Joe was holding both of Dock’s hands. We was heading toward our hideout, about a hundred miles southwest from Rondout, near the little town of Ottawa. We’d arranged for it weeks before. It was a old cotton gin that’d been turned into a paint factory. It belonged to a kin of Jimmy Murray’s. It was big enough you could drive a car into it.
Glasscock wasn’t looking right or left. His fingers was clenched onto that wheel like if he let go, the wind’d blow him clear outa the car. He was looking straight dead ahead. He didn’t look at me once or say nothing. He knowed what I was thinking. He knowed it.
It took us seven hours to the hideout. Seven long, long, long hours.
Ever’ twenty minutes or so, we’d stop and give Dock a break from all them bumps and humps. He was still awake, he hadn’t passed out, but he seemed like he was just on the edge of it. We’d wrapped cloth over wherever we thought he’d been shot, it looked like five or six places, but it was so wet with blood it was like you’d drenched it in a river.
When we finally got to Ottawa, Murray was waiting for us in that big Peerless. I can still see that big fat white face getting outa that long car and coming towards us. He was wearing a black suit and in all that dark, it looked like just his head was bobbing towards us, all by itself, a big round moon without nothing holding it up.
“Did’ja get it?” That was his first question.
“We need a doctor!” I said. “Man’s hurt here!”
Murray looked at Dock. His mouth dropped open. He hadn’t seen Dock at first. And when he did, I guessed what was going through his mind. I was right. He shook his head. “Forget it. Chicago, maybe. But it’s too risky.”
“Nobody gets nothing if he dies, Murray!” I hollered. “We gotta get a doctor! Fast!”
“It’ll blow up the deal.”
“He needs a doctor!”
“Sorry.”
A big hand come down and clamped down on Murray’s shoulder.
It was Joe’s hand.
“We’re taking him to a doctor. That’s it.” Joe’d stuck his face right down in front of Murray’s face. In fact, Joe’s whole body was pulled up agin Murray. Joe’d filled out a lot since he first come to me. I never seen him look so big, or so solid. He looked like a mountain.
Murray didn’t care. He craned his neck over to my ear and said low, “Dock isn’t gonna make it that far, Willis.” He was trying to sound sad. “I know you wanta save him. I wanta save him too.” He shook his head. “It’s too late.”
I knowed Glasscock was thinking the same thing. Only he knowed better’n to say nothing. He just stood off from the rest of us, his cheeks sucked in.
I yanked the .38 outa my waist holster and punched it up agin Murray’s nose. “You know the works in Chicago, Murray. Get him a doctor!”
With my other hand, I pulled a bunch of big bills outa my pocket—it was all old money—and I throwed it down on the running board of the Cadillac. “Here’s two thousand. Use it for a doctor. You ’n Joe take him in. Ever’body’ll get their share. You got my word.”
Murray was still dragging his feet. “You gonna leave all that money here?”
“Get going!”
THIRTY-SIX
Our shadows was flickering and fluttering all over the inside walls of that big, hollow warehouse. My shadow, and Jess’ shadow, and Glassock’s shadow.
We’d set up oil lamps on two sides, and the lamps was kicking up black, fast shadows. You could see our knives in them shadows, they was long as swords, and you could see the shadows of our arms flying up and down, up and down—stabbing, stabbing, stabbing.
If you was just watching the shadows, you mighta thought we was stabbing somebody to death.
We wasn’t. We was slicing open all them dozens of thick, leather bags, and pulling out all the loot.
The loot, my God, the loot! Piles and piles of it.
All over.
If Dock hadn’t a-got shot, we’da all been whooping it up and dancing all around that loot, whooping and dancing all over that warehouse. I never seen so much loot in my life: Liberty Bonds, stacks and stacks of ’em. Greenbacks, stacks and stacks of ’em. Stock certificates, stacks and stacks of ’em. And bags. Bags filled with loose diamonds and rubies. Bags filled with gold chains. Bags filled with gold ring settings. Bags filled with silver coins.
We was millionaires!
Only nobody was dancing. Nobody was whooping.
