The Hot Kid

by Elmore Leonard

“Another place has a terrible smell is a coal camp. They bring up those mules pull the cars? They fart a gas can kill you you step too close. Craig Valley has twenty-eight miners suing them out at their Messina dig. The owners want me to talk nasty to these people, get them irritated enough to be held in contempt of court. It’s something I’m good at, getting people irritated. But I’m not going out there, not with that stink hanging over the place and they don’t want to come to the hotel.”

  He turned to Fausto.

  “I treat my clients like they’re guests in my home. What we discuss is naturally confidential, so I can’t have any observers, can I? No one listening in on what Mr. Belmont tells me. Fausto, that means you gonna have to leave.”

  Fausto said, “But I’m suppose to always have him in my sight.”

  “Fausto, you’re giving me a difficult time here. Your prison and the appellate court have approved my client meeting me here and they understand how it works. You want those judges pissing in their robes, keep giving me your rules.”

  Fausto said, “Where am I suppose to go?”

  “Anywhere you want. You like to stay close, use the bedroom down the hall you don’t see any clothes in. Lie on the bed and take a nap. You want something to eat, a drink, call Alexander, he’ll get it for you.”

  Jack said, “He your slave?”

  “I bet you were always a bad kid,” Cecil said to him. “I heard you tried to blackmail your dad one time. Still, he’s paying a lot of money to get you off ’cause he’s stuck with you being his son.” Cecil said to his man, “Alexander, take care of the warden, would you, please? Show him a room.” And said to Fausto, “Go with Alexander,” like he was talking to a child. The two left the sitting room, going off down the hall, and Cecil said to Jack, “You imagine that man telling fifteen hundred convicts to behave themselves? Fix yourself a drink and sit down. I want to ask you about witnesses, who liked you, who didn’t and where they are.”

  Jack walked past Cecil Guyton’s chair to the windows that faced west, late afternoon sun still showing over there. He looked south an angle and could see a streetcar passing from sight on Choctaw Avenue, behind the hotel. Now he moved to the tea trolley and poured himself a whiskey, neat.

  “The whores liked me,” Jack said, “the bouncers. Get hold of Heidi Winston in Kansas City, she’ll say anything you want.” Jack sat down on the sofa. He watched Cecil Guyton pick up a notebook and turn a couple of pages.

  “What would the marshal have to say, Carlos Webster?”

  “That’s his name, Carlos? I didn’t know he was a greaser.”

  “I understand he goes by Carl.”

  “He said I’d likely do time on one charge or another.”

  “I spoke to the Tulsa marshal in charge. He said it was Carl Webster’s opinion you got a bad deal. Said he thought with the right lawyer you’d get off on appeal.”

  Jack said, “That ain’t what he told me. He wants me locked behind bars.”

  “Has it in for you, huh?”

  “Nothing he’d like better. I told him, soon as I got out I’d shoot him on sight.”

  “Let’s hold up on that one,” Cecil told him, “till I clear you of your shooting spree. It says here you shot seven men in less than half a minute.”

  “If it took that. They’re coming at us with torches.”

  “You must’ve been scared to death.”

  “I was too busy shooting ’em down.”

  “No, you were scared of being burned to death, a horrible way to die. I’m gonna have to get those girls and the bouncers in court to tell how frightening it was.” He got out a cigaret and lit it.

  Jack said, “Can you spare one of those?”

  Cecil threw him the pack of Old Gold, almost full, and a book of matches and told him to keep them.

  So far this meeting was working out.

  Cecil said, “How are these girls, pretty fair looking?”

  “For whores,” Jack said.

  They smoked their cigarets. After a few moments Cecil touched his stomach and said, “Uh-oh. I believe I still have a touch of the trots. Spaghetti and meatballs I had last night in Krebs. Supposed to be the best Italian restaurant in town. Sit still,” Cecil said, getting up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and hustled off down the hall with a magazine and his shoulders hunched.

  Jack waited till he heard the bathroom door close. Now he went down the hall to where Fausto was waiting in the second bedroom, the door open. Fausto, stretched out on the double bed, started to get up.

  “You through already?”

