Deceives gangsters storing whiskey in heart of speakeasy (9)
I believe the answer is:
hoodwinks
'deceives' is the definition.
(hoodwinking is a kind of deceiving)
'gangsters storing whiskey in heart of speakeasy' is the wordplay.
'gangsters' becomes 'hoods' (I've seen this before).
'storing' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'whiskey' becomes 'W' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.).
'heart of' means to look at the middle letters.
The middle letter of 'speakeasy' is 'k'.
'w'+'in'+'k'='wink'
'hoods' enclosing 'wink' is 'HOODWINKS'.
(Other definitions for hoodwinks that I've seen before include "pulls a fast one" , "gulls" , "Bamboozles" .)