Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

The Alimony Prison by Lou Manfredo

Story writer Lou Manfredo hails from Manalapan, New Jersey. He has not previously appeared in EQMM, but he has a story, “Case Closed,” in the award-winning crime anthology Brooklyn Noir (Akashic; 2004), which has also been selected by editor Joyce Carol Oates for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2005.

In the roaring, wild year of 1927, the Alimony Prison, nestled discreetly on Greenwich Village’s MacDougal Street, was arguably the classiest speakeasy in all of New York City.

The brainchild of an ex-prize-fighter and professional gambler named Dominick Cosenza, the speak included among its considerable boasts the very finest Canadian and European booze, the smoothest, hottest New Orleans jazz, and the cleanest, most enthusiastic Hell’s Kitchen hookers.

Splashy décor surrounded individual cafe tables arranged freely before an expansive, elevated stage. A full jazz band commanded the rear stage and downstage the most beautiful scantly-clad showgirls performed nightly to an always packed house.

Most tables were encircled by thick, pliable vertical rubber bars, and patrons would part the bars gingerly to access the gilded and cushioned chairs. Waiters wearing prison garb, gray overalls with horizontal black stripes and matching pillbox caps, rushed to serve them with rum and Cokes, Seven and Sevens, icy English gin martinis, and the best cabaret food in town. Only the rival 21 Club, located just a short walk away, could even begin to match the Prison’s overall quality.

The main clubroom sat at street level; the brothel, consisting of ten small, well-furnished bedrooms and intimate lounge area, occupied the second floor.

On the topmost third floor, an exact mirror-image nightclub stood silent and unused. On those periodic occasions when the downstairs club was raided and padlocked by prearrangement with the local authorities, the third floor was brought to life and open for business the very next evening. As soon as Cosenza and his legal representatives had attended to all legalities and fines, the downstairs club would reopen and the good times would roll uninterrupted until the next scheduled raid.

Now, on this particular night, Lily O’Rourke Cosenza peered out at the women standing before her and sighed: They were just children, really, and Lily, at twenty-seven, having to deal with them all.

“All right, ladies,” she said, in her very best mother-of-the-realm voice. “Just about time for us to open up for business. But before we do, I need to ask for a couple of volunteers.”

The “ladies” — eight prostitutes in various stages of splendid boudoir attire — returned Lily’s casual smile with icy hostility.

“We surely ain’t none of us volunteerin’ for nothin’, Lil, so just go on and pick out the ones of us with the fattest asses and get it over with,” said one young thing, Mabel McGuire, twenty years old and five foot five, one hundred and forty pounds if an ounce, and hard as a Packard’s chrome bumper.

Lily allowed her smile to grow cold and her eyes to dull.

“Well, now,” she said, dabbing a forefinger at Mabel, “that would be you, honey, sure as Jesus wore sandals to Sunday school.”

Mabel frowned as the girls around her giggled.

“Figured as much,” she said with resignation.

Trying as it was at times, Lily enjoyed running the second-floor brothel for her husband, the man known to one and all as “Big Dom.” It beat peddling butts or shaking a leg on some smoky speakeasy stage, both of which had served as careers in her recent past. Yes, she liked madaming a whole lot better: easier on the feet and on the soul. And it didn’t hurt one little bit to be married to the boss, her brooding and leathery-tough ex-prizefighter-turned-saloonkeeper. It provided a powerful touch of job security to her position.

Lily allowed herself a softer smile before speaking. “Girls,” she continued, cooing comfort at them, “you all know how this works. Every once in a time, the coppers raid the joint to show the citizens how honest they are. It’s like that for every speak in the city, every speak in the country, I figure. The deal Big Dom cut this time was they could take out the downstairs and grab two girls from outta here. They’ll hit us tomorrow night and then the joint reopens upstairs the next night, same as usual, and we here in the cathouse, well, we just keep on purring, just with two less girls. Big Dom pays all bails, legal fees, and fines, and a few days from now he opens back up on the ground floor and the two girls get cut loose and come back to work. Everybody comes away happy — saints, sinners, cops, and citizens.”

