'Virginia, leave it alone.'
'Did he tell you that story, Georgie? He tries to strong-arm this cowboy in Hot Springs and the guy hits him so hard he can't sit up straight for a week and a half. And I had to listen to him all that time, whinin' like a baby.'
'I'll fix that guy.'
'Yeah, you'll fix him. You and some army. Ben, why don't we go back right now? Fix him this week. Get it out of the way?'
Ben's eyes clouded and his face tightened.
'I got business to take care of first.'
'He's spooked by this guy. So he'll hire goons to clip him, because he don't have the guts to do it man on man.'
'I will fix that guy,' Bugsy swore. 'I will fix him after I fix Owney and after I fix Hot Springs. Forget Hot Springs. Its time is over. The future is in the desert, goddammit, and I will lead the way.'
Chapter 18
The Belmont lay close to the Oaklawn Racetrack, just south of Hot Springs. If the Horseshoe was your run- of-the-mill joint, with a hundred duplicates on almost any street in town, the Belmont was a step up the food chain. It offered the fancier gamblers a sense of class without quite demanding of them the tuxedoed glamour?with its Xavier Cugats and its Perry Comos?that a place like the Southern Club might. The entertainment tended to be regional, usually a piano combo that played light jazz. It sold cocktails at the bar, not shots, not champagne. Its machines were the sleeker Pace Chrome Comet, which looked as if it could get up and fly, the hottest thing from the year 1939, as its reels spun bells and apples and bananas and oranges this way and that. These machines weren't as tight as the older models, which meant that once or twice a night a line of bells would pop up and a pilgrim would be rewarded with a silver cascade of nickels. The house payoff was a modest 39 percent.
It stood in the same hollow as the now deserted racetrack, under a low piney ridge, and it had been done up in the style of the antebellum South, to resemble a wooden plantation house with fake columns and white trim that a Scarlett O'Hara might have designed. A valet crew parked cars; the overhanging elms gave it hushed and muted elegance.
Rather than enter the gates and move into the parking lot, in plain sight of the valets, D. A. elected to infiltrate from the empty racetrack. The three cars discharged their men on the far side, and there the raiders loaded magazines, checked weapons, put on vests and went over their plans for the last time. Becker was already there, this time with two men on his staff and a clerk-driver.
D. A., Earl and Becker hunched undercover in a racetrack portico, examining a diagram of the Belmont with a flashlight.
'Since this is a bigger, more complicated structure,' said D. A., 'I'd rather have muscle up front. I'd send ten men through the front door and side door?a six-man team and a four-man team?and I'd bolt that kitchen door and leave two men out back to cover it. That way, you got all your force up front and you get it into play.'
'I don't want any shooting,' said Becker suddenly. 'I don't want anyone else getting hurt.'
There was a quiet moment.
Then D. A. said, 'Well, sir, then I guess we better gather the boys up and take 'em home. I ain't sending men into a dangerous situation with the idea they can't defend themselves.'
'No, no,' said Becker. 'They can defend themselves. I just want 'em to think before they shoot.'
'If they think before they shoot,' said Earl, 'they may die before they shoot.'
'We train 'em to shoot instinctively. They've been trained hard. There won't be no mistakes.'
'like the Horseshoe?' Becker said.
'That weren't no mistake, sir,' said the old man. 'That was a completely justified legal shooting during the commission of a bonded officer's official duty, and we ought to thank the man who done it, for it probably saved some lives.'
Becker seemed to vacillate, almost biting his lower lip like a child.
'It just played bad in the papers, that's what I mean. I have more photogs from little Rock here,' he finally said. 'We need the Little Rock papers behind us. They'll get the state behind us. The Hot Springs papers don't matter. But you can't screw up in front of Little Rock reporters. Okay?'
Both officers nodded, and Earl was thinking: This bird wants everything. He wants us to raid without killing and he doesn't want the action to get out of control. He's worried more about the press than the young men who are going in tonight. You can't control this work like that.
'We'll brief the boys,' said D. A.
'Excellent. I'll meet up with the photographers.' Becker looked at his watch: it was 9:35 P. M.
'Ten P. M., as usual?'
'We can't set up that fast,' said D. A. 'Make it 10:30.'
'I told the photographers to meet me across the street at 9:45. Dammit, they'll get bored.'
'Ten-fifteen then, if we hurry.'
'That's good,' said Becker. He walked back to his car and his clerk drove him away.
'He's shaky,' said Earl. 'I don't like that.'
'I don't like it neither.'
They beckoned the raiders over, and briefly went over the plan.
Earl finally said, 'You, Henderson and Short, you'll be the cover team.'
He could feel Frenches eagerness seem to melt in the dark.
'Want you to slip up and jimmy the kitchen door with a crowbar or something, so nobody can get out. If somebody does get out, he's wanting to get out bad, so you cuff him and cover him closely. Okay?'
'Yeah,' said Henderson.
'Remember, be cool, calm, collected. Y'all been doing good. I'll go in after the entry team, but you be listening to Slim, he's the boss. I'm just along for support.'
'Yes sir.'
The unit moved around the racetrack single file. They could see the Belmont twinkling through the trees and hear the jazz streaming out of it, almost with a clink of cocktail glasses and the late-night odor of cigarettes to it.
'We'll go through the trees up high, on the ridge; then we'll file down and around the building. The entry team will go around front. There's people out there, so you have to control them right away.'
But Earl drew D. A. aside.
'That ridge is a little steep,' he whispered. 'With these vests and the Thompsons, coming down in the dark could be tricky. Somebody could fall, we could get an accidental discharge. See, I'd keep 'em down here and just slip behind the line of sight from the front here on the right. Rally at the corner. Send the teams around, set up, and move fast, real fast.'
D. A. looked at him for just a second, and a peculiar light came into his eyes, invisible in the night.
How does he know? he thought.
But then he saw the wisdom in Earl's counsel.
'Yeah, that's good, Earl.'
Earl told the team of the new plan.
'You're on safety now. Team leaders, when you get there at the rallying point, you remember to tell your tommy-gunners to go off safety. If they have to shoot, something better come out when they pull the triggers besides cussing. Got that?'
Whispers came in assent.
'Henderson, you got that crowbar?'
'No sir,' said Henderson, 'but I do have a length of chain and a padlock.'
'Good. You all straight?'
'Yes sir.'
