“You the Emorys?” asked the young man with the toothpick.

“That’s right,” Kevin said. “Who are you?”

“Mr. Geary sent us. We’re supposed to pick up a package for him.”

Tom’s hand drifted toward the knife at his hip. “You got something for us?”

“That’s been taken care of,” said Toothpick. He turned toward Mole-nose. “Get the sling.” Mole-nose walked back to the truck, retrieved a barrel sling, and rejoined Toothpick at the lock wall.

“Let’s go,” Toothpick said.

Kevin hadn’t seen either man before, but he had encountered enough others like them to believe they worked for Finn Geary. He and Tom guided them to hatch 3. The light rain sprinkled the barrels, which lay end to end like enormous oaken eggs in a nest of firewood. Mole-nose unfolded the barrel sling – two six-foot hickory staves connected by three equally-spaced lengths of heavy rope. They worked the ropes under the first barrel, struggled to lift it, and carried it over to the truck.

“Straight to the center,” Toothpick said in a strained voice, guiding Kevin and Tom to the middle of the flatbed. Toothpick synchronized the men and with a grunt they lifted the staves higher, swung the barrel out over the flatbed, and then lowered the sling. Geary’s men jumped onto the truck, set the barrel upright, and wheeled it to the center of the bed.

“Let’s go,” Toothpick said again, leaping down and striding back to the scow. Mole-nose grabbed the sling and followed with Kevin and Tom trailing. Kevin cast a glance across the canal toward the mules. They were nosing around the fringe of the towpath but his eye was drawn beyond them, toward the intersection of the towpath and 30th Street. Two figures were standing on the edge of a dirt lot next to the sidewalk. They were backlit by a streetlamp, and he felt a chill when he recognized the outline of a policeman’s cap on the figure nearest the curb. The man’s clothing seemed to fit snugly, like a uniform. The other man was further from the light, but Kevin could see that he wore a large brimmed hat and a long coat. Did the two men just arrive? If not, Geary’s men should have noticed them, since they could be seen clearly from the truck. It was too late to change anything. With one barrel on the truck and one on the scow – and the lock gates closed – whatever was going to happen was ordained. He followed Geary’s men and Tom back to the open hatch.

They hoisted the second barrel in the sling and humped it over to the truck, this time without words. Toothpick and Mole-nose climbed onto the flatbed and lashed the barrels together, roped them to tie-down rings in the corners, then threw a tarp over them and tied that down as well. Kevin and Tom watched from the adjacent dirt road. When they were finished securing the cargo, Geary’s men hopped down from the truck.

“Well you fellas have a good trip to wherever you belong,” Toothpick said, tilting the brim of his hat forward and acknowledging each Emory. “We got to get moving. You’ll get the barrels back next time.”

“I think you’re forgetting something,” Tom said. His voice was low and hard-edged and his hand eased toward his knife.

Toothpick smiled. He plucked the toothpick from his mouth and addressed Tom slowly, as if talking to an imbecile. “I told you,” he said. “That’s been taken care of.”

Kevin felt a stab of apprehension. Maybe these weren’t Geary’s men after all. And maybe “taken care of” meant something less desirable than being paid. He glanced over his shoulder toward the two figures he’d seen across the canal. The man with the policeman’s cap had moved closer to the scow and Kevin was convinced now that he was wearing a uniform. The other man was gone. Kevin turned back toward the truck and saw Toothpick and Mole-nose walking toward the cab. He sensed a rising fury and saw Tom take a step in their direction, knife in hand.

“I’d put that away if I were you,” said a mellifluous voice from the direction of the scow. “I don’t think you’ll need it.”

Kevin pivoted and watched the man with the large-brimmed hat and long coat approach. He was thickset but moved with an athletic lightness of foot. When the man stopped in front of them, Kevin recognized Finn Geary. His face was pockmarked with craters left by forgotten acne and his nose betrayed a youth spent in a boxing ring, but his eyes were dark and playful. Under his thick mustache, the corners of his mouth curled upward. A gap between his two front teeth contributed to an expression that Kevin interpreted as either bemused or mocking.

Geary pulled an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to Kevin before advancing to converse with Toothpick, who had climbed into the driver’s seat. Kevin backed away from the flatbed when he heard the engine start. The envelope in his hand was unsealed; he spread it open and saw a thick stack of bills inside. The truck pulled away slowly and Geary rejoined the Emorys.

“You better count it. My accountant gets distracted sometimes.”

Kevin instinctively looked up to check on the position of the figure across the canal. The policeman hadn’t moved and was facing in their direction.

“You don’t have to worry about him,” Geary said without turning to follow Kevin’s gaze. He looked at Tom and Kevin in turn and smiled knowingly. “You just have to worry about me.”

Kevin extracted and counted the bills, brow furrowed as he did the arithmetic in his head. Eight hundred, minus forty, plus fifteen. He looked up at Geary and nodded. “It’s all there.”

“It better be,” Geary said in a serious tone. “And the same goes for your barrels. If what’s on that truck isn’t what you gave Carruthers, you’ll never make it back upriver.” He smiled again. “But you already know that. That’s the nature of the business we’re both in.”

Kevin nodded, glancing back at the scow. Tom shifted impatiently from one leg to the other, and Kevin wondered whether the coffee and whiskey had caught up to him.

Geary tilted his head toward the watching policeman. “Now that guy, there,” he said. “He’s just a working man. He’s like all the other working men beaten down by Prohibition. They can’t afford the clubs for the high-rollers and the politicians.” He looked from Kevin to Tom with his hands thrust deep into his coat pockets. His eyes twinkled and he smiled broadly. “The temperance movement has been a great friend to me,” he said. “And maybe to you as well. But it’s been nothing but a kick in the balls for them.”

He retreated toward the scow with the Emorys following and turned in the middle of the deck to shake their hands. “Stay in touch,” he said with a fleeting smile. He walked off the boat onto the towpath and Kevin watched his figure recede into the shadows.

Chapter 18

Cordwood

Thursday, March 27, 1924

“That’s it for hatch 1,” Kevin said. The afternoon drizzle pricked the back of his neck as he spun in search of stray logs on the wet floor of the cargo hold. Finding none, he climbed out onto the deck and helped Tom put the hatch back in place.

They removed hatch 6 and set it on the roof of the cabin. Here the hold was still full of firewood, and the spitting rain painted the sawn ends of the logs. Tom knelt to extract them, sliding two at a time across the deck to Kevin standing at the rail. Kevin tossed them onto the growing pile of firewood on the bank.

The scow was tied up in Rock Creek Basin, where the mouth of Rock Creek was separated from the Potomac River by a two-hundred-foot-wide dam. Kevin looked out at Mike and Bess, who were tied to a tree in the vacant lot above the bank. They stood motionless in the drizzle – probably asleep, he thought. Two other boats were moored in the basin and both were hauling sand from Smoot’s in Georgetown up to Williamsport, where they were building a power plant. They had been towed by tugboats and entered the basin yesterday through the tidewater lock. Probably waiting on their mules. Kevin arched forward to launch a stream of tobacco juice onto the bank.