The Hot Kid

by Elmore Leonard

  The company brought in strikebreakers along with a man by the name of Nestor Lott, at one time a special agent for the Justice Department in Georgia, going after moonshiners defying Prohibition by the unlawful manufacture and sale of alcohol. The Krebs chief of police, a man named Fausto Bassi, told Tony that Nestor Lott was known to have gunned down more moonshiners than he arrested, and that the man’s judgment had a “hair-trigger.”

  Nestor Lott wore two .45 automatics, military issue, one holstered on each hip and snugged to his legs with leather thongs. Tony wrote in his notebook: “He is a man of small stature, no more than five-three, who stares with a look of intensity in his cold gray eyes that holds one’s attention. When he smiles, which is seldom, one is never certain if it is to express pleasure, or even goodwill, for the smile never shows in his eyes of steel.”

  Nestor Lott got rid of the company strikebreakers saying they were drunks and derelicts with no personal stake in the situation, and recruited members of the local Ku Klux Klan for the job. He told them, “You know these dagos are all Socialists, enemies of our American way. We run ’em out now or they’ll be after your jobs, your farms, and they’ll lure your Christian women as Eyetalians know how to do.”

  The next move of Nestor and his Klansmen, they put on their white robes and pointed hoods and drove out in their cars to a ridge overlooking the Osage No. 5 shaft and the strikers standing by the fence in front of the mine works with their signs. Nestor strung his shooters—each one armed with a rifle—along the high ground, all those white sheets flapping in the wind not much more than a hundred yards from the strikers squinting up at them. Next, he sent a Klansman to drive down there with a message, an ultimatum, fixed to the radiator of his car. It said in big letters:

  you have 5 minutes to leave before we open fire

  The miners never thought of leaving. They yelled at the bedsheets up on the ridge for the entire five minutes calling them dirty names, dirty laundry, and ran for their lives when the Klansmen fired a volley at them and kept firing and laughing and swearing, killing three and wounding seven before the strikers could bust through the fence to reach the cover of company structures.

  The mine operators had a fit at how it would look, knowing the United Mine Workers would now slander the company in newspapers across the country. They paid the hospital bills of the wounded, gave the families of the ones killed a check for five hundred dollars, told the little two-gun weasel to go back to Georgia, and set up arbitration meetings with the union.

  But Nestor Lott hung around, warmed up now, restless, feeling confident about the Klan behind him. What caught his eye was the flow of prohibited wine, beer and liquor all over this county—the Oklahoma state prison sitting there at McAlester, only a few miles from Krebs. Nestor said to Tony Antonelli, taking notes in the café where Nestor was having his noon dinner, “You know the women sell that Choc beer out the back of wagons? In tubs of ice? I’m talking about Eyetalian women making money getting people drunk.”

  Tony felt heat on his face, the boob not realizing he was speaking to an Italian, or not caring. He closed his notebook and said to Nestor sure, he knew of women who brewed Choc. “They make it from barley, hops, throw in some tobacco and a few fishberries, but it hardly amounts to much alcohol. Miners drink it as a tonic for health reasons, water around mining camps being of poor quality, some of it even poisonous.”

  It didn’t move Nestor. He said, “I know of bunco joints where you gamble your money away, no chance in hell of winning. Where you can get whores who’ll give you their disease, and liquor that’ll turn you blind. They bring it up from places like Old Mexico.”

  Tony said, “I never heard of any Italians in Krebs running hard liquor.”

  “But the chief of police’s Eyetalian,” Nestor said. “Man name of Bassi, speaks with an accent I guarantee ain’t American. What’s he doing about all the liquor violations?” Nestor waited for an answer, his blunt stare bearing on Tony with suspicion. Later on Tony would open his notebook and try to describe the look, the accusing stare, everyone against this squirt upholding a law no one cared about.

  Finally he spoke.

  “You want to write a good story?”

  Tony waited.

  Nestor said, “You know that big roadhouse out by Bald Mountain? The other side of McAlester?”

  Tony said, “Jack Belmont’s place.”

