Red Highway (9 page)

When Virgil heard this, he almost dropped the month-old copy of
Liberty
he had been pretending to read and looked up at the ugly speaker. He had met Fred Burke, back in the Farrell days. At that time, Burke had been a skinny punk who spent most of his time following Virgil wherever he went and begging the older robber to show him the big Luger “just one more time.” Finally the strain of ducking the punk had gotten to be too much and Virgil had talked Farrell into giving the kid his walking papers. And now they called him “Killer.” Virgil shook his head and turned to an article about Lenin.

When he wasn't sitting within earshot of the radio, Virgil was busy operating the steam press in the laundry. He had been at it so long that he had begun to take pride in his work, folding the damp gray prison uniforms just so, so that he could put a sharp professional crease right down the sleeves and along the seams, just as he had seen his mother do with a flatiron when he was a boy. He called it “the Ballard press,” but only to himself. Pride in one's accomplishments behind bars was not likely to be received favorably by one's fellow inmates at McAlester. But he still felt satisfaction when he saw a hardened con walking the yard with the Ballard press prominently displayed on his uniform. Indeed, the only time he didn't dwell over the passage of time in prison was when he was swinging down the heavy top of the big press and listening with satisfaction as the steam hissed solidly out through the apertures in the side.

Doubly satisfying to him was the knowledge that his “servant,” the man who carted the laundry to and from the press, had been a vice-president of a multimillion-dollar corporation on the outside. Unfortunately for him, some young efficiency expert had discovered that the big shot had been dipping into the till to support an extravagant mistress, and here he was. Virgil enjoyed ordering him around and read him out unmercifully whenever he dropped a load of freshly pressed uniforms, which happened often because the man suffered from arthritis. He felt superior to the older con, for one simple reason: Bank robbers were more honest than embezzlers. “You know you're being robbed when a guy pokes a gun in your ribs and demands money,” Virgil told him once, “but when one of your own employees goes wrong, he can steal you blind before you realize it.” The man had merely glared at him with a pained look on his face and turned away to pick up a fresh batch of uniforms.

One day in October, 1929, the ex-big shot failed to show up. When his replacement arrived, Virgil asked him casually what had happened to “John D. Rockefeller.”

The ruddy-faced replacement looked at him a moment before he spoke. “He's dead.”

“Dead?” Virgil was taken aback. “What happened? Did he fall off his wallet?”

“Search me,” shrugged the other. “All I know is, a buddy of mine who works in the hospital says they carried him out this morning with the sheet over his face.”

It wasn't until late that afternoon, when Virgil was listening to the radio in the barbershop, that he figured out what had happened. A deep-voiced announcer boomed out the news that the stock market had taken the biggest plunge in its history. It was the beginning of the crash. Then Virgil saw everything clearly. The ex-vice-president had every reason to believe that when his sentence was over he would have over a million dollars coming from his investments. Now, that hope had been dashed, along with all the others, and it had been too much. The shock had killed him.

But time passed for Virgil Ballard. The Roaring Twenties died with a whimper, and 1930 sprang upon the prison as it did everywhere else. Unemployment loomed dark in the future. Businesses died. As the stark statistics began to roll from the radio, Virgil began for the first time to feel grateful for his presence in the prison, and to look forward each morning to operating the press. He thought of himself as one of a very few who had nothing to worry about in the way of layoffs and firings.

“Busy, Virge?”

Virgil knew who it was without turning. There was only one man in the whole prison who called him by that name. He snapped off the radio and leaned back in his seat, regarding Alex Kern from beneath heavy eyelids.

Alex grinned at Virgil from his place beside him on the bench, showing off his gold tooth. He was a long, lanky lad, like Virgil, but in a city-bred way, and had a shock of dull black hair which he kept cropped close to his head around the back and temples, letting it grow full and thick on top. His sleepy eyelids would have made him look backward had it not been for his quick, cockeyed smile that so disarmed anyone upon whom he chose to train it. The combination added up to a witty and cocksure appearance. He looked more like a con man than a bank robber. From what Virgil had learned of the man's past, he knew that Kern was a combination of both.

