Flanagan's Run

by Tom McNab

  “It isn’t. Sure as hell Petrack was fighting under a false name; all these goddam street-fighters do. It’s not altogether certain that Wieck even died from the fight. We know that he walked home that night, after all, and we also know he had pneumonia. But the director has personally asked me to pursue this matter.”

  “All the way across America for two months to find a guy who might be in the race and who might have killed Wieck? Have a heart, sir.”

  Finley smiled, and lifted a bulky green file from the desk. “I told you there was more to it than that. Much more.” He replaced the file on the table.

  “This has come right from the top. The director believes that the Trans-America road-race may be the breeding ground for Reds and anarchists. He thinks that there’re bound to be strikes and riots in depressed cities all along the route because of these runners. That’s the real reason for your trip: to keep an eye on potentially disruptive elements.”

  Finley looked up at the map immediately above him and placed his finger a couple of inches east of Los Angeles.

  “Last reports say that they’re on their way to Las Vegas. Now, you may recall that our agents cleaned Vegas up a couple of months ago – cleaned it right out.” He chuckled drily. “So by about now Vegas should be just about back to normal. So have yourself a good time – and watch your expense account.”

  Bullard sighed, stood up and shook his head.

  “One more thing, Bullard,” said Finley.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “How often do you shave each day?”

  Ernest Bullard tried not to show his surprise, but simply stroked his chin.

  “Same as most people, sir. Once, before breakfast.”

  “Then take my advice. Make it twice, 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Mr Hoover likes clean-shaven agents. And another thing.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Open or safety?”

  “Safety razor,” said Bullard, blinking.

  Finley took out a leather wallet from his inside pocket, peeled off a dollar and threw it down on to the table.

  “Then go treat yourself to an open razor. Mr Hoover is of the opinion that Gillettes are a sissy way to shave. Know what I mean?”

  Bullard did not reply.

  Finley picked up the dollar bill and held it out to Bullard. “Have it on the agency. Just to please Mr Hoover.”

  Bullard forced a smile, accepted the bill and left, closing the heavy door quietly behind him. Two months in a foot-race, looking for a killer and some Reds all the way across the face of the continent. His wife was never going to believe him. But he was damned if he was going to shave twice a day, J. Edgar Hoover or no J. Edgar Hoover. For a moment, he stood with his back to the door, looking at the dollar bill Finley had given him. He smiled. The dollar would buy enough Hershey bars for the kids to keep them happy till he returned.

  Las Vegas, 27 March 1931. Only a month before, Bullard’s federal colleagues had swooped down upon the desert city, arresting two hundred citizens, including many public officials. The ragged rabble had been herded into the back-yard of the Brown Derby hotel, as the local jail could not deal with more than ten occupants.

  While this was happening the majority of the populace devoted itself to drinking as much of the liquid evidence as it reasonably could within the time available. Others, in desperation, set fire to their liquor, and as a result the fire department’s engines clanged throughout the night. The streets were alive with fire engines and people scampering about to find lawyers or someone to set bail.

  But within a fortnight the federal agents had departed to root out evil elsewhere and Las Vegas had indeed returned to normal. The first large casino, the Meadows, had opened: a Moorish-style building of buff stucco, designed and built by the fashionable architect Paul Wagner. The gambling casino was run by a former Goldfield gambler, H. H. Switzer, and featured celebrities like the Mormon Kid, Jimmy Lewis, W. H. Mitchel and Frank Morey. The Meadows was an immediate success, and at weekends was jammed with workers from the Boulder Dam project, forty miles to the south.

  The Boulder men had always flocked to such clubs as the Bull Pen Inn, the Black Cat and the Blue Heaven. For five days a week twelve hundred men slaved on one of the most dangerous public projects since the first railways west. The enterprise was held in an iron grip by the Six Companies, which resisted even the power of state mining inspectors. Gasoline trucks had been used in narrow underground tunnels and there had been many explosions. There was only one doctor for the entire project and the men did not possess either rudimentary sanitary facilities or even sufficient water.

