The Double Vice: The 1st Hidden Gotham Novel by Chris Holcombe (free ebook reader txt) 📕

“I’m not trying to fool anyone!”

“Only yourself. You share a room with the man! You can at least share his heart.”

Difficult to do when half of mine is missing.

That other half belonged to Victor Agramonte, the man for whom Dash had abandoned his family. The man who sailed out of New York for good one cold bitter day last autumn, to be with the family who couldn’t cross the ocean. A part of Dash never truly healed, and after that, he vowed he’d never allow himself to be that vulnerable again. One heartbreak in a lifetime was more than enough.

Dash didn’t feel like going into it—especially not before coffee—so he asked, “How was the rest of last night after I left?”

Finn pointed to his own face. “This is me noticing you changing the subject. Let’s see. I cracked my knuckles scrubbing Walter’s blood off the floor in both Pinstripes and your silly tailor shop. I may need tonight off to recover.”

“Finn.”

“Oh! And there was some man, a huge baby grand, asking for you.”

“For me?”

“Not you specifically. Just the owner.”

“Did he give a name?”

“Yes, dear. Lowell Henley. I never heard the name before.”

“Neither have I. Did he say what he wanted?”

“Only that it was about our inventory.”

“Inventory?”

Finn tapped his chin. “I suppose he meant our booze. I think he’s trying to sell us something. He said he’ll try to catch you again.”

“I see,” Dash said.

Open only a few months and already someone was peeking into their business. He didn’t know who this Lowell Henley was, but Dash suspected he knew his kind. And what he wanted.

I thought we’d have more time before we had to do something like that.

Finn stood up from the chair. “I need to go wash my face. I’m a tad puffy from being so upset over my Valentino. I may be in mourning, but that’s no reason to look like a Bloated Betty. Tah-tah!”

He didn’t wait for Dash’s response before sailing out of the room, which coincided with the third door slam that morning from downstairs. A voice trembling with fury shouted, “And I’ll tell you another thing: without me, you have no play!”

Dash rolled his eyes as he got out of bed. Actors.

In desperate need of coffee and food, Dash returned to West Fourth dressed in his Banff blue pinstripe suit with an eye-catching red tie and topped with a new gray homburg he’d been dying to show off. He walked to the Greenwich Village Inn, his usual lunch and dinner spot situated on the triangle-shaped plot of land on Barrow and West Fourth. The Village was full of such odd geometric shapes, its isosceles triangles, trapezoids, rhombuses, and parallelograms at odds with the perfect squares and rectangles of the rest of Manhattan.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, thought Dash.

The Inn sat across the street from Sheridan Square, just a few shops down from Hartford & Sons. The shutters of the pine-outlined windows of the downstairs tavern were folded open in a vain attempt to catch a cooling breeze.

Inside the Inn he saw the usual mix of bohemians— artists, suffragists, writers, and political anarchists—at the scarred round wooden tables, whose surfaces had equal parts stains and etched epitaphs. This morning, the bohemians were arguing over the state of the country and from the sounds of it, America was on the verge of collapse. No one in the place was a fan of the do-nothing Coolidge who, like his name, kept a cool, nondescript presence while robber barons and tycoons ran amuck. “Coolidge Prosperity” only benefited the rich and the bankers, one woman argued, while the working class still had the same wages as last year and the year before that.

“Mark my words,” she said, her voice rising in volume, “this administration only cares for the wealthy few. Why else put one of the world’s richest men as the Secretary of the Treasury? This Andrew Mellon cuts taxes for millionaires as often as flappers cut their hair! Newspapers every day talk of soaring profits. But do we see any of that? Have your wages gone up? Have yours? The only thing that’s gone up is the rents! Hear me, folks. The wealthy only take care of each other and when this so-called prosperity ends, they’ll retreat to their mansions while the rest of us scrounge for food in the streets!”

Her audience heartily agreed with her.

The only patrons who sat silent during these political arguments were the three ex–Wall Street traders sitting in the back against the exposed brick wall. “The Ex-Pats,” they were called. Years of ulcers, trembling fingers, and night terrors meant the only items they traded these days were coins for booze. They kept their eyes on their drinks and nowhere else.

Behind the rough wood bar, which needed two more sessions of sanding, was the owner of the tavern, a tall, thin older gentleman Dash knew only as Emmett. He wore an apron over blue slacks and a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

The warped wooden floorboards groaned and protested as Dash made his way to the bar.

Emmett glanced up, regarding him with cobalt-blue eyes and an arched snowy white eyebrow. “Well, if it isn’t our well-dressed friend. What has you slumming it today?”

Dash sat at the bar and smiled. “Had a slum-filled birthday last night. I figured I couldn’t go any lower.”

Emmett barked out a laugh. “I can see that. What happened to your face?”

There was no way to hide the damage Walter Müller had inflicted. This morning in the Cherry Lane Playhouse WC, the mirror had reflected a face with a swath of sickly purple around his left eye complemented by red spidery veins. Not a very Mode look.

“A gentleman’s disagreement,” Dash replied.

“I see how ‘gentlemanly’ it was. Whattaya have?”

“Eggs on rye and coffee.”

Emmett’s palm tapped the bar. “Done.” As he set about pouring Dash’s coffee, a creak of the floorboards turned his head towards the door. “Shit,” he muttered.

Dash swiveled around and repeated