The Bootlegger’s Legacy (19 page)

They met in the hotel lobby, then went up to Sally’s room rather than the bar or restaurant. Molly wasn’t dressed very well. They talked a lot that night, and Sally began to realize that Molly was in need of a big sister. It made her sad, but also it got her mind off of herself, which was good.

Over the next week, Sally found a very reasonably priced apartment in a nice neighborhood not far from the hotel. She asked Molly to move in with her, but Molly hesitated. Of course, Molly thought she loved the skinny jerk—although in time she did move in with Sally. Sally purchased some used furniture and a couple of beds and got the apartment looking pretty good.

Sally also had found a job as a waitress in one of the upscale restaurants downtown. She knew how to wait tables, and after a couple of weeks her tips were covering her and Molly’s living expenses. She had spent a good chunk of the “Pat money,” but not all, so she was feeling pretty good.

Months went by, and she and Molly got into a good routine. Molly was still working at Ed’s, but she wasn’t seeing the skinny creep any longer. She was taking better care of herself, and she was being noticed by a better class of creep.

As happens in life, though, it didn’t stay good for long. Sally starting feeling bad. She was only showing a little, but there was no doubt in her mind that it had to do with the baby. She went to a doctor, who said he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. He recommended that she stop working and just rest. Thanks a lot Doc.

Sally missed work more and more because she was ill. At first the restaurant manager was very supportive—after all, she was his most popular waitress—but soon he said he was going to have to hire someone else if she couldn’t work more often. Then he fired her.

Calculating how much money she had and what they were spending, Sally figured she could stay home and rest for the last month or so of the pregnancy, and then once she had the baby she could go back to work. She also thought she could call Pat. She decided she would never put the child at risk, so if she had to she would call Pat—she also knew he would want her to. Once she had decided what to do if worse came to worst, she stopped worrying about money.

Sally spent most of the last month in bed. She didn’t know what was wrong, but she knew something was—and she was scared. Molly seemed more attentive. She stayed with Sally all she could and only left to go to work. She and Sally became close again.

“Sally, how are you, can you hear me?” This was from a doctor that Molly had called after she couldn’t get Sally to respond to her. Molly was terrified. The doctor examined Sally.

“She’s not in good shape. She needs to go to a hospital. I’m going to call an ambulance and she’ll be taken to St. Joseph.” He went to the phone and, in a very businesslike manner, called for an ambulance.

“What’s wrong—is she going to lose the baby?” Molly was almost hysterical.

“I really don’t know what’s wrong with her at this point. They’ll have to do some tests at the hospital, but she’s very sick. I’m very concerned for her life and the life of the baby.”

About that time they heard the ambulance siren. Sally was rushed to the hospital and immediately placed in intensive care—out of concern for the baby, the nurses told Molly.

Molly stayed at the hospital for three days, never leaving. She slept on benches and chairs in the waiting room, almost mad with worry. The nurses were very kind to her and kept her informed about Sally—the doctors just seemed to ignore her. She was told that Sally had some kind of an infection and that the baby would need to be delivered soon or it might not live.

On the third night, the baby was born. Surprisingly, the doctors and nurses reported that the baby was by all accounts a very healthy girl. Whatever was ravaging Sally seemed not to have affected the little girl’s health.

Sally went into a coma.

Molly continued to live at the hospital. She thought about the things she and Sally had talked about over the last few months. They had talked about their names and wondered how their mom had come up with them. Sally had told Molly that if her baby was a girl she was going to name her Michelle, and if a boy Patrick. They had giggled about how Michelle sounded so much more “sophisticated” than their own names. They didn’t discuss the boy’s name much. Sally had also told Molly that she hoped it was a girl since she wasn’t sure she knew how to raise a boy.

The baby was well taken care of by the nurses, with help from Molly, and after two weeks Molly took the child back to the apartment. She was doing her best every day to do what she thought Sally would want her to do. She had matured years in a matter of months.

Sally stayed in a coma for almost two months and then she died. Everyone at the hospital was immensely affected by the untimely death of this beautiful woman—it made no sense at all. The tears were real.

Molly did the best she could for a few months, but when the money Sally had left was almost gone she had no choice but to take baby Michelle to their brother in Dallas. She was sorry, and hoped Sally would forgive her, because she loved Sally and she loved Michelle.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

It had been almost a year since Pat had purchased the hardware store. It was a different kind of life. There was a routine to the operation of the store that was comforting to him. He would open the store by seven every morning, Monday through Friday, and immediately have a few customers, often regulars from the immediate neighborhood.

Pat would have coffee made, and the regulars would stand and sit around the store discussing the topics of the day—usually politics and weather. They were all elderly men and most of them lived alone, and these morning sessions in the store were the most important part of their day. They’d also been the source of most of his knowledge about how to operate the store. As a group they’d been observing the ebb and flow of the business for many years. If Pat had a question, this was his resource team.

He hadn’t had any contact with the Martinez operation. They continued to send crates of supplies like clockwork, but they hadn’t needed him to handle any business matters. While Pat was pleased that the transition had apparently been smooth, he was actually a little disappointed that he hadn’t been needed to solve some sort of problem. But he would never complain about the Martinez brothers—they were honoring every aspect of their agreement with him.

Pat stayed in the store most days. He had a few employees who helped run things and, of course, his son Mike was a big help. The store closed every day at five, just as it had for years. Pat knew he’d have a lot more business if he stayed opened longer hours, but he didn’t want to. Maybe the next owner would have to, but Pat was fine with closing and going home for dinner.

