The Moonshine War

by Elmore Leonard

  Frank Long waited for Bud's brother Raymond and Virgil Worthman to look at Bud--both of them stooping over him--then gave them time to look up at him and make up their minds whether they were going to take a turn or pick up Bud and go home. Evidently they weren't having any, Long decided, because they didn't say a word or make a move.

  "When that boy wakes up," Long said, "take him over to see Mr. Baylor and you all listen to what he says. I've done enough talking for a while."

  Long had come out to take a walk and look over the main drag and maybe stop in a cafe for his noon dinner. But he changed his mind now and went back to the hotel, up to 205. There was no sense in fooling around, he had decided in the past few minutes. If these hardcase boys were going to gang him, it was going to take more than conversation to make them think in the light of reason. He was going to have to bust a few heads as well as stills. In his room Frank Long took off his hat and suit coat and laid the .45 automatic on the night stand as he sat on the bed. He lighted a thin cigar and picked up the telephone. Those smart-aleck boys wanted a fight, Jesus, he'd order up more fighting than they could stomach. When the operator came in, Long gave her the number of the federal Prohibition director in Frankfort. The operator took his name and room number and said she'd call him back and he hung up the receiver. Long waited.

  They'd be surprised to hear from him, since he was supposed to be on a leave of absence. He'd told them he was needed at home because of sickness in the family.

  When the operator called back she said the circuits were busy but that she would keep trying.

  He said all right and hung up again. When the operator did get through to Frankfort probably the line would be busy. Then, it wouldn't be busy, but the phone would ring for about an hour before anybody in the office decided to answer it. Then the fat woman clerk would get on and he'd tell her who he wanted and she'd say he was out and didn't know when he'd be back. He'd give another name and the fat woman clerk would sound put-out as she said, all right, just a minute, and another hour would go by while the fat woman clerk stood over the water cooler talking to another woman clerk and the phone receiver lay on the desk, off the hook. He sure didn't enjoy waiting or taking crap like that from women who thought they were the cat's ass. There hadn't been any women clerks in the Army, but Jesus there had been enough waiting. The Army was famous for it: hurrying a man up and then making wait. Though it hadn't been a bad life, even with the low pay and usually lousy food and having to wear leggings and thick-soled shoes. In his life Frank Long had farmed, worked for a mine company, gone through the ninth grade of school, had served twelve years in the U. S. Army, Infantry and then Engineers. He had made sergeant and had a pretty nice room of his own in the barracks, but they never let him go to Officer's Candidate School and get a chance at the soft life. Hell, he'd probably be in today if they'd made him an officer. He didn't have anything against the service, but when someone told him they were looking for federal Prohibition agents it sounded good. You wore a regular suit and the pay wasn't bad; you were given a badge and a gun. Long wasn't sure what the gun would be, so he swiped a BAR he liked and took it along with him when he was discharged.

  The old man, Mr. Baylor, had asked him, "What do you get out of this? A five-dollar-amonth raise?" Probably he wouldn't even get that. He'd put in his expense sheet and get a hard time from the fat woman clerk who would act like it was her money she was giving out.

  The other way, keeping the whiskey himself--the minimum he stood to make would be forty-five hundred gallons times five dollars a gallon. Or, at the bootlegger's price of five dollars a fifth he could make over a hundred thousand bucks.

  Hell yes, he had thought about it. He'd thought about it most of the time the last couple of days: find the whiskey, get somebody who knew what he was doing to ship the stuff out by truck to Louisville, and split the profit with him: some bootlegger who knew the market and ways to get to it. Long had a file on some pretty good boys. Some wanted, some in jail, some just released. One in particular Long couldn't get out of his mind, the perfect guy for a deal like this one, somebody who had the knowledge and experience to sell the whiskey and, at the same time, somebody who could be trusted. Hell, the man had been a dentist before becoming a bootlegger. You had to be pretty upstanding as well as smart to be a dentist.

