The Boys from Biloxi: A Legal Thriller (15 page)

Fats was known to delay the reporting in Harrison until all other votes had been broadcast. Foul play was always suspected but had never been proven. Finally, at 3:30
a.m.
, Jesse received a call from an election clerk at the courthouse. He had been soundly thumped in the Biloxi precincts, with the exception of the Point, which he carried by 300 votes, but not enough to do any damage to the Bowman machine. Dubisson received almost 18,000 votes, for a 60 percent shellacking.

Overall, throughout the three-county district, Jesse had convinced 12,173 voters that reform was needed. The others, almost 18,000, were content with the status quo.

Not surprisingly, Fats steamrolled his hapless opponent and took almost 80 percent of the vote.

It appeared as though little would change, at least for the next four years.

For two days Jesse stewed over the loss as he contemplated contesting the election. Almost 1,800 absentee ballots looked suspicious, but there were not enough to change the outcome.

He had been beaten in a dirty fight and had learned some hard lessons. Next time he would be ready for a brawl. Next time he would have more money.

He promised Keith and Agnes that he would never stop campaigning.

With the election over, and those pesky reformers once again put in their places, 1968 began with a bang. Fats had managed to mollify long-simmering feuds while he worked to control the voting, but things got out of hand soon enough.

An ambitious outlaw named Dusty Cromwell opened a joint on Highway 90, half a mile from Red Velvet. His bar was called Surf Club and at first sold nothing but legal booze. With a liquor permit in hand, he soon opened an illegal casino and expanded into a strip club advertising an all-girl revue. Cromwell had a big mouth and let it be known that he planned to become the king of the Strip. His plans were set back when Surf Club burned to the ground early one Sunday morning when no one was around. After a cursory investigation by the police, no cause of fire could be determined. Cromwell knew it was arson and sent word to Lance Malco and Ginger Redfield that he was out for revenge. They had heard it before and braced for trouble.

Mike Savage was known in the business as the go-to arsonist and was often used in cases involving insurance fraud. He freelanced and was on no one’s payroll, but he hung around Red Velvet and was known to associate with Lance Malco and other members of the Dixie Mafia. He left the club one night and never made it home. After three days, his wife finally called the sheriff’s office and reported him missing. A farmer in Stone County noticed a mysterious car parked in the woods on his land and figured something was amiss. The closer he crept to it the stronger the odor became. Buzzards were circling above. He called the law and the
license plates were tracked to Mike Savage of Biloxi. When the trunk was opened, the odor nauseated the deputies. Mike’s bloated corpse was covered in dried blood. His wrists and ankles were tied together with baling twine. His left ear was missing. An autopsy revealed numerous stab wounds and a viciously slit throat.

A week after the body was found, a package addressed to Lance Malco arrived at Red Velvet. Inside, wrapped in a plastic bag, was someone’s left ear. Lance called Fats, who sent a team to have a look.

Motive was easily ascertained, at least by Lance, though there were no suspects, no witnesses, and nothing useful from the crime scene. Dusty Cromwell had delivered a message, but Lance was not one to be intimidated. He met with Fats and demanded he take action. Fats, as always, said that he did not get involved in turf battles and disputes among the mobsters.

“Settle it yourself,” he said.

The murder was duly reported by the
Gulf Coast Register,
though details were scarce. Most of those with knowledge of the Biloxi underworld knew it was little more than a gangland payback.

One of Dusty’s gun thugs was a bouncer called Clamps, a real brute of a boy who’d spent ten of his thirty years in prison for stealing cars and robbing convenience stores. With Surf Club in ashes, he was out of full-time work and looking for trouble. He had yet to kill anyone, but he and his boss were having conversations. He never got the chance. When Dusty sent him to New Orleans to collect a shipment of marijuana, he was followed by Nevin Noll. The shipment was delayed and Clamps checked in to a motel near Slidell. At three in the morning, Nevin parked his car, now sporting Florida license plates, and walked half a mile to the motel. The front office was closed, all the lights were off, and the handful of customers appeared to be sleeping. He picked a room that was empty for the night, and with a flathead screwdriver unlocked the knob to the only door. The low-end motel did not use either deadlocks or security chains. He left and eased through the darkness to the room where Clamps was sound asleep. He quickly unlocked
the door, turned on the light, and as Clamps was trying to wake up, focus, figure out what the hell was happening, Nevin shot him in the face three times with a .22 caliber revolver muffled by a six-inch silencer. He finished him off with three more shots to the back of the head. He gathered Clamps’s wallet, cash, car keys, and pistol under his pillow and put everything, including his screwdriver and Ruger, into the cheap overnight bag Clamps was traveling with. He turned off the light, waited fifteen minutes, and drove away in Clamps’s car. He parked behind a truck stop, quickly removed the Mississippi license plates, substituted them with a set from Idaho, and drove to a gas station that was closed for the night. He left the car there, walked back to his own car, and returned to Biloxi.

Nine days passed before the Slidell police could identify the victim. His last known address was Brookhaven, Mississippi. The murder went unreported by the
Gulf Coast Register.

At first, Dusty Cromwell assumed Clamps had picked up the marijuana and absconded with it. Three weeks after the murder, he received a package, a cardboard box with no sender’s name or address. Inside was a wallet with a driver’s license issued to Willie Tucker, aka Clamps. Under the wallet were his license plates.

The police in Slidell drove to Biloxi and met with Sheriff Fats Bowman, who’d never heard of anyone named Willie Tucker. Fats suspected the boy was another casualty of the escalating tensions along the Strip, but he said nothing of the sort. When it came to mob fights and dead bodies, Fats knew nothing, especially when out-of-town cops were poking around. After they left, he drove to Red Velvet and went to Lance’s office.

