Mugs Birdsong's Crime Academy

by Wheeler, Richard

  Mugs sure enjoyed the heartfelt endorsement. He got off on the wrong foot, didn’t know what to teach, finally let them teach themselves, and now they all were telling him he was the finest crook in all creation.

  He helped them pack, and escorted them to the railroad station, and shook hands as they caught passenger trains east and west. He saw them settle in their seats in the coaches, and pull out their diplomas to admire them. He thought he saw some moist eyes, but couldn’t be sure because the train windows were grimy. When all had left, Mugs had a tender moment of loss, already missing all those fine lawmen who had brightened his life.

  Mugs felt mighty happy. He’d turned a long course into a two-week one and no one demanded a refund. And word of mouth would fill the ranks of students for years to come. Indeed, some of them had left written endorsements for Mugs to use anytime he saw fit. He thought he’d take them over to Typhoid Mary and have her turn them into a sales brochure.

  The bills rolled in fast. It cost thirty-seven dollars to replace the windows in the orphanage. The Union Pacific sent him a bill for fifty-three dollars, which paid for repairing and repainting the damaged express car door. A mess of other bills floated in. The food service in the orphanage kitchen came to sixty; laundering sheets and cleaning twenty rooms in the orphanage came to fifty. Some minor repairs to woodwork at the bank came to thirty-one. The railroad sent a second bill, this one for coal used up in putting the train on the siding, but that was only eleven dollars. Typhoid Mary stuck him with half a dozen invoices for Wanted posters, brochures, and advertising, and that came to a hundred twenty-one. That wounded him. He thought he was repaying her handsomely, lover boy that he was.

  He laid this mess of bills and invoices on his table, and sighed. Then he headed for the bank, where J. J. Jones quickly informed him he had enough to cover all those expenses, with a few dollars to spare—if no more bills floated in. He had done all that work for just a few dollars. He’d gotten lots of compliments, but you can’t live on compliments, and now he was nearly broke again.

  He contemplated doing a quick stickup and returning to the pen, where he would be warmly welcomed. It was a temptation. Life was hard. Going straight was harder. A life of crime was the better choice for him, and now he seriously considered it. He thought he’d see what Typhoid Mary might think about it. He bared his heart to her when they lay side by side each night, though she kept her thoughts entirely to herself. Maybe he should kill her and take over the newspaper. Then he could print his own brochures and not get billed.

  The more he contemplated what to do, the more tempted he was to rob the bank. How could he go wrong? He had the run of the place. He could walk in and shake the paw of J. J. Jones himself. He knew the tellers by their first name. They’d all come to trust him and believe he was going straight, and was another fine howdy-do citizen.

  He decided to wait a bit; he didn’t need moolah. He was mooching off Typhoid Mary; his bills were paid; he didn’t have to hire lawyers to spring him from confinement. So he began planning his next session, noticing with delight that seven of the student lawmen had caught him and sent him up the river.

  There was Filibuster Smith of Santa Fe, who had caught him in a con, when he was trying to blackmail a wealthy Mexican widow out of ten grand. That had cost him fifteen months. There was Cyrus Maguire, the dreaded sheriff of Leadville, Colorado, who had caught him fleeing from a bank with over two hundred thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties. That had cost him three to five, and he served almost five. There was Amos Tork, chief of police of Las Vegas, New Mexico, who nabbed him in the middle of a stickup of a rich lawyer. That cost eleven months.

  There was also Muttonchop Ames, the deputy sheriff at Silver City, New Mexico, who caught him trying to liberate half a million dollars of silver bullion in a commandeered train. That cost four months, because the judge had been paid off. There were three others, Bailey Bain, Dodge City’s beat policeman who had collared him. Joe Studebaker, undersheriff of Tucson, and Marley Drake, the worst of all, who caught him with a smoking gun in hand after he had killed his business partner, Deadeye Dick Dole.

  It sure was a bonanza. All these men arriving together, his nemeses, the very ones who had defeated him in his lifelong quest to succeed. Maybe, with luck, he could do something about all that.

