“Son,” Wyatt said, “Bartholomew could talk a nun out of her habit.”
This remark seemed a little rude, in front of a lady, but Dixie’s big bright brown eyes showed no sign that its meaning had registered. Or that it hadn’t.
Wyatt was saying, “Bat’ll talk, we’ll listen and watch. Agreed?”
Johnny took a deep breath, swallowed it, said, “Agreed.”
“How are we traveling? Do you own a car?”
“I do, but we’ll take the subway. Short walk, then forty-five minutes and we wind up right at Stillwell Avenue station.”
“That’s good?”
“Right across from Nathan’s hot dog stand.”
Dixie clasped her hands. “Oooh, can we eat there?”
They had.
And now that that delight was history, the delights of Frankie Yale’s Harvard Inn remained to be savored. On a corner of sorts—numerous dark narrow alleys bisected the Bowery, leading to the ocean, or perhaps disaster—the grand-sounding dive inhabited a modest one-story clapboard affair with an electric sign—perhaps significantly, with bulbs burned out spelling har—d inn, but with its front windows blacked out.
“Oh dear,” Dixie said, still on Johnny’s arm.
Alarmed, Johnny glanced at Wyatt. “Are we really taking this angel into that hellhole?”
“Yes,” Wyatt said. “And bringing her back out again, wings and all.”
Wyatt opened the door, and Johnny with Dixie, and Bat just behind, followed him inside, where they were met by the bouquet of sawdust and spilled beer, and trundling up to them came a heavy-set fellow in black trousers, white apron, white shirt and black bow tie.
The greeter was none other than their old friend, young Alphonse Capone.
He grinned at them, his teeth large and almost white, his lips obscenely reddish-purple; despite the dim light of the saloon, his dark eyebrows over the slightly bulging gray eyes and that bulbous yet flattened nose and the slightly acned chin all added up to a nastier, more ugly countenance than Bat had perceived during their meeting in Johnny’s office Friday night. Perhaps it was the absence of the garish but expensive apparel, the Borsalino hat and the tailored purple suit and silk tie and diamond stickpin. As a greeter-cum-bartender in apron and bow tie, Capone was just another thug, albeit an obnoxiously grinning one.
“Mr. Yale will be with you shortly,” Capone said, upper lip curling the smile into a patronizing sneer, as he gestured with a fat palm toward an empty booth, a little off to the left side near a door marked exit.
Capone walked them over and gave Dixie a frankly fresh eye. “Didn’t expect you boys to bring your own talent along. What’s your name, doll?”
Johnny said, “Don’t talk to her.”
Capone reared back, his smile becoming a frown but remaining amused. “Is she deaf and dumb? Pretty little lady can’t talk for herself?”
She said, crisply, “I’m with Johnny.”
Capone gestured grandly at the booth and its reserved card. “Well, honey, everybody makes mistakes. What can I bring you to drink?”
“We’re not thirsty,” Wyatt said, and tossed his Stetson on the tabletop. Johnny’s fedora and Bat’s derby followed.
Capone shrugged and winked at Dixie and lumbered off.
Bat sat nearest the exit; Johnny, with Dixie next to him, had the other outside seat. Between Dixie and Bat sat Wyatt, surveying the place; but Johnny’s eyes were on Dixie, who was frowning.
“Are you are okay, Dix?” the young man asked her. “We can leave. Wyatt and Bat can—”
“We’ll stay,” she said. “What a horrible man.”
“That’s Capone. He’s the one who shot up the club.”
“He’s evil. What an awful liver-lipped creature.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.”
Bat took a look around himself.
The crowd at the Harvard Inn was not particularly collegiate—its name was, after all, a stupid joke of Yale’s, which Bat doubted was the proprietor’s real name. A group of chippies in garish make-up and short skirts and rolled-up stockings (who might have been parodying Dixie) sat at a row of tables along the left wall just the other side of the Earp party, past the exit. They were dime-a-dance girls, possibly prostitutes; but the place wasn’t a brothel—the one-story facility didn’t provide space. Tickets were bought at the bar, opposite, an endless affair, twenty feet, anyway, the most impressive thing about the long, narrow joint.
A small jazz combo on the bandstand was playing a sluggish “Avalon” and the fairly good-sized dance floor—twenty by forty, easy—was packed with a mix of working-class couples and guys with tickets for the dime-a-dance dolls. All were dancing so close it was damned near sex standing up.
