For a few moments the room was quiet, Tony looking down at the four men by the car, Carl facing them, Tony pretty sure Carl knew about Nestor and his two guns and that Nestor’s game was to bring on a gunfight, but only on his terms. Now Nestor was speaking.
“Marshal, you have it ass-backwards. It’s your hands I want to see. Bring out your gun and lay it there on the bar.”
Tony turned his gaze on Carl Webster.
Carl saying, “I want to be clear about this so you understand. If I have to pull my weapon I’ll shoot to kill.”
Amazing—the same words, according to Crystal Davidson, Carl had said to Emmett Long before he shot him. Tony sure of it—he could hear Crystal telling it again in that suite at the Georgian hotel in Henryetta, Tony and the roomful of newsmen writing it down. If I have to pull my weapon…
“Show me you understand,” Carl said to Nestor, “by laying your hands on the hood.”
Tony, above the scene, saw it about to happen.
Nestor thumbing back the hammers on his .45s, one and then the other, starting to bring them up, Tony staring at the .45s clearing the Packard’s hood…
And saw Carl extending his Colt .38 straight out over the bar—had it already drawn in that split second of time—and shot Nestor, bam, filling the room with that hard sound, and shot Son, bam, and saw Jack Belmont behind the bar now, and the bouncers Walter and Boo bringing up their revolvers, and it stopped the Wycliff brothers, surprised the hell out of them—heads popping up from behind the bar—and bam, Carl shot the first one as more gunfire filled the room, coming from either side of Tony at the top of the stairs, but he made himself keep looking at the scene, at Jack Belmont holding a Winchester and looking up this way like he was checking on Heidi, concerned about her as the second Wycliff fired the rifle wedged against his side and Tony saw bottles on the shelf behind Carl shatter and mess up the mirror, saw Carl extend his Colt and shoot him, bam, as this second Wycliff was throwing the bolt of his rifle to put a round in the breech. Now the one-eyed bouncer was firing, shooting the Wycliff boy again before he went down. Tony saw Carl turn to Nestor, even though he was already dead, Tony knowing it because Carl knew it, or he’d have shot him again. It got Tony thinking of Carl’s words, If I have to pull my weapon I’ll shoot to kill.
But how’d he pull it so fast? How did he get it out from under his coat in that split second? Carl was reloading his gun, taking bullets from the side pocket of his coat. He walked around the end of the bar and went over to the other side of the Packard to take a look at Nestor.
Tony came down to stand next to him to see Nestor dead and tell Carl Webster something.
“When he asked you to bring out your gun”—Tony hesitated saying it—“you told him the same thing you told Emmett Long. Word for word.”
Carl said, “I did?”
“Crystal Davidson told us, that time at the hotel.”
“You remembered it?”
“I wrote it down. Everybody in the room did. Now you said the same thing and proved it, shooting three more.”
“Four,” Carl said.
Tony paused before saying, “You’re right.”
“Any of ’em shot by these bozos,” Carl said, “were already dead.”
Tony looked up at the tin ceiling. “My ears are still ringing.” He looked down to see Carl give Nestor’s gut a nudge with the toe of his shined black boot.
Carl turned to the stairs then as Heidi called out, “Jack?…Where’s Jack?” and told them, “Norm’s been shot. I think he’s dead.”
9
The first thing Bob McMahon told Carl, seated across the desk, he was getting time off while they investigated the roadhouse shootings. Carl would make his statement and they’d see how it compared to what witnesses said, all the ones on the scene. Carl said, “You aren’t taking my word?”
“Your account,” McMahon said, “you shot all four once they were in the place, Nestor Lott and the three boys with him.”
Carl nodded saying, “I was trying out a new Colt thirty-eight special on a forty-five-caliber frame.”
“That’s a heavy weapon.”
“Less kick to it. You hit where you point it.”
“The bouncers”—McMahon looked at pages of reports on his desk—“Walter and that one-eyed guy, Boo Bragg, they claim they shot two of them.”
