Glory Boys (32 page)

Pen swallowed twice. Perhaps he was right. If so, he’d seen something that she’d managed to keep hidden from herself.

‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘Things aren’t … he’s not making life difficult for you, is he? I guess he’s not much used to working alongside women.’

‘I don’t think he’s used to working with anyone very much. Sometimes he doesn’t really seem to want to include me at all. If it weren’t that I’ve made a commitment to you and to Jim Bosse and all, then I’d think about going home. I really would.’

Hennessey scowled down at his hat, as though he’d suddenly become fiercely critical of every detail of its construction.

‘He’s a good guy. But there you have it. He’s a guy. I don’t figure he’s hung around with girls too much. Maybe he’s shy. Or worse.’

‘You think he’s scared?’

‘I don’t know. But you’ll never know unless you go find out now, will you? And if you don’t – well, heck, it ain’t my place to say – but I wouldn’t want either of you to miss out on something that might be the right thing for you both.’

‘No,’ said Pen. ‘No.’

It wasn’t quite clear what she meant – if anything – by her answer. She looked a little dazed, unfocused. Hennessey suddenly gripped his hat hard and jammed it on his head.

‘Well, then. It’s been good seeing you. You take care now.’

Crawling to the edge of the cotton bale mound, he let himself slide to the ground. He took one sharp look outside, then left, walking fast.

65

The Shakeston Hotel was a two-storey wooden affair that had probably looked swell when the Montana hills still swarmed with Indians, but was looking old and beat up now that history had moved on. All the same, the place did its best and its menu, based only on food that was grown, shot or hooked within thirty miles, was excellent.

‘Try the duck,’ said Willard’s father. ‘You won’t get better.’

‘Or the trout,’ said Powell. ‘I’ve got an outstanding Muscadet here. Give yourself an excuse.’

Willard compromised and ordered trout to start with, duck to follow. The other two did likewise. Both courses were excellent, and the wines, provided by Powell, were simply exceptional. Willard’s stress, cold and fatigue began to melt away.

‘Did I tell you?’ said Junius Thornton. ‘I just got a call from Ben Krakus, the pilot who normally does the Ruxion run. He said the way you handled that plane of yours over some bunch of trees at the end of the runway was some of the best flying he’d ever seen.’

Willard shrugged modestly, as though he’d be happy to fly like that every day of his life. He emptied his glass and closed his eyes.

The idea was so simple. So beautiful and so simple.

Ever since the introduction of Prohibition, America had begun to seethe with illegal alcohol-related activity. Rumrunners brought in booze from the Caribbean. The Mexican border was an open invitation. Canada, astonished at her big sister’s fit of madness, was only too happy to stuff her pockets with as much money as she could. And the foreign imports weren’t the half of it. There was home-brewed moonshine, industrially-brewed moonshine, wine cooked up out of Californian raisin-cakes, whiskey stocks spirited out of the now-silent distilleries. And there were the loopholes: the sacramental wine, the medicinal alcohol, the half-degree proof ‘near-beer’ which was easy enough to convert into the real thing with a little time, sugar and yeast.

But any new industry needs organisation. The mobsters and hoodlums who operated the rackets at street level were hardly competent to manage a vast and complex business, organised on a continental scale.

‘Think about it,’ said Powell. ‘Early 1920, Prohibition had just come in but already booze was coming back too. In small amounts to start with, of course, but more all the time. Your father and I saw the opportunity. Your father brought his experience, his contacts, his flair for industrial organisation. Meantime, I was running Powell Finance on Wall Street – a nice little business then, but nothing compared with what it is today. We put our heads and our money together. We came up with what we’ve got now. Powell Lambert, the most profitable bank on Wall Street.’

‘Why Lambert?’ asked Willard. ‘Why not Powell Thornton?’

Junius Thornton shrugged. ‘We didn’t want the attention.
I
didn’t want the attention. I chose Lambert after a racehorse I owned.’

The Firm was an idea of genius. Its agents bought alcohol in Bimini and Havana, Tijuana and Ontario. Its men arranged transportation. Not just the trains, trucks, boats and airplanes, but the payments. The police. The border guards. The federal enforcement agents. Its deliveries were as precisely timed as they were in any other modern industrial organisation. The Firm was happy to smuggle virtually anything, but its core business, its main money-spinner by a mile was booze, just booze.

