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“Now there’s a Sheba.” Mischievous grin in place, Val nodded toward a flapper whose skirt ended a scandalous inch below her knee.
Lorenzo chuckled. “Try taking a girl like that home, and Mama would make you the new entryway rug.”
Val boomed a laugh. “Got a point there, bro.”
Still grinning over the mental image, Lorenzo scanned the crowd again. His smile froze when an inebriated man pushed through to the bar a few spaces down and pounded a fist onto the top.
“Hey, barkeep!” he slurred. “Gimme a gin.”
It looked as though he had already had more than enough, but that wasn’t what had grabbed Lorenzo’s attention.
Following his gaze, Val quirked a brow. “Isn’t that Oliveri?”
“O’Reilly,” Lorenzo corrected, grinding it out around clenched teeth.
The band kicked up its volume—Val cupped a hand over his ear. “Huh?”
“His name is O’Reilly!”
The shout apparently traveled to more ears than Val’s. O’Reilly looked his way. Lorenzo could tell the exact moment when recognition broke through the haze of alcohol. O’Reilly’s lips peeled back in a snarl, and he shoved off the bar to stagger over to him.
“Well, well, well.” The agent grabbed the counter again to keep from swaying. “If it isn’t the self-righteous victor of the day. Here to celebrate?”
Lorenzo almost, almost pitied the man. “Not really, no. At the moment I’m just contemplating the irony of a Prohibition agent who claims to be honest drowning his sorrows in the establishment of the man he just failed to put away.”
Confusion clouded O’Reilly’s eyes briefly. “This one’s his too, is it? Here I thought I was avoiding him by not going to the millinery.” He looked around as if mentally condemning the place. “Guess I didn’t get as much on him as I thought.”
Tony sidled up on the other side of the bar, drying out a mug with a white towel. “What was your first clue? When my brother got him released from jail this afternoon?” He set down the clean glass with a thunk. “Do us all a favor and move on, O’Reilly. The likes of you ain’t wanted here.”
“The likes of me?” O’Reilly narrowed his eyes. “What about the likes of your hypocritical brother here? Claiming to be such a good boy, yet he spends his days getting criminals out of jail and passes his evenings in illegal gin bars.”
The words hit their mark. “You really want to talk about pots and kettles, O’Reilly? I’m not the one who’s practically falling over drunk. If either of us is a hypocrite, it’s you.”
O’Reilly poked a finger into Lorenzo’s shoulder. “It’s the Mafia I hate, not the ridiculous law they’re making all their money from. But you—you think Sabina didn’t tell me all about your high morals? You claim to be so righteous, but I don’t see it. I think you’re just a little girl too yellow to do any of the dirty work and too weak-willed to tell your precious Papa Manny no.”
Lorenzo pushed himself off his stool and grabbed the suit jacket he had taken off half an hour ago. “You know what? I’ve lost my desire for music. Val, Tony, I’ll see you at home for dinner tomorrow.”
Val restrained him with a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you shouldn’t be the one to leave.” He tossed the agent a look that usually sent cowards running. “If anyone’s going, it ought to be him.”
Lorenzo sucked in a deep breath. “No, Val. Let him have his gin. I really ought to go over to Manny’s anyway before the evening’s through.”
O’Reilly loosed a grating chuckle. “Yeah, you do that. And give Sabina a kiss for me, will you? A nice long one, like the last few we shared.”
Lorenzo’s fingers curled into a fist.
O’Reilly chuckled again. “Bet she didn’t mention those, did she? Or that little petting party we had last week?”
Lorenzo didn’t say a word. He just pulled back his arm and landed an uppercut on the man’s jaw that sent him sprawling flat on the ground, unconscious. The cheer that went up told Lorenzo that his brothers weren’t the only ones around who had been listening and piecing together the story.
Tony pressed his lips down on a grin. “Aren’t you supposed to turn the other cheek or something?”
Lorenzo flexed his hand. “Fresh out of ’em.”
Val laughed and gave him a friendly slap on the back. “Good thing we had older brothers to beat us up, huh? Come on, Enzo, let me buy you another Coke.”
“No thanks.” Lorenzo punched his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. “I’m going to settle this thing with Sabina while I’m still in the mood.”
Tony reached over the bar and grabbed his arm, his brows knit. “You sure, Enzo?”
