Handsome Harry (39 page)

Authors: James Carlos Blake

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Thrillers, #Suspense

BOOK: Handsome Harry

10.57Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

We didn’t have the keys to the second gate, but there were wooden benches along the wall and several of the cons picked one up and started ramming the gate with it. The Bug climbed halfway up the bars and was jerking and shrieking like an enraged monkey.

Riflemen were lining up at the other gate.

I held the squarehead hack in front of me and yelled Don’t shoot or I’ll kill this bastard!

In those narrow corridors the sudden rifle fire was like a chain of dynamite blasts. The squarehead hollered
No-no-no!
as bullets sparked
and rang against the gate bars and ricocheted off the walls. One of the guys battering with the bench grabbed at his belly and went down screaming. Blood flew off somebody’s head. The bench crashed to the floor and the cons went racing back to the row. High on the bars the Bug was still screaming, and then he spasmed and dropped like a sprayed roach. The hack in my arms slumped into a dead weight and he slipped out of my grasp. I felt a hard shove on my shoulder and staggered halfway around and saw Charley slumped against the wall with his hands to his bloody chest. He grinned at me and started to say something—and his mouth blew apart in a red spray.

And then I was facedown on the floor and feeling the life draining out of me, and I knew another minute would be all she wrote.

But, as you know, it wasn’t….

O
CTOBER
17, 1934

So.

It’s past midnight, and they’re a little tardy, but here they are at the door.

The warden says something and then the guy with the Bible says something.

I’ve been shaved above the ankle and at the top of my head. They have to help me up, they have to hold me. Two big hacks position themselves close on either side of me and support me under the arms and by the back of my belt. They’re very strong, and from even a small distance it probably looks like I’m walking mostly under my own power and they’re simply holding tight to me. In fact, I’m hardly bearing any of my weight as we go out of the ready room and into the death chamber.

There are reporters but no cameras. All of them look like somebody just drew the curtain at the side show and they’re by God getting their two-bits’ worth.

And there it is….

Every picture I’d ever seen of one of them has scared me nearly witless, and for the last three weeks I’ve been as afraid as I’ve ever been.

Now here it is for real.

It’s smaller than I’d expected.

And much odder than it looks in pictures. Like something some crackpot put together in his garage.

The straps, the wires, the little metal cap….

The thing suddenly seems, well…funny.

Comic.

Silly as hell.

No. More than that. It strikes me as truly and hugely
ridiculous.

To think that this…this contraption…is the best they can come up with.

This
is what I was afraid of? Christ, what a waste of good fear.

The thing isn’t frightening, it’s…embarrassing.

Charley was dead right. It’s embarrassing to be killed this way, to be killed by people who think up shit like this. How can you think up something like this and have any self-respect?

On the other hand…it’s pretty amusing to see how pasty-faced serious they are.

I give a big smile to one and all as I’m strapped and buckled down. The reporters are scribbling like mad, and not a one of them smiling back.

The metal clamp closes around my ankle.

The metal cap clutches to my head.

The warden asks if I have anything to say.

I almost say Yes, would you please hold my hand?

But it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Not for this knock-kneed, worm-dick bunch. I go on smiling and shake my head.

They put the hood on me, and I hear them all back away a little.

Like they do when you pull the pistol and announce the stickup.

Jesus, it was grand.

It was always
so
grand…

Under the hood my grin grows and grows and feels like it’s going to—
WOOOOOOoooooooooooooo….

Author’s Note

It may be of interest to the reader that all of the central characters in this book were real people and most of its major events actually took place. It should be noted, however, that much of the pertinent historical record is vague, contradictory, or in error. In any case, this book is a novel, and as such its chief allegiance is not to the fact but to the truth of its story.

