Comfort to the Enemy (2010) (7 page)

Next week: The gangster Teddy Ritz comes t
o t
own.

Chapter
Seven

Joe Tanzi, Fugitive

South of Idabel they came to the crossroads Carl was looking for, a sheriff's car waiting by a patch o
f d
ogwoods. It was late in the day but still light for another hour or so.

Two McCurtain County deputies came to Carl's side of the car and he got out to meet them and show his star. Gary Marion watched, still in the car, his hands hanging on the steering wheel. He noticed that the deputies seemed to defer to Carl, waiting for him to speak, ask them questions. One of the deputies said the man identified as Joe Tanzi hadn't left his property, down that way toward the river. He asked if Carl wanted them along for backup.

Carl said he didn't want to alarm the man, put him on his guard, anymore than he had to; he thought he and Gary Carl turning to glance at him in the car--should be able to handle this one. He said, You check the name on the deed?

Joseph Shikoba, the deputy said. According to his story, related to the Choctaw sold him the farm.

But this convict on parole, Carl said, says he's Joe Tanzi. Why you suppose the con wants to send Joe back to prison? If we find out it is Joe Tanzi?

The deputy said, It don't sound like they were friends inside, does it?

How big a boy is Joseph?

Big. Has a good hundred pounds o
n y
ou.

Gary Marion listened and wasn't going to say another word to Carl getting in the car, Carl telling him to go left down the road, it was only a couple miles now. But Gary couldn't keep quiet.

You don't believe this guy is Joe Tanzi? I'll talk to him and find out who he is, Carl said. to my satisfaction.

The con swore he's Joe Tanzi. He knew him five years inside the Walls.

Carl said, Why does my wanting to give this man some slack upset you?

*

Was he kidding?

Because Gary had read the book about the hot kid of the marshals service, joined up and couldn't wait to shake hands with Carlos Huntington Webster, who packed a Colt .38 on a .45 frame, the front sight filed off. Only this Carl Webster, back from the war in the Pacific, wasn't anything like the Carl Webster in the book.

Gary said, You shot and killed one armed offender after another, starting with the cow thief you blew out of his saddle when you were fifteen years old. You joined the marshals and went after Emmett Long the deadliest bank robber of the Twenties, faced him in a farmhouse near Checotah, warned him if you pulled you'd shoot to kill, and you did. There was the time you faced David Lee Swick coming out of the bank in Turley, firing at you while holding a woman in front of him. You pulled and shot what you saw of him from twenty feet.

Carl said, You know the woman fainted? For a minute I was afraid I'd shot her. He looked at the gravel road and said, Pull up here for a minute.

Gary eased to a stop, not yet finished with what he was saying. According to your book you shot Peyton Bragg at four-hundred yards with a Winchester. At night, Peyton running from your posse.

Carl said, You remember reading about the woman Peyton was seeing, Venicia Munson?

Gary didn't answer, he had another on
e t
o tell.

'You shot the four guys who drove their car into the roadhouse that time, all of them coming out armed and standing fairly close. One of 'em Nester Lott, the ex-federal agent gone bad, packed two .45s cinched to his legs. Nestor pulled on you and you shot him and turned and shot the other three. Gary paused.

Carl said, This friend of Peyton's, Venicia Munson, was an old-maid school teacher who drank Peyton's wildcat whiskey and didn't care who knew it. We're sitting in her kitchen waiting for Peyton to show, she told me she was scared to death. I said, 'Well, that'll teach you to get mixed up with a bank robber.' She said, 'You're the one scares me, not Peyton. I can tell you'd rather shoot him than bring him in.' She said it was why I became a marshal, to get to carry a gun and shoot people.

For a few moments there it was quiet in the car, Gary frowning, anxious to say something, Carl waiting for him to think of the words, Gary looking out the window now as he said, "You listen to a woman doesn't know what she's talking about?

Except while I'm sitting there with her," Carl said, "I'm thinking I had a chance of adding Peyton Bragg to my list. At that time he'd be number four."

"I can understand that," Gary said, nodding his head.

