by Matt Braun
“You’ve missed the point, Pop. We can’t tell him we’re after the deed to the property his bank holds. He might find out the property is worth more than the bank. Then he’d never sell.”
“You’re wrong,” Magruder said sullenly. “He’ll be back.”
“I don’t think so,” Sherm insisted. “Mr. Durant has a stubborn streak, and we’re the ones who need the deal. We have to buy his bank.”
The tourist and convention trade was immensely profitable in Galveston. The Magruders were deep into secretive plans for a large hotel resort overlooking Seawall Boulevard and the Gulf. Too late, they had discovered that property contiguous to their project, property they needed to complete their hotel resort, was owned by the People’s Bank & Trust. The bank and the property were now owned by Earl Durant.
Magruder’s brow knotted in a frown. “Durant bought into the wrong game. We’ll persuade him to sell.”
“Oh?” Sherm arched an eyebrow. “And how will we accomplish that?”
Magruder lifted the receiver off the phone and jiggled the hook. “Central. You there, operator?”
“What number, please?”
“Give me 3154.”
“Ringing.”
The line buzzed and a man answered. “Oliver Quinn’s office.”
“Put him on. This is William Magruder.”
A moment later Quinn came on the line. “Bill, always a pleasure. What can I do for you?”
“Ollie, I need to see you on a matter of business. The sooner, the better, here at my office.”
“I’m booked solid today, Bill. How about tomorrow morning.”
“All right, ten sharp and don’t be late.”
Magruder rang off. He sat for a moment, nodding absently to himself, and then looked across at Sherm. His mouth widened in a gloating smile.
“We’ll teach young Mr. Durant some new tricks.”
Blanco County was situated in the Hill Country. Johnson City, the county seat, was nestled in the hills some forty miles west of Austin. A ranch community, small but prosperous, it was a dogleg turn south of the Pedernales River.
Sergeant Clint Stoner drove into town under a bright forenoon sun. He circled the courthouse square and found a parking place in front of a hardware store. The car was his own, a Chevrolet sedan, and he was dressed in civilian clothes. He walked across to the courthouse.
The office of Sheriff Frank Shelley was on the main floor. Stoner and Shelley were old friends from the days Stoner had served with the highway patrol. He’d called Shelley yesterday afternoon, requesting a meeting as quickly as possible. His manner had been cryptic, sparse on details.
Shelley was heavyset, in his late forties, the sheriff of Blanco County for the past decade. His view on crime and criminals was that a man who stepped out of line deserved hard time, all the law allowed. He looked up from his desk as Stoner came through the door.
“Well, well,” he said with a broad grin. “If it ain’t the pride of the Rangers himself.”
“Frank, good to see you,” Stoner said, exchanging a warm handshake. “Putting on a little weight, are you?”
“The missus says I eat regular, too regular. Have a seat and tell me why you’re tricked out in civvies. Your phone call was a mite shy on particulars.”
“Not too much I can say at this point. I’m working a case undercover and I need a new identity. Thought maybe you could lend a hand.”
Shelley chuckled out loud. “Hell, a crime-fighter like yourself, how could I say no? What d’you need, just exactly?”
“A name,” Stoner said. “Somebody legitimate, in case the name gets checked out. It’d help if he was well fixed financially.”
“Christ, why don’t you ask for the moon, too?”
“I’ll also need the credentials to go with the name.”
Shelley leaned back in his chair, which creaked in protest under his weight. He stared out the window for a time, his features thoughtful. He finally looked around with a crafty smile.
“Bob Eberling,” he said. “Bob won’t mind if we borrow his name. Known him all my life.”
Stoner nodded. “Who’s Bob Eberling?”
“Just the biggest rancher in Blanco County.”
Shelley went on to explain. Robert Eberling owned the Lazy E ranch, a hundred-thousand-acre spread along the Pedernales River. He ran a herd of ten thousand cows, and was reportedly worth more than a million dollars. Equally important, Eberling and his wife were on an extended trip to England. The ranch was being managed by Eberling’s longtime foreman.