  “That’s the one,” Nestor said. “I’m gonna ride in and hit it with my Christian Avengers. Burn it to the ground.”

  Tony said, “You think the police’ll let you?”

  Nestor said, “Boy, I don’t need their permission.”

  The first thing Tony thought of doing, sitting behind the wheel in his car, about to turn on the ignition, was drive out to Belmont’s roadhouse and tell him what was afoot. He knew for a fact there wasn’t anything harmful about the whiskey. He wasn’t sure about the girls, but they appeared healthy and fun-loving. A cutie out there named Elodie had caught his eye. Yeah, what he should do, let Belmont know the two-gun weasel was coming on a raid.

  But then something he’d been thinking about lately popped in his mind. People in the wilds studying animal behavior, how they’d watch a pride of lions, even give each one a name, and feel sorry for the runt cub, Jimmy, that never got any tit and they’d want to save its life, bring the runt into camp and give it nourishment. But they couldn’t ’cause they’d be intruding on nature with their own behavior. They had to watch the daddy lion come along and eat Jimmy. Wasn’t it the same thing here? These people living by their own rules of behavior?

  In no time Jack Belmont’s plight had become part of the metaphor Tony was working on, scribbling in his notebook, trying to draw a literary parallel between animal behavior and human behavior, as it played out in the wilds of eastern Oklahoma.

  What occupied Jack Belmont’s mind these days, outside of making money and becoming a famous outlaw, was Norm Dilworth’s wife, Heidi.

  Heidi Winston from Seminole.

  Where Norm had taken her out of a whorehouse to the shack by the Kiefer rail yard. Where she was when he and Norm went to prison. Where she stayed doing washing for railroad hands till she got a job as a chambermaid—she said—at the St. James Hotel in Sapulpa. It turned out she was telling the truth, ’cause it was what she was doing when they came out of prison to rob banks with the Emmett Long gang. Jack and Norm would swing back to stay at the St. James till Emmett called about another job. It drove Jack crazy knowing she was in bed with Norm in the next room. He’d listen, holding an empty water glass to the wall, his ear pressed against it, and he’d hear their voices, sometimes her moans when they were doing it.

  Heidi still kept giving him the eye. Or she’d bend over in front of him in a low-cut dress to pick out an olive from the dish on the coffee table and put it in her mouth looking at him and kind of suck on it. The time came the gang split up after a robbery and Jack got back to the hotel before Norm. He took Heidi by the arm into his room. Didn’t say a word to her getting out of his pants, Heidi pulling her dress over her head, neither one speaking while he humped her on the bed as hard and fervently as he could to show how he felt about her. After, Heidi said, “I was beginning to wonder about you.”

  In some ways Jack Belmont was growing up. He could review his failures and sometimes admit the ones that didn’t work were his own fault. Like blackmailing Oris. It was a good idea but done on the spur of the moment before working it out. The same with kidnapping Nancy Polis. He’d jumped the gun on that one, not realizing she might know who he was. Or then, not believing for a minute his own dad would have sent him to prison, Jesus, for blowing up that empty storage tank. It sure made a cloud.

  What did he learn about robbing banks from Emmett Long? Go in and scare the shit out of everybody and walk out with the money. How else would you do it? Emmett Long showed he was too old for the outlaw life, letting that tricky marshal set him up and shoot him. Carl Webster. No, the only thing he learned from Emmett Long was
if you wanted another man’s wife, you’d likely have to shoot him to get her.

  So what should he do about Norm Dilworth?

  For a dumb guy Norm was smart in a countrified kind of way, hooking them up with bootleggers who put them in the speakeasy business in Krebs.

  He didn’t want to shoot Norm when he wasn’t looking. He didn’t want to call him out, either, Norm a dead shot with rifle or revolver. He’d already killed two cops chasing them out of Coalgate that time. Leaned out and drilled them through the windshield of the police car. The only person Jack had shot was the colored boy running from the mob during the race riot, when Jack was fifteen. It told him he ought to shoot somebody now that he was grown, get a feel for it.

