Black Hats (11 page)

Wyatt sighed, smiled just a little. “I’ve had two good friends in my life, Mr. Holliday. This so-called reporter standing next to me, and your late father. Seeing the image of him, standing before me, well, it gives an old man pause.”

The boy beamed. “I’d be honored if you called me ‘Johnny,’ which my friends do.”

“The honor’s mine, Johnny. And my name’s Wyatt.”

“Yes, I, uh…am familiar with you and your name, sir. And I hope, at some point in the not-too-distant future, you might sit down with me, and tell me about my father.”

“He was the bravest man I ever knew,” Wyatt said. “Or perhaps the most reckless. That’s really the whole storehouse.”

Johnny, whose eyes shone, said, “We’ll see…Wyatt.”

“And,” Wyatt said, with a thumb at Bat, “don’t honor this journalist by calling him ‘Mister.’

His name is Bartholomew, if you’re wondering.”

“Reeeeally,” Johnny said, amused and surprised. “Here I thought it was ‘William’—”

“‘Bat’ is fine, son,” Bat said, his smile touched with irritation.

Tex took Johnny by the arm, affectionately. “I think this is about to become a clubhouse where no girls are allowed…and, anyway, I have to go upstairs and start getting ready for the next show.”

Johnny nodded and patted the hand on his arm. “How’s the house?”

“Packed.”

“Problems?”

“No. No sign of your…new friends.”

He nodded. “Louie’s supposed to keep them out, but those fellas have their ways.”

Wyatt and Bat exchanged glances, but said nothing.

With a little-girl wave, Tex hip-swayed back toward the elevator. The view was nice enough, but Wyatt thought she was trying a little too hard.

Johnny’s eyes went to Wyatt’s. He gestured toward the dining room. “Care for anything, gentlemen? We keep the kitchen open all night.”

“Bartholomew might want to eat a rump roast or maybe a kettle of stew. But I’m not inclined, thank you.”

Bat waved that off. “Son, I took him to Rector’s, top of the evening, then later to Jack Dunstan’s. He’s still in shock from seeing how people of means satisfy the need for sustenance.”

Wyatt jerked a thumb at his friend. “Does he talk to you like that, Johnny, all the time? This writerly nonsense?”

Johnny held up his hands, as if in surrender to a stagecoach robber. “I abstain.”

Bat said to Wyatt, “You weren’t complaining when I wrote that piece on you.”

A magazine article on Wyatt’s lawman days, written by Bat and somewhat true, had indeed sparked the Hollywood interest of Bill Hart, Tom Mix and others. But Bat didn’t need to know that.

“After all of the lies the newshounds told about us,” Wyatt said to Bat, good-naturedly riding him, “the very thought that you could join the enemy camp—”

“Why don’t you join the twentieth century, Wyatt,” Bat said with snap in his words. “I traded in my sixgun for a typewriter…and words are weapons, too.”

“They surely are,” Wyatt admitted. “They’ve killed my reputation often enough.”

Johnny stepped forward and put one hand on Wyatt’s shoulder and the other on Bat’s. “Why don’t we repair to my office, have some brandy, and if you fellas want to wrestle, why, I’ll just referee.”

They laughed and followed him.

The office was the library of the former residence, a spacious chamber of dark wood and walls that were mostly bookshelves with volumes that included medical tomes as well as the complete leather-bound works of Shakespeare and Dickens, and well-read popular editions of Bret Harte, Jack London, Rex Beach and Mark Twain.

Several framed maps, old ones of Arizona and Texas and regional Western maps, took up much of the available wall space, as did an oil painting that Wyatt at first thought was of Johnny himself, but on closer examination proved to be of the boy’s father, a romanticized version of a widely published photograph.

Soon Wyatt was sitting in a most comfortable red leather chair across from his host, and Bat next to him in a yellow leather version (matching a three-cushioned couch against the right wall), both men having been provided generous snifters of brandy. The flavor of the dark liquid was matched by the pleasant warmth it brought to the belly.

Johnny’s desk was a massive cherrywood affair piled with ledgers and paperwork. He had got himself a snifter, too, but it sat on the desk while its owner leaned forward with elbows resting on a blotter and fingertips tented.

“I am so pleased and privileged to meet you, Wyatt,” Johnny said, “that I am willing to overlook why you came.”

Wyatt shrugged. Sipped. Said, “Why did I come?”

“Because my mother asked you to. Because my mother thinks I’ve gotten myself into…as she so quaintly puts it…‘dangerous straits.’”

