I knew this was going to happen. I shouldn’t have let Archie talk me into this whole thing. But it was a done deal as soon as I got into his flivver. He and his gal Grace thought they could show me a grand old time.
“Best time you’ll have this side of the Rouge,” he said. I wasn’t convinced, but I had nothing better to do after getting off from the factory, and it’d been a bit since I had a real drink.
Archie drove us up to the place, which was in the back of a hat shop. It was after hours, but the door to the front of the store was unlocked. The three of us walked to the back where there was a little door hidden behind some display racks.
“This is how we get into the joint,” Archie said. “Joe down at the foundry said you knock five times. Guy asks who wants some tea, and you say Warren G.”
And it went just like that. Five knocks and a harsh voice and Archie giving the code. A bruiser of a guy opened the door and led us down to the basement, where there was a jazz band and about forty guys and gals drinking and having a grand old time. Even the piano man was knocking them back.
“Hooch came in over the river from Windsor,” Archie says. “The Purple outfit has been running some high quality stuff from the Canadians. No turpentine or any of that crap, won’t turn you blue or put you six feet under.”
“How reassuring,” I said, taking a seat next to Grace. She was a looker alright, but I didn’t let my eyes linger lest I piss off Archie.
The three of us were in there for about an hour and thirty minutes before it all went to hell. The barman hit a switch that flipped all the shelving behind him back into the wall, a horrible crunching sound overcoming the playing band. It was all for naught. The fuzz busted in real quick. All of us were pretty loaded, and the only way into the basement was through the stairway, which was where all the heat was. Apparently there was a passageway off to the side, as most of the people in the know snuck out that way, including Archie and Grace. That left me and a few straggler members of the jazz band. A big burly cop decked me in the gut and sent me reeling. When I got up back on my feet, he and his goon partner had me cuffed.
“I didn’t do anything, officer,” I managed. “I just came down here to check the joint out.”
“Well, I assume you know that speakeasies are illegal, and that drinking in one is as well.”
“I guess, I just don’t see the harm,” I managed.
The cop chuckled. “The harm is that you happened to be at this particular establishment, which many of our fellow officers hold in disrepute.”
“This establishment?”
The other cop started chuckling.
“What the sergeant is trying to say is that we are much more amenably inclined towards Morty’s off of Woodward.”
I put two and two together.
“What’s the word?” The cop who decked me undid my cuffs. “They ask who pays the piper, and you say Al.”
“Simple as that?”
“Yeah.”
The cops proceeded to bash in the place with their billy clubs, but they let all of us out. Helluva world we live in these days.
Michael Hughes is an author living in Los Angeles. His novels include Pumpkin Farmer, The Crimson Shamrock, Inland Intrigue, and Loafing by La Brea.