Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006

One for the Road by Gigi Vernon

Marilyn drained her gin, then carefully set the glass down on the bar, which seemed to bob like a rum-running boat on a choppy crossing of the Detroit River.

“Bottoms up,” the swell-looking gangster on the bar stool next to her said with a wink.

With difficulty, her numb, clumsy fingers screwed a cigarette into her holder and, without turning away from his soothing smile of admiration, she groped behind her for the lighter in her purse. Her fingers pawed at thin air. She turned to look. No purse on the counter. Or on the empty seat next to her, or in the darkness on the floor of the speakeasy.

The cigarette and its holder flopped out of her mouth and rolled away. She turned back to the gangster extending a lit match to her and socked him in the arm. “Very funny. Give it back,” she said, her tongue and lips thick on the words.

“Give what?” he said with a cocky grin, then blew out the match flame suggestively.

“My purse, numskull.” She slid off the barstool.

Ray would kill her if she’d lost the protection payoff to the cops. He’d send one of his suits to rub her out and she’d be dead by tomorrow. Maybe he’d somehow already discovered the loss and had already sent someone. A vision of her bullet-riddled corpse floating in the river came to her.

She belted the creep again, then groped him, trying to search him, keeping her feet under her with difficulty.

Grinning, his hands held up as if he were under arrest, he said, “Hey, if you want to get fresh with me just say so.”

“Give it back,” her voice rose into a screech. She whacked him, trying to push him off the bar stool.

At the commotion, the jazz band faltered into silence, as did the frenetic tapping of Charleston-jiggling couples.

“Ray doesn’t like his molls messed with!” she heard herself accuse the startled spectators. She wondered if everyone already knew she was no longer Ray’s. She glared, or at least tried to glare, attempting to focus through a murk before her eyes, almost as if she were already at the bottom of the muddy river. She swayed in the hush, waiting for someone to confess.

No one stepped forward. Instead, the crowd parted for the head bouncer, Ralph, a middle-aged man, beefy, with bushy eyebrows and mustache and a missing front tooth. He frowned, annoyance crinkling his broken nose. “Marilyn, Marilyn,” he crooned in a low voice. “Pipe down. What is it with you? You gotta make a spectacle of yourself everywhere you go?” He snapped his fingers at the band.

A bass player tentatively plucked a string and the rest of the band answered. They revived the interrupted tune and the dancers caught the rhythm. Conversations and drinks were picked up again.

With a hand to her elbow, Ralph helped her onto a bar stool. “You gotta problem? Tell Ralph all about it,” he crooned.

“My problem, Ralph,” she said sarcastically, “is that you let two-bit grifters in this joint.”

“This is a dandy speakeasy.”

“Oh yeah? Somebody snatched my purse while I was sitting here at the bar minding my own business,” she spluttered with anger and gin.

“You don’t say?”

She turned to the bartender, a fat, older man, his bald head as smooth and gleaming as his bland, doughy face. “Joe, who’d you serve next to me?”

“Don’t you know yourself, Marilyn? Maybe you ought to take it easy on the booze.”

“Give a girl a break,” she snapped.

“No one ever sat down next to you,” the young rumrunner chimed in with a wink. “I would have noticed the competition.”

She elbowed him away.

“Are you sure you had your purse when you came in?” Ralph the bouncer asked. “You were pretty sauced.”

“’Course I had it,” she said, slurring, thinking back, not so sure even as she said it.

“I never saw a purse,” Joe offered as he wiped a glass clean.

She’d come directly from the hotel and Ray. The schmuck. Had she had it then? Her head was so fuzzy. She shouldn’t have drunk so much. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, trying to force clarity back. She’d be dead tomorrow if she didn’t get that purse back. Ray would never cut her any slack now.

“Ralph, give me a few bucks for cab fare? Ray won’t mind,” she pleaded.

The bartender hit a key on the cash register, a bell tinkled, and the wooden drawer shot open. “Anything for the boss.” He counted a couple of bills into her palm.

She pulled on the fur coat that Ray had once given her, then left, wobbling between slanting walls and floor toward the shifting door.

Outside, a violent spring wind off the river howled through the unforgiving granite canyons of the Detroit streets. She wrapped her fur coat around her and breathed deeply, hoping the chill, grimy air would clear the muck from her head. The uniformed cop paid to turn a blind eye to the speakeasy tipped his cap to her. “Miss Marilyn.”

