As a newspaperman, Ellis was fully aware how often bodies were fished out of the Hudson. One of the uglier effects of Prohibition. He’d seen the photos too gruesome to publish: the bloated limbs, the tattered skin, the empty sockets.
In the back seat of a Packard now, he batted away visions of himself as a lifeless heap. It was harder to do on a wordless ride with two Mafia types up front. Neither had given hints of destination or purpose. Just patted him down before trapping him inside.
To stave off panic, Ellis remained a reporter. He observed and deduced, forging a distance from the situation.
When Sylvia had voiced her ultimatum, she didn’t specify a deadline. Maybe today was the day, and her husband’s buddies were tasked with ensuring the right answer. Maybe they were about to eliminate the need for an answer at all.
“Any chance of clueing me in, gentlemen? I could save us time if you told me what you wanted.” It was worth another try. But the pockmarked man kept right on driving. The heftier one just puffed on his cigarette with the windows closed. Ellis suppressed a cough, relying on tolerance from the paper’s daily haze.
A glance out the window said they were still in New York. The Bronx, in fact. And it dawned on Ellis that they were heading to his own apartment. Not a bad idea, if the plan were to stage an accident. A fatal slip in a bathtub, a tragic fall from a window.
At least his parked car across from the paper would serve as a telling clue.
Unless it was moved.
Ellis pushed down a swallow. The air turned thick as sludge.
Then came a jolt. A tap to the brakes slowed them just enough to cut a left into an alley, and the car rolled to a stop. Both escorts opened their doors and stepped out.
“Let’s go,” the driver told Ellis.
Yesterday, a guard had used the same order to prod Ellis from his cell. Being back in jail had striking new appeal.
Out of the car, he noted a door at the top of a metal staircase. He’d been here before…
“Move.”
Ellis was shoved from behind. His knees weakened from anticipation as he trudged up the steps. The driver, just a few feet back, was taller than Ellis had first guessed.
The stocky man remained by the car, lighting a fresh cigarette. His choice not to join them provided only minimal relief. No doubt the driver was also armed and equally comfortable pulling a trigger.
Inside, Ellis led the way into an unlit hall. The door slammed. The scene went black as pitch. Darkness closed in around him, a tunnel awaiting a hurtling train.
“Go.”
Ellis plodded forward as best he could, avoiding another push that could land him on his skull. His vision was adjusting. When he reached a coat-check table that led to a draped doorway, recognition fully set in.
This was the Royal. The supper club where he’d taken his parents. Same as then, the dining room glowed beneath a large chandelier. Only this time, the place was as quiet and still as a graveyard. Ellis was glad to not find himself in a dank, abandoned warehouse, though not overjoyed.
As he continued over the club’s checkered tiles, the driver stayed on his heels. Their footsteps echoed off the high ceiling. Chairs, turned upside down, were balanced on tables now bare of linens. No candles or dinnerware. No witnesses in sight. Only terror creeping in.
There was little worse, Ellis decided, than suspense from the unknown. He wheeled around and stopped. “If you’re gonna take me out, get on with it. Otherwise, tell me why we’re here.”
The driver stared back, emotionless, before a crashing noise rang out. It traveled through the swinging door of the kitchen, on the wall to the right. A cook had dropped some pans, Ellis figured—until he heard the muffled groans, broken up by the sounds of skin hitting skin. Meat being tenderized. Someone was taking a beating.
No need to guess who’d be next.
“Ellis Reed.” The voice came from behind. At the end booth, partially obscured by a white privacy curtain, a man sat snipping a cigar.
Anxiety shot through Ellis, filling every limb. Max Trevino looked no less formidable in person than he did in the papers. His neck was as thick as his shoulders, set off by an expensive, tailored suit. His black hair was slicked, fringed with gray. He had the dark eyes and bearing of a typical Sicilian.
“Have a seat, kid.” Max directed him with a wave of a cigar cutter.
Ellis managed the remaining steps to reach the table. As he edged himself into the booth, the driver stood guard no more than two skips away.
“You know,” Max said, “I’ve been familiar with your work for quite some time.”
“I’m…flattered, sir.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
Potential replies spun through Ellis’s head. He opted for silence.
Max stoked his cigar with a gold lighter and exhaled an earthy cloud. “A few stories of yours caused trouble for my ventures a while back. As a businessman, I like things to run smoothly. A well-oiled machine. You understand, yeah?”
Ellis considered his old tip-offs from the Irish Mob. Several resulting articles had exposed crimes by politicians whose pockets were often padded by other competing gangs. Apparently, some of that padding came from Max.
“Hell, what am I thinking? Course you do,” Max said. “After fifteen years of your old man’s factory work, I bet he’s taught you all about that.”
The remark, flaunting his knowledge of Ellis’s father, was jarring even without the noises in the background. Another punch, another groan. From a room stocked with knives.
Ellis struggled to keep his tone even. “What is it you want, Mr. Trevino?”
“This. To talk.” The levity in the reply was almost convincing.
“What about?”
“Family. Importance of protecting it. I can tell we see eye to eye on this already.” Max pulled several puffs from his cigar and reclined into the cushioned seat, his implied threat hanging amid the smoke. “Thing is, I hear you and another reporter—a lady friend of yours—have taken quite an interest in my sister’s affairs.”
His sister?
