The Overlords & the Wild Ones

by Matt Braun

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because of the way Mr. Aldridge is acting. I think Nolan threatened you this morning. Threatened you with more than another beating. Didn’t he?”

  “Yes and no,” Durant said slowly. “There’s more to it than you know.”

  “Things you haven’t told me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Earl—” She touched his hand. “Do you know what I feel for you? Do you?”

  “We’re probably feeling the same thing.”

  “Then don’t you think I deserve to know?”

  Durant saw his good intentions slipping away. Despite himself, he ended up telling her everything, including how he’d killed Elmer Spadden. She was shocked, but at the same time, she felt an incredible sense of relief. She finally understood what he’d been facing alone for so long.

  “I’m glad you told me,” she said when he finished. “You never again have to hide anything from me.”

  “Catherine, there’s even more to it. These men don’t give a damn who they hurt. They’re the sort—”

  “You believe I’m in danger, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Durant was startled by her intuition. “Look, I think it’d be better—”

  “You want to stop seeing me, don’t you? So I won’t get hurt?”

  “Only till things shake out. Another week or so and we’ll know what’s what.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “I won’t stop seeing you,” she said in a no-nonsense voice. “And let’s not discuss it any further. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Well, I think I’ve got something to say about that. I’m the one who has to be the judge of what’s best.”

  “Earl.”

  “What?”

  “My mind’s made up. Okay?”

  Durant knew better than to argue it further. When they left the restaurant, he walked her home, alert and watchful, expecting Nolan and his goons to appear at any moment. He fully intended to end it once they reached the house. A quick kiss and a firm good-bye. Discussion closed.

  She surprised him again. The house was dark, even though it was only a few minutes past nine. At the door, when he started to kiss her, she took his hand and pulled him inside. She shushed him with a finger to her lips.

  “Mother’s already asleep,” she whispered. “Just follow me and don’t bump into anything.”

  “Don’t you think—”

  “Will you please hush!”

  She led him to her bedroom. A faint blush of moonlight filtered through the window, and she tugged him inside, then gently closed the door. She put her arms around his neck and gave him a smoldering kiss, darting his mouth with her tongue. She pressed herself to his groin, felt him grow hard, and laughed a minxish little laugh.

  He knew then they would never argue about it again.

  Libbie arrived home shortly before ten o’clock. She sat in the car a moment, composing herself for the charade she was about to play. Her one imperative was that her father be convinced she was the jilted woman.

  On the drive back to town, she had come to grips with the reality of the situation. The most vivid part of the evening was Jack’s entreaty that she persuade her father their affair was over. She realized what he was saying between the lines, trying not to frighten her too much. Quinn and Voight would have him killed unless they believed it was finished.

  The key was her father. She somehow had to dupe him to the point that he believed she’d seen the last of Jack Nolan. Only then would he express a genuine thanks to Quinn and Voight for having ended the affair. Only then would Quinn and Voight feel confident their intervention had brought the affair to an abrupt, and final, halt. Her father was the key to Jack’s survival.

  She would have to trust Jack to find a way from there. She knew in her heart of hearts that he loved her, and she believed him when he said he would never leave her. Though he hadn’t said as much, she knew he would never be content with furtive meetings on the beach, so shabby it was almost gauche. She was certain he had some scheme in mind he hadn’t told her about, something he was working on. Something clever and secure, something lasting.

  Which meant she had to be equally clever. Her father was quick and perceptive, nobody’s fool. On the way into town, she had stopped at a bootlegger’s and bought a pint of Old Crow. She’d taken a slug to fortify her nerves, and then dabbed drops here and there on her dress. The whiskey overpowered not only the scent of her perfume, but also the musk of love. She reeked when she walked into the house.

  A light was on in her father’s study. She was thankful the scene wouldn’t be played out in front of her mother. Opal Magruder, unfailingly, retired to the master bedroom suite around nine o’clock. Her father was generally not far behind, for he arose at sunup and was in the office precisely at seven every morning. The light in the study indicated he was waiting for her to come home. She braced herself for a convincing performance.

