I lowered the menu and smiled big. How’s the caviar in this place, I said.
Well now, she said, look at you.
I said I happened to be in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop in for a bite before taking in a movie. She asked what I was going to see and I said there was a Chaplin playing a few blocks away. Say, I said—as if the idea had just come to me—would she like to go to the flicker with me when she got off work?
She gave me a strange look, then said no, which I never expected. And which surprised me with how much it irked. Then she smiled and for a second I thought she’d seen the disappointment on my face, but she said what she’d really like to do was go to the carnival over at the river fairgrounds. She guessed I wasn’t really dressed for a carnival, though, in my nice suit and all.
I told her my clothes were no problem. What time did she get off work. I said I’d already asked Earl if he minded if I took her out and he said no.
She said it was a good thing Earl didn’t mind, because even though he was her big brother and she liked him a lot he wasn’t her keeper and did not tell her what she could and could not do. She gave me that funny look again and said How old are you, anyway? You never said.
Twenty-one, I said—that too risky for you?
She laughed and said Oh brother, you really think I’m a sap for a dare?
Actually, I said, Earl told me your momma might not like the idea of you going out with an older guy.
Actually, she said, she wouldn’t.
I said it seemed to me that anybody who worked at a grown-up job and was helping to support her family like she was doing was entitled to make her own decisions.
She said men were always encouraging girls to make their own decisions as long as the decision might involve taking off clothes.
Nice talk, I said. What kind of a guy you take me for?
She waggled her brow and said she wasn’t sure. Then said there was no need to worry about her mother because she was working nights at the tire factory and didn’t have to know about me. As for her little sister Margo, the girl was devoted to her and knew how to keep her mouth shut.
And so, when she got off work an hour later, we went to the carnival.
I hadn’t realized how short she was until we were walking out to the car—the top of her head didn’t reach my shoulder. It was a cool clear night, perfect for being outdoors. She was crazy for the rides, the wilder the better. She claimed she’d been on scarier roller coasters than this one, but she was pleased with the Whip, which had arms that bobbed up and down even as they swung round and round and the seats at the end of them spun constantly. Her favorite was the Bullet, which looked like two rocket ships, one at either end of a long whirling arm that first wheeled in one direction and then in the other, while the rocket you were belted into spun like a top. The first time we went on the Bullet all the change fell out of my pockets and went pinging all over the rocket. It was all I could do to keep from heaving up my supper, but she loved every minute of it, ya-hooing and laughing and clutching tight to my arm. Her stomach was a bottomless cast-iron wonder. I didn’t see how somebody so small could eat so much. She put away a spool of cotton candy and a bag of popcorn, a foot-long hot dog with the works, a candied apple as big as a softball—and never showed a sign of queasiness, not even after our third ride on the Bullet. I was feeling green around the gills by then and close to losing my supper. She must’ve noticed and taken pity on me because when I asked if she wanted to go on the Bullet again she said no, she’d had enough of whirling upside down. I was silently thankful when she suggested the Ferris wheel. We gently rode it round and round, rising high above the blaze of fairway lights and seeing way off into the shadowy countryside under the pale bright moon. I held her close and she snuggled against me and we were at the very top of the turn when the wheel made its first stop to begin letting off passengers. She said This is really nice, and put her hand to my face and kissed me. In a minute we got our tongues into it. When I put my hand on her breast she put her hand over mine and held it there. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere and I felt her nipple stiffen under my thumb. I figured I had a sure thing and couldn’t wait for us to get back to the car.
The Buick was parked at the edge of the lot, in the shadows of the trees. As soon as we were inside it I drew her to me and kissed her again. She helped me unbutton her blouse. There was enough light from the fairgrounds for me to see the freckles on her breasts like a sprinkling of cinnamon. I put my mouth to her nipple and she made a sound like a cat purr. She didn’t object when I ran my hand under her skirt and stroked her legs and bottom. But when I tried to lay her down on the seat she pushed me away and said Whoa there, mister.
