“We shall organize, we shall organize
We shall organize today
Deep in my heart I do believe
We shall overcome someday.”
Ellis belted out the words to the old spiritual alongside Vanessa, his voice a surprisingly rich counterpoint to her dulcet tones. They were marching on a picket line outside city hall, where many promises regarding segregation had been made but precious few kept. Ellis remembered reading about Native American treaties in school; he thought he had a pretty good idea what the Indians must have felt like every time a new oath was sworn in Washington. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times—I’m gettin’ my gun.
Of course, Vanessa didn’t hold with that viewpoint, and he could see where folks like Dr. King were having a more profound effect on public opinion than the Malcolm Xs of the world had ever had, so he was willing to do it her way. For now.
They’d been at it for only about a half hour and were just starting the fifth and final verse when red-and-blues lit up the street and distorted voices over megaphones started ordering them to disperse.
Vanessa looked over at him.
“You don’t have to stay for this part,” she said. Other people were already ditching their signs and running. Vanessa looked scared but determined. Ellis knew for a fact she’d never been arrested before. He also knew her parents would freak when they got the call to come bail her out, though they’d post the money without question. But her being willing to face their wrath—which terrified her more than the thought of being in police custody—because she believed so strongly in what she was doing just made him admire her that much more. And she was already about as far up on a pedestal as any woman besides Perla could get.
“You stay, I stay,” he said, and the look of gratitude she gave him almost made him feel guilty. He wasn’t afraid of being booked. It wasn’t like the inside of a jail cell was new territory for someone who’d grown up the way he had. Sure, Sammy would be pissed about having to bail him out, especially for something as dumb as protesting, but the old man would do it just the same. And once he knew there was a girl involved, he’d probably congratulate Ellis for having the gumption to go all out to impress her. Any punishment would be forgotten. Hell, he’d probably buy Ellis a drink.
But Vanessa didn’t know any of that. She had no idea about Ellis’s family—about Sammy, or Perla, or Lincoln, or the family business. Ellis was afraid if she did know about it, she wouldn’t want to see him anymore. And while their “seeing” each other thus far had consisted only of a handful of movement-related events, he’d been angling for more, and he thought she was receptive to the idea. He was pretty sure if they got arrested together, that would seal the deal.
Maybe then, after she got to know him better, he could introduce her to Sammy.
Or maybe he’d just wait until Lincoln got back.
Or maybe he’d just keep her away from all of them for as long as he could and hope for the best. He wasn’t used to feeling embarrassed by who he was and what he did, but being around Vanessa made him want to be someone different, someone more . . . worthy of her, he guessed.
Just thinking that ought to make him angry. He was Sammy Robinson’s son, for God’s sake! He was worthy of any woman.
But . . . this was Vanessa Dautrieve. Upper middle-class family, college student at SUNB, father a banker, mother a socialite. She didn’t just run in different circles, she ran in a different world, breathed a more rarified air.
She was too good for a mob boss’s son.
Hell, she was probably too good for anyone’s son. But damned if he wasn’t going to try for her anyway, do whatever it took to land her. He ignored the little voice that asked what would happen if what it took was making a choice between her or Sammy and Lincoln.
It hadn’t come to that. Not yet, anyway. Not today.
Today all it was going to take was getting roughed up, cuffed, and booked. Fastoche.
“You’re a real hero, you know that?” Vanessa said, her dark eyes wide with admiration. “A knight in shining armor.” And then she leaned over and kissed him with those lush, full lips, and Ellis prayed she wouldn’t ask him to do anything in the next few seconds, because there would be nothing on the face of the Earth he could deny her.
And then there was a uniform pulling them roughly apart, and all Ellis could see was the stark fear on Vanessa’s face as she looked to him for guidance, all her earlier confidence forgotten as her arms were twisted behind her back and metal bracelets were snapped onto her wrists by a burly white officer whose face was half mustache.
“Ellis!”
“Ellis?” the cop who had a hold of his collar repeated, spinning him around to get a better look at his face. “Ellis Robinson? Shit.” Ellis recognized him as one of the good ole boys in the department who wasn’t too good to take black money to look the other way.
The cop looked over at his partner.
“Let her go.”
“The hell I will!”
