Hot Springs

Chapter 37

Both men were grouchy, dirty and cranky. Road dust clung to them in a gritty film. A shower would be so nice, a sleep. This was their third trip to Hot Springs from Texas in as many days, with the bitterness of a bad scene with Becker and the sad scene with Frenchy Short yesterday. And today was a high killer. Above, the sun beat down, a big hole in the sky, turning the sky leaden and the leaves heavy and lisdess. No wind puffed, no mercy, as if they'd brought some godforsaken Texas weather with them.

Dressed in farmer's overalls with beaten-up fedoras pulled low over their eyes and.45s tucked well out of sight, they sat on the front porch of the Public Bathhouse, that is, the pauper's bathhouse, at least in the shade. Other poor people―genuine poor people―lounged about them, too sick to look anything other than sick, come co Hot Springs for the waters of life, finding only the waters of― well, of water. The Public was the least imposing of the structures on Bathhouse Row, but it looked across the wide boulevard of Central Avenue at the Ohio Club.

It was a thin, two-story building, wedged between two others, the Plaza Building and the Thompson Building; its big feature was a kind of mock-Moorish gilded dome, completely fraudulent, which crowned the upper story, and a dormer of windows bulging out over the first-floor windows. It was in the Ohio that he and the old man had observed Mickey Rooney and his big-busted wife number two throwing away thousands of bucks in the upstairs craps game.

"That's going to be a hard place to bust," said D. A.

"I'd hate to do it at night when it's all jammed up," said Earl. "You got all the traffic and pedestrians, you got all the gamblers upstairs, you got Grumley riffraff with machine guns, you got Hot Springs coppers real close by. It could make Mary Jane's look like just the warm-up."

"Night's out. I don't think that bastard Becker would go for another night raid, especially downtown. Too many folks about."

"I'm thinking about five, before the avenue and the joint fill up. We rim some kind of cover operation. Maybe we could get our hands on a fire truck or something. Go steaming in with lights flashing and sirens wailing, be in on them before they figure it out and once we get it, we have the place nailed. Nobody dies. We close down that place, we put the word out among the Negroes to watch real careful for strange white people in their neighborhoods."

The two men sat in silence for a while. Then the old man said, "Let's go get us a Coca-Cola. My whisde could use a bit of wetting."

"Mine too," said Earl.

They walked south along Central, came finally, after oyster bars and whorehouses baking emptily in the noonday sim, the girls still snoozing off a night's worth of mattress-backing, to a Greek place. They went in, sat at the fountain, and got two glasses of Coca-Cola filled with slivers of ice.

"It ain't the how of the raid," said D. A. "It's figuring out the why of it. We have to justify it. Short was right on that one."

"Maybe we lay up outside, pick up a runner, and sweat him. When we break him, we hit the place."

"But we got it all set up first? Don't like that. Also, Owney'd track down the runner and kill him and maybe his family as a lesson. I don't like that."

"No, I don't neither. Maybe we find someone who works in the joint who'd testify."

"Who'd that be? He'd become the number one bull's-eye in the town. Sooner or later, we move along. Sooner or later, he'd get it. Some Grumley'd clip him for old timey sake."

"Yeah, that's right. Maybe a Grumley. Find a Grumley to talk. Turn on his kin for a new start."

"But we ain't got no budget to finance a new start. We can't protect 'em. There's nothing we can offer that'll make a Grumley turn. Finally, them Grumleys hate us. We put eleven of 'em in the ground, remember? They might still come looking. It don't matter that Pap up and died hisself off. Flem don't have Pap's grit, but he's just as much a snake."

"We got to find out where they're weakest and attack 'em there."

"Give it to Owney, he knows his business. Ain't no 'weakest.'"

"He is a smart bastard. He's been running things a long time. Goddamn, I hate being this goddamn close and not getting it done."

"We'll get it done, Earl. One way, the other, sooner, later. We'll get it done. That I swear."

They drove back, the long, grueling three-hour pull through southern Arkansas down U. S. 70, through Arkadelphia and Prescott and Hope, making Texarkana by 4:00 and the Red River Army Depot by 5:00.

The boys were sitting outside the barracks, looking disconsolate. There was an Arkansas Highway Patrol truck and three Texas Highway Patrol cars. A group of Highway Patrolmen seemed to be running some kind of operation.

Earl and D. A. walked up.

"What the hell is going on?" Earl said.

"They come to git our guns," said Slim. "Got a piece of paper signed by the Arkansas governor, the Texas governor and a federal judge. Becker signed off on it too."

"Shit," said D. A., pushing past them. "What's all this about? Who's in charge here?"

"You'd be Parker?" said a tall Arkansas Highway Patrol officer. "Parker, I'm Colonel Jenks, commandant of the Arkansas Highway Patrol. Sorry about this, but at ten this morning, I got a call from the governor's office. I went on over there and he'd evidently just chewed the hell out of poor Fred Becker and got him to issue an order. By eleven the governor's staff had taken it before a judge, and by noon they's on the phone, working out a deal with these here Texas boys. They want us to take charge of your heavy weapons and your vests. Y'all can still carry.45s, but―"

"Sir," Earl said to the commandant, "we try and do this work without a base of fire and we will end up in a pickle for sure. That's something I learned in the war, the hard way."

"I ain't saying what you done is bad. Nobody's had the sand to go face-on with them Hot Springs Grumleys and their out-of-town mobsters till you came along. But the governor's gitting heat from all sorts of folks, and that's how governors work. We serve at his pleasure, so we do what he says. That's the way it be."

"Earl," one of the boys called, "it don't seem right. How can we do this work if we don't go in well-heeled?"

"Yeah," another said, "if we rim into more Grumley bad boys with big ol' machine guns, what're we supposed to do?"

"You got the best pistol skills in the state," said Earl. "You will prevail. That I know."

But it disturbed him nonetheless.

"Can't we make some disposition so that if we get a big raid and it looks scary we can get our firepower back?" asked D. A.

"Sir," said Jenks, "you'll have to work that out with the governor. I can't settle it at this level. Your Mr. Becker will be the one to make that case."

"Only case he makes is to git his picture in the paper."

"I have to get these guns up to Little Rock tonight, and locked in the armory at State Police headquarters. As I say, it ain't my decision. I just do what I'm ordered to do. That's the way it be."

Now the guns came out: the Thompsons, looking oddly incomplete without magazines, three apiece under the arms of State Troopers. Then the Brownings, so heavy that a man could carry but one. Earl recognized, by a raw cut in the fore grip wood where he'd banged it against the doorjamb, the gun he'd carried as he walked down the hall, keeping up a hail of fire, Frenchy behind him, feeding him the magazines.

"Hate to lose that goddamn BAR," said D. A. "That's what keeps 'em honest."

"It ain't fair," screamed a boy, who turned out surprisingly to be Slim, the oldest and the most salty. "They can't be asking us to continue on these raids without no fire support. That ain't right."

"It ain't right," said D. A. "I'll be talking hard with Becker. We'll get this worked out."

"But we―"

"It's not―"

"We depend on―" came a tumble of voices.

"Shut it off!" Earl bellowed, silencing his own men and shocking the Highway Patrol officers. "Mr. D. A. said he'd work on it. Now just back off and show these boys you're trained professionals who obey your officer." That was his command voice, perfected over hard years on parade grounds and harder years on islands, and it silenced everyone.

"Thanks, son," said Colonel Jenks. "Can see you're a man who knows his stuff. Bet I know which one you'd be."

"Maybe you do, Colonel," said Earl.

"Heard nothing but good things about the ramrod down here. They say he's a heller."

"I do a job if it comes to that."

"Good man," the colonel said, as if marking him for future reference.

A sergeant came to D. A.

"Sir, you'll have to sign the manifest. And what about the carbine?"

D. A. scratched his chicken-track signature on the paper and said, "What carbine?"

"Well sir, in the original manifest you had six Thompsons, three BARs, six Winchester pumps and six M-l carbines. But you only got five carbines."

"Hmmm?" said D. A. He looked over at Earl. This was a mystery, as the carbines had never been deployed, they'd simply stayed locked up down here in Texas. Earl didn't like the carbine, because its cartridge was so light.

"We never used the carbine," said Earl.

"Well sir, it says you had six, but we only rounded up five."

"I don't have no idea. Any of you men recall losing a carbine?"

"Sir, we ain't touched the carbine since training."

"The carbines was never up in Hot Springs."

"Colonel Jenks, what do you want to do here, sir?" asked the sergeant.

Jenks contemplated the issue for at least a tenth of a second. Then he declared, "Call it a combat loss, write it off, and forget all about it. We don't have to make no big case out of it. It ain't even a machine gun. Now let's get out of here and let these men git going on their training."

Chapter 38

It took a day to set up through the auspices of a friend of his who was an FBI agent in Tulsa and knew who to call. Carlo ended up paying for it himself, because he knew there was no budget and that D. A. would never approve. But he had to know.

