JC2 The Raiders (4 page)

"How am I going to talk to my offices?"

"Trust Chandler. He'll put scramblers on your phones, too. I
talked to him about it. I told him you'd have to be able to reach the
people that work for you. Hey! You're not the first guy that's holed
up on the top floor of The Seven Voyages."

" 'Trust Chandler'?"

"
I
do."

As they talked, Jonas watched the tractor pull a Twin Beech out of
the hangar. Shortly two black cars drove onto the ramp. Five men got
out and climbed into the Beech. It taxied to the end of the runway,
turned, and came roaring back. It needed all the runway available to
take off and rose into the air just before the pavement ended.

"We're staking a lot on this Morris Chandler," said Jonas.

"Don't worry about it," said Nevada. "Maurie and I go
back a long way."

THE DESERT SETTING OF LAS VEGAS INSPIRED SOME OF the men who came to
invest to give their hotels fanciful names from the Arabian Nights —
fanciful Arabian Nights films being a Hollywood fad in those years.
The Seven Voyages was a reference to the Seven Magic Voyages of
Sinbad the Sailor. The hotel was built in a Moorish style, actually
in what Morris Chandler's architects had adapted from the style of a
dozen movie sets. It was in the middle of a vast irrigated green lawn
where twenty luxuriant palm trees swayed on the desert wind. Long
three-story wings angled away from the five-story central building.

Water played an important role in the character of The Seven Voyages.
Jets of bubbling water shot up from fountains in front. A swimming
pool dominated the rear. As Jonas was to see when they were inside,
fountains and pools were important elements of the interior decor.

At night everything outdoors was lighted. Underwater lights gleamed
in the pool. White lights shone on the palms. Colored lights played
on the fountains. Warm-yellow floodlights lit the facade of the
hotel.

Jonas parked the car in the lot behind the hotel, and he and Nevada
entered through a rear door. Nevada knew his way around in The Seven
Voyages and led Jonas directly to Chandler's executive office on the
second floor.

A dark-visaged man in a black suit stopped them for a moment but only
for a moment, since he recognized Nevada. He opened the door to the
inner office and said he would go and find Mr. Chandler, and they
should be comfortable in the meantime.

The style there was not Arabian Nights. To the contrary. Chandler's
office reminded Jonas of his father's office — his own for many
years now — at the Cord Explosives plant. The furniture was
heavy dark oak, the chairs upholstered with black leather fastened
down with ornate nails; the drapes and carpet were green; and a brass
banker's lamp with a green glass shade sat on the desk. The office
was old-fashioned, functional, and unglamorous.

Morris Chandler was not the man Jonas had expected to meet. He was
about seventy years old, at a guess — about the same age as
Nevada. Though he was erect and looked well put together, he was
short and thin — a little man. Silver-gray streaked his black
hair. His brows arched above weary brown eyes. His nose might once
have been long and sharp, but it was flat now, undoubtedly broken at
some time in his life. His face was asymmetrical; his eyes didn't
match; and Jonas guessed his right cheekbone had been fractured. His
mouth was wide, and the lower lip was heavy. Deep wrinkles scored his
flesh at the bridge of his nose, under his eyes, and around his
mouth. The skin on his neck sagged. He wore a conservative dark-blue
pinstriped double-breasted suit, precisely tailored to fit him
perfectly.

As he entered the office and extended his hand to be shaken, he
pulled a thick black cigar from his mouth with his left hand. The
sharp, strong smoke swirled around him and reached Jonas's nose. The
cigar was not just strong but cheap.

"Mr. Cord," he said, taking Jonas's hand in a firm grip. "I
am pleased to meet you." He turned to Nevada. "Hello,
Nevada. It's good to see you again."

"H'lo, Maurie," said Nevada.

It was true that Nevada Smith and Morris Chandler went back a long
way, back in fact to September 21, 1900. They met in a state prison
camp just outside Plaquemine, Louisiana. Morris Chandler was then
Maurice Cohen. Nevada Smith was Max Sand.

