"Cheerio," he said wherever he went. "Be good sports. Keep the old upper lip stiff. Tut tut and ho ho, as we say in Jolly Olde."
He attended a luncheon for the hospital board and dropped in at the Democratic Ladies' Club, where he made a donation of $1,000 toward the clubhouse redecorating project slated for that fall. He met Raymond Clinton, the Buick agency owner, and had a long discussion about the new Buicks. They were beauts! He said he was thinking about retiring his prewar limo. It was time to be modern and American. It was the '40s. The Nazis and the Japs were whipped! We had the atom bomb!
But even as he was going about his public business, he was relaying orders through runners to various of his employees, directing a search, putting pressure on the police, sending out scouting parties, setting up surveillance at Becker's office in City Hall and convening a meeting.
The meeting was scheduled for 5:30 P. M., in the kitchen at the brand-new Signore Giuseppe's Tomato Pie Paradise, where Pap Grumley and several ranking Grumleys, F. Garry Hurst, Jack McGaffery and others showed up as ordered. Everybody gathered just outside the meat locker, where about a thousand sausages hung in bunches and strings. The smell of mozzarella and tomato paste floated through the air.
"No siree, Mr. Maddox," said Pap. "My boys, they been up, they been down. These coyotes have vanished. Don't know where they done gone to ground, but it ain't in no goddamn hotel nor no tourist camp. Maybe they's camping deep in the hills. Shit, my boys couldn't find a thing. We may have to go to the hounds to git on these crackers. Know where I can git me a troop of prize blue ticks if it comes to that. Them dogs could smell out a pea in a pea patch the size of Kansas. One particular pea, that is."
He spat a gob of a fluid so horrifyingly yellowed that even Owney didn't want to think about it. It landed in the sink with a plop.
"You got boys coming in?" Owney, the high baron of New York's East Side, asked in his native diction.
"Yes sir. Got boys from Yell County. The Yell County Grumleys make the Garland County Grumleys look tame. They're so mean they drink piss for breakfast."
Owney turned to Jack McGaffery.
"And you? You made the fuckin' calls I told you?"
"Yes sir. We can get gun boys from Kansas City and St. Paul inside a week if we need 'em. It ain't a question of guns. We can put guns on the street. Hell, there's only a dozen or so of them."
"Yeah, but we gotta find the fuckers first."
He turned to Hurst.
"What do you make of it?"
"Whoever thought this out, thought it out well," said the lawyer. "These boys were well armed and well trained. But more to the point, whoever is planning this thing has thought long and hard about what he is attacking."
"Garry, what the fuck are you tawkin' about?" said Owney.
"Consider. He―whomsoever he may be―has certainly made a careful study of Hot Springs from a sociological point of view. He understands, either empirically or instinctively, that all municipal institutions have been, to some degree or other, penetrated and are controlled by yourself. So he sets up what appears to be a roving unit. It stays nowhere. It has no local ties, no roots, no families. It can't be reported on. It can't be spied on. It can't be betrayed from within. It permits no photographs, its members do not linger or speak to the press, it simply strikes and vanishes. It's brilliant. It's even almost legal."
"Agh!" Owney groaned. "I smell old cop. I smell a cop so old he knows all the tricks. You ain't pulling no flannel over this old putz's eyes."
He looked back at Jack.
"The cowboy was the fast one. The rest were punks. But you said a old man was in command. That's what you said."
"He was. But I only heard the name Earl. 'Earl, that was a great shot,' the old man said to the fast cowboy after he clipped Garnet. But no other names were used. The old one was in charge but the cowboy was like the sarge or something."
"Okay," Owney said. "They will hit us again, the bastards. You can count on it. They are looking for the Central Book, because they know when they get that, they got us. Meanwhile, we will be hunting them. We got people eye-balling Becker. We follow Becker, he'll be in contact with them, and somehow, he'll lead us to them."
"Yes sir," said Flem Grumley, "'ceptin' that Becker never showed at his office this morning, and when we sent some boys by his house, it was empty. He moved his family out. He's gone underground too."
