Hot Springs (19 page)

“You Aussie bastard.”

The reference was to one of Ben’s more regrettable adventures. With a former lover who billed herself a countess by way of some forgotten marriage to an actual Italian count, he had rented a yacht and gone to an island off the coast in search of pirates’ treasure. It had been quite the joke in Los Angeles in the social season of 1941.

“Don’t pick on Ben,” said Virginia. “He has big plans. He does know where the treasure is buried and it is in a desert, only it ain’t on an island.”

“Virginia, you bitch.”

“Tut tut, old man,” said Errol, moving on to another table.

“You shoulda smashed him,” said Georgie. “He can be an asshole. You understand, I can’t take him on because he still has Jack Warner’s ear, and he might talk against me. I might get another shot at Warner’s, so I don’t want to do nothing now.”

“You’re dreaming,” said Virginia. “You couldn’t smack him because you’re afraid of him. He’s pretty tough, they say. And genius here couldn’t smack him because he can’t smack anybody without puking all over his clothes.”

“Virginia, leave it alone.”

“Did he tell you that story, Georgie? He tries to strong-arm this cowboy in Hot Springs and the guy hits him so hard he can’t sit up straight for a week and a half. And I had to listen to him all that time, whinin’ like a baby.”

“I’ll fix that guy.”

“Yeah, you’ll fix him. You and some army. Ben, why don’t we go back right now? Fix him this week. Get it out of the way?”

Ben’s eyes clouded and his face tightened.

“I got business to take care of first.”

“He’s spooked by this guy. So he’ll hire goons to clip him, because he don’t have the guts to do it man on man.”

“I will fix that guy,” Bugsy swore. “I will fix him after I fix Owney and after I fix Hot Springs. Forget Hot Springs. Its time is over. The future is in the desert, goddammit, and I will lead the way.”

The Belmont lay close to the Oaklawn Racetrack, just south of Hot Springs. If the Horseshoe was your run-of-the-mill joint, with a hundred duplicates on almost any street in town, the Belmont was a step up the food chain. It offered the fancier gamblers a sense of class without quite demanding of them the tuxedoed glamour—with its Xavier Cugats and its Perry Comos—that a place like the Southern Club might. The entertainment tended to be regional, usually a piano combo that played light jazz. It sold cocktails at the bar, not shots, not champagne. Its machines were the sleeker Pace Chrome Comet, which looked as if it could get up and fly, the hottest thing from the year 1939, as its reels spun bells and apples and bananas and oranges this way and that. These machines weren’t as tight as the older models, which meant that once or twice a night a line of bells would pop up and a pilgrim would be rewarded with a silver cascade of nickels. The house payoff was a modest 39 percent.

It stood in the same hollow as the now deserted racetrack, under a low piney ridge, and it had been done up in the style of the antebellum South, to resemble a wooden plantation house with fake columns and white trim that a Scarlett O’Hara might have designed. A valet crew parked cars; the overhanging elms gave it hushed and muted elegance.

Rather than enter the gates and move into the parking lot, in plain sight of the valets, D. A. elected to infiltrate from the empty racetrack. The three cars discharged their men on the far side, and there the raiders loaded magazines, checked weapons, put on vests and went over their plans for the last time. Becker was already there, this time with two men on his staff and a clerk-driver.

D. A., Earl and Becker hunched undercover in a racetrack portico, examining a diagram of the Belmont with a flashlight.

“Since this is a bigger, more complicated structure,” said D. A., “I’d rather have muscle up front. I’d send ten men through the front door and side door—a six-man team and a four-man team—and I’d bolt that kitchen door and leave two men out back to cover it. That way, you got all your force up front and you get it into play.”

“I don’t want any shooting,” said Becker suddenly. “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

There was a quiet moment.

Then D. A. said, “Well, sir, then I guess we better gather the boys up and take ‘em home. I ain’t sending men into a dangerous situation with the idea they can’t defend themselves.”

“No, no,” said Becker. “They can defend themselves. I just want ‘em to think before they shoot.”

“If they think before they shoot,” said Earl, “they may die before they shoot.”

“We train ‘em to shoot instinctively. They’ve been trained hard. There won’t be no mistakes.”

