you know.'
Earl didn't, not really, but before he could say a thing, another man said, 'Earl, you look plenty wore out. You okay?'
'Yes, I'm fine. I now and then go on a toot, like the old man?'
'He was a drinking man, yes, I do remember. Onct boxed my ears so hard made 'em ring for a month,' one of the other men said fondly.
'Well, I have the same curse. I'm now living up in Fort Smith and I fell off the wagon. Got so drunk I didn't want the wife to see me. So I somehow turned up here. Sorry to rile you.'
'Hell, Earl, it ain't nothing. You ought to move on back here. This is your home, this is where you belong.'
'Don't know about that, but maybe. I have a child on the way and we will see.'
Then he noticed the stars. Each of these boys was a deputy, each wore a gunbelt loaded with cartridges and a powerful revolver, each had the look of a rangy manhunter to him.
'What're you boys out huntin'? You look loaded for grizzly.'
'You ain't heard?'
'How could I? Was drunked up like a crazy bastard last night.'
'Earl, you best watch that. Can tear a fellow down. Saw my own daddy go sour with the drink. He died too young, and he looked a hundred when he's only forty-two.'
'I hear you on that one,' said Earl, who hoped he'd never drink again.
'Anyhow, we're hunting gangsters.'
'Gangsters?'
'He ain't heard!'
'Damn, he did do some drinking last night.'
'You know that Owney Maddox, the big New York gun what run Hot Springs these past twenty years? The one old Fred Becker caught?'
'Heard of him,' Earl said.
'Five bastards busted him out of Garland County jail last night late. Shot their way out. Say it was just as bad as that Alcoa train job or that big shoot-out in the train yard. Killed two men. But Owney's fled, he's free, the whole goddamned state's out looking for him.'
'Earl, you okay?'
'Yeah,' said Earl.
'You look like a ghost touched you on the nose with a cold finger.'
Owney. Owney was out.
Chapter 56
It was exactly the kind of operation Johnny Spanish loved. It demanded his higher skills and imagination. It wasn't merely force. On its own, force was tedious.
Labor enforcers, racketeers, small-potatoes strong-arm boys, the common soldiers of crime, they all used force and it never expressed anything except force.
Johnny always looked for something else. He loved the game aspects of it, the cleverness of the planning, the deviousness of the timing, the feint, the confusion, the misinformation, and the final, crushing, implacable boldness. It was all a part of that ineffable je ne sais quoi that made Johnny Johnny.
Thus at 10:30 P. M. at the Garland County jail in the Town Hall and Police Department out Ouachita Avenue toward the western edge of the city, the first indication of mischief was not masked men with machine guns but something entirely unexpected: tomato pies.
The tomato pie was new to the South, though it had gained some foothold in New Jersey and Philadelphia. It was a large, flat disk of unleavened dough with a certain elastic crispiness to it, coated with a heavy tomato sauce and a gruel of mozzarella cheese, all allowed to coagulate in a particularly intense oven experience. It was quite a taste sensation, both bold and chewy, both exotic and accessible, both sweet and tart, both the best of old Italy and new America at once. Four tomato pies, cut into wedges, were delivered gratis to the jail by two robust fellows from Angelino's Italian Bakery and Deli, newly opened and yet to catch on, to the late-night jail guard shift. The boys hadn't ordered any tomato pies?they'd never even heard of tomato pies!?but free food was one of the reasons they'd gotten into law enforcement in the first place. Even those who had no intention of eating that night found themselves powerless in the grip of obsession, when the odors of the sizzling pies began to suffuse the woeful old lockup. Who could deny the power of the tomato pie, and that devilish, all-powerful, mesmerizing smell that beckoned even the strongest of them onward.
This was the key to the plan. Like many jails built in the last century, Garland County's was constructed on the concentric ring-of-steel design, with perimeters of security inside perimeters of security. One could not be breached until the one behind it was secure. Yet all yielded to the power of the tomato pie.
The guards?seven local deputies and warders and a lone FBI representative since the prisoner, No. 453, was on a federal warrant?clustered in the admin office, enjoying slice after slice.
'This stuff is good.'
'It's Italian? Jed, you see anything like this in It-ly?'
'All's I seen was bombed-out towns and starvin' kids and dead Krautheads. Didn't see nothing like this.'
'Man, this stuff is good.'
'Best thing is, they deliver to your doorway and it's piping hot.'
'It's 'Mambo Italiano' in cheese and tomato. I love the toastiness. That's what's so good. I like that a lot.'
At that point, two more men from Angelino's showed up, with four more pies.
'You guys-a, you love-a this-a one, it's got the pepperoni sausage, very spicy.'
'Sausage?' said the guard sergeant.
'Spicy,' said the deliveryman, who opened the flat cardboard box, removed a 1911 Colt automatic with a Maxim silencer, and shot the man once. The silencer wasn't all that silent, and everyone in the room knew immediately that a gun had been fired, but it reduced the sound of the percussion enough to dampen it from alerting others in the building. More guns came out, and a large fellow appeared in the doorway with a BAR.
'Get against the wall, morons,' screamed the commander of the commandos?that is, Johnny Spanish at his best.
'Jesus, you shot?'
Johnny knew the tricky moment was in the early going where you asserted control or you lost it and it turned to nightmare and massacre. Therefore, according to his lights, he was doing the humane thing when he shot that man too, knocking him down. If he'd been closer he would have clubbed the man with the long cylindrical heft of the silencer, but that was the way the breaks went, and they didn't go well for that particular guard that particular day.
Herman grabbed the biggest of the men and said simply and forcefully, 'Keys,' and was obediently led to the steel cabinet on the wall, it was opened, and the keys were displayed for his satisfaction.
'Which one, asshole?' he demanded.
The man's trembly fingers flew to a single key, which Herman seized. With Ding-Dong as his escort, he headed into the interior of the jail.
Iron-barred doors flew open quickly enough and, deep in the warren, they came to the cage that contained Owney Maddox. That door too was sprung, and Owney was plucked from ignominy. He threw on his coat and rushed out, passing the parade as Johnny and his boys led the surrendered guards back into the jail to lock them up away from telephones so that he didn't have to shoot the lot of them.
'Good work,' Owney cried. And it was. For his legal situation had collapsed and it appeared a murder indictment for the four guards slain in 1940 was in the offing. A gun had been found in his warehouse that had been used in that crime and the FBI test results had just come in. Meanwhile, all his well-placed friends had deserted him, and even lawyer F. Garry Hurst wasn't sanguine about his chances of survival. A life on the lam, even well