Mable McGuire inserted a finger into her right ear, furiously working it against a dry-skin itch she’d been suffering ever since the weather had turned so damn cold. “Excepts me,” she said. “I winds up gettin’ goosed by some horny coppers and dyke-rubbed in the Women’s Lockup.”

Lily brightened her smile. “Why, Mabel, dearie, I know that feeling. That’s why I got my man to make it right this time. Big Dom says there’s twenty dollars a day in it for each girl that volunteers.”

An excited chatter and raising of hands suddenly surrounded Lily, and cries of “Take me!” and “I’ll do it!” rang in her ears.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said sweetly. “If I didn’t know any better I’d just swear you ladies only do this for the money. Well, I will be damned.”

Later that evening when Lily entered the cluttered first-floor office, she found Big Dom hunched over his massive mahogany desk, an unlit Cuban cigar clenched between his yellowed, uneven teeth, a scowl working at the corners of his mouth.

“Sit,” he said gruffly, without raising his eyes to her.

She dropped heavily into one of the upholstered dark blue velvet chairs before the desk and sighed. He seemed in a black mood, and Lily, who, except for her somewhat voracious sexual appetites and the rather irksome necessities they entailed, had little tolerance for men in general, had even less for those in a foul mood. She sat silently, waiting for him to speak again.

When, after a few moments, he raised his heavy-browed, flat black eyes from the ledger book before him and met the pale gray of her own eyes, she smiled demurely.

“Hello, dearie,” she purred. “How’s my big guy?”

He knotted his hands together on the desktop and slowly leaned his massive upper body toward her. Big Dom made a strong and conscious effort to ignore her stunning beauty, despite the inviting glisten from her bobbed chestnut hair and the promise of warmth from her body.

“You line up two broads to get pinched tomorrow night?” he asked, his voice hard.

Lily could see, without needing to look, the coarse pubiclike hair that matted the back of his large, gnarled fighter’s hands on the desk before her. It caused the hair at her nape to stir.

“Yes,” she said, her tone neutral and matter-of-fact. “Mabel McGuire and Shakey Miles.”

Now his scowl deepened, the cigar tip dipping against the increased clench of his teeth.

“Shakey? Why Shakey? She pulls in nearly a C-note a night. Get one of the others, another pig like Mabel.”

Her smile deepened as she thought: How fortunate it was that Big Dom owned one of the city’s most profitable speakeasies. He’d have little influence over man or woman otherwise.

“Okay, honey, if that’s what you want.”

“Yes, that’s what I want. Now beat it, I’m busy.”

She stood slowly, admiring the sparkle of the three-carat diamond on her finger as it tossed the glow from the green-shaded desk lamp about the room. As she turned to leave, she heard him bark once more but did not bother to turn and face him.

“And Lily,” he said, “I’ll tell you somethin’ else I want. I want you and that Joe Rudi to knock it off. There’s more than some might say I was crazy, but I ain’t blind and I ain’t stupid. I hear about you and that bull-necked Sicilian goon playing footsies just one more time, I’m gonna rip his lungs out. Then I’m gonna bust up that pretty face of yours real good and put you to workin’ the kitchen steamin’ pots with the Chinks. You hear me?”

Still without turning, she answered, keeping her voice light, her tone singsong. Lily had been around, and she knew when a dangerous man was mad, and she knew when one was bad mad. Big Dom Cosenza was bad mad.

“Nothin’ going on there, lover. I swear on my soul, but I hear you. Joe and me won’t even speak on a single thing but Prison business — Big Dom business.” She paused and waited for the dismissive grunt she knew was coming, then left the room. Softly.

Guiseppe Cataldo Rudialaro was thirty years old and known throughout both the criminal and societal worlds of New York City as Joe Rudi. He had shared a misspent childhood and youth prowling the South Brooklyn streets and brothels with his lifelong friend, Alphonse Capone. And then, eight long years ago, in 1919, a local misfortune had befallen young Alphonse and driven him off into the protective womb of Chicago’s underworld.

