Shot in the Back

by William W. Johnstone

  Billy pulled the trigger and the staccato sound of the firing gun echoed back from the surrounding hills. Smoke streamed from the barrel of the gun, and pieces of metal flew up from the Buick as the bullets punched holes in the car.

  “Sumbitch! That’s really somethin’!” Billy said excitedly when the last bullet had been extended. “Pa, did you see that?”

  “How many bullets did you shoot?” Jesse asked.

  “All of ’em. Fifty,” Billy answered.

  “Look at the car. How many new holes did you put in it?”

  “I put . . .” Billy started, then he looked toward the car. “Damn, looks like I only put about twenty new holes. That’s less than half of the bullets I shot.”

  “I know that you are a good shot, Billy.” Jesse held out the gun he was holding and looked at it. “That means these things aren’t very accurate.”

  “Ha!” Billy said. “They don’t have to be all that accurate. As many bullets as they put out, some of them are bound to hit. Hell, it’s like squirting a water hose!”

  Jesse cocked his weapon, then, like Billy, fired it at the Buick. When the noise and the final echo were gone, he walked over to examine the car.

  Like Billy, he had put less than half the rounds he fired into the target.

  The Morris Still, West Plains, Missouri—September 15, 1922

  “We ain’t goin’ to be sellin’ you no more liquor,” Travis Morris said.

  “Why not?” Billy asked.

  “We don’t need no reason. We make the liquor, so I reckon we can do with it whatever we want. And that means we can sell to who we want, or not sell to whoever we don’t want.”

  “You’ve got to sell your whiskey to somebody. Who are you selling it to?”

  “We’re selling it to Costaconti, if you have to know,” Troy said.

  “Costaconti? Come on, I happen to know that he pays ten cents less a gallon than we do.”

  “Money don’t matter none if you’re dead,” Travis said.

  “You’ve moved your still two or three times to hide it from the law. Why don’t you hide it from Costaconti?”

  “Costaconti is smarter’n the law,” Troy said. “It don’t matter where we move it, he’ll find it. You ain’t gettin’ no whiskey from us.”

  As they drove away from the Morris still, Billy stopped the car just on the other side of the gate and started to get out.

  “Leave the damn thing open,” Jesse said.

  Billy laughed. “Yeah, serves them right.”

  “They were pretty determined,” Jesse told Heavy Hunt later that same day.

  “I’ve got to have product,” Heavy said. “You see the business I’ve got here. There needs to be some place for my people to go. Look over there at Leroy and Sally Mae. Can you see either one of them goin’ to a white speakeasy?”

  Leroy and Sally Mae were a young black couple who were so completely involved with each other they were not only unaware they were the subject of conversation, they were hardly aware of anyone else in the place.

  “Nice young couple like that,” Heavy said. “They deserve a place they can come to where they can be sure they ain’t goin’ to be poisoned by bad hooch.”

  “I’ll look around and see if I can find someone Costaconti hasn’t gotten to yet,” Jesse answered.

  “Find me somebody, Mr. Frank. If you can give me a steady supply, I’ll give you five dollars for every gallon you bring in. It ain’t just the money, you understand. I’m providin’ a service here.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Jesse promised.

  Jesse shook hands with Heavy, then with a wave to Nippy Jones, who was getting his band ready to play, he and Billy stepped out the back door.

  Eldridge, Missouri

  Clyde and Arnold Butrum didn’t have to take as elaborate measures to hide their still as the Morris twins did. That’s because the nearest “town” wasn’t a town at all. Eldridge wasn’t incorporated; it had no mayor, no city government, and no police department. It consisted solely of a gas station, a grocery store, a feed store, and about twenty houses, which were built there because it was the only spot flat enough in this part of the Ozark Mountain range where one could actually build a house.

  The still was three miles up a single lane so narrow that two cars couldn’t meet on the road. Though, it could barely be called a road.

  “Damn, looks like a traffic jam,” Billy said when they arrived.