  He’d been thinking of having some boys snatch Nancy Polis from her boardinghouse, send Oris a ransom note for a hundred thousand or he’d never see her again, and hope his dad still loved her. Jack was also thinking of holding up the Exchange National Bank in Tulsa, where Oris was now on the board. Jack saw a meeting interrupted, the secretary running in to tell them Mr. Belmont’s son had just robbed the bank downstairs.

  It was an image in his mind Jack liked to play with.

  But if you were a famous outlaw you’d have state and federal law after you, the Carl Websters wanting to shoot you down, and you’d have to have a place where you could lie low. That’s why the speakeasy business coming along as a sideline was a good idea, even if it was Norm’s.

  It got them the café in Krebs they turned into a speak, and later on the feed store off the highway, out of business, they bought and fixed up, added rooms out the back and upstairs with fifteen hundred of bank loot Heidi had saved out of Norm’s cut. Now they had a roadhouse not far from a north-south highway that ran up through eastern Oklahoma.

  Heidi said she’d always wanted to be a high-class madam. She got hold of three girls who worked in Seminole and one off the street in Krebs who’d run away from home and was too scared to go back and face her daddy. Heidi put her arm around the quivering girl and told her, “Honey, take my word, you have nothing to worry about. You’re sitting on what every man I ever knew wants a piece of.”

  It meant Heidi would stay at the roadhouse with the girls, and Jack most of the time, while Norm ran the speak in Krebs. It was the kind of town Norm liked, full of miners coming out of the hole thirsty, but the streets not clogged with traffic stuck in mud like oil boom towns.

  The roadhouse had cars lined up in front all night, but was fairly quiet during the day, giving Jack all the time he wanted with Heidi. It was a sweet deal.

  Only he wished she wouldn’t talk so much lying in bed naked. Always speaking as a madam about business. And always had the radio playing. Right now Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees doing “You’re Driving Me Crazy.” What Heidi was doing to Jack. Wanting to raise the girls’ price from three to four dollars. Set it at more than half of a miner’s daily wage, they wouldn’t get so many of them in here.

  “They’re the business,” Jack said.

  Heidi told him there were whores in Krebs’d screw you for four bits. “Let ’em get laid in town and come out here to drink and play monte. You know what it’s like to screw a coal miner, even after he’s washed up? You get filthy dirty. You ever look at the laundry in the morning, the sheets? Coal miners are dirtier’n oil workers any day, and I’m talking about all kinds, roughnecks, drillers, tool dressers, tankies, tankies are the worst. Shooters, all they do is talk. Ask you how many mistakes you’re allowed shooting nitro. The answer’s none. The shooter’s talking away while these other guys off the patch are waiting in the front room with their hard-ons.”

  “The girls complain about coal miners?”

  “They won’t dare say a word. They’re clearing a buck and a half every time a guy drops his pants. What I’m telling you is how I feel about it.”

  Jack had got up as she was talking and put on his pants. Now he sat on the side of the bed with his shoes and socks, his back to Heidi.

  “I can’t imagine you working in a house.”

  “Stables are cleaner,” she said.

  Lying behind him full-length naked, tan arms and white white breasts. Nicer ones than he’d seen on any Tulsa whore. He’d bet Nancy Polis had nice ones. He saw old Oris slipping a hand into Nancy’s dress.

  “Why’d you stay there?”

  “I’d try to run—Eugene’d have his guys he called his dogs out looking for me. I’d be dragged back, he’d put a leather glove on over his big mitt and beat my behind till it was raw. I told you, Norm saved my life. He said the only way he could come in that house again was with a gun. He told Eugene, ‘You come after us I’ll shoot you dead.’ This was down in Seminole. We come up to Keifer, that house you were at, and it wasn’t long before Eugene showed up, him and two others with guns. They busted in while Norm and I were in bed asleep.”

  Jack turned enough to look at her lying naked.

  “Yeah…?”

  “Eugene had the drop on Norm. But we always kept this gun under the covers when we went to bed. Norm shot Eugene and about set the bed on fire.”

  “Shot him dead?”

  “It come out his back and broke a window in the front room. I got the rifle and fired at the two running away but only hit one of ’em.”

