerged from the shadows. Boyle asked, “How long we got?”
“’Bout ten minutes and we’ll be good to go.”
“We’re square with our friends?”
“All paid up.”
“All right. Get out of here.”
“But—”
“I said get out of here.”
The figure retreated to the shadows and made its way back to the dock.
“What’s your name?” Boyle asked, turning back to the man with the gun.
He swallowed and his forearm quivered, tired, unaccustomed to the pistol. “Willard Jr.”
“Willard Jr.,” Boyle said, shaking his head. “Give me one guess.”
“Guess at what?”
“Guess at what reduced you to this. See, I knew your old man. Used to be a decent fella. Drank now and then but held a steady job. Paid lip service to the Anti-Saloon League but lamented their stubbornness in private. But once they got their way—once the political tides shifted—he didn’t speak out. No, that takes courage. Instead, he started frequenting our place. Why? The continental clubs reserved for the congressmen and their cronies stopped allowing nobodies like him. The casual imbibing turned heavier.” Boyle snuffed out the cigarette and lit another. “I had a front-row seat from there. It’s funny you coming here, Willard Jr. Your old man died with a hell of an unpaid tab.” He took a step toward the trembling arm. “But I couldn’t bear calling in that debt. I see the debt in your eyes—the debt of being the seed of that man, dead from choking on his own sick in a gutter.”
“But I—but you—”
“What, it’s my fault? Your father never drank like that before Prohibition, correct?”
He paused. “It’s not right what you and Johnny Dunn are doing at that place. It’s nothing but a refuge for skanks and sinners.”
Boyle chuckled. “You want to talk about sin? Let’s talk about the sons of bitches down the street who voted this madness into law but got bootleggers hand-delivering Canadian booze to the Capitol for briefcases of cash. Let’s talk about the clubs for the politicians and industry men that stocked up on a decade’s worth of hooch before the law kicked in. They take kickbacks and send people like me to jail on a whim, but we’re the sinners.” Boyle continued toward the retreating young man. “Meanwhile, they turn fellas like your old man from ordinary, flawed men to devils. I’m not the devil, son. The devil and his cronies live at the big domed building on First Street. If you want to kill someone over your father’s death you better—”
Before finishing the sentence, Boyle leaped forward, grabbed the barrel of the pistol, and slammed the grip into the bridge of Willard Jr.’s nose. He crumpled and Boyle watched blood paint the road crimson black. He flicked his cigarette and said to the figures he felt behind him, “Bring him back to the club.”
*
Pat Boyle followed the truck through downtown Washington, DC, reflecting on his mortality. Never once did he think the boy would shoot before he got to him, but the throb in his chest told him he didn’t know a damn thing about the boy. Hell, he didn’t know anything at all. He didn’t know about right versus wrong or good versus evil or moral versus immoral—same as the boy—same as everyone. But at least he knew he didn’t know, and at least he knew he didn’t need to. The best men, he thought, didn’t command their fellow man from a giant domed building. The best men disregarded the commands of those who sought power and control and instead basked in the plenitude of life and the abundance that this world offered, in all its forms. He felt his heart in his chest and smiled.
The Moonlight Club sat on the third floor of a narrow building squeezed between two luxury hotels a few blocks north of the White House. Upon arrival, patrons entered on the desolate ground floor level and would be stopped by a fella dressed as a security guard, who informed them it was private property, and they ought to leave. If they shared the password—any sentence incorporating the phrase lovely and useless things—the guard would direct them to a concealed staircase.
The truck pulled into the lot at the back of the building, surrounded by tall fences. Boyle followed it in. He parked and watched as fellas started unloading the cases. Two men dragged Willard Jr. from the truck to the back entrance.
The club was brimming with drunken regulars. Men sat at the bar trading slurred ramblings and downing cocktails concocted by Leroy, the bartender. Thick smoke hung like fog above the tables before the small stage, where a man crooned along with a jazz ensemble. The Moonlight Club wasn’t the sort of spot you’d find the congressmen and other bigwigs toasting to their reckless use of government power, nor was it one of the hundreds of gin joints that dotted the back alleys where, upon entrance, there was a serious risk of taking a knife between the ribs or going blind from bad hooch. The clientele was made up of regular folks. Everyone from schoolteachers to shopkeepers to lawyers and everything in between. It was also the drinking spot of the local authorities. And when it came to enforcing the Volstead Act and its accompanying laws, if the clubs paid off the cops and DC government, there was little concern the feds would bother interfering. Even the mayor stopped by the Moonlight Club for a rollicking good time now and again. Not to mention, Johnny Dunn, the fella who ran the place, made for damn sure every cop on every corner in a two-mile radius of the joint was getting a generous monthly cut.
