Hot Springs (39 page)

“I want you to get me a job with the government.”

“Jesus,” said the Irishman. “I’m thinking the boy wants to be an FBI agent! We should shoot him now.”

“No,” said Frenchy. “Not at all, not the FBI. It’s called the Office of Strategic Services. It’s the spies. It’s very tony, very Harvard, very old law firm, very ancient brokerage. Most of the people who work for it went to the same schools and they sit and drink in the same clubs. They’re special, gifted, important men, who secredy rim the country. They’re above the law. You think you’re important? You think you’re big? Ha! You only exist because you fiilfill some purpose of theirs. You supply a need and so they let you survive. They answer to no one except their own cold conscience. They are the country, in a way. I want to be one of them. I have to be one of them.”

“Jesus, Johnny,” said Owney. “The boy wants to be a spy.”

“You can do it. Earl and D. A. couldn’t do it, because they’re nothing in the East and no matter how great they are, nobody out East would notice or care. It’s a club thing. You have to get into the club. I know you know people. I know you could make three phone calls and I’ve suddenly got someone going to bat for me. That’s what I want.”

“I could make a phone call.”

“To an important man.”

“I could make a phone call to an important man.”

“He could go to bat for me. He could make them hire me. He could tell them—”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Owney. “Wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done. Your record, it’s okay?”

“If you look close, it’s spotty. But from a distance it looks good. Right schools, that sort of thing.”

“So, what are you going to give me?”

“Okay,” said Frenchy, taking a draft on a cigar. “I’ll tell you how to get them.”

“We’re all ears, boyo,” said the Irishman.

“You have to have good men, though.”

“We have five of the best,” said the Irishman.

“And you’d be one of them, Mr. Spanish,” said Frenchy. “Or should I say Mr. John St. Jerome Aloysius O’Malley, armed robber extraordinaire, called Spanish for the olive cast to his skin. As I say, I do my homework.”

He sat back, beaming.

“Ain’t he the smart one/’ said Johnny. “A sly boyo, misses not a thing, that one.”

“Kid, you’re impressing me. You are making me happy. Now make me happier.”

“I’m going to make you unhappier. They know where the Central Book is. Right now, they’re trying to figure out how to hit it. So you don’t have a lot of time.”

This was Frenchy’s specialty, as it turned out. He had a gift for conspiracy, but under that, and far more important, he had a gift for conviction. It was an almost autistic talent, to read people in a flash and understand how to beguile them along certain lines. He knew he had them now, and he even had a moment’s pleasure when he realized he could play it either way: he could set these guys up for Earl or he could set up Earl for these guys. Any way he came out on top! It was so cool! He held his own life in his hands; he could do anything.

“How did they find it?”

“They didn’t,” said Frenchy. “They’re not smart enough. I found it for them.”

He quickly narrated his adventures at the phone company on Prospect Avenue.

“Fuck!” said Owney, devolving to East Side hoodlum. “That fucking Mel Parsons! I knew he was no good! I’ll get that changed right away!”

“Barn door and all the animals fled, sport,” said Johnny Spanish. “listen to the boy here. He’s smart, he’s got some talent. See what he’s got to offer.”

“Okay,” said Frenchy. “D. A. had us quartered at the Lake Catherine dam, in the pump house.”

“Fuck!” said Owney, this elemental truth right under his nose at last revealed.

“But he won’t go back there. He’s smart. When he goes operational again, he’ll find some other place. You’ll never find it. And even if you do, what are you going to do? Go in with a thousand Grumleys, kill everybody? There’d be a huge stink, the governor would have to call out the National Guard. What does that get you?”

“Go ahead, sonny,” said Johnny.

“So you have to ambush them. But you’ve got to do it in such a way that when they’re finished, it’s not going to be a scandal. It’s going to be a joke.”

“You have the floor, kid. Keep talking.”

“What would be a temptation they couldn’t resist? That Becker couldn’t resist?”

“Now, see, Johnny was talking about that today too. You guys sure you ain’t related?”

“Possibly his lordship’s triple-great-grandfather fucked me triple-great-grandmother the scullery maid in her bog cottage in County Mayo in 1653,” said Johnny.

“I don’t think we ever had any Irish servants,” said Frenchy, completely seriously. “Anyway, here it is: the Great Train Robbery.”