Young Rudi had then taken up with Charles Luciano, a bootlegger and pimp known to one and all as “Lucky.” Joe had initially served as a low-rung enforcer and debt collector, gradually working his way up to occasional hit man. But later, as signs of Rudi’s awkward addiction to alcohol and games of chance had become apparent to Luciano, genuinely fond of young Joe, Lucky had assigned him a lesser role as overseer in Big Dom’s classy joint down in the Village. It had, after all, been Luciano’s money and booze, political juice and muscle, which had set Big Dom up in business, and as any Astor or Carnegie might do, Lucky had had the foresight to put friendly and loyal eyes and ears into the midst of his investment. Sometimes, Luciano well knew, a man made his own luck.

With Rudi serving as an extremely competent and enthusiastic bouncer for the speakeasy and brothel, Big Dom had harbored no complaints. It had been a win-win situation: a Luciano trademark. So far, for nearly three years, it had worked well.

Now, just before midnight, Rudi sat hunched over good English gin and clear ice while seated at the small, dim corner bar tucked at the rear of the brothel’s lounge. He watched with hooded, half-drunken eyes as two hookers worked a customer, swelling an imagination of sexual anticipation in the poor sucker that Joe knew even they, with the combined might of their considerable abilities, would never satisfy.

He slowly sipped at his gin and turned his attention back to Lily, who was perched sensuously on the black leather barstool beside him.

“I ain’t scareda no punch-drunk ex-pug,” he said, the cigarette- and alcohol-ravaged vocal cords in his throat grating on each syllable. “He can name his poison: fists, knives, guns, or better. I can take him three ways from Sunday.”

Lily smiled at him sweetly and patted gently at his hand where it was clenched tightly on the bar’s edge.

“I know that, sweetie,” she purred, her eyelids fluttering seductively as she thought: What predictable fools these thugs all are. “But, dearie, that’s not the point. The point is, Momma likes the moola, and Big Dom’s got the big pile. You come up just a little short in that department. So, we need to break it off — clean — grand as it all was.”

She leaned in closer, allowing her cleavage to compress and her five-dollar-a-bottle imported perfume to reach into his brain. Rudi’s face, at best impassive and bulldoggish, turned colder and meaner.

“There’s a name used for a dame talks like that,” he said, allowing more hiss into his usual rasp.

Lily pursed her lips. “But Joe, lover, you’re too much a class act to use that on me. You know, baby, nobody ever loved me better’n you, Joe. We’ll always have that.”

Joe Rudi had the education of a street orphan and the finesse of a Roman galley slave, but behind his hard dark eyes an animal’s cunning danced lightly and vigilantly.

He smiled at her, cold and cruel, sneering as he spoke.

“Bullshit, baby. You run those lines on the headwaiter and that newspaperman you got your eye on. Me and you, we ain’t got a damned thing. But startin’ night after tomorrow, right after the raid is done with, you can start skimmin’ a little more of the nightly take. Let’s say a C-note more. And then we’ll have us somethin’. That’s my price.”

Lily frowned. This did not sound right. She had been prepared for the roar of wounded manly pride and a painfully cut-off libido. But this. This sounded like greed. This she could respect, and it frightened her.

“Your price? But baby, your price for what?”

Rudi slipped an Old Gold between his thick lips and dug out a diamond-encrusted lighter. Its gold face was inscribed, “To my paisano, with friendship forever, Al.” He struck the flame and raised his eyes to hers. Still smiling around the cigarette, he now spoke softly.

“My price to not go see Big Dom. My price to not tell him about that cute little dimple you got on your left ass cheek. To not tell him... stuff. You know, dolly... stuff.”

Lily sat back on her stool. She had a sudden vision of a hospital emergency room, with doctors peering down at her face, horror in their eyes, blood running warm on her skin. Then, suddenly, the hot and smelly steaming kitchen of the Alimony Prison pushed into her mind’s eye and the chop-chop cadence of Chinese laborers began to echo within her head.

She didn’t know which image terrified her more, but she did know one thing: Neither was to her liking. No, she thought, this was not quite what she had in mind.

