Bad Boy (16 page)

I
met them the next morning, or, rather, they met me as I came out of the hotel’s service entrance. Soft-spoken, modishly dressed young men, not a great deal older than I, they were not at all like the creatures which my study of gangster movies had led me to expect. We had breakfast together, and I felt encouraged to explain why I could not sell whiskey for them.

They listened quietly, without interruption. I finished my explanation, and still they sat waiting, staring at me steadily.

“Well”—I laughed nervously—“that’s…you see how it is. I’ve never done anything like that, and—”

“What you going to do with the stuff, then?” one of them interrupted casually. “You can’t sell it, what you going to do? How you going to pay for it?”

“Well, I—I—”

“You owe for four cases, ninety-eight a case. Call it three hundred and ninety dollars. You got the dough?”

“Look,” I snapped, “I didn’t order that stuff. You can come out to the house and pick it up, or I’ll have it brought back to you. Any place you say. But—”

“You got the dough?” he repeated. “How you going to pay for it, then?”

“But I just finished telling—All right,” I said. “All right. I’ll sell this, but—”

“Good. You got a nice set-up there. Be good for ten, fifteen cases a week when you get organized.”

It was like talking to a stone wall. They didn’t argue. Their attitude was simply that there was nothing to argue about.

To be honest, I think I could have been firm at this point without serious danger to myself. I wasn’t involved with them yet. They had too much to lose to risk trouble with someone who could appeal to the authorities with figuratively clean hands. They were paying off, of course, but no fix is ever solid. The purchaser is supposed to use it with discretion, to do nothing which will seriously embarrass the seller.

So, I had only to say no and keep saying it, and, I believe, the matter would have been ended. But despite a lifetime of pushing around, I had never developed a tolerance for it. And this latest instance, which had seriously frightened my mother, was particularly distasteful to me. It seemed to me that these characters needed to be taught a lesson, and that I was just the lad to do it.

“All right,” I shrugged. “How much time do I have to pay up?”

“How much do you need?”

“Well, just getting started this way, it’ll probably take me a week to sell it—all of it. Of course, I can pay you off a case at a time if—”

They didn’t want to do that, as I was sure they would not. It would be too much trouble. Also, it bespoke a distrust which could be very unhealthy for the enterprise.

“We won’t crowd you any. You have to run over a day or two sometime, why just say so. You play with us, we play with you. Later on, maybe, you can make it cash on the line.”

“I couldn’t do that for quite a while,” I said. “Well, I could I guess, but—”

But they understood. I’d just been squeezing by. I and my family needed all sorts of things, and I was to go right ahead and take care of those needs. Naturally. That was as it should be. What was the sense in a guy working if he didn’t have any dough to spend?

We’d wait awhile before going on a cash basis. Say, a couple of months from now.

We worked out the arrangements for delivery and payment. I went on home.

Pop was out of town for a few days, and was thus unaware of the previous night’s happenings. Much against her will, I persuaded Mom to keep mum.

“I don’t know why,” she sighed. “I just don’t know why it is you’re always getting mixed up in something.”

“I didn’t mix up in it,” I said. “I was mixed up.”

“You certainly are! You’re really mixed up if you think you can cheat those fellows. Honest to goodness, Jimmie, do you actually believe you can?”

“You wait and see,” I promised. “I’ll take those birds like Grant took Richmond.”

The hotel was what was known in the trade as a “tight” or “clean” house. Bellboys returning from errands outside the hotel were always subjected to close scrutiny by the house detectives. If their uniforms bulged suspiciously, or if they were carrying a package of a certain size, they were almost certain to be searched. Whiskey was bootlegged, of course, in spite of all the hotel’s precautions. But to carry out an operation the size I contemplated was impossible by the usual pint-at-a-time methods. My base of operations, as I saw it, would have to be on the inside.

I have mentioned that a number of the lower-floor rooms were blocked off in hot weather. Since it was hot now, I purloined the key to one, using it as a storage room for whiskey which I brought in in inexpensive suitcases.

A supposed “guest” drove up at the side door and tapped his horn for a bellboy. I trotted out, removed his “baggage” and carried it up to my room. This same thing took place a dozen times a day with bona fide guests and baggage, so my comings and goings went unmarked, apparently, and while other boys had been caught and discharged and sometimes jailed for bringing in a pint, I brought in case after case. There was no trouble at all for quite a while.