He had never flown before. The plane was a C-47, though now, as a civilian craft, it had reverted to its prewar identity as a DC-3. It left Tulsa's airfield at 7:30 A. M. and flew for seven hours to Pittsburgh. The seats were cramped, the windows small, the stewardess overworked. He almost threw up twice. The coffee was cold, the little sandwich stale. His knees hurt, his legs cramped. In Pittsburgh, the plane refueled, exchanged some passengers for others, and finally left an hour later. It arrived, ultimately, at National Airport just outside Washington, D. C., at around 4:00 in the afternoon.

He took a cab to the Headquarters of the United States Marine Corps, at Arlington Annex, in Arlington, Virginia. It was a set of wooden buildings, shabby for so grand an institutional identity, behind barbed wire on a hill overlooking the capital. In the distance, a white rim of buildings and monuments could be seen, grandly suggesting the greatness of the country it symbolized, but out here, across the river, the warriors of that country made do with less. The only concession to ceremony was the presence of ramrod-stiff Marines in dress blues outside, keepers of a temple, but inside, he found no temple at all. It was merely a busy workplace of men in khaki humming with purpose. It took a bit, but finally someone directed him to the Personnel Records Branch of G1 Division, HQ USMC. A sergeant greeted him in the foyer, and he identified himself and was led in, past offices and work bays, to an inner sanctum; that is, what appeared to be miles and miles of shelves stacked with the manila envelopes that represented each of the men who'd worn the Globe and Anchor in this century. The sergeant took Carlo to a reading room, windowless and bright, where what he had requested had been put out for him.

"What time do you close?" he asked.

"Officer Henderson, we don't close. We're the Marine Corps. Take your time. We run a twenty-four-hour department here."

So Carlo, exhausted and bewildered, at last sat down alone with the ultimate clue in his quest.

Finally, shaking slightly―the effect of the hard day's travel, or his own apprehension?―he opened the battered file that contained the service record book of SWAGGER, EARL L., FIRST SGT., USMC (RET.).

With the service record book, he was able to watch the man progress from lowest grade to highest, across three continents, an ocean and the mightiest war ever fought. The book was a compendium of places lost or destroyed or forgotten about, of judgments tempered and faded but always accurate, and finally of obscure institutional relics and random facts, including fingerprints taken on enlistment, civilian occupation and education, prior service, promotions and reductions―including examinations and recommendations for advancement, pay matters including travel allowances; military justice including time lost through misconduct; inventories of residual clothing and equipment; enlistment and reenlistment data with supporting medical records; foreign and sea service; commanders' ratings on conduct and efficiency; marksmanship scores; specialist qualifications; and awards and decorations. It was in bad penmanship, in a language whose intricacies and nuances he didn't understand. But he did start noticing things: he noticed right away, for example, a discrepancy in birth dates. Earl joined the Corps in Fort Smith, in 1930, claiming to be seventeen, but Carlo now knew he was bom in 1915; he was two years underage. That spoke of a boy in a hurry to get away from what Carlo knew was the hell of his life.

The book followed the boy from his first days as a recruit at the brutal Parris Island of 1930. Many of the scores were meaningless to Carlo, for they referred to tests he didn't understand in a numerical progression he also didn't understand. But he understood simple marksmanship, and noted that the boy shot expert in all weapons. PVT. SWAGGER, E. L. was then sent to Sea School, at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia, and then deployed as a rifleman to the Fifth Marines in Nicaragua, working with the Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional in something called M Company, with an enthusiastic unofficial endorsement from the officer in charge, one Captain Lewis B. Puller. "PFC Swagger shows natural talent for combat operations and is particularly proficient in running a fire team of four men in jungle patrol." Then it was two years on the old Arizona as a rifleman, later squad leader of the Marine Detachment aboard that craft whose wreckage now still oozed oil in Pearl Harbor. But rank was slow to come by in the tiny prewar Corps, even if his recommendations were uniformly excellent and each commanding officer would write, in what appeared to be an unusual number of unofficial letters of recommendation, something like, "This Marine shows leadership material and should be encouraged to apply for Officer Candidate School or even an appointment to Annapolis and a regular commission." But Earl never went; he just sea-bagged on, finally promoted to corporal and assigned as a squad leader, then an acting platoon sergeant, with the Fourth Marines in China, from June of 1935 until June of 1939. He was in the Marine Detachment at Balboa in the Panama Canal Zone as a straight-up three-striper when the war broke out.

Carlo read it quickly, almost afraid of what he might find. But the record was uncontaminated with sin. Earl was assigned as a platoon sergeant in Company B, Third Battalion, Second Marines, where he served from February of 1942 until August of 1944. In September of 1942, he landed on Guadalcanal. That was a long and hard campaign. It won him his first Silver Star, and a recommendation for a commission (turned down). After a period of reorganization and retraining in Wellington, New Zealand, he went into it again―Tarawa. There, he was a platoon sergeant, and after the horrible fuckup at Red Beach One, where the Higgins Boats foundered on the offshore reef and he had to wade ashore with his men, taking heavy fire every step of the way, he got his most severe wound, a chest shot from a Japanese sniper on D plus two. That was followed by a four-month recuperation. Nineteen forty-four was the year of Saipan andTinian, and two more attempts to commission him. His refusal to become an officer was beginning to irritate some, as the battalion executive officer wrote tardy: "Platoon Sergeant Swagger again shows exemplary leadership skills, but his continual refusal to accept the higher responsibility of a field commission is troublesome; he's clearly capable of such responsibility, being not merely aggressive in battle but shrewd in organizational details; but he seems to reject the commission on some vague psychological ground, because his father was a (decorated) officer in the AEF in World War I, and he doesn't want to be of the same 'ilk' as his father. He does not explain this very coherently, but the feeling is clearly deep-seated and passionately held. When the war is over, it is highly recommended that this valuable Marine be offered some kind of counseling to overcome his resentment of the officer class. Meanwhile, he performs his duties with outstanding diligence." In November of 1943, he was promoted to gunnery sergeant and reassigned to Company A, Third Battalion, Second Marines, Second Marine Division, during retraining and reorganization at Camp Tarawa, Hawaii. He served with A/3/2 in the Saipan and theTinian campaigns.

In September of 1944, he was reassigned to 28th Marines in the new Fifth Marine Division, whose cadre comprised veteran NCOs from earlier Pacific battles. He was also promoted to first sergeant of Company A, First Battalion, 28th Marines. February of 1945 was Iwo Jima. The medal citation was there and Carlo imagined Earl charging up that hill in a fog of sulfur and volcanic grit and gunsmoke, destroying those machine-gun positions, finally entering that concrete bunker for a final up-close battle with the Japs. He killed forty-odd men in a minute and a half, and saved the lives of 130 Marines caught in the bunker cross fire. Amazing. The big one. But he was wounded seven times in that engagement. A severe bout of malaria, accelerated by combat fatigue, didn't help. He was sent to a training command in San Diego in June of 1945, after release from the hospital.

In October of 1945, he was declared unfit for further duty because of his wounds and a disability in his left wrist, which still bore several pieces of shrapnel. He was retired medically with a small pension, in addition to receiving his 52–20 severance package (twenty bucks a week for a year) from the government. In February of 1946 the paperwork on his Medal of Honor citation finally was approved, and in late July of 1946 he was given the award in a small ceremony at the White House.

"Excuse me," he yelled out to the sergeant, "could you explain something to me."

"Yes sir." The young man ducked in.

"When I was in the Air Corps, we called it 'AWOL,' absent without leave. Is there a Marine equivalent?"

uYes sir. We call it UA, meaning unauthorized absence"

"Now, this particular man, would a record of his UAs be kept here? I don't think I saw any."

"Yes it would. Theoretically. The company first sergeant maintains the service record book. So how diligent the first sarge was, that would determine how diligently the records are kept. Do you have a date or anything?"

"Yes. Third week in January, 1942."

The young man leaned over the service book and began to rifle through the pages.

"Looking here, I can say definitely he was with the Second Marines at New River, North Carolina, before the Second left for the West Coast, departed for the Pacific in July from San Diego and landed on Guadalcanal in September. He was assigned to a platoon all that time. There's no Captain's Masts, no UAs, no disciplinary action of any sort. He was there every day."

"What about, you know, temporary duty? TDY we called it."

"In the Naval Services, it's TAD. No, it would be unusual for a junior sergeant to go TAD at that point in his career, and this one certainly didn't. He was too busy getting ready to kill Japs."

"Leave, none of that?"

"No, sir. Not during the third week of 1942. Wasn't much leave at all given in the Marine Corps in 1942. He was on duty, on station, doing his job."

Carlo felt as if an immense burden had been lifted from him. Involuntarily, his mouth curled upward into a smile, bright and wholesome. He felt himself blushing.

"Well, listen, you've been a big help. I'm very appreciative."

"Yes sir."

He couldn't stop smiling. Suddenly the world seemed beautiful. His future was mapped out: he'd return tomorrow, the team would finish up its raiding, they'd all go back to their departments, the experience would mark him as someone special, and his career would just go on and on. Not out of ambition was he pleased, but out of something else: reverence. He saw what he was doing as divinely inspired. He was doing God's Will. It would be the Just Man who enforced both the Law and the Word, living to standards set by the Book and in the flesh by heroes like Earl Swagger; in their honor, he would live a life of exemplary conduct and―

"Of course," said the sergeant, "you might still want to check with the Historical Section and see what was going on in the Second Marines that week."

