There was no point in pretense, not if he wanted to go inside. “Alistair Gatti. I’m looking to do a little business.”
The man grunted, stepped back, and swung open the door. He was tall and built like an ox—hell, he might be an ox, it was hard to tell since their eyes were dark brown like a human’s. “Mind your manners, cat,” he said, shutting the door behind them.
“Sure thing,” Alistair said, tipping his hat with one hand and the doorman with the other. Generosity to the staff never hurt.
That seemed to put the fellow in a better mood, because he said, “End of the hall, Mr. Gatti, you can’t miss it.”
He wasn’t wrong about that; the hall led straight into what looked like a repurposed storage room, with no turns or other doors off it. The big rumrunners drank in fancier surroundings; the people seated around the card tables, sucking down unhexed cocktails served from a bar made of wooden planks, were strictly small fry.
Eyes followed him as he sauntered to the bar. A hard-bitten woman with a patch over her left eye stood behind it. “What’ll it be?”
“Give me a gimlet.”
Once he had his drink and she had her money, he turned back to the rest of the room. Most of the other customers had returned to their drinking, but a few were still watching him curiously.
“You’re one of those cats over on State Street,” a big man said. He kicked out a chair beside him. “Come on, have a seat.”
Alistair did so. “Alistair Gatti,” he said, putting out his hand.
“Ross Brown.” Brown’s enormous hand engulfed his as they shook. Brown had hair the color of his surname, and eyes so dark they bordered on black. He smelled faintly of fish and lake water—an aquatic familiar, then, maybe a seal. “Good to meet you.”
“Cheers.” Alistair clinked his glass with Brown’s, then took a cautious sip. He’d hoped a speakeasy for rumrunners would have the good stuff behind the bar, but given the look of the place he wasn’t going to bet on a lack of embalming fluid in the drinks.
It didn’t taste too bad, at least, though he had no intention of drinking more than one in any case. He just had to figure out how to broach the subject he was interested in with his new companion.
Fortunately, Brown did it for him. “I can guess why you’re here. You were one of Charlie O’Keefe’s clients, weren’t you?”
“Didn’t have time to be—he died before we could pick up anything from him.” Which was true in the strictest sense of the word, and Alistair had no intention of telling Brown they’d stolen their share of O’Keefe’s booze. “Now Camille Falke is gone, and Danny Queen, too. It’s getting hard for an honest man to make a living.”
Brown shook his big head sadly. “Too true, too true. I’m not worried, though—my boys and I are careful.”
A young woman at an adjacent table snorted loudly.
Brown swiveled around to glare at her. “We’re having a private conversation over here.”
She took a deliberate gulp from her drink—neat whiskey, by the look of it—then said, “What you’re doing is lying to yourself and lying to the cat, too.”
“You’re just sore because Camille got herself bumped off,” Brown shot back.
Alistair’s ears perked. “You knew Camille?”
“My sister.” She finished her whiskey and wiggled the glass in his direction. Taking the hint, he signaled the barwoman to bring her another.
“Thanks,” she said, when the glass was in front of her. “You can call me Lucy.”
“My sympathies for your loss, Lucy,” Alistair said. Wanda would be proud to hear him actually being polite. “What happened?”
“Camille got careless,” Brown said dismissively.
That earned him a glare from the sister. “Fuck you, seal. There was no one in that apartment when we got home, I’d stake my life on it.”
“Well, that didn’t work out too well for Camille’s life, did it?”
Lucy looked as though she might come over and start punching Brown, so Alistair said, “I’d like to hear what she has to say.”
Brown shook his head, as if to suggest Alistair was wasting his time, and finished off his drink. While he trundled over to the bar, Lucy leaned closer, though she didn’t leave her own table. “We were coming back from the movies—Yolanda, with Marion Davies.” She wiped the back of her hand roughly over her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see another of her pictures now. I went into the apartment first, and Camille followed me in. There was no one else there—no one,” she repeated as Brown returned. “I got a glass of water from the tap, we talked for a couple of minutes about the movie, and then I went into the bedroom. I was only there for a second before I heard the shot.”
“It must’ve been longer than you thought,” Brown argued. “The mind plays tricks on you when something bad happens, everybody knows that.”