  “What’d you do with the bodies?”

  “Laid ’em across the railroad tracks.”

  “Norm never mentioned that to me.”

  “He isn’t one to pat himself on the back.”

  “He never once mentioned ever shooting anybody.”

  Jack turned his head to look at her again, Heidi digging at her navel with a fingernail. She said, “That’s Norm,” without looking over.

  “He was a good customer of yours?”

  “Norm? He came two times. I got beat in between. Norm saw my raw heinie and the next time he came with the gun.”

  “You got married right away?”

  “He asked me—what am I gonna say?”

  Jack put his socks on and then his shoes, but didn’t tie the laces or get up. He said, “What do we do about him?”

  Heidi turned her head on the pillow to look at Jack, her finger still fooling with her navel.

  “Aren’t you getting what you want?”

  “I don’t like you being with him.”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  She said, “You want us to get married?”

  Jack bent down to tie his shoes. Ruth Etting was singing now on the radio, “Ten Cents a Dance.”

  “Let’s see how it works out,” Jack said.

  “How what works out?”

  “You and me. See how we get along.”

  “Lemme ask you again,” Heidi said. “Aren’t you getting what you want?”

  Nestor Lott said, “In the movin’ pitcher you see this fella name of Ben Cameron watching these white boys putting on bedsheets, dressing up like ghosts to scare some nigger kids. It gives Ben an idea and your great organization is born that day.”

  Here was Nestor addressing his Klansmen inside a rickety Pentacostal church on the outskirts of Krebs. Telling them about The Birth of a Nation, calling it one of the greatest moving pictures of all time, first appearing eighteen years ago, before Al Jolsen and talkies, and you could see it right now at the picture show in town.

  “You want to know the truth about Reconstruction after the Civil War? What it was like? You want to see niggers terrorizing white families? Shoving white people off the sidewalk? Niggers in the state legislature with their bare feet up on their desks? Well, back then the Klan was all we had to fight nigger rule and Reconstruction. Do you know if they found white robes in your closet you could get shot? The Klan rode then to put the niggers back in their place. This time it’s the Eyetalians making trouble, breaking the law, and this Eyetalian chief of police they got lets ’em get away with it.” Nestor stopped. He frowned at his audience, something perplexing him. He said, “How come the worst troubl
emakers are all dark-complected? You notice that?” Yes, they did, the audience nodding. “I went to see this police chief by the name of”—Nestor dug a piece of notepaper from his coat pocket, folded it open and looked at it—“Fausto Bassi, I think it says here. I was gonna ask him what kind of American name was Fausto Bassi, but I didn’t. I asked him if he knew who I was. And you know what he said to me?”

  Bob McMahon had two marshals in his office, Carl Webster and Lester Crowe, who was in his late forties now, both sitting across the desk from their boss. Lester Crowe was the marshal who’d come out to the Webster place with McMahon, that time Carl shot the man stealing his cows some years ago.

  “This fella walks in the police chief’s office with two .45s hanging on him, a Justice badge pinned on his lapel. He says to Fausto Bassi, ‘You know who I am?’ Fausto’s okay, he’s smart but a little too easygoing, has a belly on him. He says, ‘Yes, you’re Nestor Lott. We have you down for a triple homicide and seven attempted, over at Osage Mining. Why don’t you sit down while we wait for the judge to sign the warrants?’ Just his woman clerk’s in the office at the time. She says Nestor and this local fella with him pull their guns, Nestor both of his, and lock the chief and her in a jail cell, and they drive off. This was yesterday afternoon.”

  Lester Crowe said, “If the chief knows who he is, knows he’s wanted and the man’s standing there in his office—”

  McMahon cut him off saying, “I guess he didn’t think Nestor’d pull on him.”

  “I’d of arrested him he’s walking in the door,” Lester said. Lester was smoking a cigaret, tapping the ash in the cuff of his pants. He had told Carl one time it kept out the moths.

  “I called Justice,” McMahon said, “after the mine shooting to check on Nestor. I find out they’re thinking of changing their name from the United States Bureau of Investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or, the FBI.”