The chemist tapped his temple. “Must keep the brain clear.”
Fife smiled his magnanimous smile. “I do think you should have one night of sin every once in a while. It’s unnatural to be so pure all the time. Well, then.” He turned back to Dash and took the beaker from his hand, placing it on the shelf behind him. “I think you’ve seen enough. Shall I count you as one of my customers?”
Another pointed look.
Dash smiled.
Better the Devil you know.
“You can.”
“Excellent!” Fife extended his hand. They shook. Fife said to the chemist, “You’re a witness, Angelo. A gentlemen’s agreement.”
“Yes, sir.”
The gangster reached into his inside pocket and withdrew a card. “Here is a number you can call at any time. If anyone gives you any trouble, any at all, you dial this number.”
He handed it over to Dash.
If anyone gives you any trouble . . .
Walter flashed into Dash’s head. One couldn’t find a better definition of trouble than him. With this contract, not only was Walter threatening Dash and his friends, he was also threatening Nicholas Fife. And Fife knew how to deal with such threats, Dash had no doubt about that. Expediently and secretly.
But are you a murderer?
This question gave Dash pause. Fife would kill Walter, like Atty suggested days ago. And Dash had already said to Atty they weren’t killers. He meant it. He believed it. Yet the stakes were getting higher and the dangers more precarious. Was it still murder if it was self-defense? And could he live with the knowledge of what he had done for the rest of his life?
Dash noticed Fife looking at him strangely.
“Are you all right, Mr. Parker?” the gangster asked.
Dash cleared his mind of these ruminations and said, “Right as rain.”
Fife paused, keeping watch over his face. “Good,” he eventually replied. “First shipment will be at your club in two weeks . . . after I get my suit, of course. And now, Mr. Parker, I must bid you goodnight. I have other customers to see. I look forward to wearing your work next weekend.”
There was that damnable smirk again.
“What with the special care you took to get my . . . measurements . . . I’m sure it’ll fit me like a glove.”
23
Fife’s driver dropped Dash off at the Cherry Lane Playhouse. The lights were out, the doors locked, the box office boarded up. It looked like the abandoned warehouse it once was before becoming a theater. God knew what time it was.
Maybe I need a wristwatch like Walter. Or like Karl.
His trembling legs managed to get him up the flight of stairs to the apartment with minimal fuss. His hands were another story. They kept shaking, and it took several tries to get the keys into the locks. He finally was able to turn them and enter the safety of his home. Finn’s room was empty, as per usual. Probably out with a fleet of sailors, trying to forget Valentino’s fragile health. Joe was surprisingly still awake and lying in the main bed, not on the cot.
Once Dash closed the bedroom door, Joe looked up. “Lassie, what happened to you tonight? You have any idea how worried I was?”
The voice was the usual Irish brogue, but the eyes took on a different character. It wasn’t anger. The emeralds didn’t smolder the way they usually did when his Irish temper was set off. It also wasn’t concern, at least not directly. Dash held Joe’s gaze, trying to pinpoint the expression as well as the feeling rapidly flooding his chest.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” he replied. “Something happened . . .”
Now the emeralds darkened with fear. “What—?”
Dash told him about being kidnapped and driven to Queens. Lowell’s henchmen. The gun pointed at him in the dark. The warehouse far away from any sort of help. The gangster standing center stage. The narrative came pouring out of Dash’s mouth, words tumbling over themselves in a rush of adrenaline. The fear of stepping into that car. The relief of stepping out of it again.
When he paused for a breath, Joe reached his arms out and pulled Dash onto the bed. He was enveloped in a tight embrace, his face pressing against Joe’s broad, naked chest. He heard Joe’s heartbeat, which was pounding beneath his ear. Listening to it brought tears to Dash’s eyes.
He’s afraid for me.
It was a long minute before they separated. When they did, Joe looked into Dash’s face and said, “I’ll kill him.” So matter-of-fact.
The absurdity of the statement caused Dash to laugh. “I don’t think you can.”
“Oh, lassie, don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
Dash nodded, sniffing back his tears. “You’re right. You’re a formidable man.”
“Ya damn right I am!” His hands gripped Dash’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, lad.”
“For what?”
“For not being there once again.”
Dash forced a smile. “How could you have known?”
Joe used his thumb to wipe away silent tears from Dash’s face. Without consciously thinking, acting purely on impulse, Dash kissed him. A kiss so hungry, it was like Dash was a starving man having bread for the first time in years. He wanted to feel alive, to feel free, not caged in by men like Walter Müller and Nicholas Fife—or even by the dumb bribe-collecting copper Cullen McElroy.
Clothes were hastily unbuttoned and discarded. In a blur of movement, they were both completely naked. Joe laid Dash on his back. When their naked bodies touched, a shudder shook its way from Dash’s tailbone all the way to the top of his neck. The normally stoic Irishman whispered, “Dear God, lassie.”
After that, it was hot breath on skin. Hands guiding hands, legs rubbing legs. Joe seemed to be pushing Dash farther and farther into the mattress, the weight of Joe’s coarse, hairy body threatening to smother him. Dash’s fingers were entangled in Joe’s fiery
