First Draft
1.
Andrezej Sokol hated depending on other people to do things, and he most especially hated when people paid to do things didn’t come through.
The short, dark haired, stocky man left his apartment around one in the afternoon, walked next door and around the building. He went down a set of concrete steps. He unlocked the padlock and opened the door to…
“Oh, dammit,” he muttered.
The speakeasy had been turned upside down. The chairs were thrown every which way, the bottles of wine and home-brew liquor were broken and scattered all over the floor. Even the mirror behind the bar was smashed.
He slowly stumbled in, stepping on glass and puddles of booze all over the concrete floor, taking one small step at a time. He whistled and waited.
“Wal,” he called, and whistled again.
He looked past the last table that had been tipped and thought he saw him. “Wal!” He shoved aside tables and chairs and ran to the body. Ignoring the glass, he tucked his arm under Wal’s head and pulled him to him.
The pit bull was dead, shot point blank in the head.
Sokol dropped the dog’s body. “Oh, Wal…”
Wal slept in the speakeasy at night to guard the bar. During the day Sokol kept the dog with him at the bar, played with him, and treated him like any dog. However he had bought this particular breed because he knew they were protective and territorial.
Sokol was pissed now, and it took a lot to get him mad. Someone dared come into his place, and trash his bar, and shoot his dog. He knew he couldn’t get the cops involved. He knew who he could get involved, though he didn’t want to.
He picked himself up, and then the dog and carried him outside. He would have to ask the landlord if he could bury Wal somewhere in the back past the orchards.
“Andy?” came a woman’s voice from above him. He turned and looked up to see his wife and daughter leaning out the third floor window. “What happened?”
“Somebody shot my dog,” Sokol said, fighting back the tears, and carried the dog to the vines in the back of the house. He placed the dog gently on the ground.
Sokol wiped his hands on his pants, and went back into the speakeasy. He stood at the bottom step, surveying the wreckage, when he heard a low whistle. “That’s a mess.”
“Yeah, Danny, it is.” He stepped inside. He turned to look at the brown haired man with the rounded face, a small mustache and three days’ worth of beard.
“Did you pay up?”
“Yeah, I paid up,” he said, going to the back of the bar. He found the broom on the floor, and pulled it up out of the mess. “I don’t think Pinhead’s going to let me collect on the insurance, though.” He pointed up the stairs. “And the bastards shot my dog.”
He shook his head. “That’s not right, shooting your dog.”
Sokol started to sweep the glass from behind the bar. “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to go get a broom and help me?”
“I’ll be back,” Danny said, and Sokol snorted as he left. He’d be back, all right, when the speakeasy opened up again. Sokol knew Danny felt sorry, but not sorry enough that he couldn’t go somewhere else to get his morning drink.
Sokol was a small man, so moving around in the speakeasy was easy. Some of his larger clients, the Irish from the city, for example, or the railroad workers from down the road, didn’t like the claustrophobic feeling of being in the cellar under the apothecary shop. There was only a few inches of clearance between the bottom of the shop and the top of his speakeasy.
Sokol had gotten most of the glass swept up when he smelled the tell-tale cigar smoke of Pinhead. He paused in his sweeping to look at the entrance. A big, fat man came down the stairs, his shirt barely covering his protruding stomach. Salomao Pinheiro huffed his way down the steep stairs and walked in like he owned the place. Which he did, technically, since Sokol paid protection money to him.
Following him were two burly men that had been mill workers at one time, but were now working for Pinhead. He picked them because they were big, broad, and had an attitude about them that meant they would take no guff from anyone.
Pinhead puffed on his cigar and said, “What happened here?”
“Nothing,” Sokol snapped, and bent back to sweeping.
“You know what I think of liars,” he said.
Sokol stopped and glared directly at Pinhead. “What do you think? Somebody came in here and busted up my place and shot my dog!” Sokol threw down the broom and walked up to Pinhead. “Wasn’t I paying you to stop this kind of thing? Huh? HUH?”
The two men flanking Pinheiro moved like two bulls, slowly but with force. One pushed Sokol back hard enough he stumbled backwards a couple of steps.
Pinheiro puffed on his cigar. The other two, however were itching for a fight to pound the little Pollack into the concrete.
Pinheiro blew blue smoke toward Sokol. “You gotta pay extra for the overnights.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Pinheiro shrugged. “It’s either that or you sleep down here.”