Right then, Ellis recalled something Alfred had said back at the bank. How family in New York had long been the attraction to moving out East. “You’re Sylvia’s brother,” Ellis realized.
His editor’s warning had been more about her than Alfred.
Max raised a dense black brow. “Don’t play dumb, kid. I ain’t got patience for people wasting my time.”
The assumption was fair. Any decent reporter would have made the connection by now. Ellis had just been too busy with the Dillards, and Samuel, and yeah, time in the clink.
“I’ll do my best not to.”
Max studied his face, scanning for sarcasm. Ellis didn’t dare flinch. “As I was saying,” Max went on. “If you happened to dig up something interesting, I think we ought to discuss it. Off the record, as it were.”
It was clear that little in Max’s life was meant for the record.
“Eh, Mr. Trevino,” a man called over, having emerged from the kitchen. He had to be three hundred pounds, an equal mix of fat and muscle, and was wiping his hands on a towel. Its red smears were decidedly not from tomato sauce. Ellis tried not to picture the condition of the face, or whole body, that had taken the pounding. “I think we’re done in here. Need anything else?”
“Not sure yet,” Max said. “How ’bout you stick around a while?”
“Happy to.” The mountainous goon flicked a glance toward Ellis. “I’ll just be tidying up,” he said before disappearing through the swinging door. If not for more moans from the kitchen, the comment would have sounded like code for the disposal of a stiff.
A task possibly still on the agenda if Ellis wasn’t careful.
Max returned his focus to the table. “So?” he prompted, picking up where they’d left off.
Ellis steadied his hands, his breathing. Any hint of dishonesty could prove detrimental. Not just to him and his parents, but even to Lily, whom he suddenly feared he might never see again. “Sir, I’ve got nothing but good intentions involving your family.”
Though darkly quiet as he smoked, Max was listening.
Ellis kept mindful of the man’s time and values and mentally scrambled to simplify the summary. “There were two kids, you see, with a sign. But the picture I took, it was only for a feature.” He moved right along to an unplanned sale that divided a family. No need for dates or names or any other detail that weighed down the basics. Then he leapt to his worries over a mother, now cured but alone, and the well-being of the children. “Your sister too,” he was quick to add.
Max had gone still. It was difficult to tell if he was glowering or contemplating. “What exactly do you think you know about her?”
If nothing else, Ellis knew this for certain: he was treading on tenuous ground.
He took an extra moment, cautiously navigating the exchange. He was about to reply when Max said, “Sal?”
In an instant, the driver gripped Ellis by the front collar of his shirt. Ellis reflexively tried to resist, the pressure of the man’s knuckles tight against his throat.
“Mr. Trevino asked you a question,” Sal told him.
Weaseling out with a softened, bullshit answer about Max’s sister was the most obvious move. It was Ellis’s best shot at getting out of here in one piece, literally. But his instincts—or maybe dumb hope—said Max harbored similar concerns. That this, more than any alleged article, was the reason for this meeting.
“I’m no expert,” Ellis said, his voice strained from Sal’s hold, “but I’ll share what I got.”
After a pause, Max’s solitary nod cued Sal to back off. Ellis caught his breath and scraped his words together in a hurry. While aware of the risks of being flat-out wrong, he would dare to be candid.
Max took occasional slow puffs as Ellis spilled what he’d gathered. He recounted the troubling observations he’d seen and heard, the growing signs of delusion. The threats to Ellis, no matter how depraved, would mean little in this place. So rather, he spoke of Ruby’s inherited clothes and name, of the cruel letters and lies, of a brother secretly ripped away. He described the many hours of punishments for hindering the resurrection of a daughter—a niece—who, in reality, was gone.
By the time Ellis finished, Max was fingering his cutter, its circular opening the size of a man’s thumb. Piling on more arguments would be a gamble. There was a fine line between supplying information and dictating an opinion.
In the end, Ellis took the chance. “Quite simply, sir, I’d say you’ve got two choices. Your sister loses the girl…or, before long, you lose your sister.”
Max’s fingers slowed. The corners of his eyes tightened the slightest amount. The wait that followed brought no reassurance.
At last, he replied with finality, “A man’s gotta do what’s best for his family.”
The ambiguity of what that meant held Ellis in place. Behind him, the squeak of a shoe indicated Sal was again moving closer. No doubt he was itching to resume one of the grimmer perks of his job.
“Tomorrow morning—eight sharp,” Max stated. “You meet me at Sylvia’s, and the girl goes back where she belongs. Capeesh?”
The unexpected plan, let alone the speed of it all, threw Ellis off. He fell wordless until Max leaned forward. “I trust you ain’t got a problem with this.”
Preventing another grip to the throat, Ellis answered, “N-no. Not at all, Mr. Trevino.”
Max took another pull off his cigar and reclined once more. “Sal, we’re finished here. Give Mr. Reed a lift back.”
In stoic compliance, Sal started for the exit. Ellis hurried out of the booth to follow. This time, he’d be the one trailing behind but wishing he could charge to the front.
A few steps in, he realized he hadn’t voiced his thanks. It was more of an investment than a courtesy. He turned around to find Max lost in thought, and knew not to interrupt. Particularly with pensiveness riding the man’s features. The duty of telling his sister the news had to be a source of dread.
Just hopefully not enough to change Max’s mind.