She said she was a virgin and intended to stay that way until her wedding night. I said she could’ve fooled me. She said she wasn’t trying to fool anybody but she meant what she said about waiting.
Well hell, I said.
She snugged up to me again and kissed me and put my hand inside her blouse. Don’t you like what we’re doing, she said. Don’t you think it’s fun?
Sure, I said, it’s just…well….
Oh, she said. She slid her hand up my thigh and closed it around the erection bulging in my pants. My breath hissed through my teeth. I could see her grinning in the dim light.
She unbuttoned my fly. Goodness, she said, and stroked me gently.
Then she bent and took me in her mouth. I was stunned breathless. I felt it building fast and tried to pull away, but she moaned and held me with both hands and I shot off. She attended to me a while longer, then sat up and kissed me.
I’ve done a fella with my hand, she said, but not this. This was my very first time, I want you to know.
I said it was truly grand and thank you very much—and we both laughed.
That’s how it went every time we got together. Sometimes we went to the movies, sometimes we went dancing—her arms up high around my neck, her head against my chest. From across the room, we probably looked like a daddy dancing with his daughter, but after our first few turns I quit being self-conscious about it, and I don’t think she ever was. Whatever we’d do for fun on our dates, we always ended the evening with our clothes off, either in the car or, if we knew Earl wouldn’t be back for a while, in the apartment. She’d let me do anything except put it in. She liked me to rub it on her breasts, on her bare ass, she loved squeezing it between her thighs. We were on my sofa the first time I used my tongue on her and she was so loud I was afraid the old couple would call the police.
Somewhere along in there she said she loved me, and I guess I said it back, since saying so is a good way to keep a girl in the right mood. But she was serious about not doing the full deed until she got married, and marriage was a subject I preferred to avoid. And so, whenever I got worked up to the boiling point, she’d always finish me with her mouth.
It was swell, of course, and I had no complaints. But as marvelous as these intimate attentions were, they weren’t always enough. Sometimes a man has to get laid full and proper.
For that particular pleasure I had Sandra Deloro.
We’d met in a movie house one evening. She came up beside me at the concession stand and remarked in a lovely Southern accent that it was a shame everything on the shelves was so bad for a person’s teeth. She was lean and remarkably tall for a girl, only a few inches shorter than me, with a black pageboy and eyes as pale green as a Tom Collins. Her clothes were expensive but the only jewelry she wore was a little gold crucifix on a fine necklace. I figured she was slumming. She said she loved adventure movies like the one showing that night, The Thief of Baghdad. She was alone, so I asked if she’d like to sit with me and she said sure. Fifteen minutes after the houselights darkened we were kissing and I had a hand under her dress. Her perfume was some exotic thing that might’ve come from jungle flowers. Half an hour into the movie we left for her apartment.
It was large and extravagantly furnished and there was a framed picture on her dresser of an
earnest-looking young guy in an army uniform, but she didn’t tell me his name and I didn’t ask. She might never have asked mine if I hadn’t volunteered it. She had smooth honey-colored skin and she was strong and went at sex like it was a wrestling match.
Beyond her name she told me nothing about herself except that she wasn’t married, she didn’t have to work for a living, and she spent most of her time in Indianapolis even though she owned a country estate on the Ohio River, just this side of Louisville. She’d inherited the place a year ago when her parents were killed in a car crash. She said we should spend a few days in it sometime and I said all right. We’d been together several times since then, and for the most part we hardly talked. It was a fine arrangement.
By early spring the weather was still gray and chilly, the trees still mostly bare, and I was nearly broke. Earl and I were already thinking about which bank on the list to hit next when Pearl Elliott offered us a job too good to pass up.