“like the Horseshoe?” Becker said.

“That weren’t no mistake, sir,” said the old man. “That was a completely justified legal shooting during the commission of a bonded officer’s official duty, and we ought to thank the man who done it, for it probably saved some lives.”

Becker seemed to vacillate, almost biting his lower lip like a child.

“It just played bad in the papers, that’s what I mean. I have more photogs from little Rock here,” he finally said. “We need the Little Rock papers behind us. They’ll get the state behind us. The Hot Springs papers don’t matter. But you can’t screw up in front of Little Rock reporters. Okay?”

Both officers nodded, and Earl was thinking: This bird wants everything. He wants us to raid without killing and he doesn’t want the action to get out of control. He’s worried more about the press than the young men who are going in tonight. You can’t control this work like that.

“We’ll brief the boys,” said D. A.

“Excellent. I’ll meet up with the photographers.” Becker looked at his watch: it was 9:35 P. M.

“Ten P. M., as usual?”

“We can’t set up that fast,” said D. A. “Make it 10:30.”

“I told the photographers to meet me across the street at 9:45. Dammit, they’ll get bored.”

“Ten-fifteen then, if we hurry.”

“That’s good,” said Becker. He walked back to his car and his clerk drove him away.

“He’s shaky,” said Earl. “I don’t like that.”

“I don’t like it neither.”

They beckoned the raiders over, and briefly went over the plan.

Earl finally said, “You, Henderson and Short, you’ll be the cover team.”

He could feel Frenches eagerness seem to melt in the dark.

“Want you to slip up and jimmy the kitchen door with a crowbar or something, so nobody can get out. If somebody does get out, he’s wanting to get out bad, so you cuff him and cover him closely. Okay?”

“Yeah,” said Henderson.

“Remember, be cool, calm, collected. Y’all been doing good. I’ll go in after the entry team, but you be listening to Slim, he’s the boss. I’m just along for support.”

“Yes sir.”

The unit moved around the racetrack single file. They could see the Belmont twinkling through the trees and hear the jazz streaming out of it, almost with a clink of cocktail glasses and the late-night odor of cigarettes to it.

“We’ll go through the trees up high, on the ridge; then we’ll file down and around the building. The entry team will go around front. There’s people out there, so you have to control them right away.”

But Earl drew D. A. aside.

“That ridge is a little steep,” he whispered. “With these vests and the Thompsons, coming down in the dark could be tricky. Somebody could fall, we could get an accidental discharge. See, I’d keep ‘em down here and just slip behind the line of sight from the front here on the right. Rally at the corner. Send the teams around, set up, and move fast, real fast.”

D. A. looked at him for just a second, and a peculiar light came into his eyes, invisible in the night.

How does he know? he thought.

But then he saw the wisdom in Earl’s counsel.

“Yeah, that’s good, Earl.”

Earl told the team of the new plan.

“You’re on safety now. Team leaders, when you get there at the rallying point, you remember to tell your tommy-gunners to go off safety. If they have to shoot, something better come out when they pull the triggers besides cussing. Got that?”

Whispers came in assent.

“Henderson, you got that crowbar?”

“No sir,” said Henderson, “but I do have a length of chain and a padlock.”

“Good. You all straight?”

“Yes sir.”

“You’re also in support. If it gets wild, your job is to come in through the back. Got that?”

“Yes sir.”

“Short, you got that?”

No answer.

“Short?

“Yeah, yeah. I’m all set.”

“Okay,” said Earl. “Let’s do it.”

Frenchy and Carlo separated from the congregation of raiders. They slithered around the back of the plantation house, keeping low, under the view from the windows. They scuttled alongside the foundation, at last coming to the kitchen door. It was closed already, but the windows on either side were open, and a steamy light and a sense of urgent busde poured out of each. They could hear Negro men talking among themselves.

Henderson slipped forward, looped the chain around the door handle, pulled it tight, looped it against the doorjamb, and clamped the lock shut. It would hold tight enough to prevent an exit, unless somebody really leaned into it.

The two men crept out to the perimeter of trees and set up in a defensive position about thirty yards in back of the house.

“You better give me the Thompson,” said Carlo.

