Hot Springs

by Stephen Hunter

  The waiter came and offered to fetch cocktails. Earl took a Coca-Cola instead, though he encouraged Junie to go ahead, and she ordered something called a mimosa, which turned out to be orange juice with champagne in it.

  “Now where’d you hear about that?”

  “I read about it in the Redbook magazine.”

  “It seems very big-city.”

  “It’s from Los Angeles. It’s very popular out there. They say California is turning into the land of opportunity now that the war is over.”

  “Well, maybe we should move out there when all this is over.” But the vagueness came to his face again, as if he had some unpleasant association with California.

  “I could never leave my mother,” she said hastily. “And with the baby coming—”

  “I didn’t mean it, really. I wouldn’t know what to do in Los Angeles. Hell, I hardly know what to do in Hot Springs.”

  “Oh, Earl.”

  They ordered roast chicken and roast beef and had an extremely nice dinner. It was wonderful to see him in a civilized place, and to be in such a nice room which was filled with other well-dressed people. The waiters wore tuxedos, a man played the piano, it was all formal and pleasant.

  “Now, honey,” he finally said.

  A shadow crossed her face, a darkening. She knew that tone: it meant something horrible was coming.

  “What is it, Earl? I knew there was something.”

  “Well, it’s just a little something.”

  “Is it about the job?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Well, so tell me.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Mr. Parker though, he thought I should come up here and take you on a nice date and everything. He’s a fine man. I hope to introduce you to him sometime, if it works out. He’s as fine as any officer I had in the Corps, including Chesty Puller. He cares about the job, but he cares about his people too, and that’s very rare.”

  “Earl? What is it?”

  “Well, honey, you remember those raids I said I was never going on? Into the casinos and the book joints? Now these young men we have, they’ve worked damned hard and they’ve really become very good in the small amount of time. But two weeks. Hell, it takes two years to become a good Marine. Anyhow, these boys, they . . .”

  He trailed off helplessly, because he couldn’t quite find the words.

  “They what?”

  “Oh, they just don’t quite know enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “Enough to do it by themselves.”

  “I don’t—”

  “So I said to Mr. Parker, I said I should go along. At first. Just to make sure. Just to watch. That’s all. I wanted to tell you. I had told you I was just going to train them. Now I’m going with them. That’s all. I wanted to tell you straight up.”

  She looked at him.

  “There’ll be guns and shooting? These raids will be violent?”

  “Probably not.”

  She saw this clearly. “No. That is the nature of the work. You are dealing with criminals who are armed and don’t want to accept your will. So it is the nature of the experience that there will be violence.”

  “We know how to handle the violence. If there is any. That is what this training has been about. Plus, we wear heavy bulletproof vests.”

  She was silent.

  Then she said, “But what does that do for me and the child I carry? Suppose you die? Then—”

  “I ain’t going to die. These are old men with rusty shotguns who—”

  “They are gangsters with machine guns. I read the newspapers. I read The Saturday Evening Post. I know what’s going on. Suppose you get killed. I’m to raise our child alone? He’s never to know his father? And for what? To save a city that’s soaked in filth and corruption for a hundred years? Suppose you die. Suppose they win? Suppose it’s all for nothing? What am I supposed to say to this boy? Your daddy died to stop fools from throwing their money away on little white cubes? He didn’t die to save his country or his family or anything he cared about, but just to stop fools from gambling. And if you close down Hot Springs, the same fools will only go some other place. You can’t end sin, Earl. You can only protect yourself and your family from it.”

  “Yes ma’am. But now I have given my word, and I have boys depending on me. And, the truth is, I am happy. For the first time since the war, I am a happy man. I am doing some good. It ain’t much, but it’s what I got. I can help them boys.”

  “Earl, you are such a fool. You are a brave, handsome, noble man, but you are a fool. Thank you, though, for telling me.”

  “Would you like some dessert?”