  Chapter Six

  Mugs was restless. The next class wasn’t due for a while. His Wanted Dead or Alive posters were floating around the country, improving his notoriety. He had become a local hero in Rock Springs, where his academy was improving the economy.

  But it was all a yawn. Whenever he got bored, he looked for something to steal. The trouble was, he had stolen almost everything, so it was no longer a mental challenge. If you’ve done it all, what is there to aspire to?

  He considered knocking off a bank or two, or going after an express car on the Union Pacific, or swindling someone out of a gold mine. One idea appealed to him, which was stealing from mobsters. He’d let them do the dealing, and then take it all away. But that bored him too; he’d done that, along with everything else he could conjure up.

  He was really growing desperate in Rock Springs; maybe he should close the academy and head for southern California, and steal from actors. Maybe he should just arrange to get caught at something, and get sent up for a while, so he wouldn’t have to worry about his retirement. He had no pension, but the state penitentiary would handle all that.

  Then he realized there was something after all that he had never stolen. He had never stolen another man’s wife. The more he pondered that, the more entertaining was the prospect. One could not be the Complete Criminal without some wife-stealing.

  He decided to try some serious wife-swiping, but he needed to define the terms. What was wife-stealing? And was there a big prize, or were all wife-thefts the same? Was wife-stealing simply bedding someone’s wife, or was it winning the lady’s affections? Did divorce matter? Was stealing a beautiful, desirable, celebrated wife worth more in the scale of things than stealing someone’s little woman?

  He toyed with all this, and gradually came to some conclusions. Since he was the most notorious criminal in the country, he had to do a spectacular theft. No rinky-dink theft would do. He would need to steal someone socially prominent, someone celebrated for her talent and beauty, someone attached to someone powerful and important, and the theft would need to be complete. He’d have to walk away with the lady.

  The whole idea enchanted him. If he was already a notorious thief, imagine what stealing such a woman would do for him. Stealing three or four would help, but if he stole fifty, he would garner some real fame and not be just an also-ran. He would go down in history. He would be known, not only in the republic, but abroad. They would whisper about him in London. He would outstrip the most daring cads in Paris. He would make the Italians look impotent, and the Spanish look neutered. He would make that Bolivian, Porfirio Fuentes, look like an amateur.

  The whole idea fermented and boiled and steamed in his head, absorbing him so much he forgot he was in Rock Springs, Wyoming, awaiting the arrival of the next class in a couple of weeks.

  Rock Springs hardly seemed the place to start, and he thought to hop a freight train for Salt Lake, where he might find all manner of women, but he finally settled on Rock Springs for experimental purposes. It would be a training ground, that would prepare him for some serious wife-stealing in New York or New Orleans.

  But where to start? He began casing the town. It was largely male. Such women that he found on the streets were married to railroad workers or miners, and half of them were expecting a third or fourth child. Plainly, that could get sticky. Having made the conquest, he would need to get rid of her and go on to the next. That meant finding someone a little older, perhaps. There were things here he knew nothing about, having enjoyed the hospitality of penitentiaries most of his adult life.

  He thought about the wives of successful merchants, and eyed their houses and glimpsed them in their neighborhood
s, but that led nowhere. He tried the saloons, but found no likely prospect there. He could manage a liaison with all sorts of women, but stealing one from a prominent husband was something else, and he was on new turf. The world’s greatest crook was a rank amateur in the realm of wife-nipping.

  But then good fortune struck. He was palling around with his friend J. J. Jones at the bank one day when Jones’s wife walked in. She was a fine, slim forty, with wide-set innocent eyes, well-manicured hands, silky brown hair that had recently been combed, and a swift smile.

  “Ah, my dear, meet my friend Mugs Birdsong,” J. J. Jones said, when she stepped into his office. “Mugs, meet my wife, Jill Jane Jones, also known as J. J.”

  “Two double J’s in one family. It’s unheard of,” Mugs said.

  “That’s why we married,” the banker said. “If you want J. J. Jones, you get two for one.”

  The wifely one accepted Mugs’s slightly unclean paw, shook it, and smiled dubiously.

