Black Hats (26 page)

Wyatt sat up straighter. He engaged her eyes. He said, “I am doing right by him. And he’s no boy.”

“He’s my boy!”

“He’s your son. I think of him as a ‘boy’ sometimes myself, but he’s a man, well in his third decade. When I was his age—”

“You were a murdering son of a bitch!”

“…No argument.”

“You took my money!”

“I’m prepared to give it back. I can do that with interest, Kate.”

Her upper lip curled in contempt. “You think that will satisfy me? Return on my dollar?”

He put a hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it off furiously. “Kate, Bat made your argument. I heard him. He made it well. And the ‘boy’ would have none of it.”

She crossed her arms over her bosom. “I thought he’d listen to you.”

“And he has. I’m helping him make a success of this place. And I am encouraging him…and when the time is right I will encourage him more…to walk away from it.”

She snorted a laugh. “You have a funny way of showing it. There was no gambling here before you! You took advantage of the situation to—”

“I did. When I saw the situation, I decided to help Johnny make the best of it. I believe the day will come, perhaps a year from now, when he and that young girl of his will—”

“That little tramp!” Her eyes and nostrils flared and the upper lip curled back again. “I saw her go upstairs to him! She’s
sleeping
with him! Is she living with him? In
sin
?”

Wyatt just stared at her.

Then he began to laugh.

She slapped him and it rang like a gunshot and stung like hell.

He grabbed her arms, firmly, not to throttle her, just to get her damned attention, and prevent further slapping.

“Kate, you were a whore when I met you. Christ, my brother James was your pimp! Save your self-righteousness for somebody who hasn’t bedded you for money.”

Her chin trembled and she swallowed and said, “Can’t a…can’t a mother…a mother want
more
for her son? Want better?”

He let go of her arms and took her into his. She began to weep, not a retching cry, merely a soft sobbing. He patted her back and whispered into her ear, “Sure a mother can want more.

And should.”

Then he held her away from him enough to look into her moist eyes.

“Kate, it’s too early for him.”

She was trembling all over now, her eyes confused. “…early?”

“I been where he is.”

“Wyatt, I…I don’t understand.”

“Kate…it’s…it’s something I’d rather not put words to.”

Her chin tightened and so did her lips. “You owe me, Wyatt.
Tell
me. Talk about it, whatever it is, goddamn you.”

He took a breath. Let go of her. Turned away and said, “He lost a wife and child.”

“I know. Who do you think told you? I know he did.”

Now he looked at her. Hard. “So did I, a long time ago.”

She said nothing, but her face changed. Softened, losing years.

“It was a journey back that took doing. And only I could figure it out. Do you understand, Kate? I think he and that sweet kid from the chorus, someday they’ll have a normal life. A life more normal than you and I ever had. But Johnny needs to make that journey himself, in his own way. I mean to help him. But I can’t take the trip for him. And neither can you. Not even his mother. Not even his father, were he here.”

“Oh, Wyatt,” she said, and threw himself into his arms, “Johnny would listen to you! I know he would!”

“No…no.”

She kissed him, hard, a kiss salted with tears, and it was desperate and yearning and not half bad. His pecker was just getting interested when he pushed her away, gently.

“Kate, Kate…I’m a married man, who loves his wife, even if she probably told you enough on the phone to get you worked up and out here like this.”

Now she was embarrassed, head hanging, and muttering apologies as she got to her feet and padded out, closing the door behind her.

Wyatt got back in bed; he could use a few more winks. Kate Elder was a fine-looking woman, for sixty; but he’d be goddamned if he’d give in to her charms, not when he’d turned away a younger gal like Tex.

“Sadie,” he said, “the things I do for you.”

Took forever getting back to sleep.

Three minutes, anyway.

Fourteen

THE RAIN HEIGHTENED THE SMELLS OF WASHINGTON Market, fruit and fish and produce sheds and the nearby river adding to a damp, slightly rank bouquet. Buildings dating before the Civil War, with their arched doorways, elaborate cornices and sculpted lintels, offered up their dirty brick and stone surfaces to the storm, but to no avail: even a hammering downpour couldn’t wash away years of grime.

