I nodded and turned around, careful to check his spot in the long, narrow mirror that stretched horizontally across my back bar area while I iced the glass and poured from a thick plastic 1.75 that I hadn’t even bothered to add a Quickpour spout to.

  “Whiskey,” I said. Pause. “On the rocks.”

  He tried a smile. It didn’t work.

  “What are you here for?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Odd question.”

  “Maybe. You a tourist?”

  He shook his head.

  “Local? Must've just moved in, then, ‘cause I haven’t seen you around before.”

  Again, a head shake.

  "Okay, then you're waiting for family, who are locals. Briggs? Richards'? They've both got a son-in-law ‘sposed to be in town this week."

  “Nope.”

  I sighed, not trying to hide the eye-roll. “All right, buddy. I played the game. Guessed. Three ‘no’s,’ so I figure you’re here for me. I figured it right away, actually, and I’ve got my friend back there with the shotty, ready for whatever game you’re actually here to play.”

  Finally, a real smile.

  “There we go,” I said. “What’s worth a cheap drink and a long trip with a buddy who doesn’t look much like anyone’s buddy?”

  “You. Just like you said.”

  “Fine. I get that a lot.”

  “Just want to talk.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I want to start by talking,” he said quickly.

  “We’re talking now,” I said.

  “Maybe somewhere more private?”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe you two bozos can get back into your jalopy and head back the way you came?”

  He let out a huff. “Fine. Whatever. Your bar, your rules.”

  “Damn right,” I said, wiping off the stain of water his drink had just left on the bar when he’d set it down right next to his coaster. “So let’s play.”

  3

  Playtime.

  One of my favorite moments of pre-negotiation. Finding out just what exactly is ‘for sale,’ and what exactly the ‘currency’ we’re paying with looks like.

  The man smiled again. He wore glasses, but they weren't real. No one buys coke-can goggles and wears them earnestly unless they're in a movie about the 1970s or actually in the 1970s. His hair and shirt screamed ‘IT support,' but the clock on the wall said, ‘too late for his type.'

  “We’re here for you,” the man said again.

  “I got that already. What flavor of me were you hoping to get?”

  “The kind of flavor that tastes bitter.”

  Okay, point his. That was a good one.

  “Done. That’s my perma-flavor.”

  His smile shifted to one that seemed almost genuine, and he let out a little chuckle. “Good to hear. Mason, I’m here to warn you. And to ask for your help.”

  I frowned. No sense playing the fool — the guy knew my name. “Okay, I’m listening, uh…”

  “Fellows.”

  “Your name is Fellows?”

  “It is.” Nothing more. Just ‘it is.’ Okay, point two — you’re a fine player, Fellows.

  “Fellows, then. I can work with that. What are you here to warn me about, Fellows?”

  “They’re coming for you. I’m here to let you know.”

  “They who?”

  “The guys you pissed off up north when you blasted Elizondo off the face of the earth.”

  Elizondo was the dead guy in a million pieces who had owned the shipper — a rum-runner — and was hoping to use my father to take over a massive liquor importing operation. The legality was still questionable, but he'd done something that wasn't — he'd taken Shalice and threatened Joey and me.

  “Elizondo’s not someone I worry about anymore,” I answered.

  “Elizondo’s not someone Elizondo worries about anymore,” Fellows said. He took a brutal sip from the ‘whiskey, on the rocks,’ his nose turning upward. “Listen, Mason, I’m just here to warn you. These guys… they’re not messing around.”

  “I see. That whiskey, apparently, isn’t messing around, either.”

  He actually laughed at this, pushing the drink away. “I’m not a drinker, believe it or not.”

  “Why order a drink, then?” I asked. “I’m still going to make you pay for it.”

  He slapped a twenty on the table. “I know. I figured it’s the least I could do. You own a bar, after all.”

  I wasn't sure if that meant he felt for me because he was here to warn me about some super-scary bad guys or because I owned a bar as if that was bad enough in itself.

