Morrison's is a jazz club, and like all such entities in Prohibition-Era Manhattan, it's not merely jazz club but a speakeasy as well. And a brothel. Which is where the action takes place tonight: a brothel, with a madam and some two-dozen whores or so. More customers than that. Some of them reading newspapers in the waiting room; all rather businesslike, even clinical, you see. This is a respectable establishment. Not known for drama.
Until tonight, of course. Until an abrupt hail of bullets rings out somewhere in one of the entertaining rooms in the back -- bullets, the lickety-split rat-a-tat-tat of what's commonly called a tommygun, shattering window glass and perfume bottles with equal alacrity. Bullets, screaming prostitutes, and
laughing, laughter from the black-haired rogue tumbling out of one of the rooms in the back, pulling his pants on as he runs, ducking the bulletholes that inscribe the wall behind his head. Down down down the stairs he runs, the madam staring baffled after him -- bursting out the door to some smoke-filled front room full of the sultry sounds of cool jazz,
and out again onto the street: cabs and startled pedestrians lurching out of his way as he dives into his getaway car.
"I got it," he pants, and slams the doors shut. "Drive."
Portia Cross"Tuck your shirt in, darling, you're unkempt."
She wasn't supposed to be in the car, but she was. There she was, just finished fixing her lipstick: Crimson as sin; crimson as the strike on a whore's cheek when things got out of hand. Sanguine to the midnight jet of her dress, sleeveless sheath, flapper's delight. Oh but she doesn't have the coveted figure of the times: She's too curvy for the willowy, waifish pixie-love that out-strides the Gibson Girl. She'd have made a marvelous Gibson Girl. And she'll find her stride in the 30's, when the bombshells arise, right along with the war a'brewing and the calamity of the bread lines.
But that isn't tonight.
Tonight she's tucking the lipstick away and glancing at him sidelong as the car picks up speed and the city lights become a blur. Crosses her legs, where the tassels of sequence fringe do nothing to hide her knees, adorned in nude silk stockings with delicate velvet bows at the calves along the thick seams. "Honestly, what trinket was it this time? You're like a magpie."
Unkempt is one way to put it. Downright indecent would be another. Lark laughs in the back seat -- oh, that infamous back seat where once upon a time they discovered a rather torrid love affair, before such things cooled and became practical, edged, and far more useful -- laughs as he arches his hips up and pulls his pants up and zips, buttons, makes himself just a little more kempt.
Then he sits up. There's a tink! of metal, a sparkling sound, as he flips some bright glittery bit into the front seat for her to catch. Which she will, of course. Those reflexes of hers: they drew him long before he noticed her
(how shall we put this)
magnificent tits and ass. "No magpie ever got his claws on this, doll," Eddie Lark brags. A sudden turn has him lurching against the suicide doors, which fortunately hold his weight. Righting himself again, "Go on, look at it."
If she looks: it's a ring. An antique, the metal tarnished with time. The stone, though: that's something altogether different. Enormous, glittering, a diamond as pink as an young girl's blush and roughly the side of a quail egg.
"They called it la dame des rivières," he breathes, leaning over Mrs. Cross's shoulder and seat. "The lady of the rivers. Once in the possession of Marie Antoinette herself, they say. These days? Apparently the sort of gift John Rockefeller the Third gives his secret mistress. Isn't it magnificent, duchess? I told you. I told you it'd be worth it."
Portia CrossShe catches it, yes, quick as a cats paw. And looks over her shoulder to him; all kohl lined eyes; irises that rare sort of blue that nearly warrants the name violet. And her tongue - the very tip - taps the bottom edges of her front teeth; pink against white; the lush muscle against the pearl.
"Why little Jack Hornie, up in your corner, eating your mincemeat pie; stuck in your thumb and pulled out a plumb..."
She holds up the ring; inspects it, so cool, so detached. Slips it on like it's always belonged there on the ring finger of her right hand; arches her spine and tips her hips up, letting her shoulders roll along the edge of the seat back to look back again at Eddie Lark, crass and dark, half upside down, her marcelled hair shifting, finger waves sleek with perfection. "Were you a good boy to the pie you stuck for this plumb, darling?"
She's always had a dirty mouth: Each word provocative and stung; sleek and sweet as juice from the finest peaches, just before the masked poison gets you.
"Madam," Eddie pronounces, "I am shocked at your insinuations. I'll have you know not a single pie was stuck for the purposes of this plumb, though -- "
he lost his shirt somewhere. And his undershorts, for that matter. He still has his coat, though, which he whisks on now, the inner satin lining cold enough against his skin that he shivers.
" -- some plumbs may have been quite charmed," he finishes. And grins. And then grabs her rather rudely over the top of the head yanks her down, shouting: "Duck!"
A sudden spray of machine-gunfire shatters the windows on the left side of the car. And then a Chevolet Six clips the back fender of their getaway car, sending Eddie slamming across the backseat into the opposite door.
Portia Cross"Merde," Portia hisses; her leg twisting painfully when her knee is jammed hard between the gear well and the the chair edge, but she ducks low indeed - reflexes sharp - and doesn't scream. No, she's not a screamer...
[well, she can get quite vocal when the mood is right; but that's neither here or there]
"Joe!" Joe would be the driver. The driver now slumping forward against the wheel as the car starts to slow. With a curse far more scathing than the first, Portia moves: Pushing open the drivers door and shoving Joe right along with it [cold hearted bitch] with a mighty grunt, feral with adrenaline and need. Her teeth are gleaming in a grimace [there's blood on her ermine shrug. blood!] as she settles sloppily behind the wheel and shifts, slamming down on the gas.
