The Hot Kid

by Elmore Leonard

  Tony closed his notebook. “I believe that ought to do the job.”

  “I bet you got more’n you expected.”

  Tony raised his eyebrows. “Quite a bit more.”

  Tessa was looking from one to the other, his .45 on the table next to his chair with his glass and the ashtray holding cigaret butts.

  “You have the feeling,” Carl said, “holding the interview in Eyetalian is like keeping the whole thing off the record?”

  “I was surprised,” Tony said, “he told me as much as he did. Most of it was old 1900s Black Hand throat-cutting stuff, but I can use it for background.”

  “He bring you up-to-date?”

  “The businessman doesn’t pay the extortion, they don’t burn the place down anymore.”

  “Not since Luig did time for arson. He shoots ’em now,” Carl said. “That’s why I’m bringing him up on two counts of first-degree felony homicide in that coal-mining county.”

  Tessa looking up from his chair, mouth open, confused, like wondering if he was hearing right.

  “I’m gonna make a phone call,” Carl said, “get him transportation to the federal lockup here, so I won’t have to take him. What happens to you after that,” Carl said to Tessa, “once you get to McAlester, you aren’t gonna like at all. I only have one question for you,” Carl said. “You gonna stick your hands out to take the cuffs, or you want to see if you can pick up that gun?”

  I’ve got my ending,” Tony said. “Lou Tessa, the Black Hand assassin’s moment has come. He knows if he doesn’t reach for his gun he’s going to prison.”

  “He’s going to the chair,” Carl said.

  “All the more reason to pick it up. But he knows the marshal standing before him is armed and will draw and shoot to kill if he does.”

  “I didn’t tell him that.”

  “You didn’t have to. But did you know he wouldn’t make the move?”

  “If he hadn’t ever done it by now,” Carl said, “I didn’t see him reaching for it.”

  “Well, what he gave me is perfect, lurid as hell. You sure set him up for me.”

  They were still at Carl’s after marshals arrived to haul Tessa off to the lockup in the federal courthouse, Tessa yelling at Carl in Italian—Tony translating—that he’d tricked him, Carl shaking his head.

  He said to Tony, after, “It’s strange the way these people talk about being tricked and what’s fair. Teddy Ritz saying it wouldn’t be fair to tell me where this boob was staying in town. I said, ‘It wouldn’t be fair?’ I can shoot at ’em, but not lie to ’em.”

  He had told Tony about Belmont killing Nancy Polis, because it was on his mind, and said he had talked to his boss about it from her house, long-distance. Belmont killing her for no reason. Taking her car. Carl said, “Got what he wanted and shot her.”

  He seemed to have a different attitude about Jack Belmont now, but wouldn’t talk about it. Before, Carl took him seriously but still seemed to laugh at him for wanting to be a famous public enemy. Now, Tony had the feeling, Carl had looked at Nancy lying dead in her kitchen, killed for no reason, and stopped laughing at him. Jack had become that public enemy and had to be put away.

  “You have an idea where he is?”

  “He’s around,” was all Carl said.

  As soon as Tony left he phoned Bob McMahon at his home.

  He told him the guy with two detainers was in custody.

  “Every time you embarrass me,” McMahon said, “and I hope embarrass yourself, you come out smelling like a rose.”

  “It’s not the main reason I called,” Carl said. “I’m going after Jack Belmont. You put me on something else, I’ll quit the marshals.”

  McMahon said, “Meet me at Nelson’s tomorrow morning, seven a.m.” and hung up the phone.

  Why’re you becoming emotional on me? I told you you’re going after Jack Belmont. We’re all going after Jack Belmont. Because he’s a fugitive from justice. Not because you were both in that house at the same time, and you feel to blame for not knowing it. Have more egg on your face than on your plate.”

  They sat at a table in the Buffeteria’s clatter of breakfast noise, McMahon hunched over his three two-minute eggs, straightening now to crumble a piece of bacon in his egg soup. Carl hadn’t touched his breakfast.

  “Am I right? We don’t have to get worked up over what he’s done. We’ll get him because it’s what we do.”