  “You’re here to warn me about something. Someone, I’m guessing. Why do they care about Elizondo? And what exactly do they want to do to me?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not about Elizondo — they don’t even know about him, outside of knowing that you did him in a few —”

  “I didn’t ‘do him in,’ Fellows. He was on a ship that happened to be filled with freshly distilled explosives, and I just happened to drop the match.”

  “Either way,” Fellows asked. “They’ve got your mug plastered on their wall. You’re the target. Or ‘mark,’ I guess. If you’re still using that term.”

  I frowned down at him, taking advantage of the fact that he was sitting at the barstool and I was standing, my side six or so inches higher than his. “I’m not doing much of anything these days, besides pouring drinks and trying to make a living.”

  Fellows nodded, second-guessing his choice from before, grabbing his glass and taking another sip. He squinted through it, the pain evident on his face. "Pouring drinks and floating that yacht of yours. What's it called? The Seesaw or something like that?”

  “Wassamassaw,” I said. “And I only just got her back. She was run up onto a bank and had quite a few bullet holes in her gut after the Elizondo incident. Sent her up to Charleston to get fixed up.”

  Fellows nodded. “Guy I’m here with — back there? He wants your help.”

  It was a sudden shift in the conversation. I’d expected something like that, a quick question or statement that reminded both of us what we were actually here for. He wasn’t a friend, or a confidant, or a tourist hoping to strike up a conversation. There was a job to do, and he wanted my help with it.

  “What’s your friend want?”

  He shook his head. “Not my friend. Brother-in-law.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You and I both,” Fellows said. “He’s a banker, pretty high-roller, too. Does well with real estate deals, but he’s sharp enough to have his hand in plenty of honeypots.”

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It is. He’s in some trouble, and I thought you might be able to help.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, because you’re already involved.”

  “Like hell I am.”

  “He bankrolled Elizondo.”

  Shit. Elizondo had been (emphasis on the had been, since Elizondo was now in a million pieces, settling on the bottom of Charleston Harbor) a bigwig importer, working against the corporations to build his own empire. He’d been savvy, but even savvy types can’t survive a few hundred thousand gallons of ignited gasoline.

  I’d always wondered where he’d gotten his money. Guys like that rarely used their own fortunes to deal — it was far safer, far easier, and far more rewarding to use OPM: Other Peoples’ Money.

  “So he’s pissed because he thinks I killed him?”

  “Nope. He knows what happened, and it actually worked out well for him. There was a contingency in his contract for reversion rights — Elizondo croaks, my bro-in-law gets a nice payday.”

  “So it’s the other guys who are pissed. Elizondo’s guys.”

  “Right,” Fellows said. “The guys who wanted Elizondo’s business to work. They had a massive stake in seeing it through. And, well, thanks to you, that all went up in flames.”

  “So they’re probably not too happy with me.”

  Fellows drained his glass and coughed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I raised an eyebrow — want another? — and he shook his head.

  “You’re a cop, aren’t you?” I asked.

  He seemed surprised at first, then he relaxed. He hesitated, but then gave in. “What gave it away?”

  “Couple things. First, your eyes. The way you won’t stop looking around, even when you’re not looking at anything. You’re staring at the mirror behind me, keeping an eye on your banker brother, but also on everyone else in here. You got a quick look around when you came in, and I saw you reach to your side — nothing holstered there tonight, though — then relax. You’ve got a piece, I bet, but it’s in a chest holster or something. But your eyes are the main thing. Shifty, but not in a drug dealer sort of way. More of a checking things out and making sure you’re comfortable with them sort of way.”

  “Good eye.”

  “It’s gotten me out of a few jams.”

  "I suspect it has." Fellows sighed, then relaxed again. He was like a worn cushion, slowly giving way to the pressure and weight of the years. "I've been on the force longer than I haven't, and I'm ready to be done. But there are a few guys in my department who are more crooked than a crazy eye, and they've got their sights on Billy — my brother — since they're bankrolled by his enemies."