“Off buyin’ Hereford bulls,” Shelley concluded. “Told me he wants to add a new bloodline to his herd. Won’t get home till late September.”
“Sounds good to me,” Stoner said. “I’ll have the case wrapped up long before then.”
Shelley proceeded to brief him on Eberling’s history in Blanco County, Eberling’s wife, who was named Olive, and salient details about the Lazy E Ranch. They had lunch at a café on courthouse square, and Stoner continued to draw out more information about his new persona. They parted shortly before one o’clock.
“Frank, I owe you,” Stoner said with genuine warmth. “Nobody else I’d trust to set me up with a cover story.”
Shelley laughed. “Folks you’re after likely don’t care no more about the law than a tomcat does a marriage license. You put ’em behind bars and that’s payment enough for me.”
“I’ll surely do my damnedest.”
By early afternoon, Stoner was back in Austin. Colonel Garrison had assigned him a new, canary-yellow Packard touring car, confiscated by the Rangers from a San Antonio bank embezzler. Garrison, calling in favors as chief of the Rangers, had also made covert arrangements with the head of the State Motor Vehicle Department. In short order, Stoner had auto license plates matching those of the car owned by Robert Eberling and a driver’s license with his photo in the same name. All that remained was to find himself a wife.
Late that afternoon he called on Janice Overton. She was a part-time legal secretary and a full-time party girl. A dazzler at twenty-three, she was tall and sensuous, with long lissome legs, high full breasts, and skin like alabaster. She could be bawdy or ladylike, as the situation demanded, and she turned heads wherever she went. She had been Stoner’s steady girl for the past four months.
Janice listened raptly as Stoner described his assignment. Until she accepted the proposition, he skirted any mention of Galveston. But he embellished on the undercover nature of the assignment, and the fact that it involved mobsters who operated an illicit empire built around gambling and rumrunning. He felt obligated to end on a cautionary note.
“I won’t kid you,” he said solemnly. “These are tough cookies, and they play for keeps. It could get dangerous.”
“Oooo!” Her hazel eyes went round with excitement. “I like dangerous.”
“Don’t jump too quick. One slip and we’ll be dead ducks. I want you to know what you’re getting into.”
“Are you trying to frighten me?”
“Damn right I am,” Stoner said. “There’s no second chances when you’re working undercover. You’ll have to be on your toes all the time.”
She went up on her toes and kissed him. “I will, honeybunch. I promise.”
Janice Overton was a thoroughly modern girl. The climate of the Roaring Twenties was one of ballyhoo and whoopee, a time when all traditional codes of social behavior were under assault. Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and other expatriate writers, were particularly influential in shaping the attitudes of the younger generation. But the greater revolution was stimulated by a radical new science emanating from Vienna.
Sigmund Freud, and to a lesser extent, his disciples Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, were the new messiahs. A generation devoted to “let the good times roll” began exploring introversion, inferiority complexes, and joyously, with open abandon, their libidos. To be happy and well, according to this liberated doctrine of self-expression, one must obey atavism, the pull of deeper in
stincts. The stairway to emotional bliss was an uninhibited sex life.
Janice found the new creed of intellectualism boorish and somehow pretentious. She was intelligent, with a mind of her own, and perfectly capable of formulating a philosophy of a more practical nature. So she discarded all the pseudo nonsense about the psyche, and adopted what seemed to her the salvation of liberated women, the libido. She loved making love, and never so much as with the Tarzan of lovers, Clint Stoner. A night in bed with him was a dangerous experience; the thought of it gave her goosebumps.
Undercover work sounded like an adventure too delicious to be missed. She put her arms around his neck. “We’ll make a good team, sweetie. You wait and see.”
Stoner held her closer. “You’ll have to take off from your job. Any problem with that?”
“Oh, foo!” she said lightly. “Jobs are a dime a dozen.”
“All right, consider yourself officially sworn in and deputized. You are now Mrs. Olive Eberling.”
“Olive?”
“You’d better get used to it.”
“Ugh!” She pulled a face. “What a dippy name.”