After a night in a motel comprising three hours of desperately dead sleep and three hours of fitful turning, Carlo took the cab back to the Arlington Annex to find the G3 (Operations) Division of HQ USMC. Operations was in another of the shambling wooden buildings that were the center of the Marine empire. The building showed hard use: it needed paint and air-conditioning and a general sprucing up; or it needed tearing down.

He walked in, introduced himself and showed his badge, and was accorded a professional respect he somehow felt he had yet to earn. The FBI connection worked here too, and he went without trouble to the second floor, to the Historical Section. In here, a narrative of the Second World War was being officially compiled by a number of civilians and Marine retirees. He was eventually turned over to a man in civilian clothes who was missing an arm, referred to by everyone as Captain Stanton.

"What I need," he explained, "is the regimental record―I guess it would be a logbook or something―of the Second Marines, during the third week of January in 1942. Specifically, Company B, Third Battalion."

"They were mostly still stateside then," said Captain Stanton. "Probably still at New River. Sometime in there they would have moved to the West Coast. They didn't deploy until July for the 'Canal.

"I understand that, sir. I just have to see what was going on in the regiment that particular week. That company, that battalion if possible."

"Okay," said the captain. He retreated to the stacks, while Carlo waited, his suit rumpled, feeling sweaty and somehow uncomfortable. The office smelled of cigarette smoke and dead heroes. In stalls men consulted volumes, maps, made phone calls and took notes. Light streamed through the sunny windows, illuminating clouds of smoke and dust; the atmosphere seemed alive with particles and gases. Was this all that was left of all those young men who'd gone ashore on the beachheads of the Pacific, so many of them dying virgins, shot down in warm water or in cloying sand, never having felt the caress of a woman or the joy of watching a son take a first step? Now, they were here: in a large government-green office, full of old journals and files in cabinets and maps, wheVe their sacrifice and heroism was reduced to words to be published in dusty volumes that nobody would ever read.

Wake-Island

Manila

Guadalcanal

Betio

Saipan

Gilberts

Marianas-Tarawalwo

Okinawa

It all came to this, the lighting of cigarettes, the rumpling of paper, the tapping of the typewriters, the scratching, so dry, of pen on paper. There should be a Marine in dress blues, playing taps endlessly to salute the boys of the broken palms and blazing sunsets and long gray ships and jungles and coral reefs and volcanic ash. This room housed it all, and somehow there should be more, but this is all there was. It was another reliquary of the bones of martyrs, some of them so young they didn't know what the word martyr meant.

"Henderson? You okay?"

He looked up to see Captain Stanton, holding a thick volume under his one good hand.

"Yeah, sorry."

"You were sort of talking to yourself."

"I'm sorry. They deserve so much more than this room."

"Yes, they do. That's why we have to get it all written down, so that it'll be recorded forever. Anyhow, here's the logbook of the Second Marines, January through April, 1942."

Together, they paged through it, finding old orders, directives from command and staff meetings, training schedules, disciplinary records, and a narrative of day-by-day operations. It was the collective diary of thousands of men preparing for a desperate, endless war at the end of the world.

"15 Jan 41: 2nd Marines receives deployment orders from HQ-USMC for Camp Pendleton, California, prior to shipment overseas in Pacific Battle Zone. Operations ordered to commence planning of the redeployment."

Then, for the week of January 17 through January 24, "Elements of 2nd Marines in transit to West Coast"; it continued until early February.

"They were on the move for three weeks?" asked Carlo.

"Son, a Marine regiment is part of a division, which is a formidable amount of men. We're talking about a headquarters element, three infantry regiments of about 3,100 men each, an artillery regiment, an engineer regiment, a tank battalion, a special weapons battalion, a service battalion, a medical battalion and an amphibious tractor battalion. They were understrength, of course, but a division carried a paper strength of 19,514 men. So we're calking about a unit that's folded into a larger unit of at least twelve to thirteen thousand men. Plus all the vehicles and equipment, including the guns. It all has to work together. It's no small thing."

Carlo sat there. A worm began to gnaw at his brain. He rubbed his hand against his eye but it would not go away.

"I'm trying to envision this."

"Envision chaos. Barely organized, confusing, messed up, full of mistakes. You're moving a large body of men and equipment. It's 1942, the war has just begun. Everybody's in a panic, nobody knows what's going to happen next. You're working on a railroad system that's just been converted to troop-carrying duties. It demands coordinating with the railways, assembling trains, picking routes, routing the trains in and around other military traffic and civilian traffic, the coming of blackouts, the beginning of wartime regulation and austerity. The logistics are a nightmare. It's a mess, and none of the officers or NCOs have any real experience in it. Up till then the Marine Corps has pretty much moved only at the battalion level. Now you're moving in units of 12,000 men."

Carlo nodded, let it sink in.

"I take it you were there."

"In 1942 at that time I was a staff sergeant in the First Marines. We were also at New River but we didn't move west until July. Our baptism of fire came later, at Bougainville. It would help if I knew what this was about."

"It's a security clearance and a problem has come up. I'm trying to account for a sergeant's location in the third week of January. I already know he wasn't UA or on temporary duty or leave. He was officially with the regiment at that time."

"That should settle it, then."

"What were the routes taken west, do you recall?"

"Ah, there were many trains, many routes, depending. Since we were staging for the Pacific at Pendleton, outside of Diego, we usually went a southern route. Let's see. In my case, the train went from New River through Nashville, down to Little Rock, on to Tulsa, down through New Mexico and Albuquerque. We were hung up at Albuquerque a week due to a coal shortage, and then on into Diego."

Little Rock!

"Goddamn!"

Goddamn!

It was the first time in his life of virtue and service that he could remember swearing.

"You look like I just hit you between the eyes with a poleax, son."

"Let me ask you this. Is this theoretically possible? A guy has been in ten years. He's a sergeant. He's been around, in China, Nicaragua and the Zone. He's well-liked, even beloved. He knows all the other sergeants and all the junior officers and they know he really can do his job well. Now his unit is moving west by train, in that huge mess you described earlier. At some place― say, Little Rock―he jumps the train. He's from Arkansas, he has some family business to attend to before he goes to war. It takes him about a week, maybe less. He gets it done, heads back to Little Rock. Sooner or later another train bearing Marines comes through. He puts his uniform back on so he can mingle with them easily enough, and maybe he knows some of them and they know who he is. So he gets out to San Diego a week late. It's not that no one has noticed, it's just that they know this guy will be back, and when he quietly shows up one day, that's that. Nothing is said about it. I know it's against regulations, but this is a combat guy, the best, no one wants to give him any trouble, it's a sergeant kind of thing, something sergeants would let other sergeants get away with. Is that possible? Could that happen?"

"Theoretically, no. We do take attendance in the Marine Corps every morning at muster. But.. "

"Everyone knows that when they go up against the Japs, this is the guy they want around in a big way. He's got leader and hero written all over him in letters a foot tall. And he's probably going to die in the Pacific. Guys like him don't come back from wars, unless it's by some wild statistical improbability."

"The truth is, what you describe, is it possible? Son, it's more than possible. It probably happened a lot. When we shipped out, we knew we weren't coming back. I did it myself."

Chapter 39

He looked like a kid in a movie, one of those things with Dick Powell where everybody sang in a real trilly voice, and the women's hair was all marcelled and they wore diaphanous gowns. They didn't make movies like that anymore, but that's what the kid looked like.

"You're kind of young for this shit, aren't you, kid?" asked Owney.

Frenchy sat in an office inside the corrugated tin of the Maddox warehouse way out on the west side of town. He'd been cooling his heels with a mob of surly Grumleys who looked as if they'd just as soon eat him raw as oblige him by letting him live. They yakked at each other in Arkansas hill accents so dense and four-teenth-century, even accent-master Frenchy couldn't quite figure them out. They also spit a lot, the one thing about this godforsaken part of the country he could never get used to.

He wore gray flannels, a blue blazer with the Princeton crest, blue Brooks shirt, a yellow ascot and saddle shoes. And why not? What else would a man wear for such a ceremonial event? Overalls? He'd secredy swom never to wear overalls again. That store-bought suit he had worn every day as one of Earl Swagger's boy commandos? That thing should be burned.

"I'm twenty," he said. "I have very smooth skin, which makes me look younger. My mother says it makes me look like a girl. Do you think it makes me look like a girl?"

"Is this some kind of fucking joke? Are they tryin' to pull my leg?"

"My, nasty, aren't we? They said you liked to pretend to upper-class manners but were really pretty crude underneath. I guess they were right."

"He's got you there, boyo," said Owney's companion, an Irish movie star who looked too much like Dennis Morgan for anybody's good.

"Sir, I don't believe I've had the pleasure," said Frenchy.

"You know who I am, kid."

