The Hot Kid

  Bob McMahon looked up from the magazine.

  “That’s how he opens it.”

  Across the desk Carl said, “What’s he call it?”

  “‘Massacre at Bald Mountain.’”

  Carl said, “I wonder how many you have to have killed for it to be a massacre.” He was thinking of last summer: five lawmen and the escaped convict they were returning to Leavenworth gunned down outside the Union Station, and they called it the Kansas City Massacre. The shooters opened with Thompsons and disappeared.

  “I think Tony liked the sound of massacre and mountain together,” Bob McMahon said. He kept his copy of True Detective in front of him with one finger marking a page. “The boy knows how to write a good story. Eight pages with pictures, most of them from the past. One of Jack Belmont, on trial for destruction of property. One of Nestor Lott in uniform, during the war.”

  “Is he wearing his medal?”

  “Tony calls him ‘the diminutive two-gun avenger, dedicated to killing violators of the liquor law.’ You know there’s more information in this story than I’ve been able to gather from all the sources we’ve used? Tony Antonelli, bless his heart, has all the facts, the correct names, who they are, backgrounds…He’s wearing his medal lying dead.”

  Carl said, “But he calls the roadhouse the Bald Mountain Club. I think Tony made it up. There’s no name like that outside or anywhere inside the place.”

  “He said that’s what Jack Belmont called it.”

  “It’s the first I’ve heard.”

  “Another place in the story he calls Nestor ‘the former Bureau of Investigation agent turned renegade.’ You want to hear how Tony describes your shooting Nestor?”

  “I’ll read it sometime.”

  “He says you tell Nestor if you have to draw you’ll shoot to kill.”

  “Bob, I was there.”

  “Remember my asking you if you had your gun out? And finally got you to say you did? Tony said he asked you the same thing and you danced around it. You asked Tony if he thought you’d be lying to Nestor saying ‘if I have to draw’ when your gun’s in your hand.”

  “I was having fun with him.”

  “You want to know what he wrote?” McMahon flipped the magazine open with his finger inside, seemed about to read, but then looked up at Carl.

  “How come none of the good guys got shot?”

  “There weren’t any good guys.”

  “Norm Dilworth?”

  “He was getting better.”

  “You still believe Belmont killed him.”

  “I know he did.”

  “I didn’t tell you,” McMahon said, “Lester Crowe’s quit the marshals.”

  “That’s a shame,” Carl said.

  “He didn’t think we were treating Nestor right.”

  “You gonna read what Tony wrote?”

  McMahon looked down at the magazine and read, “‘Nestor Lott brought up both of his chrome-plated .45s at the same time to clear the car’s hood and Marshal Carl Webster,’” McMahon looked up again, his eyes on Carl, “‘with lightning responses, shot him through the chest.’ There’s one more word at the end of the sentence,” McMahon said, “‘Bam.’”

  “He wrote ‘Bam’?” Carl grinning now.

  “‘Bam.’”

  “I told him to write what he saw. He had the best seat in the house.” Carl felt good, everything working for him. “Bob, I gotta get going, I’m seeing Oris Belmont at two.”

  “What about?”

  “Jack called him wanting a lawyer for his appeal and his dad hung up on him. I think the old man should help him out.”

  “Hire a good lawyer to get him off,” McMahon said. “Why, so you can shoot him?”

  Carl smiled without wanting to, knowing Bob was kidding. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “No, but it could happen,” McMahon said. “I’m putting you on court duty for a while.”

  “Why, what’d I do?”

  “You went to Kansas City on your own.”

  “To look for Belmont. We talked about it.”

  “We agreed he could be there. That’s all the talking we did. You’re lucky you brought him back.”

  “He swears he’s gonna bust out of prison and shoot me.”

  “How is it,” McMahon said, “you go after an offender, it seems to become a personal matter?”

  Carl wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “Starting with Emmett Long, you were sure out to get him.”

  It was funny how every time Carl pictured Emmett it was with the ice cream on his mustache. And yet Carl saw him as an outlaw as tough as they come, his first big test.