‘Quality and reliability,’ said Powell. ‘We don’t water our stuff down. We don’t substitute cheap for expensive. We don’t play games with the labels. And we get our goods there. We have a better than ninety-eight per cent delivery record. Quality and reliability.’

‘And when the goods arrive, do you sell them on yourselves?’

‘You mean do we operate speakeasies? The answer is no we do not. The operation of speakeasies –’ Powell spoke with distaste ‘– is in the hands of mobsters. Racketeers and mobsters. The speakeasies are kept open through payments to cops on the one hand and through gangland killings on the other. It is not a business segment which attracts our interest.’

Willard’s father raised a finger. ‘Now, Ted, that’s not quite fair. There is one speakeasy we’re happy to operate.’

‘That isn’t a speakeasy.’

Junius Thornton nodded. ‘True.’ His gaze turned to his son. ‘It’s the best club in America. We operate the best served, the best stocked, and the most exclusive club in America.’

Willard waited to be told more, but neither of the older men chose to add anything further. Willard changed the subject to something that had been bothering him.

‘How about the distilleries? All those things hidden away in tanneries and paint factories? Are they yours, or do you just arrange the transport?’

‘Some of them are ours. Some of them belong to friends,’ said Powell. ‘As you know, there are legitimate businesses in every location. Sometimes we own the legitimate business too, mostly not. We rent space, we keep it private. Not many people even know we’re there. Not even the people that work all around.’

‘And insurance?’ Willard asked. ‘On some of the deals we financed, the Firm insured its shipments. What does that mean? Why would a gangster want to insure something? And is it possible that our insurance folk are based on the part of the twentieth floor that’s closed off?’

Powell exchanged glances with Willard’s father. Willard intercepted the glance. There was amusement in the look, but also something he didn’t understand. Junius Thornton cleared his throat.

‘Perhaps insurance isn’t quite an accurate term, Willard.’

‘Oh?’

‘Our problem isn’t federal enforcement. In this fine country of ours, our lawmakers decided to pass a law without allocating any real funds to enforcement. Enforcement officers are paid so little, it’s pretty much of an invitation to graft; an invitation that not many officers refuse. As a consequence, the feds get less than five per cent of all liquor moved in America, and in our case the percentage is far, far less than that.’

‘So?’

‘It’s hijackers. Bandits. Whatever you want to call them. They don’t want to operate in a proper professional way. They’d sooner steal our products instead of purchasing the goods themselves. So one of the services we offer is insurance. Not paper insurance, where you can get your money back. What we offer is real, effective, get-your-goods-there insurance.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

Junius Thornton sank back in his seat and Ted Powell took up the conversation. ‘Your father sells armaments, Willard. The best in the world. And we’ve hired men. Former soldiers. Good men. American men. No Italian trash. No Jews. No Irish. No Negroes. No Catholics. Just good, disciplined American men. Very well armed. Very well trained. Insurance that counts.’

Junius Thornton nodded slowly. ‘We don’t lose much to hijack either.’

‘Gosh!’

Willard was shocked, despite himself. He lived in a world where most of the people he knew were in favour of Prohibition, at the same time as they broke the rules. It was hypocrisy, of course, but it was hypocrisy that Willard could live with. But his father and Powell were talking about something in a league of its own. A private army. Soldiers armed and trained to kill. Willard was stunned by the sheer scale of the Firm’s lawbreaking.

‘If people didn’t try to steal our goods, we wouldn’t need to protect them,’ said Powell. ‘And we’re building a reputation. It’s not often now that hijackers try to bust in on our consignments. They try it once, they’re not likely to try a second time.’

‘The twentieth floor,’ said Willard. ‘The part that’s closed off. You told me it was lift machinery. I knew it wasn’t.’

Powell nodded. ‘Our insurance arm is headquartered there. It likes its secrecy.’

‘The men that followed me? They were insurance agents?’

‘Yes. We needed to keep an eye on you, Willard. We didn’t want you doing anything stupid, and if you got into trouble, we wanted someone there to go and fish you out.’

‘The way you fished out Arthur Martin?’

