Handsome Harry (12 page)

Evans stood fast and gaped at me. It was all I could do to keep from shooting him in his liver-lipped mouth.

Russell went up to him and pressed the muzzle of his pistol under his chin. You ugly sack of shit, he said, I owe you
plenty.

Evans’s eyes were showing a lot of white. Don’t do it, Clark, he said. You’ll fry.

Charley put a hand on Russell’s arm. Somebody’ll hear the shot and we’re finished, he said.

We need him, Russ, Red said.

Russell snapped on the safety and stuck the pistol in his waistband. Evans looked relieved.

Then Russell drove a fist into the bastard’s big belly and Bertha’s breath blew out of him and he fell to all fours, gagging hard, and vomited.

I stepped between them and told Russell that was enough, Red was right, we needed the guy. And not all busted up.

Russell leaned around me to spit on Evans. Fat son of a bitch, he said.

Burns and Jenkins hauled Bertha to his feet. He was pulling hard for breath, his eyes streaming and his face waxy. I said for him to wipe the puke off his chin and pull himself together. I told him and Stevens exactly what I expected from them. I emphasized that if
anything
went wrong for any reason, they would be the first to die.

I told Stevens to pick up his clipboard and look his usual official self. I asked if he was married and he said yes sir, and he had two young children. I said that was real nice and if he did everything right he’d live to see them again.

Sure thing, Mr. Pierpont, he said, you give the orders.

You bet your life, I said.

The guys without pistols armed themselves with small iron bars used for prying the lids off shipping crates. All of us except Stevens and Evans took up an armload of folded shirts. They hid the weapons in our hands. Anybody who saw us would see Big Bertha in charge of a work party transporting an order of goods.

All right, I said, let’s do it.

Nobody on the factory floor paid us any mind as we came up from the storeroom and went outside into the chilly drizzle. Stevens was in
the lead, me and Red directly behind him, the other guys trailing us in a loose double column with Big Bertha at the rear, flanked by Dietrich and Charley.

We walked slightly hunched over the shirts in our arms like we were trying to keep them dry. Almost the full length of the yard lay between us and the warehouse, which fronted the yard and flanked the admin building. The warehouse was where we delivered shirt orders for local pickup. You’d go into a little sort of alcove off the yard and up to a double-barred window manned by two civilian clerks and a pair of M City guards with shotguns and you’d pass the shirts and invoices through the bars. This time, however, when we came abreast of the alcove we kept on going.

It was still a good twenty yards to the yard gate at the administration building, and as we headed toward it I had a momentary sensation of being in one of those dreams where you’re steadily moving toward something but never get any closer to it. At every step, I expected to hear somebody yell for us to halt and the fireworks to begin. I took a casual look up at the nearest guard tower and saw a gun bull watching us. Then he turned away. He’d seen Big Bertha ramrodding us and that made everything jake.

The admin yard gate was a large iron-barred thing that opened onto a courtyard containing the door to the main gate inside. A gun tower loomed over the courtyard and the bull came out on the catwalk with his rifle in his hand. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Bertha raise a hand at him. The bull returned the wave and went back inside.

The guard on duty at the rear gate booth was an old-timer named Swanson. He’d come out of the booth with his rain slicker on as we closed in on the gate. Hey, Mr. Stevens, he said, what’s this?

Special delivery, Stevens said. The warden said to bring these shirts over and leave them at the main gate.

I was impressed by Stevens’s coolness. I’d been afraid he’d give the game away with his face or voice, but he did fine.

Nobody said nothing to me, Swanson said. He looked past us to Big Bertha and said Hey, Albert.

It’s okay, Swanny, Bertha said, open up.

O
-kay, Swanson said with a shrug. He took a big key off his belt and worked it into the lock, muttering about the meaninglessness of official procedure and how nobody ever informed him of anything.

The lock clunked open and Swanson grunted as he pulled the heavy door back and we entered the courtyard. It was the first time I’d been in there since the day I’d arrived at M City. My pulse was thumping in my throat.