“Even’,” she mumbled unsteadily, the wind pushing at her, making it impossible to stand still. A trolley rumbled by. In too much of a hurry to be inching along jammed in with businessmen, she let it pass.

“Would you be needing a cab?” he asked.

“Yeah, and be quick about it,” she said, attempting to snap her fingers unsuccessfully.

He whistled and an ancient Model-T ducked out of traffic and rattled to a stop. Negotiating the cab door proved an impossible challenge and she was glad of the cop’s help.

“The Book Cadillac Hotel,” she told the driver, a kid who didn’t look old enough for long pants, much less driving.

“Right away, Miss Marilyn,” he chirped, small behind the big wheel.

They all knew her as Ray’s moll. If they didn’t know already, soon they would know how Ray had dumped her. Then they would hear how she had disappeared, and some time after that, they would hear how her corpse had been found in the river.

With a series of pops that sounded like gunshots, the kid driver pulled out into the chaotic late-afternoon traffic.

In the back seat, she realized one of her silk stockings was sagging around her ankle. Stupid things. Viciously, she pulled it up, and after several attempts to manipulate fingers that had turned fat and sausagelike, she straightened the seam, and re-rolled it above her knee, tearing a gaping hole in the silk in the process. “Hell’s bells,” she muttered.

Surveying the congested disorder of vehicles and pedestrians in front of the Book Cadillac Hotel, James O’Neill admired the pale, spring sunshine slanting down into the street, warming and softening the granite of the tall buildings.

The flash of a pretty ankle caught his eye as a flapper in a fur coat clambered into a cab, dropping her purse on the sidewalk in the process. Too late he rushed forward. The cab nosed into traffic as a boy pounced, scooped up the purse, and was about to make off with it.

“Pardon me, lad.” O’Neill grabbed the young thief’s collar and relieved him of the purse. “Would you care to show me your name on that purse?”

Grimacing with the effort, the boy squirmed until he broke free, then dove into the river of black-bodied cars tearing through the square.

For an instant, O’Neill considered giving chase, then decided it was already a lost cause. From an island in the center of the boiling, churning river of traffic, the blue-capped boy made a rude gesture at him, then continued nimbly dodging automobiles until he reached the safety of the other side of the street and disappeared.

O’Neill loosened the purse’s drawstrings. Inside was a wad of bills, a flask, and a derringer, but nothing identifying the owner. He pulled the purse closed.

A doorman in uniform stood stonily at attention in front of the revolving glass door of the hotel, his eyes alert, taking in the scene. O’Neill approached. The man’s alarmed gaze skittered away from the bulge of a gun in O’Neill’s pocket.

“Might you know that young lady, sir?” O’Neill asked.

Startled at being spoken to, the doorman eyed him suspiciously, not recognizing him and trying to figure out where he fit in. The doorman’s gaze flitted from sidewalk to street then back again, watching for trouble.

O’Neill waited patiently, letting the man take his time.

Finally, the doorman glanced over his shoulder at the hotel one last time, screwed his face up with the effort of coming to a decision, then blasted an answer as if it were a painful belch, “Sure I know. Everyone knows her. That was Marilyn.”

“Marilyn Massie?” O’Neill’s pulse quickened at this bit of luck. That explained the purse’s contents. “And might you happen to know where I could find her?”

Before he could reply, two dapper men emerged from the hotel and gestured for a cab. Out of the corner of his eye, O’Neill sized up the men, members of the Purple Gang emerging from their headquarters in the hotel. Young, sleek, arrogant. Too arrogant, fortunately, to take notice of him.

A whistle brought a shiny new Packard to the curb. The doorman rushed to help the men climb in. The car leapt out into traffic and the doorman returned. “Big tippers,” he said disparagingly, displaying the nickel in his palm before pocketing it. Back at his station at the door, a little less wary, the doorman asked, “Who wants to know about Marilyn?”

Shrugging nonchalantly, O’Neill held up a five dollar bill. “She dropped her purse. Call me a good Samaritan. I want to return it to her.” He raised the purse and gave it a shake for emphasis with a sheepish grin.

A smile tweaked the doorman’s unexpressive mouth. “She probably went to the club. That’s where she spends most of her evenings if she’s not here.”

