Handsome Harry

by James Carlos Blake

  The undertow kept yanking down everybody’s underpants, and then Billie said Ah hell, we’re all among friends, and took her panties off and tossed them away. Mary laughed and took hers off too and sent them sailing.

  Well now, I said, I feel way overdressed. I crouched in the water and took off my shorts and balled them up and tossed out to sea. Then John took his off and swung them around his head on one finger like a lasso and flung them at Billie, who laughed and ducked underwater to dodge them, and a wave carried them away. I wondered what a fisherman would think if he reeled in somebody’s underwear.

  Billie asked Mary if she wanted to switch horses for a few rounds and Mary said why not. I didn’t mind, but to tell the truth I was surprised John didn’t either. But like I said, we were all a little tanked. It was obvious he was having fun, judging by his stiffie when he stood up with Mary mounted on him, his hands high on her thighs and her ankles crossed over his chest. I confess I was sporting a pretty happy hard-on myself, what with Billie’s ass wriggling on my shoulders and her bush rubbing the back of my neck and her tits jiggling against my head as she and Mary tried to unseat each other. Every time a wave knocked us tumbling, I’d cop feels off Billie and she’d laugh and give my twanger a pull or goose me good. Judging from the happy shrieks Mary let out as she and John rolled around in the surf, I suppose they were having the same sort of fun. I can’t speak for the others, but I felt like a kid in a swell new playground.

  I want to make it clear that play is all it was. Nothing more than a lot of sexy teasing fun among pals, without any of it getting out of hand. But booze always brought out Billie’s most dim-witted devils, and in the middle of all our fooling around she said she never thought she’d see a cock as big as Johnny’s, and whose did Mary think was bigger, his or mine.

  I thought Oh, Christ.

  Mary gave a shaky laugh and said Bill-ie, for God’s sake.

  Billie wanted to use a measuring tape to see who was champ.

  Mary said the water had got too cold for her and started trudging through the surf back toward the beach.

  Yeah, Billie said, let’s go measure them right now.

  The moon was bright enough for me to see that John wasn’t smiling anymore, and I sensed his anger like a drop in the temperature. It wasn’t that he gave a damn which of us was bigger, believe me. What galled him was Billie talking about another guy’s dick, never mind that it was all in fun among best friends. Like I said, he was cool with everything except women. With women he was as big a sap as most guys.

  As we waded out of the water, Billie still hadn’t picked up on the dark change in John’s mood and she was babbling about how thickness mattered as much as length and she’d have to measure both how long and how big around they were. I tried to make a joke of the whole thing and told John I’d be damned if I was going to let either of these sex-crazy broads measure my dick like it was a carpet sample or something. Billie laughed and slapped me on the ass and said for me not to go getting all bashful on her.

  Mary had hustled into the house and came back to the porch in a robe and with towels for us. John and I tied ours around our waists, but Billie simply held hers over her breasts with one hand and poured herself a drink with the other. John watched her a moment and then slapped the glass out of her hand and said You drunken bitch.

  He grabbed her arm and she dropped her towel and beat at him with her fists, cursing him as he dragged her naked into the parlor and up the stairs. Mary started after them but I caught her hand and said to keep out of it. We heard a door slam and then didn’t hear them anymore, one of the blessings of that huge house and its thick walls.

  Mary said how dare I stick up for him. I said I was only minding my own business and she better do the same. She was as steamed as I’ve ever seen her. She said John was an utter asshole to get so worked up just because Billie noticed a dick. What the hell did he think people were going to see when they went skinny-dipping? He thought he was so sophisticated but he was nothing but a rube, a goddamn bumpkin. She went on like that for a while, and then we went to bed in one of the downstairs guest rooms. She lay with her back to me, so I let her be and went to sleep.

