Hot Springs (20 page)

It was over in seconds.

“Y’all go home now,” Earl said to the valets. “This place is closed. You find other jobs tomorrow, hear?”

Earl walked in, his badge pinned to his lapel, and seconds later D. A. pulled up in a car.

It had gone exacdy as planned: the overwhelming show of force, the speed of deployment, the cleverness of the raiders as they separated gamblers from workers, the pure professionalism of it.

“Clear upstairs,” came the call.

“Clear in the kitchen,” came another call.

“Now ladies and gendemen,” said D. A., “this here’s a raid on an illegal gambling facility by the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. You will be checked and released if there are no outstanding warrants on you. You may keep any winnings you have on your person. We’ll have you out of here in no time, if you cooperate with us. And my advice is: if you like to gamble, try Havana, Cuba, because that’s where you’re going to have to go.”

Mr. Swenson, the manager of the place, was brought between two raiders, cursing and spitting. A rotund man, with slicked-back hair and a summer tuxedo, he wore a red carnation in his lapel. Earl plucked it out and inserted it into his mouth, shutting him up.

“When we want to talk to you” he said, “we will tell you. Otherwise you suck on that flower like a lollipop and watch us tear this joint up so you can tell Owney Maddox he’s finished in this town.”

Then they heard the machine gun fire.

“There they go,” said Carlo.

But from the rear, behind the trees thirty yards out, the two young officers saw nothing. They heard glass breaking, doors being shattered and other signals of men moving aggressively against an objective. It was over very quickly.

“That’s it?” said Frenchy.

“I guess,” said Carlo.

“Well, let’s get in there.”

But Carlo wasn’t sure. He realized now he had no clear post-raid instructions.

“I think we ought to hang here till we’re released.”

“Come on, it’s over. You can tell it’s over. I don’t want to miss the party.”

“There’s going to be plenty of party. Let’s just sit here a bit longer.”

“Shit, sit here in the dark, while everybody else is having a great time? Come on, this is stupid. Who died and left you in charge? That’s where we’re needed, not sitting out here like a couple of Boy Scouts.”

Carlo let it simmer. Rather than argue with his partner, he just hunkered yet more solidly against the weight of the tree, saying nothing, moving not a muscle or a twitch, signifying the conversation was over.

“Look,” said Frenchy, “we were put out here to cover this back entrance. Nobody’s coming out this back entrance. So we’re just wasting our time.”

Finally, it seemed he was right. There was no more bustle from the kitchen and no evidence of movement or escape from the door.

“All right,” Carlo finally said, “let’s go.”

They got up.

“Put that safety on,” said Carlo. “I don’t want you roaming around with a live gun.”

“Safety’s already on,” said Frenchy, though of course it wasn’t, nor did he have any intention of putting it on, not till the party was over.

The two young men walked to the kitchen door, feeling the bulk of the would-be plantation house loom over them. Carlo bent, unlocked the padlock, coiled the chain, and opened the door, stepping in.

Frenchy followed him and—

Whoa, there.

He caught a peripheral movement from his left, spun, and saw a second figure leap silently from the window, collect himself, join his partner and start to head off.

Frenchy dashed at them, intercepting them halfway to the trees.

“Hold it!” he screamed. “Hands up!”

He braced them from thirty feet with the Thompson, his finger dangerously caressing its trigger, which strained ever so gently against the pad of his fingertip.

But neither man seemed particularly challenged by the heavy gun aimed at him.

“Hey, hey, watch it, kid, them things is dangerous.”

The other laughed.

“He’s more gun than man, I’d say.” They separated slightly.

“Don’t move!” barked Frenchy.

“We’re not moving? Are we moving? I don’t see us moving. Do you see us moving?”

“I’m not moving,” said the other. “If a lawman tells me not to move, I’m not moving, no sir.”

“Hands! Show me hands!”

But neither man raised his hands.

They were two tough-looking customers in suits with hats drawn down across their eyes, mid-to late thirties, both handsome in a rough way. They were utterly calm. The one on the right was even smiling a little bit. The signals they were putting out utterly confounded him.

“Look, kid, why don’t you put that gun down and go inside before somebody gets hurt,” said one. “You don’t want to do nothing stupid now, do you? Something that you’d regret your whole life? I mean hell, this is just a penny-ante gambling bust that ain’t supposed to happen and it’s all going to be straightened out in—”

Frenchy fired. The gun shuddered, heaved, flashed, spit smoke and flung a line of empties off to the right, pounding against his shoulder. Three-round burst? No siree bob. He hosed them, blowing them backward like tenpins split by a bowler’s strike, and they tumbled to the earth in a tangle of floating dust and gun smoke.