  “We just started. Cecil got the shits from the Italian supper he had.” Jack watched Fausto’s head sink back into the pillows he’d piled one on top the other. His coat hung from a chair, his hat on the seat, holster hanging from one of the arms, his gun, a .45 auto in plain sight on the night table.

  Fausto saw Jack looking at it.

  “You touch that you going back. Understand?”

  Jack moved up on the right side of the bed toward the night table, his gaze holding on Fausto looking up at him, Fausto saying, “Stay away from the gun.”

  The man didn’t know he was making it easy. Jack could see how Nestor Lott had no trouble putting Fausto in a jail cell. This wop onetime chief of police was about to become a one-time deputy warden—in the half minute it took Jack to pick up the .45 from the night table and bring the barrel down hard on Fausto’s forehead—maybe too hard—blood pouring out of the wound, the man’s eyes going cockeyed staring at him. Jack pulled the sheet free to wipe off the gun barrel. He found twelve dollars and change in Fausto’s pockets, picked up the hat from the chair and put it on, tight but okay. He heard the toilet flush behind him as he reached the front hall and Alexander appeared from somewhere.

  Alexander saying, “You decide to leave, huh?”

  Jack showed him the .45. “You care?”

  “It don’t mean nothing to me, I haven’t seen you. But the man gets off the toilet, you know what he’s gonna do. You cheating him out of a big fee.”

  Jack got going. Down the hall, down the stairs, eleven floors and across the lobby, out the front and down Second Avenue to another crowd of miners pushing and shoving to get on the eastbound streetcar. Jack used his elbows, seeing it as life or death to bore through the miners, got them swearing at him but made it aboard, dropped Fausto’s change in the till and pushed his way past miners hanging from leather straps till he heard a voice call from close by, “Jack Belmont?”

  It was the True Detective writer, Tony Antonelli, looking up at him from one of the wooden seats.

  The first thing Jack said to him, “Boy, I’m sicker’n a dog. I guess I can’t take that stink out at the mine works.”

  Tony started to get up saying, “Here—”

  Jack said, “Stay there,” and pulled the miner out of the seat next to Tony, pulled him up by the front of his overalls to say in his neartoothless face, “Thanks for the seat, partner. I don’t sit down I’ll fall down, I’m sicker’n a dog.” He sat down next to Tony, got out an Old Gold and lit it. Tony was staring at the frail, stooped miner turning his head now to cough, the sound, like it was ripping his chest open. Jack said, “Black lung,” and said right away, “Listen, I want to thank you for letting me and Heidi use your car.”

  Tony looked at him but didn’t speak, in his wonder letting Jack talk.

  “What we did after leaving Bald Mountain, we went up to Kansas City. I dropped Heidi off, she wanted to stay a while and I came back. See, what happened, somebody stole your car, so I had to take the train.” Jack drew on his Old Gold and tried to blow a smoke ring.

  It gave Tony time to get ready and tell him, “I got my car back. A marshal called and I went to Kansas City to get it.”

  “They catch the guy stole it?”

  “No, but the car was okay,” Tony said, going along—why not? “It wouldn’t start till I fooled with the motor, dried the spark plugs.”

  “I was gonna pay you,” Jack said, “if
they didn’t find it. I came back, I got a job on an oil lease cleaning storage tanks.”

  “I thought that’s what you were doing when the tank caught fire that time and you were trapped.”

  “Facing a fiery death. Yeah, I was doing the same thing before and they put me on it again, since I had the experience.”

  Tony said, “What’s the matter with me. Seven months ago you were convicted of manslaughter and got twenty years. The last I heard you were in McAlester.”

  “I’m out on bond awaiting my appeal. My dad, bless his heart, got me a smart lawyer, Cecil Guyton.”

  “He got you the best. You back with your dad?”

  “We’ll see how it goes. Everybody says I got a bum deal in that trial.”

  “You did. But you know you still belong in jail. I can’t believe my luck,” Tony said, his shoulders bouncing with the streetcar, “running into you like this. I need to get your side of the trial. I’m doing a feature on it as soon as I cover this UMW business, the meetings they’re having. Doing it for the Tulsa World. I’m interviewing these fellas who live out here and work some of the mines.” He said, “Jack, if you don’t mind my asking, where the hell are you going?”

