'Sir, somebody has to stay with Junie. I cannot let her go through this alone. Honey, I'm here.'
Good old Mary! Now there was a woman! Mary couldn't be pushed around, no sir! Mary would fight like hell!
'Thank you, Mary,' Junie said, as another contraction pressed a bolt of pain up through her insides.
'Ma'am, there are no other doctors. In Fort Smith, yes, in Hot Springs, yes, at Camp Chaffee, yes, but you chose a small public hospital in Scott County to have your baby during a late-night shift and I am doing what I can do. Now please, you have to leave.'
'Please let her stay,' begged Junie.
'When we go back to delivery, she can't come. You may stay here, ma'am, but do not touch anything, and stay out of the way.'
'Yes sir'
The doctor seemed to leave, but instead he pulled Mary out into the hall.
'Look,' he said, 'we have a very complicated situation here. That woman may die. By my calculus, the baby's life is not worth the woman's life. The woman can have other babies. She can adopt a child. If it comes to it, I may have to terminate the baby's life, get it out of her in pieces. That may be the only way to save her life.'
'Oh, God,' said Mary. 'She wants that baby so bad.'
'Where is her husband?'
'We're not sure.'
'Bastard. These white trash Southern hillbillies are?'
'Sir, Earl Swagger is not trashy. He's a brave man, a law enforcement officer, and if he's not here, it's because he's risking his life to protect you. Let me tell you, sir, if someone broke into your house at night, the one man you'd want to protect you and yours is Earl Swagger. That is why we have to protect his.'
'Well, that's very fine. But we are coming up to decision time and I am not authorized to make this decision on my own and I could get in a lot of trouble. If I don't terminate the baby, that woman will die a needless, pointless and tragic death. She needs your help to decide. You help her decide. That's the best you can do for your friend.'
Chapter 66
The screen of smoke blew across the valley, white and shifting.
Owney had a hope that Johnny Spanish and one or two of his boys would come out of it, laughing, full of merry horseplay, happy to have survived and triumphed. But he was not at all surprised or even disappointed when the other man emerged.
Out of the smoke he came. He was a tall man, in a suit, with his hat low over his eyes. He carried a tommy gun and looked dead-set on something.
Owney saw no point in running. He was a realist. There was no place to run to and if he got into the forest he would be easy to track and he'd be taken down and gutted.
It occurred to him to get into the station wagon and try and run the man down. But this cool customer would simply watch him come and fill him with lead from the tommy gun.
So Owney just sat there on the fender of the old Ford station wagon. He smoked a Cuban cigar and enjoyed the day, which had turned nice, clear, with a cool wind fluttering across the valley. The sun was warm, even hot, and there were no clouds. In the background, the hillside burned, but it seemed to have run out of energy as the flames spread and died, leaving only cinders to smolder.
The man seemed to come out of war. That's what it looked like; behind him, the smoke curled and drifted, and its stench filled the air; the hillside was blackened. There were bodies back there. Five of them. He'd gotten Johnny Spanish and his crew. Nobody ever got Johnny, not the feds, the State Police, all the city detectives, the sheriffs, the deputies, the marshals. But this one got them all in a close-up gunfight. He was something.
The cowboy was finally within earshot.
With a certain melancholy and an idea for his last gambit, Owney rose.
'Lawman!' he screamed. 'I surrender! I'm unarmed! IyU go back with you! You win!'
He stood away from the car and took off his jacket and held his hands stiff and high. Slowly he pirouetted to show that he had no guns tucked in his belt. He rolled up his sleeves to show that his wrists were bare to the elbow.
He had the bicycle gun stuck in its sleeve garter against his left biceps, on the inside, just above the elbow. He'd ripped a large hole in the inside seam of the shirt, invisible from afar, so that he could get at it quickly.
Let him get close, he thought. Let him get close. Offer him respect. Show him fear. Relax him. Put him at his ease. When he lowers the tommy gun, go for the bike pistol and shoot him five times fast, in the body.
He smiled as the man drew near.
The cowboy was lean and drawn. His face had a gaunt look, exhaustion under the furious concentration. His suit was dusty, his eyes aglare, the hat low over them. He looked Owney up and down, taking his measure.
'I'm unarmed,' said Owney. 'You won! You got me!'
It just might work.
Earl was not surprised that Owney Maddox awaited him with his hands high, his arms bare. What else could Owney do? He was out of options, other than killing himself, and Owney wasn't that kind of boy. He was no Japanese marine, who'd cut his own guts out and die with a grenade under his belly so that when you turned the corpse over two days later, the grenade would enable you to join him in heaven. No, that was not Owney's style.
He stopped ten feet shy of Owney.
'You win, partner,' said Owney, with a smile. 'You are a champ. I'll say that. You are a pro. You handled the best there is, my friend. I'm outclassed.'
Earl said nothing.
He raised his tommy gun, and holding it deftly with one hand let it cover Owney.
'You're not going to shoot me,' Owney said. 'My hands are up. I've surrendered. You don't have it in you for that kind of stuff. That's the difference between us. You can't make yourself squeeze on an unarmed man with his hands in the air. I know you. You're a soldier, not a gangster. You won a war, but you wouldn't last a week on an island with alleys and nightclubs.'
Earl just looked him over, then transferred the Thompson to his left hand.
'Take your belt off and throw it over here.'
'Yah. See. I knew you weren't the type,' said Owney, doing the job with one hand.
'Thought you was English,' said Earl.
'Only when I want to be, chum. Come on, tie me, let's get this over. I want to get back in time to hear Frankie on the radio.'
But then he stopped. He looked quizzically at Earl.
'I have to know. You're not working for Bugsy Siegel, are you?'
'That guy?' said Earl. 'Don't know nothing about him.'
'You fool,' said Owney. 'You have no idea what you've done, do you?'
'Nope.'
Owney joined his hands together for Earl to loop them with the belt. Earl knelt to retrieve the belt. As he rose with it, Owney stepped forward and seemed to stumble just a bit and then his hand fled to his arm. He was fast.
But Earl was faster. His right hand flew to the Colt automatic in his belt like a bolt of electricity shearing the summer air. It was a fast that can't be taught, that no camera could capture. He caught the pistol in his other hand and thrust it toward Owney even as a crack split the air. Owney had fired one-handed. Owney had missed.
Hunched and doublehanded, Earl knocked five into the gangster, all before Owney could get the hammer thumbed back on the bike gun for a second shot. The rounds kicked the gangster back and set him down hard as the little weapon fell from his fingers into the grass.
Now Earl knew who had killed his father. Now Earl knew what had happened to his father's little gun. But he