  Billy’s comment referred to a Chevrolet that was sitting next to an old, dilapidated truck.

  “Billy, I don’t like the looks of this,” Jesse said. “When you get out of the car, have your gun in your hand.”

  Billy knew better than to question Jesse, so as he stepped out from the driver’s side of the car, he was holding his pistol down by his side.

  There were four men standing near the still. Two of the men were wearing coveralls, and the other two men were wearing suits. It was clear to Jesse that the men in coveralls were the Butrum boys, and the men in suits were Constaconti’s thugs. All four had heard the car coming and were now looking back toward Jesse and Billy.

  “Pa, they’re Costaconti men,” Billy said under his breath.

  “Yes,” Jesse said quietly. Then, he called out to the others, “Well, this looks like a busy place.”

  Suddenly, but not unexpectedly, the Costaconti men raised their hands and began firing. They were shooting Colt M1911 .45 automatic pistols, whereas Jesse and Billy were armed with revolvers, choosing them over the submachine guns because they couldn’t use them without putting the Butrum brothers into danger.

  Jesse felt the shock wave of one of the bullets as it snapped by his ear. The automatic cocked itself after each shot, so the two Costaconti men were able to get off three shots each. All six shots missed. Jesse and Billy got off only three shots between them, but all three shots found their mark and the two Costaconti men went down.

  Jesse and Billy approached, still holding the pistols in their hands. Clyde and Arnold put their hands up.

  “Put your hands down, boys,” Jesse said. “We aren’t the law, and we aren’t your enemies.”

  With expressions of relief on their faces, the two brothers lowered their arms.

  “Who were those two sons of bitches?” Arnold Butrum asked, pointing to the two bodies. “They said they was goin’ to kill us if we sold our liquor to anyone but them. And they was only goin’ to give us thirty cents a gallon.”

  “They were Costaconti’s men,” Jesse said.

  “Costaconti? I’ve heard of him. He’s some big shot in Kansas City ain’t he? Some sort of mob guy?” Arnold asked.

  “Yes. He controls most of the speakeasies in town. Not all of them, but most of them.”

  “And he only wants to pay thirty cents a gallon? By the time we pay for ever’thing, gettin’ only thirty cents a gallon means we won’t hardly make no money at all,” Clyde complained.

  “Actually these men weren’t only cheating you, they were cheating their boss. He’s paying forty cents a gallon, not thirty.”

  “Forty cents? That’s no good, either.”

  “What about sixty cents a gallon?”

  “Sixty cents? You’ll pay sixty cents?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t you say that this man Costaconti was running things in Kansas City?” Arnold asked.

  “I said most things, not everything.”

  “Will you be hauling the hooch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who for?”

  “A man named Heavy Hunt.” Jesse didn’t tell the Butrums that Hunt was a black man.

  The two brothers walked off some distance and discussed it among themselves, then they came back.

  “We want to come into Kansas City and take a look at his operation,” Clyde said.

  “Why?”

  “According to these two men, if we didn’t sell to them, they was going to kill us. I expect Costaconti may have the same idea. We just want to make cer
tain that whoever you’re selling to is stout enough to stay in business.”

  “All right,” Jesse said. “I’ll make the arrangements.” He nodded toward the two men he and Billy had killed. “Can you take care of them?”

  “Yeah,” Arnold said. “About half a mile on up the road here is a thousand-foot drop-off into a real deep ravine. We can put ’em in their car and push it off, and there won’t nobody discover ’em for a hunnert years or more.”

  Jesse gave each of the men a one-hundred-dollar bill. “This is for your trouble.”

  Clyde smiled. “This’ll more’n pay for our trip to Kansas City.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The cabin on the Brazos—June 2, 1942

  “Did the Butrum boys show up in Kansas City?” Faust asked.

  “Yes, they showed up.”

  “What did they think when they learned that Heavy Hunt was a black man and it was his speakeasy they would be providing whiskey for?”

  “They were a little surprised, but I think they would have been more than willing to work with him.”