"He'll turn up. He's got speeches to make, he's got interviews to give. He wants to be governor and he wants to ride this thing into that big fuckin' job. He's just another husder. He don't scare me. That goddamn cowboy, he scares me. But I've been hunted before."
"Pray tell, by whom, Owney?" asked Garry.
"Ever hear of Mad Dog Coll?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, well, Mad Dog, he comes gunning for me. He steals my best man, fuckin' Jimmy Lupton, and holds him for ransom. I got to pay fuckin' fifty long to get Jimmy back. He was a pisser and a half, that fuckin' kid. Balls? Balls like fuckin' steel fists. Crazy but gigantic balls. So you know what the lesson is?"
"No sir."
"Bo Weinberg catches him in a phone booth with the chopper. The chopper chops that mick fuck to shit. Don't matter how big his fuckin' balls are. The chopper don't care. So here's the lesson: everybody dies. Every-fiickin'-body dies."
After the meeting, Owney went to his car. He checked his watch to discover that it was five o'clock, 6:00 New York time. He told his driver where to go.
The driver left Signore Giuseppe's, drove down to Central, turned up it, then up Malvern Avenue and drove through the nigger part of town, past the Pythian Hotel and Baths, past cribs and joints and houses, then turned toward U. S. 65, the big little Rock road over by Malvern, but didn't drive much farther. Instead, he stopped at a gas station along the edge of Lake Catherine.
Owney got out, looked about to make certain he was not followed. Then he went into the gas station, a skunky old Texaco that looked little changed since the early 1920s, when it was built. The attendant, an old geezer whose name should have been Zeke or Lum or Jethro nodded, and departed, after hanging out a sign in the window that said CLOSED. Owney checked his watch again, went to the cooler, took out a nickel bottle of Coca-Cola, pried off the cap and drank it down in a gulp. He took out a cigarette, inserted it into his holder, lit it with a Tiffany's lighter that had cost over $200, and took a puff.
The cigarette was half down when the phone rang.
Owney went to it.
"Yeah?"
"I have a person-to-person long-distance call for a Mr. Brown from a Mr. Smith in New York City."
"This is Brown."
"Thank you, sir. I'll make the connection."
"Thanks, honey."
There were some clickings and the rasp of interference, but a voice came on eventually.
"Owney?"
"Yeah. That you, Sid?"
"Yeah."
"So what the fiick, Sid? What the fuck is going on?"
"Owney, I tell ya. Nothing."
"I got a boy busting my balls down here. Some hick exsoldier prosecutor who thinks he's Tom Fuckin' Dewey."
"Not good."
"No, it ain't. But I can take care of it. What I'm worried about is that fucker Bughouse Siegel. Frank and Albert and Mr. Lansky all like the little fuck. Is he behind my trouble down here? Is he trying to muscle me out of the business? It might do him some good."
"Owney, like you said, I asked some questions. What I hear is he is just pissing money away into a big hole in the ground out in some desert. That hot-number babe he's got with him, you know, she ain't too happy. She's been talking to people about what an asshole he is. She has friends. She has a lot of friends and he leaves her alone in Hollywood to go out to the desert and piss some more money into a hole. Only I hear that broad ain't ever alone. She still has the hotsies for Joey Adonis, among others."
"So the Bughouse has that to worry about before he worries about my little action down here?"
"That's wha
t I hear. But Owney, I have to tell you the big guys do like him. They sent him out there. He has their ear. I'd look out for him. He thinks big."
"Yeah, he thinks big, with my thoughts. I gave him his whole idea. He thinks he can fuckin' build a Hot Springs in the desert. There's nothing there but sand. Here, we got nature, we got mountains, we got lakes, we got―"
"Yeah, but in that state, gambling's legal, so you don't get raided. Remember that. That's a big plus."
"We're not supposed to get raided here."
"So you said. Owney, the guys, they always say, That Owney, he runs a smooth town. That's why they like to go there. The baths, some dames, some gambling, no problem, no hassles with the law. That's what they like. As long as you provide that for them, you will have no problems."