"I'm Walter Short, ofWilliamsport, Pennsylvania. You can call me Frenchy, all my friends did, that is, back when I had friends, and even that wasn't for very long. And you would be―?"

"Ain't he but a charmer, Owney," said the Irishman. "Aye, he's a lad, I can tell. It ain't no joke to this one. He's got the look of a gendeman schemer to him, I can see it on him. It's a Brit thing. They love to look you in the eye and go all twinkly on you before they pull the bloody trigger."

"Never you fucking mind who he is," said Owney to Frenchy. "You sing, buster, or you won't be a happy kid much longer. You convince me you got the goods."

"Sure. Let's see: the leader of the outfit is a famous ex-FBI agent named D. A. Parker, one of the old-time gun-fighters of the '30s. Killed a lot of bandits, they say."

"Parker!" said Owney. "D. A. Parker! Who's the goddamned cowboy?"

"His name is Earl Swagger. He's more a Marine sergeant than a police officer. Lots of combat experience in the Pacific. Won some big medals. Unbelievably brave guy. Scary as hell. You don't want him mad at you. Oh, yes, you already know that. He is mad at you."

He smiled.

"Earl and D. A. really are splendid men. You'd never stop them with those hillbillies you've got changing tires in the garage. If that's the best you've got, I'd suggest a career change."

"Cut the crap, wise guy. Keep talking."

"I'll tell you so much for free," said Frenchy. "You go check it out while I go out and get some dinner. Then, tonight, I'll tell you what I want from you. When I'm convinced you can give it to me, then I'll give you what you want."

"Son, Mr. Owney here could have his boys squeeze it out of your high fanciness in a few minutes of dark, sweaty work, you know."

"The funny thing is, he couldn't. He could beat me for a year and I'd never tell. I know what I'm doing and I know how the game is played. You don't scare me."

"Look at the balls on that one, Owney," said the Irishman, amused. "Lord, if I don't think he's telling some kind of truth. He don't always tell the truth, but this time he is. And he'd take what you give him, Owney. He's a smart one, and he's willing to risk it all to win what he wants. Give the little pecker that."

"Kid," said Owney, who had a nose for such deceits, "why? Why you doing this?"

This was the only time in the long night that Frenchy showed even a bit of emotion under his bravado. He swallowed, and if you looked carefully, you might see a brief, ashamed, furious well of tears in his bright eyes.

But then he blinked and it was gone.

"He should have done more for me. They all should have done more for me. I got a letter. A fucking letter."

And then Frenchy told them everything he could about the raid team except where it could be found and where it would strike next.

Once the original breakthrough had been made, it didn't take long. Owney called F. Garry Hurst with the names Earl Swagger and D. A. Parker. Garry Hurst called associates in Little Rock and within three hours Owney had in his hands files, complete with photographs, that verified against Owney's own memory and the testimony of the two managers who'd seen them the identity of his two antagonists. The picture of D. A. came from a 1936 issue of Life magazine, called "The Fastest Man Alive," in which then FBI agent D. A. Parker drew against a time-lapse camera with a timer and was clocked at a move from leather to first shot in two tenths of a second. Among the pictures, one showed the then much younger man holding a tommy gun and looking proud at the final disposition of the Ma Barker gang in Florida. Another revealed that he'd been a member of the team that had brought down Charlie "Pretty Boy" Floyd in Ohio. In a last picture, the man stood tall and lean and heroic as the great J. Edgar Hoover pinned the Bureau's highest award for valor on his chest. In a few years, fearing that he was growing too famous, Hoover would fire him, as he fired the great Melvin Purvis.

The Swagger picture appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Times: the Marine, ramrod-straight, in his dress uniform, as the president of the United States put a garland of ribbon and amulet around his neck, the Medal of Honor. Once it would have been the biggest news; by the time of the photo, July of 1946, that is, three months ago, just before all this began, it had only played on an inside page.

"Fuckin' Bugsy didn't know what he was up against," said Owney. "That guy's a war machine. Bugsy's lucky he didn't get himself killed. And I am unlucky he didn't kill Bugsy for me."

"And Earl Swagger is unlucky," said Johnny Spanish. "If we don't kill the poor boyo, then sure as Jesus Bugsy will."

Frenchy was back from dinner, looking extremely pleased with himself. The two men awaited him in the upstairs office, but all the Grumleys had been sent home. Only one lurked outside, with a pump shotgun, and he stepped aside for Frenchy.

Frenchy's mood was peculiar: he had no doubts, no qualms, and he felt, at least superficially, good, even well. But he was aware that he'd crossed some kind of divide and that it really was tricky on this side. He needed to maneuver very carefully here, and keep his goal in mind, and not get hung up. He had to get out of here with something other than just his skin: he had to get something positive, something that would take him where he wanted to go.

At the same time, though he didn't feel it, a pain lurked somewhere. It left traces, like tracks in the snow, as now and then odd images floated up out of nowhere to assail him: how Earl had saved his life when he fell forward into Carlo's line of fire during the training, the rage he felt when he wasn't named first man on the entry team, the oddest sense of happiness and belonging he'd begun to enjoy on the raid team. It was so strange.

This time, Owney was more respectful and less suspicious. He seemed like a colleague. He sat at the desk smoking a cigar and the Irishman sat at his side. Frenchy could see a Life magazine article with D. A.'s picture in it and a newspaper clipping of Earl. Drinks were offered, twelve-year-old Scotch whiskey. Frenchy took a cigar and lit it up.

"It checks out, old man," said Owney, who had suddenly transformed himself into a stage Englishman. "But the problem, my new friend, is that it's not enough. Most important: where are they? Second most important: how can we get at them?"

"Oh, I've got that all figured out," s*rid Frenchy, taking a big draft on the cigar, then chasing it with just a touch of the old, mellow Scotch. "I've designed something that's really sharp. I mean, really sharp." He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the point.

"Hadn't you best ask the lad his price, Owney?" asked the wise Irishman. "If it's cream he's givin' you, it's cream he'll want in return."

"What do you want, old man? Money? Filthy lucre? Judas got his thirty pieces, how many pieces do you want?"

"Money?" said Frenchy. "You're making me laugh, Mr. Maddox. You have me confused with a greedy little schemer who wants to buy a new Ford coupe. I am beyond money."

"That makes him truly dangerous," said the Irishman. "He's bloody Michael Collins."

Frenchy leaned forward.

"I've done my homework. I know how big you were in NewYork."

"True enough, Owney was the tops," said the Irishman.

"You still know people back there. I mean, big people. Judges, attorneys, bankers. You know them or you know people who know them. People with influence."

Frenchy's blazing ambition filled the room. Or was it his despair or his courage? Whatever, it was almost a little frightening. He leaned forward even further, fixing the two of them with eyes so hot they unsettled. The two gangsters felt the power of his will and his inability to accept that he couldn't get what he wanted.

"I want you to get me a job with the government."

"Jesus," said the Irishman. "I'm thinking the boy wants to be an FBI agent! We should shoot him now."

"No," said Frenchy. "Not at all, not the FBI. It's called the Office of Strategic Services. It's the spies. It's very tony, very Harvard, very old law firm, very ancient brokerage. Most of the people who work for it went to the same schools and they sit and drink in the same clubs. They're special, gifted, important men, who secredy rim the country. They're above the law. You think you're important? You think you're big? Ha! You only exist because you fiilfill some purpose of theirs. You supply a need and so they let you survive. They answer to no one except their own cold conscience. They are the country, in a way. I want to be one of them. I have to be one of them."

"Jesus, Johnny," said Owney. "The boy wants to be a spy."

"You can do it. Earl and D. A. couldn't do it, because they're nothing in the East and no matter how great they are, nobody out East would notice or care. It's a club thing. You have to get into the club. I know you know people. I know you could make three phone calls and I've suddenly got someone going to bat for me. That's what I want."

"I could make a phone call."

"To an important man."

"I could make a phone call to an important man."

"He could go to bat for me. He could make them hire me. He could tell them―"

"Yeah, yeah," said Owney. "Wouldn't be easy, but it could be done. Your record, it's okay?"

"If you look close, it's spotty. But from a distance it looks good. Right schools, that sort of thing."

"So, what are you going to give me?"

"Okay," said Frenchy, taking a draft on a cigar. "I'll tell you how to get them."

"We're all ears, boyo," said the Irishman.

"You have to have good men, though."

"We have five of the best," said the Irishman.

"And you'd be one of them, Mr. Spanish," said Frenchy. "Or should I say Mr. John St. Jerome Aloysius O'Malley, armed robber extraordinaire, called Spanish for the olive cast to his skin. As I say, I do my homework."

He sat back, beaming.

"Ain't he the smart one/' said Johnny. "A sly boyo, misses not a thing, that one."

"Kid, you're impressing me. You are making me happy. Now make me happier."

"I'm going to make you unhappier. They know where the Central Book is. Right now, they're trying to figure out how to hit it. So you don't have a lot of time."

