Hot Springs (12 page)

But after the meeting was over, the manager of the Golden Sim, a house near the Oaklawn Racetrack, pulled Owney over.

“I heard something, Owney.”

“And what’s that, Jock?”

“Ah, maybe it’s nothing, but you should know anyhow.”

“So, spill.”

“My brother-in-law runs a craps game in an after-hour joint for Mickey Cohen in L. A. He used to work on that gambling boat they had beyond the twelve-mile-limit.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and times are tough since they closed that ship. But Mickey told my brother-in-law that good things are set up.”

Owney listened intently. Mickey Cohen was Bugsy’s right-hand man.

“What’s he mean?”

“He says there’d be jobs for all the old guys, the real pro table crews.”

“So? Is Bugsy going to try and get the ship thing going again?”

“No, Owney. It’s bigger than that. Evidently, he’s bought a big chunk of desert over the Nevada state line. Gambling’s legal in Nevada. Nobody goes there, but it’s legal.”

“I still don’t—”

“He’s thinking big. He’s going to build a place. A big place. He’s got some New York money bankrolling it. It’s supposed to be secret. But he’s going to build a gambling city in the desert. He’s going to build a Hot Springs in the desert. Me, I think it’s shit. Who’s going to go to a fucking desert to gamble?”

But Owney immediately understood the nature of Bugsy’s visit, and saw the threat to his own future. That was Bugsy’s game, then. There could only be one Hot Springs. It would be here in Arkansas, where it belonged; or it would be in Nevada, in the fucking desert, where yid punk Bugsy wanted it.

It wouldn’t be in two places.

Someone was going to have to die.

D. A. had worked it out very carefully in his mind. He broke the team down into two-man fire teams, and put three of them into each squad, one designated the front-entry team and the other the rear-entry team.

Now it was time to do it, with unloaded weapons but all other gear as it would be, including the heavy vests that everybody hated.

Of course the young Carlo Henderson found himself united with the even younger Frenchy Short, who was full of opinions too important to be kept to himself, which was one reason nobody else would come near Frenchy.

“See,” he said, “I would use the shotguns and the carbines. This isn’t the ‘20s. The Thompsons were developed for trench warfare. For spraying. You spray a room, you got—”

“You wasn’t ever instructed to spray nothing,” said the stolid Carlo. “Mr. Earl told us: three-shot bursts.”

“Yeah, well, some of these hicks from the sticks, they’ll go nuts if somebody starts shooting at ‘em. They’ll spray anything that moves. They’ll turn one of these casinos into a Swiss cheese house.”

“You’d best just do what you’re told.”

“Ah,” said Frenchy. “You’re one of them. You probably love all this shit. You probably love that big Mr. Earl throwing his weight around like he’s some kind of God or John Wayne or something.”

“He seems okay. I heard he was a big war hero.”

“Yeah, what’d it get him? Pretend sergeant in Hot Springs, Arkansas, busting down casino doors. Shit. He couldn’t do better off a big medal than that?”

“What’re you even here for if all this is so much crap?”

“Ah—”

“Well?”

“You won’t tell anybody?”

“Of course not. You’re my buddy. I have to cover for you.”

“I got kicked out of Princeton. Boy, was my old man red-assed! He’s a big-deal judge, so he got me a job in the police department. What I really want to do is get to the FBI. But not without a college degree, no sir. But if I do well as a cop—”

“Why’d you get kicked out?”

“It’s a long story,” said Frenchy, and his eyes grew hard and tough with a zealot’s fire. “It was another crap deal, believe me. I got blamed for something I absolutely did not do! Anyhow, if I can get into the FBI, I can maybe then get into the OSS. You know what that is?”

“The what?”

“The what! Henderson, you’re even dumber than you look. It’s the Office of Strategic Services. The spies. Man, I would be so good at that! You work in foreign countries and I have a gift for languages and accents. These guys all believe I’m from some Passel O’Toads, Georgia! Anyhow, in OSS you pull shit all the time. In the war they blew up trains and assassinated Nazi generals and cut wires and eavesdropped on diplomats. My uncle did it.”

“Well,” said Henderson, “you’d best forget about all that and just focus on what we’re going to be doing in a few minutes.”

“Okay, but I get the Thompson, okay?”