  “Just certain ones,” Carl said.

  “How about Nestor? You have a personal feeling there?”

  “Nestor—Nestor was spooky. He was so serious about being stupid.”

  Carl remembered his dad saying, “You work high up in that bank building you get to look out at Tulsa.” Another time he said, “Strike it rich, you get to put up a building with your name on it and buy a house in Maple Ridge.”

  Oris didn’t have his own building but sat high up at his desk with aerial views to either side of him, his hands on the leather arms of his chair. Carl recognized him from pictures in the paper, though he no longer had his bushy mustache; that time was gone.

  Oris said, “I don’t care for you knowing about Jack calling me. That’s a personal matter.” Now he crossed his arms and held on to one elbow but didn’t look comfortable.

  Carl told him a deputy at the county jail was standing there and overhead Jack make his call, say he needed a lawyer. That’s all was said before Jack hung up the phone.

  Oris said, “You brought him to jail, didn’t you? You weren’t satisfied with his sentence?”

  “It wasn’t a fair trial,” Carl said.

  “What do you care?”

  “Jack’s lawyer was a young Italian guy from Krebs appointed by the court and approved by the judge, somebody he knew he could handle. The lawyer’s first mistake was trying to get the judge taken off the case.”

  “Recused,” Oris said.

  “That’s the word. On account of the judge is a known supporter of the Klan and the seven guys Jack shot were all Klansmen. The judge told the lawyer if he kept after him he’d be held in contempt and thrown in jail.”

  Oris wanted to know what the defense was.

  Carl said the fact that Nestor Lott had no authority in the matter and the Klansmen had no business coming at the roadhouse with guns and torches. The prosecutor got his witnesses to say they saw the defendant kill their friends in cold blood, seven men with families, their only intention to help uphold the law of the land. “The prosecutor,” Carl said, “described the case as based on an unusual circumstance, the ones on the offensive becoming the victims. But that’s why he’s charged with manslaughter and not first-degree murder.”

  “And got twenty years,” Oris said.

  “I guess the most the judge could give him.”

  “Where’s he serving it?”

  “McAlester.”

  “Where he was before.”

  Carl almost said, Where you sent him, but held off and thought of what Mr. Belmont said a minute ago, What do you care?

  “I read in the paper you come out of this a hero. You shot Nestor Lott and three others, boys. How is it you weren’t brought up?”

  “The way the court presented it, I was there to close down the roadhouse. Nestor Lott attacked a federal officer by mistake. I was a prosecution witness, but they never called me to testify. They saw it might give Jack’s lawyer a position to argue self-defense. The trial took a day and a half, the jury made up its mind this morning in about an hour. The way they saw it, Jack’s a bank robber, wasn’t he? Hell, send him to prison.”

  Oris said, “Why don’t you like the idea?”

  “I’m being picky. I think he should be in prison, but not for this one. The marshals office in Kansas City’ll take him right now. They want
him for shooting a seventy-eight-year-old man, a bank guard, in a robbery up there.”

  “The man die?”

  “Yes, he did. Jack can shoot. He’ll serve time here or get off on appeal, I could be the one takes him to Kansas City, and I’ll do it, like I brought him back from there.”

  Oris put his hands on the arms of his chair to shift his position, settling in.

  “I’ve read about you.” Nodding his head up and down. “You shot Emmett Long a few years ago. I saw him one time in Sapulpa. He seemed like an egotistical man. You shot Peyton Bragg, didn’t you? From four hundred yards. In the dark. I should’ve known you right away, you’re the millionaire marshal.”

  “That’s my dad has the money.”

  “I know him, too, Virgil Webster. We wanted him on the board of this bank we have down in Okmulgee and he turned us down. He seemed friendly though.”

  “He does okay growing pecans and reading the paper,” Carl said. “Neither of us is up on business, though I ran a cow outfit till I came of age and became a marshal.”

