Hot Springs (8 page)

“Goddamn her!” he exploded, his face white with fury, his temples pulsating, and he began to stride manfully toward his woman.

They spent the morning examining gambling joints from the hundreds in the town, from the smallest, dingiest sports books in the Negro areas out Malvern to some of the more prosaic slot halls on the west side out Ouachita to the elaborate Taj Mahals of Central Avenue. Any one of them could be the Central Book, but how would they know? None of the eight or so they eyeballed, entered, dropped a few bucks’ worth of quarters into, seemed remarkable in any way. Then they stopped at a Greek’s and had a couple of hamburgers and coffee.

“Is this what cops do?” asked Earl. “They just drive around and look at stuff?”

“Pretty much,” said D. A., taking a bite. “But when the shit happens, it happens fast. Just like in the war.”

“Okay, Mr. Parker. I believe you.”

“Earl, before this is all over, you’ll look back on these early days with some nostalgia. This is about as good as it gets.”

Earl nodded, and went back to his burger.

Finally, D. A. went off, dropped a nickel and made a call. He came back with a smile on his wrinkled, tanned prime of a face.

“This snitch I got at the Arlington, one of the bellboys, he says Bugsy and the babe are moving out today and the boys are going upstairs to get their luggage and load it up for them. Let’s go to the hotel and see if we can’t pick ‘em up.”

Earl threw down his cup of coffee, left some change at the counter and the two of them went out and got in the Ford.

When they got to the Arlington and parked above it on Central, with the grand entrance in easy view, it didn’t take long to pick up the caravan. The limo, which looked like it was thirty feet long, led the way out of the hotel’s grand entrance. It was followed by a pickup, full of luggage and black men. And behind that, a third car, a Dodge, where six of Owney’s minor gunmen and gofers—they were all from a hillbilly family called Grumley—sat dully, pretending to provide security.

From a few car lengths back, Earl and D. A. followed, taking it nice and easy, and kept contact as the folks in the big limo talked on and on. Earl could see that Bugsy and Owney did most of the chatting. The woman just looked out the window, her features frozen in place. The cavalcade made its way through the heavy traffic up Central, and a traffic cop overrode the light to let it pass, while D. A. and Earl cooled their heels behind the red. By the time they got to the station, the black men had the luggage off the truck and loaded onto a couple of hand carts and were hauling it toward the big yellow train.

“Is that the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe?” asked Earl, as D. A. pulled into a space on Market Street.

“No, Earl, that is not. That is the Missouri-Pacific 4:15 for St. Louis, the first step on the trip back to L. A. Now let’s get out and mosey over there and see what there is to see. Probably nothing, but for now I am sick of casing books in Niggertown.”

“I roger that,” said Earl.

The two split up, and drifted through the gathering crowd as the time of departure approached. Earl lit a cigarette, found a pillar to lean against far down the platform and commenced to smoke and watch. In time, he spotted the two gangsters talking animatedly near the station house, each smoking a gigantic cigar. The two fellows seemed to be having a good enough time. Other than that, nothing much was happening, though more and more people were boarding the train and the conductors seemed a little more frenzied. He glanced at his Hamilton, saw that it was just about 4:00 P. M. The all-aboard would come very soon. His leg hurt a little, as did his left wrist. He flexed his left hand, opening and shutting it, and shifted his weight, trying to keep his mind off of it. He wasn’t used to wearing a tie all day, either, and it was getting on his nerves, but he wasn’t about to loosen his, even in this heat, until D. A. did the same. He was thinking about a nice hot shower back in his cabin at the Best Tourist Court.

Suddenly someone stood before him, and he cursed himself for his lack of awareness. It was the woman. Her hair was red, and pinned up under a yellow beret. She stood on white, strapped heels in a yellow traveling suit cut right at the knee that showed off more leg than was healthy for anybody. She was staring at him intently, her eyes dark.

“Say, handsome,” she said, “did you use your last match to light that butt or would you have one or two others left in the box?”

Nothing shy about this one. And, she smelled great too. Her accent was sugar-dipped, like a fritter hot on a cool Southern morning, and he placed it as either from Georgia or Alabama.

“I might have another one here, ma’am,” he said. “Let me just dig through my gear and see.”

