Hot Springs (25 page)

“Sir, I—”

The bullets hit her in the back, blowing her sideways against the wall; she jackknifed, her eyes rolling up, then fell forward off the top stair. She rolled down the stairway, arms and legs flung this way and that, her head bobbing loosely. Earl grabbed her, and held her close, getting her blood all over him. He felt her struggle to rise, watched her eyelashes flutter as if to make a last claim on life, and then she died in his arms. He was holding her hand so tightly he thought he’d break her fingers.

“Hey, you lawmen,” came a low Grumley voice. “You come on up and git more of that. We got lots of it up here fer you too. And we got four more nigger gals up here and they ain’t gittin’ out alive, ‘less you go and get our truck.”

“Your truck is blown all to shit,” Earl called back. “I lit it up my own self and whoever was aboard is burnt crispy. You hurt any more of them gals and I will personally see that you leave here in a pine box. You come out or you’ll toast in hell tomorrow morning, that I swear.”

He turned to the closest man to him, who happened to be Frenchy.

“You know where my car is?”

“Yes sir,” said Frenchy.

Earl took Frenchy’s Thompson and spare magazines, unscrewing the stock bolt as he spoke.

“You head on back there and open the trunk and git me some more of them BAR magazines. I’m clean out. You bring ‘em to me, ‘cause I may need ‘em.”

“Can I have my gun?” said Frenchy nervously.

“Go on, git the goddamn magazines!” said Earl, pushing him rudely back down the hallway.

He had the bolt out and tossed the stock away. He turned to Stretch.

“I’m going to head up for a lookie see. Y’all stay here.”

“Earl, you ain’t got no goddamn vest.”

“I can’t move with the goddamn vest. You hold here but you wait on my signal. You got that?”

“Earl, we ought to wait till—”

“You do what I tell you!” Earl said, his dark, mad eyes boring into the boy, who turned away under the assault.

Bitterly, Frenchy ran by other crouching raiders out into the alley. Twice he was stopped by men who wanted to know what was going on, but he ran onward.

He got to the alley and saw that each end was now blocked by police cars, whose red lights flashed into the night. A light came on him and he pulled his vest aside to show the badge on his chest, and ran ahead, getting to EarPs car.

He opened the trunk, and found a boxful of BAR mags, all loaded.

Suddenly two policemen and some kind of plainclothes detective were there by him.

“What the hell is going on, bud?” asked the detective.

“We may need backup. They have four Negro girls held hostage upstairs. We killed a batch but there’s more.”

“Hell, we ain’t going in there. Sounds like a goddamned war.”

“You go to Becker!” Frenchy said hotiy. “He’ll tell you to come up and support us.”

“I ain’t getting no men shot up over nigger whores, bud. You goddamned Jayhawkers started this one, you finish her up. I don’t work for no Fred Becker.”

“Where is Becker?”

“He’s up front posing for photographers and I got a feeling he’s pretty goddamned upset over this goddamned battle thing y’all got going in Mary Jane’s.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you and the mule you rode in on, Zeke,” said Frenchy, and then turned and ran with the mags.

He was halfway there when he heard the sound of tommy guns.

Earl slithered ever so slowly up the staircase, climbing over the debris of screws and what-not. When he reached the halfway point he could see over the edge into the hallway. Spread out and gazing resolutely at the heaven he’d never enter lay a mean-looking old Grumley boy, his eyes black and blank as diamonds. He lay in his own blood and a litter of hundreds of shells. Another boy lay a few feet away, his hands clenched around his belly, which blossomed blood.

Earl pointed the Thompson at him.

“You best show me your hands or I will finish you right here,” he said.

“I am so gutshot I am going nowheres, so you go ahead and finish me, you law town bastard,” said the man, who turned out to be but a boy of twenty, though his face was clenched in pure adult hatred.

“Lay there then and bleed,” said Earl. “It don’t make no matter to me.”

He slipped up another step, saw that the feed lid on the big German machine gun was still up, meaning it could no longer be fired. He slipped a bit farther forward, grabbed the snakelike curl of ammo belt that lay beneath the gun, and gave it a yank. He held it, then yelled, “Watch out, coming down,” and flicked it downward. He signaled with his fingers: three, then he pointed to his handgun.

