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Chapter Thirteen
“Stilling brew is just a small piece of the pie, Ty,” Roger said. “Just like every other business, even legal ones, bootleggers need a way to get their product to market, to the big cities and beyond. That is where the mob comes in. It’s an underground world as intricate as the one aboveground, and in some cases, just as cutthroat.”
Ty rubbed the back of his neck, where tension was making it burn and ache. “Last night,” he said, “when I told you I wasn’t the man for you—”
“I thought I convinced you, you are,” Roger interrupted.
Shaking his head, Ty crossed the room, but didn’t sit down. Instead he stood in front of Roger’s desk. “There’s more to it than that. I am a federal agent.”
Roger Nightingale was too smooth to reveal how that news affected him. Slowly, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his beefy arms.
“I’m not a prohib agent,” Ty said, “here to break up stills or arrest bootleggers. I’m not a revenue man, either, after tax money.”
“Then what are you, and what are you after?”
“I’m a federal private investigator, here to see a specific gangster is arrested,” Ty answered. “One I believe is behind Dave’s poisoning, among other things. Ray Bodine.”
Roger shook his head and cracked a bogus smile. “You’re barking up a fallen tree, boy. Bodine’s dead. Has been for a few years.”
“No, he’s not,” Ty answered. “His brothers are in the pen, but Bodine didn’t die at that shootout. The coffin paraded down the streets in New York, the one newspapers across the nation published pictures of, held sandbags.”
“How do you know?”
“I opened it.”
Roger didn’t attempt to hide his surprise at that. “Hell,” he said, eyes wide. “You’re him.”
Ty knew Roger didn’t mean Bodine, so he asked, “The snitch Withers reported?” He was ready to clear up that falsehood, too.
“No,” Roger said. “The bounty hunter. The night stalker. The mole. The phantom. Some claim you don’t exist, but there’s not a man with a bounty on his head that’s not looking over his shoulder, wondering if he’s your next target.”
Ty didn’t respond. There was no need. His reputation had preceded him. He’d acquired many nicknames over the years. As long as no one ever saw his face, he didn’t care what they called him.
“You’re a man with no past. Never leave footprints of where you’ve been, apart from the deaths or arrests of gangsters. But you don’t do those yourself. You call in the locals. They get the credit for it, claiming only that they’d received an anonymous tip.” Roger ran a hand through his hair, which looked to be growing whiter by the minute. “My background checks, they’re all false?”
“No,” Ty answered. “I am just who they say. Tyler Bradshaw, born and raised by Irish immigrants in New York City, although my father was English. I served in the army, attended law school afterward while serving on the New York police force, and then became a private investigator.”
“Are you really only twenty-eight?” Roger asked. “That’s a lot for a man so young to accomplish.”
“I am,” Ty answered. “I never stayed in one spot too long.”
“Just long enough to make a footprint,” Roger said.
Nightingale was nervous, and Ty couldn’t say that pleased him. “I stayed in one spot long enough.” The flashbacks were too strong to ignore. “Might still be in New York if Bodine hadn’t wiped out an entire block of the neighborhood where I’d grown up. Where my parents had lived since moving to America.”
“And now you’re here,” Roger said, wiping at the sweat beading on his temples.
“And now I’m here,” Ty repeated. “And only three people know that,” he pointed out. “The two of us and my boss, who rarely leaves his office in Washington.”
“Why?” Roger asked. “Why are you telling me this?”
Ty took a seat and drummed his fingertips on the chair’s armrest. He was on virgin soil. Not once in five years had he taken someone into his confidence, and proceeding was like taking the first step on a narrow log laid out as a bridge over a fast-moving river. “Because,” Ty started, “Bodine will arrive at the resort this week. He’s rented your farmhouse under the name of Ralph Brandon. His henchmen have been in St. Paul for a couple of weeks, scouting out an in to the Minnesota Thirteen trade.”
“He’s really not dead?”
“He’s really not dead,” Ty assured him. “And I do believe he’s behind Dave’s poisoning.”
Roger sat quietly, lips pinched, most likely running scenarios through his head. With a heavy sigh, he nodded. “You bring Bodine down here, at the resort, and I’m ruined.”