  Magruder was seated in a leather wingback chair. He was reading the Southwest Cotton Journal, and he lowered it to his lap when she stepped through the door. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “You smell like a brewery.”

  “Wrong again, Daddy.” She crossed the room and flopped into a chair, legs spraddled. “Your little angel wouldn’t drink beer on a bet. I’m oh-too-much the sophisticate.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “At Mary Lou Henley’s.”

  “I could check on that, you know?”

  “Why, please do. Give her a call.”

  Libbie wasn’t worried. Mary Lou Henley was her best friend, and they had a pact to cover for each other in case their parents inquired. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it with a gold lighter. Magruder folded his trade journal.

  “What were you doing at Mary Lou’s?”

  “Drowning my sorrows.” She exhaled a streamer of smoke. “Girls love to exchange sob stories. Didn’t you know that, Daddy?”

  “Not particularly,” Magruder said. “What sorrow are you drowning?”

  “Oh, I have so many to choose from. How about my father’s a cheesy, unfeeling bastard?”

  “How dare you!”

  “How dare you!” she fired back. “How dare you involve other people in my personal life. How dare you go to Monsignor O’Donnell!”

  Magruder blinked with surprise. “I intended that to be a private matter. How did you find out?”

  “Jack told me.”

  “Jack who?”

  “Innocence doesn’t become you. What other Jack are we talking about? Jack Nolan, my lover.”

  “You’ve seen him?” Magruder demanded.

  “No, I regret to say.” Libbie deliberately tapped ash from her cigarette on the Persian carpet. “He called me this afternoon and told me about Monsignor O’Donnell. How could you reveal my innermost secrets to a stranger? We’re not even Catholic!”

  “Monsignor O’Donnell is a man of discretion. He and Oliver Quinn are friends, and I needed a suitable intermediary. I could hardly go to Quinn myself.”

  “Why go to him at all?”

  “You left me no choice,” Magruder said churlishly. “I will not have this family dragged into a scandal and held up to public ridicule. Your lover, as you shamelessly portray him, is a gangster. A common hoodlum.”

  “Ex-lover,” she said softly, concentrating on forcing a tear to her eye. “He broke it off on the phone this afternoon. I’ve lost him.”

  “Good riddance,” Magruder pronounced. “You’re far better off for it, my dear. The man would have ruined your life.”

  “You are so callous it scares me. Do you have any idea why he called it off? Do you, Daddy?”

  “I presume Quinn spoke to him.”

  “Spoke to him!” she said sharply. “Oh, yes, Quinn and the other one, Voight, spoke to him all right. They threatened his life unless he jilted me. They all but put a gun to his head!”

  “You make my point,” Magruder admonished. “These men a
re thugs, very lower-class indeed. And Jack Nolan is one of them.”

  “You don’t know anything about him! Nothing at all.”

  “I know who he works for, and that is more than sufficient. Quinn and Voight are not accepted in polite society.”

  “Aren’t we sanctimonious?” she said cattily. “Everyone in town knows you have political arrangements with them. Doesn’t that scandalize the family name?”

  “Not in the least,” Magruder huffed. “Politics oftentimes requires alliances of an expedient nature. That doesn’t mean I would invite them into my home.”

  “Or into your daughter’s bed.”

  “I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, young lady.”

  “You drove Jack off and you expect me to be civil? You don’t understand at all, do you?”

  “Understand what?”

  “You broke my heart, Daddy. You broke it into little pieces, and I’ll never forgive you. Not ever.”

  Libbie crushed her cigarette in an ashtray. She focused all her willpower into a single moment, and brought tears brimming into her eyes. She stood, walking to the door, then turned back. She looked at him with a little-girl-hurt expression.

  “I feel all dead inside, Daddy. I only wish you knew.”

  The front door opened as she moved into the hallway. Sherm stepped into the foyer, closing the door, and walked toward her. He saw the tears glistening on her cheeks.

  “Libbie.” He stopped, taking her arm. “What’s the matter?”

  She swiped at her nose. “I’m surprised Francis lets you stay out so late. You’re such the devoted husband.”

  “I was at a beauty pageant meeting. I saw the lights still on and thought I’d stop by.”

