NickyNails

It was a desperate time, calling for desperate measures. I watched the whole city’s aura slowly fade to sadness and hopelessness. Men were having a hard time finding work, earning enough to bring meager food rations back home to their starving families. There HAD to be a way to get back the happiness and prosperity of this place, and I may have found a way!
Lips has always been into the finer things in life – as typical of her breed and species- and she was my inspiration for change to come. I needed someone on the top side to exchange funds with, and Lips was mouthing off one day about how pathetic our life was, hiding and eating bugs underground in the rarely used train station. I needed something to keep her happy, because Lord help me I loved that girl.
I had been watching Al for some time now, could see the need for work, his incomparable leadership qualities. He wasn’t the most well-bred, but he was trustworthy – nobody likes a snitch, see? For the entire time I knew that guy, he imagined me some secretive agent with no face, no presence. I told him to call me “Nicky” since I had heard that name floating down the drain quite often – it was a common name and he would be none the wiser.
Al had been making and selling booze during the Great Depression (so called it by the humans) and he was damn good at it. My ancestors had a different way of making the recipe of the whisky he was selling. I taught him everything I knew in exchange for a cut of the profit and some occasional La-Di-Da thrown my way for Lips. That old girl could drink the sweat off that stuff in the blink of an eye, and she was surprisingly pleasant intoxicated.
The city had started to come back to life. Now, mind you alcohol is never ALWAYS the answer, but during this time it was ingenious. The Speak-Easies were profitable and I enjoyed quite a bit of profit from Al’s work. Transporting the alcohol was quite dangerous but Al’s guys always had a handle on it, whether it was armed coercion to forget what one saw, or they’d offer a bribe. Lips loved the gold bars we exchanged in return for our “services” and we will be sitting quite pretty on this hoard for quite a while. I have faith Al will continue to do his good work.