Legs (28 page)

"You got something to tell me now, shitkicker?"
Jack said.

The old man opened his eyes, saucers of terror. He
shook his head. Jack put the pistol between his eyes, held it there
for seconds of silence. Then he let it fall away with a weariness. He
stayed on his haunches in front of Streeter, just staring. Just
staring and saying nothing.

"You win, old man," he finally said.
"You're a tough monkey."

Jack stood up slowly and
pocketed his pistol. Fogarty and one of the porch guards drove
Streeter and Bartlett back to their truck. Fogarty ripped out their
ignition wires and told them not to call the police. He drove back to
Acra and slept the sleep of a confused man.

* * *

When Speed had brought her from the car into the
house, Kiki had said to him, "What's going to happen with those
men?"

"I don't know. Probably just some talk."

"Oh, God, Joe, don't let him hurt them. I don't
want to be mixed up in that kind of shit again, please, Joe."

"I'll do what I can do, but you know Jack's got
a mind of his own."

"I'll go and see him. Or maybe you could tell
him to come in. Maybe if I asked him not to do anything, for me,
don't do it for me, he wouldn't do it."

"I'll tell him you said it."

"You're a nice guy, Joe."

"You go to bed and stay upstairs. Do what I tell
you. "

"Yes, Joe."

Kiki was thinking that Joe really and truly was a
nice guy and that maybe she could make it with him if only she wasn't
tied up with Jack. Of course, she wouldn't do anything while she was
thick with Jack. But it was nice to think about Joe and his red hair
and think about how nice he would be to play with. He was nicer than
Jack, but then she didn't love Jack because he was nice.

She worried whether Jack had killed the two men when
she later heard the two shots and the screaming. But she had thought
the worst at the Monticello, thought Jack had killed those men when
they had really tried to kill him. She didn't want to think bad
things about Jack again. But she lived half an hour with uncertainty.
Then Jack came into her room and said the men were gone and nobody
got hurt.

"Did you get the information you wanted'?"
she asked.

"Yeah, I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh, good. Are you done now?"

"All done."

"Then we can finish the evening the way we
intended."

"It's finished."

"I mean really finished."

"And I mean really finished. "

He kissed her on the cheek and went to his bedroom.
He didn't come back to see her or ask her to come to him. She tried
to sleep, but she kept wanting to finish the evening, continue from
where she and Jack had left off in the car in the silence and the
chilliness and the brightness of the new moon on the open fields. She
wanted to lie alongside Jack and comfort him because she knew from
the way he was behaving that he had the blues. If she went in and
loved him, he would feel better. Yet she felt he didn't really want
that, and she rolled over and tossed and turned, curled and uncurled
for another hour before she decided: Maybe he really does want it. So
then, yes, she ought to do it. She got up and very quietly tiptoed
into Jack's room and stood naked alongside his bed. Jack was deeply
asleep. She touched his ear and ran her fingers down his cheek, and
all of a sudden she was looking down the barrel of his .38 and he was
bending her fingers back so far she was screaming. Nobody came to
help her. She thought of that later. Jack could have killed her and
nobody would have tried to stop him. Not even Joe.

"You crazy bitch! What were you trying to do?"

"I just wanted to love you."

"Never, never wake me up that way. Don't ever
touch me. Call me and I'll hear it, but don't touch me."

Kiki was weeping because her hand hurt so much. She
couldn't bend her fingers. When she tried to bend them, she fainted.
When she came to, she was in a chair and Jack was all white in the
face, looking at her. He was slapping her cheek lightly just as she
came out of it.

"It hurts an awful lot."

"We'll go get a doctor. I'm sorry, Marion, I'm
really sorry I hurt you."

"I know you are, Jack."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"I know you don't."

"I love you so much I'm half nuts sometimes."

"Oh, Jackie, you're not nuts, you're wonderful
and I don't care if you hurt me. It was an accident. It was all my
fault."