  “I’m at Messina, that Craig Valley works out by Hartshorne? But they’re in court now, so I’m looking around. I think it’s that stink out there affected my stomach. Those old mules passing gas.”

  “You really are sick?”

  “Since I tried coal mining. I may have to go back working for my dad.”

  “I’m trying to understand,” Tony said, “how you managed to do all these things since the roadhouse. You went right to K.C. but you didn’t stay.”

  “I saw some of the sights.”

  “Robbed a bank?”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “It was in every paper I picked up.”

  “You still have any of ’em?”

  “I clipped the stories, then covered it for True Detective while I was up there getting my car. I can’t believe you’re out walking around.”

  “I told you, I’m out on bond.”

  “Isn’t there a detainer on you?”

  “Don’t ask me what the marshals are up to.”

  They rode along, Jack smoking his cigaret. He said, “I stayed at the Aldridge while I was talking to Guyton.”

  “Where’d you stay in Kansas City?”

  “Me and Heidi rented a house.”

  “I thought you came right back.”

  “I told you, I saw the sights.”

  Tony hesitated before saying, “You didn’t by any chance run into Elodie, did you?”

  “Yeah, she was looking fine.”

  “I didn’t see her when I picked up the car,” Tony said. “I meant to. She dropped me a note saying why didn’t we get together, but…I don’t know.”

  “I recall you were interested in Elodie we’re all at the roadhouse that time. You ever pop her in the rear? Heidi says she liked it as a change of pace. But she doesn’t do commercial screwing anymore—what Heidi calls it—she’s a cocktail waitress. I told Heidi that was a shame.”

  They rode without speaking for a while, the car swaying, clanging as it came to crossroads, Jack shoving at miners hanging on to overhead straps as they bumped against him.

  Tony said, “You think I should see her, uh? I go back to Kansas City?”

  Jack said, “Who, Elodie? You’re missing something you don’t.”

  They got off the streetcar at the east end of Hartshorne, only a couple of blocks from the roominghouse where Tony was staying and kept his car. He told Jack he’d been riding the rails two days talking to miners. Jack said he’d only come back to pick up his things at the Chinese laundry—the reason he was wearing work clothes. He hoped the Chinks hadn’t ruined his good shirts.

  Nothing he said made sense to Tony.

  Like he’d spent the afternoon at the Aldridge with Cecil Guyton and Cecil wanted him to pick up his things and come back.

  “But if you want to ask me about the bum deal I got in court…I was talking about the trial with Cecil. He says he’ll parade in the witnesses, they’ll tell of their fear of being burned alive and I’ll walk out of the courtroom.”

  “But what about the bank in Kansas City?”

  “North Kansas City. Cecil says ‘Did you know there isn’t one witness to the bank guard getting shot?’ I said, ‘And do you know why? The witnesses got paid off by a man doesn’t want me to sit in the electric chair. He wants to stick my feet in a pail of cement, let it harden and drop me in the Missouri River. That’s how they do things.’”

  Tony said, “You know who this guy is?”

  “He’s right under Boss Pendergast—you want a good story about politics up there. This guy says I owe him twenty-five hundred bucks. I say I don’t and I’m not gonna pay him. What’s he gonna do about it, come to Oklahoma for me?”

  They reached the roominghouse and there was Tony’s Ford parked in front, a kid in knickers wiping it off with a rag. Tony called him by some nickname, flipped him a quarter and the kid thanked him and ran off to spend it.

  “What Cecil Guyton does,” Jack said, “he pours a good drink before he starts asking questions. You got anything?”

  Tony said, “I wasn’t planning on having a party.”

  “A bottle, Cecil says, keeps the talk flowing. I know a bootlegger lives here used to supply me when I had the roadhouse. Let me use your car, I’ll go pick up my laundry and a bottle while you look at the paper. How’s that sound?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony said. “This car’s already been stolen once.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jack said, “I stop at the Chinks’ I’ll be sure to lock it up.”

