Now, as in so many other nights of his life these past years, he had to get somewhere by the dawn. In the dawn, the killing would begin.
Chapter 62
At last, with a burst of energy from its 324 Packard horses, the Ford wagon got up a little hill and broke free from the trees.
'We're here,' said Johnny Spanish, 'with more than an hour to spare. Did I not tell you, Owney, you English sot, I'd have it done in time for you?'
Owney felt a vast relief.
He stumbled from the vehicle, taking in a breath of air, feeling it explode in his lungs.
The field seemed to extend for a hundred miles in each way under a starry sky and a bright bone moon. In pale glow it undulated ever so slightly from one end to the other. He could make out a low ridge of hills at the far side but on this side there were only trees as the elevation led up to it.
The last hours had been ghastly. Slow travel down dirt roads, at least twice when the engine seemed to stall, rough little scuts of inclines where all the boys had to get out and Johnny's deft skills alone, his gendeness with the engine, his knowing the balance and power of the automobile, when those alone had gotten them up and to another level.
How had Johnny known so well? It had been six years since, and in that experience that old sheriff had been the guide. He must have some memory. He was definitely a genius.
'You did it, lad,' he said to Johnny.
'That I did. You're grateful now, Owney, but come the pay-up time it won't seem like so much. You'll come to believe you yourself could have done it and what I did will seem as nothing. Then you'll try to jew me down hard, I know.'
'No,' said Owney. 'Fair is fair. You boys done two hard jobs in the last two weeks. I'll pay you double what I paid for the yard job.'
'Think six times, Owney.'
'Six!'
'Six. Not twice times, but six times. It's fair. It leaves you with a lot of what you've got.'
'Jesus. It was a one-day job.'
'Six, Owney. It was a five-day job, with lots of arranging to be done. Else you'd be looking at the rest of your time in an Arkansas Dannamora.'
'Four and it's a deal.'
'All right, Owney, because I don't like to mess about. Make it five, we shake on it, and that would be that.'
Owney extended his hand. He had just paid $1.5 million for his new life. But he had another $7 million left, and beyond that, $3 million in European banks that neither a Johnny Spanish nor a Bugsy Siegel nor a Meyer Lansky knew a thing about.
They shook.
'Boys, we're rich,' said Johnny.
'Richer, you mean,' said Owney.
'We're set for life. No more jobs. We can toss the tommies off the Santa Monica fishing pier.'
'Believe I'll keep my Browning,' said Herman. 'You never know when it'll come in handy.'
'All right, you lot, just a bit more to do. You know the drill.'
They had to secure the field for landing. This involved reading the wind, for the plane landed against it and took off with it. As efficiently as any OSS team setting up a clandestine landing in occupied France, Johnny's boys picked some equipment out of the rear of the big Ford and went deep into the valley. There they quickly assembled a wind pylon and read the prevailing breeze. It was now only a matter of using a flare to signal the aircraft when she came, then turning her, then climbing aboard and it was all over.
While the boys did their work, and then moved the car to the appropriate spot in the valley, Owney took out and lit a cigar. It was a Cohiba, from the island, a long thing with a tasty, spicy tang to it, and it calmed him down.
He had made it. He, Owney, had done it. He was out; he would repair to the tropics and begin to plot, to raise a new crew, to pay back his debts, to engineer a way back into the rackets.
He had an image of Bugsy after the hit. He imagined Bugsy's face, blown open by bullets. Bugsy in one of his famous creamy suits, spattered with black blood, his athlete's grace turned to travesty by the twisted position into which he had fallen. He saw Bugsy as the centerpiece in a tabloid photo, its harshness turning his death into some grotesque carnival. When a gangster died, the public loved it. The gangsters were really the royalty of America, bigger in their way than movie stars, for the movies the gangsters starred in were real life, played out in headlines, whereas an actor's heroics took place only in a fantasy realm. A star in a moving picture could come back and make another one; a star in a tabloid picture could not, and that impressed incredible elan and grace upon the gangster world. It was glamorous like the movies but real like life and death itself.
Then he heard it. Oh, so nice.
From far off the buzz of a multiengine plane. She'd circle a bit, waiting for a little more of the light that was beginning to creep across the western sky to illuminate the valley, then down she'd come. It was a good boy, or so Johnny insisted. A former Army bomber pilot who could make an airplane do anything she could do and had set planes down on dusty strips all over the Pacific. But before that the boy had run booze and narcotics for some Detroit big boys, where he really learned his craft.
High up, the plane caught a glimpse of sun, and it sparkled for just a second, just like Owney Maddox's future.
Owney turned and before him suddenly loomed a shape, huge and terrifying.
It took his breath away.
Don't let me die! he thought, but it was not a man-made thing at all, or even a man. It was some kind of giant reddish deer, with a spray of anders like a myth. The beast seemed to rise above him. His throat clogged with fear. In the rising light he saw its eyes as they examined him imperially, as if he were the subject. It sniffed, and pawed, then turned its mighty head. In two huge, loping bounds it was gone.
Jesus Christ, he thought.
What the hell was that?
He didn't like it, somehow. The animal's presence, its arrogance, its lack of fear, its contempt seemed like a bad omen. He realized his pulse was rocketing and that he was covered with a sheen of sweat.
'Owney, lad, come out of the field or you'll get cut to pieces by the props of your savior,' called Johnny.
Chapter 63
The pain came every two minutes now. It built like a worm growing to a snake growing to a python growing to a sea serpent or some other mystical creature, red hot and glowing, screaming of its own volition, a spasm, an undulation, a sweat-cracking, muscle-killing pure heat. Someone screamed. It was her. She screamed and screamed and screamed.
From her perspective, she could only see eyes. The eyes of the young doctor and they looked scared. She knew something was wrong.
'Let me give you some anesthetic, Mrs. Swagger.'
'No,' she said. 'No gas.'
'Mrs. Swagger, you're only a little dilated and you've got some hours to go. There's no need to suffer.'
'No gas. No gas! I'm fine. I want my husband. Is Earl here? Earl, Earl, where are you? Earl?'
'Ma'am,' said the nurse, looking over, 'ma'am, we haven't been able to reach your husband.'