“You’ll get to like it,” Stoner said with a grin. “Especially when I take you shopping.”
“We’re going shopping?”
“We have to look the part of ritzy swells. They gave me a thousand dollars to outfit ourselves in sporty fashion. We’ll blow the whole wad.”
“Godfrey!” she yelped gaily. “Just call me Olive.”
“Well, Olive—” Stoner consulted his watch. “Too late to shop tonight. Got any ideas?”
“You naughty man. I just love you to death.”
She led him into the bedroom. The late afternoon sun was in the west, flooding through the window with golden, shimmering light. She didn’t mind in the least.
She knew he liked to watch her undress.
The nightglow of Galveston marbled the sky with shadow and light. A soft breeze floated in off the Gulf as the swirling waters of the bay lapped at the shoreline. Stars blinked like fireflies high above wispy clouds.
Jack Nolan drove across the causeway into deepening nightfall. His car was a black Ford, indistinguishable from others on the road, and unlikely to draw attention. Seldom introspective, his mind was nonetheless on the man he was to meet in La Marque. He thought Arthur Scarett was another lost soul in a topsy-turvy world.
The universe seemed to Nolan in a state of flux. On the opposite side of the Atlantic, Benito Mussolini and his Fascist party had overthrown the old order in Italy. Joseph Stalin had taken over as dictator in Russia, annihilating his opposition in a series of purges. And in Germany an ex-corporal named Adolf Hitler had presented his manifesto for the future entitled Mein Kampf.
Not to be outdone, America had spawned an original all its own, the underworld mobster. A phenomenon uniquely American, these homegrown gangsters, men like Ollie Quinn and Dutch Voight, were brilliant capitalists. The almighty dollar became the only ideology in a remarkable marriage of free enterprise and brass knuckles.
Prohibition had shifted a market worth tens of millions to a trade controlled exclusively by the underworld. The rackets grew and diversified, proliferating amid a climate of tommy-gun violence, cheered on by Americans who simply wanted a drink. Bootlegging and speakeasies operated openly, and for the most part, law enforcement officials turned a blind eye. The accommodation, buttressed by graft, was made easier by the fact that lawmen were merely mirroring public opinion.
As Nolan came off the causeway, he reflected that Galveston was typical of the country as a whole. The casino, along with the rumrunning operation and protection payoffs from gambling dives and whorehouses, generated illicit revenues of more than five million dollars a year. Everybody in town knew that various city and county officials were on the payroll, and while no one spoke of it openly, it was an accepted fact of life. The payoff that hardly anyone knew of was the one that went to Arthur Scarett.
A few miles north of the causeway, Nolan entered the town of La Marque. On the outskirts of the business district, he pulled into the parking lot of Big Jim’s Roadhouse. The nightspot was popular along the southern mainland, with dancing, liquor, and poker tables in the back room. He was carrying a .38 Colt in a shoulder holster, and as he stepped out of the car, he adjusted it to a comfortable position under his suit jacket. The gun, like a necktie, was part of his everyday attire.
The front door of the roadhouse opened onto a hallway. Off to one side was a room with a bar, where girls mingled with customers, and for a slightly higher tariff took them upstairs. On the opposite side was a larger room with a dance floor and a three-piece band. There were tables around the dance floor and cozy booths along the walls. The place was crowded, and waiters scurried back and forth serving drinks. The music, with a trumpeter blasting away, was all but deafening.
Arthur Scarett was seated alone in a booth. He was a squat, fat man with a pocked moonlike face and a gift for duplicity. Few people knew him on sight, even though he was the chief prohibition agent for Houston and the southern counties, including Galveston. His squad of agents routinely raided bootlegging operations and speakeasies that refused to share the wealth. All of which looked good for the record and allowed him to extend preferential treatment where it counted the most. Big Jim’s Roadhouse was a longtime client.
Nolan scooted into the booth. “Evening, Art,” he said. “Enjoying the music?”
“Music’s music.” Scarett waved a pudgy hand. “But, then, I’m not much of a dancer anyway. My wife says I have two lead feet.”