“Does it look like I'm busy?” Virgil slipped a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it.

“I never can tell, you're always listening to that damn squawk box.”

“So what's up?”

Kern eyed the sullen barber, who was finishing off the back of a convict's neck with his razor. “Not here. Let's go to your cell.”

Virgil shook his head. “Not now, I got fifteen minutes before I go back there.”

“Well, we got to go somewhere private.”

“All right.” Virgil got up from the bench and led the way out into the yard. The two convicts pushed through the clusters of gray-clad men who had gathered in the well-trodden area, and came to a stop in a quiet corner of the wall beneath the west tower.

“Spill it,” said Virgil.

Alex glanced around furtively, looked up at the bell that would soon call them back to their cells, then returned his gaze to Virgil's freckled face. “They tell me you're a hotshot when there's a vault around.”

Virgil didn't answer, but regarded him coolly.

Kern went on. “They say the same thing about me. But we're both in stir, ain't we? So we can't be such hotshots after all.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Yeah. Well, have you ever thought why guys like us keep getting caught? The reedy con didn't wait for an answer. “We keep getting caught because the cops ain't scared enough of us.”

Virgil smiled for the first time, but his smile was grim. “Yeah, I noticed that. I keep expecting 'em to run away whenever I come out of a bank with a bag of money in my hand. I can't imagine why they don't.”

Alex ignored the sarcasm. “We can make 'em run, you know. Or stand still. Anything we want.” He looked around once again, then reached into his sweat-stained shirt and pulled out a folded sheet of thin paper, which he spread out beneath Virgil's nose.

It was a sheet torn from a magazine. It was wrinkled, and there were two notches in one edge of the page where the staples had been. But that wasn't what caught Virgil's eye. There was an illustration at the top of the sheet, a long black silhouette that somewhat resembled the others on the page, yet was different. The gun's squat buttstock was shaped much like those below it, as was the barrel, though a little shorter than the others, but there were two curved grips that were not found in any of the other rifles.

The most important difference, however, was the round piepan drum suspended from the stout barrel. It was a Thompson submachine gun, model 1928, equipped with a fifty-shot drum. The statistics beneath the picture identified it as a .45-caliber, capable of firing 1600 rounds per minute. Virgil whistled in spite of himself.

“Some gun, huh?” Alex held it under his companion's nose a moment longer, then refolded it and returned it to the inside of his shirt. “Them guys in Chicago used two of these last year in that garage.”

Virgil had recovered his cool exterior. “It's a good gun. So what?”

“I know where we can get one.”

It was a long time before Virgil spoke. Then he sneered. “Good for you. How do you plan to smuggle it past the gate?”

Kern placed a hand on his arm, stopping him. “I'm not talking about now.” This time it was his turn to sneer. “You think I'm idiot enough to make a break with only six months left to serve?”

“I don't know. What are you talking about?” Virgil let his arm drop.

Kern slapped his chest, rustling the sheet of paper that was folded against it. “I know a place where they keep a whole bunch of these meat-choppers. It won't take nothin' to break 'em out. Man, when somebody shows up with one of them under his arm, ain't nobody gonna get in his way. If you'd had one back in Tulsa, you'd be on the streets right now.”

Virgil thought about that, and decided Kern was right. “Yeah. So?”

“So just imagine you and me walking into a bank and letting little old Tommy do the talking.”

“You crazy? I'm in for life. Last I heard, nobody was planning to put a branch of the First National here in McAlester.”

Alex Kern straightened in his seat and relaxed. “Well, now, that's where I come in.”

Then the bell rang.

Chapter Nine

July 14, 1931.

