by Ace Atkins
He twisted himself into a pair of striped pajamas and put on a silk robe and knew this was going to be a fine vacation, not planning on leaving the room till they carried him out. He cranked up the Victrola as far as it would go, playing his new favorite, Marion Harris singing “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
As he waited for the party to come to him, Roscoe cut up Luke’s steak and placed the silver tray on the floor, rubbing the nubbed ears of his old friend.
SAM HAMMETT HAD CASED the old slump-backed roadhouse for two nights, following up on a forty-dollar payoff to a San Quentin snitch named Pinto about the whereabouts of “Gloomy” Gus Schaefer. A few weeks back, Schaefer’s boys had knocked off a jewelry store in St. Paul, and the Old Man had sent him out to this beaten, nowhere crossroads just outside Vallejo to make sure the information they got was good. It was night, a full moon, and from the protective shadow of a eucalyptus tree Sam watched the sequined girls with painted lips and their rich daddies in double-breasted suits. They stumbled out onto the old porch and to their Model Ts and Cadillacs, while poor men in overalls would wander back down the crooked road.
Two of the Schaefers’ black Fords sat close to the rear porch, his gang upstairs laughing and playing cards, their images wobbly through the glass panes. Schaefer himself had appeared twenty minutes ago, Sam knowing instantly it was him, with the hangdog face and droopy eyes, leaning out an upstairs window, checking out the moon and stars, before taking off his jacket and resuming his place at the card table.
Sam craned his head up to the window and shook his head.
He found a foothold under the second-story porch and climbed, careful not to rip a suit he couldn’t afford in a month’s pay, and shimmied up a drainpipe, finding purchase on the rail, and hoisted himself over the banister with a thud.
He breathed slow, trying to catch his breath and feeling that wet cough deep in his throat. He tried to silence the hacking with a bloodied handkerchief.
Lying close to the windowsill, he could see the figures and hear them now, every word, as they talked about everything but the heist. Mainly about a batch of hooch loaded up in one of the Fords for a delivery to a tong in Chinatown named Mickey Wu.
One of the boys had a girl in a short skirt on his knee and bounced her up and down like a child. She clapped and laughed as the boy wiggled a poker chip over his knuckles.
Sam coughed again and bit into the handkerchief to silence himself. His hands shook as he righted himself on the railing, sitting there for ages, maybe an hour, before the conversation turned to another meeting, somewhere in Oakland, and a trade with Gloomy Gus’s wife.
Sam leaned in and listened, thinking about who the hell would’ve married a fella like Gloomy Gus, and then there was a small crack. The slightest splitting of wood that sounded like warming ice.
Sam held his breath, unsure what had happened, and reached for the railing.
Then he heard a larger crack, and within seconds the entire porch fell away from the roadhouse. Sam tried to hold on to the drainpipe, keeping the entire rickety affair up in the air for a few moments, enough that he steadied himself and got some air back in his lungs, but then the porch leaned far away and crumbled like a tired fighter into a solid, violent mess.
The Schaefer gang was on him before he could get to his feet. They extended their revolvers down as he lay on his back. The air had gone out of him like a burst balloon.
Four of them, including Gus, stared down at him. He tried to catch a breath.
“Hello, Gus.”
“Shut up,” Gus said.
“Sure thing.”
“You the cops?”
“I have some business.”
“What business?”
“Diamonds,” Sam said, two men pulling him to his feet as he dusted off the pin-striped suit. He tried to look annoyed at the dirt on his elbows while two of the boys poked guns into his ribs, another frisking him and finding the little .32.
Someone had hit the headlights on a Model T and Sam turned his head and squinted. Schaefer nodded thoughtfully, checking out Sam, with the shock of white hair and the young face and the wiry, rail-thin frame.
“In times like these,” Sam said, coughing, “a man can’t be too careful.”
Schaefer’s droopy eyes lightened. He smiled.
Sam smiled back. A crowd started to form on the roadhouse’s porch. The tinny sounds of the piano player started again.
“Somebody shoot this bastard,” Schaefer said.
“Now, Gus.”
“Don’t make a mess,” Schaefer said. “Put down a blanket or something first. We’ll dump him in the bay.”
They brought Sam upstairs, tied him to a ladder-back chair, stuck a handkerchief in his mouth, and locked him in a broom closet. He heard the men walk away and waited until he heard laughter and poker chips again to try to work his hands from the knots.
HER NAME WAS Bambina Del Monte.
Her name was Maude Delmont.
Her name was Bambina Maude Delmont Montgomery. Hopper-Woods, if you count the last two.