“That’s bullshit. That’s fucking bullshit and you know it!”
Again, he shrugged. “Twenty-four hour watches need double the money, bestundo.”
Sokol was furious. If the two skurwielu weren’t there, he would take the broom to Pinheiro. Instead, he bent down and picked up the broom. The two men took a step forward.
“You wannit or not?” Pinheiro said, dropping what was left of the stogie and crushing it under his foot. One of the pea-brains grinned.
Sokol had to choose his next words carefully. “It’s going to take me a couple of days to get the money, Solomon. I have to get back up and running.”
Pinheiro looked around, nodding his head. “Yeah, yeah, pro’lly not ‘til Friday at least. I’ll pick up the money then. Double rates.”
“Double rates,” Sokol said. Pinheiro then walked back up the stairs, the two ba?wan right up his ass. Sokol heard him yell down, “Want me to get rid of that dog?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he answered, accenting it with a hard sweep.
2.
Sokol approached the man who was on his knees in the dirt under the tree. “Rak?”
The black-haired man thrust the small spade into the ground and turned around. “Oh, halo, Andy. Co tam masz?” What do you have there?
“My dog,” he answered in the same language, Polish.
He turned away. “I’m so sorry, Andy.”
“I was looking for Mr. Johnson.”
Rak stood to his full height, a half-head taller than Sokol. He had black, expressive eyes that reflected the light of the sun, and a deep, dark suntanned look since he worked all day in the orchard. He was broad shouldered from that hard work, slim from living off the vegetables he grew and the rabbits he could catch. As far as Sokol knew, he lived alone in a small shack out back on the banks of the river. “He’s gone to the mills. Are you looking to bury the dog?”
“Yes.”
Rak brushed off his knees and legs. “Then come with me. I will bury him.” He grabbed a shovel and started walking across the path that lined the back of the orchard, about a hundred yards from the banks of the Blackstone River.
“How did he die?”
“Pinhead’s boys shot him.”
“No,” said Rak, shocked.
“They want more money. They tore up my bar.” Just thinking of it got him riled up again.
“What happens now?”
“I give them more money, or I have someone sleep in my bar. It’s that simple.”
Rak shook his head. “Why does no one stop Pinhead?”
“Who’s going to stop him? Someone’s will take his place.”
“This never happened in my time in the motherland,” Rak said firmly. “We all banded together.”
“Then why are you here, if it was so wonderful at home?” Sokol remembered why he left – Poland was full of Russians and Ukranians, and Jews now. There was no Poland. He remembered his harrowing trip across Europe and the great ocean to land in New York, and then how he found a place for his family here, in Valley Falls.
Rak shrugged, “Things got worse back home. You can have a common enemy for so long, and then things get to a point where you can’t hold them off anymore. Sometimes a key person leaves, sometimes you get too complacent then things come crashing down.”
“So even if we band together, it’ll fail.”
“Not necessarily true,” said Rak, as he stopped. He took a left, and dipped down into a depression. “Here.”
In the center of the depression were small mounds of dirt, like someone had dug here before. Rak started digging at the spot he was standing. Some mounds had rolled pieces of paper sticking out of them, the writing on them too faint to see. Wal was getting heavy, so he put him down.
“I need to find another dog,” Sokol said.
“I know of a man who has many dogs. He wouldn’t miss one.”
“This has to be like Wal,” he said. “A special breed.”
“A guard dog.”
“Yes.”
Rak fell silent as he dug further. He hollowed out a three foot deep hole then rested in the sun. “You’re worried.”
“It’s not like I can go to the police with this. I run an illegal speakeasy. I can’t see Joachim – he’ll gouge me. We all pay Pinhead protection money, and now he’s got it in his head that he can rob us blind.”
“Then band together,” said Rak, as if that was the only answer.
“Band together? Me and the Portuguese? Then there’s the MacClellans whose son is on the police force.”
“You run the speakeasy. You have the most to lose. You will go to jail and where will your wife and daughter be?”
He took in a deep breath and let it out through his nose. Rak set to digging again. The dog started to smell of decay. Rak paused for a moment in mid-shovel and looked directly at Sokol. “Get out of the business.”
“What?”
Rak leaned on his shovel. “I said, get out of the business. Give up the speakeasy.”
“I need the money.”
“To pay him? If you don’t have the speakeasy, then you don’t have to pay him.”
“You don’t seem to under–”
“I’m not an idiot,” snapped Rak, and started shoveling again.