“They want the credit,” Carl said, “they can have it, but Nestor and his boys were already dead or dying. Talk to the True Detective writer. He saw the whole show.”
“He was here this morning,” McMahon said, “Anthony Antonelli. He said you told Nestor Lott if you pulled your weapon you’d shoot to kill. You remember saying that to him?”
“If I had to pull it,” Carl said.
“You remember saying it to Emmett Long? That time it was his girlfriend told us, Crystal Davidson?”
“After I told him he was under arrest. It was the same thing here, they could put their weapons down, but if they intended to use them I’d have to shoot.”
“Anthony says he’s never seen a gun appear so fast.”
“You ask him how many gunfights he’s seen?”
“What he’s saying, he didn’t see you draw. He looked over, your gun’s out and you’re firing.”
“What part of that bothers him?”
“He wants to know if you were holding it in your hand,” McMahon said, “below the counter.”
“I gave ’em a chance to put down their guns,” Carl said, staring back at his boss. “They didn’t do it.”
“Were you holding your weapon or not?”
“I was holding it.”
“The Tulsa paper said you drew and fired.”
“They asked me if I shot all four,” Carl said. “I told ’em yes, I did. They didn’t ask if my gun was already in my hand.”
“They like the idea of a marshal with a quick draw,” McMahon said, and looked down at his papers. “Anthony wants Belmont arrested for stealing his car.”
“I know. I told him he shouldn’t of left the key in it. I was sure the Packard was Jack’s but he never said it was.”
McMahon was staring at him again. “I notice you always refer to Belmont by his first name. Like you know each other pretty well.”
“I know him,” Carl said. “Set me loose I’ll find him for you.”
“Where you think he is?”
“The first place I’d look is Kansas City.”
McMahon said after a few moments, “Maybe.”
“He’d fit right in.”
“You know for a fact he killed those Klansmen?”
“As fast as he could. Norm Dilworth shot the two in their car. The Thompson got away from him.”
“And you believe Belmont shot and killed Dilworth.”
“I know he did, so he could have Norm’s wife,” Carl said. “Check the round they took out of Norm. Was it from a Winchester or a Springfield oh-three?”
“It went through him and through the house,” McMahon said. “It’s outside in that thicket. And I doubt anyone who was there, the bouncers, the bartenders, will admit seeing Belmont shoot him.”
“They don’t work for him now,” Carl said.
“But they don’t have a reason to name him. Even if we find those guys, I don’t see they’ll do us any good. And this Heidi Winston, you think she ran off with him?”
“I guess so. Unless he twisted her arm.”
“I doubt she minds him being the son of oil money.”
They were both quiet for several moments.
Carl said, “You remember Peyton Bragg, a couple years ago? Cooked whiskey and robbed banks? That half-ugly, one-eyed bouncer’s his kid brother.”
“Does he know who you are?”
“I believe so, but he hasn’t said anything.”
“We have a warrant out on him?”
Carl said, “The Volstead. We can get about anybody on that one.”
They were quiet again, both of them with their thoughts for about a minute this
time.
McMahon said, “I don’t see how you let Belmont get away.”
“I made a mistake,” Carl said. “He’s acting like he had a good time shooting those people, nothing to it. I told him I was taking him in.”
“For irritating you?”
“I wasn’t sure if there’d be a charge against him.”
“For shooting people coming to burn his house down?”
“Yeah.”
“So you wanted to hand him over to a prosecutor,” McMahon said, “but you let him slip away. At the time Dilworth was shot, what were you doing?”
“Nobody knew about it till Heidi called out he’d been hit.”
He paused and McMahon said, “Yeah…?”
“She said she thought he was dead.”
McMahon waited.
“I’d gone around to the other side of the Packard to look at Nestor lying there. I saw the medal for bravery he’d pinned on his chest, a Distinguished Service Cross from the war. My dad won a medal for bravery in Cuba.”
McMahon saw him frowning now.
“But Nestor—Jesus—wasn’t anything like my dad.”