  She woke me in the night when she snuggled up to me and hugged me close. She said she was sorry but she couldn’t stand it when he treated her that way. I said I knew that and she had nothing to be sorry about. John was the one who was going to be sorry. I knew him, and it might take him a while to cool off, but when he did he was going to feel bad for behaving as he had. We held each other without talking for a while and I thought she’d fallen asleep. But then she said in a whisper that, in case I’d been wondering, she thought John’s pecker was impressive but he had nothing on me. I said I hadn’t been wondering. Good, she said. Besides, I said, I’d seen right away he had nothing on me. We stuffed the sheet in our mouths to muffle our laughter.

  She wasn’t in bed when I woke at sunrise, the first one of 1934. I found her in the kitchen having coffee with Billie, who was nicely dressed and wearing makeup that didn’t hide her fat lip. John had also given her a thousand dollars and the keys to the Blueberry and told her to get the hell gone, he didn’t care where. She told us she’d probably go home to Wisconsin for a while till she made up her mind what to do.

  Her suitcase was by the front door and I carried it out to the car. Russell’s Hudson was in the driveway but I hadn’t heard them come in. Billie said to tell them all goodbye for her. She gave me a hug and peck on the cheek and wished me a happy new year again, then she and Mary hugged hard and both of them started to cry. A minute later she drove off around the corner and was gone.

  Later that morning Mary and I took Margo to the train station and kissed her so long and she headed home to Indy. When we got back to the house, I went and sat on the beach and tossed pieces of bread to the gulls. John came out and joined me and said he should’ve known better than to let Billie have any damn firewater. I said none of us should’ve had any damn firewater.

  For the next few days Mary gave John the silent treatment, even at the supper table, and the others got a lot of chuckles out of it. One night John finally caved in, as I’d known he would, and told her he was sorry, he swore he was. He said he knew he’d been a stupid bastard and that he missed Billie more than he’d ever missed anybody in his life. He had already phoned Red and Patty in Chicago and asked if Patty knew how to get in touch with Billie on the reservation. She didn’t, but she said she’d try to find out and would let him know.

  Mary told him he didn’t deserve another chance, but Billie would probably give him one because she loved him, which was a lot more than he deserved.

  John said he knew that.

  We all know that, Opal said, and everybody laughed.

  Another week went by without word on Billie, and John was undecided about going with us to Arizona or going to look for her in Wisconsin. We did, however, get some interesting news by way of a Chicago paper several days old. The cops had been tipped that a gangster named Jack Klutas was hiding in a house in a little burg outside of Shytown, and two carloads of cops had gone there to take him in, dead or alive. They busted into the place and collared a pair of guys without a fight, but neither of them was Klutas, who happened to be away at the time. One of the guys was a nobody, but the other was our old pal Walt Dietrich. As we were reading all about it, Dietrich was already back in M City and probably swapping stories with Okie Jack Clark. As for the Klutas guy, the cops set up an ambush at the house, and when he got back and tried to make a fight of it they shot him more than a dozen times.

  John thought Klutas had been stupid and Dietrich played it smart. The way he saw it, if the cops had the drop on you, the thing to do was surrender. I hated having to agree, but the simple truth is that dead men can’t try jailbreaks.

  Russell remarked that Dietrich was the third guy in the M City breakout bunch who was back in stir. And Jenkins was dead. Besides us, the only ones still at large were John Burns and Joe Fox, and he wondered where th
ey were.

  Fat Charley said You do?

  We sold our cars and bought new ones with Florida plates. I went for a black-and-yellow Buick and Charley got himself a tan Studebaker. John sprang for another Terraplane, a pale blue sedan. Russell sold his car too, but decided not to buy a new one till he got to Tucson. Charley wanted company on the long drive to Arizona and had invited Russ and Opal to ride with him.

  Two days before we intended to leave for Arizona, John still wasn’t sure what he was going to do. And then we received a phone call from Red at five o’clock on a Sunday morning. John got down to the phone ahead of me, thinking it might be about Billie. In part it was—Patty had finally made telephone contact with her in Wisconsin. Red gave him a number where she could be reached, then said to put me on the phone.