  “Got it. So you figured you could hide him out down here?” I asked.

  “Well, uh…”

  I looked at Fellows. Waited for the tell, for the thing that would alert me to what exactly was going on. He was a cop, so it wasn’t easy to spot.

  But then it was.

  A simple, honest, smack of his lips. He was sorry. Apologetic.

  “No. Fellows, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He looked down at the bar, then back up at me. “I’m sorry — they were already moving on him, and I — I couldn’t just let them…”

  “You brought them here?”

  I suddenly felt the bar’s walls closing in around me, becoming much smaller and weaker than the concrete-walled enclosure I’d purchased years ago. I wanted Joey there, and I wanted his girlfriend Shalice to not be here.

  “I didn’t bring them, Dixon,” Fellows said. “They were already onto Billy, and I just… I mean I had nowhere else to go, so I —”

  “Literally anywhere is somewhere else to go, asshole!” I shouted. “Your cronies are coming down to my bar, in my town, looking for your brother. You made this my problem?”

  “I wasn’t trying to, I just needed to get him somewhere I could — “

  “What? Get him somewhere what, Fellows?”

  “Somewhere safe?”

  "You're a cop. Don't you have safe houses, support staff, anything?”

  “No.”

  No more explanation than that. I suspected as much — this guy was risking his neck to save his skeevy-looking brother-in-law, and it was possible — probable, actually — that his shifty buddies on the force wouldn’t take too kindly to his subterfuge. Cop or not, Fellows was on the wrong side of the law, even though he was on the right side of it at the same time.

  This was getting confusing, and I needed a drink.

  “How long?” I asked, pouring myself something from a shelf I could barely reach. It was mostly there for decoration, as no one had the guts to order it.

  Also because I charged $250 a shot for it.

  “How long until what?” Fellows asked. He shifted, I poured, his brother squirmed in his seat in the corner.

  “How long until I’m picking up shards of your brother’s torso and my broken pint glasses from my floor?”

  Fellows sighed. “They chased us out of Charleston. Didn’t see me, but they know Billy was in the car. We lost them just outside the city, but they know which direction we were heading.”

  “So maybe they don’t know where you are now,” I said, hoping.

  He shook his head. "I wish. Soon as I got here, I got Billy out and kept him out of the light, but I saw a car parked across the street, watching your building."

  “One of yours?”

  “Undercover, but yeah. It was Mayes. He’s one of the ringleaders. Big guy, looks like a crooked cop from an old TV show.”

  “And Mayes was scoping out my bar?”

  “Yeah,” Fellows said.

  “Understood,” I said. I turned to leave.

  “Understood?” Fellows asked.

  “Yeah,” said. “Understood. I heard you, I acknowledge you, whatever.”

  “So where are you —”

  “Give me a minute,” I snapped. I strode to the kitchen, walked inside, and immediately caught Joey staring at me.

  “News?” he asked.

  “News,” I answered, nodding. “This guy — Fellows — he’s a cop. Not crooked, but knows plenty of ones who are. He dragged his brother-in-law down here because the guy got himself into a sticky deal.”

  “What’s that have to do with us?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Except that he’s afraid some Charleston thugs are going to make it about us.”

  “Gotcha. So what’s our move?”

  I sighed. “Nothing yet, I guess. Things are moving along, but I’m not about to get us tangled up with something if we don’t need to. And Shalice…”

  He smiled. “She’ll be okay. Isn’t her first rodeo.”

  4

  "Ain't that the truth." I took a glance over at the corner of the kitchen, where there were about six or seven five-gallon buckets stacked upon one another, and a few six-gallon glass carboys sitting in front of them. "How's the whiskey coming?" I asked.

  He shrugged. “You tell me, boss. You’re the moonshining expert.”

