“Not much.” Her lips felt as dry as sand.
He took a long drag from his cigarette, pulling so much smoke into his lungs he could launch a steamer.
“I pretended I was asking for a friend, a friend who witnessed the shooting of a Negro man by a white man.”
Ezekiel’s hand jerked, and a coin slid toward her, but he quickly scooped it up.
She settled in the chair, her bones melding into the wooden seat and her spine curving against the chair’s bridge. What should she tell him about MacDonald? “The cop knew you worked with Archie and that Archie was in business with one of Capone’s men, doing something more than selling whiskey in Bronzeville.”
“Which is against the rules of racketeering.” Ezekiel sighed. “Capone doesn’t try to muzzle our lucrative policy gambling business as long as we colored folk buy our bootleg from him at whatever price he sets.” Ezekiel picked up a coin and moved it from knuckle to knuckle on one hand.
“Is that why you and Archie were with Gallo? You’re working with him on something to do with policy gambling?”
“I think, somehow, MacDonald is aware I had a run-in with Gallo the night I left town,” Ezekiel said, ignoring her question.
“You met Gallo three years ago?”
“I didn’t know him. Met him once the same night I met Archie. That’s when I learned he and Gallo had worked on a failed insurance scam with my father. My father, the great Titus Bailey, owed Gallo a lot of money.”
The bleakness in his voice, the strain around his eyes, Ezekiel’s pain flowed like a river into the sea. Honoree hated to see him suffer.
“I’m sorry. That must’ve been difficult. But your father’s choices had nothing to do with you.”
Ezekiel looked up from the coins. “I killed him.”
“Who?” she asked, not following what he meant. “Who did you kill? Your father?” A nervous laugh escaped her lips. “No, you didn’t.”
He smiled ruefully. “Thank you for thinking such a thing is unimaginable, but I promise you, I did.”
“You killed him?” Disbelief twisted through her body, as her hopes and dreams dropped next to Ezekiel’s coins.
He couldn’t kill. No matter how much had changed, he couldn’t kill. She lifted her head.
“How did it happen, Ezekiel?”
He swept the coins off the table into his fist. “My father went insane, attacked my mother and offered my brothers to Gallo as if they were slaves on a slaver’s block.
“Father was desperate to salvage his reputation. His sons were his collateral. They could run numbers, sell bootleg whiskey, do whatever was necessary to repay Gallo.” Ezekiel’s laugh echoed with a heartless throb. “My mother said no, and he hit her. My baby brother, Marcus, reached him first, but Titus threw him across the room. I had no choice. I had to stop him.”
Honoree couldn’t believe her ears. Mr. Bailey, not as tall as Ezekiel, was a massively built man three years ago, and stronger than his sons.
The three boys and their mother had to be terrified.
“My father’s body was lying on the floor in the parlor when Gallo showed up. He told us not to worry. No questions asked. He would keep my secret in return, but I owed him a favor.” Ezekiel chuckled. “The last surprise of the night, Gallo made a telephone call, and Archie Graves arrived to dump my father’s body in the Chicago River.”
Honoree heard every word, but her thoughts reeled between disbelief and wishing nothing had happened. She touched his cheek. “I am so sorry, Ezekiel. So very sorry.”
“Did you honestly think I’d leave town, leave you, without a goddamned good reason?” He placed his hand over her hand and pressed her palm to his cheek.
“I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know. How could you? I killed my father, and that will be with me for the rest of my life.” He inhaled with a small tremor. “I won’t spend the rest of my life in debt to Gallo. I can’t live like that, and I won’t have my brothers, or my mother, live with that weight, either.”
“How? What can you do to Gallo? What power do you have over him?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “He’s Archie’s banker. For the policy operation. Something that’s strictly against Capone’s deal with the policy kings. My plan is simple—I’m going to make sure Capone finds out what Gallo has been up to.”
He abruptly stood and stepped away from the table. “Would you like a drink? I could use a drink.”