This was Frenchy's specialty, as it turned out. He had a gift for conspiracy, but under that, and far more important, he had a gift for conviction. It was an almost autistic talent, to read people in a flash and understand how to beguile them along certain lines. He knew he had them now, and he even had a moment's pleasure when he realized he could play it either way: he could set these guys up for Earl or he could set up Earl for these guys. Any way he came out on top! It was so cool! He held his own life in his hands; he could do anything.

"How did they find it?"

"They didn't," said Frenchy. "They're not smart enough. I found it for them."

He quickly narrated his adventures at the phone company on Prospect Avenue.

"Fuck!" said Owney, devolving to East Side hoodlum. "That fucking Mel Parsons! I knew he was no good! I'll get that changed right away!"

"Barn door and all the animals fled, sport," said Johnny Spanish. "listen to the boy here. He's smart, he's got some talent. See what he's got to offer."

"Okay," said Frenchy. "D. A. had us quartered at the Lake Catherine dam, in the pump house."

"Fuck!" said Owney, this elemental truth right under his nose at last revealed.

"But he won't go back there. He's smart. When he goes operational again, he'll find some other place. You'll never find it. And even if you do, what are you going to do? Go in with a thousand Grumleys, kill everybody? There'd be a huge stink, the governor would have to call out the National Guard. What does that get you?"

"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."

Chapter 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.

Chapter 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 shordy, 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 acdon 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 me 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 bam 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.

"Let's head back into town," said Earl. "I want to see how things are going in that colored whorehouse."

"Sure," said D. A. "Who knows what might come of it."

"Want to get there just after dark, so's nobody sees us."

Again D. A. said sure, and they drove on in silence, and D. A. fiddled with the radio, trying to line up on the Hot Springs KTHS beam, which played a lot of the jump blues and new bebop he seemed to have a strange affection for. He liked music with a little juice to it, he'd say.

"Say, Earl," said D. A., "been meaning to ask. Your daddy? He's killed in, where was it?"

"Mount Ida," said Earl. "Nineteen forty-two."

"They never caught who done it?"

"Nope."

"I'd think a man like you'd be gunning for whoever done it. Want to go back and track that dog down and make him pay."

"My daddy was looking to die, and had been for years. That mean boy done him and me and everbody else a damn favor. I'd give the bastard my big old star medal if I found him."

"Earl! Damnation! You shouldn't talk like that! He was your daddy, and a fine upstanding man. A law officer. Shot it out with some bad fellas. A hero in the Great War. I'm surprised to hear you talk as such."

"My daddy was a bully. He'd just as soon thump you as look at you, while he's sucking up to the quality. He always thought he was too good for what he got, and he was ashamed of who he was and who we were. He was a Swagger, from a long line of Swaggers descended from folks who settled this part of the country right after the Revolutionary War. I hope my ancestors weren't the bastard he was."

Bitterness seemed to swirl over Earl, as if he didn't like being reminded of his father. Now he was grumpy and gloomy.

"Could he have been somehow mixed up in any Hot Springs business?" asked D. A. "I mean, Owney and the Grumleys got a lot to answer for. Could that somehow be a part of it?"

Earl actually laughed, though there was a bitter, broken note to it.

"That's a goddamn hoot if I ever heard one! My old man was a drunk and a hypocrite and a whoremonger and crooked to boot and a bully. But see, here's the thing: nothing he knew was worth getting himself killed over. Absolutely nothing. He was a little man. Only thing he knew were all the back roads and paths in Polk County. He got that from all the hunting he done, and all the heads he put up on his wall. He cared more about them heads than he did his own children. What the hell could he have known to interest an Owney Maddox? Mr. D. A., you sure you're still on the wagon?"

"Okay, Earl, just asking. Thought I'd check it out."

Earl stopped.

He looked directly at D. A.

"Let me tell you something. Nobody knows a goddamned thing about my father, and it's best that way. Long gone, buried and forgotten. That's the way it should be. Now, Mr. Parker, I don't like to talk sharp to you, but I can't be talking about my father no more. It makes me want to drink too powerfully, you understand?"

"I understand, Earl, and I apologize."

"Fine. Now let's go check on them Negro people."

They drove on in silence, cruising down Central through South Hot Springs, turning right at the hard angle that was Malvern Avenue and following that up to the Negro section. Night had fallen and it was a jumping street, as usual, with the gals calling down from their windows and the crowds bustling into the beer joints, to rim against the wheel or bet the slots. And when they got to it, it seemed even Mary Jane's had found some kind of new life. It was really thrumming, almost like some sort of tourist attraction like the alligator farm or the shooting gallery in Happy Hollow. It looked like old Memphis Dogood was having himself a time keeping up with his customers, and the lack of girls in windows suggested they were all making their night's nut and more on their backs.

D. A. drove around back, where it wasn't crowded, and parked the car. The two men got out, found the door open and a man out back smoking.

"You, boy," said D. A., "you go on in and find Memphis. You tell him some friends want to see him."

The boy looked at them sullenly, but then rose and obeyed. Soon enough three heavyset fellows escorted the large yellow whore called Marie-Claire out. She looked them over and then said, "It's okay."

"Where's your man?" asked D. A.

"Gone. They come git him. He ain't never comin' back. He in the swamp somewheres."

"Who got him?" asked Earl.

"White mens. Grumleys, mos' likely. Don't rightly know. They come by, tell him they need to see him. Thas all. A few days back. He ain't comin' home, I tell you."

Earl shook his head.

"Sister, maybe he just wandered off with another gal," said D. A.

"And leave his place? Memphis love this place, he ain't never gonna leave it 'cept to be underground, thas God's truth."

She glared at the old man, showing a surprising ferocity for a black woman.

"I think Maddox got to him. Grilled him, then dumped him. Or had somebody dump him, more his style," said Earl.

Then he turned.

"Sorry, sister. All this bad stuff come down on your place from white folks, sorry about all that. These are bad people and we're trying to clean it up and people get hurt sometimes. Very sorry."

"You was the one shot that Grumley hoozer had the gun to my throat, wudn't you?"

"Yes ma'am. That was me."

"Well, suh, tell you somethin' then. You want to know about Mr. Owney fancy-man Maddox? I know a man might could help you."

"Tell me, sister."

"Yes suh. Ol' man name Jubilee Lincoln. Live by hisself over on Crescent, little oP house. Spirit call him late in life. He speak fo' God now, run the New Light Baptis' out his front parlor. You might wanna see him."

"Why's that?"

"He know about this. You go see him."

They got to the New Light Baptist Tabernacle half an hour later, finding it a wooden house that had seen better times in a run-down neighborhood that backed into the hills of East Hot Springs.

"Now, Earl, you s'pose that gal went to call Owney Maddox and the boys? And they're waiting for us in there?"

"Don't reckon," said Earl. "I don't see how she could help Owney after what he done to Memphis."

"Earl, you think of them as regular people, whose minds work just like ours. It ain't like that."

"Sir, one thing I do believe is that they are the same."

"Earl, you are a hard, strange fellow, I do declare."

They parked in an alley, and the dogs barked and scuffled. They slipped in a back gate and went up to the door and knocked.

In time, stirrings from inside suggested human habitation. Finally, the door opened a crack, and an old man's face peered out at them, eyes full of the fear that any black man would feel when two large white men in hats showed up knocking after dark.

"No need to worry, pop," said Earl. "Don't mean you no harm. Memphis Dogood's gal Marie-Claire gave us your name. We are what they call them Jayhawkers, trying to push the Grumley boys out of town."

The old man's face lit in delight suddenly. A smile beamed through the eight decades' worth of woeful wrinkles that had meshed his face into a black spider web and for just a second, he was young again, and believed in the righteous way of progress.

"Suhs, I just wanna shake your hand if I may," said the gendeman, putting out a cottony old hand that felt a hundred years old. Earl shook it, and it was light as a butterfly.

"Do come in, do come in. Lord, Lord, you are the righteous, that I know."

"We're just polices, sir," said Earl. "We do our job, and white or colored don't matter to us."

"Lord, that be a miracle on earth," said the old man.

He took them into his living room, which boasted a batch of old chairs and an altar. Up front was a cross. Two candles flickered in perpetual devotion.

"Lord, Lord," he said. "Lord, Lord, Lord."

Then he turned. "I am the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln, of the New Light Tabernacle. That was the niece of one of my flock them Grumleys done kilt. You remember?"

Earl did. The black girl. At the top of the stairs. Crying, her eyes pumping moisture. The shiver in her whole body, the shakiness in her knees.

"I'm sorry," said Earl. "We saved the ones we could. Wasn't nothing we could have done about that gal. It's messy work."

"Alvina was a wild gal, like her mama, suh," said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. "Her mama died in a 'hohouse too, sorry to say. The word of Jesus don't mean nothin' to either of them gals, and they paid the price. Her daddy is mighty upset too. That man ain't stopped cryin' all day, ever day, ever since."

"It does happen that way sometimes," said D. A. "Sin begets doom, often as not. But I'm sure she went to heaven. She was walking righteous toward the law when them Grumleys finished her."

"Amen," said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. "I want to thank you, suhs. You sent some Grumleys to hell, and specially you sent old Pap Grumley there too, even if you didn't shoot him yo'self. Ain't no white men take so much risk to save cullud gals, as I hear it."

