Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

10. Roberts

Chapter ten

Roberts

Police Lieutenant John Roberts parked his car outside of an unassuming diner on the West side of the river and scanned his eyes over the place. The building stood alone, with only a few cars in the gravel parking lot. It looked this side of abandoned and he hoped he hadn’t somehow gotten mixed up with the directions.

He let out a sigh and turned the engine off.

It was only noon and the heat of the day was already so oppressive that he was sweating through his suit. He pulled at his tie and swiped at his wrist across his forehead, wishing to God he could jump in the river, suit and all. Oklahoma was a hell pit in the summer, merciless the way the thick air clutched at every inch of his body. Even his lungs.

He climbed out of the car and smoothed his hair, then settled his black fedora on his head and walked across the gravel parking lot. He’d never been to this place before and though his stomach was growling with hunger, he eyed the front windows skeptically. It was dingy, poorly kept up. Why the hell were they meeting here? Sure, it was better not to meet at the police station all the time, but that didn’t mean they had to eat like possums out of a dumpster.

He shook his head and yanked the door open. The restaurant was completely empty except for one other person, and it was just as hot inside as it was outside. Good god. Behind the counter, a tiny woman who was probably older than the dirt caked into his shoes stood polishing a glass. She peered at him through her wire rimmed glasses.

“Help you, sir?” she said, accent thick as dough.

“‘Worthwhile Ice,’” he recited, making sure to hit all of the consonants with hard emphasis. Stupidest password he’d ever fucking heard.

“Right this way, sir.” The tiny old woman turned and led him down a tiny hallway to a door marked Restroom. She entered the restroom and opened another door that looked for all intents and purposes like a closet. When she opened the door, Roberts saw that it was, in fact, a closet. Very clever.

She rapped a funny little rhythm on the back wall and it opened inward. A man dressed in a white jacket stood on the other side of the door.

“One for lunch,” the tiny woman said and then began the awkward process of squeezing past Roberts to get back out to the restaurant. Annoying. He did his best to smash himself into the mop and the broom to allow her the room to go past him, resisting the urge to give her a shove .

The man in the white jacket inclined his head and stepped back to permit Roberts into the room.

It was an elegant, if tiny dining room with a collection of six tables that could only accommodate two people at each. There were no windows, but electric lights lit the room with the aid of candles at every table. In one corner there was a tiny bar where another man in a white coat stood, stirring something in an intricate diamond cut crystal glass.

How refreshing. Not at all like what he would have imagined stepping into this building from the outside. He breathed a sigh of relief. All of the tables were occupied except for one. And from the back corner of the room, a hand went into the air and waved him over with a single come motion.

Irritating, the arrogance of that gesture. He chewed on that as he walked over, but bit down the urge to make a snide comment about it.

Walter Stanley sat, fork and knife in hand, as Roberts approached the table. Didn’t even bother to get up and shake his hand as would behoove a typical business partnership. Well, that shouldn’t surprise him. Stanley always acted like his shit didn’t stink. Roberts didn’t know why he thought the longer they continued their arrangement that Stanley might actually treat him with some respect.

He should have known by now that Stanley thought such things were beneath him. And what did he need validation from this criminal piece of scum for, anyway ?

“You made it, Lieutenant.” Stanley carefully cut a petite piece of steak and tucked it neatly into his mouth, chewing with languid gusto. He watched Roberts with unnaturally blue eyes while Roberts removed his hat and handed it off to the waiter who stood by, ready to assist.

“Keep it down, would you?” Roberts said, trying not to move his lips. He scanned around the dining room to be sure no one had heard Stanley address him by his title.

“No one here has seen or heard a thing.” Stanley cut another bite of steak. “And they won’t see or hear anything that happens after this point.”

Stanley had a way of making a man feel small. Insignificant.

Roberts did not like feeling insignificant. In fact, he didn’t like Stanley. But this was a mutually beneficial business arrangement. He wasn’t required to like Stanley in order for it to work.

Insufferable bastard.

Roberts eyed Stanley with pursed lips while he continued to eat his lunch. It was strange to watch him do something as mundane and human as eating a meal. A man made of flesh and blood, though you wouldn’t know it to meet him anywhere else.

He looked more like something out of a ghost tale than a heavy hitter in the Tulsa underworld with his pale face and his hair black, as if he never went out into the sun. Irritatingly handsome, but Roberts took consolation in the fact that his nose appeared to have been broken at least once. There was also a half-moon scar under one eye and a web of scars on his chin that marred his lower lip, further subtracting from his good looks. And a signet ring on his pinky finger that he always wore, something that made Roberts want to sneer at him. Of all the self-important things.

It just wasn’t fair that some men got to have everything.

Roberts settled into the chair opposite of Stanley and looked up at the man in a white coat hovering nearby.

“I’ll have a manhattan cocktail.” Might as well live it up while he was slumming with the slimeball across the table from him.

Roberts may have spent the whole of his career locking people up for selling and possessing controlled substances but that didn’t mean he was happy about Prohibition. It was one thing when the Feds weren’t breathing down their necks. But now that the federal government had passed it into law, there was more at stake than what the local jurisdiction could offer.

Still, when Walter Stanley had sauntered into his office, bold as he pleased with a mutually beneficial business proposition, Roberts wasn’t in a position to turn him down.

