Return to The Quarry

Chapter Seventeen

1925

Manna from heaven bubbled in the bulbous copper still. Sweat sparkled on Septimus' brow in the electric lights of the dimly lit cavern beneath the house. He glanced at his wristwatch. By now, Moira was putting Frank and Leah to bed and she'd be setting about the dishes. The kids wouldn't hear the bubbling and come down wanting to watch. Septimus shoved several more split logs into the fire and brought the malted grain to a rough boil.

For a surprisingly nominal fee, he retained the services of a few go-betweens, three of the locals who networked with others like him to put thirsty people in the way of people who could produce. These go-betweens never used names. That was how it worked. Those who would pay a fortune never used names. Only monikers like Old Lady, Foreign Gentleman, and so on.

Glamour Girl wanted six cases of gin and was willing to pay more zeros than Septimus had ever seen in all the books kept at the quarry. He had seen one of her pictures with the wife, and from what he remembered, Glamour Girl was quite the stunning beauty. Apparently she and all those Hollywood artsy types were rife with endless money. With this feather in his cap, the go-betweens casually dropped the fact that unnamed Hollywood royalty used his services, in an effort to convince trustworthy to buy. And convince them it did.

Soon, shorter but no less lucrative orders came flooding in. Spectacles, The Dowager, Robber Baron, and Mustache all were willing to pay for a few bottles of rum, a case of scotch. Septimus found that he was spending more time chopping wood than worrying about profit. All he had to do was keep the stills churning out contraband. His Nibs, No Teeth, Pierce Arrow, and Rancher had orders. Banker, Judge, Chief, and Pirate all followed. The safe tucked away in the bowels of the caverns that were off limits to the workers soon was starting to fill with paper money, stacked in paper-taped bricks.

He began on Glamour Girl's order and worked on it steadily through the month. He had several weeks' lead time, so he was able to fill other orders while getting her unbelievably large order crated and packed safely in tow. His new ledger, a red book as thick as a Bible, was filling up, and soon, he wasn't just going to run through all those bills on his desk in the Big House, he was going to eliminate them all and have so much left over that he was going to be able to trade in the spindle for a solid gold tie pin. He would have to come up with something to safeguard this wealth, he knew. Frank was still a kid, but Septimus could tell he didn't have the killer instincts one needed to survive. Hell, not only survive with such money, but to continue to get ahead. Leah was too much like her mother. Too principled. Too Christian.

Septimus shook himself out of his thoughts. He had to get the big order out first. Then he would plan for the future.

Glamour Girl's gin needed to hit the train platform no later than two days from that very second. He had put it off so long that he was not sure he could get enough raw material in to make it. He knew he was cutting it fine, but he could not have this deal go south. He had to produce at all costs – just not costs to himself.

Imagine his horror when he found that he had stupidly miscalculated the pounds of juniper. That wasn't so hard to fix, as there were other things he could throw in. But it was the grain alcohol base that he was bleeding out on. All because his man at the sugar plant got busted for "losing" sacks of the stuff off the truck . . .

. . . then he had the idea.

He had heard of other distillers cutting their batches with other types of alcohol that wouldn't affect the taste or smell. These things often went unnoticed, whereas some experienced drinkers could tell if liquor had been watered down. Some even could tell by watching bubbles when tipping the bottle end for end. But adding in alcohol to alcohol was virtually undetectable.