  “No. I want you to go home and hold me and make love to me, so that if you die I can have a memory of it and when I tell our son about it, I will have a smile on my face.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said. It was as if he’d just heard the best order he’d ever gotten in his life.

  13

  Hard-boiled eggs (two), dry toast, fresh orange juice. Then he went over accounts for three hours and made a number of phone calls. For lunch he went to Coy’s and had a fillet. On a whim, he stopped at Larry’s Oyster Bar on Central and had a dozen fresh plump ones from Louisiana, with a couple of cold Jaxes. He went back and took a nice nap. At 3:00 a girl from Maxine’s came over and he had his usual good time. At 4:00 he met Judge LeGrand at the club and they got in a quick nine holes. He shot a 52, best of the week. He was catching on to this damned game. At 6:00 he went to the Fordyce and took a bath, a steam session and a rubdown. At 7:00 he had dinner at the Roman Table restaurant with Dr. James, the head of surgery at the hospital, and Mr. Clinton, who owned the Buick agency; both were on the board of the country club, the hospital, and Kiwanis and the Good Fellows. At 9:00 he went to the Southern, caught some of Xavier Cugat’s act, which he had seen a dozen times before, checked with his floor managers, his pit bosses and his talent manager to make certain that Mr. Cugat and his boys were being well taken care of. At 11:00 he walked back to the Medical Arts Building, took the elevator up, got into a dressing gown, and had a martini on the patio, while reading that morning’s New York Mirror, just delivered from Little Rock. That Winchell! What a bastard he could be.

  Owney took a moment before bed and stood at the balcony. He had come a long way. He was unusual in his profession in that he had just a sliver of an inner life. He wasn’t pure appetite. He knew he existed; he knew he thought.

  Today had been such a good day, such a perfect day, yet such a typical day that he took a little pleasure in it all: how hard he had fought, how tough it had been, and how beautifully it had worked out. So many of them died, like the Dutchman, spouting gibberish as the life ebbed out of him, or Mad Dog, splattered with tommy gun fire in a phone booth, or Kid Twist, who went for a swim in midair after volunteering to rat the boys out; or went crazy, like Capone, down there in his mansion in Florida, a complete lunatic by reports, so hopelessly insane on the corrosiveness of his dose that nobody would even bother to visit him. He remembered Capone, the plump sensualist with a Roman emperor’s stubby fingers and a phalanx of legionnaires to guard him everywhere, taking the Apollo Suite at the Arlington because it had two entrances, or, as Alphonse would think of it, two exits. A tommy gun legendarily leaned in a corner, in case Al or a lieutenant had a sudden problem that only a hundred .45s could solve.

  “Al, it’s safe here. That’s the point: it’s smooth, it’s safe, you can come down here by train and enjoy yourself. A man in your position, Al, he should relax a little.”

  Al just regarded him suspiciously, the paranoia beginning to rot his mind, turning his eyes into dark little peepholes. He didn’t say much, but he got laid at least three times a day. Al was reputed to have an organ bigger than Dillinger’s. Pussy was the only thing he really cared about and pussy, in the end, had destroyed him. He was afraid of the needles so he came to Hot Springs, under the belief the waters could cure him. They couldn’t, of course. They could only stay the course o
f the disease a bit. All his soaking in 141 degrees had earned Scarface but a few extra hours of sanity in the end.

  Owney finished his martini, turned to check that his pigeons had been fed, saw that they had, and started in, when he was surprised by Ralph, his Negro manservant.

  “Sir. Mr. Grumley is here.”

  “Flem?”

  “No sir. The other Grumley. The one they call Pap. He’s out of his sickbed.”

  This alerted Owney that indeed something was up.

  He walked into the foyer of his apartment, to find the ghost-white old Pap Grumley supported by two lesser cousins or sons or something.

  “What is it, Pap?” asked Owney.

  “A Grumley done been kilt,” said the old legger, a flinty bastard who’d fought the law for close to six decades and was said to carry over a dozen bullets in his hide.

