New York City
July 19, 1946
“PACKED AND STACKED,” muttered Jack Shepard, gazing down at the sweltering Manhattan rush hour. Cars, trucks, taxis, and people—swarms of them. Pouring out of buildings, spilling down avenues, racing back to Cracker- jack apartments and cramped rowhouses, smoky bar cars, and roomy Victorians in the suburban north, land of do- right guys and fair-play Janes, chubby-cheeked kids, and manicured shrubbery.
“Excuse me, but are you Jack Shepard?”
The perfume reached him before the words. Not cheap and obvious, like his gum-chewing secretary’s, but subtle, delicate, and dripping with pedigree.
“Look at ’em,” said Jack, still staring out the window. “Most of ’em hungry and tired and crazy to get out of the summer heat. All of them, from this height, small enough to swat like flies.”
“One of them did get swatted,” said the dame. “That’s why I’m here.”
Without turning, Jack rubbed his neck. Beneath his thin dress shirt, shoulder muscles rippled. His sweat box of an office was no place for a jacket. He’d tossed it hours ago, loosened his tie, rolled up white sleeves. His rod stayed where it was, strapped in a holster, just under his arm.
Checking his watch, he turned to his desk, slid open a drawer. Like an old friend, the liquid gold greeted him. He pulled out one glass, poured two fingers.
“Quitting time,” he said, flat as a pancake. The week had been a long one. He’d done the job he’d been hired to do, but he hadn’t liked it. Or himself for doing it.
“Does that mean you want me to return on Monday?”
Slowly, Jack glanced up. When the world went bad, a man had two means of escape. A bottle. Or a dame. The sight of this one matched her sound and smell—cultured and subtle in a pink polkadot halter and white gloves, her golden locks upswept beneath a wide-brimmed hat. She looked to be in her late twenties, had a long white neck, and smooth, firm shoulders.
“Stay awhile,” said Jack, nudging the glass. It slid a few inches across the battered wood.
She stepped forward, slowly took off her gloves—a blue-blood striptease. She picked up the glass. Jack reached in the drawer for another.
Her big brown ones studied his muscular forearm as he poured his own, then her long, blonde lashes slowly lifted and she took in the V of his torso, the narrow waist and broad shoulders, the dagger-shaped scar across the flat, square chin, and the gunmetal gray eyes, staring down her own with sharp interest.
She swallowed nervously, put the shot glass to her glossy pink pout, and tentatively sipped. A delicate eyebrow rose in surprise—no doubt at the high quality of the hooch. It made no sense with his battered wooden desk, davenport of cracked brown leather, and old metal file cabinets. But Jack wasn’t cheap where it counted.
“Thanks,” she said softly. Her teeth were right and straight, white and perfect.
Jack knocked back his own in one gulp and pointed to a wooden chair across from his desk. “Take a load off.”
She did. Pulling up her skirt, she crossed million-dollar gams in strappy sandals, giving him a happy glimpse of bare skin. One long limb swung nervously.
With a sigh, Jack moved to his worn leather chair and sat down, putting a mile of desk between them. This rich, blonde honey may have flowed easily through his door, but honey wasn’t always sweet. Sometimes when you reached for a taste, you got stung.
“You look as though you’re having a bad day,” said the dame from across the wide, brown desert of his desktop.
“What are you? My bartender?” Jack’s lips gave a wry little twitch. His eyebrow arched a fraction. “I’m the one pouring.”
The dame studied Jack’s face, took another genteel sip. “I don’t believe men really tell bartenders anything.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because men don’t like to reveal their weaknesses to other men. In my experience, men are more likely to tell women what’s vexing them.”
“
“Vassar, actually.”
“That was number three on my list.”
“Come now, Mr. Shepard, I’m sure my higher education is not what’s vexing you.” This time it was her eyebrow arching, her own wry smile teasing.
“Tracked down a clipster running a con on a suit,” Jack found himself confessing. “Only the con turned out to be minor, fifty bucks even on a check-bouncing grift—and the clipster just a little old guy down on his luck after losing a legit job. The suit hires me. Easy for him, ’cause he’s sitting on wads of dough, but he got his ego bruised, you know, the kind who’s mortified to be smarted out of one dollar, let alone fifty—so he pulled some strings with his judicial buddies after I bring the old man in. Now gramps is gonna do hard time.”
“But this con man person was guilty of a crime, no?”
“The old guy was so scared he pulled a gut-ripper on me. Pathetic little switchblade. I had to rough him up to keep him from running. I didn’t like it.”
The dame took another long look at Jack’s acre of shoulders, his boxer’s nose, his muscular forearms. “It was your job, no?”
“Frail old guy. Did his bit in the first war. Gave up the con racket a decade ago—till his legit job let him down. Hard time in Sing-Sing. It’ll be the end for him.”
“That’s not your business, though. You did your job. You should be proud.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Jack poured another one, knocked it back. “So who’s your fly, honey? The one that got swatted?”
“My sister. And if you don’t help me, Mr. Shepard, the next fly that gets swatted will be me.”
CHAPTER 1
The girls I know do not like real life. When it roars in for a landing in their backyards, threatening to fly them from dance class to dorm room, beach chair to office, bar stool to altar, they race for the underground, looking for shelter. After all, why be neurotic when you can be numb?
Quindicott, Rhode Island
Today
“ALL THE PLAYERS were in place. The lights were up, the stage was set for a tragedy worthy of the bard . . .”
Crisp paper rustled through the warm July air of Buy the Book’s Community Events room, a space so packed with people, the store’s modest air-conditioning unit had been rendered irrelevant. At the carved-oak podium, a slender young woman with long copper hair and triple-pierced ears had paused from her reading to slowly pour
