by Matt Braun
“Why the sad look then?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about those gangsters. Quinn and Voight and all the others.”
“What about them?”
“Well, in a way, I suppose it is sad.” She glanced out the window and caught a last glimpse of the Island beneath a midday sun. “After everything you went through, almost getting yourself killed, and nothing’s changed. They still run Galveston like it was their own little kingdom.”
“Maybe not for long,” Durant said. “You remember the Ranger I told you about? Sergeant Stoner?”
“Yes, the one who helped you that night at the casino.”
“I got a call from him this morning, just before I checked out of the hotel. Caught me by surprise.”
“Why would he call you?”
“Well, he didn’t know I was leaving Galveston, and he thought I’d want to hear the news. He was flying high.”
“You make it sound like good news.”
“Good as it gets,” Durant said with a grin. “Stoner’s been promoted and put in charge of a Rackets Squad. His only job will be to nail Quinn and Voight.”
“Omigosh!” Her eyes were round as buttons. “Do you think he can do it? Does he really have a chance?”
“I think Quinn and Voight are in for rough times. Stoner’s determined to close them down.”
Durant was glad to see the last of Galveston. There were no fond memories left behind, and his most fervent wish was that Stoner would rout the mob and drive them off the Island. Yet, odd as it seemed, he hoped Jack Nolan would somehow escape the law. Another time, another place, and they might have been friends.
All things considered, though, he felt himself the luckiest of men. He’d fought the mob and Magruder to a stalemate and he had cashier’s checks for sixty thousand in his wallet. Even more, he would soon direct his first motion picture, and something deep inside, visceral in its certainty, told him it was only the beginning. And best of all, he was returning to Hollywood with Catherine.
“Let’s forget Galveston,” he said, taking her in his arms. “From here on, it’s just you and me. Nothing but good times ahead.”
“Ummm, I like the sound of that.” She snuggled closer, her head against his shoulder. “Tell me stories about making movies, something outlandish. Anything at all.”
“Anything at all covers a lot of ground. What would you like to hear?”
“Tell me how you first met Douglas Fairbanks.”
“The first time was when we were shooting The Mark of Zorro. I did most of the stunts.”
“And Mary Pickford?”
“Oh.” Durant smiled, laughter in his voice. “Mary’s another story entirely.”
“Are you saying—” Catherine suddenly gasped, her eyes luminous with wonder. “You don’t mean it … do you?”
“Well, you have to understand, that was before she met Doug. She’d just come to Hollywood.”
“Yes?” Her curiosity overcame her. “And?”
“You really want to hear this?”
“I’m dying to hear it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure!”
Durant told her everything. Almost.
Epilogue
Galveston Island remained the mecca of gambling and vice for more than three decades. Civil injunctions filed by the attorney general were a nuisance, but the Hollywood Club always reopened and stayed open. The mob came to look on it as just another cost of doing business.
Oliver Quinn and Dutch Voight ultimately wearied of the battle. Age, and a fortune stashed away in bearer bonds, influenced them to sell their interests to a new generation of mobsters. These new overlords of crime were smart and sophisticated, but they were caught in the tidal undertow of a changing morality. The Texas Rangers finally turned out the lights on Galveston in 1957.
Diamond Jack Nolan became a smuggler, operating out of Jamaica. In 1928, during a run of bootleg liquor to Miami, his schooner was caught in a storm off the Florida Keys. The Libbie, named in honor of his wife, went down with all hands aboard. Elizabeth Magruder Nolan, the mother of two strapping boys, lived out her life in Jamaica, in her villa by the sea. She never remarried, and she never returned to Galveston.
Clint Stoner rose to the rank of captain in the Texas Rangers. For twenty years he stormed Galveston, raiding casinos and gambling dives, plastering the town with civil injunctions. His obsession with the mob left little time for a private life, and he and Janice Overton gradually drifted apart. He retired in 1946 and watched his successors close down Galveston eleven years later. Yet he remained a legend to all of Texas, the Ranger who never quit.
Earl Durant and Catherine Ludlow were married in October 1926. His first film, a Tom Mix western, revealed a remarkable talent as a director. He was in the vanguard of those who made the transition from silent movies to sound, and he worked with stars of the era in comedies as well as drama. He went on to make thirty-four films, and he won the Oscar for Northern Lights in 1932. He and Catherine had three children, and were among the first to build a mansion in Beverly Hills.
Cuddles the parrot lived to be sixteen. In 1927, when Oliver Quinn married Maxine Baxter, Cuddles was moved from the club to the penthouse suite in the Buccaneer. Quinn, whose many business affairs occupied his time, felt a talking parrot would be the perfect companion for Maxine. The first time Cuddles saw her in a negligee, he let loose a loud wolf whistle and squawked: “Ohboy! Ohboy! Lookathetits! Lookathetits!” Maxine, always receptive to a compliment, thought he was adorable.
PRAISE FOR SPUR AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
MATT BRAUN
“Matt Braun is head and shoulders above all the rest who would attempt to bring the gunmen of the Old West to life.”