There was a quiet moment. The two men looked at each other.

“Yeah, I thought so,” said Frenchy. “That was the biggest thing that ever happened here. October 2, 1940. Five men take out the Alcoa payroll, kill four railway guards and get away clean with several million dollars. In the Hot Springs yard! Big news! Great job! It’s even said that a certain Owney Maddox built the biggest casino in the world in 1941 on the proceeds of that job. It’s also said that the great Johnny Spanish, the world’s smartest armed robber, masterminded the job.”

“Have another cigar, kid.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Frenchy turned the lighting of the cigar into high drama. He sucked, he puffed, he drew the fire into the long, harsh tube of finest Cuban leaf, he watched the glow, he got it lit fiercely, and finally he expelled a huge cloud which rotated, Hiroshima-like, above his clever young head.

“If Fred Becker stops another train robbery and if he nabs the team that did it and that’s the team that did the first robbery and he gets convictions on them, by God, then he’s a national hero. He’s the next governor. He’s won what he wants to win. See, he only sees the gambling crusade as a vehicle. He doesn’t believe in it a bit. It’s just leverage to get him to the next level.”

Owney appraised the young man. He had the gangster thing. Mad Dog had it. Bugsy had it. The Dutchman had it. It would change over the years to something mellower and deeper, into a strategic vision. But now, raw and unalloyed, this handsome upper-class boy had it in absolute purity: the ability to see into a situation and know exacdy how to twist it, where to apply force, where to kill, how to make the maximum profit and get away with the minimum risk.

“So,” continued Frenchy, “what you have to do is find some way to plant the possibility that another train robbery’s being set up. That Johnny Spanish has been seen in town. Becker will go for it like crazy. He’ll go for it fast and recklessly. That’s his character, his defining characteristic, that ambition. He’ll order Parker and Earl to intercede. He has to. They’re the only men he’s got he more or less trusts. You’ve got him. Only, when he lunges for the big prize, it’s just bait concealing a hook, and you get him right through the gills. You lure the team into that railyard, and hammer it good.”

He sat back, took another huge puff on the cigar. The smoke curled around his face, and he took a sip of the Scotch whiskey, but not too much, for he didn’t want to blur his sharpness.

“I think he will make a fine agent,” said Johnny Spanish. “He’s pure Black and Tan, a night rider with a cunning for the devil’s work.”

“Why, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me,” said Frenchy, only partially ironic. He felt suddenly something he had never felt before: that he was home. He belonged.

But Johnny went on. “See, he’s got so much upstairs, but in the end, he’s a brick shy in the realm of experience.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Frenchy.

“A night ambush’s a devilish hard thing to pull. I’ve been in dozens so I know. You get your own boys all mixed up with the other fella’s. Everybody’s shooting at everybody else. Then, you’ve got a big space like that railyard, with lots of room for maneuver, and it gets even more mixed up. And to put a final ribbon on it, see, they’re wearing those damned vests, so they’re not going down. By Jesus, boy, you’ve thrown the babe out with the bathwater. You’ve got to lure them into a contained area so there’s telling what’s them and what’s us. That, or figure a way to let us see in the dark.”

The smile began slowly on Frenchy’s face. It flamed brightly, gathering force and power, becoming a ghastly apparition on its own. His smugness was so radiant it became a force of illumination almost on its own. He gloated like a man mightily self-pleased to discover that he’d arrived exactly where he intended all along.

“Old man,” he said. “Consider this.” He reached into his pocket and removed a page clipped from the June 1945 Mechanix Illustrated. He unfolded it and gently put it on the desk before them.

UNCLE SAM CAN SEE IN THE DARK read the headline, above a picture of a GI clutching a carbine with what looked to be a spotlight beneath the barrel and one of the new televisions mounted atop the receiver, where a telescopic sight might otherwise go.

“It’s called infrared. You beam them with a light they can’t see. Only you can see it, through that big scope. They’re in broad daylight, only they don’t know it. You can hit head shots, and to hell with the vests. You pop a few of them, and the rest turn and run. You litter the place with carbine shells and you vacate. I can get you hundreds of carbine shells. Your police are there in seconds, report no sign of another outfit and that the raid team panicked in the dark and shot the shit out of each other. They’re clowns, who’s not to believe it? Since you control the cops, nobody will ever work the forensics. Hey, is it swell or is it swell?”