"Eddie, darling, do be a good boy and make yourself useful, hmm?" The sweet croon would me more effective if the words weren't' gritted; the hmmm at the end half-hissed. And then, oh, she laughs, "Oh I do love a good chase, don't you?"
She slumps down deep in the seat, torn dress riding up her too-full thighs: And loving it.
"Poor Joe," Eddie observes as Joe goes slumping out the door --
and abruptly whipped away from their field of vision as he hits the asphalt. Through the rear window Eddie can see his lifeless body tumbling over itself in the street; cars swerving, honking, screeching around it. Two are following them.
"Sure, doll," Eddie agrees, agreeable scamp that he is: to the chase and the being useful. "So long as I don't get bumped off tonight, huh? You got a gun or somethin' in here, or am I supposed to use my two fists?"
Another screech around a turn. Eddie hits the door again on his shoulder. Grunts.
"Ya know, I heard a rumor that women can't drive as good. You hear that rumor?"
Portia Cross"You have a deplorable sense of balance," she pronounces: Well, she yells it really, because the rear window's been shot up all to hell and the wind is kicking up something fierce in the cab. "I used to wonder how you didn't fall on me more often, you know?"
She pivots a sharp left, careening over an extra lane to do so and heading for the web work of back alleys that'll take them to the Brooklyn Bridge, either to ditch out or speed towards freedom. "The cushion, jackass!" She snaps back as another volley sends sparks off the back fender and altogether too close to the wheel. "Beneath it." For the guns, that is.
"There's that wretched swill Joe drank, too. Stick a rag in it, darling. And let's hope your throwing arm is better than your love aim."
The cushion!
He throws her a baffled glance. "You want me to -- "
Beneath it, she clarifies.
"Ah. Obliged," he tosses back, quick as a tap-dance. Or a volley, straight over the net. Which is how they met: dancing, tennis, country clubs. Hardly the sort of society one would imagine to harbor talented thieves and ruthless dames, but there you have it. Strange times. A cushion goes flying out the shattered windows -- then Eddie, balancing on his knees on the floor of the none-too-steady speeding car, is slipping rounds into the revolver he finds under the seat.
Another burst of automatic fire has him ducking and covering, agile jewelsnatcher's hands covering his mop of jet-black hair. Once the hail of bullets lets up, Eddie bursts up and returns fire: ear-shattering BANG, BANG-BANGs in the no-longer-quite-so-enclosed space of the car. Sparks fly off the hood of their closer pursuer. Out on the sidewalks, open-mouthed pedestrians are staring.
A bullet whizzes by his ear, close enough that he feels the wind. It feels like exhilaration. "Take the bridge," he calls over his shoulder. "The boys in Brooklyn and these cats have a bit of a mutual misunderstanding. Might not follow us all the way over there, even for la Dame."
Portia CrossA bullet whizzes past his ear.
She grunts.
The bridge, he orders and she nods with a wince, "Right, the bridge! Got it... got it."
Her lipstick isn't the only thing so crimson stark on her now.
She takes a back road, miserable pitted and steam-rising; laundry overhead, never quite clean with all the soot and grime of the city this far away from Central Park. Sails over a pothole that threatened to engulf their back end if she didn't take it like a prime charger over a fence rail. The impact on the other side sets the car to fishtailing, but she knows enough to ease with the spin and rights them, speeding ahead for the bridge, that staple of the Island.
"Wait, Eddie, don't we have a mutual misunderstanding in Brooklyn??"
"Maybe," he evades -- he hasn't noticed, not in the noise and the lurching and the thrill of it all, that his partner in crime made that little noise, gave that little wince. "Even if we do, it's a little one. Don't worry about it. Nothin' compared to the misunderstanding we've got with these fine folks chasing us right now, huh? Now get a move on, sugar -- "
she swerves. He goes sailing into the door again.
Portia Cross"You're talking when you should be shooting, darling!" But -darling- is grunted-hissed-hoarse. Seethed. She utters a stream of prophanities low under her breath; French and resplendent -- it matters less what she says and more that she says it with imaginative verve. "Americans! You never know when to use your mouths!"
The bridge then... and they luck out. It's a near thing: But at the very last moment their pursuers pull off: A last volley fired, but that is all. And it's late -- the bridge is a breeze even in the city that never sleeps.
"Whew," she breathes, relief born on the cusp of a breathy laugh, hearth pumping at her throat, in her ears. The laugh deepens then, rich and purring; a delicious sense of after-glow [dangerous] languor washing over her. "Well that was... lovely... you always show me the nicest time."
"Hold on to your knickers, doll," he calls over his shoulder, somewhere between darling and Americans, "I'm out of bullets."
But not out of ideas. Joe, bless his heart, had left a half-full bottle of strong moonshine in the back. See, there it is, right in the hollow under the seat where the pistol was stashed. Right next to, shocking, a box of Dr. Robinson's Rx #333.
Condoms, for the uninitiated.
Time for fun later, though. Provided they survive this scrape. Eddie grabs the moonshine, casts about for a moment, and then -- finding no other alternative -- grits his teeth and tears a strip off the inner lining of his lovely coat. One end is stuck into the bottle
(she's skidding onto the ramp up to the bridge)
a match is struck in a vicious swipe against his thigh
(another volley of gunfire has them both ducking, cursing, laughing)
and then she's whipping them clear as he's hurtling the molotov out the blown-out back window. The explosion is colorful, blooms red and orange across the roof of the car as he lies crammed half on the floor. He shows her the nicest time, she says.
He turns his head, looking at her profile. And he grins. "Always said I would, duchess. I keep my promises." A hand grabs the back of her seat. He hauls himself upright, hanging half over her shoulder as he peers through the cracked windshield. "Some of them, anyway."
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