Now they were locked into this thing together, proverbial knives at each other’s throats. In the beginning it had seemed airtight. If Stanley betrayed Roberts, he would be finished. Sitting in a jail cell faster than you could say bee’s knees. And if Roberts turned on Stanley, Stanley would make sure he went down with him. But Roberts had become keenly aware of the fact that Stanley wasn’t a stranger to the precinct, and that he had begun to cultivate friends in higher places. Which placed Roberts on the wrong end of the deal.

A fact he resented immensely.

“And whatever he’s having,” Roberts called after the waiter, waving his hand in the general direction of Stanley’s plate.

Stanley dabbed at his mouth delicately with his napkin and put it aside. He rolled his tongue in his mouth, extracting shreds of his lunch from his teeth.

“What’s all the urgency?” Stanley looked him over, face not giving away so much as a passing thought. The man might as well have been made from marble. Roberts had never seen anyone look so detached. He made it look easy. Stanley, he imagined, was probably quite the poker player.

“That Evelyn girl that you run around with–” Roberts folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward. “How long do you intend to keep her with you? Her husband is asking questions and her father is breathing down my neck.”

Stanley sat perfectly still and said nothing for a long time. An electric pause that was quickly becoming physically painful for Roberts to endure.

Finally Stanley said, “So she’s missing?”

“Well, ah...” Roberts leaned back in his chair, hand flat on the table. That wasn’t the answer he’d expected at all. In fact, he was confused. “She isn’t with you?” A spare amount of hatred for Stanley bubbled in his stomach, tinged green with jealousy. Roberts had been after Evelyn Colter for years and she’d never given him the time of day. He was a personal friend of her father’s and that didn’t matter even a little to her.

He wasn’t good enough, but she’d take up with trash like Stanley without a care in the world? And that wasn’t the worst of it. Before Stanley came along, he heard that she moved off to New York and started throwing herself at anything with a prick that moved. Anything except for him, anyway. Just the thought of it made him want to flip the table.

It was difficult to say what exactly about Stanley’s expression changed, but goosebumps suddenly raced over Roberts’ arms and he had to resist the urge to back away.

“What do you mean she’s missing?” There was an edge to his voice that Roberts had never heard before.

Frankly, it took him aback.

“Her father called me and said he hasn’t heard from her in weeks. Said he’s been trying to get her husband to produce her, but he’s been putting him off. Then when it came down to it, he finally admitted that he had no idea where she’d gone. I interviewed him and he said he thought she had probably just run off. With you, frankly. Seems like he was trying to keep the scandal all hushed up.”

“And you didn’t consider that maybe he did something to her?” There was now a distinct note of rage in Stanley’s voice. Which was, frankly, astonishing .

“Uh um–” Roberts cleared his throat and tried to regain a handle on the discussion. “I’m looking into it. Everything is a possibility right now. But to be honest with you, I also assumed she was probably with you.”

“Well, she isn’t,” Stanley said, blue eyes glowing with his anger. Though his voice was still steady and low as it always was, Roberts couldn’t help but quell under the look he gave him. “So what the fuck are you going to do about it?”

“I–” Roberts sat back in his chair, totally blank for a moment. He had no fucking idea where to even start. He thought this would be an open and shut case, just a little family scandal to handle. He was not at all prepared to suddenly be in the position of having her father and her insane lover breathing down his neck to produce answers.

“Just– Just to be clear, you haven’t heard from her, either?” Roberts said, grasping at straws.

“No, Roberts,” Stanley said in a slow voice that smoldered with anger, enunciating every syllable clearly. “I haven’t.”

Stanley put down his utensils and sat back in his seat, one closed fist still resting on the table.

“We’ll look at the husband,” Roberts said, swallowing. “That’s the next step.” It was suddenly obvious how real of a possibility it was that her husband had done something to her. And it was also obvious why. Not many men he knew would put up with being so openly cuckolded by a woman who was chronically gracing the gossip columns and the society pages.

“I’d say that you’re probably right,” Stanley said in a tone that made Roberts realize that he was sweating. “So you should probably get to it immediately.”

“Yes,” Roberts said. He swallowed. “Absolutely.”

“What else do you know?” Stanley didn’t move a muscle, just watched him with those cool, glittering eyes.

“I mean, nothing,” Roberts said. “I haven’t had a chance to do anything. I just found out today. I spoke to her husband this morning at his office in the Mayo building.”

“Time to speak to him again,” Stanley said. Then he looked away, across the restaurant, his eyes crinkling. He slowly pulled a silver cigarette case from the inner pocket of his jacket and lit it with an equally expensive looking lighter.

“Sir?” The waiter was standing next to Roberts, a plate of steak and spinach in his hand. “Your meal, sir.”

Roberts moved his elbows off the table and stared at the steak, blood running across the white plate. His stomach turned just looking at it. His appetite seemed to have evaporated with all of this unsavory conversation.

“Well.” Roberts pushed the plate aside and put his elbows back on the table. “I suppose I’ll go back to her husband and try to sort out what happened.”

“Good,” Stanley said. “You handle it your way. I’ll handle it my way.”

“Y-Your way?” Roberts frowned at him. “And what exactly is your way? ”

Stanley gave him a look that sent a chill down his spine. “Just stay on standby to clean up the mess.” Then he stood and walked away from the table.

“I guess this means I’m picking up the check, then?” Roberts couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice as he watched Stanley walk away.

“There is no check, Roberts.” Stanley said over his shoulder. “I own this place.” And with that, he disappeared through the portal back into the front of the building, the door held open by one of the white coat waiters.

“Oh,” said Roberts, watching him go.

He looked back down at his bloody steak. Looked across the table at Stanley’s abandoned steak.

Oh, hell.