Jasper gave the girl a fifty and told her to take care of herself.
After she’d sashayed off with her cute little butt swinging provocatively, he looked at me and Weller, and said grimly, “That Junior has got to go. He’s a mad dog. Just foaming at the mouth and walking sideways.”
“Fine with me,” I replied. “But if you’ll remember, I advised against him in the first place.”
“And you were right, Hog. And, by the way…I got four more names here I want you to look at.” He handed me a small sheet of notebook paper. “Check ‘em out. This time I’m listening.” He looked across the table at the old man. “And I’ve pulled up on the coke, Hardhead,” he said.
“Good,” Weller said. “You needed to, but that don’t solve the Junior problem.”
“Oh, we’ll go ahead and take care of that worthless mother-fucker this very afternoon. You with me?”
Weller and I both nodded. I had no other choice.
Sparks shook his head ruefully. “Can you believe it? I loaned that asshole five hundred dollars, and now I’ll never get it back.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Well, I figure me and Hardhead will just take him out somewhere a couple of hours north of town and shoot the bark off of him.”
“What if he doesn’t want to go?” I asked.
“That’s no problem,” Jasper said. “I’ll ask him if he wants to ride up to Jackson with us to pick up some equipment for the operation. Then I’ll tell him we’re also planning to have a good steak dinner and maybe get laid, all on me. He’s always been a mooch, so he’ll go for it. But what I want you to do is go down and bond him out of jail. It would be better if me and Weller aren’t seen with him.”
“Sure. How much is the bond?”
“Five thousand, but we’ve only got to come up with ten percent. I’m dealing with a bondsman named Harvey Wade. His office is right across from the jail, and he’s set to go just as soon as he gets the five hundred. You deliver the money, then pick up Junior and bring him out here to the club. His car’s still out back, so that’s where he’s gonna want to come anyway. Me and Hardhead will take it from there. That is, if Hardhead’s willing.” He raised his eyebrows questioningly at the old man.
Weller sighed and nodded. “It’s got to be done or he may blow the whole thing.”
“Yeah,” Jasper said. “He’s gotten way too impulsive. He didn’t used to be this bad, but shit, like he is now he might just take it in his head to do Slops while we’re walking down the lane toward the trailer park.” He looked over at me. “Hog, after you drop him off here go see Nell or something. Take her out to eat someplace, and make sure people remember you.”
“I got it,” I said with a grin. “But I really doubt that we’re going to see the cops launching a major statewide investigation over Junior Connally.”
“No, you’re right about that,” Jasper said, and hauled out his roll. “But this sure chaps my ass, regardless. I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever had to shuck over good money to get some fucker out of jail just so I could kill him. Isn’t this ridiculous?”
Forty-one
After the bondsman sprang Junior I dropped him off in front of the Gold Dust about five that afternoon. “See ya,” he growled as he stepped from my car.
“I don’t much think so,” I muttered under my breath.
Nell and I had a quiet dinner at the Grotto and then went for a long hand-in-hand walk along the beach. I took her back to her aunt’s house a little after eleven and returned to my apartment.
The body was quickly found, but as in the case of the two guys Jasper killed before Christmas, the investigation consisted of little more than a few cursory questions around the clubs. I don’t think they talked to Wade. Even if they had, they would have learned nothing about my part in the affair since Wade wasn’t the kind of man to talk in the first place, and in the second place he’d let Connally sign his own agreement once the money arrived. I’d just been the delivery man. However, the newspapers did note that Junior was the second convicted felon to be found murdered in the past few weeks. This led them to speculate that a “gang war” was in progress to control the coast’s “rackets.”
So much for newspapers.
Then suddenly the time for the job was upon us. We had one last meeting the night before the score to orient the two new men and firm up last-minute details. This time Jasper had taken my advice and summoned Jacky Rolland and Lloyd Waters from Dallas. Jacky-Jack was his usual fast-talking self, greeting me like a long-lost brother and jabbering glibly about “old times.”