Don’t look like this rain’s gonna let up any time soon, does it Albert, Swanson said. He turned toward the building door but Bertha said Lock it back up, Swanny.

Swanson said Ah hell, Albert, you fellas are just gonna come right back out again.

Lock it, Evans said.

I had told Bertha to make sure Swanson locked the rear gate again. If things started jumping I didn’t want any of the yard hacks coming in behind us.

Swanson sighed like a man much imposed upon by unreasonable authority and relocked the gate. Then he went to the other door, a huge wooden thing with iron bracings, and pulled it open. We filed into a wide and brightly lit corridor with long wooden benches running along the windowless walls. Bertha closed the door behind us.

A dozen yards down the corridor was the main gate, which was actually two gates—one door at either end of a barred cage the full width of the passageway and some twenty feet long. A few yards on the other side of the cage the corridor ended at a heavy door like the one to the courtyard. Beyond that door was an alcove that gave onto the admin lobby.

Each of the main gate doors was manned by a guard, one inside the cage, one on the far side of it. They had been chatting through
the bars when we came in, and they stared narrowly at us as we followed Stevens up to the cage with our arms full of shirts.

The outer guard asked what was going on.

I said
Now,
and we dropped the shirts and I shoved Stevens hard against the bars and pointed my gun at the guard inside the cage and told him to stand fast. Russell had Bertha by the shirt collar and his pistol pressed to the back of his head. Red held his gun at Swanson’s ear.

The hack in the cage threw his hands straight up and said Oh God, don’t shoot. The other guard started backing away toward the alcove door but Charley aimed at him through the bars and said, Halt right there, my good fellow. And the hack did.

I told the one in the cage to unlock the gate and make it snappy. The guard worked the key and the lock clunked and I pushed the gate open and Russell propelled Big Bertha ahead of him across the cage and rammed him face-first into the bars on the other side. Evans groaned and dropped to his knees with a deep gash in his forehead and blood running down his face. Russell clubbed him on the ear with the pistol and then kicked him in his fat belly for good measure.

I made the inside guard sit on the floor with his hands in his pockets and ordered the other guard to open the second gate. The guy just stood there. You could see in his eyes he was thinking of saving the day. Charley cocked his piece and said Be reasonable, sir.

The hack eased forward and worked his key in the lock, but he was slow about it, and I knew he still had the notion of being a hero. Then the lock turned, and when Charley stepped back to let the gate swing open the hack whirled around and broke for the alcove door. But Red had seen it coming and ran out and caught the guy by the shirt collar before he got to the door, and he slung him around hard into the wall. The hack bounced off and fell on his ass and Red grabbed him by the hair and hit him twice with his pistol barrel and the guy keeled over on his side with his hands over his nose and blood seeping between his fingers.

Charley looked at him like a vexed schoolmaster and said How much the better for you, sir, if you’d simply been reasonable.

I told Shouse to round up the gate keys, then gave Red the nod and he heaved open the corridor door and we all rushed out through the alcove and into the lobby, waving our guns and yelling for everybody to stay right where they were.

A handful of clerks were scattered at various desks and cubicles behind a long counter and they gawked at us like we’d risen from the grave. I said to keep their mouths shut and they’d be fine. There were two enormous claps of thunder back to back and the rain smacked hard against the windows.

Russell went around yanking out telephone lines while Charley and Red ran behind the counter and went from office to office, rounding up about another eight or nine people. We wouldn’t know it till the next day when we read about it in the papers, but among those we had in our hands was the warden himself, whom none of us had ever seen and who had the good sense not to identify himself. The alarms hadn’t sounded yet and I figured the hacks were either still unaware of what was happening or they knew but were busy locking down the inmates before setting off the sirens. As we’d come to find out, another reason they held off so long with the alarm was they thought we’d taken the warden hostage.

Jenkins patted down the men and took their money, and he found a .32 five-shooter on a guy who said he was a parole officer from South Bend. I pointed to the only two women among the workers and told them they were coming with us. I wanted hostages the hacks could easily recognize as civilians. Charley gently took them aside, saying This way, ladies, if you will. The thunder was steadily booming now.