"Yeah."
"Owney. Best thing you can do is forget about Bugsy, and keep that town running smooth. That's your insurance policy."
"Yeah," said Owney. "Thanks, Sid."
It was on the way back that he had his big thought.
"Back home, sir?"
"No, no. Take me to the newspaper office. And then call Pap Grumley. Tell him to find Garnet Grumley's mother. Or someone who looks just like her."
Chapter 16
"So tell me what happened up there Henderson," Earl asked Carlo.
"I guess I screwed up. I thought I had it covered. I thought we done a good job."
Earl nodded.
The raiders were headquartered in the pumping station of the Remmel Hydroelectric Dam, which blocked the Ouachita River and had thereby created Lake Catherine, and lay between Magnet and Hot Springs, on Route 65, not far at all from the Texaco station where Owney had gotten his call from New York. The pumping station, which was administered by theTVA and run out of Malvern, not Hot Springs, was a large brick building at the end of three miles of dirt road off U. S. 65; though most of its innards were taken up with turbines turning and producing electricity for Hot Springs, the upper floors had surprising space and provided room for fourteen cots, as well as hot showers and indoor plumbing. It was better than most places Earl had slept during the war. D. A. had thought all this out very carefully.
"Tell me what happened."
"Well sir, we done our best. I am truly ashamed it wasn't good enough. But we got up there fast, we nabbed that bird McGaffery on the steps, there was a goddamned pissing drunk in the men's room, and we run him downstairs too, and we checked all the closets."
"So Garnet Grumley could not have been up there?"
"I don't think so," said Carlo. "But if I missed him, then I missed him."
"He was not up there," said Frenchy. "Mr. Earl, we went all through that place. I even beat the lock off the closet door in the ladies'."
"See," said Earl, "I do not particularly care for having to shoot a boy dead, who was after all only doing his job and as it turned out had forgotten to load his shotgun. Either of you killed anyone?"
Both men shook their head no.
"I swear to you, Mr. Earl, that fellow did not come from up there," said Frenchy. "He must have snuck in from the outside. Or maybe he came up from the cellar."
"Wasn't no cellar," said Carlo. "And we'd have seen him in the alley if he'd been lurking up there. Mr. Swagger, I do believe it was my fault and I am very sorry it happened. It wasn't Frenchy's. I was number one on our fire team, so the job was mine, and I muffed it. If you give me a next time, I will sure try hard to do a better job."
"Jesus, Henderson," said Frenchy. "He wasn't up there. It's not your fault, it's not my fault. It just goddamned happened is all and everybody is lucky it was him that got killed, and not one of us."
Earl pushed something across the table at them.
It was the Hot Springs New Era, the city's afternoon paper.
FARMBOY SLAIN IN COP "RAID"
Locals decry "Nazi" tactics
"He was a good boy," Mom says.
"Christ," said Frenchy. Carlo read:
Raiders from the Prosecuting Attorney's Office shot and killed a local man while invading a local nightclub.
The incident occurred at the Horseshoe Club, on Ouachita Avenue in West Hot Springs, late last night.
Dead was Garnet Grumley, 22, of Hot Springs, shot by a raider as he wandered in from the upstairs bathroom.
"Garnet was a good boy," said his mother, Viola Grumley, of eastern Garland County. "He did all his chores and milked his special cow, Billie. I wonder what he was doing in that downtown club. But I wonder why they had to shoot such a harmless, God-fearing boy."
Fred C. Becker, Garland County Prosecuting Attorney, refused to talk to New Era reporters.
In a news release his office provided, he claimed that officers shot in self-defense while on a raid aimed at local gamblers.
See New Era Editorial,
"Boy, I'll bet that one's rich."
"Oh, it is," said Earl.
The two young men flipped pages.
New Jayhawkers?
In the era preceding the Civil War it was common for night riders to terrorize Arkansans in the name of a just cause, which was more a license to hate. Town burnings, robberies, lynchings and other malicious acts were the order of the day.
History remembers these brigands as Jayhawkers and under that same name it consigns them to evil.