  Two months before, eight hundred of the dam workers, led by International Workers of the World leader Eamon Flaherty, had gone on strike for better working conditions. The Six Companies had been forced to shut down and the men had set up a ramshackle camp just south of the city. The Boulder men called it “Camp Stand”, and there they held out, money and food dwindling.

  In an attempt to gain favour in the town, the Six Companies had put up a $2,000 first prize for the first Trans-American into Las Vegas, with $1,000 for second, $500 for third and $250 for fourth. The men of Camp Stand were enraged. For that rage there was but one focus, and that was the Trans-Americans soon to slog their weary way across the sodden desert into their town. Nevertheless, as Flanagan sat himself down at the crowded speakeasy in the Blue Heaven two hours after his Trans-Americans had set out on their final stage to Las Vegas, there was no sign of any trouble on the horizon. The town now seethed with gamblers, sucked in by the lure of the Trans-America, and almost a quarter of a million dollars had already been laid on the stage, most of it on Muller, who now stood firm favourite at two to one on.

  “You really think that young Kraut can take it again?” said the barman to Flanagan, uncorking a bottle of whiskey and pouring the brown fluid into a tumbler.

  Flanagan, dressed in an immaculate white tropical suit, watched the whiskey surround the ice in his glass and listened with satisfaction to the crack of the cubes as they melted. He gulped down his drink, took out a cigar and struck a match with a flick of his thumb. He lit the cigar and took a long pull.

  “The smart money says so,” he said. “That young German’s got an hour’s lead on race-aggregate already.”

  “But what about Doc Cole?” said the barman. “My old man brought me up on stories about Doc Cole, so why ain’t he out there tanning the hide off that young whippersnapper?”

  Flanagan was enjoying his new role as athletics expert. He pulled again on his cigar.

  “Doc’s sneaky,” he said. “He probably reckons young Muller’ll blow a gasket by the Rockies. So Doc just sits back and lets him do it.”

  “Sounds smart thinking to me,” said the barman, nodding as he topped up Flanagan’s drink. “So you reckon my fifty bucks on Doc Cole winning the Trans-America is safe?”

  “I think you’ve put your money on a good man,” said Flanagan guardedly. “But it’s early days yet.”

  Hearing a noise behind him, he made to turn and realized with a start that he was not alone. On his left side stood a small, red-haired, ruddy-faced man wearing a rumpled grey herring-bone suit and a bowler hat.

  “You C. C. Flanagan, manager of the Trans-America?” asked the little man.

  “Sure am,” said Flanagan, putting out his hand and swivelling on his bar stool. “What can I do for you, sir?” He settled back on his stool, only to become aware that there were now two other men directly behind him.

  The little red-haired man had ignored Flanagan’s hand and stood staring at him. “My name’s Eamon Flaherty – I’m the head man of the IWW union here.”

  Flanagan felt himself flush; there was trouble brewing.

  “Then have a glass with me, Mr Flaherty.” He grinned and nodded to the barman.

  Flaherty shook his head. “I ain’t drinking with no goddam Six Companies man,” he growled.

  “What do you mean?” said Flanagan.

  “You know exactly what I mean,”
said Flaherty. “The Six Companies are putting up over five grand for the race – the papers are full of it. Those horsecocks need all the good publicity they can get in this town. Buying up your race has put a quarter of a million bucks into Vegas. Even my own boys have been laying money on it.”

  “Look,” said Flanagan, picking up a glass, increasingly aware of the two men behind him. “Why don’t you and your colleagues have a drink on me and we can sit down and talk this over like gentlemen?”

  “’Cause we ain’t no gentlemen,” said Flaherty. “All we want is that your boys don’t come into Vegas.”

  “But that’s impossible,” protested Flanagan. “They’re on their way here now – there’s no way they could run round Las Vegas. I couldn’t stop them if I wanted to. We’ve got camp set up for them. These guys will have run nearly fifty miles – there’s no way I can re-route them now.”

