“Sammy . . .”
“I came up with Roy,” Sammy said. “We go back. All the way back. You know what the smartest thing you can say about his sister is?”
“Nothing?”
Sammy reached over and squeezed the younger man’s shoulder. “See how smart you can be when you work at it?” he said.
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 00:12
* * *
“There’s three toggle switches right under the dash,” the driver said, pointing with his forefinger. “Just slip your hand under there, you’ll feel them.”
The black man deliberately turned his back and reached under the dash, tacitly acknowledging that the pistol he had been holding hadn’t been the protection he first thought it was.
“First one kills all the interior lights; in the trunk, too,” the driver said. “You push it forward, they won’t go on, no matter what’s opened. The second one—the one in the middle—that’s the ignition kill switch. Push it forward, and you can’t start the car, even with the key. The last one is the muffler cutouts. Okay?”
“I got it,” the black man said, stepping back out of the car.
“Then let’s go get that Ford of yours.”
“I don’t think so, man. You just wait here, we’ll bring it to you. An hour, no more. Man like you, I’ll bet you an ace at killing time.”
“You’re a funny guy,” the driver said.
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 00:21
* * *
“You’re really sure we need an outsider in on this?” the tall, red-haired man asked. He had moved his chair so that it was alongside Beaumont’s desk, canting his lean body at an angle to create a zone of privacy.
“An outsider’s exactly what we need, Lymon,” the man in the wheelchair answered. “You know how men like Dioguardi work. Before they make a move, they always count the house. They think they know every card we’re holding. This man, he’s going to be our sleeve ace.”
“Where do you find someone like him, anyway?” Lymon asked. “The mobbed-up guys, they’ve got a whole network. They want a job done in, I don’t know, Chicago, the boss there, he makes a call, and the boss in . . . Miami, maybe, sends him someone to do it. But that’s not us. I mean, we know people, sure. But they’re independents, like we are. They’re not with us.”
“That’s true.”
“You trust Red Schoolfield enough to use one of his guys? I heard that he wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer himself. Maybe he already made his deal.”
Cynthia walked over to the liquor cabinet, opened two small, unlabeled, brown glass bottles, and carefully shook a pill from each. She expertly tonged three ice cubes into a square-cut tumbler, added water from a carafe, and brought it over to Beaumont. He plucked the pills from her open palm, put them in his mouth, and emptied the tumbler.
“More?” she asked.
“Please.”
Without another word, Cynthia fetched the carafe and refilled Beaumont’s glass. She returned the carafe to the liquor cabinet unhurriedly, clearly intending to remain in the room.
A silver cigarette box sat on Beaumont’s desk. He opened it, turned it in Lymon’s direction. Lymon shook his head “no,” completing the ritual. Beaumont took a cigarette from the case, fired it with a table lighter. He adjusted his position in his wheelchair, blew a perfect smoke ring at the ceiling.
“This guy—Dett is what he calls himself, Walker Dett—he didn’t come from Red. I knew Red had used him on a job. All’s I did, I gave Red a call, asked him how it had worked out. Like a reference.”
“So where did you find him?” Lymon persisted.
“You know Nadine’s roadhouse?”
“Everybody knows Nadine. She—”
“This isn’t about her,” Beaumont said, the “Pay attention!” implicit in his tone. “You go out there, to her joint, once in a while?”
“Not really. Only when—”
“When they’ve got certain bands playing, am I right?”
“Yep,” Lymon said, enthusiasm rising in his voice. “They get some real corkers out there, sometimes.”
“Like Junior Joe Clanton?”
“That’s one for sure!”
“Absolutely,” Beaumont agreed. “Now, Junior Joe, he’s no Hank Williams. But who is? What I mean is, Junior Joe was never on the Opry. And you’re never going to hear one of his songs on the radio. But when word gets out he’s coming to town, you know there’ll be a full house somewhere that night.”
“Yeah. I don’t understand why he never got . . . big. That boy’s got a voice like . . . well, like nobody else.”
“Maybe that’s the way he wants it,” Beaumont said. “All men pretty much want the same things—the same kind of things, anyway—but different men, they go after it different ways. I know what Nadine has to shell out to get him to work her place. If he does that good everywhere he plays, Junior Joe’s making more money a year than some of the big stars.”
“And he gets paid in cash, right?”
“That could be part of it,” Beaumont conceded. “But I don’t think it’s the whole story. Maybe . . . You remember Debbie Jean Watson? Hiram Watson’s daughter? That girl won every beauty con-test in the whole damn state. Far as a lot of folks were concerned, she made Elizabeth Taylor look like a librarian. Remember what happened to her?”
“She went out to Hollywood. . . .”
“And never came back. You know why? Not because she couldn’t act. Hell, there’s all kinds of movies where the girls don’t have to do anything but look good. You’d think she could at least get some of that kind of work. Face like hers, body that could wake the dead, she walks in a room, she owns every man in it. But the thing is, Lymon, the camera didn’t see her the way men do in real life. The way I understand it, those movie cameras, they don’t work the same as a man’s eyes do. You need a special look to make them love you. And Debbie Jean, she didn’t have it.”