  Dr. Emmett Taulbee was his name.

  Long got a two-ring binder out of his suitcase and sat down on the bed again as he opened it, flipping through pages of reports and "wanted" sheets until he recognized Dr. Taulbee's photographs, in profile and head-on.

  There he was: Emmett C. Taulbee, D. D. S. Age fifty-one, a slight smile curling his lip and showing some of his upper front teeth. He must have thought they were something to show, though they protruded a little and were big horse teeth. Taulbee considered himself a ladies' man, and maybe there was some indication of that in the way he combed his wavy hair and let it dip down across one side of his forehead. He was also said to be a dude--wore expensive striped suits and detachable white collars on a blue shirt. His last known place of residence, Louisville, Kentucky. There was an address and a phone number, the typewritten phone number crossed out and another number written above it in pencil.

  The photographs had been taken seven years ago, at the time of Dr. Taulbee's arrest for sexually assaulting a woman patient in his dentist chair.

  At the trial the woman testified that she had been a patient of Dr. Taulbee's for several years.

  No, he had not made advances or displayed an interest in her physically, not until she was in his chair for the extraction of her molar. She said Dr. Taulbee placed the mask over her nose and mouth and told her to inhale the gas slowly. She remembered the sound of breathing in the mask and the awful suffocating feeling for a moment. Then she was asleep. After that she remembered stirring and feeling a weight and something white over her, close to her face. She did not realize at first that it was Dr. Taulbee partly on top of her on the chair. She thought perhaps she was dreaming, until she felt something and moved her body and knew that her lower body was bare and that her legs were apart.

  When she screamed Dr. Taulbee twisted off her. He stood with his back to her for a moment, then hurriedly left the room. The woman testified that she found her undergarment on the footrest of the chair. Her skirt had been pushed up around her hips, but her stockings and shoes had not been removed.

  She was an attractive woman in her early thirties, the mother of three children. In questioning her, Dr. Taulbee's defense counsel played with the implication that the woman had made up the story as a means of smearing Dr.

  Taulbee's name. Though they gave no reason why she would want to, nor did they accuse her of it directly. The woman answered all questions calmly, candidly looking at Dr. Taulbee from time to time to see how he was taking it.

  Taulbee sat quietly most of the time. Occasionally he would smile or shake his head at the woman's testimony. His counsel did not put him on the witness stand, so the court did not hear from Dr. Taulbee. Though they did hear two additional women patients testify: one, that he had acted strangely and had touched her--held her arm or shoulder and had asked her if she was by any chance menstruating, because if she was the anesthetic might have an adverse effect on her. The other testified that upon leaving Taulbee's office after having had gas for an extraction, she felt her clothes disarranged, as if she had been sleeping in them or as if someone else had dressed her. Dr. Taulbee's license to practice was revoked and he was sentenced to one to three years in the State Penitentiary at Eddyville. While he was there his wife of twenty years divorced him.

  Prison, Frank Long decided, was what changed the man's life. He met bootleggers and whiskey runners and evidently something about their business appealed to him. Dr. Taulbee was released after a year and was a good boy during the two years of his probation. Since then--during the past six years--Taulbee had been arrested four times for the possession of illegal alcohol, but had not been convicted even once. He was making money and s
ure had better lawyers than the one he had at the assault trial. Taulbee was a businessman with a working force and a good profitable operation that reached from Kentucky up into Ohio and over into Indiana and he would be just the one for a deal like this one. Hell, Taulbee was the only one Long knew of who could handle a hundred thousand dollars worth of grade-one whiskey.

  He had met Taulbee twice, both times after raids on Taulbee's warehouses. The last time they had sat around the police station questioning Taulbee and waiting for his lawyer to come and Frank Long had got along pretty well with him. Taulbee didn't seem to be worried; he told some pretty good jokes and grinned when everybody laughed. Long liked a man who didn't let anything bother him. Sitting around there Taulbee gave everybody a cigar and said, well, now if somebody else could supply the whiskey and the girls, he'd as soon come to this jail as most of the speaks he did business with. He was honest, right out in the open, and they said he sure liked girls.

