Scandal at the Speakeasy
Autor:in
Lauri Robinson
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Chapter One
As the other passengers climbed off the train with the same jubilance that they’d boarded it with back in Kansas City, and headed toward the train depot building, Mick McCormick walked around the caboose to the baggage car and waited for the porter to collect his bag.
He’d been in small towns up and down the East Coast, but this was a far cry from them. Junction, Missouri, wasn’t just small—his first glance made him think of a fabled old ghost town.
The road was hard-packed dirt and there was hardly a tree in sight, other than a tumbleweed that rolled across the road a block ahead.
Tony had told him that Junction was small, but a good town. A fine place to raise a family.
Mick wasn’t so sure.
“Thanks,” he said, taking his bag with one hand and tipping the porter with the other. “Where is the best hotel?”
Short, with a black toothbrush mustache, the man laughed. “There’s only one.” With a nod, he gestured toward the road. “A block up the street. That red building.”
Mick nodded, taking another glance up the street, where the red building, being a story higher than the others, stood out. “Thanks.”
The train whistle blew. As soon as the porter jumped on board, the locomotive slowly chugged away, heading south and leaving the small train station empty.
So was the street.
Silent, too.
Mick glanced around. There wasn’t a single person in sight. Unless they all had boarded the passenger car again, the other people who’d gotten off the train had disappeared.
Curious, but not so interested that he moved closer, he glanced at the open door of the depot. A small one-story brown brick building, that from what he could tell, was empty.
If he’d been on a case, he’d have investigated where all the people had gone, but he wasn’t on a case. This was a promise. To find Tony Boloney’s daughter and take her back to Rochester, New York.
Carrying his bag, he headed up the road to the hotel.
The entire town, all the buildings, the road, the landscape, looked old and worn-out. Sun-faded and chipped paint covered the buildings. A grocer, a hardware, a clothing store and what looked like it used to be a saloon lined one side of the street. The other side was the post office, a restaurant, with a closed sign in the window, and a pharmacy. The next block was the hotel and another restaurant, which looked to be open. He hoped. He was hungry.
There were a few other buildings across the street from the hotel, a feed store and butcher shop, but he’d yet to see another person. Houses filled the street to the edge of town, which didn’t appear to be too far away. The sun was still out, so it was hard to say if any lights were on, but no one was outside of those houses.
There was a total of two cars. Both parked in front of the hotel.
It appeared as if Junction, Missouri, rolled up and tucked away by seven in the evening. Rochester, New York, wasn’t that way. Life, and crime, went on just as much during the night as it did during the day, spring, summer, fall and winter.
It was spring now, and the April air was warmer here than New York, making him think that he should have taken off his suit coat.
A little overhead bell jingled as he pushed open the door of the hotel, and an older man, wearing a pair of brown-and-green-striped pants pulled so high up on his waist they made him appear to be overly tall and spindly, walked out of a wooden door on the right as Mick was still closing the front door.
“Good evening,” the man greeted.
“Good evening. I’d like a room,” Mick replied.
“Just one?”
Mick scratched the back of his neck at the oddness of the man’s question. “Yes. Just one.”
The man pointed to a book on the high counter, while turning around and taking a key off a square board on the wall full of hooks with keys hanging off them. “Just one night?” he asked.
Mick nodded. It could be two nights, but he wouldn’t know that until tomorrow. “Can you tell me where the school is located?” In a town this size, finding Tony’s daughter would be even easier than he’d imagined.
“You with the state board of education?” the man asked.
“No.” Mick never shared more than people needed to know.
“Oh, well, then.” Smiling, the man pointed toward the front door. “This is Main Street. Go two blocks north to Myrtle Street. Turn west. The school is two blocks up the road, on the north. Can’t miss it. A big brick building. Got a brand-new swing set and slide for the kids to play on beside it.” Frowning, he added, “But it’s closed now. School goes from nine to three.”
Mick nodded at the information and laid down the pen, having signed his name while the man had been speaking. “How much?”
“Four dollars a night.”
The price seemed steep, but everyone needed to make a living and he doubted the hotel was overly busy any day of the week, or year. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. “Do you know if the restaurant next door is open?”
Glancing at the clock on the wall, the man nodded. “For about another fifteen minutes.”
Mick laid four dollars on the counter.
The man handed him the key. “Top of the stairs. Second door on the left.”
Tossing the key in the air, Mick caught it. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
The room was clean and the bed soft. Mick left his bag on the chair and headed to the restaurant next door. It, too, was clean and the waitress said they had roast beef tonight. Mick ordered it, ate it and left before closing time, but didn’t head back to the hotel. He’d been the only customer at the restaurant, but the kitchen had been full of activity.
A man’s instincts were something he either learned to trust, or learned to ignore. Mick had learned to not only trust, but depend on his instincts years ago. This town was odd, and too quiet. The depot was where he’d find the answers, and that’s the direction he went.
He scanned the outside of the brick building and the surroundings while walking closer. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Far off, across a field of brush and tall grass, there was a house and barn. Too far away to make out much more than that. There were a few other houses along the road that continued out of town, and, like on the north end of town, they looked quiet.
He walked to the front of the depot, read the train schedule, four a day, two southbound and two northbound. The door was still open. He entered. There was a ticket booth, but no one manning it. Other than a couple of benches and a back door that led to the outhouses, there wasn’t so much as a fly buzzing around.