  “Distilling. ‘Moonshining’ makes it sound illegal.”

  “It is illegal.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Distilling alcohol for any reason was still a federal crime in the United States, even though it was typically a very safe, very easy to control hobby. Hobby brewers were allowed to brew an absurd amount of gallons each year for personal use, but home distillers hadn’t been allowed to cook their own liquor since before Prohibition.

  From what I’d read, the whole mess was related to taxes — the government wanted their cut, even if it was a stupid reason. So they taxed professional distillers into oblivion, making it damn near impossible to get a distilling license unless you had a lot of money, and then made home and hobby distilling completely illegal.

  The irony was that every distiller I knew had started by learning how to distill liquor on their own — illegally. There weren’t many classes, training courses, and resources to teach newcomers the age-old craft.

  We were hobbyists as well, as getting into distilling was something I’d always wanted to do. Now we had a stack of five-gallon buckets full of the homemade moonshine, and three carboys each with liquor in its different stages of completion. There was a sour mash I’d been working on, a fresher all-corn bourbon, and a fancy rye, corn, and barley mixture that I was hoping would turn into a smooth, spicy brew.

  The five-gallon buckets were holding the batch of one step in the process: turning what’s called the “high wines” into fully distilled and ready-to-drink alcohol by adding clean water to cut it and running it through the still again. The high wines were high ABV alcohol of somewhere around 90% purity. It was essentially rubbing alcohol made of ethanol instead of isopropyl, nearly undrinkable and totally unenjoyable.

  Once that process was completed, the distillate needed to be cut with fresh, crisp water once again, then stored at that slightly lower proof in charred oak barrels for months — or years — depending on the size of the barrels, until the wines had earned some color and flavor and turned into what we in the business called money. Or, more likely (since I didn't want to get arrested for selling illegal spirits), "good drinkin' shine."

  I like to consider myself a whiskey connoisseur, which is evident in the fact that I own a bar and in the way I spell “whiskey” with an “e.” I’m American, so whiskey has an “e” in it. The way it should be. But I don’t necessarily consider myself a distilling connoisseur. The thing about producing great spirits is that it’s a lot more science than it is art, but the art is absolutely crucial if you’re trying to produce something anyone wants to drink.

  Beer is different — anyone who drinks a lot of beer gets the itch to make their own, citing trumped-up charges like "buying beer is too expensive!" and "what else are we supposed to do with the basement closet?" and then they buy an inexpensive carboy and some fancy tubes and thermometers, and they're in business.

  I’ve had — and made — plenty of delicious home-brew beer. It’s easy to make, a bit harder to make well, but overall approachable as a hobby.

  Whiskey and other distilled spirits is a trickier thing to get into. Once you get past the “I’m breaking the law” issue, you’re in a realm of pseudoscience masquerading as real science and real science masquerading as southern rednecks who talk with a drawl.

  I love art and science, so I figured I’d try my hand. It was enough to get started, but part of the frustration is that it takes a long time to let the spirits mellow and earn their colors and flavors, only to discover that every first batch — and typically the first twenty batches — is crap anyway.

  As such, I’d decided long ago that I needed a partner. A man I could trust, who could help with the chore of it all and, most importantly, be my official taste-tester.

  I looked Joey up and down, wondering if he really was as gullible as he seemed to be at the moment. “You’re my partner, Joey.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, boss?”

  “It means I trust you. You’re a good guy.”

  “And…”

  “And I want to get your opinion on this before I age it.”

  “On the whiskey?”

  “Yeah, the whiskey.” I moved over to the stack of buckets, took off the stopper from the tiny hole in the lid of one of the buckets, then grabbed the thief — a tiny plastic spring-loaded tubule that allowed one to administer a tiny shot of booze from the inside of a carboy to the inside of one’s belly. I clicked the top down and stuck it into the top of the bucket, retrieving a bit of the wines. “Here,” I said, collecting the drips into a shot glass from the shelf.

 

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