Free Flirtinis with Flappers by Marianne Mancusi Page A

things to my goals and motivation, and I wasn't sure I minded the conflict.
    I pulled open the door to enter the club. The lights were low, and several slightly grungy men were hanging by the bar, sipping their drinks. The place was a lot classier at night. But then, so were most twenty-first-century bars.
    I scanned the nearly vacant dance floor, wondering how I was going to find Machine Gun's office without looking like I wasn't in Kansas anymore. The Men in Black really should have sent me back with some high-tech GPS device or, at the very least, a low-tech map.
    "Hey, Louise," greeted a big, bald guy in a tux. A bouncer type, probably. A human GPS on steroids. And most likely the answer to my lost-in-a-speakeasy prayers. "You here to see Jack?"
    "Yes, please," I said in the most demure voice I could muster, crossing my fingers that he'd take me to the man in question. "Will you be so kind as to escort me?" Hopefully Louise wasn't normally an "I don't need a man to show me around" type of girl.
    The bouncer nodded and gestured for me to follow. Yes. I stepped in behind him, and together we headed to the back of the club. He slipped a silver key from his pocket into the lock of a wooden door. After unlocking and pulling the door open, he started up a narrow flight of stairs, and I followed. At the top, there was an ornate hallway, lined with over-the-top gaudy decorations, alabaster statues, and gold-framed paintings. The place was so overdone Italian that it almost looked like a Godfather parody. He rapped on one of the three doors, and a voice instructed that we enter.
    I swallowed hard. Here we go.
    The room was luxurious and slightly less cheesy than the hallway outside. Machine Gun evidently spared no expense when it came to his private domain, which made me all the more furious at Louise's dump of an apartment. The walls were paneled with dark burnished wood, and overly large paintings with jewel tones further complemented their surroundings. The furniture was heavy and well built. Mahogany, perhaps, though I was no expert. At the far end of the room was an oversized desk, piled with papers. Behind the desk sat a stout, Italian-looking man, slightly balding. Machine Gun? He wasn't a bad-looking guy. Just…ordinary. Not sexy. Not handsome.
    Not Sam.
    Louise must have been one of those go-for-the-power or go-for-the-cash types, I guessed. 'Cause, seriously—there was no freaking way a girl who looked like her could really be head over heels for this tool when she had Hottie McHotterson Sam waiting in the wings. But if you mixed in the probability that McHotterson was probably McPoor Church Mouse, then I could see some reason as to the appeal of having a rich mobster as your boyfriend.
    Sure, it wasn't the way I ever selected my men, but hey, considering my track record, maybe Louise was onto something. As my mom always said, you could fall in love with a rich man just as easily as you could fall in love with a poor man. (It was getting the rich man to love you back that I always found to be the tricky part.)
    The bouncer patted me on the shoulder and exited the room, pulling the door closed behind him. I stood back, not sure whether it was the right opportunity to make my presence known. Louise's boyfriend was currently red-faced and yelling at a skinny, nervous-looking guy standing by his desk. The poor chap was wringing his hands and shaking like a leaf as Machine Gun berated him.
    "I told you to fix that fight. You said it was a done deal!" McGurn shouted, shaking his diamond-bedecked hand. "In fact, I think your exact words were, 'Don't worry, Machine Gun. It's all set. It's a sure thing.' So I'm a fair guy. I says to myself, 'Johnny knows what he's talking about. He's an upstanding guy, that Johnny. I think of him as a brother, in fact. Like we have the same mother.' That's what I tell people, Johnny. That's how much I like yah. Trust yah. And so I says, 'If he says it's a sure thing, then it's a sure thing.' No