Not surprisingly, Lance, too, said he’d never heard of Willie Tucker. There were plenty of bad actors on the Coast and the violence was getting contagious. Fats cautioned him about escalating the fighting. Too many revenge killings and they would attract the attention of outsiders. Knock off one or two here and there and it was business as usual. A gangland war was destined to end up in the press.

Dusty proved to be just as ruthless as Lance. He met with a Dixie Mafia hit man named Ron Wayne Hansom and negotiated a $15,000 contract to kill Lance Malco. The down payment was $5,000, the balance promised after the job was complete. Hansom, who operated out of Texas, spent a month on the Coast and decided the contract was too risky. Malco was seldom seen and always protected. Hansom skipped town with the money, but not before getting drunk in a bar and bragging about killing men in seven states. A waitress was eavesdropping and heard the name Malco mentioned more than once. This quickly made its way up the ladder and Lance was alarmed enough to call Fats, who called an old pal with the Texas Rangers. They knew Hansom and picked him up in Amarillo. Dusty learned of his whereabouts and sent two of his boys to have a chat. Hansom denied any involvement with the plot to kill Malco, and since the Rangers had no proof, he was released. He was ambushed by the two thugs from Biloxi and beaten senseless.

Lance was steamed at the idea of another club owner from the Strip ordering a hit on him and sent word to Dusty that if he wasn’t out of town in thirty days, he, Lance, would put out his own contract. Dusty didn’t back down and said he was looking for another hired killer. Lance knew a few more than Dusty, and for two months things were quiet but tense as the underworld waited for bullets to start flying. The next one went through the front windshield of Lance’s car, with Nevin behind the wheel, and both were hit by shattering glass. They were stitched up at the hospital and released.

Hugh drove his father home and talked of nothing but revenge. He was horrified that a bullet had come so close. Every time he glanced over and saw the bandages he felt like crying. At home, Carmen was a wreck and went back and forth between bouts of near hysteria and fits of anger at her husband for getting so involved in criminal activity. Hugh tried to rein her in, tried to referee between his parents, and tried to allay the fears of his younger
siblings. Two days later, he drove his father to his office upstairs at Red Velvet and announced that he was now assuming the role as his bodyguard and driver. He pulled back his jacket and proudly showed his father a .45 Ruger automatic.

Through his bandages and stitches, Lance smiled and asked, “Know how to use it?”

“Of course. Nevin taught me.”

“Keep it close, okay? And don’t use it unless you have to.”

“It’s time to use it, Dad.”

“I’ll make that decision.”

Lance was fed up and knew it was time to destroy the enemy. He sent Nevin out of town and on a mission to deal with the Broker, a well-connected middleman known for his talent in selecting just the right hit man for any job. In a bar in Tupelo, they agreed on the price of $20,000 to pick off Dusty Cromwell. Nevin did not know the identity of the killer, nor did he want to.

Before it happened, a street battle erupted when three of Dusty’s goons walked into Foxy’s with baseball bats and hit everyone who moved, including two bouncers, two bartenders, some customers, and a cocktail waitress who was trying to flee. They broke every table, chair, neon light, and bottle of booze, and seemed ready to finish off a bartender or two when a guard appeared from the kitchen and opened fire with a handgun. One of the goons whipped out his own and a shootout began as they scampered for the door. The guard followed them into the parking lot and emptied his automatic. Bullets were peppering the front of the building and some of the cars parked close by. A bouncer with a bleeding forehead staggered out with a pistol to help the guard. They hopped in a car and chased the goons, who were firing wildly out the windows as they squealed tires and fled the scene. The gunfight continued down Highway 90 as the cars weaved through
traffic and horrified drivers ducked for cover. When a bullet came through the front windshield of the chase car, the guard decided it was time to stop the madness and pulled into a parking lot.

Unknown to the guard and bouncer, one of their wild shots got lucky and hit a goon in the neck. He died in surgery at the Biloxi hospital. His two buddies dropped him off then disappeared. Typical for the time, the dead guy had no wallet, no ID. The getaway car, riddled with bullets, was never found. Luckily, no one inside Foxy’s was killed, but seven were hospitalized.

Two weeks later, Dusty was walking along the beach on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and holding hands with his girlfriend as they splashed barefoot in the sand. He was sipping a can of beer, his last. From six hundred yards away, an ex–army sniper known as “the Rifleman” took his position on the second floor of a beach motel on the other side of Highway 90. He aimed his trusted Logan .45 caliber military rifle and pulled the trigger. A millisecond later, the bullet hit Dusty in the right cheek and blew off the back of his head. His girlfriend screamed in horror and another couple ran to help. By the time the police arrived, the Rifleman was on the bridge over Biloxi Bay and headed to Mobile.

Cromwell’s death was sensational and the
Gulf Coast Register
finally woke up and began digging. The “gangland warfare” had claimed at least four men, all known to be involved in prostitution, drugs, and gambling. All were connected in some manner to the nightclubs along the Strip. There were rumors of other killings, as well as beatings and burnings. Fats Bowman had little to say, but assured the newspaper that his office was actively investigating the murders.

Like all law-abiding citizens, Jesse Rudy watched the war, and he, too, expected little from the investigations. And while he was frustrated by the efforts of Rex Dubisson to prosecute the murders,
he was secretly delighted that the district attorney was showing so little interest. In his next campaign, he would emphasize his opponent’s benign efforts to rein in the gangs. More violence would only help Jesse’s cause. People were upset and wanted something done.

Nature intervened in an unimaginable way and stopped the killings. The storm blew away the nightclubs on the Strip, as well as most of Biloxi. It dealt a crippling blow not only to the nightlife, but every other industry along the Coast.

It also led directly to the election of Jesse Rudy.