“So maybe that’s Junior Joe, what you’re saying? He’s got the voice for honky-tonks, but not for records?”
“I don’t know,” Beaumont said. “All I’m saying, there’s reasons for everything.”
“What’s this got to do with—?”
“This Walker Dett, he’s kind of like Junior Joe. A honky-tonk man, moving from town to town. You want him, you call this number. They give you another number—that one’s always changing—and you just leave a message. Somebody calls you back—maybe somebody calls you back—and you make a deal. Like booking an act, see?”
“So how do people even know about him?”
“Same way they do about Junior Joe. Word of mouth. Which is why I asked Red Schoolfield, was he as good as people say? And Red, he said he was.”
“It seems like a lot of trouble just to hire a gun,” Lymon said. “There’s always been plenty of freelance firepower around. Even more, since Korea ended.”
“Plenty of horses get foaled every year, too,” Beaumont said. “But how many of them end up in the Kentucky Derby? This guy, he’s in a different class from anyone we could find around here.”
“But what if the outfit guys really aren’t planning—?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Beaumont said, scornfully. “You think they’re just talk? They already made it clear—they’re going to get a taste of what we got. And once they get that taste, you know what happens next.
“Look, Lymon, they’re all businessmen. Just like us. They want our action. What we have to do is make it so costly for them that it’s not worth it. And this guy I’m bringing in, he’s just the man for that.”
“Beau . . . ?” his sister said.
“All right, Cyn. I know.” Turning to Lymon, he said, “Doc says, I don’t get some sleep after I take those damn pills, they’re not going to do the job.”
As he got up to leave, Lymon asked, “Whatever happened to her?”
“Who?”
“Debbie Jean Watson. Like you said, she never
came home.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, it seems there’s all different kinds of cameras. Movie cameras, she couldn’t do a thing with them. But she was good enough for the other kind.”
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 01:19
* * *
The big house was quiet. The man in the wheelchair rolled himself down the hall to a master-bedroom suite, where flames in
a stone fireplace cuddled rough-hewn logs. A triple-sized tub in the attached bathroom was surrounded by handrails. He backed his chair against the wall, and sat in darkness until his sister lit a thick red candle in the opposite corner.
“I suppose you’d like one of your awful cigars,” she said.
“Sure would.”
“You don’t have to always have one before—”
“There’s a lot of things I do have to do, Cyn. Some of them, I wish I didn’t. I get the chance, do something I like to do, doesn’t matter that I don’t have to do it, right?”
“You could just try something else, for once.”
“Why?”
“Because you might like it better.”
“I couldn’t like it any more than I already do.”
“You might, Beau. You used to. . . .”
“That was when I still could—”
“Try one of these, instead,” she said, walking over to his wheelchair, a red-and-gold box in her hand. “Special cigarettes. From Turkey.”
“I . . . ah, what the hell, Cyn. You know I always give you what you want.”
He reached for the box of cigarettes. Cynthia took a step back. “After,” she said, caressingly. Then she knelt before the wheelchair.
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 02:04
* * *
“These are good,” Beaumont said, exhaling a powerful jet of smoke.
“See?”
“Yeah. But they won’t last as long as a good—”
“So you’ll have another,” the woman said. “If you want one.”
“I just might,” Beaumont said. “Now, tell me, what’s your read on the meet we just had?”
“Red Schoolfield is a moron,” his sister said.
“I know that, Cyn. You think I didn’t get word from other places on this guy I’m bringing in? Red’s the only name the boys need to hear, that’s all.”
“Lymon’s shaky,” she said. “But that’s nothing new—he’s been weak for years. Of all the men, he’s the least likely to go the distance, should it ever come to that.”
“Yeah,” the man in the wheelchair agreed. “And I think we could be walking close to that line now. That’s why I called him aside at the end. He’s been talking to the Irishers.”
“Roy! How could you know that?”
“I know,” he assured her.
“So this stranger, you’re really bringing him here for Lymon?”
“No. What I told the men he was for, that was the truth. We talked about this, Cyn. Dioguardi’s already putting some of our accounts in a cross. Look at the jukeboxes. Every joint in the county knows they have to use the machines we send them. Now Dioguardi’s outfit’s coming around, telling them they have to use theirs. And if they don’t want to do that, they have to pay a tax to use ours. The squeeze is too tight.
“It’s our town,” the man in the wheelchair said, “so it’s our play. And that’s when this guy I’m bringing in earns his money.”
“What about Lymon?”
“I was thinking of Harley. That boy’s sharp. And he’s good with his accounts, too. But he’s never shown his stuff, not that way.”
“He’s awfully young, Beau. I don’t know. . . .”
“Everyone who started with us, they’re my age now, Cyn. If we’re going to keep this going . . . after, we need a younger man. I know I’m right about Harley, he just needs more seasoning.”
“I can’t see men like Faron and Sammy—”
“—following a kid like Harley? It’s not them we have to worry about, honey. They’re old pros. And they’re not going to be working forever, either. It’s the next wave, men like Udell and Roland, that Harley’s got to win over. And all the smarts in the world won’t be enough for that—you know what he has to do.”