“I thought you didn’t like the Thompson.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I said it was wrong for this kind of work. But I get to carry the Thompson.”

“Fine. I’ll go first.”

“No, I’ll go first. Come on, I’m much faster than you, I shoot better than you, I’m quick, I’m smart, I’m—”

“You can’t both go first and carry the Thompson. That’s agin the rules.”

“The rules!” cursed Frenchy, as if he’d run up against this one before. “The goddamned rules! Well, fuck the rules!”

The address was Building 3-3-2, in a sea of deserted barracks that spilled across the hardscrabble Texas plain. It looked no different than any other barracks, just a decaying tan building, its paint peeling, its wood drying out, a few of its shingles flapping in the ever-present wind.

That was the target. The twelve officers took up positions in a barracks three doors down, made a preliminary recon, studied their objective, and drew up plans. Stretch, the oldest at twenty-six, a Highway Patrolman from Oregon, was nominally in charge, and he was steady and wise, and knew the wisdom in keeping it simple. It seemed so easy, if only everybody would listen and cooperate.

But almost immediately Frenchy began to undercut him. Frenchy knew belter. Frenchy figured it out. Frenchy, charming, loquacious, willful, kept saying, “I’m the best shot, I ought to go first. Really, why not let the best shot go first?”

“Short, can you give somebody else a turn?”

“I’m just saying, the best way is to utilize your best people up front. I’m a very good shot. Nobody has shot as well as I have. Isn’t that right? Correct me if I’m wrong. So I ought to be the first-entry guy.”

He had very little shame, and no quit in him at all. Finally, to shut him up and get on with the planning, Stretch gave Frenchy the okay to be first man on the rear-entry team, with his partner.

That said, other assignments handed out, and the men suited up, sliding on the heavy armored plates over their suit coats, then donning their fedoras. They got into three cars—two old Highway Patrol Fords, painted all black, and a DeSoto that had once belonged to the State Liquor Control Board—and drove through the deserted streets of the barracks city until they came at 3-3-2 from different angles.

“All teams,” said Stretch, into his walkie-talkie and consulting his watch, “deploy now!”

The cars halted. The men rushed out. Immediately one fell down, jamming his Thompson muzzle into the Texas loam, filling its compensator with muck. Another, as he ran to the door, banged his knee severely on the swinging steel of the vest, which was really more a sandwich board of heavy metal; he went down, painfully out of action.

But Frenchy, in the lead from the rear car, made it to the door first and fastest. He carried the tommy gun. Carlo, less graceful and more ungainly in his armor, struggled behind.

Frenchy kicked the door.

It didn’t budge.

“Shit!” he said.

“Goddammit, you’re supposed to wait for me!” Carlo said, arriving, followed by the last four men on the team.

“The fucking door is jammed.”

Frenchy kicked it again. It didn’t move.

“We ought to—”

But Frenchy couldn’t wait. He threw off his heavy armor, smashed in a window, climbed into the frame and dove through it, rolling in the darkness. He stood up.

“Prosecuting Attorney’s Office,” he screamed. “This is a raid! Hands up!”

“Wait for me, goddammit,” huffed poor Henderson, still on the other side of the door.

Frenchy heard them banging. It never occurred to him to unlock it. He did not wait for anybody. He headed down a hall in what was surprising darkness, feeling liberated in the absence of the twenty pounds of armor. The hall led to a wider room, and he raced in, pointing his empty tommy gun at menacing forms which proved to be old desks and tables and chairs. At once the room filled with smoke. The smoke billowed and unfurled, completely disorienting him. He coughed, ran further into the room, all alone, and stepped into a wider space, where the smoke was thinner. All around him things seemed to crash. Before him, he saw shapes. Without thinking about it, he dropped to one knee, put the tommy gun sights on them, and pulled the trigger. The gun’s bolt flew forward with a powerful whack.

He recocked, knowing in reality he’d just mowed a few people down, and suddenly a figure appeared before him.

WHACK! he fired again, and a second later noted the surprised face of Carlo Henderson, whom he had just killed. He lurched to the left to a stairwell, kicked it open and raced up it.

“Short!”

He turned. Earl stood behind him, .45 leveled straight at his face for a perfect head shot, and snapped the trigger.

