even he will have to go ahead. And if they get the Central Book, the money dries up fast, and I am in a world of trouble.'
'That would be the checkmate move, then?'
'Yeah, and we could do everything right and on the last day, they could hit that joint and we'd be fucked. So we have to act fast.'
Johnny's face fell into a density of concentration. He thought out loud.
'The chances of bumbling into them in another raid are remote. The chances of jumping them in their home ground are also remote. Plus, difficult to handle. No, we've got to find a prize so sweet they'll not be able to resist. We've got to lay a trap so deep they won't ever suspect. We've got to find something that makes them unbearably agitated.'
'And what would that be?'
Johnny said, 'This Becker. You say he likes to get his picture in the paper?'
'He does.'
'Then it's got to be something with splash. Something with style. Something that would get the New York Herald Tribune out here and Life magazine.'
'Yes.'
'So much glory that Becker will not be able to turn it down.'
Owney thought hard. He didn't have a clue.
Johnny looked at him with impatience.
'Come on, goddammit. Use that thinker you got up there. You're like the Brit generals during the war, you can only think about moving straight ahead.'
'I just don't?'
But Ralph was suddenly there, hovering.
'Ralph?'
'Mr. Maddox, Vince Morella is here.'
'Christ!' said Owney. 'What the hell. It can't wait?'
'He's very insistent.'
'Jesus Christ!' He turned to Johnny. 'Wait a second. These Arkansas boys, they can't get nothing straight.'
He rose, went into the living room where Vince Morella stood, holding hat in hand nervously.
''What the fuck, Vince. I'm inna middle of an important meeting.'
'Sorry, sorry, sorry, Mr. Maddox, but I think you'd want to hear this right away.'
'So?'
'I get to the club this morning, go into my office, and there's a guy sitting there. He's already in. He says he wants to meet with you.'
'Jesus Fucking Christ, I told you?'
'You don't get it. He's one of them.'
Owney's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
'He's?'
'He went on all the raids, knows who they are, where they're quartered, how they operate, what they'll do next, how they communicate. He'll give it all to you!'
Owney's eyes narrowed. Now this he finally understood.
'For money, eh. Somebody always sings for the moolah.'
'Not for money. That's why he had to see you. For something only you can give him. He's a college kid. His name is Frenchy Short.'
Part Three
Night Heat
Chapter 37
Both men were grouchy, dirty and cranky. Road dust clung to them in a gritty film. A shower would be so nice, a sleep. This was their third trip to Hot Springs from Texas in as many days, with the bitterness of a bad scene with Becker and the sad scene with Frenchy Short yesterday. And today was a high killer. Above, the sun beat down, a big hole in the sky, turning the sky leaden and the leaves heavy and lisdess. No wind puffed, no mercy, as if they'd brought some godforsaken Texas weather with them.
Dressed in farmer's overalls with beaten-up fedoras pulled low over their eyes and.45s tucked well out of sight, they sat on the front porch of the Public Bathhouse, that is, the pauper's bathhouse, at least in the shade. Other poor people?genuine poor people?lounged about them, too sick to look anything other than sick, come co Hot Springs for the waters of life, finding only the waters of? well, of water. The Public was the least imposing of the structures on Bathhouse Row, but it looked across the wide boulevard of Central Avenue at the Ohio Club.
It was a thin, two-story building, wedged between two others, the Plaza Building and the Thompson Building; its big feature was a kind of mock-Moorish gilded dome, completely fraudulent, which crowned the upper story, and a dormer of windows bulging out over the first-floor windows. It was in the Ohio that he and the old man had observed Mickey Rooney and his big-busted wife number two throwing away thousands of bucks in the upstairs craps game.
'That's going to be a hard place to bust,' said D. A.
'I'd hate to do it at night when it's all jammed up,' said Earl. 'You got all the traffic and pedestrians, you got all the gamblers upstairs, you got Grumley riffraff with machine guns, you got Hot Springs coppers real close by. It could make Mary Jane's look like just the warm-up.'
'Night's out. I don't think that bastard Becker would go for another night raid, especially downtown. Too many folks about.'
'I'm thinking about five, before the avenue and the joint fill up. We rim some kind of cover operation. Maybe we could get our hands on a fire truck or something. Go steaming in with lights flashing and sirens wailing, be in on them before they figure it out and once we get it, we have the place nailed. Nobody dies. We close down that place, we put the word out among the Negroes to watch real careful for strange white people in their neighborhoods.'
The two men sat in silence for a while. Then the old man said, 'Let's go get us a Coca-Cola. My whisde could use a bit of wetting.'
'Mine too,' said Earl.
They walked south along Central, came finally, after oyster bars and whorehouses baking emptily in the noonday sim, the girls still snoozing off a night's worth of mattress-backing, to a Greek place. They went in, sat at the fountain, and got two glasses of Coca-Cola filled with slivers of ice.
'It ain't the how of the raid,' said D. A. 'It's figuring out the why of it. We have to justify it. Short was right on that one.'
'Maybe we lay up outside, pick up a runner, and sweat him. When we break him, we hit the place.'
'But we got it all set up first? Don't like that. Also, Owney'd track down the runner and kill him and maybe his family as a lesson. I don't like that.'
'No, I don't neither. Maybe we find someone who works in the joint who'd testify.'
'Who'd that be? He'd become the number one bull's-eye in the town. Sooner or later, we move along. Sooner or later, he'd get it. Some Grumley'd clip him for old timey sake.'
'Yeah, that's right. Maybe a Grumley. Find a Grumley to talk. Turn on his kin for a new start.'
'But we ain't got no budget to finance a new start. We can't protect 'em. There's nothing we can offer that'll make a Grumley turn. Finally, them Grumleys hate us. We put eleven of 'em in the ground, remember? They might