Lily was up and about early the next morning, eight o’clock, without a care that Dom would ever know she had left the cozy confines of their Sullivan Street townhouse. They had both rolled in at five A.M., after closing the Prison down and locking up the night’s receipts in the hidden safe. Big Dom had been good and drunk, and Lily knew he would not awaken until noon at the very earliest. And she planned to be back home long before that.

Lily quickly and quietly dressed in her best uptown clothes, as the nature of her errand made it best conducted away from the small-town intimacy of the twisting, tree-lined Village streets. Yes, it was better that she head for the hustle and bustle of Midtown, away from her local celebrity status — just another face in the great metropolitan crowd. She invested seventy-five cents in taxi fare and luxuriated in the comfort of an Oldsmobile’s rear seat, thankful for the grizzled cabby’s silence as he skillfully snaked through the workday traffic.

Later, a second cab sped her homeward, and she took leave of it at the corner of Sullivan and West Third, walking the last half-block to the townhouse. And when Big Dom awoke at one-fifteen that afternoon, Lily greeted him with a smile from their kitchen table.

“Morning, baby,” she said. “I’ve got some nice strong coffee for my big strong man. You sit down and let me serve it to you.”

Big Dom paused in the doorway, waiting for the bourbon to stop pounding in his temples. His bloodshot eyes took in the beauty of Lily, her full, lush body swelling the silk and satin nightgown she wore. He smiled. What a lucky son of a bitch he was, he thought. Had the world by the short ones, he did, and he would never give it up.

“Thanks, dolly,” he said. “While I’m drinkin’ it, you go get yourself ready for me. I need a little lovin’this morning.”

Lily went to the stove and poured black coffee into his favorite mug. Turning, she allowed the nightgown to slip itself open a bit. She smiled at his hulking mass, still hovering in the kitchen doorway.

“I’m sure glad to hear that, baby,” she cooed. “Nobody ever loved me better than you, Daddy. You hurry down this coffee. I’ll be waiting for you.”

At exactly ten o’clock that evening, three police vehicles rolled to a stop in front of the Alimony Prison. Lieutenant Francis Dermott McAdams, thirty-two years old and a strapping six feet two inches tall, climbed from the lead vehicle, a black Studebaker. Closing the door behind him, he leaned into the open passenger window and spoke to the patrolman sitting in the driver’s seat.

“You stay waitin’ here, Douglas, lad,” he said, his brogue nearly untouched despite fifteen years of American citizenship. “I expect it won’t take me and the boys long to be clearin’ out this cesspool.”

He ambled to the sidewalk and eyed the plain red steel door of the nondescript rowhouse so common to the Village streets. When Sergeant Behan appeared at his side, McAdams smiled without turning.

“All right, Behan, go and give it a knock. Big Dom will be openin’ it personally, I’m told, and quite the honor he must be figurin’ he’s laying upon us, I wager. Go on, lad, give it a knock.”

Once inside, McAdams waved a casual hand at the ten uniformed patrolmen who had ridden in the small paddy wagon which now sat parked behind his Studebaker.

“Go on, boys, grab a citizen or two before they all scramble down a sewer pipe,” he said casually. Upon first seeing the police, two dozen patrons had begun a mad dash for an exit hidden at the rear of the club. As they ran, the musicians onstage stood and slowly began to break down their equipment in preparation for moving it all to the equally expansive stage on the third floor. Tomorrow night, after all, would be just another workday.

McAdams turned to face Cosenza. Big Dom stood impassively next to the lanky lieutenant, unconsciously trying to stretch his own five foot ten frame to equal that of McAdams.

“Well, Dominick, it seems an amazing coincidence there’s such a light crowd I’m witnessing. Seems your regulars have chosen this very evenin’ of all such evenin’s not to drop in. The hand of Providence, it clearly is.”

Big Dom frowned. McAdams perplexed him, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like McAdams much, either.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “Providence.”

“You wait here, Dominick, till we can cart you off and square your bail away. I had them bring along a car just for you. Not as jazzy as that Stutz Bearcat you drive, I worry, but a good, solid Plymouth sedan. I’ll be goin’ on upstairs to see the ladies now, if you don’t mind.”

