by Tom McNab
“Impossible.” It was Doc again, moving to the dais on which Flanagan and his staff were seated. He faced the Trans-Americans. “Back in Hays, Kansas, Flanagan and my group laid out over seven grand at long odds on our making it all the way to New York. Flanagan chipped in about the same. That was for the cooks. Those guys went out on a limb for us back there in Kansas when we were in trouble. We’ve got to stand by them now.”
Eskola put up his hands in a placatory gesture as Doc sat down. “My apologies, Doc. I was not thinking clearly.”
“What if Mr Flanagan went ahead to look out a new sponsor, while we keep racing?” It was the Frenchman, Bouin.
Flanagan shook his head. “Time,” he said. “There’s no way I can see me picking up that sort of money in a week.”
Willard had meanwhile entered the room, and now placed a sheaf of telegrams on the table, at the same time whispering in his employer’s ear.
Flanagan smiled. “Looks like some good news for a change.” He picked up a telegram. “From the IWW union boys back in Vegas. They’re sending us five hundred clams.” He picked up another. “Doug Fairbanks’ sending a grand, and here’s a wire from Levy in St Louis – a grand.” He picked up the sheaf of telegrams.
“What’s the total we’ve got here?”
Willard scribbled on a pad in front of him and grinned.
“Twelve grand, I reckon. We even got a grand from those Scotsmen back in McPhee. Who says the Scots are tight?”
“Great,” said Flanagan. “But still a long way from what we need.”
Doc stood up again.
“Look, Flanagan, every man here is committed to finishing this race. Hell, we didn’t come all this way just to end up in Cleveland. That much is certain. All you have to do is to feed and house us till we hit New York. If it comes to the worst we’ll run for nothing.”
There was a rumble of agreement.
“Wait a minute,” said Flanagan, hands on his forehead. “See how this strikes you. Say we keep forty grand out of the total, just to get us to New York. That leaves us with around forty grand, with maybe more to come . . .” Flanagan closed his eyes.
“I’m getting it,” he shouted. “It’s coming through.” At his side, Willard put his fingers to his lips, and the Trans-Americans became silent, as if attending a seance.
Flanagan’s eyes opened, and he clenched both fists, knuckles down on the desk in front of him. “So we keep our forty grand safe, so we can get to New York, come what may. What’s left is either prize money or . . .”
“Or what?” said Doc.
Flanagan smiled.
“Gambling money. We take a chance, like we did in McPhee, in St Louis, in Springfield . . .”
“Like we been doing since Los Angeles,” came a voice from the floor. ‘
Flanagan nodded.
“Like we’ve been doing all the goddam way.” He paused. “I know for certain there are some fancy hustlers here in Cleveland.”
“Hustlers?” shouted Bouin.
“Gamblers. Poker. Dice,” explained Flanagan. “So let’s say I take the forty grand and put it in the pot . . .”
“You want to play cards with our money?” said Eskola. “Cards?”
“It’s a chance,” said Flanagan. “One that might be worth taking.”
McGregor, the head cook, stood up.
“I know it’s none of my business, but I saw Mr Flanagan pick up seven g’s in Las Vegas, on a five-hundred dollar stake. He’s good. He’s a humdinger.”
There was a flurry of discussion in some half-dozen different languages. Willard banged the gavel. “Order, gentlemen!” he shouted.
Doc stood at the base of the dais. “I’m lying second, and all of my group is in the first dozen, so I reckon I’ve got as much of a stake as anybody if all of us end up in the cellar. Forty thousand dollars split between the top runners – that’s chicken-feed compared to what we ran for at the start. Let’s look at this carefully. First, we put the forty grand in the poke. That can’t be touched, and that means we get to New York. Then we allow Flanagan to play with the rest of the money. Hell, it’s been a gamble from the beginning. Flanagan gambled on getting us to L.A., we all gambled when we came here, we’ve gambled one way or the other every single day since. Well, here’s just one more gamble – the final one.”
There was no need to put it to a vote. That night Flanagan made his way to the Biltmore Hotel with forty-two thousand five hundred dollars burning a hole in his pocket.