"When I was younger," Carl said, "I'd see movies like 'Ace of Aces' and bite my fingernails watching Richard Dix flying a Spad or a Camel and shooting down Germans. You knew they were evil by the strange kind of goggles they wore and how they always looked arrogant. Richard Dix would get on the tail of a three-winged Fokker, give it a burst and salute the Kraut spiraling down trailing smoke. They'd add another German cross to his plane, under the cockpit. At one time, when I first became a marshal, I thought, They go up looking for enemy planes to shoot down and we go out to take wanted felons dead or alive."

Gary was nodding again.

"But their dogfights and our gunfights," Carl said, "aren't near the same. Theirs are aerial shows, graceful, their planes looping around in the clouds, killing from a distance, spinning down in slow circles with that trail of smoke. Ours, we get to see the ones we kill, dead eyes staring at us, blood staining the pavement. People shot to death aren't pretty, are they?" Carl took his time to say, "How many felons have you seen killed by law officers?"

"Well, not any, Gary said, just yet. But I've seen people killed in car wrecks and they're an awful sight."

They drove up to the farm house worn bare and rickety by sun and Oklahoma dust, a new washing machine on the porch. Now a ma
n c ame out to stand with his hand resting on the washer. He was a size, more than six feet to see him there. Still in the car Carl said, "You see the old woman?" Gary, staring at the house, shook his head. Carl said, Look at the window. Those are the double ought holes of a shotgun parting the curtains. And I'm gonna guess there's a gun in that washing machine. That's how much they want to stay here and grow cotton. We get out, don't say a word. You got that?"

Gary mumbled something.

"Have you got that?"

"I said yeah.

They came out now to stand on each side of the car's headlights. Carl identified himself and Gary to the man on the porch, who hadn't said a word or taken his hand from the washing machine.

"You're Joseph Shikoba?"

The man nodded and said, "What do you want?"

"You bought this property--"

"From a man related to one of my uncles."

"You're Choctaw."

"Part of me."

"Where you from?"

"Here. All my life."

"You planted yet?"

The man shifted from one foot to the other. "Now is too late. Next year we gonn
a h
ave cotton and the year after that, every year we gonna grow cotton."

"I'll tell the sheriff," Carl said" "you're not the man we're looking for. I'm sorry we bothered you."

In the car again, turned around heading north, Gary said, I don't get it. We could have him in the back seat, cuffed.

"You'd have to kill his sister."

All right, what do you tell McMahon? We couldn't find him.

"He'll believe you?"

"Bob will call the sheriff and the sheriff will threaten to jail the snitch for making a false accusation."

"All right, let me ask you something," Gary looking from the road to Carl. You said you made up your mind to add Peyton to your list. You gave him a number, he'd be number four at that time. He's close to getting away, pretty far down the road when you shot him."

"What's the question?"

"Why didn't you let him go? You're letting Joe Tanzi off the hook when he ought to be in prison. Why didn't you give Peyton a break, let him get away?"

"Joe Tanzi was a criminal for a few days and did five years. Peyton Bragg killed four people the day he robbed the bank in Sallisaw with a Thompson sub-machine gun. Two of them were law officers. You don't allow a man like Peyton Bragg to go around with a Thompson sub-machine gun. That's th e d ifference. You have to know," Carl said, "when it's all right to use your gun."

All this to get the hard-headed bullrider to quit thinking every offender was a criminal you ought to shoot ... and every German POW a Kraut you could beat up if you wanted. And if you could.

Carl said, "We'll stop at the Deep Fork camp on the way. I want to introduce you to Jurgen Schrenk.

I've met him.

No you haven't.

*

In the bedroom of the Mayo suite, Carl and Louly were sitting up in bed talking, drinks on the night tables, an ashtray between them on the sheet that covered Carl to his waist while Louly was trying to keep it under her arms. Carl would use his foot to kick the sheet loose and Louly would have gto hang on to it; she did a couple of times and after that let it go. Carl said, "Why're you acting like you're so modest?" Louly said because she was, she was modest. Carl said, "How can you be modest and work at Teddy's? Everywhere you turn you're looking at bare bazooms." Louly said she never showed hers, even though they were way better than most everyone else's. Or unsnapped her teddy.

