Chapter2 - 2

The waitress came to take the plates; he ignored her, holding Nora’s eyes. “You can take that to the bank, Nora Walsh.”

“Maybe you don’t lie, but you don’t tell me much.”

Nora rested her chin in her hand, returning his gaze. “What do I really know about you?”

“Xavier W. Byrne, thirty years old. Marines in the war, Sicily campaign. No wife. No kids. Big Foggy Bottom family, uncles and cousins all over. I own a bottle club, I do well enough, I want you to come to Colonial Beach for the weekend.”

His gaze was steady. “What else do you need to know to make it a yes?”

Nora let out a breath. “Dinner somewhere,”

she said. “Take a night off. Let me ask you questions. Answer them.”

That flick of a smile again. “Okay.”

“Do you think Mr.Rosenberg at the deli is related to the Rosenbergs?”

Arlene wondered.

“Sugar pie, there’s more than one Rosenberg in the United States,”

Grace pointed out. Nora had observed before that Grace only broke out sugar pie when charming people she disliked. Arlene was always sugar pie. Mrs.Nilsson was sometimes sugar pie, when Grace needed to use the oven downstairs. Nora was never sugar pie; neither was Fliss, or even the annoying little Lina.

“I’m just saying ,”

Arlene said primly. “There is a significant crossover between Jews and Reds, you know. Harland says—you know, Harland Adams from the bureau...”

A pause here so they could breathlessly ask who was Harland , that name she’d been dropping for the last month. No one asked. Arlene went on a little peevishly. “Harland says—”

Nora climbed over Pete’s gangly legs to get to the hot plate and tip a little more corned beef hash into her bowl. Astounding how much food Grace could get out of that single hot plate balanced on the dinky icebox, and how many people she could feed in this tiny apartment. Right now they had ten in a room barely bigger than a closet: Fliss and baby Angela between Claire and Grace all sitting on the narrow bed with their backs to the wall, Pete on the floor up against the rickety bureau, Joe sitting cross-legged in the doorway, old Mrs.Muller planted scowling in the single armchair like the crone of death, Arlene perched on the window seat, the black-haired girl newly moved into 3A standing by the radiator since she claimed it hurt her bandaged knee to sit. She looked like she was enjoying herself at her very first Briar Club supper—Grace’s mismatched dishes littered everywhere, the smell of corned beef hash and potatoes permeated the air, and the painted vine on the green wall now flowered the entire length of the room. Periodically someone broke out Grace’s little tray of paints and added a flower to a branch. The quality of the flowers varied considerably, Nora thought. Grace’s were artistic, as graceful as she was. Nora’s were all tulips, the one flower she could reliably draw. Pete’s were big enthusiastic blobs. Fliss’s were always, always pink.

“Ready for Victoria sponge?”

Fliss asked in that bubbly English voice. “No, you sit right there, I’ll get it!”

and soon she was bouncing through the room handing dessert plates around. Everything about Fliss was perky, full of pep: her perfectly curled hair, her perfectly fluffed skirts, the perfectly swirled whipped cream on her cake. It made Nora tired just to look at her—how could any woman with a baby less than a year old look so neat and full of enthusiasm? Nora had endless memories of the various mothers in her family—Tim’s wife, all the cousins—and her old friends from high school, and they tended to run to lank housedresses and irritated expressions. Fliss looked like she’d stepped straight out of a Doris Day movie: freshly applied pink lipstick, clothes exquisitely ironed, all that eagerness to help ... It was all Nora could do, at the end of every day, to crawl out of her slim suits into a cotton robe, shake her hair down, and curl up on her narrow bed with a cup of Grace’s sun tea. “What?”

Fliss asked, seeing Nora’s tilted smile.

My family wishes they had a daughter more like you , Nora thought. Even if you are a Sassenach.

“Take the rest of the hash, Nora,”

Grace said at the end of the night after the others had trailed back to their own rooms. The black-haired girl from 3A—Bea, that was her name—had been last to make it down the stairs, hopping on her one good leg, waving off help. “Far too much left over here just for me,”

Grace went on, proffering the dish.

Nora took it, wondering if Grace suspected just how empty her neighbor’s cupboards were. She was a woman who noticed things. “Do you have children?”

Nora asked suddenly.

“Goodness, why do you ask?”

Grace laughed.

“You’re always feeding people. It’s something mothers do.”

Even Nora’s mother, forever urging everyone Just a little more colcannon .

“No, no children for me,”

Grace said. But Nora wondered. She’d believed Xavier when he said he wouldn’t lie to her; there was that streak of iron running through him that didn’t seem like it would lend itself to a liar’s endless pliability. But Grace March looked like she could lie right to your face and smile sweet as cream while she did it.

