Sam originally wanted two teams of agents to thread down the aisles from each side of Johnny’s seats, squeeze their way in, and go to guns immediately upon closing, presenting him with such an array of muzzles, he would see the idiocy of resisting. But Charles didn’t like it.
“Sir,” he’d said, “all those men, all those guns, all those people, all in the dark with a thirty-foot-high four-year-old dancing on-screen, plus music and picture talk blasting away, it could get away from us real easy, and nobody wants a shoot-out under those circumstances. Lots of people could get hit, our target hard to see and track, chaos everywhere.”
“Duly noted, Charles. But my thought is, take him as early as possible, because the longer he’s free, the bigger the chance of him seeing something and bolting. I’ve been on the phone with the Director all day and, believe me, the pressure’s on this one. We can’t let it fall apart.”
Clegg was big on the inside arrest, which in itself was an argument against it. Purvis was agnostic.
“If you wait till he leaves,” Clegg said, “you’ve got him in a flow of people and you don’t know how they’re going to react and mess things up. If they’re seated and we do it fast, I think it’s actually safer. They won’t even figure out what happens.”
“Moving in from the aisles on him seems tricky,” said Charles. “He’s too salty a boy. He’d see it coming and he might draw. Then you’ve got your shoot-out among three thousand suckers.”
“Probably won’t be a full house,” sniffed Clegg.
“Charles?” asked Sam.
“There’s an old hunting saying that might figure in here,” Charles said. “Hunters say, ‘Get as close as you can, then a little closer.’ So that’s what I’d do, outside the theater, still plenty of street light, no suspicions about him. I’d move a small team in from behind, get almost within contact distance, then, guns drawn, call him down. Hands go up or triggers are pulled. So close in, we won’t hit nobody else, unless it’s a through and through, but it probably won’t be with handgun velocities. So what everyone else has to commit to is discipline. If you see him, don’t draw and shoot, don’t jump for him or move aggressively. He’s as touchy as a jackrabbit. Let the arrest team move in quietly until they’re almost in his pocket. Even if he’s fast, he can’t beat a drawn gun.”
Sam’s decision was more political than practical.
“When he’s in and seated and the show is on, Mel will wander in and see if he can be located. If he’s near an aisle and there’s some maneuver room, then we’ll go that way. If he’s not, then we’ll wait.”
So now they stood, smoking, trying to keep their feet from falling asleep, handkerchiefs out to wipe the accumulated sweat from the brow. Zarkovich kept up a steady chatter, mostly about what he was going to do with the reward money, what kind of big car he’d get, maybe one of the new auto transmissions where there was no clutch, you just pushed a button or pulled a lever. He also thought maybe not black. Cars weren’t all black anymore. You could get any color you wanted, any color of the rainbow. Why not a nice yellow car?
But at that point—it was about 8:45 p.m.—it was a black car that pulled up, a government Ford. Clegg was behind the open window on the passenger side.
“Cowley just got a call from the Sage woman. They’re not coming here. They’re going to another one, the Biograph, on Lincoln. Get in, we’ll hop over.”
“Where’s the Biograph?” said Charles.
“A couple miles away. On Lincoln. Come on.”
Of course that meant all the plans were atomized. No one had seen, much less mapped, diagrammed, thought critically about, the Biograph. It means the whole thing would have to be made up on the fly.
“We’ll leave a few here, just in case, and in the meantime try and drop fellows over at the Biograph in ones and twos. I don’t know how much time we have.”
“Fewer might just be better,” said Charles.
“I’m dropping you a half block away. Sam’s in Brewer’s Menswear, the back room, with his people. You check in with him, see how he wants to play it.”
“Where’s Purvis?”
“He’s already there. He’s seen Sage, so he’s a key. He can make her out and get the ball rolling, one way or the other.”
Charles didn’t say: I saw her too. I smelled her.
“How about Hollis and Hurt?”
“I haven’t got them yet.”
“Get them next. I want them close by,” said Charles, and as a consequence got a sharp look from Clegg, who didn’t like his tone, his assumption of command, his closeness to Sam, and, presumably, Charles himself, and his taciturn sheriff ways.
