Free All for a Story by Allison Pittman

your people out from their hiding.”
    “They’re not hiding.”
    Monica felt her chest swell with pride at the words. Never before had she felt herself standing beside a leader, and with those words, Max had become exactly that. A young patriarch, an untested general. She willed her fellow employees to emerge from their places beneath the table, not in obedience to Doc King but as a show of loyalty to the man willing to protect them. The response was slow at first —nothing more than the slight scooch of a chair, and another as Zelda, then Trevor, then Thomas Harper Jr. and those two other guys unfolded from the darkness like so many soldiers crawling from the foxholes in the cautious light of day.
    Slowly and —Monica thought —unnecessarily, Max dropped his hold on her, abandoning her to an equal standing with her fellow Chatter ers.
    “That’s better,” Doc said in a voice as smooth as a cigar before sending out a piercing whistle that brought his armed companions crashing back through the door. Above their clatter, he calmly assured his host that, provided nobody moved, nobody would get hurt. And though she wanted nothing more than to be once again safely tucked up beside her new hero, Monica didn’t move.
    “I just wanted my men to have a good look at all of you.” Doc stood perfectly still himself, eyes panning from left to right. Behind him, his men expanded his study, using the barrels of their guns so that everyone —Monica included —had an opportunity to stare down those dark metal holes. “I want them to memorize your faces, as I am memorizing your faces, so that should I see you —any of you —near the door of any of my places, both they and you will remember this as the day I showed you mercy, though you gravely insulted both my patrons and my establishment.”
    “I said the music was wonderful, and the drinks —”
    Immediately both guns were aimed squarely at her, and the imagined rat-a-tat of their firing proved only to be the hammering of her own heart. Eerily enough, Doc’s expression hadn’t changed a mite.
    “Second warning,” he said calmly. “You —and all of you —stay away from what is mine, and I shall stay away from what is yours.”
    “Fair enough,” Max said, with the same ability to match the coolness of Doc’s tone.
    Doc acknowledged the agreement with the slightest nod. Presumably on the off chance that the staff of Capitol Chatter might make a dive for their own weapons, the three men took the first of several steps backward, never taking their eyes nor their guns off the assembled group. To be sure, nobody moved until the door was once again closed and their shadowy figures disappeared from the other side of the frosted glass.
    The only sound was that of Tony’s pencil furiously filling page after page of his little notebook. He glanced up. “What do you say, Bisbaine? Can I get a statement?”
    “No comment,” she said. “But a question —how am I supposed to know which joints are Doc’s and which aren’t? He doesn’t exactly have his name on the doors, you know.”
    “Easy,” Max said with the same authority he’d held when the gangster was in the room. “You don’t go into any of them. At least not officially, not for the paper.” He clapped his hands together as if to preemptively squash any protest. “Now, with the exception of Miss Bisbaine’s next column —and may I assume it’s one less likely to bring gangsters to our office?”
    “It is,” Monica said, hoping he would regret his condescension once he read her tribute to his uncle.
    “Then we have the next issue ready to go to press —am I right?”
    Hums and nods of agreement overruled Monica’s sulky glare.
    “Terrific.” He rubbed his palms together, looking like a man ready to work, and then surprised them all. “We’re shutting down for a while. No writing, no digging, no stories. We’ll meet here again, two weeks from now. Nine o’clock —” he gave