Missouri State Penitentiary. According to the senile old bastard of a judge who had presided over his case in Joplin, that was to be his home for the next five years. Three, with good behavior. What did he know about prison? Bars. Walls. Guards. Everything else was a mystery to him. Certainly it was going to be a big change from the broad expanses of wilderness he’d been accustomed to wandering all his life. And what of Hazel?
Pretty, black-haired Hazel. He’d known her since they were both toddlers, but how much did he really know about her? It had always been assumed between them that one day they’d be married. How would prison affect those plans? Would she still be waiting for him when he got out? And even if she were, would he still want her? His mind was a jumble of questions, and every one of them had something to do with Hazel.
He turned his head away from the window and studied the dusty floor between his stiffened legs. Five years. On a lousy bum rap. He would just have to make the best of it.
Chapter Three
“Virgil Ballard! Well, I’ll be damned!” The short, broad-shouldered con held out a callused hand as Virgil entered the cell. “How are ya, kid?”
Virgil transferred the wooden cane to his left hand and grasped the one extended him. The cell door clanged shut behind him. “Ralph!” he exclaimed happily. “Ralph Moss! I haven’t seen you since we ran moonshine together.”
“Two years ago,” beamed the older man.
“I thought you was too smart to end up here.”
Moss shrugged his bull-like shoulders. “Tell that to the cops in Kansas City. Me ’n’ Floyd was takin’ off from a bank job downtown, when boom!” He clapped his hands. “We run smack into a police roadblock. Whattaya gonna do in a situation like that?”
Virgil laughed heartily. “How is your brother?”
“Floyd? Ornery as ever. They let him go a coupla months ago, on accounta no previous record. I got eighteen months to go.” He eyed the cane on which Virgil was supporting himself. “What’s with the gimp? Catch a bullet?”
Virgil shook his head. “I busted my legs. Doc took the casts off a month ago, but they’re still weak. I been in the prison hospital since I got here.”
“Both legs?” Moss’ piggish eyes narrowed. “That’s pretty rare, ain’t it? Both of ’em?”
The younger man met his stare. “I fell down two flights of stairs.”
They remained silent for a long moment, looking into each other’s eyes. Then Moss exploded into laughter and punched Virgil in the shoulder. “That’s rich, kid. You oughtta be in vaudeville!”
“That’s what everybody says,” agreed Virgil, laughing and massaging his arm.
“Two legs! Jeez!” The stout convict wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. “You must be the original Hard Luck Harry! Imagine! Two bustid legs ’n’ prison besides! How long you got?”
“Three years, if I behave myself.”
“Hell, that’s nothin’! When the screws talk, just smile and nod. Take whatever they got to give. It’s a waltz.”
“Some waltz. They tell me the guards beat a guy to death in the shower room just last month.”
Ralph Moss laughed, but it was an embarrassed laugh. “Yeah. Well, that was his own fault. A screw told him to go back in and take another bath, he was filthy, but he told him to go to hell. He just didn’t play by the rules, that’s all.”
“For that, they killed him?” Virgil was more afraid than angry.
“I guess they got carried away. But that’s just what I told you about. You leave them alone, they leave you alone. Be amiable. Follow the rules. You’ll be out like that.” He snapped his callused fingers.
Virgil sat down on the edge of the bottom bunk of the ugly double-decked bed. His gray prison uniform hung on him like a sack. “Two years, or one, or six months, what’s it matter? It’s just too damned long! I only been here a little while, and it’s driving me crazy. Now I find out that they’ll kill you if you act like a man. I want out, Ralph. I want out now.”
Moss laid a rough hand on the youth’s shoulder. “You’ll make it, kid.” He sat down beside him. “You think this is my first time? Listen, I been in and out of these joints all my life, ever since I was old enough to lift a gun. It passes, believe me. You just got to wait it out.”
“That’s not it,” insisted Virgil, shaking his head. “As soon as I get out on the street, I’m gonna get picked up again. I just know it. And then I’ll land right back here, or someplace like it, and that’ll be it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Figure the odds.” Virgil began counting on his fingers. “I’m a crook. I don’t know how to do anything else, it’s all I been doing since I was a kid. I’m also a con. When I get out, I’ll be an ex-con. No difference. The state has my prints and picture. I been netted, labeled, and pinned to a board, just like a butterfly. There just isn’t any job I can pull that’s safe.”