  “Who? Revenuers?”

  “It’s worse, Mr. Maddox.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your place done been raided.”

  Owney could make no sense of this. One or two of his places were raided a year, but by appointment only. It usually took a meeting at least a week in advance to set up a raid. The police had to be told which casino or whorehouse to raid and when to do it, the municipal judge had to know not to get that drunk that night so he could parole the arrestees without undue delay, the casino had to be warned so that nobody would be surprised and nothing stupid would happen, the Little Rock newspapers had to be alerted so they could send photographers, and the mayor had to be informed so that he could be properly dressed for those photographs. Usually, it occurred when some politician in Little Rock made a speech in the statehouse about vice.

  “I don’t—”

  “They come in hard and fast, with lots of guns and wearing them bulletproof vests. And one of ’em shot a Grumley. It was Jed’s boy, Garnet, the slow-wit. He died on the spot. We got him over at the morgue and we was—”

  “Who raided?”

  “They said they was working for the prosecuting attorney.”

  “Becker?”

  “Yes sir. That Becker, he was there. There’s about ten, twelve of ’em, with lots of guns. They come in hard and fast and one of ’em shot Garnet dead when Garnet pulled his shotgun. Mr. Maddox, you got to let us know when there’s going to be a raid. What am I supposed to say to Jed and Amy?”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “At the Horseshoe. Just a hour ago. Then they chopped up all the tables and the wheels with axes and machine-gunned the slots.”

  “What?”

  “Yes sir. They turned them machine guns loose on over thirty slots. Shot the hell out of ’em too, they did. Coins all over the goddamned place. Nickels by the bucketful.”

  “They were working for Becker?”

  “Yes sir. He was there, like I say. But the boss was some big tough-looking stranger. He was a piece of work. He shot Garnet. They say nobody never saw no man’s hands move faster. He drew and shot that poor boy dead in about a half a second. Nailed him plug in the tick-tocker. Garnet was gone to the next world before he even begun to topple.”

  The cowboy! The cowboy was back!

  • • •

  By the time he got there, reporters and photographers were already on the scene. They flooded over to Owney, who was always known for his colorful ways with the language, those little Britishisms that sold papers. There were even some boys from Little Rock in attendance.

  But Owney was in no mood for quips. He waved them away, then called a Grumley over.

  “Get the film. We don’t want to let this out until we know what’s happening. And send ’em home. And tell ’em not to write stories until we get it figured out.”

  “Well, sir,” said the Grumley, “there’s already a press release out.”

  He handed it over to Owney.

  HOT SPRINGS, August 3, 1946, it was datelined.

  Officers from the Garland County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office today raided and closed a gambling casino in West Hot Springs, destroying 35 slot machines and much illegal gaming equipment.

  The raid, at the Horseshoe, 2345 Ouachita, also confiscated nearly $32,000 in illegal gambling revenues.

  “This marks the first of our initiatives to rid Hot Springs of illegal gambling,” said Prosecuting Attorney Fred C. Becker, who led the raid.

  “We mean to put the gangsters and the card sharks on notice,” said Mr. Becker. “There’s no longer a free lunch in Hot Springs. The laws will be enforced and they will be enforced until gambling and its vices have been driven out of our city.”

  Operating on a tip that illegal activities were under way . . .

  Owney scoffed as he discarded the sheet: maybe the thirty-foot-high neon sign on the roof of the Horseshoe that said 30 SLOTS—INSTANT PAYOUT! was the tip-off.

  “Who the fuck does he think he is?” Owney asked the Grumley, who had no answer.

  “Where’s my lawyer?” asked Owney and in short order F. Garry Hurst was produced.

  “Is this legal?” Owney demanded. “I mean, how can they just fuckin’ blow down the doors and start blasting?”