  Oris pulled out his pocket watch, looked at it and asked Carl if he’d eaten yet. Carl shook his head. Oris flicked on the office intercom and leaned toward it to say, “Audrey? Call Nelson’s and see if they have any chicken-fried steaks left. They do, have ’em put two aside and we’ll be over. With potatoes and green beans.” He said to Carl, “Sometimes by three they run out.”

  Nelson’s Buffeteria was Carl’s favorite restaurant in Tulsa. He said, “Do people here eat anywhere else?”

  Audrey came back on to say they were all set.

  Oris said to Carl, “Why should I help him?”

  Carl said, “He’s your boy,” and saw Oris shaking his head.

  “Not anymore.”

  “I spoke to Mrs. Belmont,” Carl said. “I know she has no sympathy for him. What I wondered, if you knew what a bum deal that trial was and had some time to think about it. Or talk to a good defense lawyer and get his opinion.”

  “I’ll see about it,” Oris said. “I want to know what your game is. Why you want him out.”

  “I don’t want him out. But I can’t see Jack in prison doing twenty years, and he can’t either. He says he’s gonna bust out, he said shortly, and he might be able to do it. McAlester hasn’t been the toughest joint to bust out of.”

  “He told you he plans to escape?”

  “In Kansas City and on the way back in the car, he talked all the way here.”

  “What about?”

  “Himself. He’s having a good time packing a gun and being a wanted desperado, but he thinks he deserves to be more famous. His goal in life is to be Public Enemy Number One. I told him shooting the Klansmen should help, get him known all over the country. But he’d have to escape from McAlester to make Public Enemy Number One. John Dillinger has that spot locked up. Dillinger’s robbed banks in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Idaho, Illinois. He’s escaped from jail twice, and got away from that resort in Wisconsin, Little Bohemia, when federal agents had it surrounded. Dillinger appears to have a firstclass outfit. Those fellas know what they’re doing.”

  Oris said, “What about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker?”

  “What do they rob,” Carl said, “grocery stores? They’re bush league. They spend all their time shooting law officers and trying to get around roadblocks. You want another one to put up there with Dillinger? Take our own Oklahoma boy, Charley Floyd. I told Jack if he’s made up his mind to be a bad guy, read up on Pretty Boy. I said in the car, talk to Louly here, she’s a first cousin of Charley’s wife, Ruby, and knows him. She says he’s kind and considerate to his family, gives money to people who don’t have any. You could say he comes the closest of any bank robber to acting like a human being.”

  Oris was scowling now. “You encourage him to continue being a criminal?”

  “I didn’t waste time trying to discourage him. He’s made up his mind what he wants. Louly told him he was good-looking enough to have girls swooning over him, but what good is it if he’s hiding out all the time?”

  Oris looked lost. “You’re saying it’s too late to turn him around.”

  “Way too late,” Carl said. “Jack busts out of prison he could become our most famous desperado. For a while anyway.”

  There was a joke they told about church pews. “You know why church pews are so uncomfortable?”

  “No, why?”

  “They’re made by convicts.”

  It’s what they had Jack Belmont doing for seven months in the Oklahoma State Prison at McAlester, messing up his hands making church pews. He said to the captain, “I belong in an office. I never even sat in a pew in my life.”

  Jack knew about the captain, Fausto Bassi, fired from his job as Krebs’ chief of police for letting Nestor Lott stick him in his own jail cell. But then stepped into this corrections job because of his experience with offenders.

  “So you shoot seven members of the Ku Klux Klan,” Fausto said with his accent.

  “As fast as I could,” Jack said, and it got Fausto to smile.

  They sat in his office where Jack had first met Carl Webster, looking out through bars at the rotunda, the birdcage as big as a church between the cell houses, four floors of prison bars painted white, where they heard the sound of beating wings.

  “Pigeons find their way in,” Fausto said, “but can’t remember how to go out. Like inmates, uh?” He said, “They making me a deputy warden pretty soon. They need one and don’t have anybody else. I’ll see if I can give you a job in the office. You know how to use a typewriter?”

