Page 14 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

Just past noon and already sweltering. He stood on the platform by the back door, white straw boater shielding his face from the sun, seersucker sport coat folded over his arm.

Humid air blew through the opened windows providing some relief.

Yet the Sunday atmosphere always hung cleaner and clearer.

No factory smoke. No one going to work, no trucks making deliveries. No stores open.

A day of rest, the Sabbath, when most everyone just stayed put.

The local economy was roaring, the city growing.

Some people making fortunes. He passed the twenty-story Statler Hotel as a well-dressed woman with shapely legs and silk stockings rose from the passenger seat of a yellow Packard Roadster at the curb, a bellhop holding open the car door.

She glanced up at Jan as he sauntered past. He touched the brim of his boater and smiled.

She smiled back. Now that’s a woman. The sort of people who live here and not in dark cellars. Maybe someday…

At Broadway he cut over a block to Lucas Street, which soon dipped downhill toward the wharf and river.

Though just blocks from the elegant Statler, the riverfront was worlds away aesthetically—crumbling century-old warehouses and vacant tenements along with dingy whorehouses and speakeasies that catered to boatmen and bargemen.

The air smelled of the muddy river, raw sewage, East St. Louis refineries, and coal dust.

In cold months the air there hung dark and smoky even at midday thanks to the soft coal burned to run factories, heat homes and businesses, and move riverboats.

Someday—if he ever had the chance—he’d get as far away from the squalor of the wharf (where he often toiled at Leo Gold’s warehouse) as Lady Luck would carry him.

Though sometimes you had to make your own luck.

He looked up and to his right as a streetcar crossed from Illinois atop the Eads Bridge.

On the bridge’s lower deck a steam locomotive rambled east over the Mississippi, taking boxcars of shoes, garments, furs, electrical parts, paper, chemicals, meats, and more to market.

It was a good time to be a retailer. Particularly when your popular consumable product-line could not legally be sold by department stores, grocery stores, restaurants, or bottle shops.

He found the address he was looking for just a block from the Mississippi, where another freight train lumbered north on a trestle that paralleled the river.

He knocked at a warehouse door and waited.

A gleaming black Chevrolet sedan with an Illinois license plate sat at the curb on the steep cobbled street.

After a minute the door slid open. A tall man twenty-five or thirty years old with wavy black hair and trimmed mustache, wearing a starched striped shirt and green silk tie with gold stickpin, squinted into the sunshine, studying Jan.

Heavy-jawed and broad shouldered, he reeked of cologne.

Likely fashioned himself a ladies’ man. He motioned Jan inside with a head tilt and closed the door behind him. They reached out and shook hands.

“Jan Nowak.”

“Richard Dupuis… Beer?”

“That would hit the spot.”

He led Jan to the back of the vast, high-ceiled room, dimly lit by green-shaded electric lamps hanging from the ceiling.

The warehouse smelled of wood—wooden ceiling beams, wooden crates stacked along the walls and lined in rows on the gray wooden floor.

Behind a wall of crates sat a makeshift wooden bar.

“Have a seat.”

Jan lowered himself onto a barstool as Dupuis moved behind the bar and pulled out two sweating brown bottles from a tin basin. He pried them open. The two men clinked the bottles together.

“You’re younger than I expected. Buster says your boss Leo Gold is okay. Good to do business with.”

“He’s a good businessman.”

“So, what’s your problem?”

Jan swallowed. “Leo Gold.”

Dupuis laughed. “Well, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your beef with him?”

Jan shrugged with one shoulder. “Nothing really. Not yet. I think he wants to get funny with me.”

Dupuis studied Jan then finally nodded. “Okay. I understand. What’s it worth to you?”

“Two-fifty.”

“Let’s say five hundred.”

“For five minutes work? Some guys don’t make that much in five months. This will be easy. He sits out on his stoop every day after lunch taking the fresh air. Such as it is in North St. Louis.”

“You’re not paying for my time, junior, but for my expertise, risk, and discretion.”

Jan drank from his tepid beer, set it on the bar, and pursed his lips. “Okay. Three-twenty-five.”

“Four. Up front.”

Jan pulled a face, tilted his head from side to side as though considering whether he could afford it.

He sighed and shrugged, defeated. From the six hundred dollars he had spread throughout his pockets that morning he collected forty sawbucks and handed them across to Dupuis, pleased to take the remainder back to his room in Leo Gold’s cellar.

The men again shook hands. That’s how you did business, with a handshake. Particularly in this kind of select business, where nothing gets written down and welching or double-crossing could cost you your reputation and likely lots more.

Jan climbed back up Lucas Street with the sun beating down on his straw boater and the stench of horse dung rising from the hot cobblestones.

Yes, he had prevaricated a bit with Dupuis and was not as forthcoming about his situation as he could have been.

That’s the way you do business, keeping certain cards close to your vest.

His only outright lie was when he said that Leo Gold was a good businessman. What kind of businessman would allow himself to lose everything?