“Ready,” I returned.
Daisy kicked the horse off, and the urgent clatter of hooves on cobblestone beat in time with the faint echoes of the night’s music. The cool night air brushed against our faces, and with it, the smell of chimney smoke and street vendor food.
Bags of money weighed down my wrists and arms as we rode through the streets. It was the last time I’d see these streets. Thelast time the lights would frame me and then escape me, as if I were a dark apparition.
These six bags of bootlegging money would need somewhere to go! Some of it chose its own destiny, blowing from the bags where the zippers weren’t tight enough. Blowing like bark stripped by a sawmill and landing on the sidewalks of Harlem’s streets. Some people caught it in their hands as if it were a miracle from God, jumping up and down and cheering, sharing it with the friends they’d come out with. I laughed alongside them.
There’d be a bag for Kirby’s Diner—Mr. Kirby couldn’t be bought! He’d keep cooking those meals, hiring those wayward cooks, and running business until he couldn’t stand up anymore!
A bag for Vivian’s salon! May the signage grow brighter and the clients come from farther when she wakes to find five hundred dollars at her front door!
Three bags for the park! One for the basketball court, one for the clock tower, one for the crossing guard who manned that crosswalk and kept the kids safe!
It was easy to know what to do with this money, which otherwise might have sat in the police station forever.
We’d give it to Harlem. That way, no matter who came to take it away, Central would be here to stay.
Daisy pulled on the horses’ reins outside of her house, and we dismounted. I had a bag of money saved for the Wash ’N’ Fold, which I left just inside the house. Auntie Lorraine deserved a vacation, but after what we attempted to do, we couldn’t stop to talk to the grown-ups. Daisy and I had to leave before someone found us.
I pulled my suitcases out of my room and as we walked down the stoop I told Daisy, “You’re crazy for that... but thank you.”
She winked at me. “It’s the only way I know how to be. But don’t thank me before our ride gets here.”
“Our ride?”
An Austin Twenty zoomed down the street, its engine loud, before stopping just in front of us. Driving the car was someone who looked suspiciously like Jay. “Who... who is that?”
Daisy smirked knowingly as the car stopped rumbling. The person who looked like Jay limped out of the car, holding his side as if he’d been shot.
“I could’ve sworn I watched you die,” I said in disbelief, looking from Daisy to Jay. “Am I crazy?”
“You are crazy, but I’m not dead,” he said, taking my suitcase, throwing it into the back of the car. “But I will be if we don’t get out of here quick. Step on it!”
“I cried over you!” I told Jay, and for emphasis, I slapped him in the shoulder. “All to find out you were fine?”
He laughed. “I’m glad you’re finally comfortable hitting me! You got my letter, didn’t you?”
I hadn’t yet wrapped my head around the fact that he was still here and not a ghost. I could feel his flesh. I could see his hair blowing in the wind. And behind him, the stoops and the dim streetlamps gave his beauty a perfect backdrop. His heart always craved surroundings like these.
“Thank you, Nick,” Jay said. “I thought I was a goner too, but I’m afraid it’s gonna take more than one little bullet to kill me.”
I was only half upset. There was peace in my soul as we got into the car and started to cruise down this open road, headed for the state limits. Rarely did I get back the things I lost in so satisfying a way.
We were made to be hooligans on the run! That’s what we’d become, refusing to sink to the bottom of the fountain with the other pennies. We’d be rejected from society. But we’d land where we landed.
Life was one big caper, wasn’t it? I was still so young, with so much to take from it. I still wanted a seat in the nice train car! I wanted the full car, the full train, the railroads, all the land that the railroads touched. This land was my land too! I would set justice upon it even if people didn’t recognize it as justice. That was a promise I could make to myself.
Epilogue
Daisy explained that Jordan was smart enough not to keep all her assets in one place. Before the cops busted her, she gave all her girls their cut of the business: two thousand dollars in cash and, only for Daisy, thirty quarter sticks of dynamite to use to save her favorite cousin.
By then Jay had made his way to Daisy, and together, they made plans to stage a breakout at the precinct and make our exit. But there was one last task to do beforehand, and Daisy accepted—Buchanan’s invitation to dinner. He wanted to chat about everything that happened and see if she knew about my criminal activity.
Buchanan had taken a liking to her. He felt that having her work for him would serve as some sort of penance in the fight he felt he’d lost against me. Even though I was in jail and Jay Gatsby Jr.’s life seemed to hang in the balance, it wasn’t enough for him. He still felt that he had lost and he had a problem.
There were three people in the room that night and he neededDaisy to make it seem like it was me who shot Jay in a fit of murderous rage after finding out he enabled the fire. She was on his staff, seen nearby at her engagement party next door. She weaved a story. In return, he offered her a permanent place in his home.
Daisy nodded, agreeing to slander my name, which made him comfortable. He asked Daisy to refill the pitcher and make a few drinks since his butler had quit, and it made things far less efficient around the house. She went to the kitchen and mixed a drink with liquor, sedatives, and lemonade. And once he started slurring his words and passed out on the table, Daisy searched the house.
