Prohibition is the law of the land, but Nellie needs cash - after socking a gangster in the face, she's got ten days to make it right. Frightened and caught empty-handed, Nellie turns bootlegger.
She accepts a job from her sly friend Lola to pick up...
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FRIDAY, MAY 8th 1925
• • 4 o'clock • •
It was supposed to be a quiet shift.
I leave my motorcycle in front of the dry goods store adjacent to Second National Savings & Loan. There's already a teeming crowd gathered along the steps. Fifty, maybe seventy-five people. It's a busy street, but not normally this busy at four in the afternoon.
"Howard!"
I flinch and shoulder my way through the crowd. Some of them have the gall to glare at me despite the star on my chest. I don't do myself any favors by stumbling into Captain Cunningham's line of sight. He's the color of an over-ripe tomato; a reporter's standing so close he could probably share the Captain's shadow.
"Help get this crowd under control—or by God's name you're fired, understand me?"
I mumble a "yes, sir" accompanied by a "right away, sir," and hurry over to help Mulligan. Sergeant Mulligan's an old hand at this, but he's also about twice my size. I slip my whistle between my teeth and eye him. Mulligan gives me one of his slow grins.
"Something else, huh?"
I nod, like I know already. In truth I'd arrived at the station for my shift only to find out that I was to come here immediately. I'd been thinking it would be hours of shooing drunks back into civilization before the raid scheduled for tonight, but boy, what a mistake I'd made.
"Detectives are already in there. Trying to figure out if anybody saw anything."
A housewife with a mean elbow tries to barrel past me.
"Lady," I say, "It's not that exciting. You should get on home."
"My money's in there!" She thinks a moment, squinting up at my face before adding a hasty, "officer." I suppose I can't blame her much, since I'm still a bit young. But I passed the entry exam like all the others. "What if they've taken it all!"
So it was a robbery.
"Ma'am," I say, "You running up in there and disturbing our detectives won't get any of the money back any sooner."
She scowls at me like my logic isn't quite sound, but stops trying to disrupt the natural placement of my ribs with her terrible elbows. Mulligan's still got an annoying grin on his face. I have to blow my whistle a few more times to get the crowd under control, but what I snatch from bits and pieces of excited conversation is bad news. This is the sort of thing that will make the Captain piping hot under the collar—a crime perfect for headlines. The sort that will nag at him until the perpetrators are caught and found guilty. It'll be brought up at every turn from here on out until it happens, as if things weren't bad enough in the city already.