  “Would have been willing to work with him? You mean they didn’t work with him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Why didn’t they work with him?”

  “It was my fault,” Jesse said. “I had spent my entire life being aware of everything around me, no matter how small. I could tell if a rock was in the wrong place, if a tree limb was bent in the wrong direction, if the birds were acting different. I should have seen it.”

  Jesse was quiet for a moment.

  “I did see it. I saw it, and that’s what has bothered me all these years. I saw it, but I just didn’t pay attention to it.”

  “What did you see, Jesse?”

  “I saw a green Plymouth parked where a car shouldn’t have been parked.”

  Kansas City—September 29, 1922

  Jesse, Billy, Heavy Hunt, and two of Heavy Hunt’s men were waiting at Union Station to pick up Clyde and Arnold Butrum when they arrived on the eleven o’clock train. They met the two brothers on the platform.

  “Clyde, Arnold,” Jesse said. “This is Heavy Hunt, and these are two of his men.”

  The Butrum brothers looked at Heavy and the two men with him.

  “I came down here myself because I wanted you to see who you will be working with,” Heavy said. “I want to know if my color bothers you. Because if it does, there ain’t no need in goin’ any further because I can find someone else to give my money to.”

  “What color is your money?” Clyde asked.

  It took Heavy a moment to catch what Clyde was saying, then a broad, white-toothed smile spread across his round, black face. “It’s green,” he said.

  “That’s the only color I’m concerned with.”

  “Tell me, gentlemen, do you like barbeque ribs?” Heavy asked. “Or is that just something my people like?”

  “I don’t know a Missourian, black or white, who doesn’t like barbeque ribs,” Clyde said.

  “Then why don’t we discuss business over a big mess of ribs, potato salad, baked beans, and coleslaw?”

  “Mr. Alexander, I already like doing business with this man,” Arnold said as they started toward the two cars, Jesse and Billy’s Packard and, parked just behind the Packard, Heavy Hunt’s Cadillac.

  A green Plymouth was parked a few feet away on the right side of Heavy’s car. Jesse had seen it when it arrived a few minutes earlier, but he had taken no particular notice of it. Now, though, as the seven men started to get into the two cars, four men suddenly ran from behind the Plymouth. All four were carrying Thompson submachine guns.

  “Pa, look out!” Billy shouted, and stepping between Jesse and the armed men, he shoved Jesse down.

  “Let ’em have it!” one of the armed men shouted.

  When the four men opened fire, they were no more than fifteen feet away and diagonally to the right of the Packard. Clyde and Arnold Butrum were killed instantly and fell to the ground. The two men who were with Heavy Hunt were armed, but Heavy was not. They managed to get their pistols out, but they were badly outgunned and the chattering machine guns continued to fire. Heavy Hunt and the men with him went down as the Cadillac was peppered with holes.

  Billy opened the front door of the Packard and reached under the seat, trying to get his own machine gun, but Jesse saw him jerk back, then spin around, with half a dozen bullets in his body. One of the bullets was a fatal head wound.

  Billy fell on top of Jesse, which saved Jesse’s life, not only because Billy’s body absorbed more bullets, but also because his blood covered Jesse.

  “They’re all dead! Let’s get out of here!” one of the shooters shouted, hurrying back to the Plymouth. They sped away.

  There had been several witnesses to the shooting, and vaguely, Jesse was aware that some of the women had been screaming.

  Now, it was deathly quiet.

  The cabin on the Brazos—June 3, 1942

  Faust asked, “Do you feel like talking this morning?”

  “Yeah,” Jesse said. “But there’s not much more to tell. After Billy . . . well, I quit the whiskey-running business. In fact, I left the outlaw trail altogether. That is, after I took care of one more thing.”

  “One more thing?”

  “Actually, you might say five more things,” Jesse said. “But since I took care of all five things at the same time, you might say it was just one more thing.”