Big Dom nodded. “Go on. Lil’s up there, she’ll get the two girls for you.”

McAdams turned to Behan, who stood a discreet ten paces away casually eyeing a bottle of Beefeater that sat unopened in an ice bucket at the nearest table.

“Sergeant Behan,” McAdams said, his voice cheerful and light. “I’ll be goin’ upstairs now. You keep all the lads down here. It’s tact and Christian charity we’ll be needin’ up in that sin parlor, and I’ll be only trustin’ in meself for that job.” He glanced at the object of Behan’s attention and smiled tightly.

“Why don’t you and some of the boys in blue be checkin’ for evidence, like good policemen ought to. Why, from here, there’s no way of tellin’ if that’s real gin or not. But you let me know, now, lad, when I get back down here.”

He turned back to Cosenza. “I’ll be takin’ my leave of you, now, Dominick. Why don’t you go and take a seat in that Plymouth, my brother. Behan will be out in a short bit to run you down to the station house.”

Dominick Cosenza leaned his hard-muscled frame inward to the lieutenant. He kept his voice low when he spoke.

“I took a count this afternoon, Francis. Make sure those coppers of yours keep it light. A halfa case each, no more.” He tapped at a temple with a thick forefinger. “I got the count right up here, Francis. Remember that.”

McAdams let his own face smile coldly. “And it’s good to know there’s somethin’ up there, Dominick — besides visions of whore tail and dollar signs, that is.”

They held one another’s gaze for five full seconds and then, as if by prearrangement, both looked away in unison. That successfully concluded their business, and Big Dom turned towards the checkroom and his heavy cashmere topcoat.

McAdams crossed the cafe floor to the discreet elevator at the rear wall. He stopped three feet short of the burly, squat man who stood guard there, clad in a tuxedo which stretched across his enormous muscled arms and chest.

“I’ll be goin’ upstairs now, Guido, if you please,” McAdams said in the same cheerful singsong he had used on Big Dom. The man tilted his head and gazed across the floor. When he saw Big Dom give him a discreet nod, he stepped aside.

“Name’s John,” he said harshly as McAdams stepped into the tiny confines of the elevator.

The lieutenant turned and pulled at the operating lever to activate the lift. He smiled at the man as the door began to close.

“Why of course it is, Guido, it’s the only one your mother could spell, God bless her soul.”

Lily crossed the floor of the brothel lounge and greeted him at the elevator. They embraced warmly, exchanging small kisses on one another’s cheeks.

“It’s good you’re here, Francis,” Lily said, her smile radiant and genuine.

McAdams returned the smile fondly. “Ah, Lillian, you’re as lovely as a picture.” Now he stepped back from her, took each of her hands in his, and gave an exaggerated sad frown. “And I’m askin’ meself for the thousandth time, how for the love of Jesus did a sweet young Irish lass such as yourself come to be mixin’ up with the likes of these dagos? If it was the high life you were cravin’, Tommy Sullivan runs a fine old Irish pub on Seventh Avenue, and there’s no more invitin’ a speakeasy than Rory O’Moore’s East Side joint. Then, all these unpleasantries could well be avoided, lass. As me sainted old mother was sayin’ just last night, these wops are no better than murderin’ English dogs.”

Lily pulled him towards her and kissed his cheek once more. “You’re sweet, Francis, but we’ve already spoken of this. Why, it was just this morning you were telling me the very same thing.”

Now McAdams smiled. “The truth is firm, Lillian, and same in the evenin’ as it is at morn. But we’ll move on. Do you have two girls lined up for the facin’ of justice, dearie?”

“Yes, I do.”

He nodded, a serious expression running across his features. “And are they clean, Lillian? In case some of the lads get a bit frisky in the paddy wagon?”

Lily smiled coyly. “Why, Francis, all my girls are clean. They take a bath every night. Most nights.”

He nodded again. “Well, then, run along. Go fetch ’em.”

She glanced around the room, assuring herself that it was empty of anyone but them.

“But Francis,” she said in a low whisper, “is our business confirmed?”

