Hot Springs (Earl Swagger)

by Stephen Hunter

  Johnny obeyed.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay, I’m going to try a few of these switches and you keep looking and—”

  “My God and sweet Lord,” said Johnny. “The blasted thing’s glowing like a horror movie. Where’s Boris Karloff when you need him?”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “All green.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Hmmm,” said Johnny, concentrating. “Why, I see them paint cans you set up.”

  “Is there a crosshair?”

  “Indeed.”

  “See if you can hit anything.”

  “Hold your ears, boys.”

  Johnny loved to shoot and he shot well, as did his whole crew. He babied the carbine, locked it into his shoulder, his other arm braced on his knee, he steadied and waited and then popped off a shot. To his surprise, the carbine fired full automatic; a spray of five bullets launched themselves toward the target in the brief time that Johnny had his finger on the trigger. The burst was sewing-machine fast, a taptaptaptaptap that stunned everybody.

  “Yikes,” Vince said. “The fuckin’ thing’s a machine gun.”

  “It’s the M2 carbine,” said Herman. “It goes full auto. It’s supposed to fire that way. Did you hit anything?”

  Johnny looked through the scope again.

  “One of them cans is gone. By Jesus, I must have hit the bloody thing.”

  He fired four more bursts from the curved thirty-round magazine, and in the dark, even with the echo of the shots, they could hear the paint cans tossing and splashing and banging as the bullets tore through them.

  “Lights,” said Herman.

  The lights came on. Johnny had hit all four cans, and the paint, red, exploded out of them, spattering across the corrugated tin walls of the warehouse.

  Smoke floated in the air and faraway holes winked as they admitted outside light from the bullet punctures in the tin wall. The stench of burned gunpowder lingered. A red mist floated.

  “Looks like bloody Chicago on a St. Valentine’s morn,” said Johnny.

  • • •

  Much fiddling and experimentation remained. Eventually, Johnny and Herman got the scope zeroed to the point of impact: the infrared lamp had a range of about one hundred yards, but at that range Johnny could put four shots into a target in a second, because his trigger control was so superb and the heaviness of the weapons system dampened the already light recoil of the carbine.

  “They got a lot to work on with this thing,” said Herman, his brilliance ever practical. “Needs to be lighter, tougher, stronger, with a longer range. They’ve got to mount it on something more powerful than a puny little carbine. They get it all jiggered up right, goddamn, they are going to have a piece of work!”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t wait till they get around to that. We go with what we got.”

  “Johnny, I’m just saying that—”

  “Yah, ya big Kraut, you’re thinking of them good old days mowing down people with your BAR in the trenches.”

  “Actually, it was a piece of shit called a Chauchat. Finally we got the BARs but not until—”

  “Herman, concentrate, you bloody genius, on the night’s work. Tomorrow we’ll have a nice good visit with them wonderful old days in the AEF, all righty?”

  The five men gathered around a plan of the railyard that Owney Maddox had supplied. It helped that they’d worked the same yard exactly six years earlier, although Jack and Vince weren’t on the crew then. Quickly enough they came up with a sound plan, based on Johnny’s cunning and Herman’s sense of infantry tactics.

  “We want them in a bunch,” said Herman. “We want this over as fast as possible. It can’t be a hunt, you know, a goddamn man-on-man running gunfight through the railyard. Get ’em into the zone, let Johnny hose ’em down, move in, mop up, dump a bunch of carbine brass and a few guns, and get the hell out of there. Get our money, go back to Miami.”

  “Owney’ll be there too,” said Johnny. “He wants to celebrate the finish.”

  “Damn, Johnny, that’ll slow us down,” said Herman.

  “But you see, Herman, you smart fella, in this town, Owney owns the coppers. That means they ain’t going to be responding to calls from people who hear the gunshots until we’re out of harm’s way. All right?”

  Yes. It was all right.