  Kansas City—October 8, 1922

  “The bastard actually wants my band to play in his joints,” Nippy said. “He killed my best friend, but I’m s’posed to just forget about that because his customers ‘like colored music’ when they’re drinkin’.”

  Jesse had come to talk to Nippy Jones, ostensibly to offer his regrets for Heavy being killed. In truth, it was to find out what he could about Rico Costaconti. Costaconti wasn’t one of the men who killed Billy, but Jesse knew that the men who had done the job were working for him.

  “You see, what happened was, Costaconti sent two of his goons out to bring some sweat on the Butrum brothers, but you showed up while they be there, ’n you off ’em. Costaconti blamed the Butrums for that, so he sent his button men to the depot when the brothers come to town. He figures that if he kills them for crossing him, that’ll teach a lesson to anyone else that might decide not to do business with him.”

  “So you are saying his target was the Butrum brothers, and not Heavy?”

  “Yeah. Heavy, Julius, Lorenzo, you and your boy, you just happen to be there when it all goes down.”

  “Are you going to meet with him this Sunday?”

  “I got to make a livin’,” Nippy said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I understand. A man has to do what he has to do. Is he coming here to meet with you?”

  “No, he wants me to come to his warehouse but not until after two o’clock. You know why he wants to wait until after two o’clock, don’t you?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because Sunday is the day he meets with his button men. That’s the day he tells them who to go put some hurt on, you know what I mean?”

  “The same men who killed Billy, Heavy, Clyde, and Arnold?”

  “Yeah, and Julius and Lorenzo.”

  Costaconti didn’t allow any of his speakeasies to be open on Sunday. It wasn’t because of any religious obligation that his speakeasies were closed; it was because he needed one day when he could gather his key people to conduct important business.

  On this day, Costaconti was having a meeting in the office at the back of a warehouse that advertised itself as Sicilian Olive Imports. Sicilian Olive Imports was a legitimate business, owned by Rico Costaconti and used by him as a front for his much more lucrative liquor business.

  The warehouse district was quiet when Jesse drove by a building that had a large sign out front identifying it as Sicilian Olive Imports. In addition to four trucks, which had the same sign painted on the doors as was on the warehouse, there
were two cars. One was a black Cadillac, and one was a green Plymouth. The green Plymouth was the same one that had been at the depot on the day of the shooting.

  Jesse parked his car down the street at another warehouse, tucked in between two trucks so as not to be immediately noticeable. Then, with a pistol in each hand, he walked down to Sicilian Olive Imports.

  So confident was Costaconti in his invincibility that the front door was unlocked.

  Jesse walked through the shadows of the warehouse area, dimly illuminated only by the dust mote–filled bars of sunlight that came through the narrow, dirty windows at the top of the walls.

  At the back of the warehouse a door was open, and light splashed out onto the floor. He could hear laughter and talking coming from inside.

  “That black son of a bitch was so fat I thought he’d split wide open when I shot him, but the bullets just poked holes in all that fat.”

  The comment was met with laughter.

  “You boys did a good job,” a weaselly looking man at the head of the table said smugly. “Killin’ those hillbilly bastards who wouldn’t do business with us will bring all the other bootleggers in line. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble.”

  Jesse instinctively knew this was Constaconti.

  “Oh, you’ve got trouble all right,” Jesse said, stepping in through the door.

  “Who the hell are—” Costaconti shouted, though he didn’t have the opportunity to finish his question.

  Jesse fired both guns, and it was all over within a matter of seconds. Costaconti and his four button men, the same ones who had killed Billy and the others, lay dead before him.

  Jesse turned and walked away.

  Granbury—1942

  “I’m sorry,” Faust said, leaning forward in his chair. “I didn’t realize that Billy had passed. I’m sorry for your loss, Jesse.”

  Jesse wiped his eyes, even though they looked dry to Faust. “Well, so am I, Faust, so am I. More sorry for that than I ever was for anything in my whole life. And I had a lot to be sorry for. Ain’t easy outliving your own children,” he said.