Carl said, "You called yourself Kitty so it wouldn't be you working there, but you got to see all the monkey business going on. H
e l eaned over and she turned to kiss him. They loved to kiss each other, never in a rush. Their faces close he said, "You're my little monkey." the two grinning at each other.

She told him the war bond rally this afternoon went okay, on the steps of the federal courthouse. They had the Andrew Sisters doing 'Any Bonds Today' piped over the PA system. "And then Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge did 'Let Me Off Uptown' and 'Thanks for the Boogie Ride' with an entire 17 piece band behind them. Anita brought me up to the mike with her and we sang that part, 'I like riding in jalopies away from motorcycle coppies, I like riding just like you do aboard the Chattanooga choo-choo. So let me thanks you gates, thank you for the boogie ride it really was great.'"

Carl said, "In your uniform.

Of course.

You snapped your fingers?"

"I had the moves," Louly said, "don't worry.

Carl had to grin. He sure loved this marine.

She asked earlier if he wanted to go to the show, see "Lady in the Dark" with Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland, Louly reading from the ad in the paper, "The thrilling story of a woman' s secret loves based on the internationally famed stage success." Carl said, "What's it about?" Louly said the revealing of a woman' s secret loves. He stared at her now.

"Yeah ...? ` She wasn't that crazy about seein
g i
t. They'd skip the show and have something to eat.

When he told her how he handled the Joe Tanzi business, Louly said, "The new guy didn't understand what you were doing? I don't understand it either, how you can decide to let the guy go. What're you, a parole board?"

"They got mad 'cause they couldn't find the money and gave Joe twenty-five years.

"'Cause he hid it."

"You think he should do another twenty?"

"What I think--what's that got to do with it? I don't have a say in it and you don't either."

"But I said something, didn't I, whether I had a say or not. I said this isn't the guy we're looking for. I let him grow his cotton. You know what I wanted to ask him? What happened to his wife? The one left him when he robbed the bank. But I couldn't think of how to put it."

The first thing they talked about in the hotel suite while they were taking off their clothes--then held up on that conversation for a while, until they had their highballs and cigarettes--was Carl introducing Gary to Jurgen.

Carl said Gary eyed the Kraut officer in his short pants sitting across his cot with his back against the wall, Jurgen showing no interest in Gary until Carl introduced him as a former rodeo bullrider from Kosse, Texas, no t f ar from Waco. And Jurgen said, Kosse? Do you know Bob Wills? He's from there. Gary said no, but he's heard him enough on the radio.

Gary said Bob was great but he preferred the down home sound of his favorite, Roy Acuff. It got Jurgen sitting up, Jurgen saying Roy Acuff, it was Acuff who tuned his ear to hillbilly music. He'd started listening when he lived in Detroit. Saturday nights he'd tune in the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts.

Carl said once they got into the music, and started talking about, Uncle Dave Macon, The Carter Family, Pee Wee King, the war between Gary and Jurgen was over. Jurgen hadn't yet heard of Eddie Arnold, a new singer, so Gary said he'd bring over some records. "That's how it went," Carl said. "Toward the end Jurgen was asking Gary, 'What's this about riding bulls?'"

*

"Guess who I saw in the lobby, when I got back from selling war bonds.

They were in the bathroom now getting ready to go out, Louly plucking her eyebrows, Carl patting Aqua Velva on his face.

"Teddy Ritz. I forgot to tell you. He was talking to a couple of gangsters.

"Why do you think they're gangsters?" "They look like gangsters, and they weree with Teddy."

"You talk to him?"

"He looked over, but he wouldn't of recognized me in my uniform.

I'm surprised you didn't go up to him.

"If he doesn't remember me, what's the point? But listen, Teddy wasn't checking in, the two hoods were checking out. With big suitcases they wouldn't let the bellboys get their hands on. But now I didn't see Teddy. The two guys were leaving the hotel.

Carl said, You followed them.

To see if Teddy was outside. He was standing by a Packard, the high-priced one. The two guys put their grips in the trunk ... The car was delivered by a hotel valet, he's standing there waiting for a tip. Teddy and the two guys got in, one of them driving, and took off. The valet still waiting for the tip they didn't give him. I went over and asked him, 'You know where they're going?'

No beating around the bush, Carl said. The valet said Okmulgee. I gave him a quarter.