“The club?” O’Neill asked, not sure which of the Purples’ blind pigs he meant.

The man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, and his glance shifted again to the concealed gun. “You new to Detroit?”

O’Neill nodded.

The doorman looked away and muttered under his breath as if he were a spy relaying a password, “The Kibbutzer Club. On Woodward, near Columbia. Rap three times.”

O’Neill shook the man’s hand, slipping the five spot to him. “Appreciate it.”

At the Book Cadillac Hotel, Marilyn pushed through the glass door and entered a lobby plush with furniture and bright with the light of many-tiered chandeliers, the well-dressed guests as new and shiny with unrespectable wealth as the lobby.

One of the house dicks, a front man for the Purple Gang on Ray’s payroll, leaned over the coat check counter toward the girl behind it, his back to her, engrossed in his flirtation.

Hoping to escape his notice, Marilyn quickly turned for the hotel restaurant, almost colliding with a pillar that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

Before she got far, she heard the dick’s voice behind her, “Hey! I thought I told you to get lost after the stink you made last time.”

She stopped and faced him, the sudden movement causing the room to spin uncontrollably.

Heavy jawed with small, stupid eyes, he turned to the coat check girl and laughed at his own joke. “Get it? Stink.” He mimed emptying a bottle into his mouth. “Stink!” he repeated, and held his nose at an imagined stench.

The chubby, gap-toothed girl darted a superior smile at Marilyn before she turned back to her work.

“I left my purse here,” Marilyn said, shaping every syllable carefully.

“You didn’t leave nothing here except your dignity, toots. If you have any left,” he said.

She jammed her hands into her coat pockets. Like viewing pictures on a stereoscope, Ray’s birthday party came back to her. Arriving late. Ray in a booth surrounded by his Purple Gang. That hussy of a blonde next to him, wrapped around him like a bun on a wiener. Ray’s smile of unconcern that she’d caught him cheating on her. Two-timing sonofabitch. She was glad that she’d thrown her birthday gift, a bottle of expensive cologne from Paris, France, at him. The bottle burst on the booth’s upholstery, spraying scent over the couple. It had been well worth being thrown out for.

“You’re a real comedian. You should be on the stage,” she said sarcastically, a hand on her hip. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to miss the show and go look in the restaurant for my purse.”

“Oh no.” He approached, wagging his finger at her like a schoolteacher. “I’m under strict orders. You don’t go near that restaurant again.”

“Get that finger out of my face before I take it off,” she snapped, not worrying that the words came tumbling out in a sloppy jumble now. “What’s the matter? Is Ray still celebrating his birthday?” She tried stepping around him, but he easily moved to stop her.

“No, your stinkbomb cleared ’em out pretty good.” He chuckled at the memory, then became serious. “Not that Ray’s whereabouts is any concern of yours no more, but he’s gone.” He folded his arms over his chest, blocking her path.

She crossed her own arms over her chest, then took a sudden step back as she lost her balance. “I’m not leaving until I get my purse.”

He grabbed her arm. “You’ll leave when I tell you. Which is now.” He dragged her toward the door.

She shook him off. “Take your hand off me or I’ll make a ruckus and bring the house down.”

He knew she would, too. He glanced around as if he realized for the first time they were in a lobby full of guests, then released her. “Okay, okay. I’ll take a look for you, if you promise to be quiet and go outside to wait.”

Doubtful, she nodded. She bounced against pillars and walls until she found herself standing under the awning outside. The doorman was nowhere to be seen. Angry humiliation burned in her eyes at the memory of Ray’s treatment. “Got a smoke?” she asked a kid hanging around the door, probably hoping to be asked to run a message. Her mouth was dry, too. She could have used a pull from the flask she carried in her purse.

His blue cap low over his eyes, the kid dug in the pocket of his dungarees and produced a mashed packet. He fished a cigarette out and grudgingly handed it to her.

Before she could light it, the house dick showed up, his hands empty. “Not there,” he said.

“Did you—?”

“I turned the place upside down. Not there.”

“That little tramp—”

“Marilyn, why don’t you use that pretty little head of yours,” he poked at the curls of her bob with a finger, “instead of soaking it? You didn’t stay more than two minutes. You didn’t sit down. Ergo, it follows that you didn’t leave no purse here, unless you threw it at someone?” he ended with a question.

