'Earl, in this work, sorry don't matter. Sure is better than sorry. Remember: the mind is the weapon. Think with the mind, not the fast hands.'
Owney's Grumleys turned the town pretty much upside down. He had a gang of former bootleg security boys and did all the heavy hitting he found necessary. There were a bunch of Grumleys, all related, including several Lutes, more than a few Bills, and not less than three and possibly as many as seven Slidells, as well as a Vern and a Steve. The Slidell Grumleys were by repute the worst and they had to be kept apart, for they would turn on each other murderously, given half a chance.
A Grumley visited every hotel, tourist court and campground to examine, sometimes sweetly, sometimes not so sweedy, the registration books. Another Grumley or two?usually a Bill and a Lute?traveled the whorehouse circuit. Madams and girls were questioned, and a few sexual adventures were worked in on the sly by this or that Grumley, but such was to be expected. Grumleys were Grumleys, after all. And still another couple of Grumleys checked the bathhouses. Other Grumleys tracked down numbers runners and wire mechanics and instructed them to keep their eyes open double wide. Owney even had some of his Negro boys?these were most definitely not Grumleys?wander the black districts asking questions, because you never could tell: times were changing and where it was once impossible to think of white people hiding among, much less associating with, Negro people, who knew the strangeness of the wonderful modern year 1946? Even the police were brought in on the case, but Owney expected little and got little from them.
In the end, all the efforts turned up nothing. No sign of the cowboy could be unearthed. Owney was troubled.
He sat late at night on his terrace, above the flow of the traffic and the crowds sixteen stories below on Central Avenue, in the soft Arkansas night. He had a martini and a cigarette in its holder in an ashtray on the glass table before him. Beyond the terrace, he could see the tall bank of lighted windows that signified the Arlington Hotel was full of suckers with bulging pockets waiting to make their contributions to Owney's fortune; to the right of that rose Hot Springs Mountain with its twenty-seven spigots of steamy water for soothing souls and curing the clap.
He held a pigeon in his hands?a smooth, loving bird, its purple irises alive with life, its warmth radiating through to his own heart, its breast a source of cooing and purring. The bird was a soft delight.
He tried to sort out his problems and none of them seemed particularly difficult in the isolate, but together, simultaneously, they felt like a sudden strange pressure. He had been hunted by Mad Dog Coll, he had shot it out with Hudson Dusters, he had felt the squeeze of Tom Dewey, he had done time in New York's toughest slammers, so none of this should have really mattered.
But it did. Maybe he was growing old.
Owney petted his bird's sleek head and made an interesting discovery. He had crushed the life out of it when he was considering what afflicted him. It was silently dead.
He threw it in a wastebasket, gulped the martini and headed inside.
Part Two
Day Heat
August 1946
Chapter 9
On the first morning. Earl took the group of young policemen out to the calisthenics field in the center of a city of deserted barracks miles inside the wire fence of the Red River Army Depot. The Texas sun beat down mercilessly. They were all in shorts and gym shoes. He ran them. And ran them. And ran them. Nobody dropped out. But nobody could keep up with him either. He sang them Marine cadences to keep them in step.
I DON'T KNOW BUT I BEEN TOLD
ESKIMO PUSSY IS MIGHTY COLD
SOUND OFF
ONE-TWO
SOUND OFF
THREE-FOUR
There were twelve of them, young men of good repute and skills. In his long travels in the gardens of the law, D. A. had made the acquaintanceship of many a police chief. He had, upon getting this commission, called a batch of them, asked for outstanding young policemen who looked forward to great careers and might want to volunteer for temporary duty in a unit that would specialize in the most scientifically up-to-date raiding skills as led by an old FBI legend. The state of Arkansas would pay; the departments would simply hold jobs open until the volunteers returned from their duties with a snootful of new experience, which they could in turn teach their colleagues, thus enriching everybody. D. A.'s reputation guaranteed the turnout.
The boys varied in age from twenty to twenty-six, unformed youths with blank faces and hair that tumbled into their eyes. Several looked a lot like that Mickey Rooney fellow Earl had seen in Hot Springs but they lacked Mickey's worldliness. They were earnest kids, like so many young Marines he'd seen live and die.
After six miles, he let them cool in the field, wiping the sweat from their brows, wringing out their shirts, breathing heavily to overcome their oxygen deficit. He himself was barely breathing hard.
'You boys done all right,' he said, and paused, 'for civilians.'
They groaned.
But then came the next ploy. He knew he had to take their fears, their doubts, their sense of individuality away from them and make them some kind of a team fast. It had taken twelve hard weeks at Parris Island in 1930, though during the war they reduced it to six. But there was a trick he'd picked up, and damn near every platoon he'd served in or led had the same thing running, so he thought it would work here.
He named them.
'You,' he said, 'which one is you?'
He had the gift of looming. His eyes looked hard into you and he seemed to expand, somehow, until he filled the horizon. This young man shrank from him, from his intensity, his masculinity, his sergeantness.
'Ah, Short, sir. Walter R,' said the boy, dark-haired and intense, but otherwise unmarked by the world at twenty.
'Short, I'll bet you one thing. I bet you been called 'Shorty' your whole life. Ain't that the truth?'
'Yes sir.'
'And I bet you hated it.'
'Yes sir.'
'Hmmmm. ' Earl made a show of scrunching up his eyes as if he were thinking of something.
'You been to France, Short?'
'No sir.'
'Well, from now on and just because I say so, your name is 'Frenchy.' Frenchy Short. How's that suit you?'
'Uh, well?'
'Good. Glad you like it. All right, ever damn body, y'all say 'HI FRENCHY' real loud.'
'HI FRENCHY' came the roar.
'You're now a Frenchy, Short. Got that?'
And he moved to the next one, a tall, gangly kid with a towhead and freckles, whose body looked a little long for him.
