This is an excerpt from my current work-in-progress.
MURDER AT THE GALLIANO CLUB is the next book in the Galliano Club series, coming Summer 2022.
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East Lido was home to mostly Italian mill workers like his cousin Nick Procopio who lived crammed into the warren of narrow streets above Hamilton Street. At this hour of the night, they were playing cards at a neighborhood fixture called the Galliano Club six blocks away.
Nick used to belong to the Galliano Club, but not anymore. That suited Benny just fine; meant Nick was available to go into business with him.
Behind the wheel of the Ford, his cousin produced a hunk of cheese and half a loaf of crusty bread from a wrinkled napkin. The smell of ripe provolone thickened the night air.
“You got to eat now?” Benny demanded.
“I worked twelve hours today,” Nick said and held out a fistful of food. “You want some?”
“Jesus, Nick. No.” Benny waved the cheese stink away. “You sure Fisher works late every Friday, all by himself?”
Benny had asked the question a dozen times. The situation was too good, too easy.
“I told you. I seen the night watchman’s logs.”
“Dipping his hand into the petty cash?”
Nick grunted and chewed. “What else?”
Deputy foreman of the Lido Premium mill, Nick was a bull of a man, with shoulders that jutted like twin cliffs, hands the size of iceboxes, and a pumpkin head that sat directly on his shoulders. A frayed bandana was tied around the spot where his neck should be, distracting from a grease-stained canvas shirt, dirty dungarees, and the
steel toed boots he wore to the mill six days a week.
His cousin Nick might look like a roughneck and be saddled with a horse-faced wife and four snot-nosed kids, but he was smart enough. When Benny appeared on his doorstep, having fled Chicago one step ahead of Al Capone’s enforcer Frank Nitti and his trigger-happy torpedoes, Nick helped him put the plan together.
Not only that, but he identified this Fisher fella as somebody who could get his hands on some ready cash.