“I don’t do stupid things, asshole,” he said.

Then he fired another burst, to make sure they stayed down.

Carlo, halfway through the kitchen, got there first. He found Frenchy standing thirty-odd feet from the bodies, screaming hysterically.

“Asshole! Assholes! You fucking pricks!

A tendril of smoke curled out of the compensator of the tommy and a litter of brass shells lay at his feet. The stench of gun smoke filled the air.

“What happened?”

“Fuckin’ guys made a move. I got ‘em. Goddamn, did I get ‘em. Got ‘em both, goddammit!”

“You okay?”

Clearly he wasn’t. His eyes were as wide as lamps and his face was drawn into a mask of near-hysteria. He sucked at the air mightily. He seemed to stagger, then dropped to one knee.

“What the hell happened?” yelled Earl, arriving in a second.

Frenchy was silent.

“He nabbed these two guys making a getaway. He braced them, they drew and he dropped them. Looks like he clipped them both.”

Earl walked over to the bodies as D. A. arrived. Two other raiders showed up, and then Becker, alone.

“What the hell is going on, for God’s sake? I have two Little Rock photographers and two reporters out front, and they want to know what the hell happened.”

“The officer dropped two runaways,” said D. A. “They drew on him? Isn’t that right, son?”

But Frenchy was silent.

Earl kneeled, put a hand out to each throat to feel for a pulse, but purely as an obligation. Each pulse was still. The two men lay on their backs. Frenchy had shot very well. Dust and smoke still floated in the air, and the blood continued to ooze from a network of wounds, absorbed by the material of the suits, so that each man was queerly damp, a sponge for excess blood. One’s eyes were open blankly. The other’s face was in repose. A hat was trapped under one head but the other hat lay a few feet away. The wounds were mostly in the torso and gut; both faces were unmarked.

“They drew on you, right?” asked D. A.

Frenchy was silent.

Earl heard the question and did the next bit of very dirty work. He pulled the sodden suit coats away from the bodies and checked for weapons. No shoulder holsters, no hip holsters, no guns jammed in belts, no guns in pockets, no guns in ankle holsters, no guns in suit pockets.

Earl rolled one over slightly, and gingerly withdrew a wallet. It contained what looked to be about $2,000 in cash and a driver’s license in the name of William P. Allgood, from Tulsa, Oklahoma. A business card identified Mr. Allgood as an oil equipment leasing agent.

“Shit,” said Earl, turning to the next body. That was a Phillip Hensler, also of Hdsa, a salesman for Phillips Oil.

He walked back.

“They wasn’t armed,” he said.

“Shit,” said D. A.

“Oh, Christ,” said Becker. “He killed two unarmed men? Jesus Christ, and I’ve got reporters here? Oh, Jesus Christ, you said they were trained, this wouldn’t happen! Oh, Christ!”

“It’s worse. One’s a goddamn oil salesman, one leases drilling equipment. Both from Tulsa.”

“Oh, shit,” said D. A.

By this time, the Hot Springs police had arrived, and out in the lot, the gumballs flashed red in the night. A heavyset detective came around the corner with two uniforms.

“Mr. Becker? What the hell is going on?”

“One of my investigators shot two fleeing men,” said Becker. “Naturally, we’ll want a full investigation.”

“Shit,” said the cop.

“Y’all get on out of here until we’re done,” said Earl.

“Hey, buddy, I’m Captain Gilmartin and I—”

“I don’t give a fuck who you are,” said Earl, ramming his chest square against the fat man’s gut, “I got six tommy guns that say you get the fuck off my operation till I let you on it, and if you don’t like that, then there’s some woods over there and whyn’t you and I go discuss this a little further?” He fixed his mankiller’s glare against the cop and watched the man melt and fall back.

“Take it easy, Earl,” said D. A. “The police can control the crowd and look at the bodies when we’re gone.”

Earl nodded.

But someone else came up to the mute Becker, one of his assistants.

“Fred, the press guys are really getting difficult. I can’t hardly contain ‘em. They want to come back here and see what we bagged.”

“Shit,” said Becker. Then he turned to D. A.

