Flanagan's Run

by Tom McNab

  Capone sat back in his chair and looked Flanagan squarely in the eye. Then he slowly opened the drawer of his desk and drew out ten crisp bundles of notes, counted them, and threw them across the table.

  “There,” he said. “Happy?”

  “That’s better,” said Flanagan. “But we haven’t quite finished yet.”

  “Well,” said Capone, “what else do you want?”

  “Just twenty minutes of your time.”

  Capone’s face showed his perplexity.

  “Our Mr Morgan here wants ten minutes’ time with each of your colleagues Nitti and Guzik,” said Flanagan. “No guns, no knives; just fists.”

  Capone’s plump face broke into, a smile as he looked at Morgan, sitting impassively on Flanagan’s left, then at Nitti, smiling behind him at the door.

  He pressed a buzzer on the desk on his right and spoke into a speaker.

  “Get Guzik in here.” Turning back to Flanagan, he added,

  “I think your Mr Morgan here may have taken on a little more than he can handle.” ’

  “We’ll just have to see about that,” answered Flanagan, gathering up the money into his attaché case and locking it firmly. He looked at his watch. “Let’s say two o’clock, Mr Capone, at Soldier’s Field, where we finished yesterday. And just you, Nitti and Guzik. No one else.”

  “You got my word,” Capone said. “There’ll be no one else. No need for it.” His plump face creased into a smile.

  Two hours later Capone’s black Ford cruised into Soldier’s Field stadium, driving through its black wrought-iron gates beyond the car park and on into the entrance to the track, sited at the beginning of the home straight. All around workmen were dismantling Trans-America banners or removing bottles and trash from the empty terracings. The bare flag-poles stood gaunt in the cloudy afternoon sky, their ropes flapping sharply in the wind. Above them, white gulls wheeled and screamed, occasionally swooping to pick up a morsel of food left by spectators. The stadium was dead; all that had made it so alive the day before had gone.

  Except the Trans-Americans. Like guards, they ringed the stadium perimeter, armed with baseball bats and fence-posts. Capone’s eyes narrowed as he noted their presence. The Ford stopped at the entrance to the track. Standing there, awaiting them, were Flanagan, Morgan, Packy Paterson and Lily.

  Capone saw Lily Carson and his soft lips tightened.

  There were no introductions or small talk. Flanagan simply beckoned Capone and his men to a side door leading to the area under the main stand. He knocked twice on the door, which was unbolted from the inside by a thin, grizzled old groundsman. He tipped his cap to Flanagan and looked at Capone.

  “You got some business here?”

  Flanagan answered for him. “Yes,” he said. “Mr Capone has some business here.”

  The Irishman ushered Capone, Nitti and Guzik into a gloomy corridor. Morgan and Paterson followed. Then he beckoned the old man to bolt the door and led the group along the stone-floored corridor, their feet echoing as they followed its curved path beneath the main stand. Finally, after walking some fifty yards, Flanagan stopped outside a door on the left and knocked twice. It was opened immediately, by Capaldi. The bronzed Italian-American gulped as he recognized the gangster.

  “They didn’t ought to have done it, Mr Capone,” he said, moving past him apprehensively. Capone did not answer, but together with his men entered the room, followed this time only by Morgan and Flanagan. Paterson and Capaldi remained guard outside.

  In the centre of the room stood a massive, sunken, tiled bath. Flanagan pointed to it then beckoned towards Jake Guzik. “Bath time,” he said.

  Guzik looked at Capone, who nodded. The hoodlum swallowed, loosened his tie, took off his grey jacket and placed it on a hook, then slowly released his cuff-links and rolled up the sleeves of his blue silk shirt. Morgan’s face was impassive. He took from his pocket a pair of black leather gloves and pulled them on. Then he pointed to the bath.

  “In there,” he said.

  Guzik walked slowly down the steps on to the white-tiled surface of the bath, followed by Morgan.

  “Let’s leave them to it,” said Flanagan to Capone and Nitti, ushering them from the room and closing the door behind him.

