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

He said, “I know exactly what I want. I will have good jazz . . .”

“Hear hear,” said Atty.

“. . . good men . . .”

“Hear hear,” said Finn.

“. . . and not least of all, some good gin.”

Joe, Finn, and Atty all replied in unison, “Yessir, missus sir, yessir!”

The 2nd Hidden Gotham Novel

Read on for an excerpt from

The Blind Tiger

to be released December 2021

Excerpt from The Blind Tiger

The royal-blue Stutz Vertical Eight Sedan bounced across the intersection, rattling Dash Parker’s trim six-foot frame against the ceiling. He rubbed the top of his head, simultaneously patting down his misbehaving brown hair. He hadn’t had the time to bathe, shave, and change, something he’d normally do before the nighttime festivities. After all, it was 1926, and the city was popping like a champagne cork at an Astor wedding. One simply didn’t wear one’s day suit after the sun went down. But a man waving a gun would change the plans of even the most stubborn and stylish man.

“He can just ask to see me, you know,” Dash said. “No need for the entourage and the private chauffeur.”

The corpulent shape beside him rasped, “Where is the fun in that?”

In the darkness of the backseat, Dash saw the giant bald man smile.

He would be amused. This is the part of the job he enjoys.

He certainly enjoyed the first time Nicholas Fife sent for Dash. A faceless man lunging out of the shadows in front of Dash’s building. The car sliding up behind him, the door opening seemingly by itself. The polite, but firm, request to get inside. When Dash did, shaking as he went, he saw Lowell Henley, Fife’s lead torpedo in the backseat with that same closed-mouth grin, that same raspy breath.

Now here they were again, sitting in a five-passenger luxury car outfitted in a pale blue interior with teak-outlined windows while a nameless driver sped through the grid of Manhattan. The streetlights whipped by, their balls of yellow blurring and stretching into comet streaks.

If only Fife would come around once every hundred years.

“I’m not a toy he can toss around for his amusement,” Dash said.

Lowell turned his head, his eyes glassy and black. “You’ll be whatever he wants you to be.” He faced the front again. “He’ll like that suit though. You’ll have to make another for him.”

Dash looked down at the Banff blue pinstriped fabric that set his hazel eyes aflame. The crisp white shirt underneath allowed the bright red tie to flare like a firework. The topper, the gray felt homburg, he held between his hands. He mentally accepted the compliment, but he longed for his usual tuxedo. At least then it would feel like he was going to a party instead of to . . . wherever he was actually going. Which, he was certain, wasn’t to his death.

Reasonably certain. One never knew with Fife.

He said, “You know I don’t make suits, Lowell.”

It was the honest-to-God truth. Though Dash owned Hartford & Sons Tailor, he was not gifted with needle and thread. Quite the opposite. But that wasn’t why the Greenwich Village men visited the shop on West Fourth between Barrow and Jones—just to the west of Washington Square Park, to the east of Seventh Avenue, and in the heart of Manhattan’s Bohemia. It was the secret club called Pinstripes hidden behind the changing room mirror that brought them in droves.

Lowell kept his face forward. “You took his measurements.”

“That’s the one part of the job I can do. An associate does the rest.”

He meant his club’s doorman, Atticus Delucci. One wouldn’t think the short, balding Italian with muscles thick as a boxer’s would be so adept with needle and thread. And yet, every night, he would sit in the front window of the shop doing the alterations, giving the illusion Hartford & Sons was a legitimate business. It also kept Atty from being bored senseless and provided them with extra sugar to bribe the neighborhood cops. A necessary evil.

Like Nicholas Fife.

Lowell said, “I’m told you took great care with his measurements. In fact, he said his suit was fitted down to the very last millimeter. In all the right places.”

The driver of the car flashed a look at Dash over his shoulder and smirked.

Dash could read his mind.

Well, Dash had been called worse. He preferred what the driver was thinking to what the nanny lawmakers called him and other men and women like him: “degenerates.” It wasn’t just a derogatory word; it was a legal term. He supposed they should feel flattered the nannies felt so threatened they made a special law just for them. Now in addition to being arrested for buying and selling alcohol, Dash and his kind could be charged with “degeneracy” and sent either to prison or to a mental institution. It all depended on the wealth of your family.

Dash’s family had wealth, but these days they wouldn’t intercede. That only happened once when Dash was younger, and they promised never to do so again. Especially when, just before his twentieth birthday, Dash defied his father’s orders to stop his secret foolishness.

Ah, but isn’t all love foolish?

“Turn here,” Lowell said to the driver.

The Stutz careened around a corner, tossing Dash against Lowell, then shuddered with a large bounce as the car began climbing upward. Dash looked out the window and saw they were on the Queensboro Bridge.

Just as he suspected.

He was being driven to one of Fife’s several Queens warehouses, where there were crates stacked upon crates of re-distilled liquor to be sold to the thousands of illegal speaks and clubs throughout the city. Even Pinstripes received some.

Dash adjusted his tie. “Did Fife find out something about her?”

It had to be the reason he was summoned: Fife had discovered a crucial clue about the girl who died. Dash didn’t much care for the idea of he and Fife being linked in more ways than just liquor—especially when that link was death—but he put still managed to put on a brave face.

Lowell