Hot Springs (Earl Swagger)

by Stephen Hunter

  “Go ahead, sonny,” said Johnny.

  “So you have to ambush them. But you’ve got to do it in such a way that when they’re finished, it’s not going to be a scandal. It’s going to be a joke.”

  “You have the floor, kid. Keep talking.”

  “What would be a temptation they couldn’t resist? That Becker couldn’t resist?”

  “Now, see, Johnny was talking about that today too. You guys sure you ain’t related?”

  “Possibly his lordship’s triple-great-grandfather fucked me triple-great-grandmother the scullery maid in her bog cottage in County Mayo in 1653,” said Johnny.

  “I don’t think we ever had any Irish servants,” said Frenchy, completely seriously. “Anyway, here it is: the Great Train Robbery.”

  There was a quiet moment. The two men looked at each other.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” said Frenchy. “That was the biggest thing that ever happened here. October 2, 1940. Five men take out the Alcoa payroll, kill four railway guards and get away clean with several million dollars. In the Hot Springs yard! Big news! Great job! It’s even said that a certain Owney Maddox built the biggest casino in the world in 1941 on the proceeds of that job. It’s also said that the great Johnny Spanish, the world’s smartest armed robber, masterminded the job.”

  “Have another cigar, kid.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Frenchy turned the lighting of the cigar into high drama. He sucked, he puffed, he drew the fire into the long, harsh tube of finest Cuban leaf, he watched the glow, he got it lit fiercely, and finally he expelled a huge cloud which rotated, Hiroshima-like, above his clever young head.

  “If Fred Becker stops another train robbery and if he nabs the team that did it and that’s the team that did the first robbery and he gets convictions on them, by God, then he’s a national hero. He’s the next governor. He’s won what he wants to win. See, he only sees the gambling crusade as a vehicle. He doesn’t believe in it a bit. It’s just leverage to get him to the next level.”

  Owney appraised the young man. He had the gangster thing. Mad Dog had it. Bugsy had it. The Dutchman had it. It would change over the years to something mellower and deeper, into a strategic vision. But now, raw and unalloyed, this handsome upper-class boy had it in absolute purity: the ability to see into a situation and know exactly how to twist it, where to apply force, where to kill, how to make the maximum profit and get away with the minimum risk.

  “So,” continued Frenchy, “what you have to do is find some way to plant the possibility that another train robbery’s being set up. That Johnny Spanish has been seen in town. Becker will go for it like crazy. He’ll go for it fast and recklessly. That’s his character, his defining characteristic, that ambition. He’ll order Parker and Earl to intercede. He has to. They’re the only men he’s got he more or less trusts. You’ve got him. Only, when he lunges for the big prize, it’s just bait concealing a hook, and you get him right through the gills. You lure the team into that railyard, and hammer it good.”

  He sat back, took another huge puff on the cigar. The smoke curled around his face, and he took a sip of the Scotch whiskey, but not too much, for he didn’t want to blur his sharpness.

  “I think he will make a fine agent,” said Johnny Spanish. “He’s pure Black and Tan, a night rider with a cunning for the devil’s work.”

  “Why, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me,” said Frenchy, only partially ironic. He felt suddenly something he had never felt before: that he was home. He belonged.

  But Johnny went on. “See, he’s got so much upstairs, but in the end, he’s a brick shy in the realm of experience.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Frenchy.

  “A night ambush’s a devilish hard thing to pull. I’ve been in dozens so I know. You get your own boys all mixed up with the other fella’s. Everybody’s shooting at everybody else. Then, you’ve got a big space like that railyard, with lots of room for maneuver, and it gets even more mixed up. And to put a final ribbon on it, see, they’re wearing those damned vests, so they’re not going down. By Jesus, boy, you’ve thrown the babe out with the bathwater. You’ve got to lure them into a contained area so there’s telling what’s them and what’s us. That, or figure a way to let us see in the dark.”

  The smile began slowly on Frenchy’s face. It flamed brightly, gathering force and power, becoming a ghastly apparition on its own. His smugness was so radiant it became a force of illumination almost on its own. He gloated like a man mightily self-pleased to discover that he’d arrived exactly where he intended all along.