  The five men stood uneasily in the silent, gloomy corridor outside the locker room. Flanagan was the first to break the silence, taking from an inside pocket two thick Havanas and proffering one to Capone. As Capone took the cigar and Flanagan struck a match on the sole of his left shoe, there was a dull grunt from within the locker room: it sounded like Morgan. Capone smiled and bent to light his cigar. Packy Paterson glanced uneasily at Flanagan, who stood expressionless.

  Then they heard a voice. It was Jake Guzik, screaming. The next clear sound was the scratching of fingernails on the inside of the door, followed by a body scraping down its side. There was a momentary whimper. Finally, silence.

  The door opened and Morgan appeared, a trickle of blood seeping from his left nostril. He withdrew a handkerchief from the pocket of his denims and dabbed his nose.

  “Looks like Mr Guzik didn’t want the full ten minutes,” he said, pulling open the door to reveal Guzik face down on the locker room floor, blood spilling from his nose and mouth.

  “Didn’t seem to like the bath over-much either,” said Flanagan.

  Frank Nitti walked over to his fallen comrade and pulled him round onto his back. Guzik’s face was a bloody mush. Nitti looked up desperately at his employer, then at Morgan.

  “How’d he do this?” he said, turning to look round the room. “He got a club stashed somewhere?”

  He continued to peer helplessly around the empty locker room, then finally his eyes went back to Capone. The older man was still sucking slowly on his cigar. As if making some inner decision, Capone suddenly tapped the ash of his cigar on to Guzik’s shirt.

  “It’s your problem, Frank,” he said. “You’re a grown man. You got to take your licks.”

  Morgan looked at Frank Nitti and pulled on the top of his right glove as Flanagan pulled the door shut.

  “Your turn,” he said, as the door closed behind them.

  When the Trans-Americans left Chicago along with them went Lily Carson, while the documents she had supplied on Capone’s finances were sent on to a safety deposit box in the Trans-America bank. In fact, for all the gangster’s worries, the documents were superfluous; treasury officials already had more than enough evidence to convict him. On 5 June 1931, he was indicted for tax evasion and on 20 October he was fined $50,000, with $30,000 costs, and sent to prison for eleven years.

  23

  End of the Road

  Kate Sheridan had read somewhere that the deepest love was unspoken. If that were so, she sometimes thought wryly, then she was having one hell of a love affair with Mike Morgan. Seven hours a day plodding two hundred places behind him on dirt-roads followed by a couple of hours each evening in some greasy spoon over a cup of coffee. And yet Kate felt both contented and secure as she stood beside Morgan in the cool of evening at the Maxwell House Coffee Pot on the road outside Florence, Ohio. They were both wearing grey sophomore sweatsuits, the gifts of Bloomington College.

  “Twenty-one,” she said, breaking the silence and putting down her cup.

  “Twenty-one what?”

  “Twenty-one more men to pass before New York.”

  “Don’t think about it,” said Morgan. “Just do your piece each day.” He drained his cup and turned to the counter to have it refilled. “That’s all I do – live a day at a time.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like Doc,” said Kate, smiling.

  “Perhaps,” said Morgan thoughtfully. “I’ll admit, I’ve learnt a lot from that old coot.”

  He picked up his fresh cup of coffee and looked out beyond the Trans-Americans standing in groups by the caravan. Below, in a field just off the road, the lights of the camp flickered. Then he saw Ernest Bullard approach them, determinedly making his way through the crowds o
f athletes.

  Bullard nodded over Morgan’s shoulder to the waitress at the hatch and smiled uneasily.

  “I’ve got a confession to make,” he said, turning to face his companions. A moment later he took his coffee from the hatch, paused, sipped it slowly, and sighed. “It’s amazing,” he went on. “All this way to find the best cup of coffee in the United States.”

  He looked directly at both of them.

  “I won’t flim-flam you any longer,” he said, taking out his Bureau card from his inside pocket, and opening it.

  “FBI.” He looked at Morgan. “I suppose you know why I’m here?”

  Morgan nodded.

  “Know what?” demanded Kate sharply, flushing.

  Bullard gestured for his cup to be refilled. “I don’t know what I would have done without this coffee,” he said. He sipped his re-charged cup and turned to face them.

