Page 39 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

B ogdan Zawadski slid onto a barstool in his wool topcoat. It was a bit below freezing outside and a bit above inside, The Blue Note management saving on the heating bill. Laughing couples sitting coatless on either side of him had likely been consuming antifreeze all night.

Not an overflow crowd for New Year’s Eve, yet most tables were taken.

Folks drinking, dancing, and enjoying themselves.

On the small bandstand a four-piece combo banged out a rockabilly tune with the singer doing a fair job of sounding like Elvis.

Though the club had already seen its best days, the sparkling lights and chrome gave it a festive air. He’d been in worse dives.

Bogdan got a gin from the bald, lizard-lipped bartender and spied a tall man in a black blazer and red silk tie lurking at the far end of the bar drink in hand, puffing on a fag.

Richard Dupuis. He had seen him but once thirty years earlier at Jellyroll Hogan’s bar on Cass Avenue.

Even though Dupuis hadn’t aged well, Bogdan easily recognized him.

The eyes don’t change. Pimp eyes. Always leering, evaluating, looking for a weakness to exploit.

Bogdan had always hated shakedown artists.

Otherwise honest cops who might take a few bucks to look the other way were okay or corruptible housing inspectors and such.

Not people like, say, Leo Gold, who try to bend someone when they’ve got power over them.

Or a snake like Richard Dupuis, always trying to make money off a woman or take advantage.

Seeing him again he knew that, like A.J.

, he’d have few qualms about killing him.

Unlike A.J., whether he had the guts and know-how was another question.

He had killed men in the war but always miles distant with five-inch guns or twenty fathoms below with depth charges.

Never face-to-face with his own hands. Not that he doubted having the strength to do it.

He still lifted weights at the Polish Falcon Nest on St. Louis Avenue.

And Dupuis looked old and flabby. Nonetheless, Bogdan lacked his godson’s Special Ops expertise in such matters.

The band played “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” The two sets of couples at the bar moved to join others on the dance floor. As the singer crooned the refrain he gestured to the man in topcoat and black turtleneck sweater sitting solo at the bar. In return Bogdan blew him a kiss, which brought a smile.

Bogdan signaled the barkeep for a refill. When it came, he said, “Please tell Mr. Dupuis I’d like a word with him.”

The bartender tilted his head. “And who are you?”

“My name won’t mean anything to him.”

Lizard Lips stared at him. “Didn’t hear you.”

“Dan Boggs.”

“What’s it about?”

“An offer on the table with a friend.”

Bogdan turned his back to him to watch the dancers. The bartender moved off.

Three songs later and still no direct response from Dupuis. Nonetheless he was communicating by his inaction: slow playing it. Which to the professional gambler often indicated a cover for eagerness.

When the band took a break he spied Dupuis moving down the bar in his direction, shaking hands, slapping people on the back, touching cheeks with a bottle blonde.

His Happy New Year wishes floated over the soft jukebox music, general conversation, and jingling of ice and glass.

At last he worked his way down to Bogdan and shook hands.

“Happy New Year, Dan. Glad you could make it.”

“I’m enjoying the music.”

Dupuis laid a hand on Bogdan’s shoulder. “Maybe we should step into the back room for a minute where it’s a little easier to talk.” As if Dan Boggs might have ten thousand smackers in his coat pocket that he was itching to hand over in private.

He followed Dupuis past the jukebox right of the bar and through a door labeled “Private.” On the other side of it sat a small, windowless, and dimly lit room with a gray Army-surplus desk, lone wooden chair, sticky floor, and beery smell.

Cases of bottled suds—Stag, Falstaff, Schlitz, Budweiser—stacked to the ceiling and covering three walls.

Dupuis sat on the desk and lit a cigarette, all cool and relaxed like Humphrey Bogart in the movies. Except somehow he came off more like a kid sneaking a smoke in the boys’ room.

“I have a message from my young friend,” Bogdan said and paused. He could see the anxiety in the club owner’s eyes, hoping for the big payoff but fearing the message might well be “Fuck off!” He let Dupuis twist for a moment before giving him the good news.

“All he can get his hands on is five gees.” (A greedy glimmer in those serpent eyes despite the frown.) “You can have it tonight on condition he never hears from you again.”

Dupuis shook his head. “That wasn’t the deal.”

“This is the new deal.”

Dupuis pursed his lips and scratched his cheek as if making up his mind. Clearly he already had. He let out a phony sigh.

“Okay, five thousand now and the rest when he can pull it together.”