  “Old man,” he said. “Consider this.” He reached into his pocket and removed a page clipped from the June 1945 Mechanix Illustrated. He unfolded it and gently put it on the desk before them.

  UNCLE SAM CAN SEE IN THE DARK read the headline, above a picture of a GI clutching a carbine with what looked to be a spotlight beneath the barrel and one of the new televisions mounted atop the receiver, where a telescopic sight might otherwise go.

  “It’s called infrared. You beam them with a light they can’t see. Only you can see it, through that big scope. They’re in broad daylight, only they don’t know it. You can hit head shots, and to hell with the vests. You pop a few of them, and the rest turn and run. You litter the place with carbine shells and you vacate. I can get you hundreds of carbine shells. Your police are there in seconds, report no sign of another outfit and that the raid team panicked in the dark and shot the shit out of each other. They’re clowns, who’s not to believe it? Since you control the cops, nobody will ever work the forensics. Hey, is it swell or is it swell?”

  The phone rang.

  “Goddamn!” said Owney, reaching for it.

  “With Mr. Maddox’s connections, it can’t be too difficult to get a hold of a couple of these gadgets. You set up on a boxcar. The raid team comes into the yard. Bing-bang-boom! It’s over.”

  “Yeah?” said Owney, into the receiver. “Goddammit, this better be impor—”

  His rage turned to amazement.

  “Be right there,” he said. He turned back to his confederates.

  “You work it out with him,” he said. “You guys are a team, I knew that from the start. Tell me where to go to get those units and you’ll have them next week. I’ve got to run.”

  “What’s going on, boyo?” asked Johnny Spanish.

  “A babe has just shown up and she’ll talk only to me.”

  “Ah, Owney, many’s the fine fella who’s been undone by a lass. You wouldn’t be that kind, would you now?”

  “Not a chance. But this one’s different,” he said, closing the door. “It’s Virginia Hill.”

  40

  “I hate to fly,” said Virginia. “It hurts my butt. I hate those little johns. I hate it when you’re stuck next to some joe who wants to tell you his life story.”

  “Virginia,” said Ben, “you have to do it.”

  They were in the lounge at Los Angeles International Airport, sipping martinis. It was a very deco place, all chrome and brushed aluminum, filled with soaring models of sleek planes. Outside, through an orifice now being called a “picture window,” planes queued up to take off on the long tarmac. They were silvery babies, their props buzzing brightly in the sun, most with two motors, some few with four. They looked, to Ben at least, like B-17s taking off for a mission over Germany, not that he had ever seen a B-17 or been anywhere near Germany while the shooting was going on.

  Virginia took another sip of her icy martooni. The gin bit her lips and dulled her senses. She had to pee but she couldn’t find the energy. Her breasts were knocking against her playsuit top, as if they wanted to come out and play. The drink made her nipples hard as frozen cherries. Her brassiere cut into her gorgeous mountains of shoulders. One shoe had slipped half off her foot. Every man in the joint was staring at her, or rather, at parts of her, but that was a necessary condition of her life. Ben’s pal, a tough little mutt named Mickey Cohen, lounged
nearby, as a kind of sentry. He sent out such vibrations of protective aggression that none would approach, or even admire too openly. Mickey looked like a fire hydrant on legs.

  Airplane! Virginia Hill went by train, in her own stateroom, on the Super Chief or the Broadway or the Century or the Orange Blossom Special! Elegant Negroes called her “Miz Hill” when they served her Cream of Wheat in the morning, tomato aspic in the afternoon and steak in the evening, all with champagne. It was so nice. It was the way a lady traveled.

  “Now tell me again what you’re supposed to do.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Virginia. “Ben, I am not stupid. I know exactly what to do.”

  “I know, I know, but humor me.”

  “Ah. You bastard. Why do I put up with this shit?”

  “Because of my huge Jewish pretzel.”

  “Overrated. You might try kissing me a little first, you know. It’s not always so good when we try and do it in under ten seconds.”

  “I look at you and I just can’t wait. When you get back, kisses, presents, dinner, champagne, petting. I’ll pet! I swear to you on my yarmulke: petting!”

