Page 30 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
Whatever they were talking about, it had to do with Rodney, and Fern was almost certain it wasn’t legal. She stood there, pretzel fast cooling in her hand, forgotten by both Cal and the squirming vendor, though not by the other people passing by. Looks drifted her way, and one girl walking toward them jerked backward when Fern met her eyes.
She angled her scarred half away from view and refocused on John.
“Listen,” he said, his voice dropping, “I tell you a name, and I’m fish bait, okay? I got eyes on me, Cal.”
“Here? Now?” Cal asked as he finished his pretzel.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Jesus, I shoulda never started in with this shit.”
Cal wadded up his napkin after wiping his hands and mouth and walked casually to a nearby trash can to toss it in the garbage. He brushed off his coat sleeves and readjusted his hat as he ambled back to the pretzel cart.
“Those two goons by the photographer’s stage—don’tturn your head, princess,” Cal tracked on quickly. “They’re Jacky Boys.”
“I didn’t tell you that,” John said, his voice rising. As Cal instructed, she kept her eyes on other things, the photographer’s stage hazy in her periphery. A line of couples, waiting to pose for the camera, seemed toshuffle and move. But there were two figures that stood still.
“You with them?” Cal asked John, and for the first time, his calm exterior blistered with anger.
John put up his hands in obvious surrender but then lowered them immediately. “No. I swear it. You know me. I’m with you. I’m with Rodney.”
“Yeah, I know you,” Cal muttered as he took Fern’s arm. “I know you’re a coward. You watched three pals swallow some lead, then you develop a real convenient case of amnesia.”
Fern stared up at Cal’s face. His disgust for the man in front of him had turned his eyes black. The muscles along his jaw jumped, and his nostrils flared with barely contained fury. He kept his voice low, but his grip on her elbow was starting to intensify.
“What are you accusing me of?” John asked, no longer timid. His lips thinned. Gone was any show of fear.
“You know what you did,” Cal answered and, with a tug on Fern’s elbow, started away. “And so do we.”
With his command to walk, Fern’s legs fell into step. He kept her close to his side, his free hand reaching under his long coat and staying there as they retraced their steps toward the center of the Pier.
“Don’t look back,” he said, his eyes straight ahead.
She realized her head was already half turned. “You don’t want to know if they’re following us?”
“They’re following us.”
It suddenly felt as though the whole Pier was shaking and sinking straight into the harbor.
“What was all of that about?” she asked, her pretzel pressed pancake flat in her clenched hand.
Cal surprised her with an answer. “Some trouble last week. One of our runs got ambushed. Everyone but Pretzel John got a permanent lead headache, and our supply got nabbed.”
Their feet ate up the old boards on the promenade as they hurried back inland, her mind working hard and fast to keep up with Cal’s turns of phrases.
“Supply?”
“Gin,” he explained.
Then, without warning, he steered them through a pair of doors, straight inside a cabaret. The lights were dim, the music blaring. Clouds of pipe and cigarette smoke stung her eyes. A man standing sentry in the foyer held up his hand as if to stop them—but he immediately lowered it and parted a pair of heavy velour drapes.
Cal leaned toward him and whispered in his ear before whisking her through the drapes. Fern gave in to the urge to twist around. The drapes fell as the two men from the end of the Pier turned into the club entrance.
“They’re here,” she said to Cal. He continued through the room, around tables and people imbibing despite prohibition orders. Tall, multipaned windows lined the far wall, overlooking the lake and the lights of the shoreline. On the congested dance floor, people kicked their legs wildly doing the Charleston.
“They won’t get in,” he said above a trombone solo.
They cut around the dance floor, drawing attention. Fern turned her headaway from the dancers toward Cal’s shoulder. He still held her arm, their bodies awkwardly jouncing into one another as they walked.
She was starting to wonder if they were going to stay tucked inside the cabaret when she saw a door behind a grouping of tables, covered in white linens and crystal wine glasses, and occupied by men and ladies dressed to the nines.
