Hot Springs (Earl Swagger)

by Stephen Hunter

“Now there’s a dame,” said Earl. “That is a dame.”

  “That is, that surely is,” said D.A. “Now ain’t that the goddamndest thing? I know that one and I bet I know our next guest.”

  The woman stepped sideways, smiling, filling the night with the dazzle of her lips. She was all dessert. She was what all the gals wanted to be, but never could quite make it, and what all the guys wanted to sleep with. Her hair was an auburn cascade, soft as music.

  “What’s her story?” asked Earl.

  “Her name is Virginia Hill. She’s a mob gal. They love her in Chicago, where she was special pals with some of the wops that run that town. They call her the Flamingo, she’s so long and beautiful. But again, don’t let the looks fool you. She’s a tough piece of work from the steel towns of ’Bama. She came up the hard way, through the houses. She’s a hooker, or used to be one, and she’s been around the life a long time. She’s twenty-eight going on fifty-eight. And now, the last player. Now, ain’t this interesting.”

  Yes, it was. The third person out of the car was toasty brown, like some sort of football athlete or other kind of ballplayer. He wasn’t in a tux at all, but some kind of tan linen, double-breasted, with a yellow handkerchief and a pair of white shoes on. His shirt was storm blue and he wore a white fedora. A cigar was clutched between his teeth, and even from across the street the tautness of his jaws suggested great strength. He radiated something, maybe toughness, maybe self-love, maybe confidence, but some other thing, well off the normal human broadcasting spectrum.

  “Who’s the punk?” asked Earl.

  “That’s Benjamin Siegel. Better known as Bugsy, but not to his face. He’s a handsome nutcase from the East Side of New York, very connected to the top guys. He was sent out to L.A. a couple of years before the war, where he’s been running the rackets and hanging out with movie stars. But it’s very damned interesting. What the hell is he doing here, visiting with Owney Maddox? What are them two birds cooking up, I wonder? Bugsy didn’t come here to soak his ass in the vapors, I guarantee you.”

  The three celebrities exchanged an intimate little laugh and pretended to ignore the gawkers around them, those who felt the power of their charisma. Abreast, they walked up the steps and into the nightclub.

  Earl watched them disappear. He squirmed on the bench, feeling a little dispirited. It seemed so wrong, somehow: all those boys dead in the shithole reefs of the Pacific, for “America”; and here was America, a place where gangsters in tuxedos had the best women and the swankiest clubs and lived the life of maharajahs. All that dying, all that bleeding: Owney Maddox. Bugsy Siegel.

  “Man,” he allowed, “they dress too pretty. Would be a pleasure to git them all dirty, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s our job,” said the old man. “You and me, son. Don’t believe they allow no tuxedoes in jail.”

  7

  Virginia was in a foul mood, not in itself an unusual occurrence, but this morning she was well beyond her usual bounds of anger.

  “When are they going to get here?” she demanded.

  “I called them. They will get here as fast as they can,” said Ben, staring at his favorite thing on earth, his own roughly handsome face in the mirror, as he tried to get his bow tie just right. It was a red number, with little blue symbols of something or other on it. He’d got it at Sulka’s, the last time he was in London with the Countess.

  “Well, they better shake their asses,” Virginia said.

  “They” were the squad of bellboys necessary to move the Virginia and Ben show from the Apollo Suite at the Arlington to a limousine to the Missouri-Pacific station for the 4:15, which would take them to St. Louis, where they would transfer to the Super Chief on its way back to Los Angeles. So many men were required because wherever Virginia went, she went in style, involving at least ten pieces of alligator luggage. Ben also traveled in alligator and in style, but he disciplined himself to a mere eight cases.

  So eighteen suitcases were stacked in the living room of the Apollo Suite, awaiting removal. But Virginia hated to wait. Waiting was not for the Flamingo. It was for the other 99.999999 percent of the world. She decided she needed a cigarette. She walked out onto the terrace and the blinding Arkansas sun hit her. Her sunglasses were already packed. For some reason the sun against her face infuriated her more.

  She stepped back into the room, nerves uncalmed by the cigarette. She didn’t like to smoke indoors because the smoke clung to her clothes. She was in the mood for a fight.

  “This place is a goddamn dump,” she said. “Why did we come here? You said I’d meet picture people.”