  “Then you better find some goddam way,” said Flaherty. Despite his size, he suddenly reached up, grabbing Flanagan by his lapels. Flanagan did not respond immediately, for his first reaction was to consider the ludicrous nature of the scene, with the tiny union leader suspended on his jacket like a man hanging on the edge of a cliff. Then Flanagan slowly felt the hot flush of Irish bile rise and he picked Flaherty up and dumped him on the bar stool beside him.

  “Now see here, Mr Flaherty,” he said. “You’re starting to get me riled.” But the union leader was looking over the Irishman’s shoulder at the men behind him. Flanagan felt himself grabbed from the back by one of the thick-fingered henchmen. The man’s fingers were in his mouth, so Flanagan bit down hard and tasted the salt taste of skin and felt the soft crunch of bone. The man screamed and dropped back, clutching his injured hand.

  Flanagan turned to face him, only to receive a glancing blow on his right cheek from the second of the two men. He fell back awkwardly, his shoulders scattering glasses from the bar behind him on to the floor. He could taste the salt blood from his cheek and threw himself in fury at the burly IWW man who had hit him, butting him in the chest and throwing him to the ground.

  “Can it, you guys!” shouted the barman, picking up his night-stick from a ledge behind the bar.

  But Flanagan was beyond restraint. He again lunged forward, his right eye closing fast. Flaherty, who had so far kept out of the fight, leapt like a monkey on to his back. Flanagan tried to shake him off as the two henchmen, having recovered, closed in.

  “Three against one!” shouted the barman. “That ain’t fair!” He reached forward over the bar and directed a well-aimed blow with his night-stick, not at Flaherty, but at the back of Flanagan’s neck. Flanagan went down like a log, falling on to his knee with a glazed, sickly look before slumping to the floor.

  The barman came round from the bar and looked down at his prostrate customer.

  “Like I said, Mr Flanagan,” he said. “Three on to one just ain’t fair.” He looked up at Flaherty’s men.

  “Less’n you boys want to continue the argument you best get outa here. I keep a nice place. And don’t forget – I got fifty bucks riding on Mr Flanagan’s race, so no funny business.”

  Flaherty and his men looked at each other, said nothing, and left.

  The barman took Flanagan under the arms and dragged him slowly into a back room where he settled him on a couch. There Flanagan lay throughout the afternoon, ignorant of the preparations being made at Camp Stand, for the evening arrival of the Trans-Americans.

  Eamon Flaherty was a first-class organizer, and had made sure that his best weapons, one hundred and twenty-five pickaxe handles, went to his top muscle. Eighty-five fence-posts, also courtesy of the Six Companies, went to the youngest, most limber of his men. For the rest, it would have to be business as usual, with judicious use of knuckle and boot. Twenty banners, ranging from “Trans-Americans Out!” to “No to Blackleg Runners”, were distributed to women and children and completed Flaherty’s party. At five o’clock Flaherty’s welcome committee poured out of Camp Stand by car, mule-cart and foot, and by six o’clock had taken their positions in the main street, as news passed along the crowd that Flanagan’s runners had crossed the McCullough Range and would soon be within the city limits.

  Since the destruction of the Vegas road by the flash flood Willard Clay had excelled himself: he had established an emergency feeding-station at the bridge, five miles south, and had clearly flagged the route from the bridge back north across the drying desert to the main Las Vegas road. At last, just as suddenly and dramatically as it had begun, the rain stopped, and the runners made their way diagonally back north-west to the road. Muller, not knowing that Doc and the others had crossed the flood ahead of him, drilled slowly and steadily across the desert towards the main route, again confident of victory, trailed by Bouin, Dasriaux, Thurleigh and a group of a dozen others.

  The flood had broken the race into two distinct groups. The first was Doc’s group of four, who, with well over an hour in hand, were making their way north towards the main road to Las Vegas. The second was a stretched line of a thousand runners, its sub-groups shattered by the desert downpour, its leaders now reaching the bridge five miles south of the point at which the flash flood had broken the road.

  At the front Doc and his group could afford to take it easy. They trotted along at about six miles an hour, aware of the gradual climb to the thin atmosphere above four thousand feet as they passed through the McCullough Range.

