Chapter 7 - Helena’s Gambit
The Bellevue Club on Charles Street was a fortress of Gilded Age opulence. Marble columns soared forty feet into the air, crystal chandeliers threw diamond patterns across polished parquet floors, and the city’s political and criminal elite mingled over flutes of vintage champagne.
Outside, the sleet had turned into heavy, wet snow, blanketing the limousines lining the curb.
Inside the ladies' lounge on the second floor, Maggie stood before a gilded mirror.
She did not look like a waitress. She did not look like a girl who gutted flounder at 4:00 a.m.
She wore a gown of heavy emerald silk that Rafferty’s tailor had delivered three hours earlier. The cut was high at the neck, long at the sleeves, concealing the bruises on her arms. Her dark hair was pinned up with antique silver combs, exposing the sharp, proud line of her jaw.
Only her hands gave her away. The skin remained scarred, the nails trimmed short and practical. In her small beaded evening bag, tucked beside a lipstick she hadn't used, rested a snub-nosed .38 revolver and the carbon copy of the 1994 police report.
The door to the lounge opened.
Helena Kowalic entered, leaning on a cane tipped with polished silver. She wore black velvet and three strands of pearls that looked like nooses around her withered neck.
The two women stared at each other in the mirror.
“You clean up passably well, Miss Sullivan,” Helena said, her voice dripping with aristocratic disdain. “Though you still smell of diesel and cod.”
Maggie did not turn around. “And you smell like formaldehyde, Helena. But I didn't complain about your house.”
Helena took two slow steps forward, her cane clicking sharply against the tile. “You think you’re walking into a victory tonight. You think Rafferty will protect you. My son is sentimental, like his father was when he was young. It’s a fatal flaw in this business.”
“His father wasn't sentimental,” Maggie countered, turning to face her. “His father was a butcher who let Anthony Voss run his docks.”
A cold smile twisted Helena’s withered lips. “Julian Voss is already here. With forty armed men spread throughout the catering staff and security. The announcement tonight is not a wedding, Maggie. The announcement is the formal transfer of Kowalic Freight into the Voss Corporation.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Rafferty would never sign.”
“Rafferty won’t have a choice,” Helena whispered, leaning close enough that Maggie could see the red veins in her yellowed eyes. “Julian has the city prosecutor in his pocket. If Rafferty refuses to sign, the indictment for the Curtis Bay warehouse fire drops at midnight. Rafferty will spend the rest of his life in federal prison for racketeering, and you... you will simply disappear into the bay, just like your father.”
Maggie smiled.
It was not a soft smile. It was the feral, dangerous smile of someone who had survived twenty winters on the freezing water with nothing but an iron knife and a pair of rubber boots.
“You really don't understand the docks, do you, Helena?” Maggie said, stepping into the old woman’s personal space until Helena was forced to lean back against her cane.
“What are you talking about?”
“On the docks, when a shark gets into the shallows, you don't call the harbor master,” Maggie whispered. “You don't call the police. You cut the chum line and let the harbor eat it.”
Maggie reached into her evening bag, pulled out her phone, and tapped a single button.
On the other end of the line, Moses Hardigan’s voice was instantly clear: *“The market crews are in position at all four service exits, Miss Sullivan. No Voss vehicles leave the block.”*
Helena’s face drained of color. “What have you done?”
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“Thirty families haven't sold fish in six months,” Maggie said, stepping past her toward the ballroom doors. “They’re very hungry, Helena. And you just invited them to dinner.”
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