  “Sweetie, you did meet picture people. You met Alan Ladd, Dick Powell and June Allyson.”

  “You idiot,” she said. “They ain’t picture people. They are Hot Springs people. Don’t you understand the difference?”

  “Alan Ladd is big in pictures!” protested Ben.

  “Yeah, but his wife manages him and she watches him like a hawk. And she ain’t about to help a li’l ol’ thang like me! I felt her staring at me! She would have ripped my eyes out, except that if she’d tried, I’d have belted her in the puss so hard she’d see stars for a fucking year. And that Dick Powell, he’s like Mr. Bob who ran the company store. Just a big ol’ politician, slapping the gravy on every goddamn thing! I know his type; big on talk, nothing on getting it done. He’ll smile pretty as how-de-do, but he ain’t one bit interested in me! I want to meet Cary Grant or John Wayne. I want to meet Mr. Cooper or Mr. Bogart! These are little people. You can’t get nowheres in L.A. with little people.”

  Ben sighed. When Virginia lit up like this, there was no stopping her, short of an uppercut to the jaw, which he had delivered a few times, but she was wearing him down. You can only hit a gal so many times. He wished he had the guts to dump her, but in bed, when the mood was on her, she was such a tigress, so much better than anyone, he knew it was impossible.

  “Well, I’m down here on business,” he said. “I have a lot to learn from Owney. He has ideas.”

  “That creep. He’s about as British as my Uncle Clytell.”

  “Sweetie, we’ll be back in L.A. in a couple of days. I’ll buy you a new mink. We’ll throw a big party. Stars will come. But let me tell you! This has been very profitable for me. It’s going to get better and better out there. You watch and see where the next ten years take us. We will be so big—”

  “You been saying that for six months and you’re still the bughouse creep they sent to L.A. to get outta their hair and I still don’t have a speaking part! Did you call your lawyer?”

  “Well, honey, I—”

  “You did not! You are still married to that bag Estelle! You’re still Mr. Krakow! Mr. Krakow, would you like some eggs with your bacon and let’s take the station wagon to Bloomingdale’s, dear, they’re having a sale! You ain’t moved one step closer to no divorce. You bughouse kike, I knew you’d lie! You liar! You goddamn liar!”

  She turned, and snatched a $200 lamp off a mahogany end table, lifted it and turned toward him. She advanced, nostrils flaring, eyes lit with pure craziness.

  But then his own sweet craziness skyrocketed out of control.

  “Don’t call me bughouse!” Ben shouted back. Nothing got him ticked faster than that. A white-hot flash of lightning zagged through his brain, taking all thought and reason from him. He stood, balled his fist and began to stalk his adversary, who approached savagely.

  But a knock on the door signaled the arrival of the help, and with a snort, Virginia set the lamp down, opened the door and headed toward the elevator.

  • • •

  Virginia stared stonily at Hot Springs as it drifted by through the Caddy’s window. In the broad daylight, it was just another crappy burg, like Toledo or Paducah.

  “Virginia,” asked Owney, “did you take one of our famous baths? Very soothing.”

  “I ain’t letting no nigger scrub me with a steel-wool mitt while my hairdo melts and my toes wrinkle up like raisins,” Virginia said
.

  “Ah, I see. Well, yes, there is that,” Owney replied.

  Ben shot him a little look. It said, She’s in one of “those” moods.

  Owney nodded, cleared his throat, and directed his gaze back to Ben.

  “It’s a humming joint,” said Ben. “You really got something going here.”

  “So I do. It’s called the future.”

  Ben nodded; it was clear that Owney saw himself not merely as a professional but as some sort of elder wise man, with rare and keen insights. That’s why a lot of New York people regarded him as a yakker and didn’t miss his pontifications and fake Englishisms a bit. But Ben was curious and had his own ideas.

  “The future?”

  “Yes. Do you see it yet, Ben? Can you feel it? It’s like that Braque hanging in my apartment. You have to feel it. If you feel it, its meanings are profound.”

  Ben’s placid face invited Owney onward, and also suggested that Ben was stupid and needed educating, neither of which was true.