There was a twinkle in the older man’s eye. “It don’t have to be that way, you know.”
Something in Moss’ voice made Virgil turn his head to look at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean this,” said the other, spreading his hands as if to pick something up. “There’s this little bank, see, in Dawes. I been thinkin’ about it ever since I met this guy who come from there. It’s a small town. The only law around is one old constable, and he’s nothin’. It won’t take but five minutes to pull up in front, hit it, and tear out again. Lead pipe.”
“So? What’s that got to do with me?”
“That’s where you come in. We need a good, reliable wheel man. I seen you handle them big trucks back in Oklahoma. If you can still roll like that, you’re the man we want.”
Virgil shook his head. “It’s no good. I’m gonna be in here for the next three years.”
“So what?” Moss was annoyed. “I got two and a half to serve myself. Nobody’s gonna move on accounta this plan is all mine. I ain’t told nobody about it, ’cept you.”
“You’ll still be out six months ahead of me.”
“So we’ll wait.”
“We?” Virgil raised his eyebrows.
“Sure, we. Me an’ Floyd an’ Roy.”
“Roy?”
Moss looked surprised. “Roy. Roy Farrell.” He said it as if it were supposed to mean something.
Virgil shook his head, uncomprehending.
“Roy Farrell,” began Moss pompously, “is only the biggest bank robber in Oklahoma. My brother’s with him now, and Roy sends word that he needs all the good men I can get. You’re the first. Whattaya say, kid? You in?”
Virgil thought it over. Bank robbery. That was one he’d never considered. Well, why not? It was a step up. “Okay,” he said, cheerfully resigning himself to his cellmate’s hands. “Deal me in.”
“Great!” Moss took aim to punch him in the shoulder, but Virgil dodged it. The older man gave it up and squatted on the floor, signaling for Virgil to join him. He began tracing the plan of Dawes bank on the concrete floor. “This is the front door,” he said, drawing a thick thumbnail across the thin layer of dust, “and this is the vault, about fifteen feet in. Now, there are never more’n five or six people in there at one time.…”
Virgil watched intently as the plan began to take shape. There, on the floor of his cell, the young Oklahoman studied the diagram that was to remain in his head for the next three years.
Chapter Four
Virgil was standing outside the prison gates when the spotless Auburn came careening around the corner and slowed to a stop beside the curb at his feet. It was five years old, the 1920 639K model, long and high and luxurious and yellow with black fenders and top. Somebody had been at the wooden spoke wheels with furniture polish and a cloth, for they gleamed almost as brightly as did the chrome headlights. Virgil caught sight of the fresh-faced brunette beaming behind the wheel and smiled. It was Hazel.
She reached across the seat and hit the doorhandle, unlocking it. Her arms were around his neck before he could o
pen his mouth, and she was planting kisses all over his face. He detached himself from her advances reluctantly, giving her a kiss as a consolation prize. “That stuff can wait,” he said brightly. “First, I got to get used to the open air.” He threw himself back in the plush seat and inhaled mightily, filling his lungs with the pure Missouri air, then let it out with a sigh. “You got no idea how sweet it smells out here.”
Hazel grinned broadly, showing off her milky-white teeth. “Maybe it’s me you’re smelling.”
Virgil reached out and tickled her chin. “Well now, that could just be possible.” He withdrew his hand and looked about him, at the clean luxury of the sedan’s interior. “Where’d you get the machine? Steal it?”
“It belongs to my boss. He lent it to me when I told him I had to pick up my boyfriend at the train station in Oklahoma City.”
Virgil glanced at the high gray walls of the prison in which he had spent three years of his life. There was a movement in the east tower, and he knew it was the changing of the guard. “Well,” he said, “it isn’t exactly a train station, and this isn’t exactly Oklahoma City, but the rest of it is true enough.” He smiled again at his childhood sweetheart.
