Prohibition (16 page)

All feeling rushed back to the rest of his body. Her stomach felt smooth against his. Her breasts felt warm and soft as they swayed back and forth against his chest. They matched the rhythm of her hips. Something hot spilled over him and he felt himself losing control.

Alice scooped her hands behind his head and slipped her tongue in his mouth. His pelvis matched the rhythm of hers. She bounced harder. She moaned louder. Her tongue moved faster and faster until...

Splendid release.

Shiver after shiver went through her body into his. Quinn kept moving his pelvis, bringing it up to meet hers. Her hands slipped off his shoulders, onto the bed and his hands moved up to the back of her head, pulling her mouth closer to his. The rhythm continued. They drank each other’s kiss. Her breath tasted like stale cigarettes and cheap gin. So did his. Neither one cared.

She shuddered deeply and broke off the kiss. Another spasm racked her body. She giggled. She lowered herself on him. Another spasm. Another giggle. He let his hands slide down her back, now wet with perspiration. She shot upright with another shake. She put her hands on his ribs to balance herself. He watched her loll her head around. She bit her lower lip and brushed a wisp of black hair from her eye, and tucked it behind her ear.

Her makeup from the previous night had faded. What was left was smeared all over her face. Her pale body glistened. She made no move to get off him. She sat back on his thighs. He was still inside her.

She smiled. “God, it took me a long time to get you going,” Alice whispered breathlessly, “but when you did...” She raked his chest lightly with her nails. Quinn was sure he was still drunk and couldn’t remember much. His first Cutty had been followed by six or seven others. Lots of cigarettes. No food. Same old story.

“How did I get here?” His own voice sounded strange to him.

Alice slowly rubbed her hands up his flat stomach. She grazed it with her nails on their way down. “I don’t know how you got here, but I’m glad you came,” she giggled.

Alice still sat on top of him with her head lolling around in a slow circle. Normally, she could’ve stayed there all day if she’d wanted to for all he cared, but his hangover was starting to kick in. He felt nauseous.

“You getting off me anytime soon?” he asked her, still groggy.

Alice shook her head, her eyes still closed, and began to slowly rock back and forth on him. “Not a chance. I’m having way too much fun and you know this is the best way for me to fight a hangover. Besides,” she said with a throaty laugh as she whispered in his ear, “I think somebody’s ready for number two.”

She slowly French kissed the side of his neck and proved herself right. Nausea would just have to wait.

A
FTER NUMBER
two, Alice slid off him and curled up next to him like a well fed house cat. She hadn’t pulled a sheet over herself and the thought of doing it for her never crossed Quinn’s mind.

His bare feet on the freezing floor brought him closer to sobriety as he trudged to the bathroom to take a shower. He let the warm water beat down on his head, neck and shoulders for a while. It didn’t kill his headache, but it kept it from getting worse.

Quinn remembered Wallace being there and he wasn’t happy with himself. Getting drunk with a prime suspect in the house wasn’t the brightest thing he’d ever done. He hoped there wasn’t anything else worth remembering.

He quickly toweled himself off and dressed in his usual white shirt and black suit. He started heading downstairs when he heard Alice say:

“Going somewhere, lover?” “Gotta go to work, kid.”

She laughed and rolled onto her back, still naked among the white sheets. “What work? You smack people around all day and clean up Doyle’s messes.” Her long hand patted the pillow next to her. Her lips slid into a sly grin. “Come back to bed and I’ll put you to work. Work that’ll do us both some good.”

As tempting as it was, Quinn kept his hand on the doorknob. “Archie needs me.”

“Bullshit.” Her grin turned into a sneer. “Why do you keep sticking your neck out for that bum anyhow? All he does is use you.”

Quinn didn’t like anyone running Archie down. Not even Alice. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me. With us, if there’s ever going to an us.” “There is no ‘us’,” Quinn countered before he could stop himself.

“That so?” Alice slowly stretched out her white body on the bed. “Then what do you call what happened here last night.”

