and request backup. Then I'll call the newspaper boys. I did alert the Little Rock boys to have a photog in the area. But that's okay, that's secure. Got it?'
'Yes sir,' said D. A., but suddenly Earl didn't like it. Okay, Owney owned the local rags, but how safe were these Little Rock people? He pulled D. A. aside.
'I'm going to go in early,' he said.
D. A. looked at him.
'You'll be right in the line of fire for twelve nervous kids.'
'Yeah, but in case somebody in there gets a little crazed or has been tipped off, I might be able to cock him good and save a life or two. This'll probably be the only raid we can get away with that.'
'I don't like it, Earl,' D. A. said. 'It's not how we planned it. It could confuse them.'
'I'll be all right,' said Earl. 'It could save some lives.'
'It could cost some lives too,' said D. A.
'Look at it this way,' said Earl. 'We'll never get a chance to pull this trick off again. They'll be waiting for it in all the other places. We might as well do it while we can.'
D. A. looked at him sharply, seemed about to say something, but then reconsidered; it was true he did not want a killing on the first raid, for he believed that would turn the whole enterprise inevitably toward ruination.
'Wear your vest,' he cautioned, but even as he said it, he knew it was impossible: the vests were large and bulky and looked like umpire's chestpads, and everybody hated them. If Earl walked in with a vest on, it would be a dead giveaway.
'You know I can't.'
'Yeah, well, take this.'
He handed over a well-used police sap, a black leather strap with a pouch at the end where a half pound of buckshot had been secreted.
'Bet you busted some head with this old thing,' said Earl with a smile.
'More'n I care to remember.'
Earl looked at his Hamilton in the pink light and shadow. It was 9:45. Between the tourist court and the casino, Ouachita Avenue buzzed with cars.
'I'm sending in three teams in the front and two in the back,' said D. A. 'I'll move the rear teams in first. I'll run them teams around the ice house, and they'll rally in its eaves, on that southwest corner. At 9:59, they'll move single file down to the rear entrance, We have sledges. At ten, they hit the door, just as the three front-entry teams go through the foyer and fan out through the building. Luckily it's a simple building, without a lot of blind spots or tiny rooms.'
Earl nodded.
'That's good,' he said. 'But maybe instead of going around the ice house, you ought to move 'em around the other side of the casino, sir.'
D. A. looked at him.
'Why?' he said.
'It's nothing. But the manager's office seems to be upstairs on that same corner. Maybe he's up there, the window's open, and he hears scuffling in die alley, or somebody drops a mag or bangs into a garbage can. Maybe it ticks something off in him, he takes out a gun, he heads downstairs. The rear-entry team runs into him with a gun out on the stairway. Bang, bang, somebody's hurt bad. See what I'm saying, sir? I think you'd do best to run 'em around that other side of the building.'
'Earl, is there anything you don't know?'
'What to name my kid. How to balance a checkbook. Which way the wind blows.'
'You are a smart bastard. All right.'
Earl checked his.45, making sure once again that the safety was still on, and, from the heft, that indeed the piece was stoked with seven cartridges. He touched the three mags he had tucked into his belt on the back side. He touched his sap.
Then he went among the boys.
'Listen up, kids,' he said.
They stopped fiddling with their tommy guns and drew around him.
'Slight change in plan. I'm going to go on and be in there. I have a favor to ask. Please do not shoot me. You especially, Short. Got that?'
There was some nervous laughter.
'Okay, I'll be in the main room, at the bar. Mark me. If I move fast, it's because I've seen someone with a gun or a club. I say again and now hear this: Do not shoot old Mr. Earl.'
Again, the dry laughter of young men.
'You are broken down into your teams, you have your staging assignments and your route assignments. And remember. The fight's going to be what it wants to be, not what you want it to be. You stay sharp,' and he moved away from them and disappeared.
Frenchy was annoyed. The last man on the last team. He was backup on the rear-entry team, the third fire team. That made him sixth man through the door. It did get him a tommy gun, however. He felt it wrapped under his coat as he crossed Ouachita, huge, oily and powerful. He waited for the cars to part, then dashed across, as the others had done, one man at a time, the tommy gun secured up under his suit coat, the heavy armored vest rocking against him as he ran. No car lights shone on him; nobody from the Horseshoe saw him, or could be expected to.
He ran to the Horseshoe's northwest corner, then threaded back alongside the west wall of the casino. Inside he could hear the steady clang of the slots, the calls of the pit bosses and the more generalized hubbub of a reasonably crowded place.
He slid along the edge of the building, ducking the wash of lights that shone from the shuttered windows. His eyes craned the parking lot to his right for movement, but there was none at all. Five men had passed this way before him, and at last he joined them, in a little cluster at the southwest corner of the big, square old building.
'Six in,' he said.
'Time check,' said Slim, who as the second-most-senior man of the unit was running the rear-entry team. Slim was a heavyset, quiet fellow from Oregon, a State Trooper out there. He was one of three actual gunfight veterans on the team.
'2150,' said his number two, Bear.
'Okay, let's hold here,' Slim said, trying to control his breathing. 'We'll move to the door at 2158.'
They hunched, tensing, feeling the sultry weight of the air. It was all going so fast. Getting across the street and reassembling at the rallying point seemed much simpler than it was supposed to be. No screwups at all.
'One last time, let's go over assignments. I'm one; when the door goes, I pile through it first, with my.45, covering the right side of the rear hall, turning right, moving into the main room and covering the right again.'
Two, three and four ran through their assignments, droning on about turns to left or right and sectors to cover with pistol or tommy gun.
'I'm five,' said Henderson finally. 'I go down the hall, past the casino, turn right, take the stairs up to the manager's office, which I cover. Securing that, I work the men's and women's rooms.'
'I'm six,' said Frenchy. 'I grab the blonde, I fuck her fast, then I spray the room with lead, killing everybody, including you guys. Then I light up a smoke and wait for the newspaper boys and my Hollywood contract.'
'All right, Frenchy,' said Slim. 'Cut the shit. This ain't no joke.'
'All right, all right,' said Frenchy. 'I'm six. I support five up the rear stairs with the tommy, covering the left- hand side of the stairwell. I cover him in the manager's office, and then we check the two rest rooms. I hope there's a babe on the pot in the lady's.'
'Cornhole,' someone muttered.
'Now what's the last thing we heard?' asked Slim. 'What should be freshest in our minds?'
There was stupefied silence.
'Damn, you guys already forgot! Mr. Earl is going to be in there. He'll be at the bar. So you guys especially, three and four, you make sure you do not cover him. No accidents. Got that?'
Taking the silence as assent, he then said, 'Time check?'