  “You bastard.”

  “Please, Virginia. I am so nervous about this.”

  “Twenty hours or so, I get to Hot Springs. I check into the Arlington where I already have a reservation. I go to Owney. He of course has to have me up. I tell him I’m on a sort of a peace mission. Ben is worried that Owney will think he’s shoehorning in on the Hot Springs business with this desert deal. I’m to assure him that that’s not the case and that if Vegas even begins to look as if it might work, you, Ben, will invite him, Owney, out as a consultant and fellow investor. Owney is to consider Vegas his town as much as Hot Springs and as far as Ben is concerned, Owney will always be the father and Ben the son.”

  “Yeah, that’s good. You can do that?”

  “In my sleep, sugar.”

  “Okay, what’s next?”

  “Then I pressure him about the cowboy. Does he yet know who that cowboy is? Ben has been very embarrassed about what happened to him with the cowboy. It’s gotten all around and Ben is being teased about it and being laughed at behind his back. Can Owney please hurry up and find out who the cowboy is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ben, I’m telling you, even if he tells me I am not going to tell you. I will not be part of anything against that guy. He was just a guy who lit a cigarette. You swung first. He didn’t know who you were.”

  “Virginia, how many times do I have to tell you? Forget the cowboy. It’s got nothing to do with the cowboy. You don’t have to protect the cowboy. But you have to put that move on Owney, because he will see through the father-son bullshit in a second, and will know you have a secret agenda. He will believe that’s the secret agenda. We want him to believe that I’m obsessed with the cowboy, that I’ve sent you there to find out who the cowboy is. That way, he will discount what moves I’m making and consider me a noncompetitor, caught up in some grudge match that don’t have nothing to do with business.”

  “Okay,” she said, and took another toot on the martooni. “Too much vermouth. Bartender, gimme another, easy on the vermouth. And two olives.”

  “She likes fruit,” Ben said to Mickey. Mickey didn’t say anything. He hardly talked. He just sat there, working on his fire hydrant impersonation.

  “Now,” said Ben. “What’s next? It’s very important. It’s the point!”

  “The painting.”

  “Yeah, the painting. You might have seen it the first time, Virginia, if you’d been paying attention instead of rubbing your tits up against Alan Ladd.”

  “He hardly noticed, believe me. His old lady was watching him like a hawk.”

  “He noticed, I guarantee. Anyhow: look at it very carefully. Get its name. But remember exactly what it looks like. In fact, buy a little sketch pad and as soon as possible, sort of draw what it was like. Label the colors.”

  “This is stupid. I ain’t no fancy artist like Brake.”

  “Braque, Virginia. It’s French or something.”

  “This is secret-agent stuff. What do you think, sugar, I’m in the OSS or something?”

  “Virginia, this is important. It’s part of the plan. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We have to know all about that painting. Go back a second time, and check your first impressions, all right?”

  “I can’t stand that creep twice.”

  “Force yourself. Be heroic, all right?”

  “Ty!” she suddenly shouted, rising.

  A small, fine-boned dark-skinned man had entered the bar for his own bout of martoonis; Virginia waved, her voluptuous breasts undulating like whales having sex in a sea of the brand-new miracle product Jell-O.

  Ben felt a wave of erotic heat flash through his brain as the two mighty wobblers swung past him, and turned to see the man toward which she now launched herself.

  It was that movie star, Ty Power.

  “Virginia,” he said, “why, what a nice surprise.”

  “Martooni, honey lamb? Join us. You know Ben.”

  “Don’t mind if I do, Virginia.”

  “How’s the new picture? I hear it’s swell.”

  Business. Ben sighed, knowing he had lost her for the time being. Then he retreated to his own private recreational world as Virginia pretended to be a movie star and Ty concentrated on her giant breasts and Mickey worked the fireplug routine. He thought about how he was going to kill the cowboy and enjoy every second of it.

  41

  Carlo finally reached D.A. late that night from a phone booth in Washington National Airport. It took a pocketful of nickels before the connection was finally established and even then D.A. was only at this mysterious number rarely. But this time he was, though he’d clearly roused himself from a deep sleep.