Quinn was hungover and didn’t like being questioned. “This was a nice drunken evening with...”

Alice’s cackle cut him off. “For a brave guy, you sure are scared of the truth. This is me you’re talking to here and I know you a hell of a lot better than that. I saw you go through women pretty quick – two, maybe three weeks before you move on.” That damned cocky smile of her returned.

“You and me have been doing this little dance at least four nights a week for three months, Terry. And we weren’t drunk every time.”

Three months. Quinn hadn’t thought about how long they’d been doing whatever it was they’d been doing. Too long for a fling. But he didn’t have time for this now. He had to know how Doyle was doing. He needed to know about Wallace and if Halloran was tailing him.

Mostly he just wanted to get out of the room.

“I’ve got to go to work, okay? Fatty’s been shot and Archie...”

“...will get along just fine. There’s always going to be something he needs you to handle. If it isn’t Fatty getting shot, it’s the ward bosses not doing what they’re told, or the unions trying to organize one of his warehouses or some cops who forgot they’re on the take or some other goddamned thing that ends up with you getting hurt and Archie getting rich.”

She stopped yelling and tried a smile. “But it doesn’t have to be that way forever, baby.”

Quinn wanted to remind her he was making good money, too. Better than other guys in his position. Better than he would’ve if he’d stayed in boxing, even if he’d won the belt.

But he knew Alice wouldn’t understand any of that and he didn’t feel like trying to explain it. “He saved my life, Alice. I owe him.”

“You’ve worked for the man for over five years. Any debt you think you owe him was paid a while ago. It’s time to think about what you want now. For you. For us.”

Quinn didn’t want to argue. He grabbed the door knob again. “I’ve got to go to work.”

He opened the door.

“I love you.” She looked up at him from the bed. Tears flowing from her eyes. Not the same kind of tears the rum brought. Real tears. “I love you and I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I love you and I don’t want to see you killed because of your loyalty to some two-bit party boss who did you a favor once. I know you love him like a father, but you love me, too. I’m not asking you to say it. I can tell you do. And that’s supposed to mean something, too.”

The word rang in Quinn’s ears. Love. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had used that word on him, at least someone that mattered.

Most of the women he’d known had used it to keep him from slipping away. None of them had said it the way Alice had. She’d touched him in a strange place. A place he’d always known was there, but never paid attention to before because he’d never had a reason. But he had a reason now.

And she was lying naked on the bed before him.

His loyalty to Doyle stood between them. “It means something, Alice,” Quinn continued out the door. “It just can’t mean something today.”

He closed the door quietly behind him. He told himself he didn’t hear Alice’s gentle sobbing through the door.

H
E FOUND
them sitting around one of the large dining room tables playing cards. Archie Doyle, Frank Sanders, Tommy Delaney, Fred Deavers and Hanz the Pit Boss. All in the same clothes from the night before. Each outfit was in a various state of disrepair.

Tommy’s tie was gone, his collar unbuttoned. Deavers’ dinner jacket was off. His sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Sanders was the only one who looked exactly as he had the night before. Rumpled brown fedora pushed back on his head. Tie pulled down. Collar opened. Cigarette dangling from his mouth. Doyle’s dinner coat was on the back of his chair. His bow tie lay on top of his chips. Quinn wondered if he’d bet it.

Doyle puffed on one of his black Cubans and smiled wide at Quinn over his cards. “There he is, boys. Terry Quinn, ex-heavyweight contender and current world champion mattress polo player. A Dutch master of bed artistry if I’ve ever heard one.”

They all cheered and pounded the table. Quinn gave the finger all around.

He was still smarting from his sparring session with Alice. He grabbed a cup and poured himself some coffee from the side table.

Tommy said to Archie: “Look at the poor lad, boss. We’re making him blush.”