Nora admired that. It was hard to be a workingwoman with a past and not know how to spin a good lie when expedient. Nora had spent her childhood in the confessional booth at St.Polycarp’s agonizing if even the mildest fib passed her lips—now, if backed into a corner, she could lie like a rug. “Good night, Grace.”

“Good night, Tipperary. Your turn to cook next Thursday, remember.”

“Sure, and I hope you like poundies and soda bread.”

Nora exaggerated her gran’s broad brogue as she grabbed her coat and headed down the stairs into the December chill.

Just a quick walk around the block to the Crispy Biscuit—the manager didn’t mind handing out paychecks Thursday night if you were willing to pick them up after the dinner rush ended. Nora shivered around the corner of Wood and Briar, thinking of Xavier’s offhand remark about buying her a mink. Not that she’d ever accept such a thing, but how warm was mink? Never mind; if she gritted her teeth till spring, she could snap a new coat off the sales rack when the winter clothing was slashed down to nothing...

Nora had forgotten how fast, how frighteningly fast violence could happen. Across the street the double doors of the Amber Club swung open and a man stumbled out, blood flying from his nose. He hit the curb and stumbled again, right off it and into the street, and as the yellow glare of the streetlight caught his narrow olive-skinned face, Nora’s entire world tilted. George , she thought, really quite lucidly, all things considered. George, whom she hadn’t seen in over a year. For a moment she heard the low croon of his voice in her ear, felt the sharp snap of the blow against her forehead, and it took a long inward shriek of a moment to realize he wasn’t coming for her. He hadn’t even seen her. He was too busy being beaten to a pulp.

A dark-haired man in his shirtsleeves came out of the Amber Club after George, walking unhurriedly, followed by a stream of waiters and curious patrons holding bottles of beer and tumblers of whiskey. The dark-haired man ignored them, seized George’s flailing hand just as he was rising, and broke it with one fast, efficient yank of the fingers in opposite twisting directions. George yelled, falling back, and his assailant put a fist in his face. He went to one knee and kept sinking punches— applying punches, Nora thought dizzily. This was a beating being applied, like paint being applied to a wall. The man paused at one point to turn a ring around on his finger, and she saw the flash of a diamond before he used it like a knuckle-duster to sink George Harding’s nose back into his face in a shatter of cartilage. That was when her blurring eyes registered that yes, it was Xavier Byrne. Xavier, who bought a hamburger patty every day at lunch for his dog; Xavier, with whom she was supposed to be going to dinner at Martin’s next week when he had a night off from the club. Xavier, who had risen now at the edge of the street, George Harding bleeding on the ground at his feet, and was speaking in that quiet voice that carried with effortless authority across the street.

“George,”

he said, one foot resting on the other man’s outstretched wrist, “get the fuck out of my club. No Warring is ever going to employ you again. And if you pull one more marked deck at any card table at any Warring club in town, you’re done.”

And he pulled a revolver from his waistband at the small of his back—a .22, the frozen thought stuttered across Nora’s mind; she was a policeman’s daughter; she knew her firearms—and he calmly snubbed the barrel up against the little finger on George’s uninjured hand and fired a single shot.

He shrieked.

“You’ll lose the finger,”

Xavier said, stepping back. “Be smart about this, and it’s all you’ll lose.”

George Harding kept on shrieking. There was so much surprise in his voice, Nora thought. He didn’t ever expect to feel pain. He was the one to dish out pain, never the one on the receiving end. But he was in agony now, clutching both hands to his chest and writhing, and Nora should have rejoiced at that. There was enough of the old fear and rage locked away deep, more than enough to want to see George Harding suffer. But the shock still gripped her, blurring her eyes, her ears, even as little answering cries went up from the crowd and people began to melt away at the sound of the gunshot, even as Xavier cleaned off the revolver with a handkerchief and tucked it away at the small of his back.

“Boss—”

A man was tugging at his elbow, and Nora hadn’t fled yet; her feet seemed rooted to the icy pavement, so she heard every word. “Someone called the cops. Get on out of here. We’ll clean him up, put him in a cab.”

“Get him to a hospital,”

Xavier said. “He swings at any of you, put him in the river.”

Nora heard that too.

“We got it. Just clear out, okay?”

The witnesses were already melting away; clearly no one wanted trouble. “We’ll tell the cops it was a firecracker or something. Guys, get a hose, spray it all down—”

“I got nothing to hide.”

