Black Hats (21 page)

To repay all the time he was taking up with her husband, Wyatt gave Bat’s wife Emma an evening at the Masterson apartment, where his thoughtfulness was repaid with a delicious meal of roast beef and brown potatoes and various trimmings. Emma smiled and flirted with Wyatt, which he didn’t mind, and Bat didn’t seem to, either—it brought out the pretty girl of the past in the heavyset matron of the present.

And Emma did not question it, when Wyatt said he might need to impose upon her for Bat’s continued company in the days to come.

“I know William prizes your friendship, Wyatt,” she said, embarrassing both men as they all sat in a frilly, fussy living room that seemed an unlikely hideout for an old buffalo hunter such as Bat. “And I’m not about to stand in the way. Just look after him—you know how impulsive my William can be.”

While Wyatt couldn’t bring himself to call his old deputy “William,” he did restrain himself and used “Bat,” not “Bartholomew,” in Mrs. Masterson’s presence.

Midweek he’d called home, his second call of the trip, having checked in with Sadie early on to confirm his safe arrival.

The connection was a good one, little crackle or pop on the line, and it was as if dark-haired, dark-eyed Sadie were standing there talking to him.

He could almost see his wife’s eyes flash, and not with affection.

“‘Katherine Cummings,’ is it?” she said, her husky, musical voice long on the husk right now, and short on the music.

“What, sweetheart?”

“Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me, Wyatt Earp. Don’t pour me vinegar and try passing it off for champagne. She called wondering if I had heard from you. She wants to know if you’re helping her son.”

Wyatt—alone in Johnny’s office, at his desk, using the phone—closed his eyes and shivered.

So Kate Elder had called the bungalow, and now Sadie knew that Doc Holliday’s woman—with whom Wyatt had his own history—was on the one hand his client, and on the other had dropped by the Earp residence when Sadie wasn’t around….

“Sadie darling—”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me today, Wyatt Earp. I won’t be lied to!”

“I didn’t lie. Her married name is Katherine Cummings.”

“Sin of omission, then. Something else interesting she shared—you said she paid you ‘several hundred.’ More than once in our conversation, which I will have you know was entirely civil, she said she certainly hoped she was getting her five hundred dollars’ worth. Five hundred dollars!”

Wyatt leaned an elbow on the desk and covered his face. “Sadie, no use arguing. I didn’t tell you because I needed a good stake for this trip. And I didn’t say my client was Big Nosed Kate because I knew damned well you’d have conniptions.”

Silence on the other end.

“Sadie?”

Finally: “…well. Any time I rate a speech like that out of you, I guess I can forgive you a couple of sinful omissions.”

“Nothing sinful. Small omissions. But Sadie, listen to me, Kate’s son has a real gold mine going out here. He calls it a second Gold Rush, and he’s right.”

Briefly, he filled her in, leaving out only the Coney Island affair, since he knew she didn’t like fights involving knives. But Sadie was well up to hearing about a saloon getting busted up, even if it did involve machine guns.

“We’ll be reopening soon,” Wyatt said.

“‘We?’”

“Well, the boy needs me. He’s got nerve but has much to learn. And, anyway, I think this joint is ripe for gambling—some cards anyway, and maybe down the road a casino layout.”

“Wyatt—listen to yourself. We have a life in California—you have your detective work, and then there’s our Happy Days mines…. You’re not of an age to run a saloon anymore, and anyway, it’s illegal!”

“Sadie, our diggings haven’t given us much but bored looks for the past three years, and you damned well know it. I’ve hit a rich vein of silver out here—”

“Now it’s
silver
. Before it was gold.”

“Well, it is a golden opportunity. Damnit, woman, this could be the last chance I ever get to…to really strike it big.”

“Last chance
you
get?” Her voice mingled indignation and hurt feelings. “What about me, Wyatt? What about us?”

“When things settle down, I’ll bring you out here. We’ve seen our share of big burgs, but New York is all of ’em wrapped up. You will love it out here, my darling child.”

She groaned. “Things
are
bad. When you wheel out ‘my darling child,’ I know I’m in for a horse-manure bath.”

“Sadie…”

“So, Wyatt, if ‘Katherine Cummings’ calls again, what shall I tell her? That the five hundred she paid you to talk sense to her wayward son, and get him of the speakeasy business, has bank-rolled you into a partnership with him? That you hope to expand past illegal hootch into illegal gambling?”