They sat on the porch of that big California bungalow among pecan trees in the evening, having their drinks before supper, Virgil with the pile of newspapers the Texas oil people brought whenever Carl Webster’s name appeared, this time with pictures.
“You sure like that hat. You’re turning into a regular jelly bean, aren’t you?”
They were drinking sour mash over ice with a slice of orange and a little sugar, Virgil’s favorite. “‘Twelve Slain at Roadhouse,’” Virgil said, reading a headline. You shoot four of ’em and they give you a vacation, huh? That’s a pretty good deal.”
Carl let his dad talk.
“The newspapers are eating this one up. Can’t get enough. Some more reporters come by yesterday, and that one with True Detective, Anthony Antonelli? He says he’s writing a story about it. Gonna call it ‘Gunfight at Bald Mountain.’”
“I didn’t know he was coming right away.”
“Wants to do what he called cover stories about you and another one on Jack Belmont. Wants to ask you about all the bad guys you had to shoot. How many is it now, eight counting the cow thief? He says he’s gonna ask you if you told each one the same thing, if you pulled your weapon you’d shoot to kill.”
“I’m stuck with that,” Carl said.
“It’s what happens you become a famous show-off. You have to keep track of what you said. You get a name for shooting outlaws, one’ll come along, try and shoot you to make his own name. Something this Jack Belmont could have in mind. Anthony says he wants to ask Jack why he robs banks and sells bootleg liquor when his dad’s richer’n sin. I told him the boy either wants to embarrass his daddy or show him up. How many people has Jack shot, the seven at the roadhouse?”
“One before that, when he was fifteen.”
“Same as you.”
They let it hang.
“His dad’s Oris Belmont,” Carl said.
“I know who he is. But what can he offer his boy? Work up there in the office with him? Get to look out the window at Tulsa? Or he can clean out storage tanks if he wants. I said to Anthony, take me and Carl, we have the same situation here. I’m fairly rich and Carl don’t make much more’n a few thousand a year, but we don’t compete with each other.”
“No, I listen to you tell me your opinion of things,” Carl said.
“I advise you. I give you the opportunity to become a famous pe-can planter, eek out a living hitting trees with a fishing pole. I tell you, stay out of the oil business. Right now it’s down around four bits a barrel ’cause there’s too much of it. That East Texas field come in and I’m making less than four cents a barrel.” He reminded Carl the governor of Oklahoma, Alfalfa Bill Murray, had put every producing well in the state under martial law, armed guards on over three thousand wells until the price went up to a dollar a barrel. “It could take a while, but it’ll come back. You know why? There’s so many people own cars now, and there more every day.”
Carl said, “You’re not broke?”
“Honey, I been making royalties since the Glenn Pool come in,” Virgil said. “Like I told Anthony, I’m fairly rich. What I didn’t tell him, I keep out a good hundred thousand in cash at all times—”
“Where?”
“In the house. It’s enough to live like a third-rate king for a good twenty years. The rest, I got a few filling stations and cafés with a business partner. People have to buy gas to run their cars and they have to eat.”
“You keep a hundred thousand dollars in the house?”
“And a few guns. Don’t worry about it,” Virgil said. He sipped his whiskey and said, “You’re not here, the reporters start asking me questions. They follow me out to the orchard wanting to know what I do with all my money. See, they’d noticed the wells pumping. First they ask me what I think about my only son on the trail of fugitive outlaws and bank robbers. I said, after the crash of ’29 I didn’t think there was any money left in the banks to rob. They want to know if I went bust. I told them we ever get Repeal I’m opening a few saloons somewhere. Not here, we’re dry as a bone on account of we was Indian Territory not too long ago. That and the Baptists, this state’ll vote dry forever. I told them hell no I ain’t broke, I got investments. They said you can still go broke. I said not how I’m set up, I’d still live the life of a second-rate king. I thought about it since, five thousand a year for twenty years, and changed it to a third-rate king.”
“You told them,” Carl said, “you had cash put away?”