Xavier was turning to go back into the club, looking perfectly calm, and that was when he saw Nora. Something complicated went over his face in a ripple as they stood there, and then he was crossing the street in swift, noiseless strides. There were already police sirens sounding in the distance as he took her elbow and spun her away from the Amber Club, back toward Briarwood House. “We’d better talk,”

he said. “Take me to your place.”

She should have refused, Nora realized belatedly. She should have yanked her arm away and told him to go to hell. But it all happened too fast: by the time her voice unlocked in her throat and her ears stopped ringing, they were through the back door of Briarwood House, hustling fast up the stairs even as Mrs.Nilsson came noisily through the front door, bustling and buzzing about the four dollars and thirty-eight cents she’d won at tonight’s bridge game. And by then it was too late, Nora knew, because if she started shouting at Xavier here, she’d be out of the house on her ear for sneaking a man in after hours. She didn’t really think I don’t actually want him here, Mrs.Nilsson, it’s just that he shot someone and needs to lie low would hold much weight as far as excuses went.

So she pulled Xavier Byrne up the stairs as quietly as possible, praying none of the doors would open. Jesus Christ on a crutch, if Arlene pokes her poisonous little head out her door right now ... But no one did, and Xavier blew unseen into Nora’s fourth-floor room, noiseless as a snowfall. He stopped in the middle of the floor and put his hands on his knees, letting out a long breath, and she could feel the tension coming off him in waves. His knuckles were bloody, and so was his mother’s diamond. If it really was his mother’s. If anything he’d ever said was true. If—

Mechanically she turned the bolt on the door, letting out a breath of her own before she turned around, arms tightly folded across her chest. She spoke low-voiced, spitting out the words like crystal bullets. “Who the fuck are you?”

He blinked to hear her swear. Still think I’m class from top to bottom? Nora thought. Well, neither of us is exactly who the other thought.

“I said I don’t lie,”

Xavier said eventually. “I don’t. Not to you.”

“How do I believe that?”

Nora gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “Right now I’m not putting much stock in my ability to spot liars.”

“I’m still Xavier W. Byrne. Thirty years old, Marines in the war, Sicily campaign—”

“I think you left a few things out.”

Nora shucked out of her coat and stalked over to the radio, switching on the music to cover their voices. If anyone listened, all they’d hear was Sammy Kaye singing “Harbor Lights.”

“Like what the W in your name stands for. Like this big Foggy Bottom family you said you had, uncles and cousins all over—”

She heard her voice rising, gulped it back down. “ What family?”

“The Warring family.”

She could feel the pressure of his gaze on her back. “I take it you’ve heard the name.”

The Warrings, who had been running the rackets in the District since before Nora was born. In her dad’s day it had been bootlegging. Now it was the numbers game. Two brothers on top running things, an army of cousins and nephews taking care of business. “The Warring brothers, are they—”

“My uncles.”

Nora blinked hard, trying to clear her eyes. “Related to the men at the top, how nice for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

His voice was quiet. “I thought you already knew.”

“Your name is Byrne . How would—”

“My mother was a Warring. It’s no secret. You’re a Foggy Bottom girl, a cop’s daughter. Christ, your brother’s on our payroll. I thought you knew.”

I try not to talk to my brother , Nora tried to say. He takes my money and I shut my ears. But the words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t stop staring at Xavier Byrne, looking entirely the same yet utterly different from the man in the corner banquette at the Crispy Biscuit. The same charcoal-gray suit, only the jacket and vest were gone and his blinding white cuffs were turned back to show hard wrists and work-corded forearms. The same hands that rested gently on his dog’s head and had held ice to her burned wrist, only now those hands were battered and blood-smeared. The same air of quiet force, only now it crackled like a downed power line. He looked like the man who had sent her flowers for four months. He also looked like a gangster.

He finally seemed to notice his own bloodied knuckles. “Do you have any water?”

“Get it yourself.”

“Your bathroom’s out on the landing. You want me going in and out where your housemates might see?”

Nora took a bowl from her cupboard, stamped out to the bathroom to fill it at the sink, stamped back in. He’d taken the chair by her rickety table, filled a dishcloth with cubes from the icebox—she set down the bowl, he dumped the ice in, then sank his swollen knuckles in. He leaned back in the upright chair, fishing in his pocket for the familiar cigarette case. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead.”

Nora heard her voice come out eerily polite. “I only mind when you shoot people.”

He lit a Lucky Strike one-handed, dexterously, and offered her the case. Nora shook her head, pulling up the chair across the table and sitting down straight-backed, as if a teacher was going to call on her in school. Xavier exhaled a long stream of smoke, and she heard the sickening crack that had resounded across Wood Street when he shattered a man’s nose. “Why did you beat up G—that man?”