Boyle found his usual spot at the corner of the bar and flagged down Leroy.
“Hey, Leroy. I’ll take a rye, neat.”
“I’ll make it a double for ya, sir. Considering the night you’ve had.” He pulled a glass and popped the cork from a bottle and poured generously.
“Word gets around that fast?”
“You know how it is ’round here, Mr. Boyle. Word travels faster than influenza.”
“Only question is if it travels accurately.” Boyle took a long gulp of his drink and Leroy filled it back up. The bartender was a middle-aged black man who, before Prohibition, had worked as a porter at The Stinson, a hotel that Johnny Dunn had frequented on business trips to Richmond and that Boyle had once visited—at Dunn’s recommendation—while tracking a congressional aide’s runaway wife. Dunn and Leroy had gotten close enough for Leroy to share some cocktail recipes. When Prohibition hit and Dunn got into bootlegging, he invited Leroy up to DC as head bartender at the Moonlight Club.
Leroy leaned forward on the mahogany bar. “I hear it was the boy of Willard Reynolds—the fella who died in the gutter after drinking here. That true?”
Before Boyle could answer, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Mick, one of the fellas who ran errands for Johnny. “Mr. Dunn wants to see you in his office.”
*
Johnny Dunn was taking laps around his desk, mumbling numbers under his breath.
“Hi, Johnny,” Boyle said. “I—”
But the short, balding man raised a stubby finger in his direction and continued with his routine. Boyle stood and waited.
When he finished a few minutes later, Johnny Dunn nodded toward the solitary leather chair sitting atop a spotless hardwood floor at the center of the office. Once Boyle sat down, Johnny Dunn said, “Do you know what makes me successful in this business?”
Boyle shrugged. “By the time we were fifteen, you might as well have been selling earplugs to the deaf, Johnny. You got a knack for it.”
His boss shook his head. “Not even close. It’s because I’m careful. Because I imagine everything that could go wrong with the operation before it happens, and I plan for it. But I don’t react. No. I see where our competitors or government busybodies will strike next, and I act. I act in a way that maximizes profit and thus, by necessity, minimizes violence.” He paused. “Do you know me to be a violent man, Boyle?”
“C’mon, Johnny,” he said. “We both know the answer to that. Nine times out of ten, violence is bad for business, that’s what you say. Anyway, can we skip the spiel tonight? I got a date with a bottle that I hope is strong enough to spin me to sleep.”
“Postpone it. We got this Willard Jr. issue to deal with. What concerns me is that a sniveling little shit like him can get that close to my number two man, sticking a pistol in his face while he’s overseeing a supply pickup.”
“Number two, huh?” Boyle still carried his PI ticket, but since the beginning of Prohibition, his client list had dwindled to one. As long as the Moonlight Club was in business, he didn’t need surveillance jobs for suspicious spouses to pay the bills.
Johnny Dunn ignored the quip, instead licking his finger and rubbing out a smudge at the corner of his desk. “Irv’s in there now with Willard Jr. I don’t like it, but sometimes what’s hard is necessary, like pulling teeth.”
“You talking literally or figuratively? ’Sides, shouldn’t I be the one working on the kid after he stuck that piece in my face?”
Johnny Dunn shook his head. “Irv has a taste for that sort of thing. I want you to find out who’s behind this. In my experience, beating it out of them doesn’t work as well as you expect.”
“What’s there to figure out?” Boyle asked. “Willard Jr. and his old man were close. The boy went nuts when his pa drank himself dead in our joint. He said it himself.”
Johnny Dunn sighed. “One thing I’ve learned in this business is that it’s rarely that simple. There are powerful interests out there who would like to see this place reduced to rubble with us inside. I know you have some contacts who can help you find out if this was petty revenge or something worse. I see something bigger in the works.” Johnny Dunn closed his eyes and inhaled through his thick, red nose. “I can feel it.”
Before Boyle could respond, Irv Redding stumbled through the office door. Panting, he looked at Johnny Dunn, then Boyle, then back to the boss. “You better come see this, Johnny.”
