Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

“Quite a bit, I think. This building was originally a hotel, built for the lumber trade around the turn of the century. By the ’twenties, the lumber was gone, so when Prohibition came in, the Belknaps converted the top floor of the hotel to a blind pig.”

“A blind—?” Pia echoed.

“Blind pig, speakeasy. An illegal drinking establishment. A gin mill. A very classy one, I might add. Wow. Being in here is like stepping back in time. Look at that bar.”

“It’s great,” I agreed. “So what happened to the place?”

“When Prohibition ended, they tried going legit, but things were tough in Malverne during the Depression. A lot of businesses closed, including the hotel. Then World War Two came along and saved everybody.”

“How so?”

“The town boomed. Literally. Guncotton, a component in artillery shells, can be made from tag alder, a trash tree that grows wild around here. The Belknaps built a plant to process the stuff, and landed a big government contract. Which is where the trouble started. Malverne’s a small town. So many men had already enlisted there was almost no local labor available.”

“What did they do?”

“They brought in blacks,” Cohen said simply. “There’s a village nearby called Idlewild, a black enclave in those days. Cyrus hired nearly two hundred colored folks to work in the plant. And when locals refused to rent rooms to them, he put them up in this hotel. And reopened the nightclub. As a black and tan — a place where blacks and whites could mix. Remember, in those days most of the country still had Jim Crow laws. Segregation was the rule, even in little backwaters like this one.”

“So this was a black nightclub?” Olympia said, glancing around the room, taking it all in.

“More or less,” Artie agreed. “And the place was a gold mine. Had a built-in crowd from the hotel. Cy hired a colored band from Detroit, Coley Barnes and the... Barnstormers, I think they were called. A big band. People flocked here from all over — Grand Rapids, Detroit, even Chicago. The place rebuilt the Belknap family fortune...” He trailed off, reading the surprise in Olympia’s face. “I’m sorry, I meant no offense.”

“None taken. I knew Bob’s family was wealthy, I just assumed... you know. Business or real estate, that sort of thing.”

“They did all of those things later, but their original bundle came from bootlegging, guncotton, and this gin mill.”

“What happened to the place?” I asked. “Why was it abandoned like this?”

“There was a holdup,” Artie said. “The summer of ’forty-five. The war was ending, so the government canceled the munitions contract. The Belknaps had to lay off the workers and close the factory, which pretty much emptied the hotel. Old Cy tried to keep the club operating, but there was no business. He was getting ready to close it down when Coley Barnes did it for him.”

“The bandleader?” Olympia said.

“Yep. Held the place up at gunpoint, roughed some people up, and took off with the money and another man’s wife. The Gin Mill closed down that night, never reopened.”

“Until now,” Pia Belknap said quietly. I glanced at her.

“Look at this place,” she continued, walking slowly around the dance floor. “The bar, the bandstand, all these authentic fixtures? This place has an incredible retro atmosphere you couldn’t replicate for a million dollars. And it’s already here, free and clear. Could you bring the Gin Mill up to code, Mr. Shea?”

“I suppose so,” I said, chewing my lip. “It’ll need to be rewired, but we planned to do that anyway. The plumbing and light fixtures will have to be updated, but beyond that...” I shrugged. “Hell, the place looks like it closed a few weeks ago. How much trouble can it be?”

A lot.

I had Puck scope out the saloon while I rode herd on the crew remodeling the first-floor storefronts. At street level, we were well ahead of schedule. Which was a good thing. Because the upper floors were another story.

“Thing is, the Gin Mill may have closed in ’forty-five, but it was built back during Prohibition,” Puck explained. We were at the Lakefront Diner, a little mom-and-pop joint just up the street from the Belknap. Our unofficial lunch-break spot. Cheap grub, draft beer in Mason jars. My kind of place.

The crew was at a large table, scarfing down enough chow for a small army. Puck and I were sharing a booth in the corner.

“The biggest problem is the wiring. They ran it in from the factory across the parking lot, snaked it up phony drains so it wouldn’t show on the hotel’s electric bill.”

“So? We’ll have to replace it anyway.”

“Hell, Danny, we can’t even turn it off without getting access to the old guncotton factory and it’s locked down tight as a drum.”

“No kidding? So what’s it like inside?”

“About what you’d expect.” Puck grinned. “I got in through the skylight. The place folded the same time as the Gin Mill. Looks like they just turned off the lights and locked the doors. All the machinery’s still in place and some of the storage rooms even have guncotton in them.”

“Is it dangerous?”