Hazel smiled back, but it was a tight-lipped thoughtful smile. Virgil knew what she was thinking. He was leaner now than she would have remembered him, and his hair was combed more neatly, but he was still the same sad-eyed Oklahoma youth she had known three years before. The only appreciable difference was that, in place of the blue work clothes he used to live in, he was now wearing a suit and tie, courtesy of the state of Missouri. Though it fit him poorly, it didn’t look too bad on him. He decided he would make a good banker.
Hazel placed her hands on the wooden steering wheel. Her smile was more natural now. “Where to?”
Virgil shrugged. “Where you living?”
“Picher.”
Virgil thought about his home town. It couldn’t have changed much in three years. And it was still close to the state line. “Let’s go there.”
Dawn was creeping into the bedroom of Hazel’s apartment above the Picher Print Shop when Virgil sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. Hazel, sleeping peacefully after their night of lovemaking, was lying on her side with her back to him, her smooth naked shoulder rising slightly beneath the blanket with each even breath. Virgil contemplated the contrast made by her black hair as it lay fanned across the clean white pillow beneath her head, and wished he were an artist. That scene needed depicting.
He discarded the feeling as too poetic and settled back on his propped-up pillow, dragging thoughtfully on his cigarette. Just beyond the open window behind and to the right of the bed, a sparrow was hopping from twig to twig among the branches of a nearby maple tree, stopping only to call raucously to a fellow squawker down the street. Virgil heard a car pull up in front of the drugstore across the way, heard its brake squeak, and heard another start up and pull away farther down the main thoroughfare. That, he decided, would constitute the rush-hour traffic in a town the size of Picher, Oklahoma.
The jacket of his prison suit hung from the post at the foot of the bed, its strained seams sending tiny wrinkles outward like the strands of a spider web. Virgil was reminded of another suit he had seen like it, and remembered the narrow ferret face of the man who had been wearing it. He winced at the memory, and felt instinctively for his legs. The doctors back in Joplin had done their work well; the bones had set correctly, and his limbs showed no signs of ever having been broken. It was only during damp weather that Virgil felt the pain. Back in Jefferson City, the prison air had been nothing but damp, and he had spent every day in agony, vowing to take revenge on Nelson Garver and the men who had done this to him. But Colonel Garver was gone. Virgil had learned through the grapevine that he and his entire operation had packed up and left for Chicago just as Prohibition reached its peak, headed for the more lucrative territory of the urban Midwest. For Virgil Ballard, revenge wasn’t worth going all that way. There was no percentage in it.
He took one last drag on his cigarette and put it out in the flower-patterned china saucer Hazel had left on the night table. Carefully, lest he disturb Hazel, who had turned over on her back and was smiling in her sleep, he slid out from between the sheets, and, naked, padded out into the living room in search of a drink.
He went to the pantry and brought down a bottle of bourbon from an overhead shelf. He selected the glass he had used earlier, a whiskey-stained water tumbler sitting in a puddle on the kitchen table, and filled it halfway. He had replaced the bottle and was just taking his first sip from the glass when Hazel came up from behind him and gave him a smart slap across his bare buttocks. “Lush!” she giggled, as he whirled to face her.
She had donned a semi-transparent negligee which, tied as it was at the neck and nowhere else, did nothing to conceal her femininity. She looked like Clara Bow, as Virgil remembered seeing her in a similar mode of dress in a magazine he had read in prison, only a helluva lot sexier. Virgil reached out with one bare foot and swept Hazel’s legs from beneath her. She went down hard on her bottom, her peignoir floating down into a ruffled position that left her, to all intents and purposes, quite naked. “Sex maniac!” Virgil observed wryly, and raised his glass to his lips.
Hazel looked put out for a moment, then realized the humor in her position, and began laughing, her shoulders shaking so violently that the negligee rippled like disturbed water. She gathered it about her, and, rubbing the injured spot, got to her feet. “You, Mr. Ballard,” she said, “are not a gentleman.”
“Surprise, surprise.” Virgil put down his empty glass and strode toward the bedroom. Hazel followed on his heels.
“Going somewhere?” she asked as Virgil found his shorts and stepped into them.