  “Madam, you are a wonder, and the shining light of Rock Springs,” Mugs said, being as gallant as he could manage.

  “Coming from a famous badman, I treasure your sentiment,” she said.

  “Yes, the word of an international crook carries more weight than a run-of-the-mill one,” Mugs said.

  “I didn’t know you were an international crook,” she said.

  “There are Wanted Dead or Alive posters all about me in Canada and Mexico, and at least two in England, and one in Japan,” he said. “Plus the French are about to add me to their list of arch-criminals.”

  “You must feel proud. We’re so lucky to have you in little old Rock Springs,” she said.

  “It was the empty orphanage, ma’am. I saw my chance in it.”

  “Well, do stop in for tea some afternoon,” she said.

  “Keep an eye on your silver,” he replied. “And count the spoons after I leave.”

  She laughed merrily, and so did the banker.

  “You’re a true rascal,” Jones said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Mugs replied. “There’s nothing I won’t swipe.”

  Jones laughed heartily.

  “Well, dear, I’ll leave you two men to your bookkeeping,” she said, and turned to leave. But she paused before Mugs and patted his unshaven cheek. “It’s like having a tiger on the loose,” she said. “Name your price, Mugs, and the town’ll pay it.”

  Then she was gone. Mugs was dazed. There she was, the premium property in Rock Springs, and he had an invitation to stop by for tea. He could begin his pilferage at once, and complete it before the next class arrived at the academy.

  He worried about tea. He could not remember what tea tasted like. Tea was for people as unlike himself as people get. Would it make him fart? He resolved to sip it gingerly at first, until he got the hang of tea drinking and was certain it was safe.

  Mugs headed for Typhoid Mary’s, poured some water from the pitcher into the porcelain washbasin, and began scrubbing his hands. He found a bar of soap, lathered his hands, and rinsed them in the basin. The water was gray. He pitched that out the window, poured some more, and did it again, and this time the water was not so stained. But his fingernails were still black, and he didn’t know how to clean them. He found a nail file among Typhoid’s possessions, and used it as a pickaxe to pry the grime out from under his fingernails. He persisted until the nails were as clean as his hands, and then he washed all over again and threw the water out.

  He debated whether to wash the rest of him, but decided against it. He didn’t want to be too much of a dandy. Let her discover a he-man under his britches if it came to that. He couldn’t remember an entire bath, toes to nose, since leaving the pen, and he didn’t want to start anything new. He did, however, find a brush and took after his clothing, scraping away caked food and things beyond identification, and he scrubbed at an oily spot on his brown shirt, with little effect. And then he brushed his fedora, sweeping away a lot of grit and grime, and then he presented himself to a mirror at Typhoid’s, found himself satisfactory for wooing purposes, and headed into a bright day. He knew exactly where the Jones house was; he had cased it several times, thinking to knock it over some day. It wasn’t pretentious; nothing in Rock Springs, Wyoming, displayed any extravagance. But it was a solid, comfortable house befitting a rural banker, with a fine veranda, and windows that looked out upon the sere hills and bleak cliffs of the area.

  She was a little surprised to see him, but she smiled.

  “That was fast,” she said. “Tea for two, right?”

  “Does tea make you fart?” he asked.

  She paused, smiled, and offered a reply. “Like an old mare,” she said.

  While she heated the tea on her coal stove, Mugs cased the place, seeing what could be lifted easily. There was some fancy art, but he didn’t know good art from bad, so he ignored it. Still, he wouldn’t mind copping the oil portrait of Jane Jill, or was it Jill Jane. It didn’t matter when all he needed was to call her J. J. Same with some Wedgwood stuff. It was worth something but he didn’t know how to fence it in Rock Springs. Some oriental rugs were scattered around, but those would be tough to haul away and sell.

  Pretty soon she brought a tray, the tea in a floral pot he thought might be Chinese and worth pinching. She poured, offered him sugar, which he turned down, wanting to taste tea unadulterated.

  He burned his lips a little, and then got some in and swilled it around to clean his teeth, and then downed it. He evaluated it a moment, and saw her gazing, curiosity on her face.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Cat piss,” he said.