Barely avoiding the name in time. “Why did you shoot the little finger off his hand ?”

“To make him think twice before he tried cheating at any card table in the District again,”

Xavier answered. “I hate cheats.”

“Is that what you really are, a card sharp? Is that what the Amber Club is a front for?”

“It’s not a front for anything. It’s a bottle club with some of the best jazz in town. I also run a poker game there every night from nine to two.”

His voice was even. “I run a straight table, and poker’s legal.”

“And so is everything else you do?”

She raised her eyebrows, expecting to see his gaze flicker, but his answer came unhesitatingly.

“You want to know what I do? I run the club; my uncles get a cut. I run the game, high stakes. Every afternoon I pick up the day’s betting receipts from the numbers game. I do things for my uncles when they need doing. It’s not sinister. You think I’m a gangster? This isn’t New York or Vegas, and the Warrings aren’t mob. We just provide services, services people want. It’s business.”

“It’s illegal business.”

The sound of the gunshot resounded suddenly in Nora’s head, and she flinched. “Why did you shoot him? You’d already beaten him to a pulp; you’d proved your point. Why did you lose your temper and take a finger off his hand?”

“I didn’t lose my temper at all. If I ever get angry, you won’t have to guess at it. Tonight, I was teaching a lesson.”

“You already taught it . His nose was shattered, his other hand too—”

“Not enough on a man like George Harding. Mean as a snake, more temper than sense. I leave it at a couple cracked bones, he’d come back for me with a knife. Tonight I made sure he couldn’t.”

Nora couldn’t deny George was mean as a snake, but saying so would give away that she knew him. She gripped her teeth around that particular fact, shifting course. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Sure. On the Sicily campaign, wearing Uncle Sam’s uniform.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

He started to say something, then looked at his cigarette. “You got an ashtray? I’m not dropping ash all over your rug.”

Nora pushed a saucer from this morning’s cup of coffee across the table. Grace’s casserole dish sat beside it—had it really been just an hour since the Briar Club broke up and Grace sent her back to her room with the leftovers?

“Nora.”

Xavier tapped ash into the saucer, not taking his eyes from hers. It was the first time he’d used her name. “People want things, they’re going to get them no matter what the law says. Prohibition came around and made booze illegal. Shouldn’t have, because no law stops people wanting a drink. My uncles provided something the law should have never outlawed in the first place. Same thing now with the numbers racket. No law stops people from wanting a flutter on a lottery game. It’s not hurting anybody, so we provide it.”

“What else do you provide?”

Nora knew about other kinds of rackets. Weapons, drugs, whores. “Can you say no one gets hurt in the other sidelines?”

“My family doesn’t touch those. And I’ve never killed anyone outside the war. Because I’m not a gangster.”

“Then what are you?”

“A businessman. What I do might not be legal, but it’s not wrong. It shouldn’t be illegal in the first place.”

“You can’t put yourself over the law that way.”

“You say that like the law is never wrong.”

“I know the law is sometimes wrong. But there are ways of changing the law, and those ways should never involve a gun.”

He took the .22 out from the small of his back, laying it on top of the radio, which was now crooning Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa.”

“I wish you hadn’t seen that.”

“So do I,”

Nora heard herself say. “I liked it better when the man courting me wasn’t a criminal.”

“I’m not a criminal.”

“You bribe cops, you run an illegal lottery, and you just shot a man .”

Her hand hit the table, hard. “Yes, you are a criminal.”

“It bothers you so much, me beating up a cheat? Someone who likes hurting innocent people?”

He paused. She looked away. “I’ve never spent a day behind bars, Nora. This changes nothing.”

“It changes everything . Why were you even trying to... win me over? Did you think I could, I don’t know, give you information? Tell you what cops you could bribe?”

All those lunches, the way she knew her face glowed when he asked her to join him. What a fool she’d made of herself. She could feel her cheeks burning scarlet.

“I already know what cops to bribe. I was trying to win you over because I wanted you. I still do.”

He tapped ash off his cigarette again. “And you want me.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want.”

Nora rose. “I don’t date gangsters.”

“I’m a businessman.”

His voice was even, but something in it was rising, too. “What, that’s not enough for a cop’s girl? You want a good boy in blue?”

“A lot of the good boys in blue are crooks too. I don’t want anything to do with any of you.”

Nora walked past him to the window, parting the curtains. Her window overlooked the alley behind the house; she couldn’t see all the way through to Wood Street, but there were definitely blue lights reflected and flashing off the roofs. Police cars.