  “The future. Ben, the wire is dead. The war killed it. It accelerated communications exponentially, old man. We used to control the wire because we controlled the communications. We were organized. We could get the race and sports data around the country in a flash, and no other organization, including the U.S. government, was capable of competing. Information is power. Information is wealth. But the war comes along and finally the government understands how important information is to running a global enterprise, and finally they begin to fund research. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there’s no putting him back. The next few years will amaze you, Ben. This television? Huge. Person-to-person calling? Instantaneous, without operators or trunk stations. Super adding machines, to make the most arcane calculations the property of the common man. So our great advantage is gone, and with it the source of our wealth and power. We must change! Change or die! They couldn’t see that in New York, but believe me, it is coming. Great change. One must ride it, not fear it, but be able to play it, don’t you see?”

  Ben nodded sagely. Once in 1940 with the Countess he had stayed at Mussolini’s summer retreat and heard that bombastic baldy talk in a similar vein. The future! Tomorrow! Fundamental change!

  What did it get him, but an upside-down ride on a meat hook at the end of a piano wire after the gunners got done stitching him, and old lady peasants spitting on his fat carcass?

  “Yeah, yeah, I see,” said Ben innocently.

  “Ben, the future is in casinos. That is where the great wealth will come. A city of casinos, a city we own and operate. That is what I’m trying to build here, slowly and surely, with the long-term goal of making gambling—gaming, we’ll call it—legal in Arkansas. It’s like a license to mint money. People will come in the millions. They can wander the trails in the afternoons, eat food that’s cheap, see the shows—Perry Como and Bing Crosby are just a start—and that night enter a magic world and feel the thrill and the excitement that’s formerly been felt only by high rollers and aristocratic scoundrels. They’ll pay! They’ll pay dearly! Ultimately we will become just another American corporation, like Sinclair Oil or Motorola or RCA. Ultimately, we will be America!”

  “Talk, talk, talk!” said Virginia. “You chumps, a Chicago mechanic could clip you and you wouldn’t even see it coming. It ain’t going to change, Owney. Them old bastards, they got too much riding on the way they do things. They’ll kill you before they let you change the fucking rules, without batting an eyelash.”

  They were talking so furiously none of them noticed the black ’38 Ford with two glum detectives following them a few car lengths back.

  • • •

  The train lay like a fat yellow snake, huge and wide and imposing. Its diesel streamline seemed to yearn for a horizon, a plain to cross, a river to vault, a mountain to climb. The engine had a rocket ship’s sensible sleekness, and a small cab twenty feet off terra firma. It issued noises and mysterious grumblings and was attended by a fleet of worshipful keepers. Conductors and other factotums prowled the platform, examining documents, controlling the flow into and off the thing. The crowds rushed by.

  Amid them, but indifferent, and smoking gigantic cigars, the two lords stood in their magnificent clothes, waiting imperially. It would take time for the boys to get the luggage into the compartment and now Owney and Ben were contemplating history.

  “This is where that train was jacked, isn’t it?” asked Ben.

  “It is indeed, old man.”

  “Nineteen forty-one?”

  “Nineteen forty.”

  “What was the take?”

  “I believe over four hundred thousand in cash. The Alcoa payroll for the Hattie Fletcher bauxite pit. In Bauxite.”

  “In Bauxite?”

  “Yes, old man. They named the town after its only product, which is bauxite. The bauxite of Bauxite rules the world, that is, when applied to aluminum by some alchemical process I couldn’t possibly understand, and then built into lightweight ships, planes and guns. We won the war with aluminum. The miracle metal. The metal of the future.”

  “Damn, sure is a lot of the future here in Hot Springs! It was at this station?”

  “Not in the station, per se. It was the mail car, and the train was over in the freight docks. You can’t see it from here, but this is really a yard. There are several other tracks, controlled by the tower, and warehouses on the other side. You’ll see when you get aboard.”

  “The crew? They’ve never been caught?”

  “Never. They must have been out-of-towners. No local thief could operate at that level of perfection.”

  “I heard they were Detroit boys, usually work for the Purples. Some done some time with Johnny D back in the wild times. Good people with guns. I heard Johnny Spanish himself.”

  “I thought he was dead.”

  “Nobody will ever kill Johnny Spanish. He’s the best gun guy in America.”

  “Well, if you say so. I thought I was the best gun guy in America. I could tell you some fabulous adventures I had back in New York before the Great War!”

  Both men laughed. Ben took a mighty suck on his cigar, a very fine Havana, and looked around in the late-afternoon sunlight. It suddenly occurred to him: where was Virginia?

