Black Hats (12 page)

Tex’s mouth fell like a trapdoor, and then she roared with laughter and waved a dismissive hand in Wyatt’s direction. “Sweetie, whatever you get, you deserve!…I’ll go get our

‘guests.’”

And she was gone.

Johnny was just standing there frozen, like Lot’s wife getting a gander at Gomorrah.

Wyatt gestured with a finger. “Got a rod in that desk, son?”

Johnny swallowed. Nodded. “Top drawer, right.”

“Then get behind it, and open it an inch.” Wyatt rose, and looked down at the still seated Bat, who seemed a mite bewildered. “Come on, Bartholomew. Cheap seats should be sufficient, for a show like this.”

Bat’s eyes narrowed, but he got to his feet, and followed Wyatt over to the yellow couch, where both men sat.

In about two minutes, a character bounded in, a big heavyset kid with an immediately commanding presence.

“Johnny,” he said. “Good to see you again. You look like a million fucking dollars.”

A pudgy hand bearing a pink-jeweled pinkie ring was thrust forward and Johnny, not rising, took it briefly.

From Wyatt’s vantage point on the couch, all he’d seen so far was a blur of purple—Johnny’s guest was six feet tall and four feet wide, a small building of a man wearing a purple suit, beautifully tailored.

As the newcomer swung around to take in the rest of the office—including the two men seated on the sofa—he presented Wyatt with a good detailed look. The rest of the wardrobe was equally as nattily tasteless: a lighter purple shirt, a deep purple necktie (like Johnny’s tie, this one had a diamond stickpin) and a pearl-gray Borsalino at an angle so sharp it cut across his left eye. The shoes were white and pointed and perforated.

“Mr. Capone,” Johnny said with half a nod.

Mr. Capone had a wide round face with full, reddish lips, a broad flat nose and light-gray eyes under dark shaggy slashes of eyebrow, and no neck to speak of; his complexion had an olive tinge though the plump cheeks were boyishly rosy.

He waved toward the doorway and two men in dark suits and black fedoras stepped into view.

They stood as if they were smuggling bricks under their arms, which told Wyatt they had guns in holsters under every armpit. But two-gun kids had never impressed Wyatt Earp.

Capone himself, if he was armed, either had a better-cut suit (no doubt of that) or a physique that obscured shoulder-stowed weaponry.

Oddly, the corpulent gangster said to his flunkies, a pair of interchangeable dead-eyed pasty faces, “Be polite,” and both men took off their fedoras, which they held in their left hands.

This served to make them look less alike, as one was mostly bald and the other had a full head of greasy, curly hair.

What was odd, however, was Capone requesting this respect while leaving his own Borsalino in place.

Capone turned to Wyatt and Bat and said, “Don’t get up.”

Wyatt said, “Don’t worry.”

Capone’s eyes, which had a bulginess to them, managed to turn tiny as they studied Wyatt, and then Bat. The hoodlum was smiling but the smile had a faint quiver in it, now.

Something in the faces of these old men—perhaps the spooky light-blue unblinking eyes—had stopped him for a moment.

To Johnny, Capone said, “Am I interrupting some kind of family reunion?”

Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I thought maybe these was your grandpas or some such.”

“They’re friends.”

Capone grinned at Johnny and then grinned at Wyatt and Bat. “You run with a kinda old crowd, Johnny…. Who are you, Granddad?”

The question had been addressed to Wyatt Earp, who said, “Wyatt Earp.”

Capone took that like the small punch it was and, thick spittle-flecked lips still smiling, chuckled and said, “Like in the dime novels?”

“Like,” Wyatt said, “in the dime novels. And this is Bat Masterson.”

Finally Capone swept off his hat, bowing, revealing thinning black hair. “Well, what an honor. Regular Wild West show in here. Where’s Wild Bill Hickok?”

“Dead,” Wyatt said. “So is Buffalo Bill, but I believe his troupe is in Philadelphia, should you want to catch a train and a show.”

Capone’s smile curdled and his eyes seemed to be wondering if he’d been insulted or not.

Then, gesturing with the fancy hat at Johnny, he said, “That’s right! That’s right…. You’re supposed to be Doc Holliday’s kid, aren’t you?”

Johnny said nothing. Didn’t even nod.

Capone tromped closer to Johnny’s desk. “I always figured that was just talk. Just a gimmick,

’cause of you hiring Texas Guinan and dressing your speak up, Wild West–style. So you really are Doc Holliday’s kid? He was sick or something, wasn’t he?”