“Most dangerous straight I know of,” Bat said lightly, “is trying to fill one, inside.”

Wyatt cocked his head and said, “Did your mother tell you she’d talked to me?”

“No.” Johnny’s childlike smile flickered with deviltry, so like his papa’s. “
You
just did.”

Bat chuckled. “Kid’s a card player, Wyatt. Told you as much.”

Wyatt gestured behind him. “What’s in the adjacent room?”

Johnny’s eyes narrowed, the question seeming to him a non sequitur. “Nothing. It’s a music room. Or it was till I had the piano moved to the bandstand, downstairs. Fireplace, not much space. I’m not utilizing it, presently.”

Wyatt nodded. “This is a three-story building?”

“Yes.” Mildly confused, Johnny sat forward. “Why, do you want a tour?”

“Right now? Just in words. So it’s three floors, four counting the basement.”

“Yes. The kitchen’s on this floor, in back. Floor above I turned into a dressing room for the girls, star dressing room for Miss Guinan, and I have a couple of guest rooms. Top floor is my apartment…. Why? What’s on your mind, Wyatt?”

“Nothing. Just getting the lay of the land.”

Bat was looking at Wyatt curiously.

So was Johnny, who said, “If you have a message from my mother, Wyatt, I’m willing to listen.”

Wyatt shook his head. “No you aren’t. You’ve already listened to her, haven’t you? Or heard her, anyway.”

“Yes. Of course….”

“And Bartholomew here’s tried to talk sense to you?”

Johnny grunted a laugh, sat back in his chair. “On a weekly basis!”

Bat gave Wyatt an earnest look and said, “I’ve done my best, Wyatt. Truly I have.”

Johnny laughed some more—a dry, familiar laugh; Doc’s laugh. Gave Wyatt a shiver as the young man said, “And with all due respect, Mr. Masterson…Bat…you have made less than a convincing case.”

Bat frowned, offended. “I object! I’ve stated the case against this enterprise with passion and precision!”

“All the while,” Johnny said, “you were tossing back bourbon and filling your eyeballs with my chorus girls and enjoying the speakeasy life like you were born to it.”

Had Bat moved any farther forward in the leather chair, he’d have been on the floor. “Now, I never said this life didn’t have its appeal. Who doesn’t like a drink? Who doesn’t like a damsel? You’ve got Tex Guinan in your hip pocket, and she’s the toast of the town! That whelp Winchell’s calling her the Queen of Broadway!”

“Then what,” Johnny said, crisply polite, “is your problem?”

Bat flopped back in the chair and waved his hands. “I don’t have any problem! I’m just a paying customer…”

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “Paying? When did this new policy begin?”

Bat swallowed thickly, then said, “I simply mean, that this life, this night life, has great appeal. And it has enormous possibilities for making money. I don’t deny that. In fact, that is the very
point
…”

Wyatt said, “With liquor illegal, the gangsters are bound to move in.”

Bat’s eyes whipped to Wyatt’s. “Exactly! This town is brimming with bastards in Borsalinos just waiting to take over, and kill you for the privilege. Wyatt, it’s Tombstone redux—only these characters from Brooklyn make the Clantons look like kindergartners!”

Wyatt swiveled to Johnny. “Well, son?”

Johnny shrugged, rocking gently in his chair. “Mr. Masterson…Bat…is right. The rewards are considerable, and so are the dangers. When you were my age, Wyatt…Mr. Earp…weren’t the conditions the same?”

Bat said, “No comparison!”

Wyatt said to Bat, “
You
just made one.”

Johnny continued: “Manhattan’s a boomtown, Wyatt! Do I even have to tell you? These speakeasy days are the new Gold Rush!”

Wyatt, feeling the old tingle, quietly said, “Johnny…let’s put these hoodlums aside. Where do the police stand in this?”

He flipped a hand. “We pay them off weekly. They’re no help to us, but no hindrance, either.

I’m told we’ll eventually have to help them stage some raids, for the papers…but we’ll have plenty of notice. Just in case, I only keep what I need on hand…by way of liquor, I mean.”

“What about the federals?”

“Some of them are honest, most aren’t. Right now, we have them on the pad, too.”

Wyatt nodded, sat with his hands folded over his belly. “So you do have considerable overhead.”

“No denying it,” Johnny said. “But I own this building outright, and my supply of liquor? I calculate it will last me at least five years.”

Bat said, “If
you
last five years.”

“Life is like business,” Johnny said with a shrug. “A risk.”

Bat was shaking his head as Wyatt asked, “What do you intend to do, once you run out of product?”