  • • •

  Johnny Spanish’s crew rallied at the deserted railyard canteen at about 10:00 P.M., under cover of dark. They looked like a commando unit, with faces blackened, in blue jeans and dark shirts and watch caps pulled low. They checked the weapons a last time, made sure all magazines were loaded and locked and that they had plenty of quick reloads. Vince had secured one of the larger old one-hundred-round drums for his Thompson 1928 from the Grumleys, who had plenty of drums but no more guns, and was busily cranking the spring—not easy—and inserting rounds to get the thing topped off. Herman and Johnny double-checked the infrared apparatus.

  At 10:15, a scuffling announced the arrival of another player, and it was Owney himself, accompanied by his new Best Friend, Frenchy Short. Owney had no long gun, but carried a Luger in a shoulder rig.

  “How do you know they’ll come from west to east,” said Owney. “Maybe they’ll set up on the east side of town and come through from that way.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Johnny. “Know why?”

  “No.”

  “The dogs.”

  “The dogs?”

  “All them black families live close up to the track over in the east side nigger section. They all got dogs, and them dogs set up such a racket when they’re annoyed. Parker and Swagger are smart boys. They’ll know that. They’ll come like red Indians, from the west, I tell you. He’ll read the land, Swagger will, and he’ll see where our government train will have to be and he’ll move from west to east, across the gap in the tracks, and that’s where we’ll hit him. Oh, it’ll be a pretty thing. Caught a Brit squad in the open just like this, I did, yes sir, 1924, with me Lewis gun, and you should have seen them feathers fly that night!”

  “Yeah, right,” said Owney.

  “Owney, lad, I’ll want you on the flatcar with us. But you stay put once the fun starts, as I don’t want to lose track of you and put a hot one between your beauty eyes. What a terrible pity that would be.”

  “That’s encouraging,” said Owney, “coming from an Irishman.”

  “You got any last comments, Judas Junior,” Johnny Spanish asked Frenchy.

  “The truth is, you should hit Earl first. If Earl goes down, the rest will lose their will to fight. He is the spirit of that unit. Without him, they’re just Boy Scouts.”

  “Odd, but I think I understood that already,” said Johnny.

  A last watch check: It was now 11:00. The Grumleys had obediently set a bridge afire in Traskwood and the train—it was actually leased, at Owney’s insistence, by his great customer, Jax Brewing, of New Orleans, Louisiana—would pull into the railyard around 1:00. Presumably at that time, Earl and his boys would move from their secret quarters and into the railyard, wait for the suggestion of mayhem, and then spring, only to realize in their last horror that they had been sprung.

  “Think we’d better be goin’, fellas. Good hunting to the lot of you; meet you back here at three and it’s champagne for everybody, on his lordship Maddox.”

  But as Johnny prepared to lead his team out and Owney was consumed in some drama of his own, Frenchy took a moment to speak to the Irish chieftain.

  “Yes, lad?”

  “Earl? He’s—he’s actually a—”

  “I know, boy. He’s a hero. He’s the father you never had. Could I cut him some slack? Could I take him in the legs, say? Could I just put him out of action? I’ve seen the lovesickness in your eyes, boy. But the answer is no, can’t do it. As you say, he’s the best. Kill the head, the body dies. He has to go first. I’ll make it clean. A shame, in another life Earl and Johnny could be the best o’ friends, and repair to a pu
b every night to talk over the gunfights of yore. But no, sonny: he goes first.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”

  “Look at it this way,” said Johnny. “Bugsy Siegel has sworn to kill this fine fella. He even sent his girlfriend out just to get the name. Bugsy’s still mad. If we don’t do it cleanly, Bugs might do it messily. That would be too sad an ending for a hero, eh? At least tonight he goes out like the man he is, a braveheart till the end, no?”

  46

  The word came around 5:00; exactly as had been predicted, a bridge had caught fire up near Traskwood, and the St. Louis & Iron Mountain line was shut down until the fire could be put out and the bridge reinforced. All freights were to be diverted over to the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific lines, which went east and west; a few would be shifted to the Hot Springs railyard.

  “That’s it,” said D.A., getting the news from a messenger sent out by Fred Becker. “We go, then. It’s all set. I’d get myself ready now. Becker says that northbound train won’t be in until well after midnight, but I want us on site and ready to move well before then.”

