Whiskey River by Loren D. Estleman

Hastings from a recent rain, reflecting green and purple from the neon lit saloons that lined the block on both sides; the street had been outlaw too long to observe the usual blind-pig proprieties. I parked in front of a brownstone at the end of the block. Stepping down, I saw an Auburn two-seater on the other side of the street with two men inside. Their features were in shadow, but the boat-tailed Speedster was worth noticing in that neighborhood at four in the morning, especially when it faced the wrong way. As I entered the brownstone, the glass in the door reflected the three Negroes walking around the corner onto Hastings.
    Two flights up I knocked on a door painted red and told the black face behind the go-to-hell panel I was there to see Bass Springfield. The panel slid shut. I listened to a muted cornet on the other side. The door opened.
    They had gutted two apartments, set up a bar and a platform at one end, and brought in tables and chairs from any where at all. Three colored couples shared a sofa and a brown cigarette near the door. The air was smeared with smoke, tobacco and marijuana. The cornetist on the platform was growling his way through “Potato Head Blues” with help from a banjo and bass fiddle.
    Springfield sat flat-footed at the bar on a stool that would have left anyone else’s feet dangling, with his crippled hands wrapped around a white china mug. Every eye in the place saw me put an elbow on the bar. The bartender, fat and bald in a pink shirt with garters, kept one hand out of sight under the taps.
    “I remembers you,” Springfield said when I spoke. He had a soft cap pulled down to his eyes and was watching his image in a mirror advertising Listerine’s Halitosis Cure behind the bar.
    “Jack sent me,” I said. “They got Hannion.”
    He drained the mug two-handed. I smelled raw alcohol. “Celestine tell you where to find me?”
    “Is that her name? You ought to send her away. Three men followed me from your house.” I described them.
    “I told them to watch the place.”
    “You knew about Hannion?”
    “I expected Mr. Andy. He takes more chances. But I knowed it be one of us. Mr. Jack and them at the place on Howard?”
    “He said to join them and watch your ass. By the way, there’s an Auburn parked across the street. Those friends of yours too?”
    “No. They followed me.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “Make ’em wait.” He pushed his mug toward the bartender,
    “They’ll be there when you come out.”
    He said nothing. The musicians finished playing. In the silence between sets I heard a long tinkle of glass in the distance. I turned from the bar. Springfield grasped my arm. His grip was weak, but I hesitated. “My car’s parked outside.”
    “It ain’t your car.”
    More glass broke. I remembered the three Negroes. “They’ll get shot.”
    “That’s covered.”
    “You mean they’re armed?”
    Everyone in the room laughed. The bartender took his hand from under the bar and filled Springfield’s mug from a bottle.
    “What will they do to them?” I asked.
    “Just rough ’em around some. They be walking home.”
    “That won’t make Rosenstein any happier.”
    “They ain’t from Rosenstein.”
    I tried to read his profile. “Jack said—”
    “Mr. Jack always was full of horseshit,” he said. “He knows they ain’t Purples. Them boys works for Joey Machine.”

PART TWO
May-November 1930
Bloody ’30
    I think the Prohibition laws can be successfully enforced against commercial operations. We propose to make these our objective and not to dissipate our energies in other fields…. We will exert a steady, unrelenting pressure against the outlaw liquor traffic until it is driven from the land, or our last drop of energy expended.
    —Amos W. W. Woodcock,
    Prohibition Administrator
    Some of the wets talk as though they had several drinks and some of the drys talk as though they needed them.
    — The Detroit Free Press

Chapter Nine
    B Y J ULY