'You're also in support. If it gets wild, your job is to come in through the back. Got that?'
'Yes sir.'
'Short, you got that?'
No answer.
'Short?
'Yeah, yeah. I'm all set.'
'Okay,' said Earl. 'Let's do it.'
Frenchy and Carlo separated from the congregation of raiders. They slithered around the back of the plantation house, keeping low, under the view from the windows. They scuttled alongside the foundation, at last coming to the kitchen door. It was closed already, but the windows on either side were open, and a steamy light and a sense of urgent busde poured out of each. They could hear Negro men talking among themselves.
Henderson slipped forward, looped the chain around the door handle, pulled it tight, looped it against the door-jamb, and clamped the lock shut. It would hold tight enough to prevent an exit, unless somebody really leaned into it.
The two men crept out to the perimeter of trees and set up in a defensive position about thirty yards in back of the house.
'You better give me the Thompson,' said Carlo.
'Not a chance,' said Frenchy. 'You're fine.'
'I can't hit anything at this range with a.45.'
'Yeah, well, I have the Thompson and I'm keeping it. Get that straight right now. We wouldn't be in shit squad if you hadn't screwed up. So you don't deserve the Thompson.'
'I screwed up? You screwed up! You didn't do a last check, or you would have found that hillbilly.'
'I did do that last check. He wasn't up there. That's what you should have said to Earl, not this Tm so sorry' crap. If you act guilty, the facts don't matter. You are guilty.'
'You should have checked.'
'I did check. So here we are, dumped out back so we don't fuck up again.'
'Somebody has to do this job.'
'Nobody has to do this job. We all should be going in.'
Frenchy was really getting steamed. Something about Earl really had him angry. Earl this, Earl that, God Earl, King Earl, Earl the leader of the pack! It was beginning to wear on him.
'What's so special about Earl?' he blurted.
'Earl's a hero and you're lucky to be here to learn from him,' was all Carlo could think to say. 'Now shut up and pay attention. We should be doing our jobs, not yakking about this stuff like old ladies.'
Of course Becker's change in schedule had thrown the whole thing off. They weren't in position until 10:10, and in the darkness it took about four minutes to get organized into the proper squads and fire team, all trying to do it silently while crouching in the bushes under the windows. Fortunately, there was no perimeter security, no patrolling guards, no dogs, for if there had been, surely the whispering, bickering raiders would have been easily spotted.
Finally, with just thirty seconds to go, Earl got them straightened out, and the side-entry squad peeled off to beeline to the side door, which stood unguarded.
Earl looked at his watch.
'Okay,' he said, 'I'm going to go out and get the valets out of the way.'
'You be careful,' Slim said.
'You be careful,' Earl said. 'You're going in. I'm just going to roust some teenagers.'
Earl stood, slipped out of his vest, which again would blow his cover, and rounded the corner.
He walked up the walk where three kids about eighteen or so lounged smoking under a neon sign that announced VALET. They wore absurd costumes that he could tell from their posture they despised.
'Hi, fellas,' he said.
The boys looked up, caught short. Where the hell did this bird come from? But he was so chipper and bodacious the way he strode manfully up the flagstones to them.
'Uh?' the oldest began.
'See, fellas, I'm from the Prosecuting Attorney's Office.' He pulled open his suit coat to show the badge pinned over his left breast. 'Now we have something just about to happen here, and I don't want none of you boys getting hurt, so why not just step aside a bit, and turn and face the wall, maybe rest your hands up agin it.'
'Are we under arrest?'
'Not unless you robbed a bank. Robbed any banks?'
'No sir.'
'Ain't that swell.'
'I better call Mr. Swenson,' said one of the boys, reaching for a phone mounted on the wall.
Earl's fast hands beat him to the destination. He grabbed the phone, and with a snap popped the cord that ran to the receiver. 'I don't think that would be a good idea,' he said merrily. 'Mr. Swenson's going to find out we're here soon enough, believe me.'
Using the authority of his body language, he herded them along the front of the casino until they were a good twenty yards from their positions.
'You wouldn't have no guns, would you?'
'No sir,' came a reply.
''Cause I don't want to have to hurt nobody. You just rest up agin the building for a few minutes while this thing happens and everything will be just fine.'
Earl turned a bit, and gave a whisde and watched as the raid began.
'There's the signal. Safeties off. Let's do it,' said Slim.
He led his five men around the corner of the building to the front door. The door was open and a security officer, talking to a woman just inside the entrance, looked up in surprise. Terry, Slim's number-two man, clubbed him with the compensator on the end of his Thompson muzzle, opening a vicious wound in the side of his face, and he went down. The woman screamed but the raiders rushed past her like McNamara's band and began to fan out into the casino, their guns much in evidence, their fedoras low over their eyes, their square vests like sandwich boards across their bodies.
'Hands up! Hands up! This is a raidI'
The side-door team hit its entry point with the same velocity and urgency. The doors didn't need sledges but merely stout kicks. The men poured in and fanned out on the other side of the room. A team raced upstairs, clearing rooms, finding only gamblers and staff members, but no resistance.
It was over in seconds.
'Y'all go home now,' Earl said to the valets. 'This place is closed. You find other jobs tomorrow, hear?'
Earl walked in, his badge pinned to his lapel, and seconds later D. A. pulled up in a car.
It had gone exactly as planned: the overwhelming show of force, the speed of deployment, the cleverness of the raiders as they separated gamblers from workers, the pure professionalism of it.
'Clear upstairs,' came the call.
'Clear in the kitchen,' came another call.
'Now ladies and gendemen,' said D. A., 'this here's a raid on an illegal gambling facility by the Prosecuting Attorney's Office. You will be checked and released if there are no outstanding warrants on you. You may keep any winnings you have on your person. We'll have you out of here in no time, if you cooperate with us. And my advice is: if you like to gamble, try Havana, Cuba, because that's where you're going to have to go.'
Mr. Swenson, the manager of the place, was brought between two raiders, cursing and spitting. A rotund man, with slicked-back hair and a summer tuxedo, he wore a red carnation in his lapel. Earl plucked it out and inserted it into his mouth, shutting him up.
'When we want to talk to you' he said, 'we will tell you. Otherwise you suck on that flower like a lollipop and watch us tear this joint up so you can tell Owney Maddox he's finished in this town.'
Then they heard the machine gun fire.
'There they go,' said Carlo.
But from the rear, behind the trees thirty yards out, the two young officers saw nothing. They heard glass