Waters was as placid as ever; he shook my hand and gave me a soft “Hi, Hog.” That was all I ever heard him say. At the meeting he attended he didn’t utter a single word. Back in his working days he’d been a calm, steady officer, and I never understood why he went bad. Yet he had, and I knew of at least two murders that could be laid to his credit.
As I looked over the assembled hoods, I was reminded of a hackneyed scene from the movies, one you see time and again. The local mob encounters a cop or somebody else—usually the protagonist—who’s too tough and resourceful for them to handle. So they send for the Specialist. He’s about thirty, with a fear-some international reputation, and he comes equipped with a calf-length black leather overcoat, an oily ponytail, and about a week’s growth of stubble. He sits down at the table with the mob boss and his capos. “Can you do the job?” one of the capos asks anxiously. “Can you take this guy out?”
Instead of answering, the Specialist pulls a cigarette and a fancy gold lighter from his pocket. Then, like a man with all the time in the world, he languidly fits the cigarette between his lips, carefully lights up, and blows smoke in everybody’s faces. After this tiresome little ritual, a long silence ensues while he stares coldly at the capo. Finally the capo drops his eyes. The message is clear: no one can meet the icy gaze of the Specialist, so cold and fearsomely menacing is he. Sometimes whole squads of specialists arrive, always getting off chartered business jets and whisking into town in fleets of black limousines.
The Specialist doesn’t exist, of course. And if he did, exhibiting such rude and provocative behavior around the kind of guys I was mobbed out with in Biloxi would quickly earn him a sound drubbing or maybe even a trip to the Dumpster. Instead, the average career criminal, at least in my part of the world, looks much like everybody else. He may be a stylish dresser like Jasper or indifferent to his attire like Weller and Freddie Arps. Generally he’s a good ol’ boy gone bad, a gregarious individual, and very much a conformist within his own peer group. He prefers company to solitude, and likes nothing better than hanging around with his cronies and shooting the bull. More than likely he’s a sports fan. Slops Moline and Arps went bowling a couple of times a week; Weller and Culpepper both loved football; and even Junior Connally, who was normally surly and uncommunicative, was a nut for baseball and would talk for hours with anybody who showed any interest in the subject. They all followed the sports pages and bet avidly on their favorite teams; they had their likes and dislikes, their favorite foods and favored pastimes. Some of them had children, and Weller at least had been a reasonably good parent. Junior was the most ill-tempered of the group, and even he usually appeared no more toxic than the grumpy attendant down at your local service station, while Lardass Collins looked more goofy than menacing. In short, they were much like the rest of the human race except that they stole things and killed people. Collectively they’d accounted for millions of dollars in highjackings and burglaries, and probably twenty murders, this nondescript crew of hoods I’d gotten mixed up with. They were the banality of evil personified.
“Okay, guys,” Sparks said, bringing our attention around to the business at hand. “I guess all of you know the two new men, at least by reputation, anyway. If you got any questions, now’s the time to bring them up. ...”
“How long do we have to wait until the money count and the split?” Jacky Rolland asked.
“A co
uple of weeks anyway,” Sparks said. “I’d like to let things calm down a little longer, but some of us have pressing commitments—”
“No shit,” Weller said.
“All right, everybody,” he continued. “Dark clothes, ski masks, and ripple-soled shoes. Anybody ain’t got his shoes better head out to get them tonight. And don’t nobody show up in his regular shoes. The ripple soles go in the drink along with the guns and the masks.”
“Speaking of the guns, when do we get them?” Big Harry asked.
“I issue those out tomorrow night. We mob out behind the Motherlode at nine o’clock. And for God’s sake, be on time. Now please try to understand that while the guns can’t really fuck us, or at least they can’t if all goes right and there’s no shots fired, we need to get rid of them anyhow. I mean, what’s the point of having to pay some lawyer like Vernon Kittrel a pile of money to explain to a jury of idiots why the possession of a handgun or a mask and a pair of shoes don’t prove nothing? We get shut of that shit to be safe.”