  “You’re an original, Mugs.”

  “You want to get laid?” he asked.

  She set down her tea cup and stared, and then smiled.

  “I knew there was something about you I’d like,” she said.

  “Yeah, well I don’t beat around the bush,” he said, trying another sip. He decided it needed some sugar, so poured a few spoonfuls in, stirred, and sipped again. “That’s better,” he said. “I don’t like licorice, and I was gonna add tea to the list, but with some sugar things get better.”

  They sat in utter silence, each going through tea-sipping rituals, watching motes dance in the sunlight.

  “Yeah, well, it’s my reputation I’m worried about,” he said. “You know who’s got the biggest rep of all? Billy the Kid? Nah, it’s me. Mugs Birdsong. Can you think of anyone comes close? Nah, not anyone alive or dead. I’ve done it all. You looking for a stagecoach bandit? Look no further. Train robber? I’ve stopped express trains and made off with gold bullion. You want a killer? You’d faint if I told you how many I’d killed. You want a pickpocket? Purse snatcher? Man, you should see me at work. I’m so smooth they don’t know they’ve been hit for hours.”

  He was warning up to his favorite topic, himself, and she was rapt. All this tea stuff, it’d be just fine.

  “Hey, assault. I’ve left a dozen women weeping. I’ve put fifty men in hospitals. I’ve cut the balls of a dozen. I’ve brained babies. I’ve robbed my best friends. I’ve butchered and eaten little girls.”

  She was smiling. Smiling and sipping.

  “But you know, baby, there’s one thing didn’t get done, and I can’t make the grade to all time world-famous master criminal until I do it.”

  She stared.

  “I’ve never stolen another man’s wife, and I’ve decided you’re it.”

  She smiled slightly.

  “Yeah, babe, you’re the first. I’m gonna steal you and then a few dozen more, the richer and prettier the better. I’m gonna steal wives from now until I croak.”

  “Not today, but I’ll think about it,” she said. “Mugs, you’re a card.”

  Chapter Seven

  Mugs liked the bank robbery part of his crime school and decided to keep it. Everyone had fun. It was a fine way for lawmen to get to know one another. They laughed, and talked about it for the rest of the session. So he told the banker, J. J. Jones,
that he was going to do it again on the first or second day of the next session.

  “Be sure and lock up the real stuff in your vault, J. J. I don’t want any accidents.”

  “That sure was fun, Mugs. I’m not worried, because it’s lawmen doing it. But we’ll take precautions. Let me know the hour.”

  “They’ll be toasting you,” Mugs said.

  “I’ll load the old Navy,” said J. J. “Those wads sting when they hit someone, and that’s half the fun of it.”

  Mugs promised to keep J. J. Jones posted, along with the tellers, and town people. It looked like the bank robbery was going to become a ritual opening celebration for each class. The hardware people were delighted to sell a lot of blank cartridges, so there’d be lots of noise. The whole town of Rock Springs could hardly wait for the next heist.

  Mugs decided there wasn’t enough fake money to satisfy the lawmen, so he corralled Typhoid, who ran a job printing operation as well as the Tattler.

  “I want a mess of fake money: fins, sawbucks, century notes, you name it. And on some good, tough paper so it lasts,” Mugs said.

  “Anything for old loverboy,” she said, leering at him. “Just return the favor— if you’re capable.”

  She sure was mean, he thought.

  She set to work, and pretty soon had a pile of greenbacks, in all denominations, all neatly cut with her paper cutter, and stacked and counted. This stuff was much better than the first stuff, but it was still plainly toy money, and even said Fake where the president was supposed to be in the middle of each bill. But now there’d be a mess of greenbacks in the tills when the lawmen pulled off the heist.

  Mugs took a pile of it over to J. J. The banker admired the greenbacks, and smiled.

  “This’ll make it more fun,” he said. “I’ll fill the cash trays with it at each cage, and we’ll be ready.”

  “Just be sure you lock up the real stuff,” Mugs said. “Every last dime.”

  “That’s a promise, Mugs.”