“Never did, but that’s what they kept asking, if I’d hide away money. I told ’em it was none of their business. They’re the nosiest people I ever met.”
Carl said, “What’d you say to make ’em think you’d put away cash? If you’re gonna live like a second-rate king—”
“Third-rate.”
“It means you have money to do it with.”
“I never said a word about my money.”
“You told them you had guns in the house and you were a crack shot?”
“They’re asking me later on about being with Huntington’s Marines in the Spanish War. That’s all.”
“You tell them you won a medal for bravery?”
“For getting shot by a sniper.” Virgil took a good sip of his drink and said, “This writer, Anthony Antonelli? Said you told him you’d be home.”
“I was in Henryetta yesterday.”
“You still crave that gun moll?”
“Some oil man’s been seeing her, thinks he’s daring. Crystal and I had supper, talked about different things. I like her, but it don’t mean I want to marry her. You know she lived with Emmett Long after he killed her husband. It’s the same with Heidi Winston, the girl that ran off with Jack Belmont.”
“You can talk to those people?”
“I can ask questions. What’s it like being with a man’s wanted dead or alive? I ask Crystal if she was scared all the time. She says, ‘Well, sure.’ But she sounded surprised, like it was something she hadn’t thought about. Being scared was so natural to her. Heidi’s different, she was a whore and I think she likes the excitement for a change. At the roadhouse she’s kidding Jack about shooting a cow, saying he did it on purpose. Right below them out the window are seven dead guys he shot lying in the yard.”
Virgil said, “There’s no way to understand people like that.”
Carl told him Nestor Lott had a Distinguished Service Cross pinned to his coat he must’ve won during the war.
“When you shot him?”
“I almost hit the medal.”
“I imagine you were more dead center,” Virgil said. “It sounds like he wanted everybody to know he’d been a hero at one time. If it was his medal.”
“I’m pretty sure it was. The man had no feelings,” Carl said, “but when the time came to stand up, he did.”
Virgil said, “You run into some strange birds, d
on’t you?”
Narcissa Raincrow appeared from the kitchen holding her drink, whiskey and Coca-Cola, to tell them supper was ready.
They sat at the round table in a back corner of the kitchen, windows on two sides, pecan trees everywhere you looked out there.
Narcissa served them steak and eggs and potatoes, all of it fried, a bowl of leftover white beans with salt pork, a loaf of bread she’d baked and a dish that looked like sauerkraut with tomato sauce on it. Narcissa sat down at the table and listened to them talk about Franklin Roosevelt winning the presidential election, happy that he’d skunked that constipated Herbert Hoover.
“Will Rogers says the Democrats have gone in,” Virgil told them, “with all kinds of promises to regulate the stock exchange, help out the farmers, support veterans’ pensions, and they’ll come out with all kinds of alibis. Will Rogers says we don’t vote for a candidate, we vote against the other one.”
“Says he never met a man he didn’t like,” Carl said. “You believe that?”
“No, I don’t,” Virgil said, “but it sounds good. You know when he was in vaudeville doing rope tricks and talking, he’d twirl two ropes at the same time, the idea to set one loop on the horse and the other one over the rider. Will Rogers had a list of things he’d made up to say if he missed. Like, ‘If I don’t loop one on soon, I’ll have to give out rain checks.’ Or he’d say, ‘This is easier to do on a blind horse, he don’t see the rope coming.’ He’d get so many laughs making excuses he’d muff a rope trick on purpose so he could say something funny about it.”
Carl said, “You’re sure full of Will Rogers lore, aren’t you?”
“He’s a movie star, he appears on the stage, he writes a newspaper column full of misspelled words—he’s our greatest American, the funniest man I ever heard speak.”
“And he’s part Indian,” Narcissa said.
“He’s nine-thirty-fourths Cherokee,” Virgil said, “a quarter Indian if you fudge it. Will Rogers’d say, ‘We didn’t come over on the Mayflower, we met it.’” Hunched over his supper plate Virgil said to Carl, “You remind me of him sometimes. I don’t know why but you do.”