  The men nodded and mumbled; most were glad to be moving out and into the last phase, since the chicken farm, such a joke in the abstract, proved to be a hot, dirty, dusty old place that smelled of hardened chickenshit anyhow, and they were anxious to move onward. Even Carlo Henderson, who’d just showed up that afternoon and hadn’t had time to settle in yet, appeared ready to go and didn’t need any rest from his journey back.

  • • •

  The teams drove in by different routes, and assembled just west of the railyard and station, on Prospect, behind a grocery store. There was less a need for secrecy this time, because, absent the Thompson submachine guns and the BARs, they were just men in suits with hats, completely nondescript in a town filled with men dressed exactly alike.

  Earl checked his Hamilton, saw that it was nearly midnight. They were about a half mile south of fabulous Central, where the clubs and casinos were blazing up the night, so over here it wasn’t nearly so busy.

  “All right,” Earl said. “I want you going out in skirmish teams, two men apiece. Don’t go in a mob. Couple teams move on down the block. Don’t get caught in the light of the station. Spend a few minutes in the dark and get your night eyes. Go into the yard and about halfway across it there’s a little hollow and some open space, under the electric power wires. There’s a switching house there, just a little shed, and set there somewhere. That’s where we’ll rally. We’ll hunker up there and wait till the train arrives.”

  “Earl, suppose they gun the guards?”

  “I know if we attack ’em while they’ve got the guns on the guards they will kill those boys. If we attack ’em before, we got no case and we stop the robbery, but we want a case. So we have to trust they go in and get out fast, and that’s when we go. All set?”

  They all mumbled assent.

  “Anything to say, Mr. Parker?”

  D.A., who usually wasn’t with them at this point, said only, “You boys listen to Mr. Earl. He’s right on this one. I’ll be with you the whole way.”

  “Sure wish I had my tommy gun,” Slim said.

  “Hell, you couldn’t hit nothing with it nohow,” someone else said, to some laughter.

  “Okay, fellas. Good hunting and be careful. Don’t get yourself hurt. Everybody goes home.”

  They broke down by teams and one by one the teams departed, until only Earl and D.A. were left.

  “Well, Earl, you all set?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Earl, this will work fine. I swear to you.”

  “I trust you, Mr. Parker.”

  “Now, Earl, trust me on one last thing.”

  “Yes sir?”

  “When we get to that switching house, and when we get an indicator that there’s a robbery going on, I will move out with the boys. I want you and Carlo to stay in the switching house.”

  “What?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  “What the hell is—”

  “Now you listen, Earl. This is going to happen one of two ways. It’s going to happen easy or hard. If it happens easy, it’s just going to be a matter of ‘Stick ’em up, you bastards.’ Now if it goes hard, it could be a sticky mess. Then I want you coming in where you can help out the most. You’re the only one here with that kind of savvy. And that Henderson kid, he’s a rock-solid hand too. So that’s what I want you two boys doing.”

  “Mr. Parker, the boys are used to seeing me up front.”

  “The boys will be fine, Earl. You have trained the boys well.”

  “You’re just trying to—”

  “Earl, this is the way I have figured it out. This is the way I want to do it.”

  But Earl was worried. He knew the fight would be what it wanted to be, not what D.A. wanted it to be.

  • • •

  Now Frenchy had no place to go. It’s the waiting that got to him. Best thing would be to find a whorehouse, get drunk and laid, and wake up tomorrow morning to see how it had gone.

  But that wouldn’t work. Tomorrow, early, he’d take the bus to Little Rock and from there a plane on to Washington, D.C. The day after, he would go to a well-appointed law firm on K Street where a senior partner named David Wilson Llewelyn would interview him, strictly as a formality. David Llewelyn had served in the OSS during the war and was a close personal friend of a man named Allen Dulles, who had run OSS. He was also a close personal friend of a man called Charles Luciano, recently deported, but a gangster who had made certain the docks ran well in New York during the war. Llewelyn owed Charlie Lucky a favor, particularly when Llewelyn couldn’t get the deportation canceled. And Charlie Lucky owed Owney Maddox a favor, for some obscure service years back. Frenchy would be the favor, a prize in a transaction that would satisfy the honor of three important and powerful men, none of whom really gave a shit about Walter H. formerly “Shorty” and now “Frenchy” Short of Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

