Hot Springs (Earl Swagger)

by Stephen Hunter

  They beckoned the raiders over, and briefly went over the plan.

  Earl finally said, “You, Henderson and Short, you’ll be the cover team.”

  He could feel Frenchy’s eagerness seem to melt in the dark.

  “Want you to slip up and jimmy the kitchen door with a crowbar or something, so nobody can get out. If somebody does get out, he’s wanting to get out bad, so you cuff him and cover him closely. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” said Henderson.

  “Remember, be cool, calm, collected. Y’all been doing good. I’ll go in after the entry team, but you be listening to Slim, he’s the boss. I’m just along for support.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The unit moved around the racetrack single file. They could see the Belmont twinkling through the trees and hear the jazz streaming out of it, almost with a clink of cocktail glasses and the late-night odor of cigarettes to it.

  “We’ll go through the trees up high, on the ridge; then we’ll file down and around the building. The entry team will go around front. There’s people out there, so you have to control them right away.”

  But Earl drew D.A. aside.

  “That ridge is a little steep,” he whispered. “With these vests and the Thompsons, coming down in the dark could be tricky. Somebody could fall, we could get an accidental discharge. See, I’d keep ’em down here and just slip behind the line of sight from the front here on the right. Rally at the corner. Send the teams around, set up, and move fast, real fast.”

  D.A. looked at him for just a second, and a peculiar light came into his eyes, invisible in the night.

  How does he know? he thought.

  But then he saw the wisdom in Earl’s counsel.

  “Yeah, that’s good, Earl.”

  Earl told the team of the new plan.

  “You’re on safety now. Team leaders, when you get there at the rallying point, you remember to tell your tommy-gunners to go off safety. If they have to shoot, something better come out when they pull the triggers besides cussing. Got that?”

  Whispers came in assent.

  “Henderson, you got that crowbar?”

  “No sir,” said Henderson, “but I do have a length of chain and a padlock.”

  “Good. You all straight?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You’re also in support. If it gets wild, your job is to come in through the back. Got that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Short, you got that?”

  No answer.

  “Short!”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m all set.”

  “Okay,” said Earl. “Let’s do it.”

  Frenchy and Carlo separated from the congregation of raiders. They slithered around the back of the plantation house, keeping low, under the view from the windows. They scuttled alongside the foundation, at last coming to the kitchen door. It was closed already, but the windows on either side were open, and a steamy light and a sense of urgent bustle poured out of each. They could hear Negro men talking among themselves.

  Henderson slipped forward, looped the chain around the door handle, pulled it tight, looped it against the doorjamb, and clamped the lock shut. It would hold tight enough to prevent an exit, unless somebody really leaned into it.

  The two men crept out to the perimeter of trees and set up in a defensive position about thirty yards in back of the house.

  “You better give me the Thompson,” said Carlo.

  “Not a chance,” said Frenchy. “You’re fine.”

  “I can’t hit anything at this range with a .45.”

  “Yeah, well, I have the Thompson and I’m keeping it. Get that straight right now. We wouldn’t be in shit squad if you hadn’t screwed up. So you don’t deserve the Thompson.”

  “I screwed up? You screwed up! You didn’t do a last check, or you would have found that hillbilly.”

  “I did do that last check. He wasn’t up there. That’s what you should have said to Earl, not this ‘I’m so sorry’ crap. If you act guilty, the facts don’t matter. You are guilty.”

  “You should have checked.”

  “I did check. So here we are, dumped out back so we don’t fuck up again.”

  “Somebody has to do this job.”

  “Nobody has to do this job. We all should be going in.”

  Frenchy was really getting steamed. Something about Earl really had him angry. Earl this, Earl that, God Earl, King Earl, Earl the leader of the pack! It was beginning to wear on him.

  “What’s so special about Earl?” he blurted.

  “Earl’s a hero and you’re lucky to be here to learn from him,” was all Carlo could think to say. “Now shut up and pay attention. We should be doing our jobs, not yakking about this stuff like old ladies.”

  • • •

  Of course Becker’s change in schedule had thrown the whole thing off. They weren’t in position until 10:10, and in the darkness it took about four minutes to get organized into the proper squads and fire team, all trying to do it silently while crouching in the bushes under the windows. Fortunately, there was no perimeter security, no patrolling guards, no dogs, for if there had been, surely the whispering, bickering raiders would have been easily spotted.

  Finally, with just thirty seconds to go, Earl got them straightened out, and the side-entry squad peeled off to beeline to the side door, which stood unguarded.

  Earl looked at his watch.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to go out and get the valets out of the way.”

  “You be careful,” Slim said.

  “You be careful,” Earl said. “You’re going in. I’m just going to roust some teenagers.”

  Earl stood, slipped out of his vest, which again would blow his cover, and rounded the corner.

  He walked up the walk where three kids about eighteen or so lounged smoking under a neon sign that announced VALET. They wore absurd costumes that he could tell from their posture they despised.

  “Hi, fellas,” he said.

  The boys looked up, caught short. Where the hell did this bird come from? But he was so chipper and bodacious the way he strode manfully up the flagstones to them.

  “Uh—” the oldest began.

  “See, fellas, I’m from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.” He pulled open his suit coat to show the badge pinned over his left breast. “Now we have something just about to happen here, and I don’t want none of you boys getting hurt, so why not just step aside a bit, and turn and face the wall, maybe rest your hands up agin it.”

  “Are we under arrest?”

  “Not unless you robbed a bank. Robbed any banks?”

  “No sir.”

  “Ain’t that swell.”

  “I better call Mr. Swenson,” said one of the boys, reaching for a phone mounted on the wall.

  Earl’s fast hands beat him to the destination. He grabbed the phone, and with a snap popped the cord that ran to the receiver. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said merrily. “Mr. Swenson’s going to find out we’re here soon enough, believe me.”

  Using the authority of his body language, he herded them along the front of the casino until they were a good twenty yards from their positions.

  “You wouldn’t have no guns, would you?”

  “No sir,” came a reply.

  “ ’Cause I don’t want to have to hurt nobody. You just rest up agin the building for a few minutes while this thing happens and everything will be just fine.”

  Earl turned a bit, and gave a whistle and watched as the raid began.

  • • •

  “There’s the signal. Safeties off. Let’s do it,” said Slim.

  He led his five men around the corner of the building to the front door. The door was open and a security officer, talking to a woman just inside the entrance, looked up in surprise. Terry, Slim’s number-two man, clubbed him with the compensator on the end of his Thompson muzzle, opening a vicious wound in the side of his face, and he went down. The woman screamed but the
raiders rushed past her like McNamara’s band and began to fan out into the casino, their guns much in evidence, their fedoras low over their eyes, their square vests like sandwich boards across their bodies.

  “Hands up! Hands up! This is a raid!”

  The side-door team hit its entry point with the same velocity and urgency. The doors didn’t need sledges but merely stout kicks. The men poured in and fanned out on the other side of the room. A team raced upstairs, clearing rooms, finding only gamblers and staff members, but no resistance.

  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 exactly 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 gentlemen,” 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 aw
ay. 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 Tulsa, 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.