She shook her head. A bad idea. She staggered as a wave of dizziness assaulted her.

“Think about it.” He struck a match and lit her cigarette for her. “It’s gotta be someplace else.”

She took a long drag to steady herself, then exhaled. He was right.

“Where were you before you came here?” he asked.

“Hudson’s Department Store.”

“Maybe you left it there.”

The streets near Woodward and Columbia were glutted with cars and it took O’Neill a while to find a parking space. He squeezed into a space some blocks away, climbed out, and walked along the street looking for telltale signs. A plain sturdy wooden door with a peephole had to be the Kibbutzer Club.

He hesitated before entering, touching the gun in his pocket. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. It could go wrong fast.

A barrel-chested patrolman strolling his beat, his hands crossed behind his back, tossed a pleasant greeting to him, “Afternoon, sir.” A puzzled grin spread across his face as he saw the purse O’Neill carried.

“Afternoon, Officer.” Sheepishly, O’Neill held the purse up. “I’m wondering if you might happen to know a young lady by the name of Marilyn Massie.”

The patrolman stiffened and turned watchful, as his gaze lit on the bulge of the gun. “What do you want with Miss Marilyn?”

“She dropped her purse.”

The tension in the patrolman’s eyes and mouth eased. “I saw her a few minutes ago.”

O’Neill nodded, straightened his shoulders, took a deep breath, and headed for the door of the club.

The patrolman pinched his sleeve. “I don’t believe you want to go in there, sir.”

O’Neill knew he didn’t, but he pretended surprise. “I don’t?”

“No,” the patrolman said firmly, with a meaningful glance at the gun in his pocket, “you don’t. Besides, if it’s Miss Marilyn you’re looking for, she’s not there now. Left not five minutes ago.”

Annoyed, O’Neill sighed. “In a cab?” he asked.

The officer nodded.

“I don’t suppose you overheard the address she gave?”

“Can’t say I do. Sorry, sir.” He drifted backwards, then turned and continued his leisurely patrol of the sidewalk.

Perhaps she’d realized she’d lost her purse at the hotel and returned. It was worth a try.

A few minutes’ walk bumping against pedestrians on the sidewalk like a billiard ball on a table brought Marilyn to Hudson’s Department Store a few blocks away from the hotel. She pushed through the doors of the department store cautiously, ready to make a bolt if one of the floor dicks the store crawled with spotted her.

Inside, she surveyed the women’s clothing department on the first floor. Shoppers, mostly women, a few with bored children in tow, grazed the merchandise. No sign of a dick. Careful of her balance and her surroundings, she wound her way through racks of dresses and cosmetic counters toward the perfume.

Shifts had changed and a different salesgirl stood behind an array of glittering bottles. Marilyn had fully intended to buy the cologne earlier. She had the money and she would have purchased it if she hadn’t had to wait so danged long in a herd of housewives. She had already been late for Ray’s birthday party. It had been quicker to pocket a bottle and scoot out.

Mustering all her politeness, she addressed the salesgirl, “I think I may have left my purse here earlier today.”

“Lost and found — the fourteenth floor,” the girl shot back, looking down her nose like she was better than Marilyn because she had a job in a lousy department store.

Marilyn opened her mouth for a retort, but the girl intercepted her. “Elevators — in the back of the building.”

She looked in the direction the girl indicated and saw a man in a suit striding purposely toward her, either a floor dick or a Purple sent by Ray to whack her. She bolted around the counter, spotted a door with a sign marked stairs, flung it open, and rushed up a flight. No footsteps sounded below. Her head spinning and her stomach roiling, she collapsed on a concrete step, fighting a wave of gin-induced nausea. She took off her fur coat and dabbed the beads of sweat from her forehead with a crumpled handkerchief she found in her pocket.

When the nausea passed, she opened the door and threaded her way through housewares to the elevator. She rode to the fourteenth floor, smoothing her hair and straightening her hat.

When it stopped, she stepped out into a corridor swarming with clerks. She hoped she was less conspicuous without the fur coat on. She stopped a secretary hugging folders to her flat chest. “Lost and found?” she asked.

“In there,” the woman replied, pointing to a door marked detectives.

“Hell’s bells,” Marilyn cursed under her breath. But there was nothing for it. She had to have that purse. Screwing up her courage, she strode to the door and entered. Instead of a posse of detectives waiting to arrest her, she entered a quiet, bland office. A large woman sat behind an enormous desk that almost filled a cramped reception area. The nameplate on the desk read MISS SIMMONS.