Bastille Day entered McAlester Penitentiary to a fanfare that made the celebration in Paris pale by comparison. High-pitched sirens split the air, their screams rising and falling like crashing waves, doubling and redoubling as other mechanical clarions joined them. The naked stone towers came ablaze in a sudden flare of searchlights and swayed eerily as the white beams shifted and crossed within the confines of the barren yard. On a less cosmic level the shadows in the yard moved and spewed forth uniformed guards from all over, running and shouting to each other as they brandished their freshly unslung weapons before them. The heavy machine guns in the towers flashed in the harsh artificial light as their operators swung them into position and fixed their brass sights on the illuminated area below. In the space of a few seconds, the entire heap of stone and steel had been transformed into a hunting creature.

Virgil Ballard paid no attention to the commotion as he crawled slowly and laboriously up a rope of knotted sheets and mattress covers to the top of the south wall. Once there, he rammed his heel against his homemade grabbling hook to set it deeper into the wall's ancient fissure, flung the rope to the other side, and slid down to the ground outside the prison. Then he began to run.

A guard spotted him, shouted, and swiveled his machine gun in line with Virgil's retreating back. Virgil felt the dirt hit his legs as the bullets chewed up the ground behind him and put on an extra burst of speed. In the next moment he had outrun the searchlights and the darkness swallowed him up.

The gates burst open and a massive touring car roared out through the opening, spraying gravel as it took the turn and bounded off the road, bouncing over the clotted field in pursuit of its lone prey. Virgil heard its powerful engine surging behind him and ran faster. He stumbled over the knotted clumps of weeds, tore headlong through the underbrush, and plunged into a small wooded lot. Behind him, the headlights of the touring car groped over the field like two relentless fingers, sweeping and searching for some sign of movement in the myriad shadows. Virgil veered out of the woods and headed up a grassy slope toward the ridge that etched the horizon. His blood was pounding in his ears and he felt his breath sawing in his throat when his feet clapped on the gravel road. He collapsed across the road and lay there, facedown, breathing the dust that settled slowly around him.

The surface began to vibrate and something growled in the distance, increasing in volume as it drew near. Soon it became a roar, and this was accompanied by the sound of flying gravel, then was overcome by the grind of a transmission collapsing steadily downward. Tires scraped on gravel, a car door slammed shut.

“Virge? You all right?”

Virgil rolled over on his back. He couldn't make out Alex Kern's features in the glare of the headlights, but he fancied he saw a crooked grin on his slim face.

“Hell, boy, you're just out of shape. Come on.”

He hauled Virgil to his feet and helped him into the little coupe's front seat. Then he got in and hit the accelerator. The back wheels spun and the car bolted away before the lights of the big touring car showed above the ridge.

Standing in the warden's office in his uniform, the head of the Oklahoma State Police looked bigger than he was. His abnormally broad shoulders and thick torso added to the illusion by tapering smoothly into a narrow waist, itself hung with a military cartridge belt and another, distinctly unregulation belt with a broad Western buckle. In reality, during the few seconds that the warden had remained standing to greet him, the officer had been forced to look up at the older man.

Now, as the warden took his seat behind the worn desk, he indicated the small armchair in the corner. The officer drew the chair up to the desk and sat down.

“Cigar?” The warden flipped open the carved wooden box at his elbow. The officer shook his head. The warden shrugged and lit one for himself. He held the match to the end longer than he had to, puffed furiously, then shook it out and dropped it into a brass ashtray, already littered with butts and the corpses of other matches. Then he sat back. “Well,” he said, “how can I help the state police?”

“There are a few things I'd like to know,” said the other quickly. He had a high, sharp voice, urgent and irritating. “First of all, how did Ballard escape?”

“That's easy enough.” The warden opened his desk drawer and drew out something long and thin, which he handed to his visitor. It was a narrow strip of steel, a little over twelve inches long, with a machine-serrated edge.

“Hacksaw blade,” explained the warden calmly. “Ballard used it to saw through the bars in the window of his cell. The teeth were still hot when we found it lying in the yard.”

The officer examined the blade closely, turning it over in his fingers. Then he laid it on the desk. “Where'd he get it?”

“That's the embarrassing part,” said the warden after a moment's hesitation. “We figure it was smuggled into the prison by Ballard's lawyer, a man by the name of Arthur Pennant.”