Obediently, three raiders—Slim, as senior man, Terry and Carlo, who were next in the stick—yielded their Thompsons to others and slid up the steps until they were just below him.

“They must be down at the other end in one of them rooms, but they got them gals. If you have to shoot you use your pistols and you aim carefully, you got that? You shoot at Grumleys, not at motion. They may push the gals out first. Shoot their legs, their pelvises and wait for the girls to break free. Then you go for chest or head. Got that?”

“Earl, they got machine guns!”

“Y’all do what I tell you or I’ll get three more birds and you can go wait in the cars.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m going acrost the hall. You cover me, you got that?”

“Yes sir.”

“You make sure you got your goddamn vests on.”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay. On the count of three. Ready. Three!”

Earl jumped across the hall, almost slipped in Grumley fluid and empty shell casings, but made it. Just as he ducked into a room, a man at the end of the hall stuck his head out with a tommy gun and blasted a lengthy burst at him, but immediately the three raiders returned fire, driving him back.

“I think I got him,” said one.

“I don’t know,” said another.

Earl, meanwhile, looked around the room. Squashed into the corner and holding on dearly to each other, two more Negro gals cried softly.

“Y’all be quiet now,” said Earl. “We’re going to get you out, okay?”

One of them nodded.

Earl peeked around the corner and saw nothing. He nodded over to Slim and held out two fingers, cranked his thumb back to indicate he was sending the women over.

Slim nodded.

“Okay,” he said, “y’all get over here and get ready to run. I’m going to fire a little bit. They won’t be shooting. You just jump over to the stairs and go on down and somebody will take care of you. Don’t you pay no mind to the shooting I’m going to do. You got that?”

Both nodded.

Earl stepped out into the hall, and fired half a magazine into the ceiling at the rear of the corridor, watching the bullets tear into the plaster. The two girls dipped across, where they were grabbed by Carlo, who ushered them downstairs.

Frenchy returned to the hallway adjacent to the stairwell, breathing hard. He could see that the action had moved upstairs. He bent over and retrieved Earl’s BAR, took one of the magazines, and implanted it. Then he cranked the bolt back.

The thing was heavy, and as he had his pockets jammed with other loaded magazines, he felt quite a burden as he rose. He walked around to where other raiders crouched at the foot of the stairs. He could see three others up there.

“I got Earl’s gun reloaded,” he said.

“Well, he seems kind of busy just now,” said Elf.

“Well, hell, he sent me to get ammo for that gun and so he must need it.”

Eff and the others just looked at him.

“Look out,” he commanded. “I’m taking it up to him.”

Frenchy pushed his way by them and began to edge his way up the steps.

Earl watched the room at the end of the hallway. He heard a motion, like a squirming or shifting, and the next thing he knew a man laid out with a shotgun and fired. He felt the sting of pellet, but fired too, finishing off the magazine. The bullets whacked chunks of plaster off the wall and the Grumley boy slumped and fell amid a white cascade of shattered masonry.

Frenchy started when the gunfire suddenly erupted. At that moment also his foot found a puddle of Grumley blood that had coagulated on the fourth step. Before he knew what was happening, he slid downward, struggled for purchase and fell hard. He clenched as he fell and was aware that he squeezed off a five-or six-shot burst of automatic rifle fire. Men ducked and fell to avoid the shots, and the gun pivoted in his descent, still pumping, and sent a load of bullets through the window, blowing it out in the process.

But then he was down, hard, his ass suddenly hot with pain from the fall.

“Jesus Christ, Short! What the hell are you doing?”

“I fell, goddammit. Is anybody hurt?”

“You are a lucky son of a bitch,” someone said. “You didn’t clip nobody down here but you’re going to have to pay for a new window.”

“Fuck it,” said Frenchy. He pushed the mag release button so that the half-empty mag fell out, and replaced it with one from his coat pocket. Then he picked himself up, climbed the rest of the way, and bullied his way between the raiders at the top.

“Earl,” he shouted, “I have the BAR.”

Earl looked at him, shook his head. But then he nodded, and gestured for the boy to come across.

He stepped into the hallway, and fired, issuing suppressing fire that again chewed into the masonry far at the end of the hall.

When Frenchy made it safely across, he pulled him back and took the BAR. Frenchy reached for the Thompson, but Earl threw it across the room onto the bed.

“You leave it be. Stick near me, and when I drop a magazine, you hand me a new one. You got that?”