‘Arthur Martin was on his way to an appointment with a federal enforcement officer when we intercepted him. We only learned about it at the last possible moment. We had little choice in the way we handled that matter. Our instinct is to avoid violence.’

‘Right. Little Charlie Hughes just wound up with a bootlegging felony charge. What’s a year in jail to a guy like him?’

‘Mr Hughes was a friend of Martin’s. Not as brave and not as stupid. But all the same, he began saying things he shouldn’t have said to people he shouldn’t have said them to. Our men spoke to him, came to an arrangement. He won’t be a problem.’

Willard’s brain was working all the time these days, click-click-click, making connections, figuring things out. ‘You threatened him, didn’t you? Not just him. His sisters. You told him if he blabbed to anyone, it would be his sisters who ended up wrapped around a tree.’

Powell shrugged. ‘I’m not aware of the details.’

Willard shook his head with amazement. ‘You know, I thought Leo McVeigh was one of the guys I had to be careful of. I thought he was threatening me. He wasn’t. He was trying to warn me. It was Larry Ronson who –’

‘Larry Ronson is a very good man,’ said Powell. ‘He kept an eye on you for us. He was very helpful. McVeigh is an idiot, but at least he has the sense not to speak to anyone about his idiocy. He understands what the consequences would be. We allow him to work only on legitimate transactions. He is a good worker, I understand.’

Willard rubbed his face with his hands. That day, he had busted a smuggling operation in a shithole called Ruxion, he had almost killed himself hauling an over-loaded aircraft into the sky, and now he was being let into the most valuable secret in America. He felt a wave of tiredness so strong, he was almost ready to fall asleep at table.

‘We won’t keep you long, son,’ said his father with rare gentleness. ‘But first, if I may, a question.’

‘Yes?’

‘When you leaned down to the car, you said “Good evening, Father”. It was too dark for you to see me. Nobody told you about my involvement. How did you know?’

‘Oh, lots of things.’

‘How?’

‘Powell said
we
when he should have said
I.
But that wasn’t it. It was
Heaven’s Beloved.
The more I learned about Powell, the more I knew he would never have financed a deal like that. The deal wasn’t … the movie wasn’t… Hell, it was a turkey. Everyone knew it except me. It was you who suggested I approach Powell. It was you who wanted me to quit the movies and get involved in something serious. It had to be you in that car. Had to be.’

Junius Thornton smiled. He said nothing, but there was pleasure and satisfaction in his face.

‘Which brings me to my question for you, Father.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why didn’t you just tell me? Instead of scaring me halfway to hell, you could have just come and said, “We have a business proposition for you”. What would have been so hard about that?’

‘You’d have said yes.’

‘So? Isn’t that what you wanted?’

‘Yes. Yes and no. Mostly no.’ Junius Thornton leaned across the table. ‘Occasionally, son, you’ve had things a little easy. Maybe my fault, or maybe just the way the world is nowadays. You flunked Princeton. OK, maybe you could have turned things around, but it wasn’t going the way it should have done. Then you did well in the war, certainly. But afterwards, you strolled into a job in the movies and flunked it. You tried making a movie of your own. That flopped. You’ve never known hard work, not what I’d call hard work, anyway.’

Powell nodded. ‘Don’t blame me, Will. I’d have done things the regular way. Your father said we needed to push you. He wanted to see how you’d react. Would you fight? Would you work hard? Would you figure things out? Would you persist?’

‘And that’s why I ended up with the lousiest files? The one with the biggest workload?’

‘But that’s not the point now, son,’ interrupted Junius Thornton. ‘The point is that you succeeded. You did as well as I’d hoped. Better. We were proud of you. Son,
I
was proud of you. I hope that one day, you will lead Powell Lambert to even greater things.’

The old man’s eyes misted. Willard felt an answering lump in his own throat, a glow of pride.

Powell stayed quiet for a moment, letting father and son regain their composure. Then, in a soft voice, he added, ‘And one other thing. This business of ours can get a little rough. Every now and then, we find we’ve hired a precious little altar-boy like Arthur Martin. That doesn’t help us. We need to keep the Firm secure. We didn’t know how you’d feel about the rough stuff and we decided it was better you knew about it first, so you could make your decision in full knowledge of the facts.’