I paid for the four cases promptly at the end of the week. The following week, having obtained a transfer to days, I sold six, and the week after that I sold seven. Each week I brought in a little more, paying up on the dot when the week was ended. In a very few weeks, I was handling and paying for upwards of ten cases.

Now, regardless of what my wholesalers thought, this was an enormous amount of whiskey to move in any hotel, even one that ran wide open. I had to re-wholesale the bulk of it to other bellboys and service employees, taking a very short profit or no profit. And along toward the last, in order to get rid of the stuff, I sold several cases at a loss. On the overall transactions, of course, I made money—several times the sum I would have made at legitimate bell-hopping. But this was nothing like the amount which I might reasonably have been expected to make.

The money was spent almost as fast as I got it on clothes, on medical and dental attention, on a car which I had Mom buy and leave on the sales lot. These things and our day-to-day living expenses left me with very little surplus cash. “Al’s boys” were scheduled to supply that—a quantity sufficient to travel on and to live on indefinitely and comfortably afterward.

The “boys” were just a little hesitant when, at the beginning of the week I meant to be my last, I ordered twenty cases. I had always paid off, hitherto, and I had an excellent reason for wanting so much, but still…

“This convention—you say it’s going to be a big one?”

“You read the papers,” I shrugged.

“How come you want all the stuff at once? Why don’t you take part of it at the beginning of the week and part in the middle?”

“I always have got it all in at one time,” I said.

“Yeah, but twenty cases. That’s two grand.”

“Well, let’s let it go,” I said, easily. “We’ll have thirty-five bellboys working, and there’s a chance I might be able to turn the whole twenty the first day or so. But give me five or ten or whatever you want to.”

I got the twenty, but not without some uneasiness on the part of the boys. They hinted strongly that a substantial cash down payment would be welcome, and when I pleaded a shortage of money a partial pay-off for the mid-week was arranged.

That was fine with me. I wasn’t going to be around by the middle of the week. If things went as I planned, I would work two days of the five-day convention and skip town.

I figured that I should at least be able to dump the whiskey at its wholesale price. Probably, with the house packed and so many boys working, I would do considerably better than that. With only a little luck, I should turn it for three thousand, or—if the breaks really fell my way—four or five thousand.

Anyway, it would be a very nice piece of change. Enough to give Pop a stake. Enough so that Mom and Freddie could live with me, when I entered the University of Nebraska, instead of staying with my grandparents.

The opening day of the convention was one of my long days—seven until noon, six until ten. As always, during the first shifts of a convention, there was very little fast money. The guests weren’t limbered up yet. They were interested only in getting registered and cleaned up.

I sold two pints of whiskey at retail, and the remainder of a case—less one pint—at wholesale. That was every nickel I had in the world, a little more than a hundred dollars, when I knocked off at noon. I went home and to bed, intending to store up rest for the long hard grind I had ahead of me.

The whiskey would be reasonably safe from theft during these first two shifts, but it would not be safe after that. As soon as they got themselves oriented, and the booze market began to boom, every hot-shot bellboy in the hotel would be after the stuff. They would try to steal it from me, just as I was stealing it from my wholesalers. They would steal it, dump it and skip—exactly as I planned to do.

When I went back to the hotel tonight I would have to stay there—sleeping in the whiskey-storage room and never getting too far away from it—until I was ready to pull out. It would be tough, nerve-wracking. Almost thirty-six hours of staving off a three-sided peril. The wholesalers were suspicious of me and might become more than that at any minute. The hot-shots were out to rob me, the hotel detectives to catch me. The federal prohibition agents…

I had seen no signs of the prohibs so far, but that didn’t mean they weren’t on to me. Bushels of empty bottles were being carted out of the hotel every week. The management was getting alarmed. If the prohibition agents were on their toes at all…

It was too much to worry about. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

About three that afternoon, Mom shook me awake.

“Jimmie! They found your whiskey. Prohibition officers!”

“Huh? What?” I sat up drowsily. “How do you know?”

“It just came over the radio. They got five cases, they said, and they’re looking for the person it belongs to.”

