Page 88 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
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Arriving at the Lion’s Den dressed as a man turned out to be just as beneficial as it had proved to be when leaving Helen’s house. Women in their short dresses and bared arms, their jaunty hats and exuberant voices, weren’t easily overlooked. But men, apparently, were.
Fern asked the cabbie to let her out a few houses down from the Den. The concrete walk seemed to have a pulse as she closed in on Mama Rosa’s triple-decker. Her windows were dark, but the muffled, thrumming music was unmistakable. The house next to Mama Rosa’s was dark too, but the one next to that had its first-story lights on. A pair of young women with their arms hooked, and the three men they were with, cut through the yard. That was the entrance tonight, it appeared.
Fern hurried to catch up with the group, but by the time she reached the back door, they were already disappearing inside. She’d wanted to hear the night’s password, but now, her hasty plan had run out of steam.
A chain-link fence divided the backyard from Mama Rosa’s, but Fern had a view of the autos parked out back. Cal’s yellow Roadster was among them. Hewashere. A few men in fedoras and long coats stood out back, near the enclosed stairwell that led to Cal’s third-floor room. The ends of their cigarettes glowed red in the night, a haze of smoke wreathing around them. Fern retraced her steps to the front walk, wondering if she could somehow sneak her way in from behind Mama Rosa’s. The door hadn’t been locked the time Rod had led her through it.
She stepped quietly around the side of the house toward the row of parked cars. The men’s voices became a little more audible as they laughed over something together. Peeking around the corner, she watched as one of the three men reentered the Den—the door was unlocked, just as she’d hoped. Loud music drifted out into the yard before the door closed again.
Minutes passed as she waited for the last two men to leave. Cal was inside somewhere, and after making love to her last night, and choosing to leave the city, she knew in her soul that the only reason he wouldn’t have come back to Helen’s place was if he was in trouble. Fern couldn’t leave without finding him. Another handful of minutes crept by, and just when she was ready to go back to the other entrance and wait to overhear the speakeasy’s password, a raucous noise blared at the back of the Den. She peeked out and saw two men tumbling through the back door, arms swinging, fists hammering. They fell onto the driveway gravel as several more men and women followed, all of them shouting. The two menwho’d been standing guard leaped in to break up the fight.
It was now or never.
Fern stepped out from behind the corner of the house and joined the group of drunken men and women. She backed up quickly and disappeared inside without being noticed. One challenge sorted out. Now, another loomed. She needed to find Cal and not be seen by Rod or his henchmen.
Fern entered the room near the bar, into what, thankfully, appeared to be another crush of men and women in disarray. Shouting and posturing, with men butting up against each other’s chests, causing a scene that served to distract everyone from her presence as she skirted around the edges of the crowd unnoticed. She pulled the brim of her hat lower, though nothing would conceal her scarred half if anyone were to truly look at her. Her heart stuttered as Vinny came pushing through the Den’s patrons toward the commotion. He didn’t see her, even though he passed so closely she caught a whiff of his acidic cologne.
Fern cast a look around the rest of the Den, the chandeliers as bright and glittering as ever, but there was no sign of Cal. He might have been up in his room, but if Rod was holding him, it seemed more likely he’d be somewhere Rod could keep an eye on him. The black curtains between the columns that led to Rod’s office swished aside. She gulped a breath and turned away to feign interest in the table nearest to her. Rod emerged, his figure cutting through the house floor like a calm wave, toward the melee. Fern kept himin the corner of her vision, and when he’d passed, she made for the curtains. There was no one standing guard right then.
It was probably stupid. Definitely reckless. But she’d come this far, and nothing could make her turn around—not before finding out where Cal was, and if he was all right. Her heart streamed out uneven beats as her eyes tore up and down the short hall. Rod’s office door was shut; two other doors in the hallway were closed as well. Not knowing what either of them led to, she could only try the handle of the first and pray she didn’t walk in on something shocking like she had when Cal had first taken her to see Rod. Fern twisted the handle and pushed the door open an inch. The smell of cleaner spiraled up her nostrils; it was a storage closet. She closed the door and dashed to the one across the hall. This one opened into a low-ceilinged, cellar-like room with four narrow, metal cisterns lined up along a back wall. All were connected by pipes and hoses. It was a distilling room, Fern realized, and a bare light bulb shone over shelves of product: gin, bottled in quart jugs. On the other side of the room, a man sat tied to a metal folding chair, hands bound behind his back, ankles bound to the chair legs.
Her heart stuttered.Cal.Fern rushed in, shutting the door quietly behind her. His head drooped forward, chin touching his chest. His hair, dampened by sweat, was a loose curtain that partly obscured his bloodied face.
“Cal!” She dropped to her knees before him. Immediately, she started to untie the rope around one of his ankles, her hands shaking.
He muttered something incomprehensible, and his swollen eyes parted as far as they could. Bruises ringedthem, and blood—fresh and dried—streaked down his face from his split brows and lips.
“Fern,” he murmured, as if half-asleep. But then he sucked a sharp breath through his broken and bloody nose. “No. No, no, no. Fern, get out of here; you can’t be here.”
He thrashed in the chair, and with his one ankle now unbound he nearly stood up. But then the chair slammed back down onto the concrete floor.
“Rod phoned Helen earlier; he knew where I was,” she said, ignoring him as she worked the knotted rope on the second ankle. She wasn’t going to leave him here like this.
“He found me taking the negatives,” Cal said, his throat raspy and dry.
“I should have never asked you to get them.” Tears sprang to her eyes. This was her fault. All of it.
“No, Fern, don’t, it’s not?—”
Muffled noise from the main floor of the Den became clear and loud as the distilling room door opened. A shout of alarm raised the small hairs on the back of her neck, followed instantly by the clicking of gun hammers being cocked.
“Rod, no!” Cal shouted.
“Hands up.” Rodney’s voice splintered through her veins like ice. She dropped the rope that she’d just loosened from around Cal’s ankle and raised her arms.
Someone tugged her onto her feet and slapped the fedora from her head. Vinny. His sputtering laugh ricocheted around the small room.
“Cal’s moll’s come to spring him,” he announced, his mad giggle raking up and down her spine.
He tugged Fern back against his chest and pinned her to him.
Cal tried to stand again, but with his arms still bound behind him and to the chair, he didn’t get far. “Leave her alone,” he said through gritted teeth.
Vinny tightened his grip on Fern. “I don’t take orders from you no more.”
Rod holstered his weapon and took out a cigarette. He lit it and waved it toward Fern. “I don’t get it. My big brother double-crossesme, his own flesh and blood, for…this?”