  “I know about Morgan,” he said. Morgan made to speak, but Bullard silenced him, putting his finger to his lips.

  “Have another coffee,” he said, smiling as he pushed their cups towards the coloured waitress at the hatch of the Coffee Pot. “And don’t start blaming Flanagan, either of you. I knew before that fight at Bloomington. Just after St Louis my people sent me this . . .” He fumbled in his inside pocket and withdrew from it a faded press clipping. He handed it to Morgan. “Some young freelance photographer back in Pennsylvania got this picture of you in a warehouse way back in 1929.”

  “So what are you going to do?” asked Morgan sullenly, ignoring his coffee.

  “For the immediate present, nothing,” said Bullard. “You see, I’ve been keeping close tabs on you. I watched you handle yourself in St Louis, in Bloomington and then in Chicago. Back there in the booth you knew you were exposing yourself as a handy man with your mitts. It was the same in Chicago with Capone.” He put down his cup and tipped back his hat. “But you never held back. You never hid. Most men – most guilty men – would have steered well clear on both occasions.”

  Bullard loosened his tie.

  “No, as I said, I like your style. I’ve watched you both since Vegas. It’s been an education.” He replaced his empty cup on the hatch and shook his head as the waitress offered him yet another refill. Bullard sighed.

  “One thing we’re taught at the Bureau is never to let our feelings influence our decisions. Sort of like a doctor – you know what I mean? You start doing that in my line of work and you’re on your way to getting killed.” He smiled. “So I’ve got a job to do. And that places me in what you might call a predicament. If I go strictly by the book I should pull you in now.”

  Kate darted a fearful glance at Morgan, who remained impassive, waiting to hear what Bullard still had to say.

  “But all the law isn’t in the book. So let me put it to you straight. Do you give me your word that you won’t abscond before New York?”

  Morgan looked across at Kate, who nodded.

  “You got it,” they said simultaneously.

  Bullard put out his hand to Morgan. “Fine. That way you’ll pick up enough folding money to hire yourself some fancy lawyer to keep you out of a striped shirt. Leastways, that’s how I hope it’ll work out. For both of you.”

  “So what happens in New York?” asked Kate.

  “The moment your man crosses that finishing line, he’s mine,” replied Bullard.

  “And what happens if the Trans-America doesn’t make New York?” said Morgan.

  Bullard looked him straight in the eye.

  “Then neither do you,” he said evenly.

  It had been clear to Charles Flanagan, even before Bloomington, that he would not be able to bring a thousand runners into New York, as he had hoped, for even the athletes who had survived the Mojave, the Rockies and the Great Plains were only mortal. Illness, injury and sheer fatigue had trimmed the Trans-America down to close on nine hundred runners even before Chicago.

  By Maumee, Ohio, the Japanese runner Son, lying in eleventh position, had succumbed to a throat infection and withdrawn, and soon after Elyria, on the Ohio-Michigan border, the Italian Maffei, who had been closing in on the leaders, had to give in to crippling leg-cramps. But the main volume of withdrawals were much further down the field, in the area of certain failure, where seven hours a day at five miles an hour on hot roads was more difficult to bear.

  At the top the position changed almost daily. Since St Louis, Doc had steadily eroded McPhail’s lead, but Capaldi always finished well up on each stage, and was within striking distance, in third position, by Chicago. Behind Capaldi, only an hour framed Morgan, Eskola, Bouin and Digger Mullins. Thurleigh, who had taken some days to recover from his St Louis race against Silver Star, gained strength after Chicago, and now held tenth place, but was daily gaining on the leaders and edging towards the sixth position required by his London wager.

  As the race had gained in popularity, so sponsors offered increasing numbers of stage prizes. These awards were often secured by runners who had no hope of winning the race but who were willing to exhaust themselves on a single stage in order to win a few hundred dollars, a car or a suite of furniture. No matter; as far as Flanagan was concerned these new names and faces added spice and variety to the Trans-America. And with Toffler at last off his back his troubles were melting away. The towns ahead looked likely to meet their obligations, and although the debts were still piling up there would be a modest profit once the race reached New York.