"We'll go get the doc out of bed."

"He'll fix me up line, and then we can come back
and finish the evening."

"Yeah, that's a swell idea."

The coroner was Jack's
doctor, and they got him out of bed. He bandaged her hand and said
she'd have to have a cast made at the hospital next day, and he gave
her pills for her pain. She told him she'd been rehearsing her dance
steps and had fallen down. He didn't seem to believe that, but Jack
didn't care what he believed, so she didn't either. After the
doctor's they went back home. Jack said he was too tired to make love
and that they'd do it in the morning. Kiki tossed and turned for a
while and then went down to the kitchen and checked the fudge again,
felt it with the fingers of her good hand. It was still goo, so she
put it out on the back porch for the cat.

* * *

Clem Streeter told his story around Catskill for
years. He was a celebrity because of it, stopped often by people and
asked for another rendition. I was being shaved in a Catskill barber
chair the year beer came back, and Jack was, of course, long gone.
But Clem was telling the story yet again for half a dozen locals.

"The jedge in Catskill axed me what I wanted the
pistol permit for," he said, "and I told him 'bout how that
Legs Diamond feller burned my feet and hung me from a sugar maple
th'other night up at his garage. 'That so?' axed the jedge. 'I jes
told you it were,' I said. People standin' 'round the courthouse
heard what we was sayin' and they come over to listen better. 'You
made a complaint yet against this Diamond person?' the jedge axes me.
But I tell him, only complaint I made so far was to the wife. That
jedge he don't know what to do with hisself he's so took out by what
I'm sayin'. I didn't mean to upset the jedge. But he says, 'I guess
we better get the sheriff on this one and maybe the DA,' and they
both of 'em come in after a little bit and I tell 'em my story, how
they poked guns outen the winders of their car and we stopped the
truck, me and Dickie Bartlett. They made us git down, but I didn't
git fast enough for Diamond, so he hit me with his fist and said,
'Put up your hands or I'll split your efiin' head.' Then they hauled
us up to Diamond's place with our caps pulled down so we wouldn't
know where we was goin', but I see the road anyway out under the side
of the cap and I know that place of his with the lights real well. Am
I sure it was Diamond, the jedge axes. 'Acourse I'm sure. I seen him
plenty over at the garage in Cairo. He had a woman in the car with
him, and I recognized the other feller who did the drivin' 'cause he
stopped my truck another night I was haulin' empty barrels 'bout a
month back.' 'So this here's Streeter, the wise guy from Cairo,'
Diamond says to me and he cuffs me on the jaw with his fist, just
like that, afore I said a word. Then up in the garage they tried to
burn me up. 'What'd they do that for?' the jedge axes me, and I
says,"Cause he wants to know where there's a still I'm s'posed
to know about. But I told Diamond I don't know nothin' 'bout no
still.' And the jedge says, 'Why'd he think you did?' And I says,
"Cause I'm haulin' twenty-four barrels of hard cider I'd picked
up down at Post's Cider Mill.' 'Who for?' says the jedge. 'For me,' I
says. 'I like cider. Drink a bunch of it.' 'Cause I ain't about to
tell no jedge or nobody else 'bout the still me and old Cy Bartlett
got between us. We do right nice business with that old still. Make
up to a hundred, hundred and thirty dollars apiece some weeks off the
fellers who ain't got no stills and need a little 'jack to keep the
blood pumpin'. That Diamond feller, he surely did want to get our
still away from us. I knew that right off. Did me a lot of damage,
I'll say. But sheeeeee. Them fellers with guns is all talk. Hell,
they don't never kill nobody. They just like to throw a scare into
folks so's they can get their own way. Son of a bee if I was gonna
give up a hundred and thirty dollars a week for some New York
feller."
 