Pearl owned a Kokomo poolroom called the Side Pocket. She ran a speakeasy in the basement but her real money came from the cathouse on the second floor, the one Earl had raved to me about. He had been patronizing the place for the past couple of months, and he and Pearl had become pretty chummy. As I would come to find out, she had an adventurous nature and a history of shady dealings beyond her speakeasy and whores. She also had a reputation for being trustworthy and knowing how to keep her mouth shut. Bootleggers and other felonious types often used her as a money-holder and a go-between. A few years earlier, in East Chicago, Indiana, where she had her first house, she’d taken a fall for receiving stolen property. She would’ve pulled a suspended sentence if she’d named the people she was fencing for but she dummied up and the judge gave her eighteen months. By the time she got out she’d lost the house, but the guys she’d stood up for told her they knew of a robbery team looking for a woman driver and asked if she was interested. The stickup guys were glad to have her—she was good at the wheel and a woman driver made for a better cover. As soon as she had enough money she opened another house, this one in Kokomo, where things weren’t quite as intense as in East Shy. But she still kept her hand in an assortment of other enterprises. Which is how she came to offer us the job.
Earl drove me up to meet her one night, saying she had a proposition, but he wanted me to hear it from her personally. We were about to enter the place through an alleyway door when it abruptly swung open and in the sudden cast of light a guy got the bum’s rush past us and went sprawling on the pavement. Somebody handed the bouncer a hat and he sailed it at the evicted guy and said Don’t come back. The guy struggled to his feet and said he’d been thrown out of better places. The bouncer laughed and said Shit, you’ve never even been allowed in better places. Then he saw us and said Hey, Earl, how goes it?
Pearl met us at the bar and Earl made the introductions. He had told me she was about forty years old, and she looked it to me, with lines around her neck and crow’s-feet at her eyes. But she was nicely groomed and had fine strawberry-blond hair, and although she was a little hefty for my taste, she had some nice curves on her. She gave me a bold once-over and said Goodness, aren’t you a cutie, then took us into her private office.
She poured us a drink and explained the situation to me. An acquaintance of hers—Let’s call him Moe, she said—had learned that a certain bank in town would on a certain day be holding ten thousand dollars of payroll money for several local factories. Moe had found himself a partner and they had then recruited her to be their driver for 20 percent of the take. But then two days ago—only four days before the job—Moe got in a fight in a west side speakeasy and was hauled off to jail where they found out he was a parole violator and wanted for questioning in a St. Louis jewel heist. That was it for Moe.
The partner—whom she called Ted—had only lately been paroled from a prison back East. He had never worked in the Midwest, and he didn’t know anybody he could call on to replace Moe. He was desperate not to let this fat job slip away, so he asked Pearl if she knew somebody who might want in. She knew several somebodies, but they were all seasoned pros and nobody she talked to would take the job on such short notice for less than 50 percent, a cut that was out of the question, since Ted was set on 40 for himself and she was in for 20, no matter what. Then she thought of Earl. Without having gotten too specific, Earl had told her that he and a partner had recently hit their first bank and were looking to do more of them. So she’d offered him the job, but he’d said he wouldn’t do it unless his partner was in on it too.
If Earl and I would settle for a 40 percent cut to split between us, she said, we were in. We could meet Ted in the morning and he’d give us the lowdown and we’d do the job the next day. Did we have a deal?
I looked at Earl and he gave me a wink. Sure, I said.
Next morning we all met for coffee at a downtown diner. We sat across the table from Pearl and Ted in a back booth and she introduced us as Harry and Earl and said she thought it would be smart if we kept our acquaintance to first names only. That was fine all around—the less a guy knew about you, the less he could tell the cops if he got collared. I didn’t mention it but it crossed my mind that only Pearl knew who everybody was.
Ted was a beefy guy with a nervous tic in one eye and a habit of sucking his lips like he was trying to get rid of a bad taste. He had yardbird written all over him.