Since retiring from his bootlegging business, there had been only a few days that Pat hadn’t been in the store. On one of those occasions he’d flown himself to Dallas to meet with some new attorneys he was hiring.

When he got in the plane, he thought he could still smell Sally’s scent. He sat in the cockpit for some time and felt a huge sadness overcome him. Most days he didn’t think about her, or at least not much. It had been over a year since he’d last seen her, and the pain was still strong. It seemed to Pat an odd thing for an old man to have such strong feelings—that was something for young people. But he hurt and he missed her greatly.

During most of his working days at the store he stayed busy with customers and stocking, and didn’t have much time to dwell on what had happened. Sitting in the plane, it snuck up on him and for a moment it overwhelmed him. He got out and went through the pre-flight check list. He knew this would be his last time flying the plane. While he loved it, he was getting close to the age where it would be difficult to get his license renewed, so he’d listed it with an aircraft broker. He’d received two offers and was going to take one of them as soon as he came back from Dallas. Plus, it just wasn’t that easy to be gone anymore—he was now expected to be home every day.

One of the ground crew helped him pull the plane out of the hangar. He finished his checklist and taxied out to a warm up area. He was cleared for takeoff almost immediately. Powering the plane down the runway gave him a thrill that had been absent from his life for a while. The plane jumped into the air with tremendous power, and in that moment Pat didn’t feel old at all.

The flight to Dallas was smooth for the first half of the way and bumpy the last half. His landing was textbook, although there was no one to see how well he did. He parked the plane at the FBO and took a taxi to his meeting with the attorneys.

Pat was making some arrangements for a variety of things that would need to be handled once he was gone. He had a plan but he didn’t know if it would work. The law firm had a reputation for being discreet and knowledgeable, and they had drafted the necessary paperwork for his signature with practiced ease, as well as providing him with funding instructions. Pat had great confidence that they would carry out his wishes as instructed, but it still felt odd relying on someone to do something after you were dead.

The flight back to Oklahoma City was smooth, and the plane was running great—he was definitely going to miss it. About half way to OKC he started thinking about the time he and Sally had made the spin maneuver through the hole in the clouds in Las Cruces. Now, all alone and thousands of feet above the ground, he started laughing. He laughed until he cried, and then he just cried.

Pat made an okay landing at Wiley Post—definitely not one of his best. He parked the plane in the FBO parking and left instructions with them to clean it up, service it, and then turn it over to the broker, who had an office in their building. He wasn’t going to be flying anymore.

Sitting alone that night in his home office, sipping a little Wild Turkey, Pat wondered if he had done the right thing. He knew he was right to have gotten out of the bootlegging racket before he got killed, and he knew spending more time with Bugs and Mike was right, but he wasn’t sure about Sally. He didn’t want to be old and he didn’t want to not be with Sally.

In a crazy moment, maybe fueled by the Wild Turkey, he thought he had to see her again. Tomorrow he would find out where she was and he would go see her. He felt elated just thinking about it. In the middle of the night, he sat alone, grinning at the thought. Why couldn’t he be with Sally? He loved her so much.

The moment passed. He knew why—it would ruin her. He had to be strong for her. And he was.

The routine of that first year at Allen’s Hardware became the routine for every year thereafter. Not much changed in the hardware business. His regulars changed occasionally, usually because one died, but it always seemed that there was someone new to come in and gossip.

Pat became such an institution, he heard people say he had run the business since the thirties—how old did they think he was? He enjoyed his life at the store and at home with his family. The sadness grew less.

“Didn’t you used to be Pat Allen?” This question was from an elderly man who’d been in the store for a few minutes and had glanced at Pat several times.

“Well I guess I still am.” Pat chuckled a bit.

“Well I’ll be dammed. I sure thought you were dead.”

“Not yet.”

“Hey, I used to see you when you visited my uncle, Sheriff Tubbs in El Reno.”

“Well yeah, I remember Sheriff Tubbs. How is he doing?”

“Oh my uncle died many years ago. I can’t believe you’re working at this hardware store. That’s really something. You know my uncle was shocked when you sold out to them Mexican people—but that worked out great for everybody. I helped my uncle as he got older, so I knew all about that shit.”

Pat was real sure he didn’t want to have this conversation. He steered the guy away from the regulars and just nodded his head as he talked.

“Yeah, I tell you those were sure some nice gangsters—it was like they really cared if everything was working out. We need those damn people running the telephone company—they sure the shit knew what they were doing. Of course you probably know about them pulling out.”

“I wasn’t aware.”

“Yeah, must have been seven, eight years after you retired—they just up and quit. Of course that was about the time the state started their own liquor stores. Guess you can’t compete with the goddamn state, even if you’re a gangster. Anyway, we heard that they were having trouble in Mexico with gangs and bandits and that they moved their whole operation to Miami. Man, how would you like to live like that—go from one foreign place to another at the drop of a hat?”

Pat found the part that the guy had come in for and shooed him out the door. What a blowhard. But Pat thought that sounded like the Martinez brothers—once it got too ugly they moved on to something else. Those guys sure did treat him right. There was never another sighting of Giovanni—the Mexicans must have done the world a favor and ended his vile existence. If Pat had been a little bit younger he sure would have liked to go to Miami and visit Juan and Francisco Martinez, two of the nicest gangsters he had ever met.

Pat woke up one day and everything seemed different. He’d always been a strong man—sick occasionally, but never really ill. But this time something was wrong. He had trouble rising, and could only sit on the edge of the bed. Bugs had already gone downstairs, so he just sat there for a while. It crossed his mind that he should talk to Mike about the money—but then it seemed to leave his mind. He knew he would never be the same.