Clegg left them off on Lincoln, and like Madison, it was a jam-up on Saturday night, in the dead summertime, with traffic clogged, lots of pedestrian action, a batch of bars all busy and smoky, and the marquee of the Biograph—Manhattan Melodrama, Charles noted—blaring brightly, filling the night with its brightness. COOL INSIDE, it said on a banner hanging from the front of the marquee.
The whole scene had an odd not-Chicago feeling to it. The buildings on both sides of the street were but two stories tall—all manner of bars, retail, honky-tonks—all aswarm, but there was nothing of that looming-city sense of tall towers closing out the sky. It could have been Saturday night in a Texas cattle town, with all the cowboys in for a night of hard drinking and, if lucky, soft rubbing. People milled and jostled, smoked, bumped, smiled, tried to find space at a new bar, celebrated the death of Prohibition by acquiring a happy, drifting buzz no matter the heat. Cow town all the way, with cars instead of horses, octane instead of methane.
Charles and the momentarily quiet Zarkovich slipped into the menswear place, walked between aisles of coats and piles of shirts, and slipped in the back, where they found Purvis and Sam, five or six others, gathered around a blackboard on which an awkward map of the theater had been inscribed.
“Okay,” said Sam, “glad you made it.”
“Ready to get this done,” said Charles.
“We’ve got a real solid ID, with a girl and Mrs. Sage buying tickets for the eight-thirty show. I saw them from the car,” said Purvis. “He was big as life. He looks a little, uh, different. The face is sort of blurred, but it’s still him, you’d have to be drunk not to see it.”
Charles nodded.
“What time does the show end?”
“Ten-thirty.”
All checked watches, saw that the movie had little more than an hour to run.
“Mel, what about taking him inside?” asked Cowley.
“I walked in and didn’t spot him. I can’t say where he’s sitting. I could go in again and get an exact location.”
“No sir,” said Charles, out of order but sound enough. “Too much hunt in that dog. He’d spook easy and then we lose our surprise and the whole thing goes into the crapper.”
“I think Charles is right,” said Sam. He paused, to think on it a bit, as the gathered agents—a few more had come in—waited. Finally Hurt and Hollis showed and moved toward Charles.
“Best thing,” Sam said, having worked it out, “is to take him on the street when the show lets out. I see it like this, but please improve on it if you can. Mel, you are up near the box office, maybe a little to the left. You’re eyeballing the crowd. When you spot him, you light up a stogie, and we’ll see that and from that we can locate him. With two women, one young, one middling, him being in straw hat, white shirt, tan slacks, white suedes, we should have no trouble. I’m guessing he turns left and begins to amble down Lincoln. Charles, I want you to the immediate left of the theater with Hurt. Is Hurt here yet?”
“I’m here, sir,” Hurt said.
“Okay, you move in on him from the rear. I’ll put Hollis there too, and he can join the two of you as you get in close for the collar. Guns away, please. I’m afraid someone will see the gun too early and scream and it�
��ll go bad. So the guns don’t come into play until the very last second.”
“If he sees us, he might draw. I’ll have to draw against him,” said Charles.
“Is that a worry? Are you fast enough?”
“Charles is so fast, it seems to be over before it starts,” Hollis said, and there was some laughter.
“Fine,” said Sam. “Good to have the gunfighter on our side, for a change. Anyhow, I’ll be across the street with Detective Zarkovich and reinforcements en masse. I’ll put two men in the alley about forty yards down from the theater, but I want them alert, and when they see your little parade approaching, they break cover and start moving against the crowd toward Johnny. When you converge, you call him out, Charles, and hopefully his hands go up and all of you can get him cuffed before he gets anything out of that pocket.”
He paused, still thinking.
“My one worry is the Chicago guys. They don’t know we’re here, and if anyone notices a lot of us, they might show up. So you cannot get into it with them. If they show, you have to play it cool. And refer them to me, if necessary. We don’t need five hundred uniforms with shotguns showing up in the middle of our arrest. Anybody got any questions?”
