A Prohibition Ballad.

The following is based on a true story.

…The eardrum-shattering dual reports of the .38 slugs resonate across the decades in this place. On stormy nights at the strike of 1:24 AM you can hear their echo — surrounded by a pungent, otherworldly scent of red roses in full bloom — through what is now The Darkhorse Tavern, a forgettable dive bar on a forgettable street in an even more forgettable Midwestern city.

It was on just such a tumultuous night in 1928 when something unspeakable occurred at the spot where the Darkhorse now operates. Back then, the place was a speakeasy called Club Paradisio with a legitimate diner in the front operated by the Club owner’s mistress.

Local officials and police knew all about the debauchery inside the Paradisio — gambling, cabaret dancing, the new craze called “jazz”, burlesque shows, and an endless flow of illegal intoxicating beverages. They just didn’t care as the owner, a gruff Irishman named O’Malley, made sure they had a chance to wet their beaks in his profits in return for being able to operate his establishment with impunity. It only helped that Old Man O’Malley reportedly had connections to both Capone and the various New York outfits.

O’Malley’s star attraction in the Paradisio was his own daughter Rose. Rose had the voice of an angel, bringing men far and wide from surrounding cities, counties, and even states just to hear her croon an Appalachian ballad or a jaunty dance number from Paris or New Orleans while moving her body like a snake if it were trying to hypnotize its charmer.

The way Rose moved, her flame-colored hair, and penetrating blue eyes mesmerized every man that walked in into ultimately emptying their wallets at the Paradisio; whether at the bar, the rigged roulette wheel, the card tables, or tipping her for her performances.

Rose thought her occupation which turned a healthy living for her and her father also made her invulnerable to the affections of men who sometimes wouldn’t get out of her face. Steffens was one such patron who Rose knew had a crush on her and thought acting like a total pig was the way to bring it to its twisted fruition.

She despised men like Steffens. Nevertheless, she was an expert in playing men like the poor, sad, flesh fiddles they were. That is, until one night…

As she was carrying her wardrobe into the rear of the building, she dropped one of her finest mink sashes on to the ground. When she bent down to pick it up, she was greeted by a pair of black wing tips. Her eyes slowly danced up the tall man in a charcoal gray suit and black tie in front of her.

He tipped his brown fedora to her and gave a sly wink with his deep, dark, brown eyes amid a face chiseled from the foundation of the Earth itself. “Ma’am, I believe this is yours”, he said, handing the sash back to her. He was mystery and chivalry personified in a rugged masculine grace.

Rose was loathe to admit it, but she was instantly smitten. Her feelings only grew when the man spirited her away to the bar for drinks after her sets. One thing led to another and after a while she started heading back to his temporary living quarters in the Lincoln Hotel, instead of home to her controlling father.

The man never gave his name. He was merely known around Club Paradisio as “the Gambler.”

“The Gambler” was an earned moniker to the eternal chagrin of old man O’Malley and other players at the tables. The ancient miser couldn’t figure out how, but The Gambler never lost a hand at any game in the Paradisio. He drained the Old Man’s profits at a steady pace.

Usually the Gambler was wise enough to leave town once the house started noticing his prowess at the tables. He had almost been shot in both knees once, almost had his legs broken twice, and been beaten to a bloody pulp with brass knuckles and blackjacks more times than he could count.

Something distracted him this time. Something primal. Something wired into the mental and spiritual build of every man. The Gambler was in love.

Their rendezvous in his hotel room became more frequent. Whenever she had spare time, she would come up to eat a meal, make passionate love with him, or just lounge in his lap looking up at him as he read “Life on the Mississippi”, The Autobiography of P.T. Barnum, Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, Coleridge, Byron, Shakespeare, or even Sherlock Holmes. He would talk about the lessons of the great philosophers and poets with her as he read. He reminded her daily she was his living poetry.

One day she ran to him utterly terrified. With tears streaming down her angelic cheeks, she showed The Gambler the developing bump in her stomach. With this, he reassured her: “Rose, I have more than enough cash to support all three of us comfortably for the rest of our lives. I assure you I am not going anywhere. Let me prove it to you by becoming my wife, Rose.”

She was over the moon, but soon came crashing back to the land. She knew she could not hide her baby bump well when performing. And if her father found out, there would be fire raining on her from the ceiling of Club Paradisio. She wouldn’t live to regret it. Old Man O’Malley’s wrath was legendary.

Still, she did the best she could to conceal her condition. That was when she noticed the Gambler did not show up for several days back-to-back. This was very strange and unlike him. It layered on more fear in the pit of her and her developing child’s soul. Did he finally skip town? Did he take flight over his own fear with the pregnancy? Was his word and their engagement really worth a damn?

A telephone rings in a darkened room. The cherry of a cigar is all that lights the surrounding space filled with acrid sulfuric smoke, like an olfactory fire and brimstone sermon delivered by a corrupted preacher.

A shadowy figure picks up, “Hello? Yes… Yes I will… Two grand… Perfect… Expect me late tomorrow night.”

Three days after the Gambler’s disappearance his body washed up in a nearby river. Rose felt on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She straight up asked her father, “What did you do?”

His reply was curt and simple, “while that rat bastard deserved a bullet in the head, I didn’t do it, sweetie.”

She didn’t believe him. He was a vengeful, spiteful, and angry Irishman.

Rose slept in her room above the Club for days on end. All she could do was cry uncontrollably. The love of her life had been snatched away not through any natural causes, but from a wound from a high caliber hunting rifle. He was then dumped in the river where his bloated body was fished out.

Her beloved tried repeatedly to tell her something in a recurring nightmare as they were both standing in open graves. His brain fell out from the massive hole in his skull before he could convey his message. She woke in a cold sweat as he became nothing but a skeleton.

She was losing sleep, not eating, and mentally deteriorating at a break neck speed. She refused to leave her room above the Club — a bar-less prison of her own psyche’s making.

She found her father’s loaded .38 special in a drawer in their little quarters above the Club. That’s when a plan occurred to her despite the tremendous pain she was in. She would perform that night.

After her set finished at 1:24 AM she pulled the gun from her garter belt, pointing it at her father’s balding head as he sat at the bar. “Father!!”, she yelled with all the force of a dejected banshee, “how could you have my man murdered?”

“Rosie, I told you, I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

“Liar!”

She pulled the trigger and hammer. Firing once and hitting him right between the eyes. Old Man O’Malley just slumped forward with his head on the bar, bleeding out.

Passion swallowed her whole in the moment. In the great belly of the beast, she shouted to the heavens, “Lover we’re coming!” before putting the snub nose, metal death machine in her mouth and pulling the trigger. It was exactly 1:24 in the morning.

The smell of rose perfume, brain matter, and viscera clouded the entire Club as everyone looked on. Steffens started to cry, “I loved her! I had the Gambler killed!”

Wess Haubrich is a freelance true crime journalist who recently branched out to short fiction after a hospital stay from shattering all the bones in his wrist and ankle on the dominant side of his body. Follow him on Twitter here.