  “He didn’t have to shoot her,” Carl said.

  “What you’re telling me, you thought you knew him but realize now you don’t. Do me a favor and think of yourself when you were still Carlos, at the drugstore the time Emmett Long shot the Creek. You’re fifteen, a well-behaved young boy. As a rule you don’t speak out to grown-ups unless they want to hear from you. You remember, about that time, the name of the cow thief you ran into?”

  “Wally Tarwater.”

  “You said you admired the way he bunched the cows without wearing himself out.”

  “I remember he knew how to work stock.”

  “But you told him you’d shoot him if he tried to ride off with your cows, and you did. Shot him out of the saddle at a good two hundred yards. Remember what you told me? You said you didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Just wanted to wing him? I thought you were doing a little strutting there. I thought, Is he that good or wants me to think he is?”

  Carl kept quiet. He’d started dabbing his fork at his fried eggs and potatoes.

  “I didn’t mind your sounding cocky, showing off in a quiet way. You’re a fifteen-year-old kid and you handled the situation. I said to myself that day, I want him when he’s of age, and I gave you my card. I let you show off now, because you always come out, as I said last night, smelling like a rose. You’ve been a marshal seven years, a marshal, and you’re almost as well known as that FBI showboat Melvin Purvis.”

  McMahon paused to sip his coffee.

  “You might not’ve heard. Purvis got Dillinger late last night on a tip. The FBI laid for him coming out of the Biograph movie theater in Chicago. Shot him down in the alley that runs next to it.”

  Carl hadn’t seen a paper and wanted to know everything at once. If it was Purvis who shot him. How many times he was hit. Was he dead on the scene. Was Billie Frechette with him. But what he said was, “What picture was playing?”

  McMahon looked up from his runny eggs.

  “Is that Carlos I hear? The kid wanting to know what the last movie was Dillinger saw? I don’t know, but it’ll be in all the papers.”

  Walking to the courthouse they talked about Belmont, Carl looking for the reason he killed Nancy Polis. McMahon said, “He couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut. What other reason is there?”

  They talked about where he might be. Carl saying, “He swore he’s coming after me and I’m counting on it. But if you put a watch on my building he’ll wait it out. I think it’ll annoy him and he’ll call me about it and complain, trying to be funny. He’s a famous criminal but doesn’t know how to behave like one.” Carl said, “Except when he killed Nancy Polis. What I’m thinking, let him find out I’ll be at my dad’s place. Maybe Tony, the True Detective writer can get in touch with him and tell him—let it slip. He’ll keep calling me at home and I won’t be there. He’ll call the office, he’s told I’m on leave. He won’t believe it, but might think I’m at the farm. I know Tony’s told him about it, that I like to visit.”

  “He calls the office,” McMahon said, “I’ll have Evelyn tell him where you can be reached, like we do it all the time. Carl, let’s get ’er done.”

  It’s what every farm girl dreams of,” Louly said, “lie around in a de-luxe hotel and get waited on. After two days I’m thinking, Hasn’t he shot that guy yet?”

  Carl had just brought her home from the Mayo.

  “I didn’t shoot him,” Carl said.

  “He tried to shoot you, didn’t he?”

  “He’s Boob McNutt, he didn’t know
what he was doing. But the next time I have to be gone—”

  “Wait a minute—”

  “I mean the next time we have to be apart. I got the same situation coming up. Guy wants to shoot me.”

  “I know—Jack.”

  “But this time I’m gonna be at the nut farm.”

  “So…?”

  “I don’t want you to be with me.”

  She stayed calm.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want you maybe getting shot on my account.”

  “Why? ’Cause we’re pards? Who’re you, Tom Mix?”

  Louly turned her voice up and was herself saying, “You jerk, we’re the same as married. When we’re apart I miss you ’cause I love you so much. Honey, I love even to look at you when you don’t know it. If we’re gonna be apart all the time I may as well become a nun. I’ll even turn Catholic and my stepfather Mr. Hagenlocker will see if he can get me burned at the stake. Carl, I have to be with you. That’s all there is to it.”