He slid on his trousers, letting the suspenders flap about his knees while he donned his BVD undershirt and tucked it in. “Job hunting,” he answered. “That’s something they don’t do for you when you leave prison.”
Hazel leaned languidly in the bedroom doorway. “There’s not much around here right now.”
“I figured that,” said Virgil, buttoning his collar and tying his necktie. “That’s why I’m leaving for Miami.”
“That far?” Miami, Oklahoma, was over thirty miles away. She left the doorway and stood facing him. “How do you plan to get there?”
He brought his thumb around in a wide arc in a hitchhiking gesture, then reached for his jacket.
“Coming back?”
Virgil paused at the door and took her chin in his hand. “In style, honey,” he said. “In style.” Then he left.
“This here’s Roy Farrell,” said Moss, his hand on the dark man’s shoulder. “Roy, I want you to meet Virgil Ballard. Virgil’s a good old boy.”
The slight man grasped Virgil’s hand coolly, then let go. He had jet-black hair and intense dark eyes, with which he seemed to be assessing the blond youth. The Oklahoma sun had burned his skin to a deep reddish-brown, adding to the Indian effect made by his high cheekbones and the color of his wavy hair. The effect was diminished, but not spoiled, by the pencil-thin mustache he sported just above his lip. Virgil tagged him as Creek, or possibly Cherokee.
Floyd Moss, Ralph’s younger brother, pushed forward to pump Virgil’s hand. He was a big, gawky plowboy, all arms and legs and wind-blown straw-colored hair. “Hell, boy,” he said, “when I heard you was up in Jeff City, I thought I’d seen the last of you! Well, if this don’t beat all!”
“You look good, Floyd,” said Virgil, disengaging himself from the big man’s baseball glove-sized hand. All the Mosses were as strong as oxen.
“Ralph has told me some good things about you,” observed Farrell mildly. In contrast to the Moss brothers, his manner was reserved. “Of course, Ralph has been known to stretch the truth at times.” He smiled then, but his eyes were grim.
Ralph shook his oxlike head. “Not this time, boy. Virgil can make a Mack truck stand up and dance the Charleston. As wheel men go, he’s the king
.”
Farrell didn’t say anything to that. He turned and headed for the next room. “In here.”
Virgil followed him, flanked by Floyd and Ralph. “How d’you like this place we got here, Virgil?” asked Floyd. “Humdinger, ain’t it?”
“Yeah.” Virgil looked around at the sitting room in which he found himself, at the expensive carpet and the big new leaf-patterned easy chairs.
“Not bad. I didn’t know you guys were doing this well.”
Ralph snorted. “Don’t take nothin’ at all. You lay down a couple hunnert a week, and you got yourself the Taj Mahal. There’s houses like this all over Miami.”
“I’m more comfortable in these surroundings,” explained Farrell, who had unbuttoned his pinstriped jacket and taken a seat in one of the chairs, motioning for the others to do the same. “The time for planning heists in low dives and condemned buildings is past. These days, it’s top drawer all the way or nothing.”
“That seems true enough,” said Virgil, sitting down in the chair opposite Farrell. “I been reading about you in the papers lately. You got off pretty clean in Oklahoma City, and again in Tulsa.”
Farrell cast off the compliment with a gesture of indifference. “Those were small jobs, not worth the effort. The pay’s low, and the risks are high. Let me give you some advice.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Stay away from the big cities. Shawnee, McAlester, Muskogee, they’re no good. You never know when they’re gonna be digging up the streets or when some jerk in a J.C. Penney truck is gonna jackknife right in front of you. Hit the small towns, the one-street burgs. Those banks are chock full of cash from rich farmers and grain industries. Just drive in and drive right out again with thirty grand in your back seat. It’s as simple as that.”
Virgil studied the gang leader’s smooth features. “I see you been talking to Ralph.”
Farrell smiled again, genuinely this time, white teeth flashing in his dark face. “You mean Dawes. Yes, I’ve been talking to Ralph about it. The only reason we haven’t hit it before now is that he talked me into waiting for you.” The smile faded. “I hope it was worth it.”
Red Highway Page 3
