Chicagoland by Gail Martin (important books to read TXT) 📕

dressed servers moved swiftly and silently beneath the watchful gaze of the old men immortalized in large oil paintings along the walls.

Sarah moved through the club like she’d been there before. We headed into the dining room, where the maître d’ showed us to a table in a private room where we could talk undisturbed.

Jonathan Kirkpatrick looked to be a decade older than Sarah, with dark hair accented by flecks of gray at the temples. I’d expected him to have a softer look since he wasn’t a working man, but Kirkpatrick had a rugged, almost craggy appearance that reminded me of the men I once knew who worked in mines like his.

Kirkpatrick pressed his lips to the back of Sarah’s hand in greeting, and she bussed an air kiss beside his cheek. He faltered a bit when we came to the table, unsure who should pull out Sarah’s chair, silently speculating about West’s role. While the two top dogs tried to figure it out, Sarah pulled out her own chair and sat down, smoothing her skirt beneath her. I tried to hide my smirk.

“It’s been too long,” Kirkpatrick said, looking genuinely pleased to see her and managing to exclude everyone else in his focus. “Maybe two, three years?”

Sarah nodded, returning his attention in a way that wasn’t exactly flirting but bestowed the force of her charisma on him, like a gift.

“At least,” she agreed. “You look well.”

Kirkpatrick shrugged, and I could see he was trying not to look overly pleased. “I’ve been too busy to notice, but that’s kind. You’re as beautiful as ever.”

“Charmer,” Sarah deflected. I thought again that she would have made a good spy. She loved the game, and while Sarah broke plenty of restrictive, old-fashioned conventions, she also knew how to use them to her advantage when the situation warranted.

Still, I picked up real friendship between her and Kirkpatrick, or maybe just the warmth of shared history and a survivor’s appreciation of moving past loss.

Our server stopped by and recited the menu for our order. Everything sounded good. Since he didn’t rattle off the prices along with the descriptions, and since I figured Kirkpatrick was paying, I ordered what I wanted, which was a steak. West did the same. Sarah chose trout, and Kirkpatrick picked lamb.

The wine master followed with a bottle Kirkpatrick must have chosen ahead of time and poured for all of us. Apparently Prohibition didn’t count in the rarified spaces of Chicago’s clubs for the wealthy and influential. The interruption seemed to have broken the flow of conversation, telling me that Sarah and her friend were a bit more awkward with each other than they initially let on.

“So,” Kirkpatrick said, clearing his throat. “What brings you to Chicago…with bodyguards?”

Sarah sipped her wine. “Still cleaning up some of the loose ends from Henry’s affairs. Money’s involved, so I figured I shouldn’t travel alone.”

The lie seemed to satisfy him. After all, she could hardly say she’d come on a lark to help Eliot Ness with his monster problem.

“Sorry to hear that’s dragged on, but any excuse to catch up is a good one,” Kirkpatrick said.

He’s not okay. I wasn’t psychic, but I’d gotten good at reading people. I believed Kirkpatrick was genuinely happy to see Sarah, in part because I had the sense tonight took his mind off weightier things.

Then again, he was the head of a big mining company. He could be worried about all kinds of things—labor strikes, the price of coal, competitors. It struck me how odd it was to find myself dining with a coal baron when I had known so many men who toiled and died in the mines beneath the Pittsburgh hills. In my mortal life, I had raised a pint at the pub when miners wished death and damnation on their bosses, silently toasting their ruin just as I had nothing good to say about the Carnegies and the Fricks of the world.

“And you?” Sarah inquired, with feigned polite detachment. I knew she had an agenda, but I was more than willing to sit back and watch her work.

Kirkpatrick gave a wry chuckle. “Nothing tremendously interesting. I’m sure you recall the tedium of managing a large enterprise.”

Sarah had taken control of Harringworth Coal when her husband died, and by all accounts ran it much better, increasing its value before she sold to a rival and cementing her place among the independently wealthy.

“Things should be quieter in Chicago, with the infamous Al Capone in jail,” Sarah said.

“Crack down on one, and there’s always another to take his place,” Kirkpatrick replied, sounding world-weary. “It can actually be worse for a while, as all the underlings jockey for position once the boss is gone. As bad as Capone was, he might have kept a lid on others who were just as bad.”

Is that his worry? Better the devil you know? I didn’t envy any business owner navigating Mob politics—payoffs, protection money, bribes, always wondering when the price would go up or the demands would grow.

“There’s always something,” Sarah agreed.

The food arrived, as well as a second bottle of wine. No one seemed concerned that the club might be raided for alcohol, and I knew no cop who valued his badge would dare try to cart the club’s wealthy and powerful members off to jail.

The conversation turned to movies and the weather. West chimed in on occasion, especially when the topic shifted to baseball. I stayed quiet, as befitting hired muscle. Ears open, mouth shut.

“So is it true?” Sarah asked as the cheesecake arrived for dessert. She leaned forward, dropping her voice confidentially. “You’ve still got the ash contract with the city, right? Are the stories they tell true about the monsters in the tunnels?”

Kirkpatrick flinched. Barely, but I caught it, and I knew the others did too. He hesitated, and I figured he was trying to decide whether to lie.

“We don’t know what’s going on yet,” he said, carefully choosing his words. “Some of the workers are fairly transient. That makes