“This ought to be good,” Johnny Dunn said.
“It’s Willard Jr., sir. He’s dead.”
*
Swollen, purple veins bulged in Willard Jr.’s pallid neck like worms burrowed beneath the skin. The whites of his eyes were now red, drained of life, and his cheeks were puffy and crisscrossed with a maze of burst capillaries. His hands were tied behind his back and his head tilted backward, Adam’s apple prodding cold flesh, threatening to pierce through.
“The hell happened?” Johnny Dunn asked.
“I ran out for a second to get some supplies,” said Irv. “I come back and find the son of a bitch dead as his old man.”
“And looking like his old man, too,” Boyle said, examining the body. “I remember Willard Sr. had the same discoloration of the skin, swollen veins, red eyes.”
“That’s bull,” Irv said. “The old man died choking on his vomit. He was a drunk, it happens. Willard Jr. hasn’t had a drop of booze since he’s been here.” He paused. “My best guess is Willard Jr. had something on him to take in case things went sideways. He knew what we’d try to get out of him, and he knew he’d squeal.”
“Suicide is your theory?” Boyle asked.
“Yeah. I was the last one with him and it’s the only possibility that makes sense.”
Boyle leaned toward the young corpse. “Making sense can be a wonderful thing,” he said. He turned his gaze to Johnny, then to Irv. “But, sometimes, aren’t things more interesting when nothing makes sense at all?”
A few silent moments later, Mick joined the three men in the windowless room deep in the belly of the building. “Christ,” he said, examining the body. “Looks same as those dead folks at the joint over in Dupont where they had a batch of booze cut with wood alcohol.”
“The Rooster Room poisonings?” Boyle asked. “You sure this looks the same?”
Mick nodded. “Sure. I was meeting a gal there and watched half the place stumble out confused, veins bulging, struggling to breathe.”
Boyle turned to Johnny. “That stuff’s no joke. Any reason to shut down tonight?”
Johnny Dunn closed his eyes and recited numbers in his head with subtle, noiseless movements of his lips. It was as though he were calculating every variable in all of history that had led to that single moment. Then he said, “No reason to think someone spoiled our hooch. We know our sources and there’s no indication that Willard Jr. had a drink here. Irv, clean up this mess. Boyle, find out what the hell’s going on.”
*
The night was dwindling and, despite the free-flowing drinks and raucous jazz ensemble, the clock on the wall suggested that soon the place would empty and all that would be left were those who ached at the notion of being alone.
Boyle sat at the corner of the bar sipping rye whiskey. “You plan to perch yourself on that stool all night, Mr. Boyle?” Leroy asked with a grin.
“What, I’m not good company?”
“Company got nothin’ to do with it. I get to rest all day before I’m back at it tomorrow night. My guess is Johnny’s got you running ’round town solving problems.”
“Bartenders know all, don’t they?”
He topped off Boyle’s drink and said, “Ain’t a damn secret in this joint that folks can keep from me for more than an hour.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Boyle lit a cigarette and waited for the distinguished lines of the bartender’s face to crease from a smile to a portrait of regret.
“It’s about the Willard fella and his boy, ain’t it?”
Boyle nodded.
Leroy glanced over each shoulder. “I remember the night Willard Sr. died. I was the one serving him. Sure, he came in with whiskey on his breath already, but he only had a few drinks here. For a fella like him, last thing I expected to hear the next morning was that he’d died from too much booze. I’d seen that man drunker than a sailor every Friday and Saturday for half a year.” He lowered his head. “But then I think, ain’t that only a way for me to make amends for the role I played in his death? I don’t know, Mr. Boyle. Way things are these days, it’s like any decision we make can lead to a man’s downfall. How do you carry on in a world like that?”
Boyle took a drink. “What do you think has existed longer, Leroy, guilt or alcohol?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I’m no sir. Which one?”
The bartender pondered the question before answering. “Booze has been around awful long, but I imagine guilt has been there since the start of man. Bible times. It’s inherent in us.”
“Wrong,” Boyle said. The flickering candlelight set his eyes aflame. “The intentional fermentation of alcohol for purposes of ingestion dates back to the Stone Age. Tens of thousands of years ago. The invention of guilt—by weak men who sought to order society as they saw fit but lacked the strength to do it by force—occurred much later.”