He stood, pulled the matchbox out from his inside pocket. He deftly opened it, took out a match, and struck it and cupped. He had large hands that protected the fragile flame from any gust of breeze. She came close, cupping his hands in hers, and drew his flame to her Chesterfield.

“There you go,” he said.

“Thanks, I needed that.” She stood back, inhaled deeply, then exhaled a zephyr of smoke.

“Do I know you?” he asked. “Ain’t you in the pictures?”

“Been in a couple, doll,” she replied. “But you had to look quick. It’s a crappy business unless you know big guys and I just happen to know the wrong big guys. The big guys I know scare the hell out of everybody else. You wouldn’t know any big guys, would you, handsome?”

“No ma’am,” said Earl, smiling. “I know a couple of generals, that’s all.”

“Oh, a soldier boy. I thought you might be a cop.”

“I used to be a Marine.”

“Bet you killed a tubful of Japs.”

“Well, ma’am, you just never could tell. It was so fast and smoky.”

“My chump boyfriend stayed in L. A. running a sports wire. He’s a real hero, the louse. He drags me all the way to this craphole town to meet picture people and they’re all small potatoes. It took me ten years to get out of towns like this, and here I am, back again.”

“You from Georgia, ma’am?”

“Alabama. Bessemer, the steel town. If you haven’t been there, you ain’t missed much, sugar. I—”

Earl had the peripheral impression of flailing, of something hot and wild suddenly swarming upon him, animal like, so fast it was stunning.

“What the fuck is going on?”

It was Bugsy Siegel, his nostrils flaring, his eyes livid with rage. Two flecks of gray gunk congealed in the corners of his mouth. His body radiated pure aggression and his eyes were nasty little pinpricks.

He grabbed the woman, roughly, by the elbow and gave her a powerful yank. The strength of it snapped her neck. He squeezed her arm hard until his knuckles were white.

“What the fuck is this all about, Virginia?” he demanded.

“Christ, Ben, I just got a light from this poor guy,” she said as she pulled her arm free.

“Sir,” said Earl, “there wasn’t nothing going on here.”

“Shut up, cowboy. When I talk to you, that’s when you talk to me.” He turned back to Virginia. “You fucking slut, I ought to smack you in the face. Get to the train. Go on, get your goddamn ass out of here!” He gave her a shove toward the train, and turned after her.

But then he thought better of it, and turned back to Earl. His hot eyes looked Earl up and down.

Earl gazed back.

“What are you looking at, bumpkin?”

“I ain’t looking at nothing, sir.”

“You fucking dog, I ought to beat the shit out of you right here. I ought to smash you into the pavement, you little nobody. You nothing. You piece of fucking crap.” His anger fueled the color of his language.

“Ben, leave the poor guy alone, I started talking to—”

“Shut up, bitch. Get her to the train, goddammit,” he barked at two of Owney’s Grumleys who’d shown up in support. Earl saw Owney himself with two others back a few steps and around them a cone of onlookers had formed. It was dead quiet.

“Do you know who I am?” Ben said.

“Ben, get ahold of yourself,” said Owney.

“He’s just a guy on a platform,” the woman yelled, pulling away from the two goons.

But now the focus of Ben’s rage was entirely upon Earl, who just stood there with a passive look on his face.

“Do you know who I am?” Siegel screamed again.

“No sir,” said Earl.

“Well, if you did, you fucking putz, you would be shitting bricks in your pants. You would be stinking up this joint. You do not want to fuck with me. You don’t even want to be in the same state as me, do you understand that, you country flickhead?”

“Yes sir,” said Earl. “I only lit the lady’s cigarette.”

“Well, you thank your fucking lucky stars I didn’t decide to wipe your ass on the railway tracks, you got that, Tex? Do you get that?”

“Yes sir,” said Earl.

Bugsy leaned close. “I killed seventeen men,” he said. “How many you killed, you pitiful farmer?”

“Ah, I’d say somewhere between 300 and 350,” said Earl.

Bugsy looked at him.

“And see,” Earl explained further, “here’s the funny thing, the boys I killed, they was trying to kill me. They had machine guns and tanks and rifles. The boys you killed was sitting in the park or in the back seat of a car, thinking about the ball game.” Then he smiled a little.

At first Bugsy was stunned. No one had ever talked to him this way, particularly not in the face of one of his rampages. And then it struck him that this hick wasn’t scared a lick. The guy smiled at Bugsy and—fuck him, fuck him, FUCK HIM!—actually winked.