The phone rang.

“Goddamn!” said Owney, reaching for it.

“With Mr. Maddox’s connections, it can’t be too difficult to get a hold of a couple of these gadgets. You set up on a boxcar. The raid team comes into the yard. Bing-bang-boom! It’s over.”

“Yeah?” said Owney, into the receiver. “Goddammit, this better be impor—”

His rage turned to amazement.

“Be right there,” he said. He turned back to his confederates.

“You work it out with him,” he said. “You guys are a team, I knew that from the start. Tell me where to go to get those units and you’ll have them next week. I’ve got to run.”

“What’s going on, boyo?” asked Johnny Spanish.

“A babe has just shown up and she’ll talk only to me.”

“Ah, Owney, many’s the fine fella who’s been undone by a lass. You wouldn’t be that kind, would you now?”

“Not a chance. But this one’s different,” he said, closing the door. “It’s Virginia Hill.”

“I hate to fly,” said Virginia. “It hurts my butt. I hate those little johns. I hate it when you’re stuck next to some joe who wants to tell you his life story.”

“Virginia,” said Ben, “you have to do it.”

They were in the lounge at Los Angeles International Airport, sipping martinis. It was a very deco place, all chrome and brushed aluminum, filled with soaring models of sleek planes. Outside, through an orifice now being called a “picture window,” planes queued up to take off on the long tarmac. They were silvery babies, their props buzzing brightly in the sun, most with two motors, some few with four. They looked, to Ben at least, like B-17s taking off for a mission over Germany, not that he had ever seen a B-17 or been anywhere near Germany while the shooting was going on.

Virginia took another sip of her icy martooni. The gin bit her lips and dulled her senses. She had to pee but she couldn’t find the energy. Her breasts were knocking against her playsuit top, as if they wanted to come out and play. The drink made her nipples hard as frozen cherries. Her brassiere cut into her gorgeous mountains of shoulders. One shoe had slipped half off her foot. Every man in the joint was staring at her, or rather, at parts of her, but that was a necessary condition of her life. Ben’s pal, a tough little mutt named Mickey Cohen, lounged nearby, as a kind of sentry. He sent out such vibrations of protective aggression that none would approach, or even admire too openly. Mickey looked like a fire hydrant on legs.

Airplane! Virginia Hill went by train, in her own stateroom, on the Super Chief or the Broadway or the Century or the Orange Blossom Special! Elegant Negroes called her “Miz Hill” when they served her Cream of Wheat in the morning, tomato aspic in the afternoon and steak in the evening, all with champagne. It was so nice. It was the way a lady traveled.

“Now tell me again what you’re supposed to do.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Virginia. “Ben, I am not stupid. I know exacdy what to do.”

“I know, I know, but humor me.”

“Ah. You bastard. Why do I put up with this shit?”

“Because of my huge Jewish pretzel.”

“Overrated. You might try kissing me a little first, you know. It’s not always so good when we try and do it in under ten seconds.”

“I look at you and I just can’t wait. When you get back, kisses, presents, dinner, champagne, petting. I’ll pet! I swear to you on my yarmulke: petting!”

“You bastard.”

“Please, Virginia. I am so nervous about this.”

“Twenty hours or so, I get to Hot Springs. I check into the Arlington where I already have a reservation. I go to Owney. He of course has to have me up. I tell him I’m on a sort of a peace mission. Ben is worried that Owney will think he’s shoehorning in on the Hot Springs business with this desert deal. I’m to assure him that that’s not the case and that if Vegas even begins to look as if it might work, you, Ben, will invite him, Owney, out as a consultant and fellow investor. Owney is to consider Vegas his town as much as Hot Springs and as far as Ben is concerned, Owney will always be the father and Ben the son.”

“Yeah, that’s good. You can do that?”

“In my sleep, sugar.”

“Okay, what’s next?”

“Then I pressure him about the cowboy. Does he yet know who that cowboy is? Ben has been very embarrassed about what happened to him with the cowboy. It’s gotten all around and Ben is being teased about it and being laughed at behind his back. Can Owney please hurry up and find out who the cowboy is?”

“Yeah.”

“Ben, I’m telling you, even if he tells me I am not going to tell you. I will not be part of anything against that guy. He was just a guy who lit a cigarette. You swung first. He didn’t know who you were.”