  19

  Bob McMahon was telling Carl they weren’t doing too bad lately. “Outside of Jack Belmont,” Carl said. “He was a good boy his daddy’d give him all the money he wants.”

  “Cheer you up,” McMahon said, looking at a report on his desk, “Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker met their end yesterday.”

  “It’s about time,” Carl said.

  “Near Gibsland, Louisiana. It says at a roadblock, but it sounds more like an ambush. Somebody who knew where they’d be told on them and the Texas Ranger heading the posse said they fired a hundred and eighty-seven shots to stop the car.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Bonnie was eating a sandwich. The most they ever got in a robbery was fifteen hundred. John Dillinger called ’em a couple of punks.”

  “What’s the most he ever took, Dillinger?”

  “Seventy-four thousand,” McMahon said off the top of his head, “from a bank in Greencastle, Indiana, last year. He said Bonnie and Clyde were giving bank robbing a bad name.”

  “I’m sure glad they’re done,” Carl said.

  “Next thing is get this Jack Belmont out of our hair. The guy is driving me nuts. His daddy’s got all that money, why doesn’t Jack be a good boy and enjoy it? Twice now he’s run off with the True Detective writer’s car. Says he’s gonna pick up his laundry. Why didn’t Tony go with him?”

  “Jack’s a talker,” Carl said. “He’d of thought of a reason to go alone, pick up a bottle? And Tony’s polite, he would’ve said don’t steal the car, okay?”

  “You know how he got out? He’s in town to see a lawyer on his appeal.”

  “Cecil Guyton,” Carl said. “I read about it.”

  “He called me up, Cecil did. He seemed confident he’d get Belmont off and must’ve told him. Why would he try to escape?”

  “He didn’t try, he did. And almost killed that warden. He told me he’d bust out so he could shoot me on sight. Another reason might be, avoid that detainer in Kansas. But he claims he’d never be convicted. Nobody saw him shoot the old man.”

  “He robbed the bank, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know,” Carl said. “That Kansas City’s different than anyplace else I’ve ever been. If Teddy Ritz wants to punish Jack himself, like shoot him, then even
the bank people never saw him.”

  “Well, Jack Belmont hasn’t been seen anywhere since he left Hartshorne.”

  “He said he and Heidi were going down to Old Mexico in Teddy’s La Salle, but now he’ll put shooting me ahead of his vacation.”

  “And if he’s serious, he’ll have to come here, won’t he?”

  “He’s good for his word,” Carl said. “I can think of places I’d rather be than standing in that courtroom.”

  Bob McMahon didn’t say anything but kept staring at Carl.

  Carl said, “What’re you doing? You see me as a goat on a tether, waiting for the lion?”

  “It’s an idea,” McMahon said.

  “He isn’t that dumb.”

  “But you thought it might tempt him.”

  “Bob, he isn’t gonna walk into a federal courtroom, even for me.”

  “All right, you’re off court duty,” McMahon said. “Go find him.”

  “I’m gonna talk to Anthony Antonelli afterwhile. We’re gonna meet at the Mayo.”

  “No court this afternoon?”

  “We’re adjourned till tomorrow.”

  “Who’s up?”

  “Some poor boys should be home making whiskey.”

  McMahon went into his pile of reports. “You ever see a picture of Dillinger’s girlfriend?”

  Carl said, “Billie Frechette? You bet,” and grinned.

  Carl walked behind most of the twenty-two columns dressing the front of the federal courthouse, looking out at a different part of the street at each open area but not pausing.

  Jack said he’d be out shortly and he wasn’t kidding. He was the most confident guy Carl had ever met. Or had the biggest mouth. Or was the dumbest. He had to be dumb to walk away from his dad, and it was this state he found himself in that made him mean and ugly. He’d failed at blackmail and kidnapping—those didn’t count—’cause he was set on being an outlaw. He liked to shoot guns and he was fast. He’d have to get a car. He couldn’t hang on to Tony’s for long. And a place to stay.

  Think of him in Tulsa with a place. Maybe with some prostitute he’s known for a while. Since he was a kid and she likes him and who his dad is and sees a future in Jack. He uses her car. She’s been popular with rich oilmen, has some money, can finance him. Thinks he’s cute…