  The Trans-America had slowly wound its way through the bleak industrial heartland of Michigan, crossing the Ohio-Michigan border at Colombia. They now moved directly east, north of Mishawata, towards Cleveland, and Flanagan’s final press conference.

  Charles Flanagan looked down at the massed reporters in the audience in the Grand Metropolitan Hotel, Cleveland. Things had gone well. He had just learnt that Fred Astaire had launched a dance in honour of Kate Sheridan called the “Sheridan Shuffle”, while Irving Berlin had composed a ditty called the “Trans-American Rag”. Neither work would make its way into the pantheon of American show business, but it was all good copy nevertheless. He checked his wristwatch: the first half hour of questions had presented no problems. The race itself was now only four hundred miles from its conclusion, and should be gravy all the way. Already the request for places on the VIP platform at Madison Square Garden had exceeded the platform’s capacity.

  Flanagan had decided, on balance, against the races between midget jockeys on Shetland Ponies. Better to finish with dignity. After all, as he reminded himself, the Trans-America wasn’t marathon dancing or pole-squatting. And anyway, the race was boiling up to one hell of a finish.

  Carl Liebnitz raised his arm and, catching Flanagan’s eye, got to his feet.

  “Some of my colleagues on the press corps have been wondering about Madame La Zonga and Fritz the talking mule,” he said, keeping his voice deadpan. “We don’t seem to have seen them since Springfield?”

  “I’m glad you asked that question, Carl,” said Flanagan.

  “Back in Bloomington, General Honeycombe made me an offer for the circus. I talked it over with Madame La Zonga – ”

  “And Fritz?” said Liebnitz.

  “And Fritz, and the rest of the staff,” grinned Flanagan.

  “And they agreed to go with the General. Last thing I heard they were doing great business in Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

  The exchange went down well. Flanagan peered down into the audience, scanning it for further questions. As he did so, at the back of the conference room a buttoned bell-boy in a pill-box hat entered with an envelope, and after whispering with some of the journalists in the back row made his way to Carl Liebnitz, tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a white envelope. Liebnitz looked up, ripped it open, scanned its contents, and stood up frowning.

  “Sorry, Flanagan,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s bad news.” He paused and took off his spectacles. “I have a telegram here which states that the Trans-America Bank has today closed its doors to its d
epositors. In short, the bank has gone bust.”

  There was immediate uproar and journalists scrambled over each other to get to their telephones, leaving Carl Liebnitz standing at the back of the room, the telegram hanging limply from his fingers.

  Flanagan slumped back in his chair, face flushed, a lump in his throat.

  “Conference over,” he said gruffly, banging his hammer on the desk.

  The next morning nine hundred and sixty-one Trans-Americans, Flanagan’s road gang and the catering staff silently faced Flanagan in the same conference room at the Grand Metropolitan Hotel.

  Flanagan stood up, forced a thin smile, and drew his fingers through his greying hair.

  “I guess you’ve all heard the bad news by now. Carl Liebnitz got the first telegram, but I have since had the position confirmed by Leonard Evans, the vice president of the Trans-America Bank. The long and short of it is that, at twelve a.m. yesterday the Trans-America Bank closed its doors for good and is now in the hands of the receivers. I have at this moment no idea why the bank has gone bust – banks are going to the wall every day – but that isn’t our immediate concern. What it means to us, to you, is that your $350,000 prize money isn’t there any more. There’s nothing in the pot.”

  The sun-blackened Texan Kane stood up. “Just what options have we got? What’s our financial position?”

  “I’ll level with you,” said Flanagan. “I might have seventy thousand dollars in the pot after all the salaries and bills are paid. We have nine days to New York: the cost of that is forty thousand dollars, maybe thirty thousand if I cut it fine. That could leave thirty to forty thousand dollars for prize money.”

  “But surely,” said Doc, interrupting, “those are your profits?”

  “Were my profits,” replied Flanagan gloomily. “No, boys, it all goes into the pot. If I come out of this without ending up in the Tombs then I reckon I’m ahead.”

  There was spontaneous applause from the Trans-Americans. Then Eskola got to his feet. “We could end here; split up the seventy thousand dollars now.”