“For Christ’s sake, woman, tell her nothing. Lie if need be.”

“Well, the sinful omissions are pilin’ up like poker chips, aren’t they? Wyatt, you finish up out there and come home. You’ve had three calls from Bill Hart. Your last chance to hit it big isn’t playing cowboys and Indians in the Wild, Wild East—come west, old fart, and sell your life story to the movies, why don’t you?”

“Sadie…I have to finish up here. I’ll call you next week.”

“Well, why don’t I just sit here by the phone, then, and wait for that delightful gesture.”

“…How’s Earpie doing?”

“Your dog misses you more than I do. Wyatt….”

“Yes?”

“Try not to get killed.”

She said goodbye and he did, too, and hung up. The door onto the hallway was open and he wished he’d closed it before making the call; even from just his half of the conversation, embarrassment would not be at a shortage.

Absent the restaurant’s chef and his assistants, Dixie—with the help of Bill the porter—had been doing all the cooking. Wyatt doubted your average chorus girl could handle pots and pans and stoves the way Dix did, but not all chorus girls were from Iowa. He made sure to compliment her, and even accompanied the kid to a grocery store several blocks away, pleasant bodyguard work at that.

Once, carrying a brown bag of groceries for her, he said, “What made you want to go into show business?”

“I was in plays in junior high and high school,” she said, also carrying a brown bag. In street clothes and without the jazz baby make-up, she just looked a human, an attractive one, but a human.

“And you won beauty contests, I reckon,” he said.

“Yes. One came with a screen test. I left town with a big fuss about me, all sorts of ballyhoo.

So I just
can’t
go back.”

“Would you like to?”

“No. Not really. But I’m not very good, am I?”

“Hell, child, you’re cute as a box of kittens.”

“Yeah, and just as talented.”

“What about that screen test?”

“I took it. A little studio on Long Island. Producer tried to make me in his office. I turned him down. Studio did me the same service.”

Wyatt liked the girl—she wasn’t an ambitious witch, which was what you found if you scratched the powdered surface of most show-business femmes. Just a nice smalltown kid knocking around the edges of the big city, coasting on her looks.

He was having a cup of coffee in the big white modern kitchen while she was starting to get lunch ready for the brownstone’s residents, beef stew, when a milkman made his delivery through the back door.

The milkman, a redheaded character in his twenties with freckles exploding all over his puss, wore a black cap, white blouse and black trousers. The cap and the back of his shirt both had stitched droste dairy. He came in and helped Dixie load up the icebox with ten cold-sweating quart bottles with wire-fastened heavy-paper caps out of his big wire-and-wood case. Helping Dixie load was probably not part of his job, but the answer to his helpfulness likely lay in the goofy smile he wore, and the way his eyes didn’t leave some part or other of her body.

“Where’s your horse?” Wyatt asked the redheaded boy, knowing the four-foot easement behind the building would not exactly accommodate a milk wagon and its steed.

The kid grinned; his teeth were not the color of milk. “Aw, Bessie’s over on West Fifty-third.

There’s a warehouse driveway over there I can leave her in, while I cut down the passageway.

This brownstone’s my only delivery on Fifty-second, in fact it’s the only building we deliver to in the fifties.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, it’s Klingman Dairy territory.”

“Then why don’t we get our milk from Klingman?”

Suddenly the redheaded kid looked nervous. “You’d have to ask Mr. Holliday that.” Then, to Dixie, he said, “Have Mr. Holliday let us know when he wants his regular deliveries started back up.”

Then the redheaded kid departed, lugging his case—now filled with clinking empty bottles—and Wyatt sat thinking as he slowly finished his coffee, while Dixie cut carrots.

Wyatt asked, “Dix, why does a delivery boy delivering milk remind a customer to ask if he wants delivery service started again?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She was cutting celery now. “That’s at least one more

‘delivery’ than I can make sense of.”

“Me too,” Wyatt said.

On Friday afternoon, just a little under a week since the “raid” (as Frankie Yale had put it), the club was its old self, none the worse for wear with the exception of a few paintings and nick-nacks that had as yet to be replaced, and the lingering odor of fresh paint.