I
was still half asleep, too drowsy for the moment to comprehend the true and terrible nature of my plight. As I recall it, I even laughed a little sleepily. Only five cases, huh? Well, that wasn’t so bad. And as long as they didn’t know who—

Then it hit me, and suddenly I was wide awake and shivering. Five cases! Hell, if they had found five cases they had found it all! It had all been there in the one room. They’d only
reported
five cases, but they’d gotten every damned last bottle. Those prohibs—yes, and doubtless the assistant managers and house detectives—would be drinking my booze for the next six months.

They knew who the stuff belonged to all right. They’d just been waiting for me to get the cache built up good. Now, they’d knocked it over, and it was my cue to stay away from the hotel and keep my mouth shut. Otherwise—

But my wholesalers! I couldn’t skip town now. I didn’t have the money. And if I stayed here and couldn’t pay them…! For all I knew, they might have gotten the news already. They’d think I’d sold fifteen cases, and they’d want their dough. Probably, since I could no longer work at the hotel, they’d demand a settlement for the full amount. The loss of an alleged five cases to the prohibs would be my headache.

I pushed Mom out of the way and snatched up the telephone. I called Allie Ivers.

He had just heard the news himself, and his alarm was every bit as great as mine.

“I’m sorry as hell you got into this, Jimmie. I just thought you could play it safe and easy, and—”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I laid myself wide open. What had I better do?”

“Beat it. Get out of town as fast as you can.”

“But I can’t! I’ll have less than a hundred bucks by the time I gas up the car. I’ve got a thousand miles to travel, and I have to take my mother and sister with me and—”

“You won’t have a head left on your shoulders if you hang around here. I’m, not kidding you, Jimmie. If I thought it was safe for you to wait until tomorrow I’d have you do it. I could scrape up some dough for you and—”

“Forget it,” I said. “I’ll—I guess we’ll manage some way.”

I hung up the telephone and began flinging on my clothes. I told Mom to start packing.

“Packing!” She stared at me incredulously. “
Packing!
Are you completely out of your—?”

“Don’t pack, then. Just get ready to travel. Pop can take care of the other things later.”

Mom grumbled, but she didn’t argue much. Without understanding all the details, she knew I was taking the only way out of a very serious mess.

She called Freddie from the schoolgrounds where she was playing with some other children. The two of them began to pack, and I called a taxicab.

I sped into town and got the car from the sales lot.

I had never seen it before, except from a distance. But Mom had always been a shrewd bargainer, and she seemed to have surpassed herself in this case. The body, the tires, the upholstery—all looked first-class. The motor seemed to be a little tight and sluggish, but that was only natural in a car which had been standing idle for several months.

Pop was at home when I returned. He was obviously displeased with the news of my bootlegging, but more concerned for my safety. I had to leave. The family was breaking up. It was no time for the reproaches which he must have felt like handing me.

We got the car loaded and made our farewells. Hardly more than an hour from the time of the radio news flash, Mom and Freddie and I were on our way out of town.

It was a scorching hot afternoon. We had gotten about five miles out on the highway when the smoke began to rise from the hood. Before I could get to a filling station, some five miles farther, the motor was pounding ominously.

I got out and looked it over.

The radiator was full of water. The fan belt was okay, and the oil gauge stood at the full mark. I let the car cool awhile, then I drove on again.

The motor grew hotter, the pounding louder. Mom looked at me, frowning.

“What’s the matter, Jimmie? Why does it do that?”

“We’ve got a flat crankshaft,” I said. “It’s been packed with sawdust and tractor oil. Now, it’s working loose.”

“Is it—will it cost much to fix?”

“It will. And it won’t stay fixed. The bearings will work right loose again.”

“But how…what in the world will we do?”

“Go as far as we can, then—well, we’ll have to see when the time comes.”

We rode on, and smoke and fumes poured up through the floor boards. The whole car shook with the pounding of the motor. Freddie stoppered her ears with her fingers and hung her head out the window. Mom snatched her back inside, turned on me furiously.

“Honest to goodness, Jimmie! What
is
the matter with you? This car’s about to fall apart and we’re practically broke and we’ve got to travel halfway across the United States and—and—and you sit there laughing! What’s the matter with you, anyway? How can you do it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just don’t know of anything else to do.”