All you could hear was the sound of leather ripping, and breathing. Ever’ so often, Glasscock’d suck in a extra-big breath and start to open his mouth, like he was gonna say something. He never said nothing. Ever’ time, he’d just let that breath out and close his mouth again. One time, he pulled out a little glass bottle from his pocket and swallowed some of his pills.
I could hardly stand to look at him. To be honest, there was part of me that wanted to do him like they do a hog at hog-killing time—throw down on him, hang him from a tree limb, chop off his snout and his ears, drain out his blood, yank all his lousy guts out.
When Glasscock seen he shot Dock, did he just keep shooting so we wouldn’t have to mess with a hurt man?
Or maybe did he shoot Dock on purpose?
One less man meant more loot to split.
If Dock’d died on our way to that warehouse, we woulda buried him and kept on going. But he didn’t die. And I never one time, not one time, thought about letting him die to cut down on the risk of blowing up the job.
That thought just never come to me. Brothers do that for brothers.
When the Dalton gang pulled that two-bank job in Coffeyville, Kansas, back in eighteen and ninety-two, Emmett Dalton was galloping off, making a getaway, when he turned around and seen his brother Bob’d get shot offa his horse. Emmett didn’t think twice. He wheeled around and charged right back through all them blazing guns.
There was only one thing I didn’t like about that story. Bob Dalton died anyhow. And Emmett went down with twenty-one slugs of buckshot, and ended up in the penitentiary for fourteen years.
So I wasn’t thinking about the end of it.
That picture of Dock all shot up kept blowing back into my head that whole time: while we was dividing up the loot into shares; while we was putting it in the Cadillacs and driving to a barn of somebody we knowed nearby; while we was pulling off ten bales of hay and digging a big hole and burying most of that loot; while we was back on them country roads driving in the general direction of Chicago; while we was turning off into a deserted field southwest of Joliet and shucking one of our cars and the empty pouches; while we was back on the roads to Chicago.
Was Glasscock just a idiot yeller-belly—or was he a murderer?
No sooner we hit Chicago, we could see the whole town was worked up over the train robbery. Newsboys was running all over the city shouting, “Read all about it! Read all about it! BIGGEST TRAIN ROBBERY EVER!” My stomach flied into my throat when I seen them newsboys running around waving them papers. Had they found Dock? Was they gonna say that one of the robbers was dead, and a search was on for the rest?
After we’d dropped the car at the garage, I told Jess and Glasscock to wait. Then I walked outa that garage like I was just a ordinary man. The first newsboy I seen, I walked over to him and give him a nickel. I sucked in a breath. I read it. Jesus Christ! We’d got $3 million! It wasn’t eight, like Fahy’d said it might run to, but it was still a helluva lot. Yeah, three million dollars!
And the laws didn’t have nobody.
The story said they’d only found a few clues—blood where one of the robbers had been shot, two gas masks, some broke formaldehyde bottles, a little bottle of nitro, and one mail sack that had dropped off the getaway car. The story said half the city’s detectives was working on the case. Others was coming into Chicago from all over the country. The Chicago police chief told the reporters: “I assure you that we’ll have the culprits within a few days.”
I quick went back to the garage. I told Jess to find hisself a out-of-the-way hotel
and to spend the night there and in the morning to catch a train to Texas. I told Glasscock he better get outa town too. I told ’em both to take some of the money: $35,000 for Jess; the same for Glasscock. I give ’em both the address and phone number for where I was gonna go: the apartment of one of Murray’s friends.
“Call me right before you leave. Somebody else answers, not me, hang up.”
“How’s Dock?” First thing I asked Murray’s pal.
“Not good.”
“Murray get a doctor?”
“Yeah.”
He wrote out the address where Dock was at on the back of a old envelope. Fifty-three North Washtenaw Avenue, I’ll never forget it. It was the apartment of another one of Murray’s boys, a booze-runner.
I didn’t waste no time. I caught a cab to go there. I’d borrowed a Panama hat with a big wide brim and it was low over my face. I got outa the taxi about four blocks off from that address. No sooner I got out I tucked up in a alcove of a building. I wanted to see if any suspicious cars’d been trailing us. I didn’t see none. I come outa the alcove and walked slow towards the apartment.