Three bartenders were working the long bar, with Capone sometimes serving off a well-balanced tray, sometimes greeting and seating new customers, and the other two making the drinks in tea cups—a lame deception, Bat felt, as beer was being openly sold in foaming mugs. Bat counted eighteen stools and six spittoons at the bar, and the rest of the green-plaster-walled place was packed with small tables, mostly couples, with barely enough space for Capone and a couple other waiters to get by.
Capone’s role was unique—he seemed popular here, joking and chatting with customers, a number obviously regulars. He presented a jovial front and had a certain theatrical presence.
Bat was no stranger to saloons, but to him this kind of dive held no appeal. What an outrage that a gutbucket like this could thrive openly, while the great watering holes remained shuttered, like Shanley’s or such stellar hotel bars as the Metropole or the Churchill or the Knickerbocker. A nightclub like Holliday’s was one thing; but the Harvard Inn was no better than the roughest barrelhouse on the plains. Christ, the goddamned Lady Gay was better!
Funny that the Lady Gay should jump into his mind…or maybe not. The Harvard’s dime-a-dance girls were not so unlike Mollie Brennan, and this sawdust-and-suds-scented slophouse was just the sort of dump to suit a besotted bastard the likes of Sergeant King of the Fourth Cavalry.
And, to be frank, it was just the kind of seedy, noisy saloon the twenty-one-year-old Bat Masterson might have frequented.…
By the summer of ’75 in Sweetwater, Texas, Indian scouting had slowed way down. Most months Bat had little else to do but pick up his paycheck at Fort Elliott, and gamble and drink and generally frolic at the Lady Gay and other such joints. Though he’d skinned buffalo and killed Indians, he wasn’t yet wise in the ways of the world, and when black-haired, blue-eyed Mollie said she loved him, Bat believed her, even though the wench with the hour-glass shape sold her dances (and probably more) to any scout, soldier or cowboy who swaggered in (and staggered out of) the Lady Gay.
Funny thing was, a run-in Sergeant King had with Bat’s old buffalo-hunting compadre, Wyatt Earp, probably lit the fuse.…
King was a burly, brawling loudmouth, a mean drunk but a brave gunfighter who had initiated, and survived, any number of barroom battles with fists and/or guns. Perhaps ten years older than Bat, the sergeant was such a hardcase that he would arrange his furloughs around when he could accompany cowboy friends to trail towns to help them “hoo-rah” the main streets. Which was to say shoot them up, restricting the killing to dogs when possible but leaving no survivors among street lamps, hanging signs and store windows.
That summer, a few days before the Lady Gay incident, King and his cowboy buddies, in search of a little such fun, came to Wichita, Kansas, where Wyatt was on the police force. King and the cowboys had barely started having a good time when Wyatt Earp strolled around a corner to find the sergeant with a sixgun in his hand and an unsteadiness in his feet.
Wyatt, of course, strode up to the son of a bitch, yanked the weapon from King’s mitt, tossed it in the street, and slapped him while simultaneously removing a second gun from the soldier’s belt, tossing it also in the street. Wyatt responded to King’s complaints by clubbing him with the barrel of a .45 Colt, and dragging the se
mi-conscious brute by the scruff of the neck to jail. King was fined a hundred dollars but left town in a thousand bucks’ worth of bad mood.
Though he’d seen the burly sarge around Fort Elliott, Bat didn’t know King to talk to, though he was aware of the man’s reputation as a gunman and brawler; certainly he was not aware that Sergeant King considered black-haired, blue-eyed Mollie Brennan, hour-glass shape and all, to be his personal property.
So when the sergeant and six other cavalrymen, all well-lubricated, came roaring into the Lady Gay that summer night, pushing through other soldiers and gamblers and buffalo hunters and dance-hall girls, Sergeant King was distraught to find Bat and Mollie dancing and getting along famously.
Bat didn’t even see King draw.
Mollie did, and threw herself in front of her dance partner, taking the bullet meant for Bat in her stomach and collapsing to the hardwood floor as other patrons scattered and the next bullet smashed into Bat’s pelvis.
As his legs went out from under, Bat nonetheless drew his Colt and fired at King; hurting, maybe dying, Bat was no less a crack shot, and his target was King’s heart, and he did not miss.