“Yes sir,” said Frenchy.

But Earl was already leaning out the hallway.

“Slim,” he said, “y’all be ready over there. I’m going to work my way down the hall. You weave behind me, clear the rooms. I think they’s empty. When I get into the room next to the one they’re in, I’m going to shoot through the walls. This .30 caliber should kick right through. I’ll shoot high but I’ll scare the shit out of ‘em. They’ll a-come running out, and you boys be ready, you got that?”

“Yes sir,” said Slim.

“You ready, kid?” he asked Frenchy.

Frenchy gulped.

Earl stepped out, the BAR locked in the assault position, its butt clamped under his arm, its long muzzle pointing down the hail. Like his caddie Frenchy cowered behind, two mags in one hand, one in the other, others stuffed into his suit coat. It seemed almost comic—the man with the vest cowering behind the man without one—but nobody laughed.

As second in the stick, Carlo let Slim dash forward into the first room, duck in and shout “Clear!”

It was his turn. As Earl moved forward, hunched and urgent, and passed the next doorway, he jumped toward it. Ooof! He stumbled, caught himself, and looked down to discover a Grumley toppled over in a pool of his own blood, his fingers latticed around a belly wound that still pulsated. But Carlo could tell in a second he was dead, and flew on.

He kicked open the door, scanned quickly over the sights of the .45 which he had locked before him at the end of his two tightened arms. He pivoted, finding the room empty, checked behind the door, then dashed to a closet, finding only frilly women’s clothes.

“Clear!” he yelled.

“Clear!” came another call, as a third raider worked a room behind Earl’s staunch advance.

Finally, there was only the one room left, the last room on the right. A dead Grumley lay on this floor too, though Carlo wasn’t sure when he’d been hit. He couldn’t remember many details of the past three or four minutes.

He crouched in a doorway, on his left knee, his pistol fixed on the last entryway, his wrists braced against the wall. Slim was above him in the same position, only standing, and down the hallway, two or three other raiders had taken up positions in doorways.

Earl yelled to the surviving Grumleys.

“We got y’all covered. You come on out and you won’t get hurt.”

“Fuck you, lawman,” yelled a Grumley from inside.”You come in this room, we’re gonna start blasting these here nigger gals and we’ll all go to hell for breakfast.”

“Don’t hurt them gals. They ain’t done nothing to you.”

“No man tells a Grumley what to do, you bastard. Who the hell you think you are! This is our town, it ain’t yours. You get out of here or by God there’ll be blood in rivers spilt. No Grumley goes down easy, you hear me?”

But Earl wasn’t listening. Instead he’d slipped into the room next door, oriented his automatic rifle to the common wall with the room where the last Grumley boys crouched with their hostages. He stitched a burst across the wall, about seven feet high. The old wood and plasterboard vaporized under the buzzsaw of .30 caliber bullets. The magazine was done in two seconds. Dust floated heavily in the air.

“Another,” he yelled, and Frenchy placed the mag in his hand. He jammed it in and fired it off in another single roaring blast.

Dust blew and floated everywhere, like fog.

Screams came from inside the room.

Suddenly the door blew open and a Negro gal sprawled out, thrown out by two Grumleys to draw fire. But she didn’t, for the raiders stayed unexcited and reasonable, and in fact after falling to her knees, she got up and ran down the hallway, screaming “Don’t shoot me, oh please, sirs, don’t shoot me.”

Earl fired another magazine, and it was enough.

They all broke from the room, Grumleys in rage and fleeing prostitutes in panic, figures in the foggy dust only readable by body postures.

In the fog, only gun flashes leapt out. Carlo fired at what had to be a man and brought him down as two or three of the gals ran clear. Above him, Slim found a target and fired, and his man fell backward, his finger jacking the trigger of a Thompson, which whittled a nasty gash in the ceiling. Two more black girls fled by, and a last Grumley came out of the room with a shotgun and three raiders shot him simultaneously and he fell down atop still a third.

Dust heaved. From somewhere women howled. Gunsmoke filled the air.

Earl clicked in a new magazine and slid to the side of the last door, then stepped in.

A last Grumley huddled in the corner, behind the large yellow mass of a woman in a dressing gown who screamed and blubbered but could not escape his iron grip. He had a big revolver jammed into her throat.