He walked behind the teller cage to a door that he was sure would be locked. Every depot had an office.
The door wasn’t locked and it wasn’t a back room. It was a hallway. A short hallway, with doors on both sides. The first one he tried was a depot office, complete with a desk, but without an attendant. He closed the door. The second one opened to a set of stairs leading down into a basement, with a flickering light bulb hanging overhead.
The steps were well worn, with grains of sand on each step. Off the shoes that had walked down them. Or up them. At the bottom of the steps there was a small room with another door. He opened it and found a tunnel, with a line of light bulbs hanging from a single electrical line hooked to the railroad timbers supporting the ceiling.
Railroad timbers reinforced the walls, too, and the floor was as hard packed as the Main Street of town.
The tunnel curved a few times, but all in all, his instincts said it went in the direction of the house and barn he’d seen past the overgrown field. As he walked, he began to pick up faint sounds.
Laughter.
Music.
A speakeasy.
He knew them well.
Rochester, as well as Buffalo, Syracuse, New York City and nearly every other town, was full of speakeasies, and though they were disguised as something else, everyone knew what they were. For the most part, the police ignored them. It was the bootleggers, sneaking booze in from out of the country, and the manufacturers they busted. The mobs. They were the ones that were getting rich while making prohibition deadly. Despite what others thought, the police were concerned about the death rates that had increased during prohibition more than anything else. If anyone was to ask him, the law had been doomed to fail from the moment it had passed.
The tunnel was well constructed and included vent holes overhead every twenty-five yards or so, and ended at a solid door with a small sliding wooden window. The laughter and music were louder. Much louder. Mick now knew where all the people off the train had gone, and why they’d been so boisterous.
He knocked on the door.
The window slid open.
Recalling what he’d heard repeated by some of the crowd on the train, Mick said, “Two bits.”
“Do you have a card?”
For a town this size, this was a pretty sophisticated joint. “Need a new one,” he said.
“Five or ten?”
Mick took out his billfold, pulled out a five-dollar bill and slid it through the slot. “Five.”
The door opened and a guy with dark curly hair who looked like he threw bales of hay, one in each hand, all day long, every day, handed him a slip of thick paper with ten red x’s drawn on it.
Mick took the paper. “Thanks.” Ten drinks for five bucks. Plenty of places did this. Sold cards. One of the x’s would be crossed off each time he ordered a drink. The idea behind it was that the speakeasy wasn’t selling drinks. They merely sold “cover charges” for entering the joint, claiming it was for the entertainment—which at times was nothing more than a pig or chicken in a pen.
“Got a magician tonight,” the husky guy said. “And Rudy’s on the piano.”
Mick nodded as he walked past the guy and pushed open a second door. The place was big, and packed. A wooden bar ran the length of one wall. At the far end there was a piano in one corner with a man pounding on the keys, producing music for people to dance to on the floor near the far wall. Tables filled most of the room, with people gathered around them, talking, laughing and drinking beneath the strings of light bulbs hanging overhead.
Recognizing several from the train, Mick shouldered his way to the bar and handed another big man the ticket he’d purchased.
“How’s life?” the bartender asked. Another good-sized farm boy type of guy with slicked-back blond hair.
“Can’t complain,” Mick replied.
“Beer, hooch or cocktail?” The bartender’s barrel chest was so large, the buttons on his shirt were strained. “Any one of them will make life better.”
All three of the beverages were sure to be homemade, so going with the safest bet, Mick said, “Beer.”
The guy filled a mug from one of the kegs on a shelf behind him, slid the mug across the bar and crossed off one of the x’s on the card before handing it back.
Mick stepped away from the bar and then up against the wall at the end of the bar, giving room for the bartender to assist other customers, never making anyone wait a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
There were two other bartenders. Another big and young guy, who looked like the one he’d paid the five bucks to, was behind the other end of the bar and a young woman with a string of white pearls looped through her brown hair was behind the middle of the long bar.
He tried not to stare, but couldn’t help it. She was pretty, very pretty. But it was more than that. There were shelves of shot glasses behind her that she’d grab by the bases four at a time, fill them while still holding them in her palm and slide all four onto the bar without spilling a drop. She was so quick, so graceful, it almost looked like a magic trick.
A better trick than the guy dressed in a black tux, red shirt, and black and red cape who was walking around, slipping cards out from the cuffs of his shirt sleeve and pretending to pull coins out from behind the ears of those watching him. Not much of a magician, but it didn’t take much because the entertainment wasn’t why people were here.
They were here for the hooch. That’s what the woman was pouring in the handful of shot glasses she slid onto the bar nonstop. She also appeared to be the one running the joint. All questions from customers and the other bartenders were directed to her, and she had the answers. From where things were located to the magician’s name and that the entertainment tomorrow night would be a juggler named Beans who could juggle four bottles. Full ones, which evidently were harder to juggle than empty ones.
Mick had no idea if that was the case or not, and because his curiosity had been solved about where everyone from the train had gone, he took the last swallow of his beer and set his mug on the bar.
“Another one, mate?” the bartender asked.
Mick considered it, because the beer had been good. Not overly bitter like a lot of the joints back home. Prohibition had changed a lot of things, and whether he was an investigator for the police department or not, he appreciated a decent beer now and again. However, none of that had an iota to do with why he was here. He gave the bartender a one-finger wave. “No, thanks.”
