Speakeasy by Alisa Smith

Author:Alisa Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

JUNE 1933

I WAS NERVOUS crossing the border to say the least. The last time we passed over, we had been on the run from the law. Maybe the Canadian police had our descriptions. Would we attract their notice? Ramon had a perpetually shifty look, even though Bill had supervised the purchase of his travelling suit, and he kept tugging at the collar. Just before we reached the guard station, I urged him to calm down.

“It’s just this fucking fake hand,” he said. “I can’t stand it. Give me a hook any day.” Bill had sensibly insisted that businessmen did not have hooks, and bought him expensive kid gloves, pearl grey, to wear over both the real hand and the fake one.

“I like your hook better too,” I said.

Meanwhile, Cruickshank was hunched down in the back seat in his idiotic tweed, and concealed his face behind a golfing magazine while we stopped at the border station. Bill of course was cool, answering the officer’s questions calmly.

“We’re visiting friends in Vancouver,” Bill said. “Just for three days.”

“Profession?”

“Businessmen.”

The border guard looked over our expensive car, nodded, and waved us through. Bill accelerated evenly to the speed limit and we motored through the quiet farmlands.

“It’s proved again that money buys respectability,” Bill said, craning his head round to grin at us in the back seat. “Lena, honey, pass me a cigar.”

Lena opened the glove box. She clipped the end of a cigar with small silver scissors kept there for that purpose, lit the cigar and placed it between Bill’s lips so that he needn’t take his hands from the wheel. If Lena ever performed an intimate service like that for me I shouldn’t take it for granted as Bill did. He was busy watching the road signs, though as far as I knew we had no plans. He turned into a place called White Rock and followed a waterfront road alongside a pretty beach, where he pulled over, the motor idling as we faced the sea, the sun warming my skin. Blue herons waded near the shore.

Bill spread his arms wide. “Life is beautiful.”

My worries about the job evaporated, and I couldn’t help grinning. I saw the world through his eyes, with birds singing, for us, the waves crashing and breaking, for us, and wished we could pause this moment forever. But Bill was a cog ever turning, and his fancy was caught by a hotel overlooking the pier, where he suggested we could get some liquor to enjoy the fact there was no Prohibition in Canada. The restaurant was empty, it being a weekday afternoon, and Bill had to go find the waiter, which annoyed him; but he pepped up as soon as the man brought our beers. The waiter put them directly into our hands, explaining that the bottle had a round bottom and would tip over if you put it down.

“I love this country,” Bill said as the waiter returned to the kitchen. “It’s got spirit. They invented a bottle that forces you to drink like a man.

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