“Is this lost and found? I’m looking for my purse,” Marilyn asked, finding she didn’t have to work so hard at making the words clear now.

“Let me check.” Miss Simmons eased herself up from her chair and waddled to a filing cabinet in the corner. “What did it look like?”

“Brown leather with a drawstring.”

Miss Simmons opened a drawer and pulled out a purse. “Is this it?”

“No. Let me look.” Half a dozen limp, deflated purses filled the drawer, but none of them were hers.

“Sorry. Would you like to leave a name in case it turns up tomorrow?” Miss Simmons returned to her desk and extended pen and paper toward her.

Tomorrow? She’d be dead by tomorrow. She shook her head. She rode the elevator down and drifted through the aisles toward the street entrance like the ghost she would soon be.

An arm grabbed her from behind. “Back again? So soon?” It was the same store dick that had been stationed near the perfume counter on her earlier visit, a big, raw-boned guy who reeked of Ivory soap. “For your information, Miss Lightfingers, a bottle of very expensive cologne disappeared on your last visit.”

“You’re accusing me?” She yanked her sleeve from his grasp, then made a show of slipping on her fur coat. “I can afford anything I want in this joint.” Indignation reawakened the slur. “That pisswater you’re trying to pass off as perfume? I wouldn’t take it if you were giving it away.” She adjusted the collar of her coat haughtily.

“Obviously we weren’t giving it away.” He glared back.

There was nothing he could do about it now and they both knew it. She cocked her head to one side and looked him over. “Hey, you’re a dick,” she baited him. “Maybe you can figure out what happened to my purse when I was here. I think one of your customers stole it right under your nose.”

He cocked his head, meeting her challenge. “Could be. We get a lot of grifters here.”

“Did you happen to notice whether I had it with me?”

“Can’t say I did. You were making a pretty good getaway at the time.” He put his fists on his waist. “How about if I escort you to the door just so neither one of us loses something else this time?”

“You again!” The doorman at the Book Cadillac Hotel chuckled at O’Neill. “You’re a dogged one!” He glanced around, as if he were nervous of being overheard. “You missed her at the Kibbutzer Club because she came back here.”

“Obliged.” O’Neill made to push through the revolving glass door.

The doorman yanked his sleeve. “Just a minute, buddy. She’s not here now. She left. Well, you might say she was shown out. Asked to leave, so to speak.”

“I see.” O’Neill frowned. “Cab?” he asked and sighed.

“Not this time. She headed down the street.”

“Then I might catch her?” He turned on his heel.

“Maybe. That way.” The doorman pointed in the opposite direction.

“Just in case, where does she live?” he asked.

The doorman hesitated, glancing around.

O’Neill produced another five spot.

The doorman plucked the bill from his fingers. “21 Second Avenue.”

He tipped his homburg in thanks.

That left only the bank. Clarity creeping back, Marilyn strode down the street to the First National where she had gone to get dough for Ray’s cologne.

The bank dick, a slim man with a thin mustache that he thought made him look swank, blocked the door, a fistful of keys in his hands.

The door refused to open. Locked. She banged on the glass.

The little man held up his wristwatch and pointed to its face. Five o’clock, closing time.

She yelled through the glass, “Did I leave my purse here?”

He shook his head.

“Did I have a purse with me when I left?”

“Sure you had one. You socked me with it,” he yelled back at her, rubbing his scrawny arm.

Then where was it? She stepped away from the door in a daze. Stone sober now, she wandered aimlessly down the street torrential with office workers heading for home, huddling into her coat, the wind whipping tears into her eyes.

Mentally she retraced her steps. She’d taken money from the bank and walked to Hudson’s. Had she stopped anywhere? No. She hadn’t been tempted as there were no speakeasies in the neighborhood. That’s what flasks were for anyway.

She’d gone into Hudson’s with the purse, but had she come out with it? Maybe. She’d then walked to the Book Cadillac Hotel without stopping except for a few more swigs, arriving in more of a fuddle than she’d intended. She’d stayed at the hotel only for a few moments. From Ray’s birthday celebration at the hotel, in a drunken fury, she’d called a cab to take her to the club where she’d realized she’d lost the purse. The cab! She’d left it in the cab!