It was a two-story building, square brick, a lot of weeds poking up in front, paint peeling on the window shutters. Before I went in I walked past it for half a block. Then I turned and come back, looking in ever’ direction to make sure nobody was behind me. I didn’t see nobody.
I walked up some creaky steps to the second floor. I went to the apartment number, Number 5. What if Dock was dead in there? I sucked in some gulps of air. Ever’thing seemed like it was in a dream, or like it was happening to somebody else, not me. Not Dock. Not any of us.
I knocked on the door. It opened a crack.
“It’s me, Willis. Lemme in.”
The door swung wide open.
A dozen arms come out and grabbed me.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The Chicago police throwed me into a “death cell.”
No windows. Nothing except plain cement walls. Nobody talks to you.
You’re alone, a hundred percent alone, like you never been alone in your life.
They wanted me to spill the beans, give ’em the names of ever’body that was in on the train job, and I wasn’t gonna do it. No matter what they done to me, I wasn’t gonna snitch. That was one of my rules. And I had a few of ’em—no drinking, no whoring, no killing, no lying to people you did business with. And no snitching. The only way I mighta talked was if I thought it was gonna help Dock in some way. But I knowed the less I talked, the more they was gonna wanta keep Dock alive. If Dock was alive. I didn’t know.
And so they throwed me in solitary, in a little cell in the town of Rockford on the outskirts of Chicago.
Well, you ever seen a field rat, or even a field rabbit, after it’s been caught and penned up in a little cage? Most of ’em ’ll run round and round that cage like crazy, trying to find a way to break out, and when that don’t work, if it’s a wood cage, they’ll gnaw and gnaw that wood ’til their teeth wear down or break off. After that happens they’ll crawl off into a corner and they’ll just lay there like that, their eyes all kind of glassy, like the eyes of the crazy man, ’til they die.
I wasn’t a rat. I was a man. Only I was caged up like a rat. And the first few days I was in that cell, I went round and round that cage like crazy, too, trying to figure a way to break out. Only it was my thoughts, more’n my feet, that was going around, going over what’d gone wrong, and how I could turn it all around before the teeth in my mind broke off, and my eyes got glassy …
For the first few weeks in that death cell, ever’thing that went through my mind was clear. And I kept thinking about how things’d went down. The Chicago police grabbing me through the door of that apartment. Cuffing me. Throwing me into a chair. Hollering at me to “Start talking.”
Me looking all around for Dock. But no Dock. No Joe. No Murray.
Nobody but them big, hollering laws.
Though a open door, I could see into the next room. I seen a messed-up bed with dark spots on the sheets. But I couldn’t tell if they was shadows, or stains of blood. I’d told the laws that I was a oil man from Texas that’d come there looking to buy me some beer, and that my name was James H. Watson. “Yeah,” they’d said, “well, you was ‘Willis’ when you knocked on the door.”
They’d knowed I was lying. But I knowed the Chicago police was the crookedest in the world. I’d told ’em I’d give ’em $20,000 if they’d give me the air, and they acted like they was going along with it. Was they playing me for a sucker? I didn’t know, but I’d got ’em to let me call Louise.
Her voice’d went low. She’d knowed something was up, but she hadn’t asked me no questions. She’d quick got on the train and brung that money from New London—the $20,000 I give her as a down payment on the future—and we’d all met her at the depot. She didn’t ask me no questions, just handed me a brown package. I’d handed the package to the dicks and took her arm and started to walk off.
That’s when a gnarly old hand’d come down on my shoulder.
It was Captain William Schoemaker, the new chief of the Chicago police detectives. Sharp little nose, watery eyes. He’d showed up from God knows where.
The last I seen of Louise, she was like in shock, holding her handkerchief to her mouth.
They’d took me straight to their station downtown, and that’s when they let it out they’d got Joe and Dock too. They wouldn’t tell me who’d tipped ’em off to Dock being in that apartment on Washtenaw, only that it was a “informant.”