Silence filled the club as the jazz ensemble finished their final set, the wail of the trumpet evaporating into the smoky, windowless room. “I’m afraid I don’t follow,” said Leroy.
“As you reflect on the choices you make, I want to remind you which plays a more fundamental role in our civilization. When guilt wins, they win. When alcohol wins—when liberty wins—we win.” He lifted his whiskey glass. “I can feel it, Leroy. I can feel life in all its wonder when this elixir burns my belly. It isn’t sin; it’s life itself.”
At that, both men turned and saw a woman with a narrow nose, thin lips, and bobbed dark hair fill the doorway. The pin affixed to her dress signified membership in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, but he had met her years earlier when she hired him to tail her wayward husband.
Boyle waved her over.
She took the seat and said, “Leroy, darling, be a doll and fetch me a Corpse Reviver.”
“Yes, Miss Rebecca,” he said, already prepping the glass.
“Thanks for coming,” Boyle said without looking up.
“Oh, it’s not like I have anything better to do at this hour.”
They sat in silence until Leroy served the drink. She had a sip and relented to a smile that she couldn’t have fought off with every ounce of will in her.
“What’s the latest with your teetotaling friends?” asked Boyle.
“That’s it? Right to business?”
“Business is all you get at four in the morning.”
She stuck out her lower lip, imitating a pout. “But we agreed, didn’t we, that this was the safest time for me to stop by? So that my teetotaling friends, as you call them, don’t catch wind of our meetings?” Her drink was half gone, and she signaled with a dimpled smile for Leroy to start fixing another. “They’re not wrong on everything you know,” she continued. “If their husbands weren’t such brutes coming home drunk and doing Lord knows what to them every Saturday night, they wouldn’t have it out for you and your spirits.”
“Plenty of blame to go around for the ills of the world,” Boyle said.
“I must say, my life has improved since my husband died.”
“I’m sure he’s in a better place.”
“Hell?” She shrugged. “It might give this desolate rock a run for its money.”
Leroy lifted the rye bottle to Boyle, and he shook his head and pushed the empty glass forward, as though betraying an old friend. “I’m tired, Rebecca. I spent part of my evening with a pistol in my face and I’m trying to figure out why. What do you got for me?”
“There’s no question that the Anti-Saloon League is hiring undercover agents to get involved with some of the saloons and speakeasies. It’s their thinking that the feds aren’t enforcing anything so it’s their holy duty to act by any means necessary. I’m not privy to the details nor have I heard anything specific about your establishment.”
“That connected to the Rooster Room poisoning?”
“Can’t say for certain but I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”
“What about Willard Reynolds?” Boyle asked.
“The dead one?”
“I mean his son, Willard Jr.”
Rebecca started on her second drink and slid a generous bill across the bar toward Leroy. “I’ve observed him with some of the others, part of the groups of young men who want to join the ranks. He seems to be quite involved.”
“With anything in particular?”
She shrugged. “I can look into it. Why? Would you like me to speak with him?”
“Sure,” Boyle said. He stood and adjusted his hat and nodded to Leroy. “You can check in with your husband while you’re at it.”
*
As he walked home, Boyle watched the orange glow of dawn rise above the Tidal Basin and saturate the waning night sky. The majestic monuments reminded him of man’s obsession with legacy, but the apathetic manner with which night traded shifts with day assured him that no stone structure could memorialize the fleeting nature of existence. We were meant to disappear, he thought. Only once we accepted and embraced that fundamental truth could we truly live.
When he returned to his cramped apartment, he fried an egg and drank a warm glass of milk and slept for a few hours. He dreamed vigorously. As though his subconscious was alarmed by the listless manner with which he carried himself by day and sought to shake him from his waking slumber by presenting its vilest concoctions of the mind. That night, his subconscious shunned the strictures of reality and Willard Jr.’s bullet pierced Boyle’s brow. At once, he was a boy again, his mother at the Sunday night dinner table trying to wipe the wound from his forehead, insisting he was making a fool of himself showing his face to their church friends like that. Boyle tried to sit still like a good boy, but he couldn’t help but squirm as his mother’s finger excavated the shards of skull and rubbery brain matter beneath.
He woke to the midmorning sun and scratched his forehead and, after the customary internal quarrel, rose to face the day.