  Sherm was co-chairman of the International Pageant of Pulchritude. Young, shapely contestants came from all over the world to participate in a swimsuit revue, which was held every year in late spring. The pageant drew crowds of fifty thousand or more, pumping revenue into the town’s economy, both legal and illicit. Oliver Quinn was the other co-chairman.

  “How very timely,” Libbie said in a wounded voice. “Did you and Mr. Quinn discuss my scandalous little romance?”

  Sherm squinted at her. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “Ask Daddy.”

  She walked to the stairway. She bowed her head, sniffling loudly, and mounted the stairs as though sapped of energy. A small, hidden smile touched the corners of her mouth.

  She thought Jack would have been proud of her.

  The moon stood high at midnight. Nolan was alert for a signal as he steered the Cherokee south into the Gulf. Whizzer Duncan, armed with a Thompson submachine gun, was beside him in the cockpit. The fleet of lugger boats manned by his rumrunning crew plowed along in his wake. The dim glow of a lantern suddenly appeared off the starboard bow.

  Nolan turned the wheel over to his pilot. Some minutes later, the motors throttled down, they swung in under the lee of the Shark. The schooner, painted black and almost invisible in the pale moonlight, swayed at anchor against gentle swells. The lugger boats stood off from the Shark as Nolan clambered up a rope ladder.

  Captain Rob McBride waited amidships. “Jack, my boy!” he called out with a jaunty laugh. “I’ve missed the sight of you, and there’s a truth.”

  “Goes both ways, Rob.” Nolan handed him a manila envelope stuffed with cash. “Sixty thousand and not a penny less. I know you’ll count it.”

  “Why of course I will, laddie. What’s a count between friends?”

  A short while afterward they stood watching crates of liquor being off-loaded onto the lugger boats. McBride, one eye on a net slowly clearing the hold, glanced at Nolan. He grinned his pirate’s grin.

  “Tell me, Jacko,” he said. “Have you ever given any thought to smugglin’? There’s far more money in it, and pleasurable work it is.”

  Nolan looked at him. “You offering me a job?”

  “Aye, indeed I am! I’ve just bought another schooner and I’m lookin’ for a captain with a head on his shoulders. We’d go partners.”

  “A speedboat and a schooner are just kissing cousins. I’m no sailor, Rob.”

  “Nothin’ to it,” McBride assured him. “A couple runs with me and you’re ready for the high seas. You’ll be lazin’ about in Jamaica with rum punch in one hand and a lass in the other. Never a better place to hang your hat.”

  “Well, it’s a twist,” Nolan said with a humorous smile. “I never pictured myself as Blackbeard.”

  “I’ve been watchin’ you, laddie. You’re tough and you’re smart, and you’ve got what it takes to make a smuggler. Put on your thinkin’ cap.”

  “I might just do that, Rob. No harm in thinking, is there?”

  “None a’tall!”

  The lugger boats loaded, Nolan went down the ladder to the Cherokee. As they pulled away from the schooner, he looked back and saw McBride in the spill of light from the lantern. The old pirate waved, and Nolan tried to picture himself flying the Jolly Roger. Then, almost unbidden, he took it a step further.

  He wondered how Libbie would like Jamaica.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Stoner enjoyed watching her dress or undress. Either way, he thought of it as his own personal floor show, naughty but nice. He couldn’t imagine that anyone on a burlesque stage had ever done it better.

  Janice artfully played to her audience of one. They were in the bedroom of the suite, with Stoner seated in a chair by the windows. She knew there was no serious risk of hanky-panky when she was dressing; he seemed fascinated by what went into the creation. Undressing was an altogether different matter, somehow more provocative. Day or night, she was almost assured they would end up in bed.

  The sun dipped below the horizon like a cauldron of smothered coals. Stoner was already attired in his tux, apart from his jacket, which was hanging in the closet. Outside the hotel, Seawall Boulevard was jammed with weekend tourists, a typical Friday night. Later, he and Janice would pretend shock when Captain Purvis and his Rangers raided the Hollywood Club. But that was later, and he saw no reason to let it intrude on the moment. He was watching the floor show.