“What about the money?” Arps asked. “Where does it go?”
“Hog and Weller are taking it clear out of the county tomorrow night. Once they get shut of Biloxi they should be in the clear. Hog has that ex-cop ID of his, and that should cool it with the law if they happen to get stopped. Then in two weeks we get together up in Tupelo at this safe place I know and split it up.”
“I’m not too sure I’m happy about a crooked cop holding the money,” Big Harry said.
“Well, fuck, Harry!” Sparks said, weaving his head back and forth. “Would you feel better with a crooked crook holding it? I mean, be realistic, man. We’re every one of us thieves here.”
“I trust Hog all the way,” Weller said.
“Well, why the hell wouldn’t you trust him?” Big Harry asked. “You’ll be with him!”
Weller fixed the fat man with his cold, dead eyes and tapped a gnarled knuckle on the table for emphasis. “Harry, I been doing this shit since nineteen and twenty-five. If you can find one son-of-a-bitch who’ll claim I ever swung with a nickel of his money I’ll kiss your ass.”
“Okay, okay,” the big hood said placatingly. “I didn’t mean nothing by what I said, anyway. I was just thinking out loud.”
“If we could get back on track here,” Sparks said. “Now, Harry and I are driving the getaway cars out to the lane a couple of hours beforehand and leaving them there. Bigfoot Waters is following and bringing us back to town. When we get out there to the trailer park, I’m tricking out the gate, and then we go in. Harry and I take the lead trailer. That’s where old man Giles will be. That’s the first one on the right, just inside the clearing closest to the driveway leading in. Bigfoot and Jacky Rolland get the next one down and to the left. Tom-Tom and Lardass get the one beside it. That’s where the daughter lives. Slops and Freddie Arps get the one directly across from where Giles is. Hog and Weller are going to be posted right at the opening to the clearing as backup.…Everybody got that?”
“Sure,” Arps said. “All anybody needs to know is which trailer he takes.”
“Right.”
“How about the phones?” Weller asked.
“There’s only one,” Jasper said. “It’s in old man Giles’s trailer. The cord comes out a window and it’s on the ground all the way to the lane. I’ll just clip it as soon as we get to the clearing. Now, once more, the way it’s going to go down is this. Me and Big Harry knock on old man Giles’s door. Once he’s opened up and we’ve pushed our way in, then I key the mike on the walkie-talkie and give the rest of you the go-ahead. At that point you guys John-Wayne it on the other trailers. Two of the doors can be kicked in, but the third one, that’s Slops’s and Freddie’s trailer, has a door that opens to the outside. We’ve got a two-foot wrecking bar for that one. Just put the end of that mother under the lip of the door right at the knob, give a good heave, and you’re home free. These fuckers open up like a sardine can, only quicker.”
“We gonna have to peel the safes?” Lardass asked in his curiously metallic voice, his words running together.
“I don’t think so. My contact says old Giles is nuts about his daughter, so I think if we start talking about putting a blowtorch to her feet or something like that, then he’ll drop his mud on the combinations. At least that’s what I hope will happen. If not, then Freddie and Tom-Tom will do their stuff.”
“The getaway?” Lardass asked.
“ ‘Across the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go,’ “ Sparks sang in a lilting falsetto. “It’s only a quarter mile to the getaway cars. Then we come back to the Motherlode where Hog and Weller take off with the money. After they leave, Slops and Lardass drive the getaway cars a few miles down Beach Boulevard and abandon them. I’m following them to bring them back. Now, please remember, everybody…The Motherlode. Not the Gold Dust or any of those other joints, but the Motherlode. And one last thing. I know I can’t expect everybody to be dead straight when it goes down. I mean, we all need a little Dutch courage at times, but don’t nobody show up bad fucked up or drunk or nothing like that. I imagine this is the biggest score any of us have ever pulled. Just a few hours of discipline, then we can lie up and take our ease for a long time. Any more questions?”