That day was the worst day of Chandler's whole
life. He had arrived from Baton Rouge on the back of a wagon —
chained to the back of the wagon. In the yard, in view of anyone
interested, he'd had to strip and put on a prison uniform:
black-and-white-striped pants and a shirt much too large for him.
Then he'd sat on a bench, put his legs on an anvil, and watched in
horror as a guard
riveted
shackles on his ankles: steel bands
joined by about a foot and a half of chain, with a large steel ring
in the middle. They gave him no shoes, and he was barefoot as he
lurched across the yard toward the warden's office.

The warden was a big ruddy-faced man who wore round steel-rimmed
spectacles and now pulled them off as he squinted over a paper that
had been handed him by a deputy. He read what was on the paper and
looked up. His face was not unkind, not even stern. He shook his
head.

"Boy," he said, "you gotta be some kind of dumb. Some
kind of dumb to get yourself a year in a place like this for no
more'n the petty racket you was runnin'." He shook his head
again. "Jew-boy from N'Yawk. That ain' gonna make it no easier
for you, boy."

"He's a fancy dude." The deputy laughed. "Prettiest
little suit of clothes you ever see. Celluloid collar. Pink satin
necktie. High button shoes, with spats. An' he greased his hair down
with some kind of stickum that smelt like geraniums. Personally, I
like him better in what he's got on now. Th'other way kind of made a
man sick."

The warden read from the sheet of paper. " 'Maurice Cohen. Grand
larceny by fraud.' Hell, boy, you shoulda robbed a bank. You'd had a
better chance of gettin' some real money, and you'd done better time
here. Ol' boys'd respect you if you was a bank robber. You gonna do
bad time, Maurice Cohen."

Maurie trembled. He was on the verge of tears. He was afraid his legs
would fail him and he would fall on the floor.

"Well, okay then," said the warden. "Mike, you take
him out and give him ten stripes. Then he can have his dinner."

"Ten stripes!"
Maurie shrieked.
"Why?
What have I done to get — Sir! Sir! Why?"
He wept, and his words blubbered out of him. "Oh, please ..."

"Insurance," said the warden gently. "Seems like a man
that gets ten the first day behaves better and doesn't think about
tryin' to escape. Some way, they remember the feel of it, an' it
makes better men of 'em."

Mike was a huge Negro. He was a trusty. As he led Maurie out across
the porch and toward the whipping post in the middle of the yard, he
spoke quietly. "Don' you worry none, boy," he said. "I'm
very good at what I do. It ain' gonna hurt like what you think."

The big black man ordered him to strip off his uniform. He couldn't
of course get his pants all the way off; he could only drop them down
to his leg irons. When Mike lashed him to the post, Maurie was naked.
He had an hour to stand there, bound to the post, before the work
gangs came in and assembled in the yard to watch the whipping.

The convicts found him a curious figure. He was a little man, short
and slight, and his skin was almost white. Many of them had never
seen a circumcised man before, and they walked around him, staring
and commenting —

— "Jeez Chrass! Somebody's cut th' end
off him!"

— "God, it must hurt like hell t' have
that done!"

— "It's what the Jews do. Talks about
it in the Babble. Y' ever read the Babble, y'd find out where it
tells the Jews to cut their boy babies like that."

— "Makes m' flesh crawl!"

Hanging in his bonds, Maurie saw a man as bad off as he was: naked as
he was and locked inside a small cage in the middle of the yard, a
short distance from the whipping post. The cage was so small the man
could not stand up and could not stretch out. He was curled in a
fetal position in a corner of the cage, confined with his own
excrement, which lay about him on the ground. He seemed oblivious to
the flies that crawled over his sweating body.

When the work crews were all in, fifty or sixty men formed a circle
around the whipping post to witness the lashing about to be given to
Maurie Cohen. His knees kept buckling, and he hung on the rope that
bound his wrists to the post. He glistened with sweat, and when the
wind blew he shivered. He knew he was earning the contempt of the men
he was going to be locked up with for a year. He dreaded that, but he
couldn't do anything about it. When he saw the warden step out on the
porch, his bladder let go. They all laughed.

Then Mike, the big Negro, stepped up behind him. Maurie twisted his
neck and looked. Mike was carrying the snake, a fearsome, threatening
instrument of torture.

