Dusk crept up on Irving City as the fog rolled in from the river. Once the sun was safely beneath its horizon, that’s when Melvin “Lucky” Durts got to business.

They called him lucky because he’d escaped being arrested a record twelve times in 1922 alone. No one was as slick as he was finding an escape route. But if you were to ask him, he’d say he wasn’t lucky. It was just that the coppers weren’t anywhere near as smart as he was.

Lucky stood near a warehouse near Dock 23 in Irving City’s busiest port during the day. At night, the whole thing shut down, and he was waiting for the dock guard to come by for his usual weekly take. Ten bucks got a lot of business done for Lucky over the years.

“Hey, how much longer this gonna take?”

Lucky had almost forgotten he wasn’t alone. Normally he ran this part of the business by himself, but he was currently saddled with Tony “No Name” Lopez. He was called “No Name” because he hadn’t done anything of note to receive any recognition. Some second cousin of Big Monte’s or something.

“Shaddup, Tony,” Lucky said. “It takes as long as it takes. We can’t move product unless we have product to move.”

“Seems silly to pay off a guard when you could have him whacked,” Tony said.

“Are you stupid, Tony?” Lucky asked. “I mean, really. Are you so inconsequentially stupid that you wandered through this life on nothing but the fact that you were too ugly for your parents to put you down?” Tony cowered. Typical Tony, Lucky thought. Hey, that’s not a bad nickname.

“So why don’t you kill him?” Tony asked. “I’m just trying to learn, is all.”

“I don’t kill him because he’s good people,” Lucky said. “And you don’t turn your back on good people. Don’t forget that, Tony.”

“Gotcha, boss,” Tony said.

A few more silent minutes passed and Lucky looked for any sign of the guard. It wasn’t like Patrick to be late like this.

“Did you see that?” Tony asked, pointing to the far side of Dock 22, across the harbor. Lucky sharpened his focus across the water, but didn’t quite catch anything.

“I didn’t see nothing,” Lucky said. Then they heard the scream.

“Do you think we should check it out?” Tony asked.

“There’s nothing to check out,” Lucky said. “Keep yourself calm.”

“What if your guard buddy Patrick is in trouble,” Tony asked. “There’s a bunch of shady characters that hide out around the docks.”

“That’s us, nitwit,” Lucky said. But there was something that Tony was saying that was getting under his skin.

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