Her last husband, Cassius Clay Woods, was a real screw. He hadn’t known she was still married to the Hopper fella and was still sending her sap letters about eternal love and even little poems he’d written, really horrible ones about her eyes being like the sky and her skin the color of milk. Her eyes were black, her hair was black, and she had her father’s dark Italian skin. Who was this guy trying to fool? But that’s what happened to a man who’d slipped a vise on your finger and still didn’t get into your drawers.
It was after hours at Tait’s Café, a speakeasy on O’Farrell, and as usual Al was late. Paddle fans worked away the smoke that rose from marble-topped tables where couples sat in little wiry chairs. There was a big stage, but the stage was bare except for a placard announcing A SPRIGHTLY AND DIVERTING ENTERTAINMENT INTERSPERSED WITH GUEST DANCING.
She ate ice cream and drank bourbon, mixing the two a bit, and hadn’t a clue on how she was going to be paying if Al didn’t show up with some cash. He was the one who drove her from Los Angeles along with the girl, the whole way bragging how they’d soon be dining in Paris on a king’s budget.
But Al Semnacher didn’t look much like a king when he walked through the alley door of the speakeasy. He looked more like a goddamn rube, with his graying hair, low hairline, and horn-rimmed glasses. A guy who’d stutter if his hand touched your tit.
“Anyone ever tell you that you look like a rube?” she asked. “Why don’t you clean your glasses now and again?”
“He’s here.”
“Who?”
“The mark.”
Maude rolled her eyes. “Just pay the tab and let’s fly. ‘The mark’? You never worked a con in your life.”
“What’s that?”
“Bourbon and ice cream.”
He wrinkled his nose, making him look like a spoiled-rotten kid smelling something he didn’t like.
“It’s good. Want some?”
“It’s gone.”
“So it is,” said Maude. “Say, your girl doesn’t exactly look like her pictures.”
“The nightie shots or the one from Punch of the Irish?”
“Both,” Maude said. “She’s gotten fat.”
Al Semnacher leaned back into the chair and drummed his little fingers. He readjusted his thick, dirty glasses and leaned in, speaking in his little voice: “She needs money and we need her.”
“And she’ll stick with the script?”
“A variation on the Engineer’s Daughter. But it’s a long con.”
“I’m glad you listen,” Maude said, thumping her fist on the table. “But, Al?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me do the thinkin’ in this relationship.”
Al fiddled with the long spoon, dabbing out just a teaspoon of the melted ice cream. He winked before he slipped the spoon into his mouth and said, “I like your hair.”
“Do you, now? You don’t think I look like a boy?”
&nbs
p; “With those knockers that’d be kind of tough.”
Maude reached down and hefted those big boobs on her skinny frame and asked, “She’ll get us in?”
“She’s been knowin’ ole Fatty for years now. His pecker will get hard just hearin’ her name. Trust me.”
Maude met Al’s eyes and she smiled, keeping the contact.
“You have balls, Al. No brains. But a big set of ’em.”
2
Sam had knocked over the chair and was working the ropes on a rusty pipe when the door opened and rough hands gripped him by the arms and jerked him into a room where the gang played poker. Gloomy Gus glanced over at Sam as he counted out some cash, tossing a wad to the center of the table, and said to one of his boys, “Thought I told you to kill the bastard.”
“Thought we’d wait ’cause of the mess.”
“Are you trying to say something?” Gus asked. One of the gang stooped down and pulled the handkerchief from Sam’s mouth.
“I came with an offer.”
“You came to us as a copper or a bank dick. Look at you, the way you’re dressed, you look like a copper from a mile away.”
“Can I explain my offer?”
“Explain, my ass.”
The boys laughed, Gus laughed, chomping down on an unlit cigar. His right incisor made of gold.
Sam was jerked to his feet by two men. His legs felt strange, tingling and light.
“I can give you five grand for it all.”
“Who sent you?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
One of the boys punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over and, as the wind came back to him, spat blood.
“Five grand. Is this a joke?”
“How ’bout I sit in for a hand?” Sam asked. “Then you can get to killing me.”
Gus looked up from the cards that he’d begun to deal. He glanced over at the boys and shrugged, one of ’em just a kid, with jet-black hair parted down hard with drugstore grease.
Gus picked the cards off the table. He shuffled. He relit the old cigar, the tip glowing red-hot.
He stomped his feet in time with the music below them.
Sam wandered to the table, took a chair, and said, “Stud?”
“I call the fucking game,” Gus said. “So, Mr. Big Shot, you got ten dollars for the pot?”
Sam reached into his coat pocket and, having left his wallet with Haultain, smiled and said, “You stake me, Gus?”
Gus cut his eyes up from the deck in hand, and then just as slow and lazy, began to deal around the table.