“Not a chance,” said Frenchy. “You’re fine.”

“I can’t hit anything at this range with a .45.”

“Yeah, well, I have the Thompson and I’m keeping it. Get that straight right now. We wouldn’t be in shit squad if you hadn’t screwed up. So you don’t deserve the Thompson.”

“I screwed up? You screwed up! You didn’t do a last check, or you would have found that hillbilly.”

“I did do that last check. He wasn’t up there. That’s what you should have said to Earl, not this Tm so sorry’ crap. If you act guilty, the facts don’t matter. You are guilty.”

“You should have checked.”

“I did check. So here we are, dumped out back so we don’t fuck up again.”

“Somebody has to do this job.”

“Nobody has to do this job. We all should be going in.”

Frenchy was really getting steamed. Something about Earl really had him angry. Earl this, Earl that, God Earl, King Earl, Earl the leader of the pack! It was beginning to wear on him.

“What’s so special about Earl?” he blurted.

“Earl’s a hero and you’re lucky to be here to learn from him,” was all Carlo could think to say. “Now shut up and pay attention. We should be doing our jobs, not yakking about this stuff like old ladies.”

Of course Becker’s change in schedule had thrown the whole thing off. They weren’t in position until 10:10, and in the darkness it took about four minutes to get organized into the proper squads and fire team, all trying to do it silently while crouching in the bushes under the windows. Fortunately, there was no perimeter security, no patrolling guards, no dogs, for if there had been, surely the whispering, bickering raiders would have been easily spotted.

Finally, with just thirty seconds to go, Earl got them straightened out, and the side-entry squad peeled off to beeline to the side door, which stood unguarded.

Earl looked at his watch.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to go out and get the valets out of the way.”

“You be careful,” Slim said.

“You be careful,” Earl said. “You’re going in. I’m just going to roust some teenagers.”

Earl stood, slipped out of his vest, which again would blow his cover, and rounded the corner.

He walked up the walk where three kids about eighteen or so lounged smoking under a neon sign that announced VALET. They wore absurd costumes that he could tell from their posture they despised.

“Hi, fellas,” he said.

The boys looked up, caught short. Where the hell did this bird come from? But he was so chipper and bodacious the way he strode manfully up the flagstones to them.

“Uh—” the oldest began.

“See, fellas, I’m from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.” He pulled open his suit coat to show the badge pinned over his left breast. “Now we have something just about to happen here, and I don’t want none of you boys getting hurt, so why not just step aside a bit, and turn and face the wall, maybe rest your hands up agin it.”

“Are we under arrest?”

“Not unless you robbed a bank. Robbed any banks?”

“No sir.”

“Ain’t that swell.”

“I better call Mr. Swenson,” said one of the boys, reaching for a phone mounted on the wall.

Earl’s fast hands beat him to the destination. He grabbed the phone, and with a snap popped the cord that ran to the receiver. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said merrily. “Mr. Swenson’s going to find out we’re here soon enough, believe me.”

Using the authority of his body language, he herded them along the front of the casino until they were a good twenty yards from their positions.

“You wouldn’t have no guns, would you?”

“No sir,” came a reply.

“‘Cause I don’t want to have to hurt nobody. You just rest up agin the building for a few minutes while this thing happens and everything will be just fine.”

Earl turned a bit, and gave a whisde and watched as the raid began.

“There’s the signal. Safeties off. Let’s do it,” said Slim.

He led his five men around the corner of the building to the front door. The door was open and a security officer, talking to a woman just inside the entrance, looked up in surprise. Terry, Slim’s number-two man, clubbed him with the compensator on the end of his Thompson muzzle, opening a vicious wound in the side of his face, and he went down. The woman screamed but the raiders rushed past her like McNamara’s band and began to fan out into the casino, their guns much in evidence, their fedoras low over their eyes, their square vests like sandwich boards across their bodies.

“Hands up! Hands up! This is a raidI”

The side-door team hit its entry point with the same velocity and urgency. The doors didn’t need sledges but merely stout kicks. The men poured in and fanned out on the other side of the room. A team raced upstairs, clearing rooms, finding only gamblers and staff members, but no resistance.