Then Earl said, “Congratulations, Short. You killed three of your own team members, you killed your partner, and you got yourself killed too. Just think of what you could have done if you’d have gotten to the second floor!”

D. A. gathered the young men in the dirt road out front of 3-3-2, invited the fellows to shed the body armor, stack the guns, take off the hats and coats and loosen the ties and light ‘em up if they had ‘em. It was blazing hot and most of the men had sweated through their clothes. They were a pretty sad-looking bunch: dampened and dejected.

“Now fellows,” he said, “I’d be lying if I told you you did a good job. Frankly a bagful of coons locked in a cellar with ten pounds of raw meat might have behaved better. Basically what I saw was a series of mistakes compounding mistakes. I don’t know what happened to your communications. Front-entry team at least hung together; too bad you got wiped out by the rear-entry team. Now, as I told you, the deal is simultaneous entrance. That’s the trick. You have to be coming from two directions at once with overwhelming force. They have to understand that there is no possibility of victory and that resistance is futile.

“I will admit that we threw you some ringers. Mr. Earl popped a smoke grenade just to confuse the issue. I would say it confused you plenty. Would anyone disagree with me? The back door was locked. Did anybody think to look above the doorjamb? That’s where the key was. Instead, at that point, rear-entry team just fell apart. Did rear-entry team walkie-talkie front-entry team? Nah. I was monitoring the radios upstairs. You were out of contact, and when you’re out of contact, all kinds of hob can play. Finally, fellows, you can’t let yourself get too excited. We had an unfortunate experience where one team member became separated, and got extremely aggressive with his weapon. He was supposed to be in support, but he rushed ahead, brought fire on die other team, then shot his partner, then rushed up a stairwell without securing the zone behind him and got shot by Mr. Earl. Fellows, you have to stay calm. If you let your emotions get the best of you, you become dangerous to your team members. This is about teamwork, fellows, remember. Teamwork, communications, good shooting skills, controlled aggression, sound tactics. That’s the core of the art. You got anything. Earl?”

“Only this. I learned this one the hard way. The fight is going to be what it wants to be. You got to be ready to go with it, follow it where it goes, and deal with it. Remember: Always cheat, always win.”

Fire and movement.

It was the most necessary training and the most dangerous.

“I saved this for last,” said D. A., “because you have to work on your gun-handling skills and your self-discipline before you can even think about such a thing. This is the one where if you screw up, you kill a buddy or a bystander.”

The course, as D. A. designed it, was set up in a tempo office building that administered the ranges back when the depot was turning out men for war. Now it was scheduled for destruction when the government’s budget would allow it. It could be shot up to everybody’s content and all walls but the front one were declared shootable. That gave the men a 270-degree shooting arc.

“You move through in two-man teams, just like on a real raid. The man on the right takes the targets on the right. The man on the left the targets on the left. Short, controlled bursts. Remember, trust your buddy. And, for God’s sake, stay together!”

That was Earl. He would walk behind each team as they ran the course, as a safety measure.

The guys waited their turns as each two-man team ran the course. Inside the house, they could hear the quick stutters of the tommy guns and the bark of the .45s as each team popped its targets. One by one the teams emerged intact, joyous, and Earl would call up another team.

Finally, it was Frenchy and Carlo’s turn.

“Okay, guys, you just take her easy. Short, you listening today?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Okay, who’s on the big gun?”

The two hadn’t discussed this. They looked at each other.

“Henderson, you’re bigger. You run the big gun. Short, you’re a damned good pistol man. You work your .45. Remember, controlled speed, make sure of your targets, keep relating to your partner. Know where he is at all times, and nobody has to get hurt.”

“Gotcha,” said Frenchy.

The two young officers locked and loaded their weapons under Earl’s supervision, then bent and got into the heavy armored vests.

“All right,” he said, “muzzles level, we’re shoulder to shoulder, we’re not rushing, we’re all eyes looking for targets. You shoot the black targets. You don’t shoot the targets with white Xs on them. That would be civilians. Henderson, remember, three-shot bursts on that thing, dead center. You, Short, you’re responsible for the left-hand sector. Henderson, you take the right. Don’t hold the gun too tightly. Okay, fellas, I’m right here for you. All set?”