JACK AMONG THE MAIDS

The Streeter incident took place in mid-April, 1931.
Eight days later, the following document was released in the Capitol
at Albany:

Pursuant to section 62 of the Executive Law,
I hereby require that you, the Attorney General of this state, attend
in person or by your assistants or deputies, a regular special and
trial term of the Supreme Court appointed to be held in and for the
County of Greene for the month of April, 1931, and as such term as
may hereafter be continued, and that you in person or by said
assistants or deputies appear before the grand jury or grand juries
which shall be drawn and sit for any later term or terms of said
court for the purpose of managing and conducting in said court and
before said grand jury and said other grand juries, any and all
proceedings, examinations and inquiries, and any and all criminal
actions and proceedings which may be taken by or before said grand
jury concerning any and all kinds and-or-criminal offences, alleged
to have been committed by John Diamond, also known as Jack (Legs)
Diamond and-or-any person or persons acting in concert with him, and
further to manage, prosecute and conduct the trial of any indictments
found by said grand jury or grand juries at said term or terms of
said court or of any other court at which any and all such
indictments may hereafter be tried, and that in person or by your
assistants or deputies you supersede the district attorney of the
County of Greene in all matters herein specified and you exercise all
the powers and perform all the duties conferred upon you by Section
62 of the Executive Law and this requirement thereunder; and that in
such proceedings and actions the District Attorney of Greene County
shall only exercise such powers and perform such duties as are
required of him by you or by the assistants or deputies attorney
general so attending.
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt Governor of the State of New York

Jack thus became the first gangster of the
Prohibition Era to have the official weight of an entire state, plus
the gobble of its officialese, directed at him. I find this notable.
I did what little I could to throw a counterweight when the time
came. I cited the whole affair as a cynical political response to the
harsh spotlight that Judge Seabury, his reformers, and the Republican
jackals were, at the moment, shining on the gangsterism and
corruption so prevalent in New York City's Tammany Hall, with
Democratic Gentleman Jimmy Walker the chief illuminated goat. FDR, I
argued when I pleaded Jack's case in the press, was making my client
the goat in a Republican stronghold. I voiced particular outrage at
superseding the Greene County District Attorney.

But my counterweight didn't weigh much. Jack went to
jail and I understood the spadework done in Albany by Van Deusen's
vigilantes. FDR even sent his personal bodyguard to Catskill as an
observer when the swarm of state police and state attorneys moved
toward Jack's jugular.

Knute Rockne told his men:
"Don't be a bad loser, but don't lose. "

* * *

Fogarty got me out of bed to tell me Jack had been
arrested and that he himself was going into hiding. Jack and Kiki
were in the parlor at Acra, and Fogarty was playing pool in the
cottage when the trooper rang the bell under the second step. Three
times. Jack's straight neighbors thought three was the insider's
ring, but it was the ring only for straights.

Jack tried to talk the trooper into letting him
surrender in the morning by himself, avoid the ignominy of it, but
the trooper said nix, and so Jack wound up on a hard cot in a
white-washed third-floor cell of the county jail. Tidy and warm, not
quite durance vile, as one journalist wrote, but vile enough for the
King Cobra of the Catskills, as he was now known in the press.

I worked on the bail, which was a formidable
twenty-five thousand dollars: ten each for assaulting Streeter and
Bartlett, five for the kidnapping. Uh-oh, I said, when I heard the
news, heard especially how young Bartlett was. What we now are
dealing with, I told Fogarty, and Jack too, is not a bootleggers'
feud, which is what it was in a left-handed way, but the abduction of
children in the dead of night. Not a necessary social misdemeanor, as
most bootlegging was contemporaneously regarded, but a high crime in
any age.

I called Warren Van Deusen to see if I could pry Jack
loose by greasing local pols, but found him haughtily supporting the
state's heavy anti-Jack thrust. "Kidnapping kids now, is he? I
hear he's holding up bread truck drivers too. What's next?
Disemboweling old ladies?" I wrote off Warren as unreliable, a
man given to facile outrage, who didn't understand the process he was
enmeshed in.