That Night at the Palace

by Watson, L. D.

  Finally the bartender went over to speak to the man. Usually these guys needed someone to talk to. If you give them a couple of drinks and an ear, they would go on their way.

  “You want another drink, fellow?”

  “No, I ain’t got no money for no more.”

  The bartender looked at the man, who was obviously torn up.

  “Here,” the bartender said as he refilled Irwin’s glass, “this one’s on me.”

  Irwin took a swig, “Thanks.”

  “You hang out as long as you want. Did you hear about those killins up in Elza? We was just talkin’ about it. That ‘Alligator Killer’ done it again. Got him some gal this time.”

  Irwin stared at the man without saying a word.

  “You okay, fella?” the bartender asked.

  “That gal was my daughter.”

  Suddenly the room fell silent as every head turned his direction.

  The bartender was stunned. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Here have another.”

  He poured another drink as the two men from the end of the bar moved down next to Irwin.

  “My god, man. I’m sorry about your girl. Charlie pour him one on me,” one of the men said.

  “They can’t let that kid get away with this. They ought to go up there and lynch ‘im. That’s what they ought to do.”

  #

  MAIN STREET,

  ELZA, TEXAS

  11:00 a.m., Saturday August 15, 1936

  It had been another boring morning for Jesse and Cliff. For the third straight day there hadn’t been any deliveries. Mr. Washington had said that he thought there would be some in the afternoon. So the two boys were back to sweeping and stocking shelves at the feed store and McMillan’s.

  They had just finished and were heading up Main Street to see what was happening at the domino hall when Jewel turned the corner right in front of them, just a block past the Palace. It had been three weeks since they had seen her. That had been the night of the carnival - the night her mother had died. Jewel, of course, didn’t know her mother was dead.

  Jesse and Cliff had both wondered what they would say whenever they saw her again, though they had never discussed it. The fact was that discussing Jewel would just make them think about that night, and both of those boys wanted that memory out of their minds.

  Jewel walked up to them with her hands in her pockets. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” the two boys replied simultaneously.

  For a moment the three just stood there without saying anything. By now everyone in Elza had heard the story that Sarah Stoker had run off with some carnival worker. Of course, only Jesse and Cliff knew the truth.

  Jesse finally broke the silence and said, “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  Jewel just shrugged. There wasn’t much to be said on the subject.

  After another moment of silence, Cliff suddenly reached into his pocket and said, “I’ve got your money.”

  “What money?”

  He handed her some cash. “From the deliveries. You weren’t around the last couple of weeks to get your share.”

  Across the street Gemma came walking out of Anna-Ruth’s and headed toward them.

  “But I wasn’t here,” she said to Cliff, somewhat confused.

  “We’re all partners, remember. The business is part yours.”

  She smiled and looked at Jesse. “He’s just doing this ‘cause he’s afraid I’ll beat him up, isn’t he?”

  She and Jesse laughed and Cliff frowned as Gemma joined them.

  “Hi,” Gemma said to Jewel.

  Jewel smiled back and said, “Hi.” There was a new connection between the two girls that hadn’t existed before.

  “You guys makin’ deliveries today?” Gemma asked.

  “Mr. Washington said he may have some this afternoon,” Jesse replied.

  As they were talking, Peterson pulled up and parked in front of Anna-Ruth’s. He looked at the kids gathered together, climbed out of the car, and walked across Main Street toward them.

  “If some afternoon you don’t have anything to do, you can come over to the shop. I’m there every day,” Gemma said to Jewel.

  “Okay, thanks. Maybe this afternoon if we don’t have a delivery,” Jewel replied.

  “Why would she want to hang around a dress shop?” Cliff asked.

  Gemma looked at him with annoyance. “Because she’s a girl and might want to talk with another girl for a change.”

  “What do girls have to talk about that guys don’t?”

  Jesse cringed at Cliff’s remark.

  “I can tell her all about how you’re afraid that I’ll beat you up,” Jewel said with smirk.

  Cliff fumed, trying to form a reply as Peterson walked up.

  Neither of the boys had seen the man coming, and both immediately tensed at his presence. For Jesse, Peterson Crawford had been the subject of a lot of thought. On one hand, Jesse knew what an evil man he was. On the other hand, Peterson Crawford was Gemma’s father. He wanted to tell someone, but other than Cherokee and Cliff, there wasn’t anyone he could tell. If he told Chief Hightower what he knew, he’d have to explain about Mrs. Stoker, and they had promised not to do that.

  “Hi, kids,” Peterson, said with a broad smile as he walked up to them.

  “Hi daddy,” Gemma said and hugged her father.

  “You know, honey,” he said to Gemma, still smiling. “I was thinking that we should go to the movies tonight. Would you like to invite your friends? It’s on me.”

  Gemma looked at the others. “You guys want to go?”

  Jesse and Cliff were white with fear.

  “I don’t think I should. I’d better stay home with my dad,” Jewel answered.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that I can, either,” Cliff answered. “I’m kind of in trouble.”

  “You’re always in trouble,” Jewel commented.