—Terry C. Johnston, author of the Plainsmen series
“Matt Braun has a genius for taking real characters out of the Old West and giving them flesh-and-blood immediacy.”
—Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TITLES BY MATT BRAUN
WYATT EARP
BLACK FOX
OUTLAW KINGDOM
LORDS OF THE LAND
CIMARRON JORDAN
BLOODY HAND
NOBLE OUTLAW
TEXAS EMPIRE
THE SAVAGE LAND
RIO HONDO
THE GAMBLERS
DOC HOLLIDAY
YOU KNOW MY NAME
THE BRANNOCKS
THE LAST STAND
RIO GRANDE
GENTLEMAN ROGUE
THE KINCAIDS
EL PASO
INDIAN TERRITORY
BLOODSPORT
SHADOW KILLERS
BUCK COLTER
KINCH RILEY
DEATHWALK
HICKOK & CODY
THE WILD ONES
HANGMAN’S CREEK
JURY OF SIX
THE SPOILERS
Author’s Note
Galveston was the Las Vegas of the Roaring Twenties. There were casinos, nightclubs, Broadway entertainers, bookmaking parlors, and a red-light district with over a thousand ladies of the evening. The Roaring Twenties was also the era of the Volstead Act, a federal law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic spirits anywhere in America. The Island, as Galveston was called by locals, was nonetheless home base to the largest rumrunning operation west of the Mississippi.
Overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, and located off the coast of Texas, Galveston was controlled by modern-day mobsters. A triad of gangsters, crooked politicians, and unscrupulous businessmen transformed the Island into a paradise of sun-and-surf resorts, with a nightlife that rivaled New York and Paris. Millions of tourists flocked to the Island, and tens of millions of dollars were siphoned off by an underworld empire that lasted more than fifty years. There is nothing remotely similar to Galveston in all of American history.
The Overlords is historical fiction. Literary license has been taken with names and places, dates and events, and a large part of the story is pure inve
ntion. In fact, The Overlords bears testament to the hoary adage that truth is stranger than fiction. The historical reality of Galveston Island often beggars belief.
The Roaring Twenties was an era of booze, jazz, and “let the good times roll.” Galveston Island was a microcosm of a people and a nation involved in a decade-long party orchestrated by the mob. The Overlords is their story.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE OVERLORDS / THE WILD ONES
The Overlords copyright © 2003 by Matt Braun.
The Wild Ones copyright © 2002 by Winchester Productions, Ltd.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
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The Overlords St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / January 2003
The Wild Ones St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / January 2002
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
The Wild Ones
MATT BRAUN
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
ACTING THE PART …
Lillian finally joined the fight. After a struggle to cock both hammers on the shotgun, she found it required all her strength to raise the heavy weapon. She brought it to shoulder level, trying to steady the long barrels, and accidentally tripped both triggers. The shotgun boomed, the double hammers dropping almost simultaneously, and a hail of buckshot sizzled into the charging Indians. The brutal kick of the recoil knocked Lillian off her feet.
A warrior flung out his arms and toppled dead from his pony. The others swerved aside as buckshot simmered through their ranks like angry hornets. Their charge was broken not ten feet from the overhang, and Fontaine and Chester continued to blast away with their Henry repeaters …
IN MEMORY OF ALL THOSE LOST AT
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
AND THE PENTAGON
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
CHAPTER 1
THE TRAIN was some miles west of Boonville. Lillian sat by the window, staring out at the verdant countryside. She thought Missouri looked little different from Indiana or Ohio, though perhaps not so flat. Her expression was pensive.
September lay across the land. Fields tall with corn, bordered by stands of trees, fleeted past the coach window under a waning sun. There was a monotonous sameness to the landscape, and the clickety-clack of steel wheels on rails made it all but hypnotic. She wondered if she would ever again see New York.
Chester, her brother, was seated beside her. Three years older, recently turned twenty-two, he was a solid six-footer, with chiseled features and a shock of wavy dark hair. His head bobbed to the sway of the coach and his eyes were closed in a light slumber. He seemed intent on sleeping his way through Missouri.
Alistair Fontaine, their father, was seated across from them. A slender man, his angular features and leonine head of gray hair gave him a distinguished appearance. He was forty-four, an impeccable dresser, his customary attire a three-piece suit with a gold watch chain draped over the expanse of his vest. He looked at Lillian.
“A penny for your thoughts, my dear.” Lillian loved the sound of her father’s voice. Even as a young child, she had been entranced by his sonorous baritone, cultured and uniquely rich in timbre. She smiled at him.
“Oh, just daydreaming, Papa,” she said with a small shrug. “I miss New York so much. Don’t you?”
“Never look back,” Fontaine said cheerfully. “Westward the sun and westward our fortune. Our brightest days are yet ahead.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Why, child, I have no doubt of it whatever. We are but stars following our destiny.”
She sensed the lie beneath his words. He always put the best face on things, no matter how dismal. His wonderfully aristocratic bearing gave his pronouncements the ring of an oracle. But then, she reminded herself, he was an actor. He made reality of illusion.