  He felt utterly desolate. He sat in the bar of a place just down from the bus station, a honky-tonk full of smoke and mending GIs on outpatient status from the Army and Navy Hospital, amid girls of somewhat dubious morality and hygiene. He nursed a bourbon, and tried not to see himself in the mirror across the bar. But there he was: a handsome young man in a spattered mirror, very prep-looking, as if he’d just stepped off the Choate campus. Looked younger than his age. Who’d look at such a mild, innocent kid and guess what grew in there? Who knew he had such dark talents, such a twisty, deviant mind, such raw guts, and such a total commitment to himself above all things? You could look at a thousand such boys and never pick him as the one like that.

  Frenchy was busy doing something his training would teach him was utterly pointless. He was justifying.

  It’s not my fault, he was saying to himself. They betrayed me. They did it to me first. They should have fought harder for me. Goddamn that Earl, goddamn him to hell: he knew how good I was and he knew it wasn’t my fault I stumbled in the middle of a gunfight and after all I was the one who made everybody look good when I got those two bank robbers who I know were trying to move on me and would have killed me and maybe the whole raid team if I hadn’t’ve stopped them.

  His was the gift of self-conviction. In a little while he had reconstructed the past. This new version was much better. In it, he was the secret hero of the team. All the fellas looked up to him. He led all the raids. He got the two bank robbers. But Earl and D.A. were jealous of his success, of his natural heroic style and his cunning and nerve. After all, he had found the Central Book. So they had to defeat him, destroy him, ruin his chances. The old and the corrupt always tried to destroy the fresh, the energetic, the talented. It happened all the time. It wasn’t his fault.

  The more he thought about it, the better he felt.

  • • •

  “Anything?” whispered Owney.

  He crouched next to Johnny on the flatcar, and crouched behind them, guarding the
delicate umbilical between the carbine and the light source, was Ding-Dong.

  “I think they’re there. I heard something. But I can’t see anything yet,” Johnny responded.

  The only sound was the odd tinkle of running water, as if someone somewhere had left a faucet running. The smell of kerosene, oil and coal filled the air, making it unpleasant to breathe. Odd noises came: the scuttling of rats or possibly hoboes, the movement of yard bulls on their rounds, the clanks as brakemen greased up the journal boxes over the axles. But here, in the center of the yard, it was surprisingly clear: the coaling and watering docks were farther out, on the outskirts.

  Johnny Spanish watched through the green glow of the infrared scope. It was strange. The world had been turned inside out, almost like a photographic negative. Light was dark and dark was light, with a crosshair superimposed.

  He could see the switching shed, but there was no indication that anything was happening. Because he was looking into a lamp beam, the problem of shadow—though it was green, not black—was disconcerting. He wondered if he should have done more work on the scope, getting a better sense of what was going on in the glowing puzzle that was his night vision through the eyepiece. Could men move into his firing range and he not identify them as men?

  No, not really. He could, after all, make out the shape and size of the switching house, could see the little dip behind it, could see the hard steel struts of the power wire pylons. There was no background, because the power of the lamp didn’t penetrate that far. He couldn’t see what wasn’t illuminated, which gave the universe a completely foreshortened perspective, as if the world were but 150 yards deep or so.

  “Do you see—”

  “Shut up, goddammit! Shut up and be still!” he commanded Owney, who was shaky.

  Owney said nothing.

  Then, far off, they heard the sound of a train approaching.

  “It’s time,” Johnny whispered softly.

  “Ding-dong,” said Ding-Dong Bell. “The party’s about to start.”

  47

  Crouched in the dark behind the switching shed, they watched as the train pulled into the yard. It looked like any other train, leaking steam, hissing, groaning, like some kind of large, complex animal. When it finally came to rest, it clanked, snapped, shivered and issued steam from a variety of orifices. A lot of the boxcars said JAX BEER but that meant nothing; trains were thrown together out of all kinds of cars, everybody knew.