Johnny slapped the air. “Hell—retire. In five years, I’ll be independently wealthy. The hoodlums can have it.”

Wyatt said, “Hmmm,” and mulled that.

Bat said, “Johnny, quit painting this rosy picture and tell Wyatt about this character Capone, and his boss, Yale.”

Johnny rocked some more. “Nothing much to tell. They all work for a smart slick guinea named Torrio, who operates mostly out of Chicago. They’re not trying to take over.”

Wyatt frowned. “They aren’t?”

“No. They’re just using their old Black Hand extortion techniques to force me into using them as my distributor. But I don’t
need
a distributor!”

“Because of the supply you won.”

Johnny chuckled. “Oh, you heard about that, did you?”

“Yeah. You got this brownstone, you won half the liquor left in New York, playing poker….

This Brooklyn bunch—they don’t run speaks?”

Tiny shrug. “They own a few—but on
their
side of the river. Biggest joint’s in Coney Island—one of Yale’s two or three headquarters.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Yale? I can’t really say. He’s feared, all right. But it’s this plump kid, who does his enforcing, that has everybody’s underwear riding high.”

“Capone.”

“Capone. He’s maybe…twenty-one, twenty-two? You see, they’re having trouble in their own backyard, with the Irish hoodlums moving in on them. That’s why they’re trying to expand over here…but it’s not going to work out.”

“Why?”

Johnny threw his hands in the air. “There’s too much competition over here already! And Arnold Rothstein, who is a personal pal of mine, has connections with every faction in Manhattan. He’s the peacekeeper. Plenty for everybody, he says.”

“Good philosophy.”

Johnny folded his arms and an eyebrow rose slyly. “Now, I might be able to throw Yale and Capone a
bone
…”

But before Johnny could finish that, Tex stuck her head in the door, string of pearls dangling like a noose. Her expression was grave.

“Trouble,” she said.

Johnny’s chin lifted; the dark blue eyes were hard and glittering. “Not our Brooklyn friends?”

“
Your
Brooklyn friends.”

“Capone?”

“Himself…and two bully boys.”

Wyatt glanced at Bat, whose expression was as grave as Tex’s. Wyatt, however, was smiling, just a little. This was a nice piece of gambler’s luck, being here when the hoodlums came to call.

Johnny was up and coming around the desk. “How’d the bastards get in?”

Tex met him half-way, stopping him with her hands on his chest, while Wyatt and Bat remained in their well-padded leather chairs.

She said, “They tagged in after two toney couples who Louie recognized as regulars. Louie’s tough, but with three Brooklyn boys packing heat? Forget it.”

Moving past her, Johnny said, “I’ll handle these sons of bitches. Louie and the other boys can back my play, and—”

Wyatt said, “Johnny. A moment.”

Johnny froze and said, “Oh, Wyatt, that’s generous as hell, but I can’t ask you to—”

“I’m not offering anything.” His eyes went to Tex. “Are they causing trouble? Bothering the clientele?”

“No! Not yet, anyway. They’re just sitting at one of the tables, listening to the band and watching couples rub against each other.”

“Maybe they’re here for your show.”

Tex’s eyebrows hiked. “Yeah, to bust
up
my show!”

“Have they ever gone that far before?”

“No, but they’ve threatened—”

“Tex, what do they say they want?”

“I didn’t talk to them.”

“Did your friend, uh, Louie? Did he talk to them?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“And?”

“And Capone and his cronies, they say they wanna talk to Johnny in private.” Her eyes found Johnny’s and she gripped his nearest arm. “You can’t do that. They get Johnny alone, and God knows what they’ll pull. It’s an invitation to dine, and I don’t mean on steak or stew.”

Wyatt, still seated, said, “Send them up.”

Wyatt was addressing Tex, but Johnny answered, “Receive them in my own office?”

“Sure. It’s business, isn’t it?”

Johnny, who already had a good head of steam worked up, paused and thought. “I suppose…I suppose it is.”

“Keep it cool.” Wyatt raised a forefinger. “Plenty of time later, to get hot.”

Tex turned to Wyatt, eyes flashing, nostrils flaring. “Are you completely out of your mind, Wyatt Earp?”

“That has been suggested,” Wyatt said. Then to Johnny:

“Have her send them up. Bat and me’ll back your play.”

Bat said, “We will?”

Tex, hands on her hips, said, “Pardon me, but a couple of duffers like you are gonna take care of young turks like this?”

“I rode a young filly once,” Wyatt said, “and she didn’t complain.”