Earl bought the ticket, one-way to Tulsa, $8.50, with just about the last of his cash. Supposedly the state would forward a last paycheck, or so he had been promised, but he’d believe it when he saw it.
The train wouldn’t leave for half an hour, so the two men sat down on the bench. Discreetly, the policemen and the detectives set up a watch around them.
“You want an Eskimo Pie, Henderson?”
“Yes sir.”
Earl went back inside, got the boy the ice cream and returned. While the boy ate his ice cream, he lit up a cigarette and stared at the train just ahead of him.
“Mr. Earl,” said the boy. “How come you knew where that culvert was?”
“What?” said Earl.
“How come you knew where that culvert was?”
“Hmmm. I don’t much know. Must have seen a map. What difference does it make?”
“How come you knew how steep the hill behind the Belmont was? How come you knew that street ran downhill not far from Mary Jane’s? How come you knew where the manager’s office at the Horseshoe was? Mr. Earl, was you in this town before you got here with D.A.?”
Earl didn’t say anything. Then he said, “What difference does it make?”
“I have to have this out with you, Mr. Earl. Mr. Parker wouldn’t want me to. But I have to know, Mr. Earl. If you murdered your father, I have to know, and then I have to work out what to do next. I can’t let a murder pass, no matter that the man who committed it saved my life. I’m a police detective and that’s what I’ll be till the day I die.”
“You are a good cop, Henderson. Wish I could say the same.”
Earl lit another cigarette. The boy stared at him intently.
“It makes sense, Mr. Earl. You were going to the Pacific. You thought you were going to die over there. You had to have it out with your daddy, to punish him for beating your brother till he died, then hanging him up in the barn, and beating you till you ran away. But you couldn’t disappear during normal duty, because the Marine Corps would keep a record. But when the division moved out for the West Coast from New River, that would be your time, Mr. Earl. You could disappear and come back and your sergeant pals would cover for you. You could get here and wait for him and recon the place and learn it up one side and down t’other. So you meant to beat him up and you shot him instead. You drive him out to Mount Ida, you dump him, you hop a freight, then another troop train, and you’re on your way to Guadalcanal and who would know? Is that how it was, Mr. Earl?”
“Say, you are good, ain’t you?” said Earl.
“You tell me, Mr. Earl. Mr. D.A. would let it pass as bad old business, but I have to know. I investigated it. I can’t get it out of my mind. It kills me to think you done such a thing, but I can’t look myself in the mirror if I don’t know.”
“Wouldn’t that be some end? Survive the Pacific, survive all this and get the chair because some young cop has the genius to see into everything?”
“Some people need killing. No doubt about it. Your daddy, he’s one of them, from what I can tell. I saw the pictures of that boy. I ain’t even sure it’s wrong, what you did. But I have to know. I just have to.”
The mention of his brother hit Earl like a slap in the face.
“You are right,” he said. “Some people deserve killing. And you got everything pretty right too.”
He took a breath. “I will tell you this once and I will never speak of it again. I will never answer no questions on this and if you want to believe me or not, that is your decision, but you should know by this time I am not in the habit of telling lies. I only told one that I know of, when I told D.A. I had never been here.”
“I believe you, Mr. Earl.”
Earl took a puff, blew a blue cloud of smoke out before him. Passengers hurried this way and that, kids squawked, mamas bawled, dads lit pipes, traveling men read the paper, cops kept watch. It was America as it was supposed to be.
Earl sighed.
“I did decide to have it out with that old bastard. Didn’t seem right for him to go on and on and both his sons dead before him for one damned reason or another. My topkick covered for me. I jumped train in Little Rock, and was here in Hot Springs for four days. I made it back to Pendleton just fine. Top understood. He was a good man. He didn’t make it off the ’Canal, but he was a good man.”
“I have it right?”
“Most of it. You only got one thing wrong.”
The boy just looked at him.
