Damn it, Joey, don’t make me feel guilty! I was glad it was dark, so he couldn’t se
e me blush, but I didn’t want to lie. “Look, I didn’t plan on it. There’s another part of the story you haven’t heard.”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
I bit my lip. How the hell was I supposed to be up front with him and ask for what I needed with all this odd tension between us? Did he really have feelings for me? Or was he just angry about what I’d done? “Well, while you were living it up in Chicago, I was—”
“I wasn’t ‘living it up in Chicago,’ you know. It was business.”
“Maybe, but all that rum plus the opium must have brought a good load of dough.”
Joey studied me but said nothing.
“Well, didn’t it?”
“We didn’t sell the opium in Chicago.”
My jaw dropped. “What? Why not?”
“Sam doesn’t even know about it. It was in hidden containers that ended up in the hearse I drove with Angelo. When we found it, we agreed to keep it to ourselves. We sold the rum as instructed, gave Sam his cut, and brought the opium back to Detroit.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not even sure what made me do it. It just seemed like the opportunity was there for me to make a move on my own. Like I told you, I’m planning on going back to Chicago, and I could use a little money to get started down there.”
“Jesus, Joey. If Sam finds out, he’ll kill you.” I put a hand on his arm, but when he glanced down, I removed it.
“He won’t find out. Unless you tell him.”
He meant it as a joke, but I couldn’t make light of this. “And what about Angelo? Can you trust him?”
“Why shouldn’t I? He gains nothing by telling Sam about it.”
“So where is it? The opium, I mean.”
Joey rubbed his lower lip, as if he was wondering whether to confide in me. Then he looked me in the eye. “This information does not leave the car.”
I nodded.
“It’s hidden in the boathouse.”
“Daddy’s boathouse? How the hell did you get in there?” My father had purchased a dilapidated old boathouse on the water for bootlegging purposes a few years back, and although Joey had occasionally worked for him, I didn’t think he had a key.
“I took the key off your ring while I was at your house earlier. You were upstairs getting the money to pay me back.”
“You stole the boathouse key from me?” Somehow that seemed worse than anything I’d done. Neither of us had behaved terribly well in the last week, but at least we’d been honest with each other.
“I was planning on telling you. I just got…distracted.”
Our eyes met, and I took a drag on my cigarette, fast. “Joey, I—”
“I want to meet with Enzo.”
“What?” I coughed, choking on the smoke. “Why the hell do you want to do that?”
“I want to make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”