He entered the lift and pressed the button for the basement. A few second later he stood before a heavy steel door marked “boiler room”. He knocked and a hatch opened, revealing a pair of black bushy eyebrows and a bulbous nose.
“I’m Flanagan.”
The eyes looked at him unblinkingly.
“This is a private game,” said the nose eventually. Flanagan reached into his pocket and withdrew a thin wad of hundred dollar bills. “How much to make it less private?”
The eyes looked down at the clip of bills which Flanagan was holding.
“What you got there,” came the reply.
The next moment the door opened, and Flanagan entered.
9 a.m., 3 June, the Grand Metropolitan Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio. Flanagan entered the conference room with a smile on his face and stepped on to the platform to face his Trans-Americans. He was impeccably dressed in a black waistcoated pin-striped suit and black patent leather shoes. Before him stood the Trans-Americans and his staff and a sprinkling of reporters, including Liebnitz, who had got wind of what was in the air. This time there was no need for Flanagan to call for silence. The room was still.
“One hundred and fifty grand in the pot – all our stake,” said Flanagan, his hands on the table in front of him. “Five card stud. Just me and Easy Eddy Arnold left in. A good player, but I’d played him in Vegas. A bluffer.”
The silence was almost palpable.
“Easy Eddy has to fill in a run in diamonds.” Flanagan drew in a deep breath. “I have a full house – aces and kings.”
Capaldi was the first to speak.
“For God’s sake tell us, Flanagan. Did the man fill in his run?”
“Yes,” said Flanagan, dropping his head into his hands.
Willard Clay looked around him and shook his head. He sat at a table in the gloom of Gargan’s speakeasy, Cleveland, along with Doc and his group and surrounded by other Trans-Americans. If he had visited any one of the ten speakeasies within walking distance of Gargan’s he would have witnessed the same scene: men who had not let alcohol pass their lips since Los Angeles now in various stages of inebriation.
“I sure hope these guys can take it,” he said, looking around him as he drained his glass. “ Cause we hit the road again, 8 a.m. tomorrow, rain, hail or snow, money or no money.”
“They can handle it,” replied Doc. “We can all handle it.” Around the table sat his team – Thurleigh, McPhail and Morgan – along with Packy Paterson, Stevie, Kate, Dixie and Lily.
“Where’s Flanagan?” Morgan asked.
“Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since morning,” said Willard. “He took off right after he spoke to you guys. Just got into a taxi and vanished.”
“He shouldn’t take it too bad,” said Doc. “Nothing he could have done. In his place I’d’ve done the same. A full house of aces and kings against someone trying to fill in a straight? He can’t be blamed. Anyhow, he’s kept this whole damn shebang on the road since Los Angeles. None of the boys blames Flanagan.”
“So what are you going to do?” said Willard.
“Keep running,” replied Doc. “That’s what we came here to do.” The others nodded agreement.
“Have you any idea of the number of people who have stopped us in the street today, telling us to keep going?” asked Doc.
“That’s right,” said Hugh. “People I don’t even know. One pushed twenty dollars into my hand.”
“One old guy stopped me in the street, gave me his running shoes. Sa
id he had run a marathon back in 1912. That must have been about your time, Doc,” said Morgan, smiling.
“Amazing how many marathon runners we seem to meet,” continued Hugh. “Never heard of most of them. Jesus, it must be the American Dream to run a marathon. No, there’s no doubt the man in the street wants us to keep going. For one thing, he wants to know who’s the best man – ”
“Or woman,” interposed Kate. “A crowd of ladies from the Daughters of the Revolution turned up at the hotel today, after we’d finished our meeting, and offered me food and accommodation all the way to New York.” She turned to face Willard. “How much have you got left in the kitty?”
“Four thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight bucks in stage prizes, bets et cetera. At least a grand of that will go back to Juan Martinez’s folks. The rest of it we split up amongst ourselves, in New York.”
“If I manage to make the first two hundred places into New York – and the Woman’s Home Journal stay with their offer – then put that in the kitty, too. I reckon you guys have kept me in the frame since back before Vegas,” said Kate.