“My family,” said Sokol.
Rak pitched dirt. “What about your family?” He stopped, gazed at Sokol again.
“He’ll get us thrown out on our ear. He knows the Chases.”
“And the Chases know you. Your wife and daughter work in their mills.”
A distant whistle blew.
“They’re going to work now?”
“Yes.” How did he know what he was thinking?
Rak looked at the hole he dug, judged it fine, and got out of it. He picked up the dog as if it weighed nothing and set it down gently in the hole. He started covering it with the dirt. “You still don’t have a job?”
Sokol shook his head. He did work at the mills at one time, but Chace let him go, saying that they didn’t need a third shift anymore. His wife and daughter got paid less than he did, so the Valley Falls Mill kept them. Mr. Johnson did not take any money off of the rent like he did for the other tenants who had lost jobs. Sokol was, after all, renting the speakeasy and his apartment. But now it was getting too expensive, and with him losing business and having to pay twice the going rate for the protection – not to mention all the liquor he had lost in that raid…
Sokol said quietly, “Maybe I should get out of the business and give it to Pinhead.”
“Your family comes first, Andy.”
Sokol sighed. It was the sigh of a man admitting defeat.
3.
Sokol was still up when the dawn streamed in and his wife and daughter came home on the bus. Both of them dragged their tired, weary bones up the stairs to the third floor, kissed Sokol on the cheek, and tumbled into bed. Sokol could remember when he worked the machines and was that busy. His daughter was starting to get too big to run under the looms. His wife had said they were going to put her on the floor or let her go.
Already, at ten. How time flies.
Sokol was drinking the horrible rotgut that Old Man Fonseca made. He hadn’t been able to sleep. He was usually just closing up the speakeasy right now on normal days.
He went to the cigar box that held the money he made from the speakeasy and counted it out again. The number didn’t change, no matter what he did. He had enough to pay the rent on both places, but not enough to pay the protection money. If he got out of the business, he would have plenty of money to pay for the rent and bank a little extra. However, he never trusted banks, especially the Chace Bank near the City Hall.
He put the money back and went downstairs. Busses were running, bringing women and children to work for the first shift. On a normal day, the men would have gone to bed. Today, without his speakeasy…
Sokol went back to the speakeasy and unlocked the padlock, letting himself in. At least the glass was swept up, though it smelled like stale liquor. He had one more day to come up with the protection money.
He sat down on the concrete steps. Who was he kidding? He wouldn’t be able to get this speakeasy back up and running.
“Andy,” said an old woman’s voice, in heavily accented English. He turned around and saw Mrs. Cruz, the one who sold him the wine. “I hear-ed, yes? You barzinho, pwsssh!” She made an exploding motion with her hands.
“Yes,” he said. “Sim. Look.” He scooted along the steps.
“Rak Morrsey, he say to me. He say, Senhora Cruz, you give vinho tinto, yes? Give vinho to Andy. Make money for mãe e filha.” She nodded, and gave him a gap-toothed smile.
“Rak?” What was Rak doing? He said to get out of the business, and now he went to see one of his suppliers and told her to give him wine?
“I bring Fabiano, vinho. Espera.” She went back up the few stairs and disappeared. His eyes narrowed, confused. He came out of the cellar and saw Emilio, one of his suppliers of pure grain alcohol, come toward him with a box. “Hey, Andy, Rak said you need some booze.”
They came from all up and down the street. Grain alcohol. Wine from barrels. Warm beer. Bathtub gin and all kinds of things to mix with it. Whiskey. Even the MacClellans provided canned fruit.
When night came, he had the speakeasy open and running, with the Portuguese railmen and the men who were laid off filling the place. He was making money hand over fist, as people kept coming in, buying drinks that he never had before but they knew he had.
He finally closed the door at dawn, shooing out everyone. This time he had a box of liquor that he was bringing upstairs, and he made sure the padlock was securely fastened. He carried the box upstairs, unlocked the door, and sat down at his kitchen table with a sigh of satisfaction. He put his hard-earned money away.
The next afternoon, people were waiting outside for him, not to open, but for the empties. No one had broken in during the night, so he passed out all the empties back to the people. Some gave him more liquor, some promised him more tonight.
Then his eyes caught Rak, standing by the vines. He locked the door again and walked over to him. “Rak, I don’t know how I can thank you.”
Rak shrugged.
((And this is going the wrong way…))