Abruptly she stopped and a stocky businessman slammed into her. She forced herself to focus on remembering the cab or the driver’s face. Nothing came to her. Useless. Gone forever. It was all a gin-soaked blur.

Now some cabbie was gleefully spending the five C-notes intended for the cops that some cursing, corked flapper had left in a purse on his back seat. And some cop was wondering where the payoff was that she was supposed to have delivered at noon. And by now, some trigger was searching for her with orders to bump her off.

O’Neill hurried down the sidewalk packed with workers and businessmen on their way home. Several times he thought he glimpsed a dark bob or a fur coat ahead which could have been Marilyn, but each time he caught up to the woman, it wasn’t her.

He gave up after twenty minutes. Might as well try her at home.

At the nearest trolley stop, he boarded, and jumped off at the corner of Highland and Second Avenue at a stylish new apartment building. He entered expecting to find a doorman, but no one seemed to be about. According to the mailboxes, her apartment was on the third floor. He climbed the stairs and rang the doorbell. Silence. He waited and rang again. When no answer came, he left.

Marilyn didn’t know how long she wandered, anticipating a bullet in the back or from the window of a passing jalopy. As the sunset reddened the sky, she found herself near a lunchroom the Licavoli Gang, rivals to the Purples, sometimes frequented. The lunchroom’s windows spilled light into the spring dusk. The dinner crowd had come and gone and the place was deserted except for a young couple at a corner table.

“Gimme a cup of coffee,” she said as she climbed tiredly onto a stool, her feet throbbing in her heels.

The skinny waitress set a cup down and poured.

Marilyn sipped at the dark brew. From now on, coffee, black coffee was the strongest drink she would take.

It was all her own doing. She should never have got mixed up with Ray, or the Purples, or the hooch. She should have stayed in Lansing where she belonged and married a decent, law-abiding boy who met with her parents’ approval. Tears of regret and terror burned her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She swatted at them angrily and sniffed.

“Better fix your face, doll,” the waitress suggested in a kind voice, and hitched a thumb at the counter-length mirror on the wall behind her.

In the mirror, Marilyn saw that her eyeliner and mascara had run, leaving corpselike black smudges under her eyes.

The waitress set a stack of paper napkins on the counter next to her.

“Thanks,” Marilyn said, smiling at her own self-pity, and wiped the makeup off.

Maybe she could disappear. If she took a train tonight to some small town out West and took a new name and found a job, maybe she could escape Ray’s unrelenting vengeance. She eyed the waitress in her pink uniform. If she had to, she could sling hash as well as the next girl.

The door opened and in the mirror she saw a fresh-faced young gangster, trim and well polished, enter.

She huddled over her coffee cup and pulled her hat down over her face, hoping to make herself inconspicuous.

The click of his footsteps stopped next to her, his polished shoes and the bulge of a gun in his pocket visible under the crook of his arm.

She cringed, waiting to be dragged off the stool into a waiting car outside.

“Excuse me, miss, might you be Marilyn Massie?” he asked, his voice melodic with an Irish brogue.

“Yes,” she said into her coffee in a subdued, humble voice. If she pushed him aside and ran, how far would she get? He looked fit. Would he shoot her down in the back if she fled? The place was empty. He’d kill her first, then the waitress and the young couple, the only witnesses.

“You’re a hard lass to pin down. I’ve been looking for you all over town. You dropped this,” he laid her purse on the counter, “when you got into a cab outside of the Book Cadillac Hotel.”

Without looking at him, she reached for the purse, expecting the dough to be gone.

“Everything there?” he asked. “A kid was about to make off with it when I stopped him.”

She loosened the drawstrings and peeked inside. Everything was there — the wad of bills, the derringer, the flask. She blinked in confusion. “Yes, it’s all here,” she said in a small voice, still not daring to look at him.

He unbuttoned his jacket to reach for a gun and her breath stalled. Instead, he retrieved a wallet and flipped it open to a badge. “I’m Undercover Detective O’Neill.”

A gasp of relief burst from her. She risked a glance at him, encountering mild, blue eyes and a helpful, white smile through a sappy mist that formed over her eyes. “Could I buy you a cup of coffee, Officer, for your trouble?”

“You can do more than that, miss. You’re going to help me put a few dozen rumrunners behind bars.”