Texas Guinan dropped by to check out the progress; she had stopped in last week and saw the club at its shot-up worst, and was very pleased to see her domain recognizably itself again.

She was wearing a dark blue dress with tiny white polka dots, simple but clinging nicely to her generous figure, with only a couple of strings of pearls to hint at her stage persona. A big beaded handbag was slung over her shoulder, and a cloche hat could not contain her wealth of blonde curls.

Hands on her hips, pirouetting to appraise the joint, Tex said, “Well, the little elves have sure as hell done their work! How’s our young cobbler feel about it?”

Wyatt alone was down here keeping her company—the carpenters and painters had cleared out, and “cobbler” Johnny was upstairs talking to his chef, who had stopped by for the first time since the shooting.

Wyatt, in a black coat and trousers and white shirt and string tie, gestured to a nearby table with checkered cloth and chairs, and they sat. The basement club was naturally cool.

“Johnny’s pleased with the place,” Wyatt said. “Nobody gouged him, and look how we’re back to normal.”

Her mouth was smiling but her eyes weren’t. “Are we? Back to normal?”

Wyatt twitched a frown. “Then you know about what Johnny did to that kid Capone?”

“Of course I know about it.”

“Little Dixie told you, I suppose.”

Tex’s laughter echoed in the empty club. “Hell, Wyatt, everybody in
town
knows! Winchell put it in his column—didn’t name names, but certain blanks ain’t that tough to fill in.”

“I suppose not.”

She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “I just wanna know if it’s safe to bring my girls in here. Me, I’m a grown-up woman, and I can take care of myself. But most of those girls, well, they may now and then advance their careers on their backs, but in their way, they’re still kids, innocent kids, and I don’t wanna see ’em get hurt.”

“Me either.”

Tex froze for a moment. Then her eyelashes batted, as if she were whipping him with them.

“‘Me either?’ That’s all you have to say, after I ask you a question twice as long as the goddamn Gettysburg Address?”

“I don’t think they’re in any danger.”

She sighed. He enjoyed what the sigh did to her breasts under the white-dotted blue cloth, but tried not to make it obvious.

She said, “Why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Think they’re in danger! Wyatt, stop looking at my tits and concentrate. Are my girls at risk here?”

His eyes met hers. “No.”

“My God, I oughta get that dentist Johnny down here!”

“Why?”

“Getting anything out of you is like pulling goddamn fuckin’ teeth!”

“Sometimes your language is less than lady-like.”

“Is it, really?”

He gestured. “Capone came around and shot up the place well after closing, when no customers or staff were around—he shot things, not people.”

“That was before Johnny carved his fat face up.”

“True enough. But Capone is not the boss—Yale is. I watched Frankie Yale close, and he strikes me a businessman. Remember, he was embarrassed, too, by Johnny cutting that pudgy hood.”

Tex nodded, her eyes knowing now. “You were on Yale’s turf.”

“Right. We made him and his top toughie look weak. Not good for him in his business.”

“So…as a businessman, why hasn’t he retaliated?”

Wyatt sighed. He looked at the stage, which was dim, but the lights above had been replaced and were ready to shine.

“If he wants to do Johnny monetary damage,” Wyatt said, “he’ll wait for our renovations.

Why shoot up a place that’s already shot up? No, Holliday’s is clean as a whistle again, and ready for destruction.”

“Wyatt, you really know how to put a girl’s mind at ease.”

“You’re not a girl, you said it yourself, you’re a woman full-grown, and I got no intention of putting your mind at ease. You deserve the truth, Tex, and you’ll get it.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

He rose and she watched as he prowled the edge of the nearby dance floor, walking, thinking, talking.

“If vengeance was all,” Wyatt said, “Capone would have struck by now—not at this place, but at Johnny. Or maybe at me, and then there’s Bat, who clobbered him. No, I figure Capone’s boss is thinking like a businessman. Restraining Capone, and himself.”

She frowned, shaking her head. “Can Yale still want to do business with Johnny? After that bloody farrago at the Harvard Inn?”

Wyatt said nothing. He trusted Tex, but he didn’t know if Johnny had made her privy to the existence of his extensive liquor supply.

“Sit down!” she ordered. “You’re making me nervous.”

He sat.

“Goddamnit, I just want to know my girls are all right, coming back here. That’s all.”