He smiled, his dark blue eyes kind and full of true affection. “Of course, me darlin’,” he said in equally low tones. “Big Dom is on his way, in the trusted hands of good Sergeant George Behan, my right-hand man. Your troubles are all about to end, Lillian, as the Good Lord is my judge. The wheels are set to turnin’.”

She smiled. “I knew I could count on you, Francis. As long as we’re friends, I’ll never see the inside of that damn kitchen.”

Now he smiled. “Nor will my children ever be layin’ eyes upon the bleak and sorrowful walls of the poorhouse, saints be praised.”

Lily left for the rear bedroom, returning shortly with Mabel McGuire and Shakey Miles’s replacement, Margarita Miller. McAdams smiled at them; they were old acquaintances.

“Get yourselves downstairs now, ladies, if you will. Look for Patrolman Krausman. You can’t miss him, he’s the Jew and the only copper won’t be suckin’ on a bottle a booze when you get down there. He’ll run you in to face the wrath of the law and learn you your lessons. Go on now.”

The girls entered the elevator and disappeared. McAdams turned back to face Lily.

“And now, Lillian, where would that baboon, Rudi, be hiber-natin’? In one of the back rooms samplin’ the wares, and gratis to boot, I’d wager.”

She smiled at him sweetly. “Exactly right, Francis. You wait here. I’ll get him.”

As he waited, McAdams watched as a sudden parade of prostitutes, free of their labors for the balance of the night, filed through the lounge and out the rear fire door to a stairway leading to the back alley. McAdams smiled at each one, greeting them by name, and they variously blew kisses, toodle-oohed, or shook their bosoms for him as they went by. Ah, he thought, it had been a sweet day when, ten years earlier, he had been driven by the dismal employment opportunities for a poor young Irish immigrant to sit for the policemen’s civil service exam. A sweet day, indeed.

When Lily reentered the room, a brooding, obviously drunken Joe Rudi was trailing behind her. He went straight to the bar and reached behind it, pulling down a bottle of gin. Taking two glasses, he sat at the bar and turned to McAdams.

“You wanna drink?” he asked, his words slightly slurred.

McAdams smiled. “Why, Joseph, I truly would. But I’m on duty and I’ve got me reputation to think of.”

Rudi shrugged and poured gin into his own glass.

“Suit yourself,” he said, sipping at it. “But there ain’t nobody here but us, and we got no concerns about reputations, I guess.”

McAdams turned to Lily with a tight smile.

“Now is that so, Lillian? Are we to say the whole floor is empty, ’cept for we three Christian souls?”

She returned the smile. “Empty as our graves, Francis. I checked myself.”

McAdams moved to the bar. “Then pour me that drink, Joseph. I’m not fussy who it is I drink with.”

Rudi poured two fingers of gin into the glass. McAdams frowned at it. “Well, for the love of Mary, Rudi, try to remember the whole damn world ain’t Eye-talian. You’re drinkin’ with an Irishman now, lad, so heavy-up that hand a bit.”

Rudi scowled, but again reached for the bottle. He filled the rock glass, six ounces of straight gin; clear as water, fragrant as a flower. McAdams lifted the glass and downed half of it in a single swallow. He smiled and licked at his lips, raising the glass in Rudi’s direction.

“To your health, of course,” he said, and then swallowed the balance of the booze.

Now he stepped back four feet from Rudi and squinted.

“Joseph,” he said, a scolding tone creeping into his voice. “Joseph, I’m afraid my policeman’s eye has detected a bit of bulge there at your waist. Would that be a heater you’re packin’there, lad? And on the very night there’s to be a lawful crackdown on the joint? That would be insultin’to me, Joseph. A bit insultin’.”

Rudi smiled. “Relax, copper. The gun’s legit. I got all the paperwork I need.”

McAdams stepped back another foot, an exaggerated look of shock washing across his face. “Why, Joseph, heaven forbid you’re implying the boys down at Pistol Compliance displayed such a serious lapse of judgment as to issue a thug such as yourself the legal papers for a carry permit? Is that what you’re implyin’?”

Rudi smiled and drained his glass. He refilled it and then McAdams’s.