Doc raised his glass, smiling sentimentally. “Here’s to you, Kate. You’re a lady. Where do you lie now?”
“Two hundred and twenty-first,” interjected Willard. “Twenty-one runners to beat. You dropped a few places.”
“But the big question is, how many runners will stay in?”
“We still have stage prizes left, don’t we?” said Dixie.
“Yes,” said Willard. “About four thousand dollars’ worth. That might keep a fair number in, especially those in the front group.”
“Then the Journal will probably stay with me,” said Kate.
“Whatever happens, we should all come up smelling of roses,” said Doc. “How many of us haven’t had offers of work or endorsements for products?”
“I’ve been asked to lecture at colleges and women’s clubs all over the country,” said Kate. “Me? I never gave a lecture in my life.”
“You’ll have no problem,” said Doc. “You’ve been giving press conferences since Morgan bopped you way back in the Mojave. You’ve learned to stand on your feet. We all have. Of course it’s a shame that we’re not going to be able to finish off in real style, with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but if it hadn’t been for the Trans-America I’d still be serving milk-shakes at five bucks a week.” He squeezed Lily. “I reckon we’ve all come out of this in good shape. I certainly know I have.”
He raised his glass.
“So, ladies and gentlemen, let me give you a toast. To Charles C. Flanagan, wherever he is.”
For “Packy” Paterson the Trans-America had proved to be a new lease of life. He had not fully understood the implications of Morgan’s offer to join the race back in Bloomington but he had immediately accepted: to become, in effect, the “manager” of Doc’s group, dealing with mail, laundry, massages and any details which might detract from the runners’ concentration on their daily fifty-mile stints. In return, he was given an equal share of any winnings which Doc’s group might accrue by New York.
Packy soon teamed up with Hugh McPhail’s friend, Stevie and, freed of preparation for nightly booth fights, the veteran boxer soon learned the delights of the Scottish “half and half”, which had felled Flanagan back at the McPhee Highland Games. Their friendship was perhaps not surprising. They had both lived through hard times in bleak places, the Scot in the depths of a Glasgow tenement, the American in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Together they made a formidably effective management team, the hulking boxer and the quick-witted, bandy-legged little Scot.
For Stevie, the rural sections of the United States, the vast wheat plains of Kansas and Nebraska, had been a revelation; but the industrial north was simply Depression Glasgow all over again. True, the faces were Polish, German and negro, but they bore the same hopeless expressions that had haunted the “broo park”. He could not escape from them – gaunt unshaven faces in the rear of excited crowds lining the streets as the Trans-Americans plodded through town after town towards New York.
His journalistic work with McLeod of the Glasgow Citizen was far from onerous; just to winnow out the human stories of the Trans-America in order to give colour and depth to McLeod’s formal reports. By Springfield Stevie was offering his pieces to McLeod with confidence and by Elyria he was submitting whole reports to the Citizen under the journalist’s by-line. Like Hugh McPhail, he knew that there was no going back. You returned only to soil that would allow you to grow, and he owed no loyalty to Glasgow. True, times were hard in America too, but here there was room to breathe; and if he could not survive in America, he reasoned, he had no right to survive at all.
The immediate concern of the Scot and the American was, however, the location of Charles C. Flanagan, about whom nothing had been heard since Cleveland. Willard Clay, absorbed with the problem of setting the Trans-America on its way again, had asked Carl Liebnitz and the unlikely pair to combine to find Flanagan.
Flanagan was not found, however, until three days after Cleveland, on the morning of 4 June, when he was discovered face down, clad only in trousers and a woman’s dressing-gown, in a hotel bedroom in Akron, Ohio. Alongside him in the double bed were a trumpet and two Alsatian dogs.
“Wake up, you dumb Mick,” shouted Carl Liebnitz, pulling him on to his back. Packy Paterson slowly poured a pitcher of cold water over the recumbent figure, while the third member of the rescue party, Stevie, pulled back the curtains.
Flanagan hardly twitched as the icy water splashed over his face.
“Aces on kings,” he mumbled. “Aces on kings.”
