Page 81 of Fire and Bones
I unwound my ankles to stand but my feet, dead asleep, vetoed the move. I pinwheel-lurched across the room like a drunk stumbling from a bar.
Grabbing the phone, I flung myself onto the bed.
“Brennan.”
“Are you all right?” It was Doyle on the line.
“I’m good,” I said, hopefully hiding my disappointment.
“You sound like you just ran a marathon.” I could hear voices in the background, some human, some robotic. I figured she was phoning from her office at the TV station.
“If so, I’d be dead.”
“Ben just called and offered to take me to Nara-Ya for dinner. He wondered if you’d like to join us.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Will you stop it. I’ve been dying to go there. Meet us at seven. It’s in District Square. If you Uber, Ben says he’s happy to drive you home.”
“Okay.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a crash course in bootlegging.”
There was a moment of indistinct background chatter as she worked through that.
“I’m reading the articles you photocopied. On the Warring brothers.”
“Great minds.” She truncated the quote. “Keep at it. I think I’ve made a major discovery along those lines.”
“Yeah?”
“Not now. I’ll tell all at dinner.”
She disconnected.
I noticed the time. One-forty.
Unbelievably, I was hungry again.
Hoping to slip in and out unseen, I crept downstairs to the kitchen.
Not a chance.
Lan appeared and offered to make me a sandwich.
Knowing it was futile to refuse, I accepted.
Ten minutes later I was back on the floor of my room, a turkey and Havarti on rye artfully plated on a tray beside me. Green chips, probably something healthy like spinach. Fresh fruit salad. Napkin folded to look like a dove.
I munched as I continued working through the stacks.
Though the bulk of the Warring coverage ran from the thirties into the fifties, Doyle had photocopied several more recent articles. By the late eighties, DC concerns seemed to have shifted away from homegrown gangsters to organized crime.
A 1987 Post Sunday edition featured a spread headlined: OUR GANG—WITH THE MAFIA MUSCLING IN, WE SOON MAY LONG FOR THE GOOD OLD BAD DAYS. The tone was close to that of fond remembrance. A good chunk of the treatment was devoted to Emmitt.
The text traced the brothers’ rise to prominence during Prohibition, their entry into the numbers business, and their headline-making trials for murder and tax evasion. It referenced Emmitt Warring’s appearance before a Senate District Subcommittee, describing his testimony as largely taking the fifth.