  Janice was naked. She felt his eyes on her as she stepped into her panties, then slipped into a bandeau brassiere designed for gowns cut low in the back. She next adjusted the straps on an elasticized garter belt, carefully rolled on sheer silk hose, and snapped the tops into fasteners. Her slip was crepe de chine, snug around the hips and trimmed in delicate lace. The slip was short, hugging her knees, and displayed the shapely curve of her legs. She moved to the vanity table.

  The ritual of a woman dressing seemed to Stoner a work in progress. Her eyebrows were plucked, made fashionable by the French designer Erte, and she penciled a fine, thin arc in black. Kohl was applied around the eyes to give them an almond shape, then highlighted with blue eye shadow, and dark mascara was used to enhance the curl of the eyelashes. Her rouge was worn in the manner currently in vogue, concentric patches which accentuated her cheekbones. Her lipstick, a cherry red, was painted on like a bright rosebud.

  The last touch was dabs of Shalimar on her neck, wrists, and behind her knees. A miracle of modern marketing, Shalimar meant “abode of love” and signified the passion of Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal for the woman of his life. The fragrance was warm and sensual, exotically oriental, and widely believed to have a seductive effect on men of all ages. Janice knew it certainly worked on Stoner, and secretly thought of it as catnip for the boudoir. She smiled at him as she posed in a sleek evening gown that emphasized what it concealed.

  “There!” she said with a coquettish little wink. “Olive Eberling never looked so good.”

  Stoner grinned. “You’ll make the ladies jealous tonight.”

  “Flattery will get you anything, precious.”

  “I’ll hold you to it after the raid. We’ll have reason enough to celebrate.”

  “Darn,” she moped, the sparkle suddenly gone from her eyes. “I hate
to think it’s going to end so soon. I’ve gotten to like being rich.”

  “Don’t let down now,” Stoner cautioned. “We’ve come too far to drop the ball. We’re almost there.”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry about me, Sherlock. I’m still up for the game.”

  “I like your spirit, Dr. Watson. Like your cute outfit, too.”

  “I think you like it better off than on.”

  “Yeah, maybe so, but you’re dressed now. Time to go to work.”

  “Once more into the breaches, boys and girls. We’ll fight the good fight tonight.”

  “Let’s go get ’em, tiger.”

  The Hollywood Club was packed. Tonight was Sophie Tucker’s closing night, and she’d again drawn a full house. Stoner and Janice were by now regular patrons, and the maitre d’ greeted them with an obsequious bow. Their usual table was reserved by the dance floor, and waiters descended on them hardly before they were seated. Stoner, whose mood was already celebratory, ordered champagne.

  The orchestra wailed away at the St. Louis Blues. The music of the Roaring Twenties was conspicuously lacking in nostalgia, the traditional ballad replaced by blues and jazz. Songs were abbreviated, a series of vocal ejaculations evoking a sense of primitive rivalry, or spiritual misery. Jazz in particular was brazenly defiant, music in the nude, rapid and feverish and exciting. A jazz musician’s triumph was erratic syncopation, a bizarre and outré rhythm.

  Janice, all but jiggling in her seat, thought it was the cat’s meow. Blues and jazz had come upriver from New Orleans, spreading across the land so quickly it seemed an overnight sensation. In an era desperate with the need for escape, and cynical of anything conventional, the stuttered wailing of a saxophone became the salvation of white America. The big thing that year was the music of Jelly Roll Morton, and with it, a frenzied new dance. The orchestra segued into the Black Bottom.

  Oliver Quinn stopped by the table. “Good evening,” he said with the charm reserved for wealthy patrons. “Enjoying the music?”

  “I just love it!” Janice cried. “Bob’s such a stick-in-the-mud about anything new. I can’t get him on the dance floor.”

  The floor was crowded, men flailing their arms and women waggling their pert little bottoms with abandon. Stoner was not surprised by Quinn’s cordial manner, for he’d lost something over three thousand in six nights at the casino. He saw nothing of Jack Nolan, who usually assisted Quinn in greeting the club’s steady clientele, particularly high rollers. He wondered if Nolan was off on another rumrunning operation.