There were none.
“Be on time ‘cause you don’t want to miss it,” Jasper said with a grin. “This one’s going down in the history books.”
Forty-two
The morning of the robbery began with the worst possible news. I was dressing to go out for breakfast when Leland Bigelow phoned me. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get this information you needed,” he said as soon as he’d identified himself. “But you told me not to let Blanchard know I was snooping, and that made it tough.”
“Sure. That’s okay. I just appreciate your help. What’s the story?”
“It’s not good. Apparently the son-of-a-bitch lied to you, because you don’t have a Mississippi law enforcement commission of any kind, and you never have had.”
“I’m not surprised,” I replied. And I wasn’t. Nevertheless, the news gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Manfred, just what in the hell is going on down there?” Bigelow asked. “Why would he do something like this?”
“I have no idea, but it stinks.”
“Pull out, son,” I heard his deep, rumbling voice say. “Let it go.”
“I can’t do that. It would mean leaving Bob Wallace out there alone.”
There was a long pause at the other end of the line and for a moment I thought the connection had been broken. Then he said, “Okay. But isn’t there something I can do to help you?”
I thought for a moment. “Yeah, there is. You could stay close to the phone tonight in case I need a good lawyer.”
“Lawyer?” he asked. “Why a lawyer?”
“It could be possible that somebody is trying to set me up.”
“Ohhh…I get it.”
“Can you do it?” I asked.
“What? Sit by the phone? Hell yes, I will.”
“Good. I’ll call collect if I need you. If everything goes all right, I plan to see Nell as soon as it’s over. I’ll phone you from Lurleen’s place and let you know it’s okay to stand down.”
“You do that. And be careful.”
We hung up and I finished dressing. I was just about to go out the door when the phone rang again. This time it was Bob Wallace. “Where are you, Bob?” I asked.
“I’m in Jackson. I’m driving down there in a little while, but I’m pissed to the gills.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Curtis Blanchard tried to keep me out of the operation at the last minute. First he started in on some bullshit about the governor deciding that he didn’t want anybody but Mississippi officers involved. Then when I told him he could tell the governor to go fuck himself, he called the DPS director in Austin and tried to get me pulled.”
“You’re still in, aren’t you?” I asked
anxiously.
“Hell yes, I’m in. Blanchard ain’t got the stones to keep me out of anything I want to be in.”
He was right about that; few people did have the stones to override Bob Wallace. Genghis Khan, maybe. Or Erwin Rommel.
But not Curtis Blanchard. “Bob, how much do you trust Blanchard?” I asked.
He gave me a mirthless little laugh. “Up until this morning I trusted him about as much as I could trust a man. And we’ve worked together a bunch of times. I mean, there’s his reputation, plus I’d never seen anything to tell me I shouldn’t have confidence in the man.”
“Nor have I until here lately,” I said. “But there’s been something bad wrong with this whole deal from the beginning. I’ve known that ever since I saw Blanchard in a coffee shop up in Jackson talking to Sam Lodke.”
“What!? When was that?”
“Right after Christmas. And add to that him virtually ignoring those two poor bastards Jasper killed back in December and you’ve got something really strange going on.”
“Why in the hell didn’t you tell me about him and Lodke?” he asked. I could tell he was getting hot.
“Because I knew you’d jump him about it, and I couldn’t afford to have that happen.”
“But—”
“And there’s one other thing. I don’t have the highway patrol commission he said he got for me. As it stands now I’m just a citizen freelancing it.”
“That lying bastard!” he growled.
“Just be there tonight, Bob,” I said, putting as much urgency into my voice as I could. “I need you covering my back.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said firmly. “I’m not going to get pulled off this thing unless the Good Lord calls me home before it goes down.”
“Thanks. And keep quiet afterward about Blanchard and Lodke and the commission and the rest of that crap until I’ve had time to talk to Nell’s dad about it.”
“Nell’s dad? What’s he got to do with it?”
The Sweet and the Dead Page 19