“Yes, of course, you’re right,” she said. “Abilene just seems like the end of the earth. I feel as though we’ve been … banished.”
“Nonsense,” Fontaine gently admonished her. “We will take Abilene by storm, and our notices will have New York clamoring for our return. You mark my words!”
Chester was roused by his father’s voice. He yawned, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What’s that about New York?”
“I was telling Lillian,” Fontaine informed him. “Our trip West is but a way station on the road of life. We’ve not seen the last of Broadway.”
“Dad, I hope to God you’re right.”
“Never doubt it for a moment, my boy. I have utter faith.”
Lillian wasn’t so sure. On the variety circuit, The Fontaines, as they were billed, was a headline act. Her earliest memories were of traveling the circuit of variety theaters throughout the Northeast and the Eastern Seaboard. Originated in England and imported across the Atlantic, variety theaters were the most popular form of entertainment in America.
A child of the theater, Lillian had been raised among performers. Her playmates were the offspring of chorus girls, song-and-dance men, comics, contortionists, and acrobats. At an early age, she and Chester became a part of the family troupe, acting in melodramas with their parents and sometimes accompanying their mother in song. The family ensemble presented entertainment for the masses, something for everyone.
Alistair Fontaine played to popular tastes by appearing in the sometimes-histrionic melodramas. At heart, he considered himself a tragedian, and his greatest joy was in emoting Shakespearean soliloquies in full costume. Yet it was his wife, Estell Fontaine, who was the true star of the show. Her extraordinary voice rendered audiences spellbound, and she might have had a career in opera. She chose instead her family. And the variety stage.
The magnitude of her stardom became apparent just three months ago, in the early summer of 1871. A bout of influenza quickly turned to pneumonia, and two days later she died in a New York hospital. Her loss devastated Alistair, who stayed drunk for a week, and left Lillian and Chester undone by grief. Estell was the bulwark of the family, wife, mother, and matriarch. They were lost without her, emotionally adrift. Yet, strangely, made somehow closer by her death.
Their personal tragedy was compounded in their professional lives. With Estell gone, the Fontaines soon discovered they were no longer a headline act. Her voice was the stardust of the show, and without her, they were suddenly unemployable anywhere on the variety circuit. Theater owners were sympathetic, but in the months following Estell’s death there were no offers for an engagement, even on the undercard. Their booking agent suggested they try the budding variety circuit in the West.
Alistair Fontaine was at first opposed and not a little offended. But then, after three months without work and facing poverty, he reluctantly agreed. Their agent finally obtained a booking in Abilene, Kansas, the major railhead for shipping Texas cattle. Whatever was to be learned of their destination was to be found in the pages of the Police Gazette. Abilene was reported to be the wildest town in the Wild West.
Today, watching her father, Lillian wasn’t at all convinced that he had reconciled himself with their situation. In off moments, she caught him staring dully into space and sensed his uncertainty about their trip West. Even more, she knew his posturing and his confident manner were meant to reassure herself and Chester. His oft-repeated assertion that they would return to New York and Broadway was fanciful, a dream at best.
She longed for the counsel of her mother.
“When’s our next stop?” Chester abruptly asked. “I wouldn’t mind a hot meal fo
r a change.”
There was no dining car on the train. A vendor periodically prowled the aisles, selling stale sandwiches and assorted sundries. Their last decent meal had been in St. Louis.
Fontaine chuckled amiably. “I fear you’ll have a wait, my boy. We’re scheduled to arrive in Kansas City about midnight.”
“Wish it was New York instead.”
“Be of stout heart, Chet. Think of us as thespians off on a grand adventure.”
Lillian turned her gaze out the window. Abilene, for all her father’s cheery bluster, hardly seemed to her a grand adventure. The middle of nowhere sounded a bit more like it.
She, too, wished for New York.
The train hurtled through the hamlet of Sweet Springs. Coupled to the rear of the engine and the tender were an express car and five passenger coaches. As the locomotive sped past the small depot, the engineer tooted his whistle. On the horizon, the sun dropped toward the rim of the earth.
A mile west of town, a tree had been felled across the tracks on the approach to a bridge. The engineer set the brakes, wheels grinding on the rails, and the train jarred to a screeching halt. The sudden jolt caught the passengers unawares, and there was a moment of pandemonium in the coaches. Luggage went flying from the overhead racks as women screamed and men cursed.
Then, suddenly, a collective hush fell over the coaches. From under the bridge where trees bordered a swift stream, a gang of riders burst out of the woods. Five men rode directly to the express car, pouring a volley of shots through the door. Another man, pistol drawn, jumped from his horse to the steps of the locomotive. The engineer and the fireman dutifully raised their hands.
Four remaining gang members, spurring their horses hard, charged up and down the track bed. Their pistols were cocked and pointed at the passengers, who stared openmouthed through the coach windows. No shots were fired, but the men’s menacing attitude and tough appearance made the message all too clear. Anyone who resisted or attempted to flee the train would be killed.