“So how are things otherwise?”
“Never better, Jack.”
A waiter took Nolan’s order for bourbon and water. Scarett was drinking scotch on the rocks, and they made small talk until the waiter returned. Nolan sipped his drink, then slipped a thick envelope from his inside coat pocket. He placed it on the table.
“Mr. Quinn and Mr. Voight send their regards.”
“The usual?”
“The usual.”
The payoff was all part of the cost of operating an illicit business. The federal penalty for rumrunning was $1,000 and six months in prison, and repeat offenders were fined $10,000 and sentenced to five years. The law also mandated forfeiture of all property, including boats, trucks and cash seized at the time of arrest. Bribing a prohibition agent was considered an investment in the future.
Scarett pocketed the envelope. “I got a call from the Coast Guard today. How many cases did you bring in last night?”
“Does it matter?” Nolan said. “You know our deal.”
The deal was simple. Galveston Island, from the Hollywood Club to the lowest hooch joint, was immune to raids. The rumrunning operation was immune as well, at least on the beach, where smuggled liquor was transferred from boats to trucks. Once the trucks cleared the Galveston County line, the rules changed and bootleggers became fair game. Everyone understood the rules, including the bootleggers, who scattered like quail when they crossed the county line. Scarett was paid ten thousand a month to abide by the rules.
“I’ve been thinking,” Scarett said in an exploratory tone. “Maybe we ought to up the ante.”
“Why spoil a good thing?”
“Jack, you’re running God knows how many cases a month. I deserve a bigger piece of the action.”
Nolan’s gaze was empty of emotion. “You wouldn’t want to try that, Art.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Call it a word to the wise.”
Their eyes locked and several moments elapsed in silence. Scarett blinked first, some inner voice telling him not to push too hard. “Well, like you said, why spoil a good thing?”
Nolan slid out of the booth. “Enjoyed our little talk, Art. See you next month.”
Outside, as he pulled away in the Ford, Nolan thought there was no accounting for greed. But he didn’t fault Scarett, or particularly think the worse of him. There was no great harm in throwing out a line and seeing if the fish
took the bait. No harm if a man knew when to call it quits.
Nolan arrived back at the Hollywood Club shortly before nine o’clock. He found Quinn and Voight in the office at the rear of the casino. They were involved in a discussion about the astronomical salary needed to import Al Jolson from Broadway. Jolson was opening at the club Friday night, and Voight was still complaining about the price. Nolan thought the ongoing argument typified the differences between the two men.
Quinn was a polished gentleman, a bon vivant and raconteur with an easygoing manner. He was always impeccably dressed, his wardrobe tailored in London, and he frequently traveled to New York booking headliner entertainment for the club. Voight, apart from his tuxedo attire at the casino, wore off-the-rack suits and always appeared a little rumpled. His manner was polite but quietly sinister, no laughter in his eyes. He looked like he might hurt you, given the slightest pretext.
For all their contrasts, the partners ran a smooth operation. Gulf Properties, their holding company, employed over a thousand people, fully five percent of the adult population on the Island. They owned gambling clubs, bars, a restaurant and an amusement pier, and several other legitimate businesses. The Hollywood Club was nonetheless the jewel of their empire.
Yet, for all their gangland activities, they were astute businessmen. They realized that public relations were key to success and they allowed only wealthy Islanders inside the casino. Their patrons were drawn instead from the upper financial strata of Houston, Dallas and other cities throughout the Southwest. To show Galveston in the best light, they also maintained their own brand of law and order with a squad of hooligans known as the Night Raiders. No one feared to walk the streets after dark.
Quinn finally noticed Nolan waiting by the door. He broke off the argument about Al Jolson, and looked around with a quick smile. “Everything status quo with our friend, Mr. Scarett?”
“Went off fine,” Nolan replied. “He tried to sandbag us for a raise, but he backed off when I spelled it out. He didn’t like the options.”
“Damned ingrate,” Voight grumped. “We’ve made him rich as Midas. His only option is to go for a swim.”