Communication

"You have a lot of nerve, kid." I couldn't be certain, but that puff of air half resembled a laugh.

He sat hunched over, a repugnant smirk on his face as I watched him from across the steel table watching the guard pacing in the corner. All the glory I knew in him was stripped down from fur collars and patent shoes to a white and black striped jump suit and a number for a name. He scanned the room before his glance returned to me. His hand rubbed his chest above his heart where the bullet that sent him to the soggy boards of the dock once held a temporary home.

"Should it surprise you very much?" I lit a cigarette and blew a wispy stream of smoke up and away from the table.

"You're your father's daughter, I tell you that much, kid. You wear your fox lined gloves and white woolen coat into this filthy place like the dirt can't touch ya. Nevermind the reason you're here and, for that matter, the reason I'm here." He chuckled, hands resting on the table top face down. The guards want to see his hands, they want to see mine. I can feel their eyes watching us, roving over my pin curled hair, my chiffon, my ankles. "You're a class act, you, wearing the clothes that were paid for by what put me in this place, my new gray palace."

"I have a conscience, papa, but that'll never trump a girl's sense of fashion." I smiled. "Why'd you bring me out here all this way? I've got stories to write, a mess to clean up, and a reputation to preserve. Plus, the damp isn't good for my complexion."

"I needed to see something beautiful. I'm surrounded by these ugly mugs," he gestured over his shoulder to the other men in the room, "and it's driving me insane. You tell your mother yet?"

"She reads the paper, pops. She knows. Who do you think's living in your house downtown? She moved in the day your trial closed. Says you owe it to her.."

He grumbled out a laugh and smacked the table top with the open palm of his hand. "Ha! That woman, she's probably right. The guts in that one. I never should have left her, you know that?"

"Yeah, papa, I know."

"Still, it don't sting as much as it would have. You don't strike me as the Temperance type. None of that holy roller, save the family stuff was ever in you."

"You're right, I'm not. Never was and won't be. The drink might be poison, but it's a man's right to kill himself with it if he wants to..."

"Then why the hell am I here, Frankie?" His eyes bulged out, his lips clasped tightly together.

"A man has the right, pops, but the law, albeit wrong, must always win otherwise we all go down. Give it time, the law will change. The people won't stand for it."

"Christ, Frankie. You're an optimist. My guys hassling ya?" He leaned back.

"A few broken windows to put on a good show, but nothing lately. Theo's taken over, so I hear. I can't finger him yet, but I'm working on it."

A bell rang above us and the other women let out a harmonious sigh. I stood to leave and with me he too rose. A tasteful hug, the loving embrace between a father and his traitorous daughter. "Don't worry about it, kid, we're square."

Outside the gates, in the freshest air Chicago can muster, a cab was waiting to take me back to my newly minted office at the Tribune. I lit a fresh cigarette, got into the car, and draped the fur blanket across my lap. Fall had broken into winter overnight and the drive uptown was long. The weight of the blanket pushed something sharp into my hip.

There, inside my coat pocket, a letter addressed to Theo in my father's scrawl.

Bastard.

Ambient Embers

Through my window branches clash together in a violent wind. The drizzled mist of rain spatters the glass and sodden leaves roll across the grass. The day is greeted with a dark, tumultuous sky. An extension of night. I wrap the blanket tighter around me. Its healing embrace warming my body. A tight crocheted pattern lets my fevered body breathe. 

Steam rises from the lip of my mug, maroon tea swirls, an aroma released into my aching lungs. My body curled into itself, huddled in for warmth against the tufted grey lounge. Only a lamp to light the pages of my journal; the house quite, still under a restless night's slumber. At my feet, the bundle of a cat. Her brown and grey fur pulsing to her breath, the shocks of orange dancing, her white feet kneading. And in her eyes reflected the dying embers of a fire, the smoke stained glass encasing white flames, black soot, ashes, and coals. 

A restful reproach after a night spent in fog, a night balanced in the upheaval of loyalties. Shots rang out across the docks, buffeted against steel hulls, thumping in the dense air. The smoke of his cigarette trailing to the ground, the curse in his eyes. He saw me and he knew. It was the end to his kingdom, this rise of my career. My canvas coat wrapped tightly around my waist, my hands on my hips I stood triumphant over the conclusion to this story. My father, his daughter; destroyed in the name of justice. 

This marked the beginning although it marked his end. The men in their woolly blues cheered, a single tear dropped, and then I walked away. It is time to forget the man he was and begin to build the woman I am to become. 

My first headline: 

Top Popped: Giuseppe the Bottleneck

Read More: Chicago's Vice

Chicago's Vice

The fog floods my lungs as I struggle to my feet. Cramped legs protest my subtle, silent movements. I wince with pain. 4:30. My watch tells me I've been hunched behind this stack of wood crates for an hour longer than I had hoped. Maybe my informant was wrong. Maybe she lied. Impossible. She owes me too much. Her information is solid. 

I shake out the damp locked beneath the collar of my canvas jacket in time with the fog horn blowing off the docks. Jesus, I can't see a thing. Just a thick blanket of mist infiltrating every pore, every crevice; growing rust on every ship. I want to leave; to turn tail and go home to the warmth of my salon. Who am I compared to Giuseppe the Bottleneck: smuggler, businessman, mafioso? Me, some flapper tart from uptown who got a funny notion. 

I'll wait just a few moments more. He has to be here, there's no other way to get that poison into our town and I need it. I need the proof on his label, the evidence of his hands on the bottle. I've tracked him this far; from darkened stairwells, behind passwords and doors I have followed him, the king of this city. And I will bring him down. Just a few minutes more.

Waves lap the pylons that keep this wharf upright, the boards moan under the moisture in the air, under the booted footsteps of men. I crouch low, my auburn hair hidden beneath the black scarf I borrowed from the housekeeper. He won't see me until I want him to, the woman who will end his reign. More boots, the muffled cough of age behind a limp cigarette. It's embers marking the man's pace. I can smell him. 

Their eyes stare into me, their breath mingling with the fog. They wait for the signal. Soon, I promise resolutely.

Where would they be without me? Treading water in an open case; never drawing nearer. The morning I threw open those brass doors they were saved. A little woman in white trousers had outdone them all. A little woman in white trousers had handed them a prize. My facts checked out, though they tried hard to poke holes in my theory. A girl can learn a lot more than a copper can in a lounge they aren't supposed to know about. And I did. 

The crowbar wrapped in his gloved hands cracks open a wooden crate just off a gangplank. It's silent, but for the fog horn - a sound I'll hear for days after, imprinted in my mind. He takes a glove to his teeth and slides it off his hand. Each bottle is inspected. I step out from the shadows and I know he sees me. Then the men. This day would change him. This day he would remember his daughter, Francis Falcon: Investigative Reporter and snitch.