Well, a new plague of Jayhawkers is upon us. Unlike their predecessors they don't ride horses and carry shotguns; no, they ride in modern automobiles and carry machine guns.
And, like their brethren from a century ago, they hide behind a supposedly "just" cause, the elimination of gambling influence and corruption from our beautiful little city. But, as before, this is a clear case of the cure being worse―far worse―than the disease.
"Ouch," said Carlo. "Newspaper morons," said Frenchy. "Well, they do leave out the fact that the late Garnet spent fourteen months in the state penitentiary for assault and that he had a juvenile record that goes back to before the war," said Earl. "And D. A. says that Viola is no more his mama than you are, Short. He's an orphan Grumley, raised at the toe of a boot in the mountains, and pretty much your legger attack dog, and little else. So if a man had to die, better it was him than you or me."
"Yes sir," said Carlo.
"Okay, let me tell you two birds something. You are the youngest, but that don't bother me. You are probably also the smartest I got. I don't hold that smart boys ain't no good in combat, as some old sergeants do. But I do know your smart boy is easily distracted, and naturally doubtful, and has a kind of sense of superiority to all and sundry. So let me tell you, that if you want to stay in this outfit, you put all that aside. You put those smart-boy brains on the shelves and you commit to doing what you're told and doing it well and thoroughly. Elsewise, you're on your way back to where you come from, and you can tell your buddies there you were a bust as a raider."
"Yes sir," said Carlo.
"Now rack up some sleep. We're going again tonight."
Chapter 17
The Derby was filled that night. At one of the booths, the young, leonine Burt Lancaster held court like a gangster king, surrounded by cronies and babes, his teeth so white they filled the air with radiance.
In another, the young genius Orson Welles sat with his beautiful wife, eating immense amounts of food, an actual second dinner, and downing three bottles of champagne. Rita Hayworth just watched him sullenly as he uttered the words that were to become his signature: "More mashed potatoes, please."
Mickey was there, of course, though without his wife. He was with a chorine who had even larger breasts than his wife. He was smoking Luckies and drinking White Russians and looking for producers to shmooze, because he could feel himself, in his dreams at least, slipping ever so slightly.
Bogie was there, with a little nobody named Bill something or other, a Mississippi-born screenwriter who was lost in the rewrites of Ray Chandler's The Big Sleep. Bogie called him "Kid," got him good and drunk, and kept trying to get him to understand that it really didn't mat
ter if anybody figured out who did it.
And Virginia was there, with her swain Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and Ben's best Hollywood friend, Georgie Raft.
"Will you look at that" said Ben. "Enrol Flynn. Man, he don't look good."
"He's all washed up, I hear," said Georgie, drunkenly. "Warner's may drop him. Look at him."
Errol Flynn was even drunker than Georgie Raft and his once beautiful face had begun to show ruination. It was a mask of beauty turning inexorably into a burlap sack hung on a fencepost.
"Yeah, well, they didn't pick your contract up either, Georgie," said Virginia.
"I bought my way out of my contract," said Georgie. "I gave Jack a check for $10,000 and walked out of his office a free man."
"I heard he would have paid you the ten long to take a hike," said Virginia.
"Can it, Virginia," said Ben.
Raft stared moodily into his drink. For a tough guy, he had an amazingly delicate little face, a nose as perfecdy upturned as any pixie's.
"It ain't been easy on him," consoled his best friend from the old neighborhood, where they'd specialized in heisting apple carts.
"Why don't you beat up a casting director, Ben? That is, if you could find one you could take. Maybe you could make Georgie big again."
"I don't know what's the matter with this bitch," Ben explained to Georgie. "Ever since we got back from the South, she's been acting funny toward me."
He looked at her. But goddamn, she was still the female animal in all her surly glory, tonight with a huge wave of auburn cream for hair, meaty big-gal shoulders and breasts scrunched together to form a black slot in the ample flesh into which a man could tumble and lose his soul forever.
"Yeah," she said, "maybe it has something to do with all the times you fly out to the fucking desert and watch
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