"We tried, Dr. Lincoln," said Earl. "We saved most. It pains us we weren't able to save all."

He couldn't remember the girl's name even. But he remembered the bullets hitting her and how heavily she fell down the stairs and how she died in his arms.

"Them gambler fellas don't give no two nothin's 'bout no culluds," said the old man. "I cleaned toilets and spittoons in the Ohio for fifty years, till I couldn't bend over no more, and nobody never called me nothin' but Jubilee, and nobody never gave nothin' about any of mine or what happened to them, no suh. You two is the only righteous white peoples I ever met."

Earl took a deep breath. Then he looked at D. A. Then he said, "You say you were the janitor at the Ohio?"

"Yes suh. Yes suh, and a hard job it be, specially since they put all them damn phones inside and all them boys sit there takin' inf'mation and smokin' and spitdn' and drinkin'. It was a mess most nights."

"Sir? Would you―?"

"Would I what, suh?"

"Would you sign a statement saying you saw a telephone room in the Ohio?"

"That Mr. Maddox and them Grumleys, they like to kill me dead if they find out."

"It would be dangerous, that's true," said Earl. "But we'd keep you protected until it's over."

"Suh, if them Grumley crackers decide to kill a Negro man in this town, nothin' but the Lord Almighty could stop 'em."

"Well sir, we're trying to end that kind of thing. End it for good and all."

The old man considered.

"I reckon, the good Lord's gonna call me to Glory any-hows, soon enough. Been around eighty-seven years. Hell, if it rile them Grumleys up, I be glad to do it!"

Chapter 42

You could not deny how beautiful she was. How a woman could have hair that red, maracas that melony, a waist that narrow, hips that round and legs that long was something on the level of the truly miraculous. Her lips were like strawberries, her eyes green and forever. Everywhere she went, it might as well be spa-ring.

"Virginia, you look so wonderful, darling," said Owney. "Cocktail?"

"Fabulous," said Virginia.

"Martini?"

"Absolutely dah-vine, sugar. Dip the olives in the vermouth, that'll be quite enough."

"Yes, my dear," said Owney. "Ralph, you heard Miss Virginia. Care to come out on the terrace? It's lovely and the view is quite spectacular."

"Of course. But I want you to show me around. What a fabulous place. It's so New York here. It's a little bit of New York in the heart of little old Arkansas, I do declare!"

"We try, darling. We try so hard."

"Oh, birds! I never would have guessed."

They walked to his pigeons, cooing and lowing in their little cages.

"They're adorable. So soft, so cuddly."

The word soft, pronounced by Virginia Hill above the two most perfect breasts in all of the white world, more beautiful than a Lana's, a Rita's, and Ava's, almost knocked Owney out. He needed a drink, and to focus hard.

Ralph arrived.

"Martini, m'dear?" said Owney. "Low on the vermouth, as you requested."

"Sweet as shoefly pie and apple-pan dowdy, I declare."

She was really laying on her Scarlett O'Hara imitation with a trowel. She took the drink, winked at Owney through it, and…

Gulp!

"That was fabulous. Could Gin-gin have another winky?"

"Ralph, run get Miss Hill another winky."

"Yes sir," said Ralph.

Owney took Virginia to look at Central Avenue, hazy in the falling dusk sixteen floors below.

"Ain't it a sight? Sugar, that is some sight. Can't b'lieve it's in the same South where Miz Virginia done growed up. Winky makes Gin-gin feel good. Where Gin-gin growed up was pure Southern-fried dogshit, complete with them uncles couldn't keep them fingers to themselves."

She threw him a smile, and sort of scrunched her shoulders in a practiced way that seemed to crush the immense breasts together more poetically, as if to mount them on a silver platter and present them for his pleasure.

"Virginia, come sit over here, in the arbor."

They sat. Gin-gin's second winky arrived. Gulp!

"Another, Ralph."

"Yes, boss."

"Now Virginia, I suspect you have a message for me."

"Oh, Owney, you don't miss trick one, do you, honey?" She touched his leg and flashed a mouthful of teeth at him. He vowed that he'd have two of the best gals sent over from the best house tonight, and drown in flesh.

"Well," she said primly, "Ben is worried that…" and off she went, explaining how Ben worried that Owney would take offense at his, Ben's, plans in the desert, exactly as Ben had laid it out for her, with a few breathless giggles, and a few fleshy quivers of the mighty boobs thrown in here and there for emphasis.

"The thought"―Owney laughed when she was done―"that I would take offense at anything Ben did in Nevada, why, darling, it's almost adorable. Ben is my favorite son. Of all my boys, he's the best, the smartest, the quickest. I'm honored that he's chosen me as his hero and that he seeks to emulate me. Why, what he accomplishes in that desert will be a monument to me, and I'm touched. Virginia, sweetness, do you hear? Touched "

"I sure am happy that you're so happy."

"I'm so happy too. I genuinely appreciate the way Ben keeps me informed. In our business, communication skills are so important. Why, good heavens, it's almost dinnertime. We'll dine at the Southern. There's a most amusing fellow you'll meet, a business associate of mine."

"Sugar, I can't wait. But can I run to the ladies' first?"

"Why of course, my darling. Wouldn't have it any other way."

She tottered off on her heels, that body that seemed to have stepped off a Liberator fuselage only barely shielded by the artful languor of her gown, her flesh undulating underneath its strictures.

Owney tried to think. He had no buzz on because his own martini was pure spring water. What does this mean? What is going on? What is the hidden message?

"Why, Owney. Why Owney, what on earth is this?"

Owney rose, walked in to see Virginia standing awestruck in front of his Braque.

"You didn't see that the last time, Virginia?"

"No, I was trying to make time with Alan Ladd to get a picture."

"Well, then, my dear, that is art."

"There's something about it," she said.

"Ben said it reminded him of Newark."

Virginia burst out with a laugh so spontaneous it shook him.

"That silly!" she said. "That boy don't know a thing."

"No, I suppose not."

"Why's it all square?"

"It's called Cubism, darling. An early modernist movement, which broke down the convention of the narrative and the objective. It communicates the power of ideas over precise information. One can feel its power. Actually when Ben says 'Newark,' in his way he's not far wrong. Braque called it Houses at L'Estaque. But it's not about houses. It's really about the power of the universe and how its deepest secrets are hidden from us."

She looked at him all goo-goo-eyed.

"Why, honey, I never knew you were so smart! You sound like a regular Albert Einstein."

"It's not quite e equals mc squared, but in its way it's an equally radical supposition, eh?"

He stood there, feeling the pride he drew from the picture. Knowing its secrets made him feel ineffably superior. None of the square Johns from the Hot Springs business community who frequented his soirees had an iota's worth of knowledge about this thing. At $75,000 it had been cheap for that thrill alone.

"Houses at L'Estaque" she repeated. "Ain't that a toot!"

Chapter 43

It was too hot for gardening―it was darned near too hot for anything!―but Junie wasn't the sort to be stopped by a little heat. So out she went, the baby huge inside her and kicking, her feelings a little woozy, but nevertheless determined.

Arkansas was not rose country. You couldn't get a good rose, at least not here, on this flat plain with its half-buried tubes of homes and no clouds in the sky and the sun hammering down, somehow bleeding the day of color. She hadn't even tried roses. She knew roses would fail in so much direct sunlight.

So she'd planted less aristocratic flowers in the little bed outside her hut on 5th Street in the Camp Chaffee vets village, a mix of hydrangeas, daisies, lilacs and lilies. Now some weeds had come into the garden and it was time to expunge them.

Of course she had no tools, and the dried earth was too hard to attack with a spoon, and so she rooted around and found a ghoulish Jap bayonet that Earl had brought home from the war. It had a long, black blade, a truly horrifying thing, but she put it out of her mind that it had once been used to kill men, and insisted to herself that it was only a tool. With its smooth sharpness, she could penetrate into the soil deeply, twist vigorously and uproot the ugly scruff weeds that had seemed to come up almost overnight.

It wasn't a big job and wouldn't have been beyond her in any circumstances except these, where the heat just pummeled her. But she worked onward, through her discomfort, through her sweat, and in an hour had culled most of them. But her back ached. And her feelings of wooziness suddenly increased.

So she sat back for just a second, wiped her brow, and gathered strength for the last few weeds.

Possibly a mistake. As soon as she did, she looked up. Life was livable as long as you simply concentrated on what was just ahead of you, and let your faith and your love steer you, and did your duty. That she knew.

But, looking up, she confronted a bigger picture: the rows and rows of Quonsets gleaming dully in the sun, lit up now and then with a wife's attempt to brighten them (as she had) with flowers. The attempts were heroic and doomed. The huts were still government housing, with laundry on lines that ran between them, hardscrabble, almost grassless dirt that lay in the lots, dusty gravel streets.

Would they ever get out?

What about the boom? Would it ever reach them and take them somewhere? But not if Earl was dead in some horrid battle for nothing against gangsters.

Don't think that, she warned herself. She had a deep belief in God, country and her husband, and would never allow herself any willing subversion. But later, more and more, evil thoughts had been creeping into her brain.

