Page 34 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

F ew customers for a Saturday night—A.J.

counted twenty-five, including himself, as he took a seat at The Blue Note’s bar.

It was the holidays. People should be celebrating.

Maybe they were saving it for Christmas.

The small bandstand stood dark. Two older couples danced to Ray Charles’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You” floating from a jukebox against the wall to his right. He asked the bald bartender for a beer.

“You of age, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

He pulled his wallet from his jacket and handed across his military I.D.

The bartender took his time studying it, glancing up twice to A.J. before sliding it back to him on the chrome-topped bar. He pulled a bottle from a cooler behind him and a short beer glass from the back bar and set them before him. “Name’s Karl if you need anything else.”

“Thanks, Karl.”

Elvis Presley followed Ray Charles: “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” One of the couples left the dance floor.

Richard Dupuis, who had been chatting with Karl at the far end of the bar, approached.

“You remember me don’t you, A.J.?”

“I remember you.”

Dupuis extended his hand. “Wouldn’t have known you. You really filled out.”

A.J. took his hand, gold pinky ring and all.

He tried not to think of Dupuis’s hands vis-à-vis his mother—ancient history.

Probably still in his fifties, he looked older.

Years sitting inside dark, smoky venues drinking hard liquor and sucking on coffin nails had seemingly taken their toll.

Hair and mustache half gray, bags under his eyes, sallow skin as if he had liver problems. A paunch grew over his belt.

Dupuis wore a plaid Kuppenheimer sport coat that had lost its shape, a white shirt whose cuffs were frayed, and a stained silk tie. As always, generous with the cologne.

The Blue Note also looked threadbare. A.J.

remembered it from a decade earlier when he came with Uncle Raymond one afternoon after duck hunting at Horseshoe Lake.

It had seemed magical with its starry ceiling and chrome bar, its padded blue banquettes and barstools.

Now it needed paint and polish. Business seemed not so hot. Times change. People sometimes don’t.

“Been a while,” said Dupuis. “I still think about your mother. Such a terrible accident. She was good people.”

A.J. doubted Dupuis’s ability to recognize or respect goodness. “Maybe too good.”

Dupuis nodded and shrugged as if he got A.J.’s meaning: Too good for the likes of you.

“Looks like you’re doing okay. Saw your picture in the Press-Record , home on leave. So I sent the note.”

“‘Mutually beneficial business?’”

Dupuis lifted a cordovan wingtip onto the chrome foot rail, lit a Marlboro, and blew smoke from his nostrils.

“So you’re twenty-one now. Still own the house on the lake? Nice place. I knew the mug who sold it to your father. Another bootlegger. In fact, I know a lot about those days. Things you might be interested in. Things about your father.”

“Can’t imagine what you might know that I’d care about.”

Another shrug. “Something that happened thirty years ago during Prohibition. A tale of ill-gotten gains and mayhem that the Feds would still be interested in even if you’re not.”

Dupuis had a sneer on the right side of his face that A.J. remembered well. As a kid he wanted to wipe it off with his fists.

“I’ll bite.”

“A little pogrom in north St. Louis. A teenage Polish bootlegger knocking off a Jew and stealing a hundred gees worth of illegal Canadian whiskey he had stashed.”

Now it was A.J.’s turn to shrug. “Everyone involved is dead and gone.”

“Not everyone. Such as yours truly, though as an innocent bystander. And the money isn’t, is it, junior?”

“Seems a stretch.”

“Not if the right people are willing to talk. Like the trigger man, who’s doing life in Stateville for another hit.”

“What’s his incentive? Not like he needs money.”

“Maybe he wants to clear a guilty conscience. Maybe wants to cut a deal for more privileges. And maybe because he owes me for helping take care of his wife and kids over the years.”

“Your specialty, Dupuis, comforting abandoned women and widows?”

The sneer again. “Be a wise guy if you want. See what it costs you. Now that you’ve turned twenty-one, son, and seen all that’s at stake. Maybe time to take out a little insurance to safeguard it.”

A.J. lifted his chin. “Insurance is it? And the premium?”

“A mere ten gees. Chump change for the likes of you.”

Surreal. A.J. felt like he was in a dream. No, a nightmare. One that had been lying dormant inside him for a decade. He’d gone to The Blue Note out of curiosity, wondering if he still longed to slit Dupuis’s throat, as he had when he was eleven. Now he had his answer.

“Lot of money for a fairy tale.”

“I’ll give you a week to think about it. I leave for Miami New Year’s Day. If I don’t hear from you by then, I go elsewhere with it. Which could cost you a lot more.”

A.J. worked to keep his breathing slow and his hands relaxed. To show nothing of what was roiling inside him—an urge to grab the motherfucker by the scruff and bang his forehead against the chrome bar a few times. Instead he drained off his beer and tossed a buck on the bar.

“Don’t hold your breath, old man.”