*
The only person in the bar that morning was Gordie, Mick’s eighteen-year-old cousin whom Johnny paid two bucks a day to do chores. Boyle found the young man, built like a lineman and already balding, emptying cases of liquor behind the bar.
“Hey, Gordie.”
“Mr. Boyle,” he said with a wayward smile.
Boyle pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit a match. “You were around last night, yeah?”
“Sure was.”
“You help out with the Willard boy?”
“Dragged his ass upstairs and tied him up.”
“How’d he seem to you?”
“How do you figure?”
“Drunk? Acting funny?”
Gordie shook his head. “Sort of dazed, but sober.” He paused. “Irv was acting funny about it.”
“How so?”
Gordie scanned the room before responding. “Made sure he was in there alone with him. I stood outside and waited. Didn’t hear much. Then Irv came out and said no one in besides for him.”
“Then what?” Boyle asked.
“He came back about twenty minutes later. Went in and came out white as a sheet. Said Willard Jr. was dead.”
Boyle nodded. “He seemed surprised?”
Gordie shrugged. “Far as I could tell.”
Boyle smoked his cigarette and Gordie wiped his sweat-dampened brow and grabbed a soda pop. Boyle closed his eyes and felt the hot smoke in his throat and keyed in on the unique creaks, like fingerprints, signaling the descent down the stairs from the offices above. He took one last drag—resisting the allure of the clinking bottles—before opening his eyes to find Mick staring at him.
“Thank God you’re here, Boyle,” he said. “Johnny’s losing his shit. You better get up there.”
Before following, Boyle turned back to the bar. “Hey Gordie, you ever seen a snake shed its skin?”
“Say what?”
“It’s a hell of a thing. They leave the dead part behind but come out just the same.”
*
Irv was already there. He stood in the corner and watched Johnny Dunn, on his hands and knees, scrub the crevices of his desk with a toothbrush.
“Shoes,” he hollered as Boyle opened the door. “Take off the damn shoes.”
Boyle slid them off and approached the chair before the desk. “What’s the problem, Johnny?” he asked. “Besides for dust buildup.”
Moments passed with no response but for vigorous brushing and Johnny’s quickening breaths. When he emerged, he was beet red and sweating. “Got the message this morning—there’s a blown still out at our source near Leesburg.”
Boyle shrugged. “Pain in the ass, but we’ve got other sources.”
Johnny shook his head. “That’s just the start. An hour later, word comes through that a truck expected in this afternoon had an axle snap and the whole shipment’s busted. We don’t even have enough supply to get us through the night.”
“Hell of a coincidence,” Irv offered from the corner.
Boyle turned to him. “Mark Twain was born and died in the years Halley’s comet appeared seventy-five years apart.”
“Shut up, Boyle,” Johnny said. “There’s no question the Anti-Saloon League is behind this. Word is out that the mayor’s stopping by tonight—the perfect time to target us. And you know Congressman Buckner, one of our few allies on the Hill? He was an old fraternity man with Willard Reynolds. I already got a call from him saying we need to stop bringing attention to the joint—and that if he finds out there’s any funny business behind Willard’s death, we’re dealing with the teetotalers alone.” He paused to catch his breath. “You learn anything last night?”
Boyle still had his eye on Irv. “Nothing. Those pious types are a crafty bunch. Lotta hours of the day with unsullied minds. No surprise they come up with a clever idea or two.”
“I can handle the supply problem, boss,” Irv said.
Johnny glared at him. “Yeah? How’s that?”
“You know Geary, the fella in Baltimore who we get a shipment from every few weeks?”
“Yeah.”
“He keeps a stash on hand and uses it in situations like these to strengthen connections. Jacks up the price for short notice but nothing crazy.”
“How do you know this?” Johnny asked. “And why haven’t I heard it before?”
Irv shrugged. “Never had this issue before.”
Johnny grumbled as though half-satisfied with the answer.
“It’s never smart to pay up for a last-minute batch,” Boyle said. “You know what those bootleggers will do to the stuff to make some extra bucks.”
“He’s trustworthy,” Irv said. “Besides, we already buy from him.”
Both men turned to face their boss. After a heavy breath, Johnny said, “Irv, set it up. We can’t afford to go dry this weekend.”
“It’ll be here,” Irv said. He headed for the door.
Once he was gone, Johnny turned to Boyle. “You got something to say, smart guy?”