The sergeant fell in a bleeding motionless heap; Mollie was bleeding and moaning and would be dead within minutes. The six soldiers who’d come in with King advanced on the fallen Bat, to finish him, but were held off by Bat’s English-born friend Ben Thompson, who’d been running the Lady Gay’s faro table, which he hurtled gun-in-hand—the soldiers may have outnumbered Ben, but they didn’t try him: he was the only man in the West more dangerous with a gun than Wyatt.
The West.
How bitterly ironic that an incident like that one, a drunken sergeant taking the life of a poor saloon girl and Bat killing the son of a bitch, whose bullet narrowly missed making Bat a goddamned eunuch, that such a shabby, tawdry tragedy would fuel Bat’s legend, a legend he admittedly traded upon every day here in New York.
As for the West, whenever he was asked, he would say he never wanted to see it again, or see anybody from those days; to hell with the West and everybody in it.
And yet here he was beside Wyatt Earp, and glad to be, enjoying the company of his old friend, even if this shabby saloon brought back the wrong kind of memories.
Wyatt tapped Bat on the arm. “Wake up, Bartholomew—that’s Yale.”
Capone was coming over with a stocky but muscular-looking character in a gray double-breasted suit with black lapels and a gray shirt with a black silk tie with a diamond stickpin. His black shoes were mirror-polished and a handkerchief in his pocket was also black—where the hell did a person find a black handkerchief, anyway?
Most startling was a big jewel-studded belt buckle—good God, were those diamonds?
A black-haired, dark-eyed, oval-faced individual with a pug nose and dimpled chin, Yale stopped at the booth and smiled, just a little, and nodded toward Dixie, saying, “Miss…gents. Don’t get up.”
Wyatt and Bat exchanged glances—who was planning to get up for this guy? What, crawl out of this booth?
Capone got his boss a chair and Yale sat with his hands resting on his thighs; the hands bore two heavily jeweled rings each, including a massive apparent-diamond pinkie ring.
“Whiskey,” Yale said to Capone.
Capone nodded, then asked the group, “Sure you don’t want to wet your whistles?”
“We’re sure,” Wyatt said.
“Suit yourselfs.”
Before he left, Capone winked at Dixie and licked his lips. Bat saw Johnny stiffen with anger, but nothing was said.
“Thank you for coming,” Yale said. “You know who I am. I’ve seen you around sporting circles, Mr. Masterson. You must be Mr. Earp.”
Wyatt nodded.
“And I’m Holliday,” Johnny said quickly. “This is Miss Douglas, who’s an entertainer at my club.”
Yale’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you had that Guinan broad—”
“Miss Douglas is in Miss Guinan’s chorus line. Miss Douglas is a personal friend. She wanted to see Coney Island.”
Yale half-smiled—not quite a smirk—and said politely, “Hope you’re not disappointed, Miss Douglas.…Is it all right to discuss business in front of the young lady?”
“I said she was a personal friend,” Johnny said, perhaps a tad too touchy.
Yale patted the air with a palm. “No offense meant. Anyway, I hear the feds raided your place.”
“You raided my place,” Johnny said. “Your fat flunky ‘raided’ my place.”
Wyatt gave Johnny a look, and Johnny swallowed and nodded.
Bat sat forward and said to Yale, “That’s the past, Mr. Yale. We’re here to discuss a future business relationship.”
Yale’s forehead frowned while his lips smiled. “The past, the future…kinda sounds like the present-day got lost in the shuffle, there.”
“We’re here,” Bat said, “on your turf, to pay you respect. You’re providing an important service in this Prohibition period—your reputation for good beer and superior liquor is well-known on the East Coast.”
Capone was back with a tea cup for his boss. The big man threw a wink at Dixie before he strutted off in time to the little jazz band playing, “Look for the Silver Lining.”
“Who am I to argue?” Yale sipped his whiskey. “But my understanding is, Mr. Holliday here has a bottomless supply of quality liquor. Why would he need my services? In fact, it is I who am interested in doing business with Mr. Holliday…in purchasing that supply.”
Bat began, “Mr. Yale…”
Yale pressed on. “Mr. Holliday here is in the retail business—I am not. I supply wholesale product to the likes of Mr. Holliday and his fellow retailers. My suggestion is, Mr. Holliday stick to his business, and I will stick to mine…and, in accordance, we will do business with each other.”
