Lauri Robinson - The Runaway Daughter

Quickly, yet cautiously, Ginger tucked the tarp inside the sideboards of the truck bed.

“Brock! Hold up there!”

The sound of her father’s voice made Ginger jolt, and she hit her head on the guitar case. Muffling an expletive with her hand, frustration welled inside her. Someone must have squealed. Josie or Twyla. They, as well as half the town, clearly were in love with Brock, and watched his every move. One of them must have seen her.

“That amount I just offered you,” her father said. “Double it.”

* * *

Searching for another way to say no, Brock Ness opened his truck door before turning around. The original amount Roger Nightingale had offered him to play at the resort for the rest of the summer had been a nice head of lettuce, but it smelled too much like another handout. “I can’t,” Brock said.

The resort owner pulled the lapels of his maroon jacket over his barrel chest. “All right then,” Roger said. “The full amount your father owes me. Play for me this summer, and we’re even.”

“You’ll be paid the full amount by the end of the summer from the money I make on the radio in Chicago,” Brock said, climbing into the truck.

“I won’t make this offer again,” Nightingale said.

Roger wasn’t technically a gangster or a bootlegger. He was a middleman. Getting filthy rich connecting wholesalers with suppliers, and as cutthroat as either of the other two.

“I don’t expect you to,” Brock said, closing the door of the Model T truck his father had bought to deliver milk five years ago. “I said I’d pay off my father’s debt and I will.”

“See that you do.” Roger stepped closer and laid a hand on the side of the truck. “You’ve come a long way since dropping milk on my back porch, but a debt’s a debt.”

No one had to tell Brock that. His family’s debt hung around his neck heavier than a ball and chain. “I appreciate you letting me play here as often as you have.”

“I’m a fair man.”

Fair and rich rarely went hand in hand, yet Brock had struggled to stay on Nightingale’s good side for years. “I also appreciate what you’ve done for my family.”

Roger was silent for a moment, then let out a heavy sigh. “If anyone in Chicago gives you trouble, mention The Night. Every big cheese knows the name. I’ve got what they all want, and they keep me happy because of it.”

Although he had no intention of increasing his debt to Roger, Brock nodded and stepped on the starter pedal. “Goodbye, sir.”

The ox of a man stepped back and Brock shifted the truck into first gear, easing across the parking lot so the narrow tires wouldn’t stir up a cloud of dust. It hadn’t rained in weeks and the clear night sky said it wasn’t about to anytime soon. Good. He’d have to drive all night and day to be in Chicago by tomorrow evening, and couldn’t afford a delay.

He should have left two days ago, but Roger had insisted he play one more night at the resort. The money covered his father’s payment for this month, and the rest would put food on his mother’s table until the radio gig started dishing out. Then he’d be able to send money home every week. That was a godsend. The economy was booming, and had been since the war, everywhere except the Ness household.

Brock dropped his foot on the gas pedal, and shifted through the gears as the truck ambled along the road circling Bald Eagle Lake. Ever since his father had taken a stray bullet while delivering milk down the street from a speakeasy raid, the Ness family had been one penny shy of eating at the soup kitchen.

Doctors cost money, and until Roger Nightingale had stepped in, his father’s care had been minimal at best. Brock told his mother to take what the resort owner offered, and promised he’d pay off the debt.

He would.

No matter what.

Melancholy pressed heavily on his shoulders, but his train of thought shifted as the truck backfired. Nightingale had a garage full of cars. Norma Rose, his oldest daughter, had a brand-new Cadillac Phaeton. Red with a black roof. A real beauty. Jimmy Sonny, who worked over at the Ford plant, said that car cost upward of four thousand dollars. Roger had bought her that car as a birthday present. Her younger sister, Twyla, had got Norma Rose’s old car, a coupe that still put the three-hundred-dollar milk truck to shame. Josie had a car, too, another coupe that had been passed down. The only Nightingale girl without her own ride was Ginger. A good thing, too. Giving that dame a car would be dangerous.

The youngest of Nightingale’s four daughters was the doll of dolls. A real flapper with her short skirts and even shorter hair. She was a canary, too. She could carry a tune and hit the high notes like a bird on a wire. A Jane like no other, that was Ginger Nightingale, and she stirred things inside him worse than a man who’d been slipped a Mickey Finn. He’d seen men draw back on drinks peppered with knockout drops. Half a glass later they were fried to the hat. That was the way Ginger made him feel, and he stayed as far away from her as possible. The past two days had been torture. She’d badgered him nonstop about the letter the radio station had sent him. He’d thought twice about even answering her. Roger Nightingale made it perfectly clear that men—especially men who worked for a living—had better stay miles away from his daughters.

Slowing to make the corner onto the main road, Brock forced his mind back to Jimmy Sonny. The mechanic said Ford was designing a radio to be installed in cars. That was thrilling. Someday people could listen to him playing while they drove.

Right now, though, the only one listening to him was him.

The town of White Bear Lake was quiet, and hopefully St. Paul would be, too. There were four five-gallon cans of gas strapped to the truck. A stray bullet could put a stop to his trip before it even started.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Brock discovered St. Paul wasn’t as quiet as he’d hoped. The traffic block ahead said a late night raid was taking place. Easing the gears down, he rolled to a stop as a copper with a shiny set of wrist-nippers dangling from his belt loop strode toward the driver’s door.

Brock leaned an elbow out of his window. “Evening.”

“What you got under that tarp?” the policeman asked.

“Instruments.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Not at all,” Brock answered.

The dust building up under the tarp had Ginger pinching her nose, but she almost wet herself when she heard Brock give the policeman permission to look under the tarp. She couldn’t be discovered, not this close to home.

They might as well haul her to the hoosegow. At least she’d get bread and water there. At home, her father would lock her in the room that he’d had his men paint pale pink on her last birthday and throw away the key. Pale pink. Norma Rose got a new Cadillac. Ginger, a pale pink paint job. She didn’t even like pink. Red was her color. Bright red. Like her lipstick and fingernail paint.

To be fair, her father had bought her new furniture along with the paint, but a new bed was no fun when you slept alone. That’s what she was tired of. Being alone. Watching all the dancing and fun through the staircase rail. She wanted to live it all, not watch it.

“Peterson, what are you doing? Keep that traffic moving!”

Ginger willed not so much as an eyelash to flutter. That wasn’t Brock or the other voice she’d heard a moment ago. It was pitch-black under the tarp, but the noise said they’d entered town and they might even be surrounded by coppers.

“Might have us a bootlegger here, Sarge.”

The answer came from the first man Brock had spoken to. Ginger’s very toes quivered. She was right. Coppers. Plenty of them.