Boyle lit a cigarette and shrugged. “Can’t be right without risking being wrong.”
*
A note waited for Boyle at the bar. “You see who left this?” he asked Gordie.
“Some kid,” he said. “Said it was for your eyes only.”
Boyle cracked the seal. It read: Prescott’s at noon. You’re expected. RB.
The thick heat made the midday walk to Logan Circle a pilgrimage. As he walked, sweat dampening his linen suit, Boyle considered that his livelihood had turned him into a man of the night. A creature who emerged only to poison and be poisoned in the wee hours under cover of darkness. The sun’s glare an enemy, he yearned for the comfort of the shadows.
Prescott’s was a speakeasy housed underneath a pharmacy that served a high-end clientele. Inside, Rebecca sat at a lonesome table drinking champagne and nibbling on crab cakes.
Boyle joined her and the barman greeted him with a whiskey. “Anything to eat?” he asked.
Boyle shook his head. “Hope I’m not picking up the bill,” he said as Rebecca slurped an oyster with as much grace as possible.
She tilted her head and cleared her throat, and, in her soft features, Boyle recognized her shameful delight in knowing something he didn’t. “I’ve caught wind of a plan tonight at your spot. I take it you’ve had issues with your regular supplier?”
Boyle took some drink.
“Of course, you have,” she said. “I know Johnny’s careful, but the replacement booze will be adulterated. Same MO as the Rooster Room. You have to shut down tonight.”
Boyle chuckled.
“Is this funny to you?”
“They say in the midst of suffering is when men prove their worth.”
She leaned forward. “What are you worth, Mr. Boyle? Far as I can tell, nothing is worth much to you.”
“I have an acute fascination with lovely and useless things.”
“Well fascinate yourself with this—there’s a plot to target the poisonings to particular patrons at your joint tonight.”
He pondered for a moment. “How could they target the poisoning without help from the bartender?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Men are creatures of habit—they drink what they drink. A marking perhaps? Otherwise, it seems it would require direction.”
“Men drink what they drink,” Boyle repeated. He downed the last of the whiskey and rose. “Thank you, Rebecca.”
“I’ll hear from you tomorrow?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
*
Boyle returned to the Moonlight Club at seven that evening—an hour before it opened. As expected, he found the barroom empty but for Johnny and Irv at a table, Mick and Gordie unloading the new shipment, and Leroy tending bar.
“All whiskey and gin?” Boyle asked Irv.
“You bet.”
“Well done,” he said. “Plenty to get us through the weekend.”
“My pleasure.”
Boyle selected a couple of new bottles and took them to the bar. “Shall we see if it’s any good? Leroy, fix us a round. What’ll you have, Irv? Johnny?”
“I’ll pass,” said Irv.
“Nonsense,” said Johnny Dunn. “Boyle’s right, you earned it. Let’s have a round.”
Irv dabbed the sweat in the valleys on his forehead with his handkerchief. “All right. Gin martini.”
They watched in silence as Leroy fixed the drink, the only sound the clink of ice against glassware. “You fellas joining me?” Irv asked as Leroy served it up.
“Sure,” said Johnny. “But only if you break out the special reserve you were bragging about. You know, the good stuff for the mayor?”
Irv chewed his lip like it was steak fat, forehead scrunched as though he was pondering every decision he’d ever made.
“Special reserve?” Boyle asked.
“Uh-huh.”
Boyle returned to the cases and went through the inventory. He noticed that several of the whiskey bottles had a small diamond-shaped marking on the neck.
“Ones with the diamond?” Boyle asked.
Irv’s face was still. In the background, Boyle saw that Leroy’s wasn’t.
“Can I see that?” the bartender asked.
Boyle brought it over and Leroy examined the bottle like a precious artifact. His worn face reflected a keen familiarity with evil, but a simultaneous exasperation with its ubiquity.
“The mark,” he said, eyes on Irv. “It’s the same as the one on the bottle for Willard Reynolds Sr. the night he died.” Leroy’s gaze shifted to Boyle. “He said the same thing then—that it was a special reserve bottle for old man Reynolds.”
“You watch your mouth, boy,” Irv spat, rising from the table. “You watch your mouth spreading nonsense like that.”
“Sit down, Irv,” Johnny belted. “Now.”