Is this it? Is this what I get? What about all the jobs that were supposed to open up after the war, the explosion in industry and finance, construction and communication? Shouldn't it somehow be for the men who'd fought the hardest, like her Earl? Instead, is he going to throw his life away for nothing?

The man who was her husband was still a considerable mystery to her. He didn't like to talk about the war or his past, but they deviled him savagely. He was a good man, an honest man, but he had a reservoir of melancholy deep inside him that would not come out. When he gets on his feet, she thought, it will be all better. But he was on his feet now, and what he loved best had nothing to do with her, but only with other men, some kind of mission, something that took him so far away not just in emotion but in distance. It would involve guns and killing. He loved her, she knew. She didn't doubt it, not a bit of it. But the question remained: what good was that kind of love, because it wasn't the love of somebody there, somebody to be depended on. It was love as an idea, not a messy reality, love from afar. He was still at war, in certain ways.

The baby kicked.

You stop it, you little thing, she ordered.

He kicked harder, and there came a sudden cramp so intense her limbs buckled and down she went, curling up.

Oh, Lord? Was it time?

But her water hadn't broken, so no, it wasn't time, it was just one of those rogue pains that sometimes happen.

She wasn't sure what happened next. It all went dark.

She fell into pain, then numbness. Then she heard a voice and thought it might be Earl's.

"Earl, honey?"

"No, Junie, it's me, Mary, from next door. Honey lamb, you fainted."

Mary Blanton was kneeling beside her, fanning her with a copy of Redbook.

"Oh, my goodness," said Junie.

"I don't know anything about being pregnant, Junie, but I can't think weeding in ninety-five-degree weather is recommended."

Junie shook the confusion out of her eyes. Now she felt really icky.

"I don't know what happened," she said.

"Come on, honey, let me get you inside and into some shade. You can't lie out here and roast."

With Mary's help, Junie hobbled inside, where she lay down on her bed.

In the little kitchenette, Mary turned on all the fans, then threw ice into a glass and appeared with a large iced tea.

"Here you go, you sip on that till you get your strength back."

Junie sipped the tea and its coolness hit her solidly.

"Are you okay?" Mary asked.

"Yes, I'm fine now. Thank you so much, Mary."

Mary was the bluntest woman Junie had ever met, and she'd worked in war factories for years while her husband, Phil, was in the Navy. Now he was working in a radio shop by day and going to electronics school at night on the GI Bill.

"Well, I don't know about any husband like yours who'd leave a girl all alone as much as you are. A girl as pretty as you and as pregnant as you ought to be getting special attention, not all by herself in a tin hut, pining away."

"Earl's got a job he has to do. He always does his job. That's the kind of a man he is."

"If you say so, Junie. I never heard of such a thing. It's not how we'd do it up North."

Mary just didn't understand, not being from around here.

"I know he was a hero, but that only goes so far. A man ought to be home when his young wife is going to have a baby."

Junie nodded. Then she started to cry.

Mary held her, muttering, "There, there, sweetie, you just cry it all out, don't you worry."

Finally Junie looked up.

"I am so scared," she said.

"About your Earl?"

"Yes. But also about the baby. I can feel it. There's something wrong. I could lose them both."

Chapter 44

Earl and D. A. were not demonstrative men. But the confidence they now felt, armed with the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln's signed affidavit and his considerable courage, came through anyway, in the way they walked, in the way they talked, in the way they were. The men realized that something had happened, some breakthrough had been made, and the game was very nearly over, victory in sight. That filled everyone with hope and joy, and even the loss of the heavy automatic weapons and the bulletproof vests and six men seemed not to faze anyone; a general air of lightness and frivolity ensued as they broke down the camp at the Red River Army Depot, loaded up and headed out for the new quarters on the Pettyview chicken ranch.

It helped that the phrase "chicken ranch" was a well-known synonym for whorehouse.

"Hey, we're going to a chicken ranch. Whoo-eee!"

"Bear, would your mama 'low such a thing?"

"Hell, buhba, I was a champeen chicken rassler afore you'se even a glint in your daddy's eye!"

"Boy, the best part of you ran down your mama's leg. Tell you what, you need any help, y'all come to me and I'll show you the ropes."

"Yeah, you guys all talk big, lemme tell you when you get a dose your old dicks gonna swell up like a tire on a hot day. Shoot, saw a feller in Memphis so purple and swoll-up he couldn't get his zipper zipped. Had to walk around with it hanging out. But it was so purple, nobody thought it was a dick; they thought it was some kind of tube or something."

The joshing continued, and someone said to Earl, who was supervising benevolently, "Say, Mr. Earl, we are running low on.45 hardball."

Earl examined the ammunition cache. There was but one case of the.45 hardball left, that is, 1,000 rounds.

"Shit," said Earl. "Well, I doubt we'll need it anyhow."

"Yes sir."

"Lookie here," said Earl, figuring out a scrounger's angle. "I see we got plenty ball tracer we used in the training."

It was true. Four cases of the Cartridge Caliber.45 Tracer M26 remained.

"Look, load up two cases of the tracer in my trunk. Maybe I can work a trade with another agency or something, and lay off the tracer in exchange for some more hardball. Who knows? If we have to, we can always go to tracer, but I don't want to do it inside."

"Yes sir."

"On the 'Canal, I saw ball tracer from an idiot's tommy gun light up a goddamn cane field. It was full of Japs, but if the wind blowed wrong, I know a Marine squad would have been fried up real good."

"Bet you chewed him out, eh, Earl?"

"Hell, boys, couldn't chew him out. That idiot was me!"

They all laughed. It was the first time in anyone's memory that Earl had referred to the war or made fun of himself, a double whammy in the cult of Earl that he had spontaneously created.

D. A! came out of his little makeshift office with a briefcase full of papers, and said, "Y'all ready?"

It seemed they were.

There was a last-minute discussion of routes and timing, for it would be better if everyone arrived later, and after dark, and D. A. told them to keep their lights off as they traveled down the last half mile of dirt road before they reached the farm and not to make the turnoff if there were other cars on the highway.

Each car had an assignment: one would stop for ice, another for groceries and snacks, another for Coca-Colas.

But finally, there was nothing left to do.

"Okay, boys. We'll see you tomorrow," sang D. A., and the little convoy was off.

"Look, that's fine, but something else has come up."

The meeting was at an out-of-the-way ice cream parlor in West Hot Springs, well off the byways of the gambling town. Becker wore his usual suit and had his usual pipe; but this time, besides assorted clerks and functionaries, he had two blunt-faced State Policemen in not so plain clothes as bodyguards.

"Sir," said D. A. patiently, as if explaining to a child, "I'm telling you we can end this thing. We can end it just like we planned. We all agreed very early on that the Central Book was the key. Now we've got a plan that―"

"I heard the plan the first time, Parker. I'm sure it's a fine plan."

"We can do it fast. Our boys are very well trained," said Earl. "They're probably the finest-trained police unit in the country today. We can do it and nobody gets hurt, and it's over. You win. You're the hero. You're the next―"

"Earl," said D. A. sharply.

"Yes sir," sad Earl, shutting up.

"The raids still make me uneasy," said Becker. "Too many things can go wrong, too many people can get killed. The community doesn't like the raids. All the killing―it makes people nervous."

"Sir, if you're fighting rats, some rats are bound to die," said D. A.

"Something else has come up."

Earl and D. A. said nothing but exchanged a brief glance.

"A source I trust, not in the police department or die municipal government, says that he was dining with his wife in the Southern Club and he saw Owney with a beautiful woman and a man he recognized from the papers as an Irish mobster called Johnny Spanish."

Earl and D. A. ate their ice cream.

"Sir, there's lots of gangsters come to Hot Springs."

"Not like this one. I made some inquiries. It seems Johnny Spanish―real name John St. Jerome Aloysius O'Malley―is a noted heist expert. An armed robber. He learned his trade in the IRA in the '20s. He specializes in banks and factory payrolls. Very violent, very smart, very tough. He has a crew of four other men, and they do the heavy work but the mob scouts their jobs and puts up the seed money."

The two men were listening numbly. Each by now had an idea where this one was going.

"They say Johnny Spanish was in Hot Springs in 1940. Early October, 1940. Mean anything?"

"The Alcoa payroll job."

"exactly. So I'm thinking: Owney used Johnny before to raise money for a project―the building of the Southern. Now, you've put a big crimp on Owney financially with your raids. He needs cash to keep operating, to keep up his payments. His empire runs on cash. This would be the perfect time for another big job."

"That seems like the sort of thing you'd need a big police operation for," said D. A. "We haven't trained for that kind of operation, Mr. Becker."

"But you have the element of surprise! Now let me finish. I made some discreet inquiries. Alcoa sure isn't coming through Hot Springs anymore, I'll tell you that. But tomorrow night, the Federal Reserve Board is moving over a million dollars in gold up to Fort Knox, in Kentucky, where they're consolidating the gold reserves. They dispersed them during the war, because they thought it was too big a target. A million bucks' worth was moved to the Federal Reserve Bank in New Orleans. Now it's headed back to Fort Knox, under guard of the U. S. Army, and that train is slated to run up the St. Louis & Iron Mountain tomorrow night to little Rock, where it'll divert to the Memphis & Little Rock and on to Kentucky tomorrow night."