Ty couldn’t deny that, nor could he offer an alternative. Despite his desire to shield Norma Rose, to somehow preserve the resort she cherished, his goal hadn’t changed.
“I told you last night this resort doesn’t just feed my family,” Roger said. “The business we do here feeds this entire area, and beyond.”
Ty understood the resort didn’t just employ a lot of people, but that the popularity of the place helped other local businesses thrive. He didn’t want to put a stop to any of that. Not even the bootlegging. That wasn’t his job. The making and transporting of illegal alcohol was too big and vast to ever be stopped completely, and within his inside circle, no one wanted it to end. They focused on catching the real villains of the world. “Bodine wants in, Roger,” Ty said. “In on the money being made by Minnesota Thirteen and he knows you’re the key.”
Roger’s distress was made clear by the heavy sigh he let out. “I told you the mobsters I deal with are not in the business of killing innocent people. They aren’t interested in owning entire cities. They’re just out to put cash in their pockets.”
“Up to now,” Ty argued. “But it’s getting bigger, and Bodine wants in. He wants that money in his pocket and he doesn’t care who’s in his path.”
Roger stood and walked to the window, his shoulders slumped. “I’m ruined either way, aren’t I?”
Ty couldn’t lie, therefore chose to remain silent.
* * *
Norma Rose stayed in bed later than usual. Sleep hadn’t eluded her, as she’d feared. The dream she’d been having had been too good to leave. Now, awake, lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling, she couldn’t recall exactly what it had been about, other than it had been wonderful. It left her feeling warm and tranquil and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly, relishing even that—just breathing—as a smile remained on her lips.
Her lips quivered and the smile slipped. What did she have to be this happy about? Memories overrode the mingling aftermath of the unknown dream. The dance-off. Ty. Sheriff Withers.
Norma Rose groaned. A deep and hollow sound that echoed off the walls.
Definitely nothing to be happy about.
Completely foreign to the way she normally reacted to anything that needed to be done, she pulled the covers over her head and seriously considered staying in bed all day.
The knock on her door wasn’t what changed her mind. She’d never spent the entire day in bed and wouldn’t today, no matter what she might have to face. Pulling the covers off her head and tucking them beneath her arms, Norma Rose said, “Come in.”
Twyla, dressed in a yellow-and-black outfit that made her look like a beautiful sunflower in full bloom, bounded into the room. “Good morning, sleepyhead.” Plopping onto the bed and kicking her heels to make the bed bounce, Twyla added, “Still tired from last night? You were magnificent.”
Norma Rose bit her tongue just in time. She’d been about to say last night shouldn’t have happened, at least her dancing, that is, but if she said that, she’d have to mean it, or at least pretend and that she did not want to do. For reasons she still had to discern. “Thank you,” she said instead. “For all you did last night.”
“You’re welcome,” Twyla said prudently as she stood and smoothed her skirt over her thighs. “You can thank me for what I do today, later.”
Throwing back the covers to climb out of the bed, Norma Rose swung her legs around and planted her feet on the floor. “What are you doing today?”
“Stay seated,” Twyla said, holding up both hands, “until after I speak.”
Norma Rose’s stomach fell, from past experience.
“Okay?” Twyla asked.
Considering she was rather frozen from fear, Norma Rose agreed. “Okay.”
Twyla planted her feet as if she was prepared to defend herself, and her shoulders rose with a very deep breath. Norma Rose’s stomach hiccupped. Last night had been a bad idea. Whether it had worked or not, she’d pay for it today. Only the good Lord knew how.
On the end of her exhale, Twyla began to speak swiftly. “Father spoke to Brock this morning. Don’t worry, Ginger’s fine. I think Father is actually relieved she’s not here. At least that’s how it seemed. Anyway, Brock suggested we hire Slim Johnson for Al’s party and Palooka George’s birthday, and considering you and Forrest haven’t spoken since that incident a million years ago, which really doesn’t matter now that you have Ty, I told father I’d go talk to Forrest, to see if he’ll let Slim out of his contract long enough to play for us.” She huffed out a breath and flinched, as if waiting for the sky to fall. “What do you think?”
