Page 30 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

T he place was a dump, in Richard Dupuis’s professional opinion.

A no-class hayseed dump. Pinball machine, bowling machine, ten-point buck head over the front door.

Smelling of fish grease and stale beer. A half-dozen stuffed largemouth bass turning yellow with age on varnished wooden wall plaques.

Lighted beer signs—Stag, Black Label, Griesedieck Brothers.

Tables and chairs from the last century and hard-ass wooden booths, like the one where he and Hazel sat sipping Presbyterians.

Country music twanged from the jukebox. And the cliental.

Families with yelping kids who pointlessly and endlessly slid the puck back and forth on the darkened shuffleboard machine.

Geezers with their gray-haired old ladies.

A couple sodbusters in bib overalls at the bar.

Dupuis felt like he was trapped in the Grand Ole Opry.

She had dragged him there for the Friday fish fry even though it was nothing special.

And her jabber. Nostalgic crap. Stuff she had told him a dozen times before and couldn’t shut up about.

After a few snorts she always got real talky and couldn’t remember that she said the same thing ten minutes ago.

“…It was the first time we had a chance to talk alone. We’d been at Helen and Raymond’s for a barbecue. Jan offered to drive me home. Well, Helen and I conspired to arrange it. Stopped in here for a nightcap. Place hasn’t changed at all…”

“I bet.”

She stared off glassy-eyed, maybe feeling sentimental about the dead fish on the wall.

Even with all the booze and smokes, she still didn’t look near thirty-five.

Still had it. And a terrific lay—at least when soused enough to pretend she was with the Polack.

Afterward sometimes she’d start crying. Always moping about him .

Despite the Class-A tail, Dupuis was getting sick of it.

Funny how often that happened. You have a few laughs with a broad, but soon she starts showing her true colors, wanting this or that and getting on your nerves. Can never leave well enough alone.

Now the kids moved from the shuffleboard machine to the jukebox by the door, dropped in a nickel, and played “Aba Daba Honeymoon.” Jesus F. Christ. He lit a Pall Mall and sipped his drink.

“Why do you miss him all that much? Just another guy.”

She huffed and took another hit on her pres. “If you’d known him you’d understand. A real gentleman. So romantic. A thinking man who appreciated good books. Kind, considerate, and generous. People respected him.”

“Ha! So he said. But you never did business with him, did you? Bet he never told you how he did business.” Dupuis snickered. “Hardly ‘kind, considerate, and generous.’”

“Says who?”

He dismissed her question with a flick of his hand. “Everybody… A slick operator, that Jan Nowak. Acted like he was still some altar boy, but you couldn’t trust him. Pulled the wool over Jellyroll Hogan’s eyes and even duped me.”

“You told me you met only once.”

“Once was enough.” Dupuis took a deep drag on his cigarette.

“He pitched me what he made out to be a nickel-and-dime deal. Turned out it was the move that made him, and I helped him do it.” He shook his head and crushed out his smoke in a tin ashtray.

“I should have gotten a piece of the action instead of just chump change.”

“What deal was that?”

“You really want to know the truth about Saint Nowak?”

“I know the truth. He was a good man.”

“Well, Mrs. Nowak, good guys don’t go around hiring hit men to whack their boss.”

“That’s a lie. What do you know about it?

” she spat. Though something Jan had once said about Dupuis being involved in Leo Gold’s death floated back to her.

She couldn’t remember exactly what. So much of the past came to her in a haze these days.

She feared it was all drifting away from her.

Then all she’d have left was the present.

Dupuis leaned forward over the drink cradled between his hands on the tabletop and whispered. “I know that in July of 1929 Jan Nowak paid me four hundred dollars to put an end to Leo Gold.”

“Jan paid you to murder a man? Absurd.”

He held up his palm then put a forefinger to his lips, signaling her to lower her voice.

“No, no, no. I never did any rough stuff. I was just the middleman. I knew a guy who knew a guy. I got only a buck and half out of the deal and Nowak got a fortune.”

“Jan could never do that!”

“Worse, he low-balled me. Said it was personal. That the guy was getting handsy with him. Didn’t bother to tell me he was gonna steal a warehouse of Canadian whiskey from the dead man and set himself up in business. This I learned later from Jellyroll’s boys.”

Hazel took a cigarette from her purse and lit it, her hand shaking. She blew out a stream of smoke.

“You’re making it all up.”

Dupuis shrugged. “Then tell me how a teenage kid got the scratch to start a first-class bootlegging operation? To pay suppliers, grease the cops, and build a network what with all the competition around? Just hard work and good business practices? Right. Then when they repealed Prohibition he used those ill-gotten liquor proceeds to expand his loansharking operation.”

“What loansharking operation? He was a banker.”

Dupuis guffawed. “Banker! That’s a good one.

Some bank, charging fifty percent interest each month.

Ha! He was a shylock, pure and simple. Had a gang of tough young Polacks who did his enforcing, slapping people around, breaking bones, chopping off fingers, what have you.

Meanwhile Saint Nowak sat above it all, playing the role of community benefactor.

Dishing out cash to the church, the Polish Falcons, and widows while his punks put the screws to his debtors.

The whole time he’s over here at his lake house acting the country gentleman, hunting and fishing, being the good family man. ”

Hazel gazed down at the sawdust on the floor. An image appeared of Jan holding her close as they danced their first dance, Judy Garland’s voice echoing…

“Why are you trying to hurt me with these lies, Richard? Why are you trying to take him from me? You’re just jealous because you’re not half the man he was.”

Dupuis snorted and lifted his highball. “I’m sure he’d be proud of the way you’re honoring his memory.”

She stiffened. Dupuis smiled. That one hit home.

“Let me tell you one last thing, sister. You never knew the guy. It was all an act. He was feeding you a line.” He shook his head. “You never knew him.”