Nobody did.
—
IT WAS NOW AROUND 10. In ones and twos, the agents deployed themselves at the designated spots along the street, in the alleys and doorways, across from the Biograph and in parked cars along the busy road. The heat hadn’t broken, but it had fallen off its perch a bit and, at 97, it now seemed cool. Above, no moon, but clear black sky, ribbons of dim stars bleached out by the hot lights of Lincoln and its spangled array of nighttime action.
Charles and Hurt found their spot. In a few minutes, they saw Hollis move into place, just across the sidewalk and up a bit, angled against a car with a slight bend, as if he were talking to a friend sitting in it.
“Hurt, mosey over there and grab Hollis. I want to talk to you birds.”
Hurt nodded, ambled with exaggerated casualness to Hollis, passed the word, and each went through a bit of pantomime before they arrived back at Charles’s spot.
“Okay, y’all recall the briefing?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Now forget it.”
“Ah, Sheriff, what do—”
“I said forget it. Too busy, too many moving parts, too much coordination, too much depending on stuff that can’t be controlled. So you don’t look for Purvis’s cigar. You don’t look for a lady in orange. You don’t look for a fellow without a jacket in a straw hat. Got that?”
“Sheriff—”
“You look at me and only at me. I’ll spot Mrs. Sage. In the first place, Purvis is short, he may not see Johnny. In the second place, Purvis is short, you and our other chums may not see Purvis. That’s how it turns to crap, with nobody knowing, everybody trying to see stuff that can’t be seen.”
“Yes sir.”
“Ed Hollis, I didn’t hear a ‘Yes sir.’”
“Yes sir,” said Hollis over a gulp of air.
“I will move behind him, slide through the crowd. Hurt, you’re on my left. Hollis, you wait until we’re past. Also, neither of you fellows are to look directly at him. You’ll see him clearly enough when we close, but these big-time bad men with lots of gun experience, they can feel eyes on ’em—some sort of snake instinct, I think. If you’re staring at him, he will feel it, I guarantee it. Got it?”
“Yes sir.”
“After we pass, Hollis, that’s when you break from your position and come onto us. You’re to the left of Hurt. We’re three abreast, just behind him. Okay?”
Nods.
“Next thing. The two boys converging from the alley? Forget ’em. You got enough to worry about without trying to time it right so that they’re where they’re supposed to be. They don’t matter. Nothing matters, because once we get in contact distance of Johnny, we go. You both have your .38s holstered on your belt?”
“Yes sir” came the replies.
“You can put your hand on the grips under your jackets. That way, you aren’t disobeying no orders. But if Johnny wants to go hard, you will have to draw and shoot fast, making sure you see both the gun and him as you squeeze. You will find the point of aim naturally, but only if your eyes are driving the action. You don’t shoot until the gun is low in your vision and the barrel is pointed right at him, right at that white shirt, which ain’t gonna be but two feet ahead of you, then you fire. Got that?”
Again: “Yes sir.”
“As I reach him, I’ll skip ahead a step, so I’m at a kind of forty-five-degree angle to him. I will call him out. ‘Johnny,’ is all I need to say. And, believe me, he will know it’s him I’m talking to. That’s the key moment. He may draw, he may reach for the sky. It’s his call. If he reaches, you two break him down, wrap his arms around backwards, knock his knees out, and get him in cuffs. I will have him covered. Now, if he decides to go, and if it turns out he’s faster or he has a sleeve gun or maybe a crossdraw under his shirt, or if he even goes for a gun in the pocket, he will turn on me, and maybe he’s faster, maybe I’m faster. In any event, if he gets a shot off, it’ll be into me. Y’all will have clear shots, but keep moving into him and, as he goes down, be sure to track him and adjust your own hold to keep your slugs in him and not Joe Blow three feet ahead.”
“Sheriff, if we come around him from the left and he cottons to it, draws, and gets a shot off, it could go our way instead of toward you—”
“No, this is the game I signed up to play and I will play it full out. I will initiate. Got it?”