Bugsy threw his punch with his right. It wasn’t a roundhouse, for he was a skilled fighter and knew that roundhouses were easily blocked. It was an upward jab, with the full force of his body behind it, and his reflexes were fast, his strength considerable and his coordination brilliant, all driven by his mottled fury. He meant to punch the cowboy right below the eye and cave in the left side of his face.

He threw the punch and for quite a while—say somewhere between .005 and .006 second—felt the soaring pleasure that triumph in battle always unleashed in him, the imposition of his will on an unruly world, his ego, his beauty, his cunning, all in full expression. He knew important people! He hung out with movie stars! He fucked a countess, he fucked Wendy Barrie, he fucked hundreds of the world’s most beautiful starlets! He was Bugsy, the Bugman, Bughouse, friend of Meyer and Lucky, he counted in this world.

Then it all vanished. With a speed that he could never have imagined, the cowboy got a very strong hand inside his wrist to turn the blow, not so much block it, and with his other hand himself strike.

Bugsy was not a coward. He had been in many street fights, and he’d won most of them. He was indefatigable in battle when he had a stake in the outcome, and his rage usually sealed him off from the sensation of pain until hours later. He had been hit many times. But the blow he absorbed took all that away from him. It was a short right-hand punch that traveled perhaps ten inches but it had a considerable education in mayhem behind it, and it struck him squarely below the heart, actually cracking three ribs. It was a hammer, a piston, a jet plane’s thrust, an atom bomb. It sucked the spirit from him. The shock was red, then black, and his legs went, and he slipped to the platform, making death-rattle sounds, feeling bile or blood pour from his nostrils to destroy his bow tie. He urped and his lunch came up. He convulsed, drew his legs up to his chest to make the hurt go away, sucked desperately for oxygen and felt something he had not felt in years, if ever: fear.

His antagonist was kneeling.

“You know what?” he said. “I only hit you half as hard as I know how. If I see you in this town again, I’ll hit you so hard it’ll knock your guts out of your skin. Now you get on this train and you go far, far away. Don’t come back, no more, no how, not ever.”

He stood and looked Owney square in the eye.

“You or any of your boys want to try me, Mr. Maddox, you go right ahead.”

Owney and his crew of Grumleys took a step back.

“I didn’t think so,” said Earl, smiled, winked at the pretty lady and slipped away.

After he regained his voice and his legs, but not his color, Bugsy turned his rage on Owney, demanding to know who the vanished cowboy was. Owney admitted he didn’t know at all. As the crew of Owney’s Grumley boys led him to the Pullman car and as he nursed the wretched pain in his side, Bugsy passed out what could only be an edict, with the full power of his associates back east behind it: You find out who that guy is. You find out where he lives, who he hangs with, what he does. You mark him well. But do not touch him. I will touch him. Touching him, that’s for me, do you understand?

Owney nodded.

Virginia said, “Sugar, you’re going to touch him with what now, a howitzer? An atom bomb? A jet?” She threw back her hair, flushed and victorious, and laughed powerfully, a laugh that emerged from a diaphragm as if coated in boiled Alabama sap and grits. “Honey,” she said, “you ain’t got the guts to face that kind of how-de-do again, let me tell you. Ha! He got you so good! You should have seen the look on your face when he poked you! You poor ol’ thing, you done got the white beat off you!”

“Virginia, shut up,” said Bugsy. “You were the cause of all this.”

“So how was I supposed to know he was Jack Dempsey? Anyhow, you were the idiot that swung on him. Couldn’t you see he was a tough guy? He looked tough. He stood tough. He talked tough. And, honey, he sure as hell hit tough!”

“Do you want a doctor, old man?” Owney asked. “We could delay the train.”

“And let these hicks laugh at me some more? Let some hick sawbones pick at me? No thank you. Owney, you said you ran a smooth town. You said we’d all be safe here, you owned things, things ran great in Owney’s town. And this happens. Some ringer. He had to be a pro boxer. I never saw no guy’s hands move that fast, and I never got hit so fucking hard in my life. So maybe this ain’t such a safe town and maybe you ain’t doing such a good job.”

With that he limped bravely up the steps of the Missouri-Pacific and was taken to his Pullman stateroom by a covey of Negro porters.

Virginia followed, but she turned for a last whisper to the befuddled Owney.