  “Well, Owney, it appears that it is. Becker is operating on a very tiny technicality. Because Hot Springs Mountain is a government reserve, any illegal activities within the county that are subject to affecting it can be construed to come under injunction. So any federal judge can issue warrants, and they don’t necessarily have to be served by federal officers. He can deputize local authorities. Becker’s got a federal judge in Malvern in his pocket. There’s your problem right there.”

  “Damn!” said Owney. He knew right away that clipping a federal judge would not be a good idea, just as clipping a prosecuting attorney wouldn’t, either.

  “Can you reach him?”

  “He’s eighty-two years old and nearly blind. I don’t think money, whores or dope would do the trick. Maybe if you snuck up behind him and said boo.”

  “Shit,” said Owney.

  “It’s a pretty smart con,” said Hurst. “I don’t see how you can bring legal action against the federal government, and through that technicality Becker is essentially operating as a federal law enforcement officer. He’s got the protection of the United States government, even if the United States government has no idea who he is.”

  “Okay, find out all you can. I have to know what the hell is going on. And I have to know soon.”

  Owney headed inside, where Jack McGaffery, the Horseshoe’s manager, waited for him.

  “Mr. Maddox, we never had a chance. They was just on us too fast. Poor Garnet, that boy never hurt a fly, and they blowed him out of his socks like a Jap in a hole.”

  But Owney was less interested in the fate of Garnet than he was in the fate of the Horseshoe. What he saw was an admirably efficient job of ruination accomplished quickly. The roulette wheels and the craps tables could be replaced quickly enough, although a roulette wheel was a delicate instrument and had to be adjusted precisely. But the slots were the worst part.

  Usually, the slots were simply hauled away to a police warehouse, stored a few weeks, then quietly reinstalled. Some of them had dozens of TO BE DESTROYED BY HSPD stickers on their backsides.

  But this time, someone had walked along the line of machines and fired three or four tommy gun bullets into each. The heavy .45s had penetrated into the spinning guts of the mechanical bandits and blown them to oblivion. The Watlings looked like dead soldiers in a morgue, their glossy fronts cracked or shattered, their adornments of glass spider-webbed, their stout chests punctured, their freight of coins spewed across the floor. Reels full of lemons and cherries and bananas lay helter-skelter on the floor, along with springs and gears and levers. They were old Watling Rol-a-Tops from before the war, though well maintained, gleaming and well bugged and tighter than a spinster’s snatch, ever profitable. The Rol-a-Tops, though, were the proletarians of the gambling universe. More obscenely, a Pace’s Race, the most profitable of the devices, was include
d in the carnage. It was a brilliantly engineered mock track where tiny silhouettes of horses, encased in mahogany under glass, ran in slots against each other, and by the genius mechanics of the thing, the constantly changing odds whirled around a tote board, the odds themselves playing the horses. Its glass shattered, its elegant wood casing broken, its tin horses bent and mangled, the thing lay on its side, all magic having been beaten out of it.

  Owney shook his head sadly.

  “We kept people out,” said Jack. “All the coins are still there. Them boys didn’t get no coins, that’s for sure.”

  “But they got $35,000?”

  “Sir, more like $43,800 and odd dollars.”

  “Shit,” said Owney. “And all the records.”

  “Yes sir. But wasn’t airy much in them sheets.”

  Of course not. Owney wasn’t foolish enough to keep sensitive documents in casinos.

  “But sir,” said Jack. “Here’s something I don’t understand.”

  He pointed at the walls. Every ten or twelve feet, someone had whacked a hole with an ax. Owney followed the gouges, which circled the main room of the casino, continued up the stairs to Jack’s looted office, and followed a track into both the gals’ and the men’s rest rooms.

  Looking at the destruction in the women’s room, he said finally, “Who did this?”

  “Well, it was an old guy. There was an old guy who came in after all the ruckus was done. He had a hatchet and he went around chopping holes in the wall while the younger boys chewed up the tables and gunned the slots.”