“Yes,” Cynthia said. “But . . . Oh, never mind that for now, Beau. When are we expecting this man you sent for?”
“Tomorrow, the next day, sometime soon. He’s on the road right now, heading this way. Soon as he checks into the Claremont, he’s going to call.”
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 03:55
* * *
“Can’t sleep, Beau?”
“I don’t need much, Cyn. You know that.”
“Yes, but you need some. It’s very late. Do you want—?”
“No, thank you,” the man in the wheelchair said, almost formally. “I just . . . wanted to think some things through, I guess. You know how people tell you, when you got a problem, you should ‘sleep on it’? Well, that’s the coward’s way. The right way is, you grab on and wrestle with it.”
“You always were a great wrestler, Beau.”
“Used to be, honey. Used to be.”
“I don’t think there’s a man in this town who could take you at the table, right this minute,” Cynthia said, shaking her head as if to dispute any doubters.
“I guess I should be strong, all those exercises you used to make me do.”
“You had to do them, Beau. The doctors said . . . this would happen, someday.”
“You can say ‘wheelchair,’ Cyn. The word doesn’t scare me. Not anymore, anyway. When I was a kid, I hated those braces I had to wear. Now I wish I had them back.”
“Beau, we don’t have to . . . do any of this. We could go somewhere else. Florida, maybe. We have enough money. . . .”
“How long you think all that money would last us, we did that? Most of what we have, it’s not hard cash, Cyn. It’s tied up, in all kinds of things. The money that keeps you safe is the money that keeps coming in. Like an electric fence—the minute you turn off the power, anyone can just walk right through it.” Beaumont looked at the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Power,” he said, quietly. “That’s what keeps us safe. And money, money coming in, that’s only a piece of it. The men, my men, the men who stand between me and everyone else, you think I could buy that with money?”
“Of course not. Even if you were down to your last penny, Luther would never—”
“Yeah, I know, honey. But Luther’s our own, like Sammy and Faron are. You can buy a man’s gun, but that doesn’t mean you bought his heart. Bodyguards, they’re nothing but bullet-catchers—and they know it. One day, you pay them to stand in front of you; another day, someone else could pay them to stand aside.
“You look at some of those countries in South America. Every time you turn around, they got a new guy in charge. You think, how could that happen when the boss, he’s got a whole army on his side? Easy. Somebody in that same army decides he wants to be the boss. You read between the lines, you can see it clear. The difference between a bodyguard and a hit man, it’s whose money he’s taking, that’s all.”
“Is that why Lymon—?”
“Lymon? No. He doesn’t have it in him to even think about taking over from me. He’s the kind of man who’s got to be with someone stronger. That’s why he’s always been with me. And that’s why he’s talking to the Irish guys, too. Hedging his bets.”
“But why would they trust someone like him? If he’d sell us out, why wouldn’t he—?”
“—do the same to them? He would. And they have to know it. Once a man betrays his own, no one else can ever trust him again. Lymon was a good man, once. But even back then, he never knew how to plan ahead.”
“Nobody can plan like you, Beau,” his sister said.
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 11:53
* * *
“Welcome to the Claremont,” the desk clerk said, glancing down at where the guest had signed the register.
“We have you in 809, Mr. Dett. That’s a corner room, deluxe, with shower and bath, for two weeks, is that correct?”
“Two weeks, that’s right,” the guest agreed.
“Let me get you some help with that luggage,” the clerk said, hitting a bell and hollering “Front!” simultaneously.
“Appreciate it,” Dett said.
“Would you like me to send a boy out to take care of your car, too, sir? We have parking around the back, complimentary for hotel guests.”
“No thanks,” Dett replied. “I didn’t drive. Came in on the plane from Cincinnati, then I grabbed a cab. I figured I’d rent a car while I’m in town. That’s the way I always do it.”
The desk clerk prided himself on being a superb judge of humanity, able to size up any new guest in minutes. He often regaled his mother with his Sherlockian deductions at the end of his shift. As he filled out the registration card, he covertly took stock.
The man on the other side of the counter was clean-shaven, the facial skin stretched tightly over sharp cheekbones. His dark-chestnut hair was cut almost military-short. His hands were well cared for, but two knuckles of his right hand were flattened, marked with white keloid starbursts. A simple steel watch with an expansion bracelet constituted his only jewelry. His dark-blue suit, although clearly well fitted, was what the clerk’s mother would have dismissed as “decent.” A gray felt fedora, a plain white shirt with a spread collar and button cuffs, and a black tie—a little wider than was currently fashionable—didn’t help with the diagnosis. Nor did the man’s luggage, an unmatched set of two suitcases, a Pullman and a smaller job, plus a generic attaché case.
A traveling salesman working the circuit would have made conversation about the weather, like a boxer sparring to keep in shape. A confidence man would be either flashier or more richly conservative in dress. A gambler would carry cash in the buttoned breast pocket of his shirt. A gunman would be wearing a shoulder holster. An itinerant preacher would have a Bible somewhere in sight. The clerk glanced down at the register, saw that Mr. Walker Dett had listed his business as “real estate,” whatever that meant.
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