I felt a sudden rush of cool air and turned to see Walt, Okie Jack, Burns, and Fox going out the front door. That wasn’t part of the plan—we were supposed to stay together—but before I could say anything, they were outside and the door closed behind them.

I said for Jenkins to put the other employees in the main gate cor
ridor with Stevens and the hacks. He started ushering them over there, saying Let’s go, you Hoosiers, get a move on.

Lagging behind the others was a white-haired guy with a bad limp and a look of disgust. Punks, he said, looking right at Jenkins, nothing but punks.

Jenkins jabbed him in the side with the .32 and told him to shut his yap and get in the corridor. The old man had more nerve than was good for him—he slapped at the gun, saying Don’t point that thing at me, punk.

The gunshot was like an electric blast through the room and everybody jumped and the old man fell down and curled up in a ball, holding his side and saying
Jesus,
oh
Jesus.
The younger woman let out a little shriek and the other one told her to hush up for God’s sake.

Goddamnit,
Jenkins hollered at the old guy, look what you made me do!

I shoved him aside and bent over the old man. He wasn’t hit bad, just a deep tear through the flesh along the ribs. But it was hurting him plenty and he was really cursing us for bastards now.

Hell, he’s all right, Red said. He took hold of him under the arms and the old man groaned and swore even louder as Red dragged him over to the hallway door and let the other employees pull the old-timer in with them. Red said anybody who opened the door inside the next half hour would get a bullet in the head, then he shut the door on them.

I took the older of the two women by the arm and headed for the front door. Charley had hold of the young one, who said Please don’t hurt me. Charley told her to fear not, she was among gentlemen.

The visitor lot was out in front and we hoped there’d be at least one car there. If there wasn’t, we’d have to hustle out to the highway and hijack the first vehicle that came along.

A car was pulling away as we got outside. Looking back at us through the rear window of the sedan were Fox and Burns, with some guy in a hat sitting between them. Walt was driving and Okie Jack
was up in the front seat with him. A guy in civilian clothes stood in the driveway watching them go. He said he was a prisoner being transferred from another county by the high sheriff himself, but when they pulled up in front of the building they got surrounded by a bunch of convicts with guns. They made him get out of the car and took the sheriff with them.

The bastards left us, Shouse said.

We’ll jack one off the road, I said. Let’s go.

I tugged the woman up close beside me and started hotfooting it across the parking lot and toward the highway, the others close behind.

The new transfer yelled What about
me,
and Charley yelled back I hereby pardon you, laddybuck—try to be a better person.

The woman complained she couldn’t keep up and I said she’d better. The gun bull in the corner tower was looking down at us through the blowing rain. He held a telephone receiver to his ear with one hand and was jabbing his finger at us with the other, as if the guy he was talking to on the phone could see what he was pointing to.

There was a filling station where the prison road joined the highway and its neon sign shone a hazy orange. We were almost to the junction when the prison sirens started wailing. I heard a pistol shot and I looked over my shoulder as Russell fired two more rounds at the nearest tower. The bull ducked out of sight—as if anybody could’ve hit him with a handgun from that distance. Russ spun around and came running, giggling like a kid.

The woman was stumbling bad now and sucking air hard. Then down she went and I let her go. Behind me, huffing like a bellows, Fat Charley stopped running and kissed the younger woman’s hand and said something I didn’t catch, but I heard Russell yell Come on, Romeo,
move
it.

The highway lay empty in both directions as we ran across it but there was a brand-new Ford Phaeton at the station pumps. The attendant saw us coming and left the hose nozzle in the tank and ran away around the corner of the building. The man and two women in
the car stared out at us like terrified paralytics. I told them to get out, and Red yanked the hose from the tank. The guy behind the wheel and the woman by the front passenger door were quick to scramble out of the car, but the old lady in the backseat said she most certainly would not get out into the rain and we had no right to take her son’s car and blah-blah-blah.