I’d strung ’em a line; told ’em my partners was two St. Louis mobsters named Blackie Wilcox and Sam Grant.
But they’d figured out—soon enough—I was lying.
And none of us three—Joe or Dock or me—was talking.
The Chicago laws’d thought Joe’d give in the easiest, being he was the youngest. When he didn’t say nothing, they’d beat him black and blue. Broke his nose and put lumps on his face and head. They walked me past the room he was in. They was still working on him. I seen the marks all over his face, and blood pouring outa his nose. And Captain Schoemaker was acting like he was gonna poke Joe’s eyes out with his two long fingers.
William Schoemaker, chief of Chicago detectives.
Joe still wasn’t talking.
They wouldn’t tell me much about Dock, only that he’d been took to the Cook County hospital. I didn’t think he was gonna talk either, no matter how bad off he was. Still, that Schoemaker’d wanted to make me sweat. He’d put his mouth close up agin my ear: “Most men crack when they’re about to make the acquaintance of Saint Peter at the pearly gates.”
It didn’t do no good.
Oh, did they want me to talk! They didn’t beat me up, like they did Joe, but they done ever’thing else—they’d shouted at me, and shook their fists, and Schoemaker’d kept sticking that needle nose in my face. So close I could smell his breakfast, or his supper, or his dinner, or his coffee. Said he was gonna send me and ever’body else that was in on the robbery up for twenty-five years. Or maybe more, if they could stack up a bunch of counts.
It hadn’t done no good.
Finally, they’d throwed me in that death cell.
There wasn’t no bed, no chairs, no nothing. There was a drain in the floor for pissing, and in one corner, a “sugar pot” for the other. They handed you your food, or what they called food, through a trap window but they didn’t give you no fork or knife or even a spoon. They didn’t want you to have nothing you could stab a guard with, or yourself, if you went crazy. You ate with your fingers, and at night, when you was sleeping on the floor, you could feel the cockroaches crawling all over you to get at whatever was left on your fingers—crumbs, juice, mush.
Like I said, all you can do when you’re ain’t sleeping is pace round and round and round and round, like them trapped rats and rabbits, ’til you feel you’re going crazy, ’cause no matter how many times you go round and round and round, you’re not really going nowhere. There
’s nowhere to go.
I didn’t have no money. No diamond rings or stickpins, to bribe a guard. And even if I had some, it likely wouldn’t have worked. Not this time. It had to be another way.
The only way outa that hell-hole was in my head, but after a while, after nobody was talking to me no more, or even asking me if I was ready to talk, after the days slid into weeks, it was all I could do to keep my thoughts from getting all scrambled up and tossed around in ways that didn’t make no sense at all.…
You see people you know—Ma, Pa, Jess, Dock, Joe, Louise—and they’re all standing in some room, and that room looks like you been there before, but you don’t know where it is … and all the people you know ’r talking to each other, but the things that’s coming outa their mouths don’t sound like human words, it’s more like a bunch of mockingbirds a-chattering …
… tck, tck, tck … achaw, achaw, achaw …
I’m standing in the middle of ’em, and I’m telling ’em I’m gonna escape, just like I done offa Pa’s cotton patch back in Rising Star, and just like I done offa the prison farm at Imperial, but now they ain’t mockingbirds no more, ’cause they all got their heads throwed back and they’re laughing like they’re about to choke.
“Ain’t no way out this time, old boy,” they’re saying.
I walk from side to side of that cell, like I’m in a cage, only there ain’t no wires for me to look through to the outside, not even one hole. Just cement walls. I walk right to the left, left to the right, up and down, down and up. I wanta get the kinks outa my legs and pump the blood up into my head to figure things out … but ever’where I look there’s only a cement wall.
Pork-fat hash.…
Pork-fat hash, that’s what’s on the plate that gets slipped through the slit into my death cell. Brown and lumpy. Like dung. And some peas. I count ever’ pea on my plate—one pea, two pea, three pea, four pea, five pea, six pea, seven pea, eight pea, nine pea, ten pea, eleven pea, twelve pea, thirteen pea. That’s all. Thirteen peas.
All Honest Men Page 29