  “Where’s Virginia?” he asked, instantly coming alert from his torpor.

  “Why, she was here a second ago,” said Owney.

  “She was pesky this morning. She can get real pesky sometimes,” he said, soothing his panic as he eyed the crowd. At last he saw her. She had wandered down the platform to get a cigarette while the boys loaded the bags. But—who was she talking to? He could make out a figure, someone strange, someone he didn’t know, but hard to see through the crowds. But then the crowds parted magically, and he saw her companion. A tall, tough-looking gent in a blue suit with a fedora pulled low over his eyes and the look of command and experience to him. Ben smelled cop, and a split second later that little flare of rage fired off in his mind.

  “Goddamn her!” he exploded, his face white with fury, his temples pulsating, and he began to stride manfully toward his woman.

  • • •

  They spent the morning examining gambling joints from the hundreds in the town, from the smallest, dingiest sports books in the Negro areas out Malvern to some of the more prosaic slot halls on the west side out Ouachita to the elaborate Taj Mahals of Central Avenue. Any one of them could be the Central Book, but how would they know? None of the eight or so they eyeballed, entered, dropped a few bucks’ worth of quarters into, seemed remarkable in any way. Then they stopped at a Greek’s and had a couple of hamburgers and coffee.

  “Is this what cops do?” asked Earl. “They just drive around and look at stuff?”

  “Pretty much,” said D.A., taking a bite. “But when the shit happens, it happens fast. Just like in the war.”

  “Okay, Mr. Parker. I believe you.”

  “Earl, before this is all over, you’ll look back on these early days with some nostalgia. Thi
s is about as good as it gets.”

  Earl nodded, and went back to his burger.

  Finally, D.A. went off, dropped a nickel and made a call. He came back with a smile on his wrinkled, tanned prune of a face.

  “This snitch I got at the Arlington, one of the bellboys, he says Bugsy and the babe are moving out today and the boys are going upstairs to get their luggage and load it up for them. Let’s go to the hotel and see if we can’t pick ’em up.”

  Earl threw down his cup of coffee, left some change at the counter and the two of them went out and got in the Ford.

  When they got to the Arlington and parked above it on Central, with the grand entrance in easy view, it didn’t take long to pick up the caravan. The limo, which looked like it was thirty feet long, led the way out of the hotel’s grand entrance. It was followed by a pickup, full of luggage and black men. And behind that, a third car, a Dodge, where six of Owney’s minor gunmen and gofers—they were all from a hillbilly family called Grumley—sat dully, pretending to provide security.

  From a few car lengths back, Earl and D.A. followed, taking it nice and easy, and kept contact as the folks in the big limo talked on and on. Earl could see that Bugsy and Owney did most of the chatting. The woman just looked out the window, her features frozen in place. The cavalcade made its way through the heavy traffic up Central, and a traffic cop overrode the light to let it pass, while D.A. and Earl cooled their heels behind the red. By the time they got to the station, the black men had the luggage off the truck and loaded onto a couple of hand carts and were hauling it toward the big yellow train.

  “Is that the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe?” asked Earl, as D.A. pulled into a space on Market Street.

  “No, Earl, that is not. That is the Missouri-Pacific 4:15 for St. Louis, the first step on the trip back to L.A. Now let’s get out and mosey over there and see what there is to see. Probably nothing, but for now I am sick of casing books in Niggertown.”

  “I roger that,” said Earl.

  The two split up, and drifted through the gathering crowd as the time of departure approached. Earl lit a cigarette, found a pillar to lean against far down the platform and commenced to smoke and watch. In time, he spotted the two gangsters talking animatedly near the station house, each smoking a gigantic cigar. The two fellows seemed to be having a good enough time. Other than that, nothing much was happening, though more and more people were boarding the train and the conductors seemed a little more frenzied. He glanced at his Hamilton, saw that it was just about 4:00 P.M. The all-aboard would come very soon. His leg hurt a little, as did his left wrist. He flexed his left hand, opening and shutting it, and shifted his weight, trying to keep his mind off of it. He wasn’t used to wearing a tie all day, either, and it was getting on his nerves, but he wasn’t about to loosen his, even in this heat, until D.A. did the same. He was thinking about a nice hot shower back in his cabin at the Best Tourist Court.