  He had said he didn’t want her to get shot. What was a better reason to leave her home? Now he said, “I love you with my whole heart. That’s why I don’t want any chance of him shooting you.” Carl added, “The way he shot Nancy Polis.”

  Louly said, “So that’s it. Well, I’m going with you.”

  He had said it twice now and it hadn’t changed her mind any. He was thinking it was something guys in movies always said to the babes, and that’s why he said it. Except this girl had shot Joe Young in a moment when she had to. She was no shrinking violet, she stepped up.

  He said, “All right, if you want.”

  “You knew I was going,” Louly said. “I want to make a bet. If you get Jack at the nut farm we get married there, this year.”

  “That’s what you win?”

  “What we win. You want to get married, don’t you?”

  “Yeah…?”

  “But you have this fear that if we’re married you couldn’t put yourself all the way into your job and take chances. You’d hold back being a marshal. You get Jack, it would show you can do your job and not worry about me.”

  He wasn’t sure if that made sense, but said, “What if he gets me?”

  She hesitated. “You’ve never thought that before, have you?”

  “Or he gets away. He’s always getting away.”

  She said, “Or what if you give me a gun and I get Jack? I wouldn’t mind, since the man’s a poisonous snake.”

  “Or Virgil shoots him,” Carl said, “with his new Krag?”

  They were having fun kidding around. Still, neither one offered Narcissa as a shooter.

  22

  Carl and Louly arrived at sundown in the ’33 Chevy they gave him to replace the shot-up Pontiac. Carl didn’t even get inside the house before he and his dad were sitting on the porch talking about the weather: over a hundred degrees for the past twenty-five days, Virgil said, from July into August.

  “A hunnert eight to a hunnert eleven in Okmulgee. It got so bad shade trees were dying in town. I haven’t counted what we lost, must be a couple dozen. No discovery wells are going in anywhere less they’re near water. The crew working the Deep Fork section were sucking water out of the creek and the graze was starting to look burnt, so I had ’em shut down the wells.”

  “You can’t live on oil,” Carl said.

  “That’s the truth.”

  “You told me that a long time ago. The night Dillinger went to the movies it was a hundred and two in Chicago.”

  “With those two women,” Virgil said.

  “The Lady in Red, a whorehouse madam named Anna Sage, and Polly Hamilton, his girlfriend while Billie Frechette’s doing two years. They say Dillinger wouldn’t let her drink ’cause she’s Indian.”

  “I never heard that, she’s Indian. So it was these two other women.”

  “Everybody was going to the movies during the heat wave. Get some of that ‘Modern Refrigerated Washed Air’ blowing on them.”

  “Here you see in the movie ads ‘Air-Cooled for Your Comfort’ with a polar bear sitting on a block of ice.”

  Narcissa appeared saying, “For you two polar bears,” and set a tray holding a bowl of ice, a bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the table between them—once Virgil moved his newspapers.

  Carl said, “You know what that last movie was Dillinger saw?”

  “If it was Dillinger,” Virgil said.

  “You want to get into that?” Carl sounding tired. “There’s some question it wasn’t Dillinger. But he did have plastic surgery and that’s all I know. Right now it’s still John Dillinger they got.”

  “I won’t argue with you,” Virgil said, pouring their sundown drinks. “It opened Friday at the Orpheum. I’ve been hoping you get here before it leaves.”

  “I sat home all last week,” Carl said, “waiting for Belmont to call and complain about the surveillance around my apartment. He has my number, but must’ve lost it. I doubt he takes care of his things. This afternoon he called the marshals asking for me and was told I was on my way here. They gave him your number. They don’t do it as a rule, but want to get this business done.”

  “There gonna be marshals around here?”

  “I told Bob McMahon, you want to get this over with, stay away. He said, once he knows Jack is on the property—I call and let him know—he’ll set up roadblocks so he can’t get out.”

  “So you expect Belmont to show.”