“Yeah,” he said, an amused smile on his lips. “That’s what I’m implyin’.”

McAdams shook his head sadly. “Well, then, Joseph, do me a service before I join you in another taste. Slip that heater out and lay it down on the bar. I’ll be feelin’ better with me eyeballs able to rest on it.”

Rudi shrugged. “Whatever you say, copper,” he said, a scornful sneer creeping into his tone.

He reached into his waistband and slipped the gun out from under his worn tuxedo jacket. He placed it on the bar top and slid it five feet away. McAdams glanced at the heavy Remington revolver and sighed.

“Well, Lillian,” he said, his eyes planted squarely on Rudi. “Time to call it an evenin’.”

Lily stepped back further from the bar and smiled. “Yes, Francis, it is indeed.”

Rudi spun his barstool around and faced McAdams. “Already?” he said, his smile now dismissive. “I thought you was an Irish booze master. One drink and you quit?”

McAdams smiled coldly. “No, Joseph Rudi. It’s you that’s quittin’.”

Now Rudi’s smile turned to a puzzled frown. “What?” he asked.

From her distance, Lily spoke. “Give my regards to my first husband, Joe,” she said sweetly.

Rudi looked at her, clearly baffled, the gin muddling his brain.

“Your first husband? Tony Olives? Ain’t he dead?”

McAdams drew the forty-four service revolver from under his heavy woolen winter coat.

“Yes, indeed he is, Joseph. Dead and burnin’ in hell, by the saints above us,” he said.

He raised the gun and fired. Lily flinched against the crashing boom. The heavy slug tore through the center of Rudi’s heart, and he died halfway to the hardwood floor.

McAdams stepped quickly down the bar. Using the now-hot barrel of his own revolver, he pushed Rudi’s gun off the bar top and onto the brothel floor, then kicked it gently towards the leaking, lifeless body. He turned and faced Lily.

“Imagine the brass of the man,” he said. “Rushin’ at a trained law-enforcement officer such as Francis McAdams, a gun in his hand. Why, it was a damn-near godless suicide, it was.”

Lily raised her eyes from the corpse. She smiled at McAdams.

“And in front of a witness, no less. What ever was he thinking?”

McAdams shook his head and compressed his lips. “Lillian, it was the demon liquor doin’ his thinkin’, that’s what it was. That’s why the boys and I do our damnedest to close down these sin parlors. Praise the Eighteenth Amendment for the lives it has saved!”

They moved silently closer to the body, standing shoulder to shoulder and gazing down at it. Without either looking away from Rudi’s corpse, they spoke.

“Now, Lillian,” he said. “what was that deal again? Fifty dollars a night for a year’s time, was it?”

“That’s it, Francis, my dear. Fifty a night every night the cathouse is open, for one full year.”

He nodded. “And a tidy sum it’ll be. It’s not a joke raisin’ two children on a lowly policeman’s pay. The whores’ money will go to good use meetin’ the needs of Francis junior and Mary Elizabeth, I can assure you that, lass.”

With that, the rear door flew wide and the elevator behind them slid open. A half-dozen policemen, pistols drawn and with the brims of their hats turned backwards, rushed in. McAdams held up a calming hand.

“Take a beat, lads, and wind down. The thing is done with, thank the saints. The lady and I have escaped a tragedy. Alas, we’ve lost a soul here, boys, and a brother in Jesus. But it couldn’t be avoided.”

The officers gathered around Lily and McAdams, their guns dangling in their now-relaxed hands. After a moment, McAdams looked up and gazed about at his underlings, a happy smile lighting his face.

“Ah, just think on it, lads. What a great and wondrous country we live in, a country where the likes of us can stand, and the likes of Joseph Rudi can die, on the very same floor where the saintly and honorable Mayor Jimmy Walker himself trod just a few short nights ago.”

Now he looked into Lily’s beautiful gray eyes as she smiled up at him. His mind swam with memories of past sexual delights shared with the woman behind those eyes, and her smile told him there were yet more to come.

Ah yes, he thought. A great and wondrous country indeed.

Copyright © 2006 Lou Manfredo