“So you tell me what to do. You promised me this wouldn’t happen. Now we got a situation where we’ve killed two innocent men. Unarmed men.”

“Well, we don’t know nothing about ‘em yet,” D. A. said.

Earl was so disgusted with Becker’s panic that he turned and walked away, over to where Frenchy knelt in the grass with Henderson more or less holding him. He knelt too.

“You saw them make a move?” he asked.

“He ain’t talked yet,” said Henderson.

“Short. Short! Look at me! Snap out of it, goddammit. You saw them make a move?”

“I swear to Christ they did,” Frenchy said, swallowing.

“They ain’t armed.”

“I know they were going to try something. I saw his hand move.”

“Why would his hand move? It had nothing to move toward.”

“I— I—”

“Did you panic, Short? Did you just squeeze down on ‘em because you was scared?”

“No sir. They made a move.”

“Son, I want to help you. Ain’t nobody here going to do it. That Becker, he’ll throw you to the wolves if it makes him the youngest governor in the state of Arkansas.”

“I— I know they moved. They were trying something.”

“Is there any evidence? Did they say anything? I mean, give us something to work with. Why did you fire?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you see anything, Henderson?” Carlo swallowed. He decided not to mention Frenchy’s cursing the dead bodies, his state of lost anger.

“He was just standing there with the smoking gun. They were dead. That’s all.” “Shit,” said Earl.

But someone was standing over him. Peanut, the biggest man in the unit, a former detective from Adanta, loomed over them. “Whaddaya want, Peanut?”

“Well sir,” said Peanut, “I may be wrong, but I don’t think I am.” “What?”

“Them boys. The boys Short bushwhacked.” “Yeah?”

“I looked ‘em over real careful.” “They’re a couple of salesmen from Tulsa.” “No sir. B’lieve one’s Tommy Malloy, out of Kansas City, and the other’s Walter Budowsky, called Wally Bud. Bank robbers.” “Bank robbers?”

“Malloy’s number one on the FBI’s most wanted list. Wally Bud is only number seven. But that’s who it is, killed deader’n stumps over there.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Frenchy. “I’m a hero!”

Cleveland was on the phone. Owney didn’t want to take it and you never could be too sure about the security of the phones, even if Mel Parsons, who ran Bell Telephone in Hot Springs, maintained that no one could eavesdrop without his knowledge.

Still, Owney knew he had to take the call.

He had a martini, and a Cubano. He sat in his office in the Southern. One of the chorus girls kneaded the back of his neck with long, soothing fingers. Jack McGaffery and Merle Swenson—neither with a club to manage—sat earnestly on the davenport. F. Garry Hurst smoked a cigar and looked out the window. Pap and Flem Grumley were also in attendance, though as muscle slightly exiled to a further circle.

“Hello, Owney Maddox here.”

“Cut the English shit, Owney. I ain’t one of your stooges.”

“Victor? Victor, is that you?”

“You know it is, Owney. What the hell is going on down there? My people tell me some cops knocked off Tommy Malloy and Wally Bud. I’m supposed to tell Mr. Fabrizzio that? Mr. Fabrizzio liked Tommy very much. He knew his dad back in the ‘20s when his dad legged rum across Superior for him.”

“It’s nothing. I got some pricks who—”

“Owney, Jesus Christ, this is serious shit. There are people unhappy all over the goddamn place. Tommy was down there because you said he’d be all right. Send your boys down, you said; I rim the town, the town welcomes visitors. What the fuck, now I got two dead guys?”

“I’m having some trouble with a local fuckin’ prosecutor, It ain’t a big thing.”

“Oh, yeah? It was pretty fucking big to Tommy Malloy. He’s fucking dead, if I recall.”

“I got some kind of rogue cop unit. These guys, they’re like another mob: they just open fire and to hell with anything else. It’s like the Mad Dog is runnin’ them. I will take care of it. Mr. Fabrizzio and his associates have nothing to worry about. It’s safe for Cleveland, it’s safe for Chicago, it’s safe for New York. Ask Ben Siegel, he was just down here. He saw the town. Ask him.”

“Owney, it was Bugsy called Mr. Fabrizzio. That’s why I’m on the phone right now.”

“That kike fuck,” said Owney.

Now it was official. Bugsy was talking against him. That was tantamount to a declaration of war, for it meant that Bugsy was lobbying for permission from the commission to move against him. Whatever was going on with goddamned Becker, it was helping Bugsy no end.