“It’s like everything you say. I learned the town, I learned all the casinos and finally I picked him up, b’lieve it or not, at the Horseshoe. The Belmont was too fancy for him. I knew about the hill behind the Belmont because I can read a goddamned map, that’s all. But I followed my father from dive to dive, from joint to joint. It was a Saturday night and I was going to wait till the crowds died down, then jump him and beat the shit out of him. I wanted him to feel what it tasted like, to get a hard, mean beating. He’d never been beaten in his life, but that night, I would have cracked him a new head, that I swear.”
The train whistled. It was time to go.
“You better get aboard,” said Earl.
“I can’t go till I hear it all.”
“Then I better finish fast. You sure you’re up to this?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, we’ll see. The old man finally laid up at a place down at the end of Central. Just another no-name whorehouse at the cheap end of the row. I moved on down and waited. And waited. And goddamn waited. I seen him park his car, I seen him go in, and then nothing. Finally, ’bout four, I went in myself. There’s something strange goin’ on, but I’m not quite figuring it out. It’s all dark, and the whores are just shocked-like. It’s a run-down whorehouse, all dark, all crappy, all lousy. No johns nowhere, but some whores sitting in a little room, and I got to say, they’s scared. They’s almost in shock. ‘You see a old man come in here?’ I ask. I ask ’em, and they just run away, like they can’t figure out what the hell is going on. Damnedest thing. I go upstairs. One by one I open doors. It ain’t much different than Mary Jane’s, and in a couple of rooms, I find other whores, some of ’em drunked up, some of ’em high on juju-weed, and I’m wondering what the hell is going on.
“Finally I get to a last door. Daddy’s got to be in there. I kick the door in, and get ready for the fight of my life, because he was a big, mean sumbitch and he ain’t going to stand still while his oldest boy goes to whip-ass on him. But he’s just lying there and in the corner, this little gal is crying so hard, the makeup on her face is all run to hell and everything.
“I check Daddy. He ain’t dead, but he’s almost into the barn. ‘Daddy,’ I say. He reaches up and grabs my arm and recognizes my voice. ‘Earl,’ he says. ‘Oh, God bless you, son, you come for your daddy in his hour of need. Son, I am kilt dead, get me out of this house of sin, please, son, I am so sorry for what I done to you and your brother, I was a wicked, wicked man. I done such evil in the valley and after and now the Lord has punished me, but for your sake and your mama’s sake, git me out of this here house of sin.’ ”
“What was the valley?”
“Henderson, I ain’t got no idea. Maybe he meant ‘Valley of the Shadow,’ that’s all I could figure, and I puzzled on it for many a year.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I look, and he’s shot. Shot above the heart. Had to be a little bullet, ’cause there’s a little track of blood, not much. ‘What happened?’ I ask the girl, and she says, ‘Mr. Charles, they busted in on him. They grabbed him and when he drew his little gun, they got it from him and shot him with it, right in the heart. They came to kill him and kill him they did.’ This whore was crying up a storm. Mr. Charles, he was so good and kind, he took care of us, all that stuff. ‘Who done this?’ I asked. ‘They done it,’ said the whore. ‘Gangsters done it. Shot him with his own gun and told me if I squealed they’d kill me and all the gals in the house.’ ‘Git me out of here,’ he screamed. ‘I am dying, Lord
, I am dying, but son, Jesus, please, get me out of the house of sin.’ So that is what I done. I come to beat the man and put the fear of God in him, and I ended up carrying him down two flights of stairs, him crying and telling me what a good son I was and all that, how wonderful I was, how proud he was. Things don’t never work out like you expect, know what I mean? I was strong enough to carry him out. But I didn’t want to go on the street, so the madam, she takes me down into the cellar, and through a big door and that’s how come I got into the underground stream the first time. I carried him to the culvert. ‘Thank you, son,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much.’ I went back, got his car, drove it to the station and carried him to it. Time I got him to it, he’s dead and gone. His last words was, ‘I have been a wicked man and I done evil in the valley and so much evil come from that and I hope Jesus forgives me.’ I didn’t want him found there. I drove him to Mount Ida, dumped him, tore open the liquor locker behind Turner’s. He had his Peacemaker in the car. I jacked off a round so they’d think it was a gunfight, I messed up all the tracks in the dust, and then I lit out cross-country. The next day, I hoboed a train. A week later, I reached Pendleton and four months after that, I hit the ’Canal. That’s the true story. I was hunting him, but so was someone else.”