About the Author

Handsome Harry
is J
AMES
C
ARLOS
B
LAKE
’s eighth novel and ninth book of fiction. Among his literary honors are the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southwest Book Award, the Quarterly West Novella Prize, and the Chautauqua South Book Award. He lives in Arizona.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

P
RAISE
FOR
Handsome Harry

“Handsome Harry
is Blake’s most buoyant and polished novel yet…. Sassy, stubborn, funny, and resilient, his women are one of the delights of his novels…. Among other things, this is a great love story.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Handsome Harry
is a humdinger…. Blake brings this character to life so powerfully that we can’t help but find him an entertaining and somewhat sympathetic companion.”

—Otto Penzler,
New York Sun

“[An] engrossing novel…filled with hoodlums who are violent but honorable…capturing the attitudes and outlooks of the populace.”

—USA Today

“Blake at his edgy best…seductively violent.”

—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A beguiling, hurtling digression into a new voice for Blake.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“The gutsy Blake mimics a true criminal marvelously while telling an alluring story.”

—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Blake’s dialogue is fast, funny, and often raw…. A fast-paced novel that will pull readers into a world of violence, vendettas, and revenge…. Blake’s telling is oh, so good.”

—Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Blake writes with a bare-knuckled intensity that crackles with relevance and truth. Make no mistake about it, Blake is a master at his craft and his
Handsome Harry
is one of the best crime novels of the year.”

—Tucson Citizen

“Underpinning scenes of bank robberies, jailbreaks and bloody shootouts is a surprisingly intimate story of friendship, honor and desperate love…. A masterful social commentary on Depression-era America.”

—BookPage

“Harry’s voice is the smooth, almost affectless vernacular of a hardened con [in] this ‘ripped from the history books’ adventure as seen through Harry’s lens of tough verisimilitude.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A brilliant portrait of the real-life Pierpont….”

—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“Easily the year’s best crime novel.”

—
Clarion-Ledger
(Jackson, MS)

“The novel cooks harder than sly narrator Pierpont does when he meets his inevitable appointment with Old Sparky…. Blake brings this gin-soaked era back to life.”

—Booklist

“Irresistibly compulsive reading.”

—Library Journal

“Blake has created one charming gangster [and] tells the story with humor, finesse, and deftly paced action….
Handsome Harry
is a kick.”

—Tucson Weekly

“To categorize
Handsome Harry
merely as a ‘crime novel’ would neglect the solid characters and quality of Blake’s writing…. He keeps readers enthralled with the skill of a master storyteller.”

—Oxford Town

“The exuberantly unrepentant Harry Pierpont relates his story with power and raw vivacity.”

—
Book Folks

“Pierpont manages to seem both clever and good-natured even as he revels in the brutal things he’s capable of doing. This is a violent rogue’s memoir.”

—Arizona Republic

“Blake poses the central question of who did the greater harm, the Dillinger gang who robbed from the rich and became folk heroes or the merciless banks that foreclosed on homes and businesses rendered helpless by the Great Depression.”

—Fort Myers News-Press

“Fast-paced, very funny…snappy and hilarious dialogue…. All in all a fine book that sees James Carlos Blake going from strength to strength.”

—The Barcelona Review

“Blake brings alive the gang’s exploits—deadly shootouts, hard drinking, fast women—in this gripping novel…. [He] excels at merging historical fact with fiction.”

—
Playboy

“The time, place, and people all come alive through Blake…. This is a gifted writer.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“Masterful detail with a steady current of electric storytelling.”

—Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Mr. Blake remains the master of action-packed narrative. His prose is compulsively readable, and his characters [have] ferocious immediacy.”

—Dallas Morning News

“The novel has an appealing intimacy. Blake captures the outlaw gang perfectly, from psychopathic narcissism to jailhouse bravado to paranoid remorselessness.”

—Denver Post

O
THER
W
ORKS BY
J
AMES
C
ARLOS
B
LAKE

Under the Skin

A World of Thieves

Wildwood Boys

Borderlands

Red Grass River

In the Rogue Blood

The Friends of Pancho Villa

The Pistoleer

Copyright

HANDSOME HARRY
. Copyright © 2004 by James Carlos Blake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-196795-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1