“What do you want, Mr. Capone?”

“Mind if I sit?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Capone sat. He crossed his leg and rested an ankle on a knee. Wyatt got a glimpse of purple sock.

“Of course I’ve seen you around, Masterson,” Capone said without looking back at him. “You were one of them cowboys, too, right? And now you hang around racetracks or something.”

Bat said nothing. But Wyatt noted his friend’s eyes had turned very hard and very cold.

“Anyway,” a genial Capone was saying to Johnny, “you’ve had plenty of time to think over our offer. Mr. Yale has been generous in giving you lots of rope.” Capone glanced back, grinning. “You old cowboys know about rope, don’t you?”

“Thrown one over a tree or two,” Wyatt said.

Capone’s eyes got tiny again, but then he turned back to Johnny. “We’re not a bunch of goddamn bootleggers. We’re not making our own stuff. We’re importing the genuine article from Canada. Real label product.”

Johnny sighed. “Mr. Capone, I’ve explained to you at length—I have my own supply of ‘real label’ product.”

Capone’s nodding was exaggerated and protracted. Then he said, “Mr. Yale is aware of that.

He understands you have years and years worth of product, stored away someplace.”

“I have no control over what Mr. Yale ‘understands.’”

“That’s right, you don’t. And don’t forget that.” Capone’s hand slipped under his purple suitcoat and Wyatt was just starting to rise when he saw that the fat fingers were withdrawing a thick cigar.

Wyatt settled back as one of the flunkies lighted the cigar for Capone, who bestowed a nod, and got the oversize stogie going, taking his time about it, and then said to Johnny, “Mr. Yale is willing to offer you a good sum of money for that stored-away product. A generous sum. A Christian sum. He will even give you a sizeable discount, when he sells it back to you.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Good business. Good business. With years’ worth of product, well, there are considerations.”

“Considerations.”

“Such as, could that product go bad, over time? You serve bottled beer, right? Your whiskey and such, well, it will stand the test of time. But beer is like milk. It don’t have to get spilt to go bad.”

Johnny was nodding now, and his voice was fairly amiable as he said, “You’re right. My supply of beer will be gone, in six months. I’ll need a new supplier. And I’m willing to talk to you and Mr. Yale about that.”

Wyatt glanced at Bat; both men realized that this had been the “bone” Johnny had mentioned.

But Capone was shaking his head and waving a pudgy hand which had the pool cue of a cigar between thick fingers, smearing the air with blue smoke.

“Beer won’t do it, Johnny. No, sir. You see, we could be real pricks and come over the bridge and start taking over speaks—”

“Maybe Arnold Rothstein,” Johnny interrupted with an edge, “and his various good friends would frown on that.”

“Fuck Arnold Rothstein. Rothstein is a gambler and he should stick to his goddamn cards.”

Capone sat forward and the leather chair, where Wyatt had sat, groaned like a cavalry officer taking Indian torture. “We got no interest in the retail side. We are strictly wholesale. And there’s gonna be wholesale fucking
trouble
if you don’t sell out to us and then start buying.

Capeesh
? That means ‘understand’—understand?”

Capone crushed the big fresh cigar in a glass tray on the desk; the waste of what must have been an expensive smoke made a certain wanton violent point.

Johnny raised a hand, gently. “Mr. Capone, I’ll consider your offer. For now, I have a club to run. You’re welcome to go downstairs and take a table and watch the show. As long as you behave yourself.”

Capone was out of the chair like a cannonball. His hands were on the desk and he was leaning his fat florid face right into Johnny’s pale skinny one and shouting, “Are you saying we ain’t civilized, Mr. Yale and me?”

Wyatt was astounded by how fast Bat moved.

And the bum leg wasn’t a factor, at all, the bulldog Bartholomew suddenly past the chair and was behind Capone and sticking the small snout of a revolver between the fat folds of the hoodlum’s neck.

“Time for you and your boys to go,” Bat said.

The two flunkies were moving forward.

Wyatt took the closer one, and wasn’t even fully off the couch when he kicked the hood behind the left knee. The world went out from under the guy—this was the bald one—and Wyatt knelt and withdrew the two revolvers from under the fallen flunky’s shoulders to point up at the astounded curly-headed one, who hadn’t even gone for his own guns, yet.

Rising slowly, Wyatt said, “I have to agree—you fellers need to move on.”