“No, he wants to finish this now and not have it hanging over him. He’s going overseas next week. So, it’s five large tonight or nothing. You chose.”

Dupuis acted like he was thinking it over then raised his palms in defeat. “Okay, let me see it.”

“I’m not the bagman, just Western Union. He wants to meet you at his home on the lake at two a.m.”

Dupuis tilted his head. “Uh, why there? And why two in the morning?”

“He figured that’s a safe place you both know. Right now he’s across the river at a party with his fiancée.”

Dupuis shrugged. “I don’t get why he just didn’t give you the dough to make the handoff. Cleaner and easier.”

Zawadski returned the shrug. “He’s a weird kid, even now. I think he trusts you in some stupid way. Don’t ask me why. He wants to look you in the eye when you promise this is the end of it and shake hands on it.”

Dupuis sneered. “A real Boy Scout, huh? Tell him to come alone.”

“Ditto for you, boss.”

Bogdan made as if to leave. Then with his hand on the doorknob he turned back.

“The house is closed up. He’s got a lantern in the boathouse so you can count the cash. He’ll meet you on the dock.”

§

From a desk drawer in The Blue Note office-cum-storeroom Richard Dupuis took a Smith & Wesson Model 10 snub-nose revolver and checked the chambers.

He didn’t plan to use it and never had to, but always carried it when transporting cash.

He slid it into his overcoat pocket, smiling at the irony: It was the same gun he carried the summer day he met A.J.

Nowak’s fucking Polack father on the St. Louis wharf back in ’29.

Took only thirty years to get a fair cut on that deal.

The five gees tonight would square it nicely.

Out front Karl Maulhardt was locking the door behind the last customers.

“You know the drill, Karl. Call me if anything important crops up.”

“When was the last time that happened? Won’t bother you unless I have to.

You have a good trip, boss. And a Happy New Year.

” The two men shook hands. The bartender locked the door behind Dupuis as the latter stepped out into the cold, starry night, just a sliver of moon hanging over him like a scythe.

The leather seats of his ’55 Cadillac Series 62 convertible felt like ice.

The V-8’s starter ground and the engine fired.

Dupuis turned the heater to high, pulled on his gloves, and sat in the cold car anticipating the drive south the following day.

He always put the top down after crossing the Georgia-Florida line.

It took a few minutes for the heater to warm the ragtop. Probably time for a new model. He’d look around when he hit Miami. A ’63 listed for five grand. This one still worth a couple gees, so he’d have some extra cash in his pocket to play the ponies and pay the ladies.

Warm air began blowing from the heater ducts. He pulled out the headlight switch, illuminating the dashboard. The clock there read a quarter to two.

He turned on the radio and tuned it to KATZ, the St. Louis Negro station that played old jazz and blues tunes after midnight.

He sat listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson, James Johnson, and Fats Waller.

The music put him in a nostalgic mood, taking him back to the 1920s and ’30s when he was a young man about town.

As the clock ticked near two he put the automatic into reverse, backed out over the gravel lot, and moved onto the deserted road leading toward the lake.

At the lake road he turned right. After a minute he slowed and eased the Cadillac onto the gravel drive where the wooden sign reading “Lazy Lane” still hung from a post. She’d always worn nice, sexy stuff—silk stockings, garter belts, lacy bustiers, and such.

Pity she bought it so young. He could still be tapping it from time to time.

Ahead he spied a new Chevy with Missouri plates and a Hertz bumper sticker—a rental that A.J.

likely picked up at Lambert Field when he flew in.

Dupuis pulled to a stop behind it and killed the Caddy’s headlights.

He removed his driving gloves, rose from the car, and slipped his right hand into his coat pocket where it grasped the Smith & Wesson.

In dim moonlight Dupuis picked his way through the dark toward the lake bank.

He paused at the thick-trunked maple tree where the steep plank stairway led down to the dock.

There light seeped beneath the boathouse door.

Then a black-gloved hand passed before his eyes.

A wire tightened round his neck, pulling him back and away from the stairs.

Gagging, eyes bulging, he grabbed at the wire, the snub-nose revolver tumbling from his grasp to the ground and bouncing down the stairs to the lake.

He pulled on the wire. It cut into his hands, though he hardly noticed.

But the more he tugged on it, stretching it way from his throat, the deeper it cut into his windpipe somehow.

Dupuis kicked and gurgled. A dark cloud approached from behind, consciousness slipping away. Then he felt warm breath in his ear and heard a voice rasp, “This is for Hazel Nowak. This, you pimp bastard, is for Magdalena Sheehan.”