“Jesus,” said the boy.
The train had begun to pull out.
“Why’d they kill your daddy?” Carlo asked.
“I ain’t never figured it. Who knows what that man had got himself into? He was a bad man. He beat and hurt people, he did terrible things. Someone finally caught up to him, I reckon. Before I did.”
They rose, and went to the train, where a conductor was calling a last “All aboard.”
“One thing maybe figures into this,” said Carlo. “I only noticed this ’cause I was looking in newspaper files and I happened to make a connection. But you know that robbery? The Alcoa payroll job?”
“Yeah?”
“It was October 2, 1940. Your brother died October 4, 1940. There’s something you might think on.”
“Damn,” said Earl.
Carlo got to the train, and hobbled aboard and for just a bit Earl kept with him as if he didn’t want to let his one survivor from the wars escape his protection.
“Earl? Whyn’t you let your father just be found in that whorehouse? Why take the risk? Would have served him right.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Carlo. Them whores. They wasn’t like other whores. None of them.”
The young man’s face, still so innocent, knit in confusion.
“They was all boys,” said Earl, stopping at last, spilling his last and most painful truth.
52
She was an octoroon from the French Quarter, well schooled in the arts, with oval, wise eyes that bespoke the knowledge of ancient skills. So she had the thunderous savagery of the Negro race, but no vulgar Negro features. She looked like a white girl of special, almost delicate beauty, as if from a convent, but her soul was pure African. And she was extraordinary. She took him places he never knew existed. She took him to a high mesa that overlooked everything, and he could see the world from far away but in precise detail, and then she plunged him into a vortex so intense it made that world and its complications vanish.
“My God,” he said.
“You like?”
“I like. I see why Miss Hattie charges so much.”
“I am very good.”
“You are the best.”
“I am so pleased.”
“No. I am the one that’s pleased.”
Owney wasn’t obsessed with the pleasures of the flesh like some, but now and then, in a celebratory mood, he liked to let go. And this one had really gotten him to let go.
“Ralph will take care of you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Maddox.”
“Thank you. Uh, you were—?”
“Opaline.”
“Opaline. Thank you, Opaline.”
Opaline, wrapped in a chartreuse silk peignoir, her white heels and beautiful shoulders flashing, walked out to dress. Owney rolled over, checked the clock. It was nearly 1:00 P.M.
He went into his bathroom and showered, then took his time dressing. He had no appointments today, the fourth day in the first week of the complete consolidation of his realm. Johnny Spanish and the lads were presumably still celebrating in some dive or other, on his tab, and he didn’t begrudge them. All things considered, they had performed exactly as advertised.
Owney decided it would be a tweed day. He chose a Turnbull & Asser shirt in white linen cream and a red tie in the pattern of the 15th Welsh Fusiliers and, finally, a glorious heather suit from Tautz, the leading sporting tailor of the day. He finished with bespoke boots in rich mahogany. It took him some time to get everything just right, and finally, he enjoyed the construction. He looked like an English gentleman off for an afternoon’s sporting. Possibly a partridge hunt, or a spot of trout fishing. He didn’t shoot partridge and he’d never fished in his life, but in all, it was quite nice.
He walked into the living room.
“Ralph, I’ll take my lunch on the patio, I think.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Maddox, sir.”
He went out, checked on his cooing birds, stroked one or two, attended to their feeding, then sat down. Ralph served him iced tea while the meal was being prepared.