  For some time Willard feared that he had lost Doc’s group, but at the improvised feeding-station other runners told him that they had crossed the flood, and Willard’s Trans-America bus churned its way painfully across the desert in pursuit. Willard picked up Doc’s group just outside the village of Jean, where he supplied them with food and drink.

  “Where’s Flanagan, Willard?” asked Doc, sipping an orange juice.

  “Up in Vegas, setting up camp,” said Willard confidently.

  Like the others, Kate Sheridan had slithered south through the lashing rain, across the slimy desert, took refreshment at the feeding-station, then made her way back north to the main Las Vegas road. To her, the rain came as a welcome relief and she used the drop in pace to pass a dozen men before her return to the main road.

  Around the runners churned the press buses, support-cars and motor-cycles, struggling through the desert mud, occasionally becoming marooned, to be pushed out of muddy ruts by journalists and runners.

  Five miles out from Las Vegas Doc’s group began their drive into town. No one made any decisive break; rather, the pace quietly increased from a steady seven minutes per mile to a crisp six.

  Normally Doc felt no trouble at such a pace, and could cover close on twenty miles at that speed. However, the residual effects of the week’s running, the altitude, the struggle across the muddy desert and his experience in the flood-stream – all had combined to sap him, and for a moment he felt again the doubt that all runners feel when the pace rises and the body makes its protest.

  They ran four abreast, like soldiers in line, cutting through the steep, stony passes which carved through the mountains to Las Vegas. Luckily there were few really steep hills; but when such hills were encountered the pace dropped to a heavy-legged crawl and all four men struggled for oxygen in the thin air.

  “Vegas,” said Doc at last, as they reached the crest of a hill.

  Below them, twinkling in the early evening gloom, was “the meadow”, just four miles away: “the meadow with many streams”, as the Indians had originally baptized it. The first sight of the town charged Doc with a fresh surge of energy, but he knew that he could not risk a sprint finish, not with such young men. He would have to squeeze them, but squeeze them ever so slowly. Gently he started to inch up the pace. The others felt it, but held on through the next half-mile. Again Doc pressed, smiling inside himself as he heard the laboured breathing in response. He was getting to them; he kept pressing.

  Juan Martinez was the first to succumb, easing off with a sob with little over a mile to go. But
Hugh and Morgan held on, both gulping now rather than breathing hard. But Doc Cole could not be withstood. By the time they had entered the suburbs of Las Vegas he had set up a twenty-yard lead and was pulling away steadily. By this time the route was lined with thousands of Las Vegans cheering them on, but there was still half a mile to the finish – in the centre of town, at the Silver Dollar.

  The runners moved through a blur of lights, every casino and speakeasy empty as its customers crowded the rapidly-narrowing road into the town centre. Through the roar and cheering of the crowds Doc Cole plodded, the sweat streaming down his lined, gnome-like face, the blood from cactus scratches showing red scars on his legs. He could see the finish now, the banners, the waiting tables only a few hundred yards ahead.

  But then, with only three hundred yards to go, the cheers were drowned by angry, menacing boos. Through his fatigue Doc sensed the change and looked around him in bewilderment. It was the IWW strikers from Boulder, pressing in on the tunnel of spectators, pinned back by a thin line of straining policemen.

  Doc could see the Golden Nugget casino sign on his right and the Trocadero on his left as he entered the final furlong: a band in front of the casino broke into an overture from the “Pirates of Penzance”. On each side hands strained and reached out to make contact with him, and he could feel their fingers touch him as he trotted the final yards. In one stage he had made up the deficit on Muller. Blocking out the jeers, he put all his concentration into completing the last two hundred yards . . .

  But suddenly he was down, forced to the ground by a burly IWW man who had squeezed himself through the police barrier. For a second Doc did not respond, the fatigue of the day’s running having finally sapped his energy. The two men rolled over untidily on the rough ground, as the boos grew to a crescendo, and even in his fatigue Doc could smell the whiskey on the man’s breath. Then Doc became aware of another runner – McPhail, he realized – pulling his attacker off, leaving Doc gasping on hands and knees, blood seeping from a cut lip.