Rum Running

Arthur and a couple of men, lent from his father, could see where a couple of guys from the Fallow gang were sitting in a drugstore across the street. They were sitting in a car, parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant but that was chump change compared to the crime they were about to commit. They were working on his father’s orders this time, which made him feel better, this wasn’t a personal vendetta, this was family business. Family business gave him security because it meant that if people gunned for him after this his family would protect him. The Fallow gang had made the mistake of diverting one of their shipments for use in a Fallow speakeasy, and Arthur’s father had ordered something done about it.

At a motion of Arthur’s hand the gunfire started and the drugstore windows shattered in a million pieces of glass. At Arthur’s word the guns stopped and their driver stepped on it. Their car wasn’t marked so it shouldn’t be traceable but the driver still took a round about way back home. Home, in this case, being a hotel where the staff knew enough not to ask questions, it was a common enough situation in mobs.

Arthur ran up the steps and found his way to his father’s suite of rooms. His father liked to get reports right away and while Arthur was his son he wasn’t immune to his father’s anger. The only thing you could say was that he wasn’t in danger of being knocked off if he messed up, that wouldn’t stop his father from yelling at him and booting him down the stairs. Arthur knocked on his father’s door and walked into the beautiful office his father ran everything from.

“We took care of your errand,” Arthur told his father. The only other person in the room was his half brother Mick, sitting sullen in a chair in the corner, but Arthur still didn’t like to speak in plain terms. You never knew who was listening. If the other two wanted to that was their business but Arthur wasn’t going to admit to anything.

“You finished it clean?” his father’s voice was sharp. Arthur nodded, his father didn’t trust anyone. That went for Arthur even, though he trusted Arthur more then most. Arthur was the most likely to inherit his father’s crime kingdom out of the children, for various reasons. None of them were legitimate, so that wasn’t a consideration, mostly they were judged for their records while working for their father, as well as their mothers. Mick had never actually done anything wrong but his mother had tried to betray their father to the cops when their father had lost interest in her. It wasn’t Mick’s fault but their father never really trusted him because of it. So it was that Mick, who was the eldest, didn’t stand on good odds for inheriting any of their father’s mob, while Arthur, the second oldest, seemed the most likely.

“Is there anything else you want me to do?” Arthur asked.

“No, you can go on. You got school don’t you?” his father asked.

“Yeah, I’ll go then.” Arthur went to the city college, under a different last name, in the hopes that people wouldn’t ask him about his father. It was the one place that he could pretend to be a normal guy. It was for the family business just like everything he did was but it was one of the more pleasant parts of it. He was studying as an accountant so he could keep his father’s books. It was all on his father’s orders; his father wanted someone in the family to be the one in control of the money. He said that too many mob bosses got betrayed by the people who kept the books. Arthur didn’t mind, it would keep him from street work, guns weren’t his thing. He didn’t dislike them but the frontlines were a good way to get yourself killed and it seemed too much like doing the work of one of the disposable underlings.

After the smell of guns and the thrill of speed as we had driven away from the drugstore Arthur had trouble paying attention to his classes. The hypocrisy of his life usually didn’t bother him; usually he was able to keep his two worlds separate. He had noticed before however that it was more difficult when he had done something exciting and adrenalin was coursing through his vanes. He would have thought that after a couple of years being a gun for his father he would stop feeling excited after every job but the danger was still real and so his body still reacted to it.

After classes Arthur gathered up his notes and looked them over, most of them didn’t make any sense. He might as well have skipped class. His father wouldn’t have been happy, if he had found out, but he wouldn’t. A lot of the time Arthur had some sort of bodyguard to go around with him but not when he was in school. He had put his foot down about that. If he died while in class that was that, but he wasn’t going to announce to the entire college that he was his father’s son. No body guard also meant that he could do what ever he wanted without it getting reported to his father, which made his time in school the most private time he ever had.

“Did you get the notes?” Arthur heard a voice behind him ask. He turned and found himself looking at the young man, about his age, who sat right behind him in the auditorium. “I swear that the professor drones on so much I just can’t keep my mind on his lectures. I think I stopped taking notes about halfway.”

“Here,” Arthur said, handing over his notes. He watched as the man shuffled through them.

“Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?” the man asked after a little while.

“No,” Arthur admitted with a grin. The man grinned back.

“Well, I’ll copy them anyway and try to figure then out later. They probably have something to do with the book; I’m not sure what though. I’m David by the way,” the man stuck his hand out and Arthur shook it.

“Arthur,” he introduced himself.

“Well Arthur, since you let me copy your notes how about I treat you to a cup of coffee?” Arthur stared at David in amazement, he had never known anyone so forcefully friendly before and he wasn’t sure if he trusted it. In his family trust wasn’t cultivated, it was squashed out as not being something that led to survival.

“That’s alright,” Arthur said shrugging, trying to turn him down politely. “You don’t have to pay me back; it isn’t causing me any trouble.”

“I insist, I always pay people back, I don’t like to owe favors,” David told Arthur firmly.

They were firmly installed in a booth at a café near the college when Arthur finally talked again. He still wasn’t really sure how he had gotten there, it wasn’t like he was a pushover and he had had no intention of going with David. Somehow he had ended up caving in to David anyway; David was a force to be reckoned with through pure strength of personality obviously.

“This is the first time I haven’t gone straight home after classes since I was in grade school,” Arthur commented, though he didn’t tell David the reason.

“Well then it’s high time you got out. It isn’t healthy to be cooped up with the same people all the time,” David said firmly.

To be continued...