Read the Opening Scene
Monday, September 14, 1931 Chicago, Illinois
Buck Wilson did not deserve a second chance. He knew it down to his marrow, yet here he stood, outside Chicago’s Union Station, in the very town where he’d left all his hopes and dreams. The detective who wanted to arrest him at his side.
He adjusted his fedora to cover more of his face. “If they find out I’m here, you know what they’ll do.”
“I reckon so.” Michael O’Connor braced his hands on his belt and looked around, neck craning to see the tall buildings around them. “You liked it here?”
“Let’s go, O’Connor. Quit acting like a tourist.” Buck tugged at his collar. The heat was more oppressive here in the city than up in Crow’s Nest. He couldn’t wait to leave, to return to the small Wisconsin town that had become home. But first, he had to face the one person he thought he’d never see again.
“I could have done this by myself, you know.” O’Connor kept up with Buck’s brisk pace.
“I know.” Buck turned his back on the Chicago River and headed west down Jackson. He needed the walk, even if it meant arriving looking wrung out. Frankly, he wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t be tossed out on his rear. He deserved nothing less. But he needed to face her like a man, not send the detective to do his dirty work.
Detective Michael O’Connor was around seventy, with blue eyes that could see into a man’s soul and a gray mustache that seemed to be a living thing at times. Buck scratched at his own usually clean-shaven chin as his eyes fell on a Beistle Devil Dancer in a shop window. The travel down from Crow’s Nest hadn’t afforded time to shave, and the scruff provided a measure of anonymity. However, showing up, looking like a hobo—or worse, a Halloween decoration—wouldn’t win him any good graces.
He halted. “We need a cab.”
“Finally. He has some sense,” O’Connor grumbled.
“Yeah. Yeah.” It was a longer walk than he remembered, and the Windy City Chicago was not today. He’d give anything for a fishy breeze off the lake. And just as much, he wouldn’t breathe a word of that sentiment to his companion. Though, as the older man folded himself into the hansom cab with a twinkle in his eye, Buck suspected the good old detective knew more than Buck wanted.
“Did you tell Matrone where you were going?” Detective O’Connor broke the silence that settled once they were on the move.
Nick Matrone was an Italian doctor who’d befriended Buck this past summer. He was one of the few men in Crow’s Nest who saw Buck as a person instead of the head of the Crow’s Nest Conglomerate. They sparred every morning. Matrone’s fiancée, Mindy Zahn, was the first to prod Buck about facing his past.
“They can’t know the truth.” Buck watched the old buildings go by, many already donning the orange and black of next month’s holiday. Black cats and witches hats. Pumpkins and masks. “Telling you is dangerous enough.”
“I wish you would have told me two years ago,” the man huffed. “Two heads and all. We could have solved this before people got hurt.”
Could they have done so? He’d been reluctant to risk it. But now, with children getting caught in the cross-hairs and his own step-brother in jail again, the counter-risks were piling up, too. “I guess we’ll never know.”
Before too long, he recognized the spire of St. Mark’s. The sun reflected off the cross that rose high above the surrounding buildings, including the one where the cabbie stopped. Buck paid the driver and sent him on his way. O’Connor stood silently beside him. He appreciated that about the detective. The man didn’t rush into things. For a moment, Buck let his eyes linger on the Catholic Church across the street, where a man in a flat cap unloaded crates of food to be carried inside.
On the edge of one of the Italian neighborhoods, smells of sausage and basil wafted through the air and punched him in the stomach. They reminded him of the blissful life he’d been forced to leave behind. O’Connor gripped his shoulder, and Buck shook himself away from the memories. If he wanted to make his sacrifices—her sacrifice—worth it, he needed her help. There was no other choice.
“We’re being observed,” O’Connor’s gravelly voice rumbled.
Buck turned toward the old brownstone, nearly stumbling over a newsboy as the kid darted by, a package of newspapers tied with twine in his arms. Sometimes, he missed the hustle and bustle of the city, but most times, he did not. And there were plenty of children to trip over on the wharf in Crow’s Nest.
He scanned the building. A paper apple with a cut-out smile hung below the agency name painted on the picture window beside the door. On the second floor, he spotted the flutter of a curtain. The Di Stasio Giornaliste Agency was home to some of the most dogged female journalists he’d ever met. Curious women who would have no trouble tossing him to the street for what he’d done to one of their own.
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