The two younger men looked at each other and could think of nothing to say.
“Got it?” Charles repeated.
“Yes sir.”
“Since I’m set, my drawstroke should be faster than his, unless he’s John Wesley Hardin, and I believe John Wesley Hardin is dead. So in that situation, I’ll draw and fire. I don’t believe in shooting a man once. It’s against my religion. If he’s worth shooting, he has to be shot a lot. I’ll put three or four into him. And that should be that. And you don’t tell nobody about this little chat. As far as you’re concerned, you followed Sam’s plan perfectly, Sam had it all figured out. And if it goes wrong, it was because I got it screwed up. You don’t blame Sam or Melvin or even Clegg. Any mess is on me. Got it?”
“Yes sir.”
Charles glanced at his watch: 10:16.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s do this.”
—
IT WAS HAPPENING, though somehow time slowed down so it all poked along at five miles an hour. Charles saw the tallish woman he recognized from the severe profile as Sage, slid his eyes to the man next to her, and beheld John Dillinger.
Johnny seemed to have melted a bit, or perhaps wilted would be the right word, for his clearly recognizable features were subtly softer, as if the bloom that drove the bush had finished and everything had lost its precision and begun the fall to earth. He’d added a mustache too, not Gable’s full swagger of Fuller Brush but a more sophisticated, more dapper little pencil line just above the lip. He sparkled. Whatever you could say about the man, he had “it,” which nobody could quite define, but it made him the one you noticed. Perhaps it was his comfort with himself, perhaps it was a number one’s sense of entitlement and belief in his own self-achieved placement high in human aristocracy, or maybe it was just sheer animal testosterone, pure rampant, wanton masculinity radiating from every pore. Even now, the man wore his sloppy grin and wide-eyed apprehension of all things large and small with perfect grace. He actually looked good in a straw boater. The hat was tilted rakishly, he held hands with Polly, and the two were in lovers’ syncopation as they walked the walk. His shirt billowed slightly—he was one of those men who wore his clothes well and turned every off-the-rack suit into a London tailor’s masterpiece.
At that point, Charles slid
his .45 from its holster, keeping his finger off the trigger, feeling the rawhide strip tight against and disabling the grip safety, snicked off the frame safety with his thumb, and inserted the weapon deftly into his waistband, just to the left of the belt buckle. Then he eased ahead, with his left hand quietly pushing his suit coat a little unnaturally to the right to cover the automatic’s big grip. He felt Hurt beside him, heard the Oklahoma detective take a brief breath and mimic Charles’s easy glide through the crowd. The two tried to slip, and not push, as they moved a little faster with each step, oriented on the silhouette of Johnny’s straw boater, which was twenty-five feet ahead, then twenty, then fifteen.
Charles felt as if he was sliding, as he kept cranking a little to left or right to get between folks ahead of him without touching or forcing, turning sideways to get a shoulder between and ooze or wiggle through. If he was breathing hard, he didn’t feel it at all, he just watched as Johnny grew nearer and bigger. Somewhere in here, he felt Hollis coming from the right, and he was aware that the young agent had gotten around Hurt and they now formed a line of three abreast. And if this last little knot of happy moviegoers could just be penetrated and passed, they’d be there and it would be time.
Charles broke from the two, edged his way with perhaps too much energy between a man and woman talking about the great Gable, and suddenly came free so that nobody was between him and Johnny and his two gals.
It went from slow to fast. It went from clear to blur. It went from five miles an hour to five hundred miles an hour. Without checking on, but with complete faith in, the loyalty and technique of Clarence Hurt and Ed Hollis, he skipped a pace and came around Johnny’s right, shouldering Sage aside, with his left hand tugged his coat back to free the Colt’s grip from its hiding place, and went to gun. At that precise moment, Johnny himself bucked a fast step beyond Polly. He knew.
Don’t know how, don’t know why, maybe just the animal in him sensing the approach of pure threat, some primordial feeling welling up from wherever that animal slept deep in the brain, but Johnny snatched for something in his pocket as he launched forward. He was drawing.
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