Chapter 20
GANGSTERS SLAIN IN HOT SPRINGS read the headline in the Little Rock Arkansas Democrat two days after the raid.
Prosecuting Attorney's Raiders Send Two 'Most Wanted' to County Morgue
Hot Springs?Officers from the Prosecuting Attorney's Office shot and killed two highly dangerous wanted men in a nighttime raid on an illegal gambling establishment here tonight.
The shootings occurred at the Belmont Club, on Oakland Boulevard in South Hot Springs, at approximately 10:30 P. M.
Dead were Thomas 'Tommy' Malloy, 34, of Cleveland, Ohio, a bank robber who was listed as No. 1 on the FBI's most wanted list, and Walter 'Wally Bud' Budowsky, 31, also of Cleveland. Budowsky was No. 7 on the list.
Both men were pronounced dead at the site.
Malloy, a career criminal since his teens, was wanted on several charges of armed robbery, including the July 5, 1945, robbery of a Dayton, Ohio, bank and trust that left two officers dead and two more wounded. That crime catapulted him to No. 1 on the FBI's list, but he is wanted in connection with at least 12 other charges, including a kidnapping, two counts of assault with attempt to kill and several more counts of fleeing across interstate lines to avoid prosecution.
Budowsky is also suspected of taking part in the Dayton job, as well as several other crimes. Both men served time in the Ohio State Penitentiary.
The editorial was even better.
Becker: A Man of His Word It seems that when Garland County Prosecuting Attorney Fred C. Becker gives his word, that word is as good as gold.
Elected in a controversial election just last month, Becker has moved aggressively against organized crime interests in Arkansas' shameful bordello town 35 miles to the south, raiding two casinos in the past week. Long a haven for gamblers, gunmen and ladies of the night. Hot Springs is becoming downright dangerous for such folk, owing to Becker's crusade.
At the same time, it's becoming a place of pride for citizens who obey the law, worship God and go to church on Sunday.
Becker is to be commended for his efforts and maybe Arkansas would do well to think about hitching its wagon to his star in the 1948 gubernatorial race. If he can clean up Hot Springs, a Herculean labor if ever there was one, then who knows how far he can go?
This was a good day for Becker. The Arkansas Democrat was the only paper with a reputation outside the state; it could get him noticed nationally. Who cared what die Garland county rags screeched about or their demands for indictments against the raiders; they had no circulation outside the county, no influence on party politics, no reach to the state's bosses, no connections to the national press.
Already that seemed to be happening. He was onto something. The winds of change were in the air; the tired old men who'd rim the country while the boys were off fighting had to step aside now, and whoever saw that first and seized that opportunity would go the furthest. If he became governor in 1948, he would be the youngest governor in the history of Arkansas, one of the youngest governors in the United States. The sky was the limit; who knew where that could take him, particularly if the radio networks began picking up on it.
Already Life was sending a man down, and that meant Time would follow and probably Time's imitator, Newsweek. Those magazines were read in Washington, where it really counted. Maybe… Senator Becker. Maybe… even bigger.
So after his morning news conference?a love celebration, really, in which the little Rock boys pulled rank on the snippier Hot Springs bumpkins and asked flattering, Softball questions?he went back to his office to luxuriate in his success. As a matter of fact, he wasn't an aggressive prosecutor so much as an ambitious politician. There were a number of routine matters before him?moves to prosecute traffic offenders, county statute violators, petty criminals in the Negro section?but all of them could wait.
Instead, he loaded up the bowl of his English briarwood with a fine mild Moroccan tobacco, lit it up, and enjoyed the sweetness and the density of the smoke and the pure pleasure: he concentrated on enjoying the moment, and more than a few minutes passed in this state of high bliss before a knock came at the door.
It was Willis O'Doyle, his number-one clerk, who had ambitions of accompanying his chief as far as his chief could go. O'Doyle had a communique from D. A., an out-of-schedule communication unusual in and of itself.
It said, when decoded, 'Please call us at 2:00 P. M. tomorrow and order us to raid Mary Jane's, in the Negro section out Malvern Avenue. This will pay very big dividends.'
Hmmm, he thought. What the hell is this about?
Earl came to them that very morning.
'All right, fellas,' he said. 'You want to gather 'round?'
The raiders, sleeping on cots, spent lazy days when they weren't actually scheduled to hit some place. Earl had plans to keep them in shape with various dry-fire exercises but it seemed so poindess because there was so little room in the pump-house station and they couldn't work outside, because of fear of discovery. So he let them sleep, stay clean, clean their weapons and otherwise occupy themselves until the word came on the target that night.
This was his first urgent gathering since they'd swung into operation.
'We have an opportunity,' he said. 'In the service, the CO'd just give the order and I'd draw up a plan and that would be that. But this ain't the service, and it's your butts on the line, so I figure you ought to have some say-so in what we do next. Fair enough?'
The men nodded or murmured assent, even the still-sleepy Frenchy Short, now something of a hero for his victory over the two gangsters.
'Y'all know what radio intelligence is?'
'Fred Allen?' somebody said.
'No. Gangbusters!
There was some laughter.
'Not quite,' said Earl. 'It's what you can do when you break the other guy's code. Or it's what you can do when you know the other guy's broken your code, only he don't know you know. Well, we now got us a chance to play a little radio game, 'cept that it's a telephone game.
'Mr. D. A. knows all the tricks, and he figured Owney's boys would be trying like hell to find us. He figured they'd even try and tap Mr. Becker's phone lines. That's why we don't use telephone lines. Well, goddamned if Carlo Henderson didn't go downtown yesterday dressed like a farmer, and goddamn if he didn't find a telephone crew set up at a junction box where all die prosecuting attorney's lines are shunted through te the big Bell office. So they are listening. Here's a coupla things we could do.
'First, we could just mark it, and make certain we never gave up nothing on the phone. See, that would keep them guessing, and it would cause them to spread out their resources, because mind my words, what they want to do is ambush us.
'Now here's another thing we could do: we could pass out phony information. We could say, See, we're going to Joe's Club. So they'd set up to get us at Joe's Club, only we'd hit Bill's Club. That way we'd be sure to have a raid without no problems. We could probably do that two, three times. Then they'd catch on, and that game'd be over.
'But there's one last thing we could do. We could pass out the information that we were going to hit Joe's Club. So you can bet they would load up at Joe's Club. They'd love to hit us and hurt us and kill some of us. They'd love to humiliate Mr. Becker and send us home in shame. But here's the wrinkle. We know that they know. So instead of them hitting us, we lure them in, and then we hit them. They think they got us marked, all the time we're marking them. We counterambush and we smoke 'em good. See? Their best shot is blasted, the power and the prestige of Owney Maddox and his hillbilly gunmen is made to look pathetic. We found a place on Malvern that'd work right fine. Called Mary Jane's.'
'Hell,' said Bob Billy, one of the most aggressive raiders, a Highway Patrolman from Mississippi, 'I say we go and kick some fellers upside the head.'
Cheers and laughter and agreement rose.
