Day thing, it wasn't nothing like this. Down here, it's the South, there are no laws.'
'Owney, the boys are talking. You know how it is when the boys talk.'
'And that shmata Ben Siegel is talking too. Right? I know he is. It's how a yentzer like that operates.'
'Owney, no need to run down the other fellow. Ben is out in L. A., doing his job. You leave Ben out of this.'
'Yes, Mr. A,' said Owney, slightly stung.
'Owney, you have to take care of this. You ran a tidy little place down there and everybody was happy. People went down there for vacation and they were happy. They played the horses, the wheel, the slots, they met some girls, they laughed at Abbott and Costello, they heard Dinah Shore, it was very nice. Now you got bullets flying and people dying everywhere. You can't do business in a climate like that, you can't have no fun. Things don't grow like we all think they should.'
'I agree with you totally, Mr. A. Growth. Stability is the fertilizer of growth, which is the destiny of prosperity. What I have here is a franchise on the future. This is what will be, you'll see. Except for these crazy cops.'
'Very good, Owney. You still understand, I see. Now, you want we should send some fellas? I could dispatch some very good Jersey people.'
'Nah. Not hitters. Hitters ain't got no stomach for this. Hitters take guys out to the marshes and clip 'em with a.32 in the back of the head. It ain't like that down here. It's a fuckin' war. Plus, hitters'd stand out like fuckin' sore thumbs.'
'So what do you need?'
'I need soldiers. I mean real hard-ass fucking soldiers, been in some scrapes, shot it out with the fucking cops ain't afraid of nothing. like the scary shit, when the lead flies. There are some boys like that.'
'Sounds like you want Marines.'
'Nah. What I want is armed robbers. I want the best armed robbery crew. They'd be the boys who could run a thing for me. They could plan and wait and spring a trap and shoot the shit out of it. They'd have the discipline, the long-term, wait-through-the-night guts. Okay. You know who I want, Mr. A. I want Johnny Spanish and his crew. They worked for me before. They worked for me in '40.'
'Johnny's retired, Owney.'
'Johnny owes me. He hit a big fucking score in '40. Biggest caper of his career. I set that job up for him.'
'Whyn't you just call him? I could find the number.'
'Mr. A, coming from you, it would be better. He's black Irish. You know, I come from England. The Irish, they got a thing about the English.'
'Just 'cause you tried to starve them to death.'
'Hey, I didn't starve nobody. All the time I have these problems with the Irish. That goddamned Vincent the Mad Dog, another black Irish, want to bust my balls. God, was I glad when he got his ass blown to shit.'
'All right, Owney. I can make a call. I can ask a favor. But you know, Johnny and his people don't work cheap. Johnny goes first-class. He deserves first-class.'
This, of course, was Owney's problem with Johnny. Johnny and his crew?that would be Jack 'Ding-Dong' Bell, Red Brown, Vince 'the Hat' de Palmo and Herman Kreutzer?took 60 percent of the take, leaving 40 for the local setup guy. This was unprecedented: in all other similar transactions, the armed contract robbers only got 50 percent. But they were the best, if a little aged by now. So if Johnny came down here for a bit of business and there was no up-front promise of a take, Johnny would need a cash down payment and a big backside splash.
'It has to be Johnny,' said Owney.
'It's done. He'll be there before the week is over.'
'You got to hurry, Mr. A. These guys are one strike from taking over down here.'
'Owney, Owney, Owney. Johnny will take care of it all. You can trust Johnny. We'll look out for you, Owney. You can trust your friends.'
Chapter 35
Junior Turner, the sheriff of Montgomery County, looked at Carlo Henderson with a grimace of the purest dripping scorn. Junior was a big man in his thirties, with a face that looked like old possum hides hung on a nail in a barn somewhere. His fat belly exploded beyond the perimeters of his belt and there were stains of a disagreeable nature on his khaki shirt. He wore a big Smith & Wesson Heavy Duty.38/.44 in a fancy belt, the only fancy thing about him. Then he turned and launched a majestic gob of Brown Mule from his lips. It took off with a disgusting slurping sound, seemed to elongate as it followed the parabola of its arc, a yellowish tracer bullet glistening with mucus, tobacco curds and spit, until it struck dead center into the spittoon with a coppery clang, rocking the vessel on its axis.
'This here's a small town, my friend. We don't much cotton to outsiders stirring up our business.'
Mount Ida, a smear on the roadside consisting of a bar, a general store, a Texaco station and a sheriff's office, stood in the trackless Ouachitas, encapsulated almost totally in a wall of green pine forest, about halfway between Blue Eye and the more cosmopolitan pleasures of Hot Springs. It united the two by a sliver of road called 270, mostly dirt, occasionally macadam, all of it lost and lonely through the high dense trees.
'Sir, I am on official business,' said Carlo.
'You say. The official bidness of Garland is bidness. So why'n hell's a little old boy like you rutting around in a crime done happened in our county four years back? It was open and shut. If you read the papers, you know ever goddamned thing.'
'I am just following up a loose end.'
'Now what loose end would that be, son?' asked Junior, casting a yellow-eyed glance around to his two deputies, who guffawed at the sheriff's rude humor.
'I am not at liberty to say, sir,' said Carlo, feeling the hostility in the room.
'Well, son, I ain't at liberty to just open my files to any joe what comes passing this way,' the sheriff said. 'So mebbe you'd best think 'bout moving on down the road.'
'Sir, I?'
But he saw that it was useless. Whatever grudge this man had against Garland County and its representatives, it was formidable and unbridgeable. He knew he was out of luck here. He rose and?
'So you tell the Grumleys if they want to check out Montgomery, they can just go on straight to hell,' the sheriff said.
'I'm sorry?'
'You tell the Grumley clan Junior Turner of Montgomery says they should go suck the devil's own black goat's milk. I said?'
'You think I'm working for the Grumleys? You think I'm a Grumley?'
'He got that Grumley look,' said one of the deputies, evidently called L. T. 'Sort of narrow-eyed, towheaded with a yellow thatch all cut down. Them eyes blue, long of jaw, a rangy, stretchy boy.'
'I think I smell a damned Grumley stink on him,' said the other deputy. 'Though I 'low, Grumleys most usually travel in packs.'
'It ain't common to see a Grumley on his lonesome,' said Sheriff Turner.
'I killed a Grumley,' Carlo said.
'You what?'
'A couple, actually. It was hard to tell. Lots of dust flying around, lots of smoke. Mary Jane's, it was. I see they're now calling it the greatest gunfight in Arkansas history. I fired a lot, I know I hit at least two, and they went down.'
'You kilt a Grumley?'
'I know you heard about that raid. That was us. That was me. That's what this is all about. The Grumleys. Putting them out of business for good. Driving 'em back into the hills where they can have sex with their cousins and sisters and be no bother to good folk anymore.'
'L. T., you hear that? He kilt a Grumley,' said the sheriff.