  “Is it hard?”

  Fausto, with his big stomach, smiled again. “All you have to do is learn, uh? You know you shouldn’t be here. The judge and the prosecutor made up their mind they going to put you away. You hear from your father?”

  Jack said, “No, why?”

  “He’s hiring a lawyer to appeal your case. Cecil Guyton. You know that name?”

  Jack said no.

  “You never heard the name Cecil Guyton?”

  “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “He was prosecutor in Tulsa County a few years, quit and became a famous defense lawyer, like Clarence Darrow. You know him, don’t you?”

  “Clarence Darrow,” Jack said, “the Monkey Trial.”

  “They both take the same kind of cases, ones that attract a crowd.”

  “I’m the monkey this time?” Jack said. “Where will the trial take place?”

  “I think here in the district court, unless he wants to change the venue. But Cecil Guyton’s on a case right now. It could be a month before he can take you on.”

  “What’s he charge?”

  “Ask your father.”

  “He usually wins?”

  “Almost always. You walk or have your sentence reduced. This one, he should have no trouble. But there is a condition Guyton always insists on. He won’t come to the prison.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To talk to you, tell you what to say. He has to have permission from the prison for you to go to him. He takes a suite at the Aldridge to see you there. If it can’t be arranged to let you out he won’t take your case.”

  “You might be afraid I’ll wander off?”

  “Why would you if he’s setting you free? Or you’re given a year or so, with credit for time served, instead of twenty years? Still, I think your daddy will have to put up a bond.”

  “Well, if he’s hired this guy…Why won’t Guyton visit the prison?”

  “He says it’s unsanitary. Cecil Guyton is careful of his health. We will let him have his way because, first, we know you were railroaded and, second, it gives us a chance to look intelligent and right this wrong. Also, we don’t like the judge who sentenced you.”

  “You’re saying I’m as good as free.”

  “In Oklahoma,” Fausto said. “They holding a detainer on you in Kansas.”

  “I’m arrested right away?”

  “It could happen.”

&nbs
p; “Walk out of the courtroom…?”

  “And there’s a marshal there to pick you up,” Fausto said. “Or they take you back to prison to wait for the marshal. What’s the hurry?”

  Jack talked to inmates who’d been here a while about escape attempts. Most seemed to take place when convicts were used on work crews outside the prison. On a signal they’d make a run for it in different directions and a couple would get shot by the guards and a couple would get away, for a time. There were convicts who had guns smuggled in and slipped away in delivery trucks and the prison mail truck. Two inmates working in the women’s cell house scaled down the outside of the building and drove away in the assistant matron’s motorcar. Two others tunneled out of the tubercular ward of the prison hospital, hiding the dirt in the basement.

  Jack’s favorite: a convict inside only eighteen months of a thirty-year stretch got permission to see a member of the parole board at the county offices in town. The convict talked his guard into stopping for a soda in the drugstore. Once they were inside he ran out the back, around the corner, jumped in a taxi, and got all the way to Muskogee, seventy miles.

  Jack would be taken to town pretty soon to meet with the famous lawyer at the Aldridge Hotel. He’d have to look at his chances of going a hundred miles, all the way to Tulsa.

  And not get shot by the police once he got there. Like the convict who went to Muskogee.

  17

  Court duty gave Carl time to think. The first thing he wondered about was why any marshal liked working as a bailiff; and most seemed to. They gave different reasons like, “You get to see justice carried out.” Carl actually heard that said. Or, “You don’t get shot at.” That could happen though. A woman standing in the back of the courtroom walks up to the defendant sitting at the table with his lawyer and puts one in the back of his head. Then she panics and shoots at the marshal—he’s in his stance, his revolver extended—she misses and people right there grab her. If they’d waited another second the marshal would’ve shot her. Or somebody comes in to assassinate the judge and starts firing and there’s a shootout. But the assassin barely knows how to shoot and he sprays the courtroom, the ceiling, till the marshal shoots him down.