  Long did not make a judgment about Dr. Taulbee's assault on the women. If he liked to do it to them while they were sleeping, that was his business, but Jesus, it was sure better when they were squirming around. It didn't seem enough to send a man to prison for. Those women had probably been asking for it anyway.

  The more Long thought about it, the better it looked to him. Long and Taulbee, partners.

  One job, that was all. He wasn't about to turn criminal for life. One job and he'd take his cut and go to California or somewhere. Just one job and not do anything wrong ever again.

  Before the phone rang Long picked up the receiver and waited and then said to the operator, "Listen, never mind that call to Frankfort. I got a number in Louisville I want you to get me."

  Chapter Five.

  Dual Meaders told the filling station man ten gallons of ethyl and sat to wait, his elbow pointing out the window and his pale-looking eyes gazing straight ahead, half closed in the afternoon glare.

  Behind him, in the back seat, Dr. Taulbee said, "Ask him where's a good place to eat."

  The girl sitting with Dr. Taulbee, Miley Mitchell, a good looking eighteen-year-old girl with brown hair and nice dimples, said, "God, around here?"

  "Ask him," Dr. Taulbee said.

  Dual Meaders got out of the La Salle; he walked back to where the filling station man was holding the nozzle in the gas tank opening and asked where was a good place to eat.

  "Right in front of your nose," the filling station man said, nodding across the highway to the white frame house with the FOUR STAR CAFE sign on a pole in front.

  Dual Meaders didn't like the man's answer. If the man had been close enough to see Dual's light-colored eyes, he would have smiled or laughed or said something else to show he was just being friendly and not smart aleck at all. But he didn't see Dual's eyes and Dual didn't have time, at the moment, to show them to the man. He opened the rear door and said, "Across the street."

  Dr. Taulbee squinted at the FOUR STAR, frowning, showing his front teeth. "Ask how far to Marlett."

  "I know how far," Dual said. "Corbin's another fifteen miles, Marlett's sixty, seventy more."

  "We could wait till we get to Corbin," the girl, Miley Mitchell, said.

  "Not the way my stomach's growling," Dr. Taulbee said.

  Miley was studying the cafe. There were no cars parked in front. "I don't know. It's after three, maybe they're not serving now."

  "Honey," Dr. Taulbee said, "get out of the car, will you?"

  Holding the door open, Dual was looking at the filling station man who was watching the gauge on the gas pump. It still burned him the way the man had answered. Dumb hick saying right in front of your nose. Dumb hick pumping gas in his filthy dirty overalls.

  At the edge of the road Dr. Taulbee looked around and said, "What're you waiting for?" Dual closed the car door and followed after them.

  As he was crossing the road, the filling station man called out, "Hey, what about your car?"

  Dual kept going. Over his shoulder he said, "Leave it where it's at."

  The man called out something else, but Dual didn't pay any attention. Jesus, it was hot in the country already, a spring day, but like the middle of August. He headed for the shade of the cafe, opening the door that Dr. Taulbee, a few steps ahead of him, had let close.

  The place was empty: counter, tables, and booths all empty. A radio was playing in the kitchen and there was the sound of voices, but no one appeared until they were seated at a booth.

  The woman who came out of the kitchen looked them over as she stood at the counter and filled three glasses of ice water from a pitcher, then smiled as Dr. Taulbee gave her a pleasant nod. From the city, the woman decided, judging by their suits and striped ties, the older one with a rounded stiff collar and a tiepin, but they seemed friendly. Probably father and son, or uncle and nephew--they looked enough alike to be related though the older ones hair was nice and wavy and the younger one's was slicked straight back and shiny. The woman didn't know about the girl. She could be the daughter of one or the wife of the other. Though the woman had a feeling the girl wasn't related to either of them. The girl was certainly pretty, a little thing but with a pair of grown woman's ninnies; if they were her own and not a pair of socks balled up inside her undies. They were travelers on the road, maybe going to visit kin or to attend a wedding or a funeral. It was too early in the year for them to be on a vacation.