Johnny was breathing hard.
Bat said, “We have a…similar view. We would like to begin purchasing beer from you more or less immediately.”
“We can do that,” Yale said with a nod.
“And as for the liquor, we will pledge to do business with you, on an exclusive basis, when Mr. Holliday’s supply runs out.”
Yale frowned. “My understanding is his supply is considerable.”
Bat shrugged. “Hard to say. The marketplace has its demands. And a sophisticated citizen like yourself, Mr. Yale, is well-versed in how rumors get out of hand. Our best estimate is…a year or so.”
“A year or so.”
“In the meantime, Mr. Holliday will pay you a ten percent premium on all the liquor he sells, until he begins buying from you.”
“No.”
Bat cocked his head. “It’s a fair offer, Mr. Yale.”
“He sells his supply to me. He stays in retail. I handle the wholesale.”
“Mr. Yale, Johnny’s not wholesaling his liquor to anyone; he’s merely supplying himself.”
“Way I see it, he’s wholesaling to himself. That trods on my toes, business speaking.”
Bat glanced at Wyatt; Wyatt nodded. Johnny was frowning.
Bat said, “Twenty percent, Mr. Yale. For doing nothing but being patient. A year, perhaps a shade longer…”
“No.” He turned his dark eyes on Johnny. “Can’t you speak for yourself? You’re no goddamn kid. You’re as old as me, for Christ sake!”
Johnny’s mouth opened but Wyatt shook his head at the younger man, and Johnny said nothing.
Bat said, “Twenty-five percent, Mr. Yale. And this is on top of buying beer from you. There’s plenty for everybody here.”
Yale said, “A year’s supply of high-grade booze? I’ll give you five thousand for it. First and last offer, Holliday. Take it or—”
“Leave it,” Wyatt said.
A dark eyebrow arched. “Oh, you’re getting into it now, Granddad?”
“We came to do business,” Wyatt said. “We didn’t come to be robbed.”
Yale studied Wyatt for a long time—maybe thirty seconds, which seemed an
eternity.
Then Yale sipped his tea cup of whiskey. And said, “I need to make a phone call.”
“Fine,” Wyatt said.
Yale scooted his chair out, rose, and quickly walked toward a doorway between the bar and the edge of the dance floor.
Bat said to Wyatt, “I thought Yale was the top of the ladder in Brooklyn.”
Wyatt’s shrug was barely perceptible. “Well, he’s checking with somebody. And I don’t think it’s his mother, wife or priest.”
Shaking his head, a steaming Johnny said, “Twenty-five percent? That’s highway robbery!”
“May be the price of doing business,” Wyatt said.
The jazz band was well into “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” when Capone came swaggering over. Was he a little drunk?
He leaned a pudgy hand on the tabletop. “Pardon my being so impolite. I think I was dazzled by the young lady’s beauty. Did I remember to ask youse if you wanted anything from the bar?”
“You did,” Wyatt said, “and we don’t.”
“Anybody? Anything? Boss says on the house…How about you, sweetie?”
Capone was leaning past the seated Johnny, almost putting his face in Dixie’s.
“No,” Johnny said. “And back off.”
Capone leered at Dixie, then at Johnny. “Why don’t you let her talk for herself? These dames are gonna get the vote, ’fore you know it. She oughta get started usin’ her noodle.”
Wyatt said, “Mr. Capone, I think you’re needed at the bar.”
Capone ignored that. He leaned in farther and his thick lips were inches from a recoiling Dixie’s face. “Honey, I been in love since I saw you come swayin’ in the door. I been meaning to tell you—you got a real nice ass…and I mean that as a compliment.”
Johnny was out of the booth and Capone pulled back; the big man did seem a little tipsy.
“She’s with me,” Johnny said. “Apologize.”
“What the fuck?”
“Apologize and go away—before you get hurt.”
The bullnecked Capone roared with laughter, throwing his hands over his head in hilarity, then bringing them back clawed. “Who the hell’s gonna hurt me, punk?”
With a straight-arm left, Capone knocked Johnny against the corner of the booth, hard, and was drawing back a big fist when Johnny’s right hand went to his left sleeve and something shiny caught the dim light and glinted and winked and the blade flashed once, twice, three times.
Black Hats Page 14