Liebnitz looked helplessly at his two fellow-searchers.
Stevie took the initiative. “Just you go get some hot black coffee, Packy, lots of it, and plenty of ice.”
Packy stumbled off downstairs, to return a few minutes later with a steaming jug of coffee and a box of ice cubes.
“You want I should give him the coffee now?” asked Packy, standing menacingly over Flanagan.
“Not yet,” said Stevie. “Put the coffee and ice down there.” He pointed to the bedside table. “And get those blasted dogs out of here.”
Packy led the growling Alsatians from the room.
Liebnitz sat down on the side of the bed and took off his jacket and tie.
“God, it stinks in here,” he said. “Open that window, for God’s sake, somebody.” He bent close to Flanagan and grimaced.
“Give me the ice,” said Stevie. “And bear with me a wee moment. I’ve never tried this before, but I’ve heard it works a treat. It’s called the ‘collision of opposites’ method. When I say ‘now’, I want you to pour the coffee down his trap. You got it?”
Packy nodded while Liebnitz propped the limp figure up against the headboard of the bed.
Stevie gingerly unbuttoned Flanagan’s trousers and pulled out the elastic of his underpants. Flanagan’s eyes did not even flicker. Then Stevie picked up a handful of ice cubes and rammed them down into Flanagan’s groin.
“Now!” he shouted.
Packy pulled open Flanagan’s lower lip like a drawer and poured down the hot coffee.
The effect was immediate. Flanagan sat bolt upright, his eyes staring, spraying coffee over them all.
“Mother of God!” He leapt to his feet, jumped off the bed and ran round the room, spraying out ice cubes as he ran.
Liebnitz smiled at Stevie.
“Looks as if your collision theory works,” he said. “At that speed Flanagan could have beaten Silver Star on his own. I think we can all have a coffee now. But this time without the ice.”
Half an hour later a grey, shaven, sober Charles C. Flanagan sat in Jake’s Diner, Akron, on a stool alongside Liebnitz, Stevie and Paterson.
“It was one of the boys from Morgan’s old union who found you and got back to us,” said Liebnitz. “He said you were doing some sort of Rudy Vallee impersonation in the speakeasy last night. That didn’t go down too badly, but w
hen you said Caruso couldn’t hold a candle to Count John McCormack you got into a fight with some Italians and the barman threw you all out.”
“That was the last I can remember,” said Flanagan, rubbing his jaw. “Still, I think I dished out a few punches.”
“Took a few too, by the looks of you,” said Packy.
Flanagan gulped down his coffee and shook his head. “Why didn’t you just let me be?” he said. “I’ve had it. I’ll pick up the race outside New York.”
“The race?” said Liebnitz. “The race is no problem. The boys are still pounding out the miles like there was still three hundred and fifty grand at the end of the road, and your man Willard is Mr Efficiency as usual. It’s all going like clockwork.”
“Then what are you doing here?” said Flanagan.
“Because I’ve got you an offer,” said Liebnitz. “So just pin back your Irish ears.”
Flanagan nodded blearily as a waitress served him his tenth cup of coffee.
“Transcontinental Airlines’ new boss is one Clarence C. Ross. He only took over a couple of weeks ago. After Cleveland, I wired him about the Trans-America, to see if he could rustle up some loot from some of his New York banker buddies. He refused point blank.”
“And you three came all this way to tell me that?” muttered Flanagan morosely.
“Let me finish,” said Liebnitz. “As I said, he refused point blank. No, he said, I won’t go to my banking associates, not on any account. I’ll put the money up myself. Transcontinental will sponsor the race.”
“God almighty!”
Flanagan sat up and coughed, again spraying coffee over Packy and Stevie.
“But on one condition,” said Liebnitz, taking out his handkerchief to dab his spattered jacket.
“I thought there’d be a catch.”
“No, listen, it’s not all that bad. You see, Clarence Ross is marathon mad; has been ever since the 1908 Olympics. He even tried running in one himself at Boston but ended up with rigor mortis at twenty miles. He thinks marathon runners are the greatest thing since the vertical man.”