“Telephone, Ralph.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Maddox, sir.”
He had one final i to dot. And the wonderful thing was: his worst enemy would dot it for him.
He reached into his wallet, and took out a note he’d received from the chief of detectives of the Hot Springs Police Department. It had a name and an address on it.
Earl Swagger
17 Fifth Street
Camp Chaffee, Arkansas
The cowboy. The cowboy had somehow escaped, but the police had done what no one else had been able to do: they’d captured the cowboy. He was released today, and ordered out of Hot Springs. But that wasn’t enough for Owney. He mistrusted men like the cowboy, for he knew that the cowboy’s anger would grow, and that he would never be safe until the cowboy was eliminated. But now there was peace in Hot Springs, and everybody knew it was time for the killing to stop and stability and prosperity to resume. A deal had been reached.
But he knew someone who hated the cowboy even more than he did.
He picked up the phone.
He dialed long distance, and the operator placed the call for him, and he waited and waited as it rang and finally someone answered.
“Owney Maddox here. Ben? Is that you, Ben?”
“Mr. Maddox, Mr. Siegel isn’t here. He’s in Nevada.”
“Damn. I have some information for him. Information he wants very much.”
“Do you want to leave it with me?”
“Yes. It’s a name and an address for an Arkansas party he’s most interested in. It’s—”
But suddenly Ralph was hovering.
“Yes, Ralph?”
“Sir, there’s some men here.”
“Well, tell them to wait. I’m—”
“Sir, they’s FBI. And Mr. Becker.”
“What?”
At that point, Fred Becker strode onto the patio, with four FBI agents and four uniformed state policemen.
Owney said, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.
He rose.
“What the hell is this all about? Ralph, call my lawyer. Becker, you have no right to—”
“Mr. Maddox, my name is William Springs, special agent of the Little Rock office, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sir, I have a warrant for your arrest.”
“What?”
“Sir, you own a painting by the French artist Georges Braque entitled Houses at L’Estaque.”
“I do. Yes, I bought it from a legitimate—”
“Sir, that painting was stolen in 1928 from the Musée D’Orange in Brussels. You are in receipt of stolen property which has been transported across state lines, which is a felony under federal statut
e 12.23-11. You are hereby remanded into custody and I am serving you with a search warrant for this property, for your office at the Southern Club, and for your warehouse complex in West Hot Springs, which agents and state policemen are currently raiding. Anything you say may be held against you. Sir, I am required to handcuff you. Boys”—he turned to his men—“rip this place up.”
The cuffs were snapped on Owney.
He shot a look at Becker, who looked back with a smirk.
“You’ve been ratted out, Owney,” said Becker. “You have some nasty enemies in Los Angeles.”
“This is a two-bit fuckin’ rap,” said Owney, devolving to Brooklynese, “and you fuckin’ know it, Becker! My lawyer’ll have me outta stir in about two fuckin’ minutes.”
“Yes, perhaps, but we intend to search very carefully and if we find one thing linking you to the Alcoa payroll robbery or any of twelve to fifteen murders in Hot Springs since 1931, when you arrived, I’ll put you away for the rest of your life and you’ll never see daylight again. Say good-bye to the good life, Owney.”
“Take him away, boys,” said the FBI agent.
As they led him away, Owney saw his beautiful apartment being ransacked.
PART FOUR
PURE HEAT
53
Earl drove west, leaving Hot Springs in the rearview mirror. The road ran through forest, though ahead he could see the sun setting. The police convoy followed him to the Garland County line, and stopped there as he passed into Montgomery toward places beyond.
He told himself he was all right. Really, he told himself, he was swell. He was alive. His child would be born shortly. He had survived another war, an unwinnable one, as it turned out, but there was no changing things and there was nothing back there for him but probable death and guaranteed shame and humiliation.
I am not a goddamned avenging angel.
It is not up to me to avenge the dead.
I am not here to punish the evil.