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stared at screens, books, and maps, hoping that secrets would reveal themselves and help lead to my family.
    The Bird Cage Club had once been a secret itself, known only to a select few.
    It was hard to believe that I lived there.
    Sometimes I awoke not knowing where I was and had to remind myself I’d been hiding out in the old club for months. The small, mahogany-paneled room where I slept revealed itself during the first week without my family, when I’d tried to fix a loose sconce. I gave the lamp a tug and a wall moved, revealing a hidden room complete with a dusty rolltop desk, cracked leather chair, and a tall floor safe. Every speakeasy had a secret office where the owners could skim cash in peace; this one, with walls of bulletproof steel and a private bathroom outfitted in gold fixtures, is where I dropped a mattress.
    Now and then I try to picture what the Bird Cage Club was like ninety years ago.
    I see tough guys in tuxedos, flappers in shiny dresses and glassy beads.
    I hear the squeal and bop of a jazz band punctuated by the jingle of slot machines.
    It was Tyler Strozzini, the Outfit’s VP of Money and owner of the Currency Exchange Building, who told me that, in addition to the Bird Cage Club (our family has a hundred-year lease on the twenty-seventh floor) and Club Molasses, there had been hundreds of other speakeasies all over Chicago owned by all types of Outfit members. Tyler’s eighteen and about to start college. As VP of Money, and with me serving as counselor-at-large, we work-flirt, flirt-work on a regular basis. I know about his revolving door of girlfriends (he makes a point to tell me) and he knows about my boyfriend, Max Kissberg—especially how Max spent the summer in California. Every time we meet to resolve Outfit disputes, Tyler flashes a perfect smile, leans over, and whispers, “What guy would leave his girlfriend, especially one who looks like you, alone and lonely for the entire summer?”
    I always answer with a slow smile that (as I’ve learned) melts Tyler’s natural cool, if only for a split second. “A guy who knows that his girlfriend loves him.”
    “Love?” Tyler chuckled. “Okay, but remember, love makes you weak.” It was during our most recent sit-down that he looked around the Bird Cage Club and said, “Nunzio had a real talent for speakeasies, I’ll give him that.”
    “Yeah, this place and Club Molasses must’ve been awesome back in the day,” I said, scribbling the Outfit decision in the ledger. I’d resolved an issue between Muscle and Money, in favor of Muscle. Old Knuckles Battuta, VP of Muscle, buzzed away victorious in his Scamp, chortling with crusty teeth at Tyler; there was no love lost between them. Tyler was resentful, which put him in a needling, know-it-all mood. Outfit guys always try to show how “inside” the organization they are by demonstrating superior knowledge of its secrets and history (somehow they all had a grandfather who’d been best buds with their god, Al Capone), and Tyler was no exception.
    “Most of the other speaks weren’t so high class,” he said, pinning his green eyes on mine. “Pretty creepy stuff went down in some of them. But of course, you’re aware of that.”
    “Oh . . . sure,” I said, always careful to pretend I knew just as much as he did.
    “Like for instance . . . ,” he said slyly, pausing a beat too long so that it was impossible for me to look away from his chiseled face, his smooth, copper colored skin, “the Catacomb Club.”
    “Uh . . . right. The Catacomb Club.”
    “We all know what happened there. What your grandpa Enzo did,” he said with a wink, raising an eyebrow and adding, “allegedly.”
    “Uh . . . right,” I said, keeping my eyes pinned to the ledger.
    Tyler stood and looked over my shoulder, a whisper of lemony cologne reaching my nose. “You’re pretty busy, huh? That’s good . . . hard work keeps a girl honest,” he said, slipping a perfectly tailored