  “Yeah, well, Able McCormack won’t let me go to the movies this summer, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jewel said as she laughed.

  Peterson looked at Jesse. “Well how about you, sir?”

  Jesse froze. He couldn’t think of a reason not to go, and when he looked at Gemma’s eyes, he didn’t really want one.

  “Ah, okay,” he said hesitantly.

  “Great,” Peterson said, still smiling.

  #

  COLDWELL’S FARM AND RANCH,

  TYLER TEXAS

  6:00 p.m., Saturday December 6, 1941

  McKinney and Chief Hightower were sitting in McKinney’s coupe across the Troup Highway from Coldwell’s. They had the headlights off, and the car was somewhat hidden in the shadow of a mechanics shop.

  The Rangers had known about a gambling setup in Tyler for some time, but they had just recently begun to get a grasp on the scope of the operation. A former runner and current snitch facing a serious parole violation had sung like the proverbial canary. The bookie in charge was a one-armed war hero by the name of Stumpy Coldwell. He had at least fifty runners operating from Dallas to Shreveport and in every town in between. Richard Crawford was one of those runners.

  There were four Rangers present for the raid. McKinney and Hightower were out front and three other rangers were out back, along with ten Texas State Highway Patrol Officers. No local police were involved. The Tyler Police Chief was privately notified, but his department was not brought in on the operation out of suspicion that a few of his officers were on Stumpy Coldwell’s payroll.

  McKinney and Hightower’s job was to make sure that no one slipped out the front door. They were only there as support and because their investigation was loosely connected. Under normal circumstances the old Ranger would have taken a much more active part in the operation, partly because of his experience and seniority, but mostly because he didn’t like sitting out front away f
rom the real police work. That wasn’t possible this time. McKinney had Hightower with him, and although he was gaining respect for the chief as a police officer and investigator, the man lacked the training and experience necessary for a raid like this.

  McKinney hoped that Richard Crawford would be picked up. With luck McKinney could get him to slip up during questioning. Criminals weren’t the smartest people in the world, and criminals under pressure tended to make stupid mistakes.

  The three Rangers would go in from the back. According to the snitch, the store closed at five and the runners gathered at six thirty. They all parked behind the store and met in a large room on the second floor overlooking the warehouse behind the store. Some evenings as many as thirty or forty runners would be there all at the same time. From the cars McKinney had seen pulling around back, this was shaping up to be a good night. He counted forty-five cars. One of the cars was a red ‘41 coupe.

  #

  Stumpy stood silently looking down at Richard Crawford, who was sitting in front of him. The room was a large office with windows that looked out over the enormous warehouse behind the Farm and Ranch store. It sat above the storage room where Richard had spent two weeks recuperating after being shot some five years before. Around the room were other book-runners, but alongside Stumpy were three men Richard didn’t like seeing.

  Stumpy Coldwell considered his gambling business just that - a business. He provided a service in exchange for payment. If a degenerate gambler wanted to win some easy money, he could place a bet with one of the runners, and if he won he would receive his reward. If he lost, well, life was hard. The problem was that sometimes the gamblers made bets on a line of credit and “forgot” to pay. On those occasions Stumpy had to employ people who could retrieve his payment. The three men he used for this particular task were the men beside him. They were old war buddies from the days in Belleau Wood in France.

  Richard knew that the boss was angry with him, but he couldn’t help smiling when he looked at Stumpy. The large man was standing, as he often did, with his one arm holding the other arm as if he had his arms crossed and resting on his fat belly. Only Stumpy had just the one arm, which Richard found terribly amusing.

  Stumpy didn’t find anything amusing about Richard Crawford, and he especially didn’t like the smirk on his face.

  Stumpy bit hard on his cigar and said, “You told me that this mess in Elza had nothing to do with you, but last night a Texas Ranger showed up at ‘The Line’ lookin’ for you.”

  “I said,” Richard argued with way too much confidence for Stumpy, “that they picked up a kid for it, and they did. You’ve seen the papers. He’s going to the chair for sure.”

  “And what about that girl?”

  “The kid did that one, too. He was out on bail,” Richard replied with a smile. “I’m tellin’ you, Stumpy. I got this all sewed up.”

  Stumpy grunted. He was beginning to hate this punk. Crawford was just like his brother - a two-bit loser who thought he was George Raft.

  “What was that about last night, then? I don’t need no Rangers snoopin’ around.”

  Richard slumped in his chair. “Okay, there’s a loose end I’ve got to take care of. But that’s it. I’ll take care of it tonight and no more trouble.”

  Stumpy stormed around the room, trying to control his anger.

  “What are you going to do, kill someone else? You listen to me, you little punk. You get out of here, and you clean up this mess. I don’t want to see you or any Texas Rangers. You get out of East Texas for at least six months or a year ‘til this blows over. If I see you again, you get to deal with these three,” Stumpy said, motioning to the three large men leaning against the wall.

  Stumpy looked at one of the men and nodded his head. The man then grabbed Richard by the coat collar and dragged him down the stairs, through the warehouse, and tossed him out the back door.