Doyle shifted one of the cards in his hand. “Considerin’ most of the blood in his body has been residin’ further south for the last several hours, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

More table pounding and catcalls. Doyle’s tall stack of chips spilled over. He cursed them as riotous bastards.

Quinn took refuge in a booth with his mug of coffee. His mouth was too dry to taste anything, but at least the caffeine would help his headache. He watched Tommy grimace at his lousy hand. He folded, grabbed a bottle of scotch and slid into the both opposite Quinn. Tommy was a veteran of Quinn’s hangovers.

“Give it to me straight,” Quinn asked. “What did I do?”

“Talked with a couple of the customers,” the bartender told him, “drank and made your way up stairs a little before closing time. Unless anyone had seen how much you were drinking, they would’ve thought you were just tired. No harm done at all, except to yourself.”

He poured some of the scotch into Quinn’s coffee. “Here. A little hair of the dog that bit you will do you good.”

Quinn swallowed the spiked coffee and felt a little better. At least he hadn’t made a complete ass of himself. He called over to Hanz, who’d just called Doyle’s bet. “What about the guy in the white suit?” He made sure he didn’t mention Wallace’s name.

Hanz said, “Played roulette and a little black jack the whole night. That’s all. Played it careful, betting odds or evens on roulette and occasionally betting on the groups, but never too much. On blackjack, he always hit on twelve, but never on fifteen and when he got two face cards, never split or doubled down. A very careful boy.”

Quinn wasn’t surprised. A guy like Wallace wouldn’t blow a wad in a strange house until he got the feel of the joint first. “How much did he walk out of here with?”

“He lost maybe about one hundred total by the end of the night,” Hanz said. “But on his way out, he did ask me something strange before he left.”

“What?”

“He asked about the billiards room downstairs,” Hanz said. “He wanted to get on the list because he heard New York poolrooms were dangerous places.”

Doyle looked at Quinn from across the card table. “Sarcastic son of a bitch, ain’t he, kid? Who is he?”

“Nobody,” Quinn said. He hoped Archie couldn’t hear the lie in his voice. “Just some punk who sassed me on his way in. Tried to bring his bodyguard inside and kicked when I told him no. Frankie can tell you all about it.”

“Maybe later,” Doyle said as he went back to his cards. “By the way, looks like we’re famous again. Show him the paper, Tommy.”

“Take a look at page seven,” Sanders said. “Bixby creep’s getting ballsy in his old age.”

Tommy handed Quinn the morning addition of The New York Journal. Growing bread lines at soup kitchens had once again replaced Fatty Corcoran’s shooting as front page news. Quinn flipped the broad sheet over to page seven to “Bixby’s Box”. An outdated picture accompanied Bixby’s by-line for the past decade, showing a man with a rakish smile and a thin mustache.

Quinn’s red eyes narrowed when he saw the headline of “Bixby’s Box”

CRIME KING HOLDS COURT

Doyle Defiant Despite Shooting Spree

Hold the phone, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. New Yorker. The Bixby Box bestows its best to bad boy Archie Doyle for standing firm in the face of danger. Not even a bullet in a komrade’s keyster could keep the Big Mick from his daily duties as Grand Poobah of Patronage and Payola in this City of Towers. Word has it that the Arch-bishop himself held court last night at the lovely Longford Lounge with a powerful and elegant elected official who’s known for his nocturnal needs and diminutive stature. So be-ware, street scoundrels and be- have. The ol’ grapevine is humming with juice and all of it comes up champagne on ice for the Big Mick and his cronies.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed more when he found a second item just below it:

JUICE BELLY JAB-OREE

Movers and shakers weren’t the only show at the Double L last night. Fight fans saw an eyeful at the grand bar when the lush-ious songbird Alice Mulgrew went one round with ex-heavyweight pretender Terry Quinn. The ol’ juice belly professed love between lefts but Quinn’s fancy footwork kept him out of harms’ way. Maybe Sweet Alice should take boxing lessons because to this reporter’s ear, her singing lessons ain’t cutting it.