  Pearl had called him fifteen minutes earlier with an offer of a bank job for us from Sonny Sheetz—and Sheetz wanted our answer within the hour. Pearl didn’t know why Sonny was so desperate, but the bank was in East Chicago, right in his front yard, and her guess was he’d got wind of an audit about to happen that could tie him to some shady bookkeeping. She said the guaranteed take would be at least fifteen grand. To show his appreciation to us for accepting the job on short notice, Sonny wouldn’t take a cut. The short notice was the catch—the heist had to be done on Monday, and the bank closed at three o’clock.

  We’re talking about tomorrow, Red said.

  Pearl had told Sheetz we were in Michigan, and Red didn’t disabuse her of the notion. If they’d known where we really were they surely wouldn’t have bothered to offer us the job, figuring we could never make it up there in time. Red didn’t think we could, either, but he didn’t want to tell Pearl no without first checking with me.

  I told him to hold the line and quickly laid the thing out to John. We’d been spending fast and loose, all of us were getting low on funds, and we’d been thinking about pulling a job on the way to Arizona. Now here was a fat one dropped in our lap. Fifteen thou would keep the wolf a long way from the door while we lazed around Arizona.

  John liked the job, but he was as doubtful as Red that we could get up there in time. Chicago was more than a thousand miles away and God knew how many towns in between to slow us down. Before three o’clock tomorrow?

  I said, You and me? We can do it.

  He arched an eyebrow. I gestured with a hand like it was a speeding car and said Zoooom. And he laughed.

  I told Red we’d take it. He gave a low whistle and said You know the kind of trouble we got if you guys don’t make it?

  I said not to fret, we’d make it, and in the meantime he should get us a car for the job. We’d see him at his place.

  We were on our way in the Terraplane before sunrise. John had talked with Billie on the phone and of course been forgiven. He told her to take the Blueberry to Chicago and meet him in the parking lot of some tavern on Byron Street where they’d been a few times, to be there no later than three o’clock and wait for as long as it took. She said sure, no questions asked.

  After the job, John would be taking Billie to meet his family in Mooresville before heading for Arizona. I’d drive the Blueberry to Indianapolis and sell it to our ex-con pal Elmore Brown, then check into a hotel and wait for Mary to get to Indy with my Buick. Maybe we’d visit my mother, depending on whether the cops still had the place under surveillance. Charley and Russ and Opal would go on to Tucson ahead of us. We all had Tweet’s phone number to call and find out where everybody was.

  Yowsa, what a drive! I have to tell you, that Terraplane could move. John had first turn at the wheel and we barreled up the Florida coast at sixty-five miles an hour with hardly a stoplight along the way except for St. Augustine and Jacksonville. Then we were roaring over Georgia clay roads, passing farm trucks in clouds of red dust, honking slowpokes out of our way, slowing only as we went through the burgs. We didn’t get chased by a cop till after I took the wheel and we flew through a stop sign going through Macon. I gave him the shake as soon as we cleared town.

  What we mostly talked about as we went along was Mary and Billie. He asked if I was serious about going to live in Miami and settling down and I said I was. Was he serious about settling in Mexico? He said he sure was. He wanted to know when I was going to do this settling and I said I hadn’t exactly decided yet. When was he going to do his settling in Mexico? He hadn’t exactly decided yet either. I said I didn’t know about him, but I found it very comforting to have such solid plans for the future. We were both grinning to beat the band and he asked what was so damn funny. I said what did he think was so funny. He said I asked you first. We laughed so hard it was all I could do to keep the car on the road. It took us a while to get ourselves under control, then nobody said a word for the next hour.

  Sometime during that drive he told me a story about Billie I’ve never forgotten. Back when they were on their first date, she told him she’d had a lonely childhood on the reservation, she never had many friends. Her only steady company for years was a cat she’d found by the side of the road and named Ling Ling. The name sounded Oriental to John, and he asked if it was a Siamese. Oh no, she said, nothing like that, it was just a regular cat with one head.

  In Atlanta we bought a sack of burgers and bottles of cola and then went winding up into the mountains. We had to turn the heater up high against the increasing cold. I was wowed by how well the Terraplane held the road as it leaned through the curves, John grabbing tight to the dashboard whenever the tires let a little screech and the car started to drift before I muscled it back under control. Still, the mountains slowed us down and they strained me to the bone. By the time we hit Chattanooga that evening I was glad to let him do the driving again.