  “He seems stuck on living up to his word—at least with me. He says he’s gonna shoot me, he has to try. Tony, the True Detective writer, phoned to tell me Jack’s killing Nancy Polis got him on the wire service as a possible number one public enemy. Now he has to live up to it, even though he’s still only a flash in the pan. Tony wants to be here if Jack shows up. Says he’ll write the story and use ‘Jack Belmont’s Last Ride’ as the headline. But Tony doesn’t think he’ll show, not with every law officer in Oklahoma looking for him.”

  Virgil said, “I don’t think he will either. I was him, I’d think about lying low till I was an old man.”

  “He was going to Mexico in a La Salle from Kansas City, but then I brought him home and he changed his plan.”

  “If you think he’s coming,” Virgil said, “what’re you doing sitting out in the open?”

  “He has to get here first, then work out how he’ll do it before he can shoot me.”

  “All by himself?”

  “I don’t know,” Carl said. “But who’d want to help him?”

  The first ones Jack thought of were his roadhouse bouncers, Boo and Walter. He didn’t think he could get used to being in the same car with Boo, but Walter would make a good partner, for a while anyway, and Walter had come from Seminole, same as Heidi and the roadhouse whores. To get there Jack needed a different car, one that wasn’t hot for a change.

  What he did, he left Nancy’s Chevy on the street in downtown Tulsa and walked all the way home, to the Belmont mansion in Maple Ridge. It took him nearly two hours. He sneaked around back to the maid’s room, the one who’d taken in his overalls, and got her to the window in her nightgown buttoned to the neck. He said to her, “Margaret, mama said I could use her car, but I need the key. It’s in the cupboard in the butler’s pantry on the second hook. It says Cadillac V-twelve on it.” Margaret, thirty-six, never married, had turned to stone looking at him. Jack said, “But don’t wake her up to tell her. Wait till she needs the car. Tell her don’t worry, I’ll bring it back.” She got him the keys and still didn’t say one word.

  That same night he drove to Seminole and parked his mom’s Cadillac in front of the whorehouse where Heidi and the girls used to work. Not one of them was back. Jack got to drinking with a whiskey runner he knew, a young guy from the Cookson Hills who’d made a few deliveries to the roadhouse. Jack asked did he know what’d happened to his bouncers. The whiskey runner said yeah, Boo was living up at Bunch with some woman keeping a vegetable garden these days. “Walter, hell, Walter’s back in Seminole ke
eping the peace in a roadhouse, the one out this way across from the Philips station.”

  Jack said, “He worked for me and I never knew his last name. You know it?”

  “Walter’s a heinie,” the whiskey runner said. “He doesn’t have a sense of humor and doesn’t like people making fun of him. I saw it written down one time, on some papers he had. It’s Schitterer.”

  “How do you spell it?”

  “S-c-h-i-double-t-e-r-e-r. But you smile saying his name, like some drunks have done? He’ll break your jaw. He won’t tell his full name as a rule and stays out of trouble.”

  Jack said, “Schitterer,” and couldn’t help but smile.

  He recognized Walter from behind by that tree trunk of a neck growing out of his shoulders, part of his Charles Atlas build. Walter recognized Jack from the picture of him in banks and his name on the list of the 10 most wanted. He brought Jack outside to ask him, “Are you crazy, showing yourself?”

  It meant this fistfighter was sympathetic to Jack’s plight. Or hadn’t yet heard about the thousand-dollar dead-or-alive reward.

  “Walter,” Jack said, tempted to call him Mr. Schitterer, but not sure he could keep from grinning, “see that Cadillac V-twelve parked over there? It’s mine. What I’m driving to the home of a wealthy oilman who doesn’t trust banks. He keeps enough money in his house to last him all his life. I estimate a hundred thousand or more. You want some?”

  “How much?”

  “Forty percent.”

  “How you come to that?”

  “We each take half, but I get ten percent more for knowing about it.”

  “How do we work it?”

  “Watch the house. Wait for them to drive into town for some reason, for supper, and we go in.”

  “You say, ‘Wait for them.’ Who’s them?”

  “In case he has company, or takes his housekeeper.”

  “What if we can’t find where it’s hid?”

  “Ten bucks it’s in his bedroom. How about we leave tomorrow?” Jack said. “You want to, you can drive the car, that brand-new Cadillac V-twelve.”