Maurie looked at the warden. The warden nodded, and instantly Maurie
felt the snake crack across his shoulders. It hurt like being seared
with a hot iron must hurt — worse because he felt its cut. He
opened his mouth to scream —

Cold water crashed against his face. A lithe, muscular man with black
hair stood staring curiously at him, empty bucket in hand. Oh, God,
he'd passed out, and they'd revived him so he'd feel the remaining
nine stripes! The man with the bucket wore a small quizzical smile.
Maurie glanced around. The warden was gone from the porch. The
convicts were in a moving line, going in the mess shack to pick up
their food. All wore stripes the same as his. All wore leg irons.
Except for the man with the bucket, no one was paying attention to
him anymore. Maurie was still tied to the post. His back was ... What
was it? It felt like it was on fire, and yet it ached, too, a deep,
agonizing ache in swelling flesh.

"Felt that fust one, din't ya?" asked the man. "But
none of the rest. Like Mike tol' ya, he knows how to do what he does.
That first shot went across your shoulders all right. But when he
give ya the second one he made the tip hit ya sharp and hard on the
back of the head an' knock ya out. Ya got th' other nine while ya
wasn't feelin' nothin'. Ya didn't even have to feel the sting of the
liniment Mike poured on to keep th' stripes from festerin'. You
lucky. You git stripes ag'in, y'll git 'em the reg'lar way. Think
on't."

Maurie moaned.

"It was nothin' special, got nothin' to do with you bein' a
Jew-boy. They done it to me my first day here. My name's Max Sand.
The Man ordered me to take care of you fer a while."

Max untied him, and Maurie dropped to his knees.

"That's th' way, boy. Pull them pants up and come on."

Maurie followed him. He couldn't imagine trying to pull the shirt on
over his back. Max led him to a shack, where there was a cot and a
bucket. A chain ran from a ring set in a heavy block of concrete. Max
padlocked that to the chain between Maurie's leg irons, and he went
away and left him.

Maurie sat on the cot. He couldn't lie down. He sat and wept.

A little later Max returned. He brought a tin cup full of coffee and
a tin plate heaped with food. Without a word, he put the cup and
plate down and left, latching the door outside.

Beans. Beans cooked in some kind of congealing grease that was almost
certainly lard. The few little flakes of meat among the beans were
undoubtedly pork. Forbidden food. But Maurie had learned from his
days in jail that even mildly suggesting they should not serve him
pork would win him laughter at best, a backhand slap across the mouth
more likely. He picked up the spoon that was the only utensil they
provided and ate a couple of mouthfuls of the unappetizing mess. He'd
starve if he didn't eat whatever they gave him; he knew that. God
forgive, he prayed as he shoved some more into his mouth.

And then he wept some more.

The horror of his year's imprisonment had only begun.

They left him in the shack for five days: time for his back to heal,
or begin to heal. He was let out only when he carried his slops
bucket to the latrine and poured the contents in. Max came to take
him out. Max brought his food. Max was no trusty, as Mike was. He
wore stripes and leg irons as most of the other men did, but Maurie
noticed that Max didn't stumble. He'd learned how to walk in chains.

Max sat down in the doorway of the shack and talked to him. He asked
him what fool thing he'd done to get himself a year in this place.

"They say ya done somethin' stupid. How stupid? What stupid?"

Maurie sighed heavily. "I was selling insurance," he said.

Max grinned. "Oh, yeah. And there wasn't no insurance company,
right? I guess you just had a printer print up some fake policies for
you, and —"

"Right," said Maurie.

"That's dumb all right. That
is
dumb.
To risk being sent to a place like this ... That's dumb."

"What are you here for, Max?"

"Two years. Illegal use of a firearm."

"What'd you do with it that was illegal?"

"I killed a man."

"You don't go out with a work crew."

"I will, next week. A cottonmouth got me on the leg. I'm on half
duty right now."

At the end of the five days they took Maurie out of the shack. He was
assigned to a cot in a barrack. At night they ran a long chain the
length of the barrack, passing it through the ring in the middle of
the chain that linked each man's leg irons. That confined them. The
guards didn't even close the doors and windows, which were left open
so air — and mosquitoes — could come in.

The warden really was a man of kindly disposition. Realizing Maurice
Cohen did not have the physique to work all day in the fields, he had
him assigned to the kitchen.