  They drank their ice water and asked for Coca-Colas and when the woman came back with the Cokes they ordered from the top of the menu, talking among themselves as they told her what they wanted: the older man ordering salmon croquettes and the salad and asking the younger one about Marlett and how far out from town was a certain place--"the Caswell place"--which sounded like somebody's farm. They made the woman wait talking about Marlett, but she didn't mind because then she would learn something about them. The woman looked at the girl for her order, but it was the one with the slick shiny straight hair who spoke up and told her he'd have the barbecue beef and two orders of fried potatoes; though he was so thin and pale, with sunken cheeks, he didn't look like he'd ever eaten a full dinner. He had a toothpick in the corner of his mouth he must have picked up at the cashier's counter coming in. He rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth and said, don't worry, Caswell would have enough room for anybody they brought. The young girl said she guessed she'd have the salmon croquettes also; but the Four Star Cafe woman was listening to the older one say they would learn soon enough if they needed the extra room or not and when they got there they'd stay at the hotel if the burg had a hotel. The younger man said if he remembered correctly it was called the Cumberland Hotel, and the young girl said again she would have the salmon croquettes, if the woman wouldn't mind, and another Coca-Cola. The woman had never been to Marlett, though she knew where it was and was pretty sure there was no tourist attractions over there like natural caves or mineral springs. With them mentioning this Caswell place, or whatever the name was, the woman was pretty sure they were going to visit friends or kin.

  It was a little while after she had served them their dinner and was back with more bread and butter for the skinny slick-haired one that the young couple came in. They sat at a table after standing at the cashier's counter and looking around the empty restaurant for a while.

  As she put the bread down the skinny one said, "Dog, I like that tan suit that boy's got on."

  The woman went to the counter to pour two ice waters and studied the new couple as she took the waters to their table: nice looking, both of them in their mid- or late-twenties with city written all over them. They were trying to appear at ease, but the woman could tell they were self-conscious and knew the three people in the booth were looking at them. Yes, they sure were: the skinny one was looking this way and then laughed out and the young girl with the pretty dimples giggled and the wavy-haired man was grinning, showing his teeth. The young couple ordered ham sandwiches on whole wheat and iced tea. When the woman told them they didn't have any whole wheat the young
man said white would be fine.

  The Four Star woman took their orders to the kitchen. She was at the counter fixing their iced tea when the skinny slick-haired one from the booth walked over to the young couple. She heard him say something about the man's suit. The man looked surprised and said, "Well, thank you."

  "Where'd you get it?" Dual asked him.

  "I believe it was in Cincinnati," the young man said, fumbling with the button of his suit coat to open it.

  As he did, pressing his chin to his chest to look at the label, his wife said, "Where else?" She opened her eyes wide and laughed brightly to show she was at ease. "You just bought it about a month ago."

  "I like that kind of material," Dual said. "It's not as woolly or hot as some suits."

  "Thank you,"

  "It's gabardine," his wife said.

  Dual frowned, cocking his head as he studied the light tan double-breasted suit. "How much you pay for a suit like that?"

  "This suit?" The young man trying to act natural, looked at the label again, as if the price tag might be there. "I think it was about fifty bucks."

  "Forty-four," his wife said, "I remember because you wondered if you should spend that much."

  "Forty-four dollars," Dual said, nodding, still appraising the suit. "Okay, I'll buy it off you."

  The young man grinned, going along with the joke. "Gee, if I had another one I would, I mean I'd sell it to you."

  "I don't want another one," Dual said. "I want that one you got on."

  As his wife laughed, letting Dual know she had a good sense of humor, the young man laughed and kept smiling as he said, "What am I supposed to do, take it off right here and give it to you?"