They played until dawn, and Sam’s stomach felt hollowed out from the cheap gin they drank from fruit jars. Someone brought in some coffee and he drank that and smoked two more Fatima cigarettes and played two more hands and was feeling pretty good with the situation and was just about to bring up the diamonds again until one of Gus’s boys thundered up the steps, threw open the door, and yelled that someone had just set fire to their cars.
Gus’s dark eyes turned right toward Sam.
LABOR DAY MORNING.
Virginia was in the hotel bathroom, naked as a jaybird, door wide-open, powdering her face and big fat boobs before checking her red lips and pulling herself into a slip. Still no panties, mind you, just the slip, as she played and combed her mousy brown hair and danced a little fox-trot before flushing the commode and adding makeup under her eyes.
Maude Delmont watched from the edge of the bed, legs crossed, dressed in a cute little black dress and smoking a thin brown cigarette. She studied herself in the mirror on back of the door. Her black hair was bobbed, as every girl who read a magazine knew to do, and she’d painted her eyes up like some kind of Oriental.
She liked it. She didn’t look half bad.
Virginia must’ve been a hell of a looker based on those photographs of Al’s. But somewhere down the line, she’d developed an ass the size of a zeppelin and looked just plain tuckered-out. She’d been sleeping pretty much since they’d gotten to San Francisco.
Virginia Rappe. She pronounced it Rap-pay, telling people she’d learned that in France. But from the boring stories Maude heard on the drive, the only thing Virginia had learned in France was how to pick pockets of rich, dumb Americans and dance in her underwear.
Al was a lousy con man.
Virginia was a lousy whore.
But Al wanted to believe she was an actress, a star of tomorrow, and had told Maude a half dozen times about how six years ago Virginia’s face appeared on the sheet music to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” And Al would say it all serious, like a man in love, and that would make Maude laugh even more. “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” She couldn’t believe he didn’t see the humor in talking about a tired broad like Virginia as if the girl was some kind of kid virgin.
Virginia walked through the shabby little hotel room drinking some gin, still wearing a slip up top but no dress. When she turned to Maude, Maude noticed a sizable patch of fur between her white thighs, like a French poodle being strangled, and she motioned to it with the burning end of her cigarette and coughed.
“Oh, shit,” Virginia said.
“You sure you’re up for this?”
“You asked me that ten times.”
“So, how do you know ole Fatty?”
“I worked for Sennett when he was there.”
“You really in the pictures?”
“I was in a restaurant scene. Fatty was throwing pies.”
“Did you get a pie?”
“Not a crumb.”
“I always wanted to be in pictures,” Maude said and recrossed her legs. “You sure you’re okay? You look a little peaked.”
“Just nerves.”
Maude watched the girl’s hand’s shake as she combed her hair some more and tugged on her stockings and dress. Her face looked drained, and even with the makeup black circles rimmed her eyes as she turned back from the dressing table.
“After this is done, can I have dinner?” Virginia asked.
“Sure, sweetie.”
“With dessert?”
“With dessert.”
“Please excuse me.”
Virginia went back to the bathroom, where Maude heard gagging and vomiting and then the toilet flush. When she returned, Virginia asked, “Isn’t this the cutest little hat?”
It was a straw panama with a blue bow.
Maude ticked off the ash of her cigarette. “You might want to take off the price tag, honey.”
SAM FELT A LOAD of bricks against his neck and tumbled to his knees. There were fists and feet and cursing and spit, and a lot of blood after that. He heard a thud on the floor—half of an old brick had landed beside his head—and he tried to make his way on all fours as another gleaming shoe knocked him in the stomach and against the wall, and soon it felt like he was underwater trying to find the right way up, searching for air. He covered his face the way he’d seen fighters do and curled up into a ball, as there was more shouting but then less kicking, and for a few seconds he was left alone, until a final blow came to the ribs like an exclamation point to it all.
He could not breathe.
It felt like minutes passed until a sliver of air worked into his diseased lungs and he saw some light flat across the wooden floor and heard feet up and down the staircase, stumbling and bumbling like the Keystone Kops. He tried to sit but only fell flat to the ground.
Someone called his name and he opened the only eye he could.
The hands were more gentle this time but no less strong, and Sam felt himself standing through no fault of his own. His arm was draped around a man, maybe a head taller than him, and they were walking across the room in a crazy, jumbled dance, down the stairs and out to the back of the roadhouse, where the early-morning light split Sam’s skull.
He was flopped into a rumble seat and the ignition was pressed and they were off down the bumpy, curving road without a word.
“How you doin’ back there, buddy?”
Sam crossed a forearm
over his eyes. “Why’d you have to go and do that?”
“What?”
“Distract ’em,” Sam said. “Don’t you know I had that son of a bitch right where I wanted him?”
“You think Gus will be more upset about his Fords or the hooch I used to start the fire?”