Page 27 of Prohibited

He shook his head and yanked the door open. The restaurant was completely empty except for one other person, and it was just as hot inside as it was outside. Good god. Behind the counter, a tiny woman who was probably older than the dirt caked into his shoes stood polishing a glass. She peered at him through her wire rimmed glasses.

“Help you, sir?” she said, accent thick as dough.

“‘Worthwhile Ice,’” he recited, making sure to hit all of the consonants with hard emphasis. Stupidest password he’d ever fucking heard.

“Right this way, sir.” The tiny old woman turned and led him down a tiny hallway to a door marked Restroom. She entered the restroom and opened another door that looked for all intents and purposes like a closet. When she opened the door, Roberts saw that it was, in fact, a closet. Very clever.

She rapped a funny little rhythm on the back wall and it opened inward. A man dressed in a white jacket stood on the other side of the door.

“One for lunch,” the tiny woman said and then began the awkward process of squeezing past Roberts to get back out to the restaurant. Annoying. He did his best to smash himself into the mop and the broom to allow her the room to go past him, resisting the urge to give her a shove.

The man in the white jacket inclined his head and stepped back to permit Roberts into the room.

It was an elegant, if tiny dining room with a collection of six tables that could only accommodate two people at each. There were no windows, but electric lights lit the room with the aid of candles at every table. In one corner there was a tiny bar where another man in a white coat stood, stirring something in an intricate diamond cut crystal glass.

How refreshing. Not at all like what he would have imagined stepping into this building from the outside. He breathed a sigh of relief. All of the tables were occupied except for one. And from the back corner of the room, a hand went into the air and waved him over with a single come motion.

Irritating, the arrogance of that gesture. He chewed on that as he walked over, but bit down the urge to make a snide comment about it.

Walter Stanley sat, fork and knife in hand, as Roberts approached the table. Didn’t even bother to get up and shake his hand as would behoove a typical business partnership. Well, that shouldn’t surprise him. Stanley always acted like his shit didn’t stink. Roberts didn’t know why he thought the longer they continued their arrangement that Stanley might actually treat him with some respect.

He should have known by now that Stanley thought such things were beneath him. And what did he need validation from this criminal piece of scum for, anyway?

“You made it, Lieutenant.” Stanley carefully cut a petite piece of steak and tucked it neatly into his mouth, chewing with languid gusto. He watched Roberts with unnaturally blue eyes while Roberts removed his hat and handed it off to the waiter who stood by, ready to assist.

“Keep it down, would you?” Roberts said, trying not to move his lips. He scanned around the dining room to be sure no one had heard Stanley address him by his title.

“No one here has seen or heard a thing.” Stanley cut another bite of steak. “And they won’t see or hear anything that happens after this point.”

Stanley had a way of making a man feel small. Insignificant.

Roberts did not like feeling insignificant. In fact, he didn’t like Stanley. But this was a mutually beneficial business arrangement. He wasn’t required to like Stanley in order for it to work.

Insufferable bastard.

Roberts eyed Stanley with pursed lips while he continued to eat his lunch. It was strange to watch him do something as mundane and human as eating a meal. A man made of flesh and blood, though you wouldn’t know it to meet him anywhere else.

He looked more like something out of a ghost tale than a heavy hitter in the Tulsa underworld with his pale face and his hair black, as if he never went out into the sun. Irritatingly handsome, but Roberts took consolation in the fact that his nose appeared to have been broken at least once. There was also a half-moon scar under oneeye and a web of scars on his chin that marred his lower lip, further subtracting from his good looks. And a signet ring on his pinky finger that he always wore, something that made Roberts want to sneer at him. Of all the self-important things.

It just wasn’t fair that some men got to have everything.

Roberts settled into the chair opposite of Stanley and looked up at the man in a white coat hovering nearby.

“I’ll have a manhattan cocktail.” Might as well live it up while he was slumming with the slimeball across the table from him.

Roberts may have spent the whole of his career locking people up for selling and possessing controlled substances but that didn’t mean he was happy about Prohibition. It was one thing when the Feds weren’t breathing down their necks. But now that the federal government had passed it into law, there was more at stake than what the local jurisdiction could offer.

Still, when Walter Stanley had sauntered into his office, bold as he pleased with a mutually beneficial business proposition, Roberts wasn’t in a position to turn him down.

Now they were locked into this thing together, proverbial knives at each other’s throats. In the beginning it had seemed airtight. If Stanley betrayed Roberts, he would be finished. Sitting in a jail cell faster than you could say bee’s knees. And if Roberts turned on Stanley, Stanley would make sure he went down with him. But Roberts had become keenly aware of the fact that Stanley wasn’ta stranger to the precinct, and that he had begun to cultivate friends in higher places. Which placed Roberts on the wrong end of the deal.

A fact he resented immensely.

“And whatever he’s having,” Roberts called after the waiter, waving his hand in the general direction of Stanley’s plate.

Stanley dabbed at his mouth delicately with his napkin and put it aside. He rolled his tongue in his mouth, extracting shreds of his lunch from his teeth.

“What’s all the urgency?” Stanley looked him over, face not giving away so much as a passing thought. The man might as well have been made from marble. Roberts had never seen anyone look so detached. He made it look easy. Stanley, he imagined, was probably quite the poker player.

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