  I snoozed in the backseat as we sped through the night, then somewhere near the Kentucky line I woke to a siren and a flashing red light behind us. They stuck with us at over seventy miles an hour down a straight dirt road in country so dark we couldn’t see a thing outside the headlight beams. If a cow had stepped out in the road, that would’ve been all she wrote. I picked up the Thompson from under a coat on the floorboard and leaned out the window and fired a bright yellow burst over their roof. They must’ve hit the brakes with both feet, they faded out of sight so fast.

  Around four in the morning we crossed the river into Indiana. I took the wheel and John curled up in back. Come daybreak my eyes felt red as the sunrise, like they had sand under the lids. I stopped in Terre Haute for gasoline and another refill of the coffee thermos. John woke up and asked if I wanted him to spell me, but I said I was doing fine and go ahead and sleep some more.

  And we did it. We rolled into Chicago shortly before noon. It was cold but sunny and bright. The car was gray and brown with mud and dust but the engine still purred like a happy cat. We parked in a public garage at the end of the block from Red’s place.

  Patty answered my knock and threw her arms around me and smooched me all over the face, then gave John the same swell welcome.

  Red stood there beaming at us and said Bedamn if you boys didn’t get here with time to spare. Hell, we got most of three hours yet.

  Patty made us a lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, potato salad and Cokes. All was well between her and Red, and we were glad to hear they’d decided to join us on the Arizona trip and were packed and ready to go. We ate, then showered and put on fresh clothes. Red kissed Patty at the door and said he’d be back in no time.

  He’d swiped a Plymouth in Naperville the day before and swapped its Illinois plates with a set of Ohio tags he’d got from Pearl. The car was in the parking garage, next to his black Packard. We got the guns and vests out of the Terraplane and put on the vests. All of us wanted to go in the bank but somebody had to drive and stick with the car, so we did a three-way coin toss. Red and John came up tails and I showed heads. I got behind the wheel of the Plymouth and we headed for the First National Bank in East Chicago.

  If you ever need proof that you should never hit a bank without casing it first, this
job is it. We didn’t even know what the parking situation would be like. I figured that if I had to, I’d double-park in front of the bank. If a cop came by and told me to move along while John and Red were inside, I’d fake motor trouble till they came out, and then I’d deal with the cop any way I had to. It wasn’t the kind of planning that would’ve made old Herman Lamm tip his hat to me.

  As luck would have it, there was a parking place almost directly in front of the place. I slid into it and cut the front wheels away from the curb, ready for a fast getaway, and I left the motor running.

  They might as well put up a sign saying Reserved for Bank Robbers, Red said. I tell you, boys, this is getting too fucken easy anymore.

  Maybe we should tie one hand behind our backs, John said. Or wear a patch over one eye.

  Yeah, Red said, like pirates—Arrrgh.

  John slipped the Thompson under his overcoat and Red checked the chamber of his .380 and put the pistol in his coat pocket. I had my .45 beside me on the seat.

  We’ll be right back, John said. And they got to it.

  They’d been inside less than three minutes when a uniformed cop came down the street, walking in my direction. We wouldn’t know until we read the papers the next day that the police station was only a block away. I didn’t hear an alarm, but we knew some banks had alarms that sounded only in the police station, so as not to tip off the robbers. The cop didn’t look too concerned, though. If he was responding to an alarm, it was another case of thinking it wasn’t for real. Then he pushed open the door and froze, and I figured John or Red had seen him coming and got the drop on him. He went inside and the door closed.

  But somebody had hit a silent alarm, all right, because here came more cops running my way, all of them with guns in their hand. Eight of them, maybe ten, some in uniform, some in plainclothes. I watched through the windshield as they shooed pedestrians away from the bank and took cover behind cars or in store entrances. None of them was aware of me. It was like watching a movie. I set the .45 between my legs and eased the car into gear, ready to boom us out of there the instant the guys made it into the car.