The first cop shrugged, slipping his own cuffs back into his belt.
“Your funeral, man. I ain’t arresting Sammy Robinson’s boy, or his girlfriend. I need trouble with the Black Mob like I need a hole in the head. You got a death wish, you go right on ahead. I ain’t stoppin’ ya.”
“Fuck.”
“Exactly.”
The mustachioed cop uncuffed Vanessa and shoved her none too gently toward Ellis, who caught her in his arms and pulled her close.
“You two get out of here before I change my mind or someone who doesn’t know—or care—who your daddy is gets hold of you.” When neither of them moved, he frowned. “Now!”
They didn’t need any further prompting. They ran.
• • •
They’d taken Lincoln’s Drifter to the demonstration, so when they got back to it, they just got in and drove until it got dark. Ellis wasn’t even sure where they were headed; he just followed traffic, stopping at red lights, going when they turned green, waiting for Vanessa to say something. Anything.
Finally, she did.
Ellis did as he was told. She gave him a few more directions and soon he was in a part of New Bordeaux he wasn’t particularly familiar with. Southdowns—Vanessa’s part.
They came to a small wooded area nestled in between big manor houses with sprawling yards and long driveways. There was a playground with swings, a slide, and a seesaw, where flower-lined walkways abounded. A sign warned that the starlit park was closed after 9:00 p.m., which would explain why theirs was the only vehicle in the lot.
Vanessa got out of the car and Ellis had no choice but to follow; he certainly wasn’t leaving her here alone, at night, even if one of these big houses turned out to be hers, which would probably be the case. He’d see her to her front door like the gentleman he desperately wanted her to believe he was. Whether she wanted him to or not.
She led him over to the swings and sat down in one. He took a seat in another.
“So, you’re part of the . . . mob?”
She didn’t look at him as she said it, instead staring off into the darkness of the humid New Bordeaux night. He didn’t want to be having this conversation. Ever, if he could have helped it, but especially not now. It was too soon. She barely knew him.
“My family is, yeah,” he hedged. He tried to laugh it off. “Some people run diners and dry cleaners; we run nightclubs and numbers.”
She didn’t even crack a smile.
“And the cops are afraid of you?”
Ellis chewed on his lip. She didn’t sound disgusted or condemning, just curious. Maybe being a mobster wasn’t the black mark against him he’d imagined it would be. He decided to answer her questions as honestly as he could, without giving away any family secrets.
“Some are, I suppose—they know what we do to people who get in our way. Some we pay off to look the other direction. Some get a harsher treatment.”
She nodded at that, still not looking at him.
“And you—what do you do to people who get in your way?”
He had to tread carefully here, he knew. But he couldn’t just lie to her.
“People don’t tend to get in my way, because of who I am.”
“And who is that, exactly? Just who is Ellis Robinson, besides a smart, handsome young man interested in the civil rights movement?”
His heart may have skipped a beat or two when he heard the word “handsome,” but he tried to focus on her question.
“You heard the cop. I’m Sammy Robinson’s son, and Sammy’s the head of the Black Mob in New Bordeaux. People mess with me, they know they’re messing with Sammy, and most of them don’t want to do that. So mostly I don’t get messed with.”
And that was true as far as it went. It didn’t include people like Lincoln and Sammy himself, of course.
“So why is the son of a mob boss—a man who lives and breathes violence—hanging around with a woman who preaches nonviolence as a way of life? We’re like day and night.”
Ellis surprised himself by having an answer.
“Because Sammy’s way of life can only get me so far. It’ll never get me the respect of the people in these big houses.” He stopped, took a deep breath, rushed on. “It’ll never get me someone like you.”
She looked up at that, and her eyes were pools of diamond in the starlight.
“Don’t be too sure about that,” she said, and leaned over to kiss him for the second time that day. Only this time there was no one to pull them apart, and the kiss soon turned into something more. Vanessa led him in among the trees, and there was some fumbling with jeans and skirt and underwear. Then she was drawing him down to the leaf-carpeted ground, into her embrace, into her.
I would do anything for her, Ellis thought, right before all thought was blown away on a wave of pleasure and passion.
“Vanessa,” he whispered into her hair, and then neither one of them was able—or wanted—to say anything coherent again for a very long time.