It was a simple enough plan. We’d rent three cabins for two nights at the Happy Trails Motor Camp about ten miles outside of Kokomo. We’d leave Earl’s Maxwell and Ted’s Chrysler there in the morning and come into town in Pearl’s Model T, which looked exactly like every other black Ford sedan in the country but would be carrying license plates off a junkyard car. Another of Pearl’s sidelines was the sale of license tags. She got them from a variety of sources in a variety of states, and there was never a shortage of buyers.
We would hit the bank as soon as it opened. Ted described the layout and assigned me to the door and gave Earl the job of disarming the guard and keeping everybody in line while he himself collected the money from the vault. When Ted gave me the high sign, I would go out and signal Pearl to bring up the car and we’d all hop in and get gone. Back at the motor camp we’d divvy the loot and everybody go his own way.
Did we have any questions?
I said it sounded like a solid plan to me, and Earl nodded.
Well then, Pearl said.
It’ll go smooth as oil, Ted said.
And it did—right up to the part where we were all supposed to get gone.
As soon as Ted came out of the vault and gave me the nod, I stepped outside and beckoned Pearl, who had the Ford idling at the end of the street. She was wearing sunglasses like ours and a man’s hat with her hair tucked up under it, and she wheeled up in front of the bank, fast and slick. I jumped into the front seat and Earl zipped into the back.
But Ted wasn’t behind him.
He was at the bank door, struggling with the guard and some other guy, the guard with an arm around Ted’s neck from behind and the other guy trying to get the gun out of his hand. There was yelling and shrieking and the alarm started shrilling and Earl said Oh shit. The sack of money was on the floor by the doorway. The three of them staggered back into the lobby like drunk wrestlers and fell down, still grappling for the gun. I jumped out and ran over and snatched up the money as the pistol went off—blam—and people really started screaming.
I dove back into the car and yelled Go!—and Pearl stomped on the gas and hauled us out of there.
She was as good behind the wheel as she’d claimed to be. In minutes we were well out of town and rolling along on an isolated farm road that circled back to the highway and the motor camp, no sign of anybody behind us.
I should mention here that Earl and I had already decided we weren’t going to stand for a measly 20 percent apiece, not with Ted getting 40. We intended to make our position clear to him when we got back to the cabins to cut up the take. Pearl would get her 20 all right, but th
e rest of the money would get evenly cut three ways. If he didn’t care for the new arrangement, too bad—there was only one of him and two of us. But, seeing how things turned out, there wouldn’t even be any argument about it.
As we were heading for the cabins, Earl said maybe God was telling us the split should be between him and me and to total hell with Ted.
Pearl cut her eyes at him in the rearview, then at me, then back to the road.
I’ll confess I was sorely tempted. But I said no, if we deserved an equal share, so did Ted.
Earl said he didn’t much like it that the sonofabitch had tried to cheat us.
He didn’t try to cheat us, I said. He just hadn’t been fair with us. There was a difference.
Well hell then, Earl said, did we have to be fair to him?
The take was less than we’d expected—$8,900. In appreciation for bringing us in on the heist and doing such a good driving job, we gave Pearl two grand, a little more than she’d bargained for. Then Earl gestured at the rest of the money still on the bed and said Well?
I said we’d be fairer to him than he’d been willing to be to us. I counted out $2,400 for Earl and the same for me, leaving $2,100 for Ted. If he had any complaints, he could sue us. I gave his share to Pearl, who would get word to him that she was holding it. He’d probably need the dough for a lawyer.
It was only midmorning but Pearl got a flask from her bag and we had a drink to celebrate. Earl told her he’d come back to the Side Pocket later in the day to see her. He didn’t say it like a buddy but like a guy who was getting ideas. She said she couldn’t promise she wouldn’t be busy. Earl said he’d take the chance.
While he was outside putting the real plates back on her car, Pearl said it broke her heart when the wrong guy got sweet on her. Then she gave me a kiss on the mouth and said she’d wouldn’t be busy if I came to see her.
Handsome Harry Page 4