  Crouched in some brush about twenty yards behind the back door, Texas Ranger Warren Wilson was checking his sawed-off shotgun alongside Texas Highway patrolman Luther Francis when they saw a man tumbling out the back door of Coldwell’s Farm and Ranch. Wilson looked at his watch.

  “Ten more minutes,” Wilson whispered.

  The man got to his feet and stumbled his way to a small car and drove away.

  “Could you tell the color of that car?” Wilson asked Francis.

  “It’s dark, but I think it was red.”

  “Dear god, I hope that wasn’t the guy McKinney’s after.”

  “If we’d grabbed him, we would have blown the whole operation.”

  “Yeah, well you aren’t the one who’s going to have to explain that to Brewster McKinney.

  #

  STAFFORD’S BAR,

  LUFKIN, TEXAS

  9:15 p.m., December 6, 1941

  Irwin had been drinking in Stafford’s since early afternoon. He’d thrown up twice and passed out once, but the bartender kept giving him coffee, and the other patrons kept buying him food and whiskey. Considering the amount of liquor he’d consumed, he was fortunate to still be alive.

  All afternoon and evening people were coming in with new information about what was happening up in Rusk. One story was that the kid on trial was a rich kid whose father had paid the judge to sweep it under the rug. The rich part, Irwin was able to confirm. The kid lived in one of the largest houses in town, and his father was a big dog in the oil fields. That part riled everyone in the bar because they all had been around the oil fields enough to know that the rich oilmen were crooks who made their money off the poor farmers who owned the land they drilled on. Another story had the judge being a relative of the kid, and he wanted to let the kid off. That story, Irwin couldn’t confirm but he was drunk enough to say that it wouldn’t surprise him none, which was enough to count as a fact to the crowd that was mostly drunk and growing more angry by the minute.

  “The judge shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. That boy went and murdered poor Irwin’s little girl. Somebody ought to go up there and lynch that rich punk.”

  #

  TYLER POLICE STATION,

  TYLER, TEXAS

  10:55 p.m., December 6, 1941

  Corporal Brewster McKinney had never been so angry in his life. In the past half hour he had chewed the hide off every Texas Ranger on the scene and most of the Highway Patrolmen. If any of the Highway Patrolmen or Tyler Police officers had any aspirations of becoming a Texas Ranger, those dreams promptly changed. No one wanted a job where you worked under a man like that big Ranger, and nobody involved with the raid at Coldwell’s was going to escape the wrath of Ranger McKinney.

  Chief Hightower didn’t know exactly what to do except stay close behind the Corporal and keep his mouth shut. With the mood that McKinney was in, Jefferson feared the slightest remark could set him off.

  The two officers, along with two other Rangers, five highway patrolmen, and the chief of the Tyler police department were standing shoulder to shoulder in a tiny observation room looking through a one-way glass mirror into the interrogation room. In the room was a plain wooden table where Ranger Wilson sat across from Stumpy Coldwell.

  McKinney was standing squarely in the center of the glass window, blocking the view for most of the other officers present. He knew it; he also knew that no one was going to challenge him. He was working an active murder case, and as far as he was concerned, that far outweighed a punk numbers racket, even if it did pull in a million dollars a year.

  McKinney was growing impatient, not that he was a particularly patient man to begin with. Wilson was taking his time. In general, McKinney liked Wilson. He was part of the new breed of Ranger. Wilson was a graduate of the University of Texas with a degree in law enforcement. McKinney grumbled at the thought of it. When he had started there was no such thing as a degree in law enforcement. All you needed was a gun and the guts to go after a bad guy. In
the early days most of the Rangers couldn’t even read, let alone go to college.

  The old days were long gone. There was a time when an interrogation like this would begin with a pistol whipping, but that was a long time ago, which was, the old Ranger had to admit, a good thing. Texas was growing up, and law enforcement had to grow up as well.

  But that didn’t mean that he had to stand there cooling his heels all night while waiting for that green college kid to get around to asking the important questions. For ten minutes Wilson had danced with this fat bookie without getting to the point. Finally, McKinney’d had enough and barged into the interrogation room and laid a picture of Crawford on the table in front of Stumpy.

  “Where is this man?”

  Stumpy bit down on his unlit cigar, as was his habit whenever he was angry. Right now he was angry. He had lawyers to handle the legal stuff. He knew that he’d be out on bail in an hour, so this cops and robbers stuff was just academic as far as he was concerned. At worst he’d end up doing six months or a year in Huntsville. He knew that was a possibility when he had started his racket. What angered him was that this thing didn’t need to blow up. It was all because of that little Crawford punk, and the proof was lying on the table in front of him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why’d you have your boys toss him out of your warehouse tonight?”

  Stumpy glared at McKinney and then leaned back and said, “Look, I’m a business man. I don’t know what you boys think I did to drag me down here, but I’m clean and respectable. But that aside, no matter what you think, I ain’t got anything to do with any killin’. We tossed that boy out because I think he killed those people down in Elza. In fact, I think he killed some woman four or five years ago, too. I don’t want nothin’ to do with him. If you’re after the people who killed those folks, I’m happy to help ya all I can.”