Johnny’s gun was out of the drawer, in hand, and the three of them—Doc Holliday’s boy and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp—ushered their three Brooklynite guests out via the seldom used front door. Wyatt brandished only one of the two guns he’d commandeered, sticking the other one in his waistband, thinking a pair of guns was redundant and a trifle showy.

Considerable restraint was displayed, when none of the guests got kicked in the ass as they started down the eight steps to the sidewalk.

Capone looked back to glower, “You fucked up bad.”

This seemed generally directed, but Wyatt responded.

“Maybe so,” he said, pointing a gun at Capone’s jack-o’-lantern head. “Not too late to kill you.”

At this, the three hoodlums scurried into the night, almost bumping into several well-dressed couples on the sidewalk who were making the speakeasy rounds.

Inside, the handful of diners—who had witnessed the conveying-by-gun of these guests out the door—were on their feet and milling around wide-eyed, whispering. The pair of waiters looked startled, too.

“Nothing to worry about, folks,” Johnny assured them, tucking his revolver (a little pearl-handled nickel-plated number) in his suitcoat pocket. “Your meals are on the house tonight.”

Then their host led Wyatt and Bat back into his private office.

“Now do you see what I mean,” Bat whispered to Wyatt, as they settled into the leather chairs and Johnny got back behind his desk. “Do you see why this boy’s mother wants you to talk sense to him?”

“I intend to talk sense to him,” Wyatt assured Bat. Then he turned back to Doc’s son and asked, “Johnny, have you considered putting some gambling in?”

Bat covered his face with a hand.

“You’ve got plenty of wasted space for it,” Wyatt was saying. “That front music room, we could start with a table in there—faro or poker. Lots of folks in this town might get a kick out of playing a hand or two with the likes of old Wyatt Earp…if I don’t sound too immodest.”

Johnny was rocking back in his chair, smiling, laughing softly. “No…No, Wyatt. You don’t sound immodest at all.”

TWO

BUCK THE TIGER*

*
gambler lingo for
: defy the odds

Seven

AL CAPONE WAS NO FUCKING THIEF.

In this, the twenty-one-year-old businessman from Brooklyn took great pride. Sure, back when he ran with kid gangs, he was involved in the typical petty pilferage of such good-natured childhood pastimes as lunch money extortion, and knocking over pushcarts and scattering bread bins, taking free samples in the wake. Kid stuff, no worse than pulling old boys’ beards or breaking this window or shooting out that street lamp.

No one could say he didn’t have a good, decent upbringing. His papa, Gabriele, was a barber; his mother, Theresa, a seamstress, loving and kind and a hell of a cook, as his going-on-two-hundred-fifty pounds proved. Papa having a trade, and the ability to read and write English, meant a quick climb for the Capones—only a few years in the really nasty tenements.

Yet the memories of squalor stayed with young Al. He was not likely to forget the early days with the family of six (Al had three brothers) sharing two unfurnished rooms with no gas or electricity, cold water from a sink in the hall, heat from the kerosene stove Mama cooked on, and a two-holer shitter out back for the whole goddamn building.

These beginnings had been as rough as the Sands Street neighborhood, which bordered the Brooklyn Navy Yard and its bedlam. His ears rang with the clamor of shipbuilding and shipping, punctuated by the screech of sea gulls; his nostrils twitched at the smells of acrid oil, rotting vegetation and brackish seawater. The stench off the Gowanus Canal—a manmade waterway for barges, a marshy brownish scar across Brooklyn—could bring tears to a grown man’s eyes, let alone a little kid. And that was the good part.

The bad? Saloons and brothels and pawnshops and gambling joints and tattoo parlors served the swaggering, drunken sailors who infested the Sands Street sidewalks, leaving gutters brimming with used lambskins and broken beer bottles. To this day, the sight of a sailor in uniform brought a bile of disgust to his throat.

Papa’s profession, honest though it was, was literally a nickel-and-dime affair. For years the old man assisted other barbers and worked part-time in groceries (where his English skills were valuable) and finally was able to open his own barbershop at 69 Park Avenue (in Brooklyn—this was a step up, but not hardly Manhattan). The family took an apartment over the shop, with such luxuries as electricity and indoor plumbing and even furniture…and such necessities as taking on a couple boarders.

Al’s memories of those years were pleasant. The new neighborhood was a mix of mostly Irish and such other nationalities as Chinese, Swedish and German. He had grown up around all kinds of people, which contributed to him being the kind of guy who could get along with everybody. His people were from Naples and it always surprised and disappointed him when Italians fought amongst themselves, Northerners against the Southerners and the Sicilians against everybody.