Irv shot one more look at Leroy and complied. He took a breath. “Look, Johnny, I don’t know anything about whatever’s going on here. Leroy’s lying through his crooked teeth, and I can’t say why.” He turned to Boyle. “Unless you put him up to it.”
“Tell me,” Boyle asked, “why is it that the truth is often so hideous?”
Irv didn’t respond.
“Because the truth reflects reality and, in reality, people do hideous things. And they do the most hideous things in the name of good.” He picked up the bottle and pointed to the small diamond. “Does this mean anything to you, Irv?”
“Not a thing.”
Boyle retrieved a glass, uncorked the bottle, and poured two fingers of the golden liquor. “Care for a taste?”
Irv shook his head. “I can’t stand whiskey. The damn stuff makes me sick.”
Boyle swirled the liquor in the tumbler, eyeing it with wonder. “I’m sorry, Johnny,” he said. “We better shut things down tonight.”
“Why’s that?”
“Irv’s with the Anti-Saloon League. He’s a member of their undercover army trying to bring joints down from within.”
Irv’s mouth fell open but, by then, Mick and Gordie hovered behind his chair.
“You can thank Leroy’s keen eye for confirming it,” Boyle continued. “See, the mark signifies bottles poisoned with wood alcohol. Irv’s first victim was Willard Sr. He instructed Leroy to give him the so-called special reserve—a targeted killing. Irv knew that Congressman Buckner might go sour on us if his old college buddy croaked here. But that wasn’t the only reason he did it. Willard Jr. was already involved with the Anti-Saloon adolescent army, and it was a way to turn an eager young man into a devoted fanatic. A mad dog to sic on their enemies. That way, when Willard Jr. came for me, it would look like vengeance—a crime of passion—not a choreographed political killing.”
“But Willard Jr. botched the job,” Johnny Dunn said.
“He sure did, poor kid. And after we dragged him back here, Irv knew he wouldn’t stand up to our questioning. So, he slipped him the same medicine his old man got so he wouldn’t spill.”
“This is all horseshit,” Irv said, hunched in his chair, voice shaking.
Boyle ignored him. “Next step wasn’t as original: blowing up stills and jacking trucks. See, Irv needed a way to substitute the shipment with one he had control over. Can you imagine the shit storm if—on top of the Congressman’s buddy dying—the mayor did? Or a few of DC’s finest? We’d be finished. We’d crumble and they’d move on to the next target in their holy war, God knows how many bodies in their wake.”
At that, Irv’s face contorted to a smirk which turned into a jubilant howl. “That’s all you got, is it? No proof at all? Only wild accusations from a freak like Boyle?” He turned to Johnny Dunn. “Johnny, you can’t be buying this. How long have we known each other? You wouldn’t do me in without a shred of evidence, would you?”
Johnny eyed the bottle with the mark before turning to Boyle. “How do you know all this?”
“Tips from friends in convenient places.” Boyle had lots of friends in convenient places, all relationships he’d cultivated during the years he’d gumshoed for anyone willing to pony up a retainer. “I’d be happy to bring them in to corroborate. Some of them are right here—Leroy, Gordie.” Johnny glanced at each, and they gave their boss a solemn nod.
Irv took a long inhale, as though unsure of how many he had left. “If this is all true, Boyle, you know who my friends are. The most powerful men in the world down the street. If you kill me, they’ll come for you.”
Boyle lifted the tumbler and swirled the whiskey in his palm. “Who said anything about killing?” He presented the glass to Irv. “All I ask is that you take a drink.”
*Writing fiction set in another time period can be tricky. It is difficult to capture the essence of a bygone era and to write a story that is more than an imitation. When esteemed editor Michael Bracken invited me to contribute to Prohibition Peepers, an anthology of Prohibition-era private eye stories, I wanted to avoid these pitfalls. After all, what do I know about life and times in the 1920s?
Times change, I thought, but people don’t. So, I started with a character—a reflective yet ruthless PI who believes that the fight against Prohibition is a fight for the human spirit. I then dropped this peculiar PI into our nation’s capital, where factions are all too ready to sin in the name of virtue; to clash in the name of peace. From there, the story fell into place.
I highly recommend the Prohibition Peepers anthology, edited by Bracken and published by Down & Out Books. It explores a fascinating era of our history that is fertile ground for crime fiction. While most of my stories are set in the present, I enjoyed visiting the past for this one.