By nine a.m., these streets would be crammed with traffic, even in weather like this, and the retail shops a block over would have no shortage of buyers for their radios and fireworks and garden supplies and sporting goods and who knew what all.

But before dawn, the shops were dark, the streets owned by the trucks of farmers and haulers.

Few of the men in caps and workclothes bothered with slickers as they loaded and unloaded in the shifting, rain-stippled glow of headlights, though their pace seemed even more frantic than usual, as the noise level of squawking fowls and yelling humans and slamming crates combined with the rumble and shriek of freight cars and the mechanical roar and squeal of trucks backing up and lumbering forward, to lend competition to the thunder that God was hurling around like He owned the place.

Through all this, Wyatt guided and coddled the bay, soothing the steed, taking it easy with the reins so that the animal didn’t get spooked by the lightning flashes and celestial whip cracks.

New York’s two most unlikely milkmen were glad to be within the metal cab of the Droste Dairy wagon; still, enough water was making it in that Wyatt covered with newspaper the long-barreled Colt .45 on the bench beside him.

Back behind, Bat and his little revolver were dry as toast, but the thunder had an unsettling way of echoing within the wagon, and the spattering of raindrops made a steady overhead tap dance, not quite deafening but damned distracting.

They made their steady, leisurely way in and around the trucks and the men scurrying in the street, sometimes getting an irritated glance at their splash of hooves, as if people belonged there more than any lousy milk wagon. Just a few blocks down the warehouses took over, with no activity to speak of, though the Washington Market din continued to compete with the thunderstorm.

Soon Bat had hopped out, finally getting well and truly wet as he unlocked the big doors and swung one open, and slipped inside as Wyatt guided the bay into the vast warehouse, the horse’s clips and clops on the cement providing counterpoint to the drumming rain on the roof, which echoed through the empty space in relentless, monotonous rhythm.

Bat closed them in and walked over to the massive false wall, wet footsteps following him, found the rope handle in the indentation in the wood, and swung open half of it. As usual Wyatt positioned the horse with the back of the wagon to the opening, and the two water-dripping men in black caps, white blouses, black trousers and white work gloves began selecting crates.

Wyatt selected one of the two sets of portable metal steps to allow Bat to climb up and take crates off the first row, but from the other side, in the first of six aisles within the formidable collection of crates. Each tier of wooden boxes was a good nine feet tall, so using the steps was a necessity. Even at his six feet plus, Wyatt couldn’t have easily plucked one off the top; and Bat was almost a head shorter.

The procedure—this would represent their third delivery in as many weeks—took longer than Wyatt had expected. The crates of each variety of liquor tended to be stacked together—all of the Scotch, all of the bourbon, and so on—so the two men had to move the wheeled steps around, here and there, working off a shifting shopping list Johnny had provided.

They did not transfer each crate directly to the rear of the wagon; instead, they hauled each clinking crate out into the open area past the aisle, and then would finally load up for delivery.

That neither man was a kid anymore, and that both had their share of sciatica, did not speed the process.

Today was Friday. They were, as Wyatt had suggested, varying their delivery, avoiding a pattern. First had been Monday, then Wednesday.

Business continued to boom at Holliday’s, the week nights steady, the weekends wild. Yale’s people continued their watch, even now with the third week since re-opening almost over.

And Wyatt’s own bankroll, while in no danger of rivaling Arnold Rothstein’s, was growing steadily. His net thus far approached ten thousand dollars.

Even the women were behaving themselves. On his most recent phone call to Sadie, she had agreed to come out at the start of June, if all still was going well. Tex, hearing this, laid off on the flirting, though their friendship continued apace. Johnny and Dix remained a happy little cooing couple. And, best of all, Kate had spent only two days at the club, having come to reluctant terms with her son’s chosen path, even accepting Wyatt’s return of her five hundred plus the expense money and a hundred-buck self-imposed penalty, before heading back to Arizona.

Wyatt had not been privy to Johnny’s conversations with his mother, but Doc’s wife and son were openly affectionate by the time she left. This was in part due to a small conspiracy involving all concerned, to keep Mama from learning of the threat posed by Yale and Capone.