"They're going to stop a train guarded by troops?"

"No. But suppose a bridge would catch fire? You watch. Sometime tomorrow a bridge along the St. Louis & Iron Mountain will catch fire somewhere north of Hot Springs but south of Little Rock. Or some track will be torn up. Or a tunnel will collapse. Something will happen tomorrow. The feds will divert to Hot Springs because it's the biggest yard between New Orleans and Little Rock, and the closest. If that happens, I guarantee you, Johnny Spanish will hit that train, Owney will make a million bucks and he'll go on and on and on."

"You should call the FBI," said D. A. "It's a federal thing. They have the firepower to handle that sort of thing. I still know a few fellas in the Bureau. I'm sure they'd share the credit, Mr. Becker. That could make you look real good."

"Oh, I'd get muscled out. I know how the FBI works. You worked for Hoover. You know what an egomaniac he is."

The dull, pained look on D. A.'s face told the story.

"He's right," he finally said. "They'd push us out and it wouldn't have nothing to do with us. J. Edgar himself would come on down to get in all the pictures."

"Now," said Becker, "look at it this way. If our team does this, brings these fellows down, makes the nab, it has exactly the same effect as closing down the Central Book. Then we can hit the Central Book too, if we have to. But if we get Johnny Spanish and his boys, we link him to Owney, we save the gold, we pin the 1940 Alcoa job on him, just think of it!"

Earl said, "I don't like night operations. They're plenty tricky, especially on unknown ground. Everything looks different at night. You got bad communication problems, you have target-marking problems, you have terrain recognition problems. You need perimeter containment, you need experience. Lots of men died at night because their own boys got jittery."

But D. A. responded quickly. "Yes, but Earl, think of the reward. This might be it exactly. This would put us on the map for all time. I can see the look on J. Edgar's face if I showed up on the cover of Time magazine. Whoooeee, that chilly bastard would twitch his lips like the strange fish he is and wish to hell he'd gotten there first. Whooooeee."

Earl saw at that moment his argument was lost. D. A. had connected with the concept in some deep way that called upon his own bitterness and seemed to validate his derailed life. It was the poison of dreams.

"Yes sir," Earl said. "We are short on men."

"I'll call Carlo at his mama's and get him back fast.

And hell, I'll go myself, I'm still the best gun in town. Ain't as spry as I once was, but I'm still damned fast."

"That's the spirit," said Fred Becker. "By God, that's the Marine spirit!"

CHAPTE 45

Somewhere along the way, Herman Kreutzer had picked up some expertise in electronics, so he understood Sniperscope Ml right away, and he was the one who talked Johnny Spanish through it, with guidance from War Department technical manual TM 5-9340, classified SECRET! Owney must really have had some juice to come up with something this special this fast.

The system consisted of two units linked by electrical cord: the Carbine, Caliber 30, T3 Modified, which wore the Telescope T-120 jury-rigged by special bridge mount to its receiver, and clamped beneath its forestock the infrared light source, which resembled a headlight, and behind that a plastic fore grip with the lamp trigger switch; and, three feet of cord away, the electrical power supply unit, a large metal box that supported the battery and various vacuum tubes. The whole thing weighed about eighteen pounds, loaded. The scope looked like a thermos jug, the headlamp like, well, a headlamp, and the electrical power supply like a large but utilitarian radio. You couldn't move fast with it, you couldn't maneuver, pivot, twist or switch angles or positions quickly.

"Ah, whoever came up with this gizmo never trekked the alleys of Dublin, that I'll tell you," said Johnny, feeling the heavy weight of the rifle but more peculiarly its awkwardness, for the scope was too large and the lamp completely threw off the balance of the little piece; and the fragility of the connection to the battery housing via the cord made the whole thing even more problematical.

"You'll get the hang of it, Johnny," said Herman, fussing with various switches and consulting the manual. "It's just for sitting in a hole and clipping Japs as they come over the ridgeline thinking everything is hinky-dinky banzai. Okay, I think we're set. Red, get the lights."

Red Brown hit the lights. Jack Bell and Vince the Hat put their cards down. The Maddox warehouse went dark.

"Throw the bolt," said Herman.

Johnny, in the kneeling position, snapped the bolt, lifting a round into the carbine's chamber.

Herman read by flashlight. "Okay, now with your front hand, hit the trigger switch up on the front grip."

Johnny did as he was told.

"By Jesus, it's broken," he said.

"Nah, it's invisible. Invisible to you, to the naked eye. Look through the scope."

Johnny obeyed.

"Nothing."

"Okay, I'm going to try a few of these switches and you keep looking and―"

"My God and sweet Lord," said Johnny. "The blasted thing's glowing like a horror movie. Where's Boris Karloff when you need him?"

"What's it look like?"

"All green."

"What do you see?"

"Hmmm," said Johnny, concentrating. "Why, I see them paint cans you set up."

"Is there a crosshair?"

"Indeed."

"See if you can hit anything."

"Hold your ears, boys."

Johnny loved to shoot and he shot well, as did his whole crew. He babied the carbine, locked it into his shoulder, his other arm braced on his knee, he steadied and waited and then popped off a shot. To his surprise, the carbine fired full automatic; a spray of five bullets launched themselves toward the target in the brief time that Johnny had his finger on the trigger. The burst was sewing-machine fast, a taptaptaptaptap that stunned everybody.

"Yikes," Vince said. "The fuckin' thing's a machine gun."

"It's the M2 carbine," said Herman. "It goes full auto. It's supposed to fire that way. Did you hit anything?"

Johnny looked through the scope again.

"One of them cans is gone. By Jesus, I must have hit the bloody thing."

He fired four more bursts from the curved thirty-round magazine, and in the dark, even with the echo of the shots, they could hear the paint cans tossing and splashing and banging as the bullets tore through them.

"Lights," said Herman.

The lights came on. Johnny had hit all four cans, and the paint, red, exploded out of them, spattering across the corrugated tin walls of the warehouse.

Smoke floated in the air and faraway holes winked as they admitted outside light from the bullet punctures in the tin wall. The stench of burned gunpowder lingered. A red mist floated.

"Looks like bloody Chicago on a St. Valentine's mom," said Johnny.

Much fiddling and experimentation remained. Eventually, Johnny and Herman got the scope zeroed to the point of impact: the infrared lamp had a range of about one hundred yards, but at that range Johnny could put four shots into a target in a second, because his trigger control was so superb and the heaviness of the weapons system dampened the already light recoil of the carbine.

"They got a lot to work on with this thing," said Herman, his brilliance ever practical. "Needs to be lighter, tougher, stronger, with a longer range. They've got to mount it on something more powerful than a puny little carbine. They get it all jiggered up right, goddamn, they are going to have a piece of work!"

"Yeah, well, we can't wait till they get around to that. We go with what we got."

"Johnny, I'm just saying that―"

"Yah, ya big Kraut, you're thinking of them good old days mowing down people with your BAR in the trenches."

"Actually, it was a piece of shit called a Chauchat. Finally we got the BARs but not until―"

"Herman, concentrate, you bloody genius, on the night's work. Tomorrow we'll have a nice good visit with them wonderful old days in the AEF, all righty?"

The five men gathered around a plan of the railyard that Owney Maddox had supplied. It helped that they'd worked the same yard exactly six years earlier, although Jack and Vince weren't on the crew then. Quickly enough they came up with a sound plan, based on Johnny's cunning and Herman's sense of infantry tactics.

"We want them in a bunch," said Herman. "We want this over as fast as possible. It can't be a hunt, you know, a goddamn man-on-man running gunfight through the rail-yard. Get 'em into the zone, let Johnny hose 'em down, move in, mop up, dump a bunch of carbine brass and a few guns, and get the hell out of there. Get our money, go back to Miami."

"Owney'll be there too," said Johnny. "He wants to celebrate the finish."

"Damn, Johnny, that'll slow us down," said Herman.

"But you see, Herman, you smart fella, in this town, Owney owns the coppers. That means they ain't going to be responding to calls from people who hear the gunshots until we're out of harm's way. All right?"

Yes. It was all right.

Johnny Spanish's crew rallied at the deserted railyard canteen at about 10:00 P. M., under cover of dark. They looked like a commando unit, with faces blackened, in blue jeans and dark shirts and watch caps pulled low. They checked the weapons a last time, made sure all magazines were loaded and locked and that they had plenty of quick reloads. Vince had secured one of the larger old one-hundred-round drums for his Thompson 1928 from the Grumleys, who had plenty of drums but no more guns, and was busily cranking the spring―not easy―and inserting rounds to get the thing topped off. Herman and Johnny double-checked the infrared apparatus.

At 10:15, a scuffling announced the arrival of another player, an

"How do you know they'll come from west to east," said Owney. "Maybe they'll set up on the east side of town and come through from that way."