  “Where the hell have you been?” the old man demanded.

  “I’m in Washington, D.C. I was checking on Earl’s Marine records.”

  “D.C.! Who the hell told you to go to D.C.?”

  “Well sir, it’s where the investigation took me.”

  “Lord. Well, what did you find out?”

  “Sir, I have to ask you. Suppose—” He could hardly get it out. “Suppose there were evidence that suggested Earl killed his own father?”

  “What?”

  He ran his theory by D.A.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Sir, if ever a man needed killing, it was Charles Swagger. Heck, it may even have been self-defense and the reason Earl didn’t turn himself in was ’cause he knew he’d get hung up in Arkansas and miss the trip to Guadalcanal.”

  “You tell nobody about this. You understand? Nobody.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “If I find a chance, I may poke Earl a little bit on the subject. But that’s all. Under no circumstances are we going to indict a man like Earl for something that can’t be proven but by the circumstantial evidence in some forgotten Marine Corps file.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now you get on back here. We may be moving back into Hot Springs very shortly, and we need you.”

  “Yes sir.”

  • • •

  Frenchy was gone. Carlo was still tending to a sick mother and would be back. Two others elected not to return, and after the heavy weapons were confiscated, Bear and Eff left the unit, saying the work was now too dangerous.

  That left six men, plus Earl and D.A., no weapons, no vests.

  “Y’all have to decide,” Earl told them, “if you want to go ahead with this. We’re operating on about two cylinders. You’re young, you got your whole lives ahead of you. I don’t like it any more’n the rest of you, but those are the facts and I ain’t sending any man into action who don’t believe in the job and his leaders. Anybody got any comments?”

  “Hell, Earl,” said Slim, “we started this here job, I sure as hell want to finish it.”

  “I will tell any man here,” said Earl, “that all he has to do is come to m
e in private and say, thanks but no thanks, and I’ll have you out of here in a second, no recriminations, no problems, with a nice letter from Fred C. Becker. We ain’t fighting Japs. We’re fighting gamblers and maybe it ain’t worth it for men with so much yet ahead.”

  “Earl,” said Terry, “if you could go through the war and come home and have a baby on the way, and still go on the raids, that’s good enough for me.”

  “Well, ain’t that peachy. You may feel different if you get clipped in the spine or get an arm shot off.”

  “Earl, we are with you. You lead us, dammit, we’ll follow.”

  “Good,” said Earl. “You goddamn boys are the best. Carlo will be back soon, that’s another gun. Plus, we think we got a real fine idea on where to hit ’em where it hurts the most.”

  He issued orders: he and Mr. D.A. were going back to the Hot Springs area that night to find another place to hide the unit, and they’d send word for the others to join up in two days or so. For the rest, they were just to train under Slim’s guidance, working with the remaining .45s and practicing their pistol skills.

  • • •

  Earl and the old man poked about in the far environs of Hot Springs, looking for a good hide. A trailer camp out by Jones Mills promised something, but was too close to the main road in the long run, and not far from a small casino and bar where surely the presence of a passel of hard-looking young men in the vicinity would be noted.

  “A fine sity-ation where the law’s scared of getting spotted or jumped by the criminals,” fumed D.A. “Ain’t never been in nothing like this before. Like we’re the ones on the goddamned run.”

  They tried a hunting lodge near Lonsdale, to the north, cut over and tried a fishing camp at Fountain Lake, and still couldn’t quite settle on a place. Off toward Mountain Pine was Grumley territory, so no further progress to the west was made; instead, they cut back, drove up the Ouachita toward Buckville; at last they located Pettyview, an agricultural community with almost no street life at all. A quick inquiry by Earl at the real estate office located a chicken farm, abandoned since before the war and up for rent. They drove out and found the site about the best: an old house, an empty barn, six long-deserted chicken houses, piles of bones and shit turned to stone out back, and no neighbor within four miles or so. The barn could easily enough conceal all the cars, lamps didn’t have to be lit at night, and the place was available for $35 a month with an option to buy, month to month. D.A. forked over the $70 in cash, and they were in business again.