Had Kate known about the incident at Coney Island, and all it entailed and connoted, Doc’s better half would no doubt still be around…and on the warpath.

These thoughts had just trailed through Wyatt’s mind as he set a case of Scotch atop another of gin when a thunderclap shook him…

…only it was no thunderclap, rather the metal doors of the warehouse being flung wide and hard enough for them to slam ringingly against the walls.

Bat was just approaching with a crate of whiskey in his gloved hands as Wyatt, yanking the long-barreled Colt from his waist-band, moved forward only to see and hear one dark sedan sweep in, and then another, new shiny rain-pearled black Fords that screeched to sudden, angular stops.

The bay reared and whinnied, head flung side to side, nostrils flaring, eyes huge and afraid, front hooves pawing, striking the air, as the curly-headed Capone crony in a black rain slicker and rain-dripping black fedora slammed shut the big metal doors and the bald one (though his black fedora concealed that baldness) jumped out of the nearest Ford, on the rider’s side, a tommy gun in hand.

“Take cover,” Wyatt said, and Bat—who had already set the crate on top of others put aside for loading—ducked back into the nearest aisle.

“Over there!” the bald guy said, cradling the tommy gun under his right arm and pointing at Wyatt with his free hand, his thin upper lip peeled back over his teeth in a sick, satisfied smile. The curly-haired hood was on the run, a big automatic in his mitt as he rushed to join his pal, and both drivers were climbing out, a skinny one and a squat one, making it four hoods in black fedoras and matching slickers, and everybody had guns.

So did Wyatt, of course, but he didn’t fire his, not yet—he slipped behind the small pile of set-aside crates, and assessed the situation. Only half of that fake wall exposed them, and the nervous horse was blocking that space, though not for long, Wyatt figured: the severely spooked animal was no longer rearing, but seemed ready to run, despite the lack of an exit, probably heeding its instinct to return to its stable.

The snorting, neighing horse moved headlong toward the curly-headed hood, who got spooked himself and started firing at the oncoming animal. The bay took the shots in the head and neck and instantly went down in a thousand-pound pile, taking the wagon with it in a sickening thump of horseflesh and earrending crash of metal and wood.

This put the dead, fallen animal in the way of the intruders, half-barring the opening onto the storehouse, and in the following few moments of confusion, Wyatt yelled to Bat, “Lay some fire down!”

Bat, in the first aisle, up the portable steps, leaning on the top row of crates, poised like the defender of a fort, began shooting his revolver at the intruders, whose first reaction was to scurry out of the way, but for the driver of the second Ford, the skinny sharp-nosed character who caught one in the knee and, as he was doing the resultant awkward dance, took another in the head, leaving a bloody mist behind as he stopped dancing and fell.

A hood yelled “Bastards,” just another sound among the many, the rain continuing its own artillery onslaught, thunder adding occasional cannon fire.

At the same time, Wyatt had run from behind the pile of crates to that fake half-wall, that big open door giving their adversaries a view of them and the liquor repository, and as Bat’s bullets flew overhead, the sharp cracks standing out like hail in the rainstorm, Wyatt—slipping a little in the horse’s blood but maintaining his footing—put his back against the wooden door and reached one hand around and grasped its handle, that inset loop of rope, and with his other hand gripped the door’s edge and pulled it shut, fingers of his other hand keeping hold of the rope, so that it squeezed through the space between the shut doors; then, as Bat’s gunfire ceased, Wyatt hooked the rope over a handle on the inside of the other door.

And ran back to his pile of crates.

The two men, temporarily at least, were shut inside—the dead animal, the fallen wagon, one dead hoodlum, and three live (heavily armed) ones on the other side of the massive wooden doors.

The hoods were yelling at each other in the outer warehouse, unintelligible echoing, as Wyatt joined Bat in the aisle and said, “Is there a way out?”

Bat, still at the top of the metal steps, revolver in hand, quickly scanned the possibilities.

“Those windows, maybe?”

A high row of painted-out black windows were on the rear wall.

“Even with these steps,” Wyatt said, “we can’t get up there—and anyway, it’s a story-and-a-half drop.”

From his perch, Bat surveyed the walls. “No door,” he said, though they’d already known that.