Under the Skin Read online

  Hartung spits into the cuspidor. “I give up. There’s no making sense with a crazy man.”

  He stares into his whiskey for a time, then sips of it. “Damn hopeless case.”

  Youngblood grins. “Guess so.”

  “No guess about it.”

  “She’s really a sweet girl.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Wait’ll you meet her.”

  “I done met her.”

  “No you aint, you just seen her and said howdy. I already told her you’re gonna visit us real often.”

  “I am?”

  “You damn right. You’re gonna have many a supper with us.”

  Hartung drains his drink and contemplates the empty glass. “Supper, huh?” Then steps back from the bar and gives Youngblood a look of alarm. “Whoa! Is she gonna do the cooking?”

  It takes Youngblood a second to catch the allusion to the hapless McGuane—and they burst into loud barking laughter.

  I f she is a mystery to others she is hardly less of one to herself, a fact that troubles her not at all. No one will ever learn anything of her life prior to her arrival at Mrs. O’Malley’s. There were witnesses to that earlier life, of course, but none are known to anyone who now knows her or will come to know her. Only her own memory can bear testimony to her past, but not in all the years to come will she permit herself even a passing thought of where she’s come from or who she’s been, and thus will her previous history disappear to wherever the world’s vast store of unrecorded past does vanish.

  The last recall of it she allowed herself was when Youngblood returned to her after a full night of pondering her disclosure that she carried another man’s child, returned to her with the morning light and held her hands and said it didn’t matter. And asked her again to be his wife.

  She had searched his eyes for any hint of uncertainty but saw nothing in them but love.

  Love. The very thing in Cullen Youngblood she had wagered on. A love whose power she dared not test against the truth but which proved equal to the lie. And in the moment of staring into his eyes and marveling at the blazing force of that love, she had the final thought she will ever have that touches on her earlier self:

  And they used to call me crazy.

  W e wore good suits and hats and freshly shined shoes. Brando and LQ carried briefcases stuffed with old newspapers. Anybody who checked us out as we came through the Jacinto’s revolving door would’ve figured us for three more members of the East Texas Insurance Association attending the year-end convention.

  The lobby was brightly lighted and well appointed with dark leather sofas and easy chairs and ottomans, embroidered carpeting and tall potted palms. Business types stood chatting in clusters and huddled around documents laid out on coffee tables. Most of the action at this hour was in the hotel dining room, which was jammed with conventioneers and other New Year’s celebrants and pouring out music and laughter and the loud garble of shouted conversations. The smell of booze carried out from the room. Even though Prohibition was two years dead and done with, you still couldn’t belly up to a bar in Texas and buy a hard drink, not legally, but you could bring in your own, and this bunch must’ve brought it in by the carload. Through the open double doors I caught a glimpse of the mob inside, and of a man and woman seated on a dais—the man grayhaired and wearing a white toga and a sash that read 1935, the woman young and goodlooking in a white bathing suit with a 1936 sash.

  A couple was embracing at the bank of elevators as we came up, the man holding the woman close and nuzzling her neck, running his hand over her ass. The woman glanced over at us and pushed his hand away and hissed, “Will you just hold your horses?”

  The little arrow over one of the elevator doors glided past the arc of floor numbers to stop at number one. The doors dinged open and another loud bunch of conventioneers came surging out and headed for the dining room. We moved fast to get into the car ahead of the couple and LQ turned and raised a hand to them and said, “Houston police business, folks. Yall take the next one, please.”

  Brando smiled at the pretty blond operator and made a shutting gesture and she closed the doors on the couple standing there with their mouths open. She had nicelooking legs under her short skirt and wore her cap at a sassy tilt. Brando winked at her and said, “All the way up, honey.” She got us moving and said, “Yall policemen?”

  “Don’t we look it?” LQ said.

  “Yessir,” she said. “I guess so.”

  LQ said he was Sergeant O’Brien and Brando and I were Detectives Ramos and Gallo. She wanted to know if we were going to arrest somebody. LQ said probably not, just ask some people some questions. She looked from one of us to the others. LQ was fairhaired and cleanshaven and spoke with an East Texas drawl, but Brando and I were darkskinned and had big mustaches, and I thought the girl might be wondering when the Houston PD had started hiring guys that looked like us.

  At the top floor LQ set down his briefcase and he and I got out. Brando stayed with the elevator and kept the door open. I heard the girl say, “I wanna see,” but Brando told her to keep back from the door.

  We’d figured on the watchdog in the hallway. He got up from his chair and dropped his magazine on it, tugged his lapels into place and planted himself with hands on hips. He held his coat flaps back so we could see the shoulder holster he was wearing.

  “Stop right there,” he said.

  We kept walking toward him. “Houston police,” LQ said. “Here to see William Ragsdale.”

  The guy cut his eyes from one of us to the other. He was goodsized but so was I, and although LQ was on the lanky side, he had the height on us. The guy’s hands dropped off his hips.

  “Let’s see some badges,” he said. You could almost hear the gears turning in his skull, thinking what might happen if he pulled a gun and we were really cops. That was the trouble with dimwits—in the time they needed to think it over, they were had.

  “Sure thing,” LQ said, pulling the .380 out from under his coat and cocking it as he put the muzzle in the guy’s face. “Have a good look.”

  I drew my revolver from under my arm and held it down against my leg. It was an old single-action .44 with high-power loads that could knock down a horse.

  The guard looked heartbroken at being taken so easily. He held his hands away from his sides as LQ reached in his coat and stripped him of a bulldog.

  “How many?” LQ said, jutting his chin at the door.

  “Just him and Kersey, a pair of chippies.”

  “Kersey a gunner?” LQ said.

  “Naw, shit. Owns a truck company, some strip clubs.”

  LQ told him what to say and warned him that if he said anything else he’d be the first to get it.

  I stepped off to one side of the door and LQ stood on the other. LQ nodded and the guard gave the door two sharp raps, waited a second and then gave it one more.

  A voice inside said, “What?”

  “Got a package here for Mr. Ragsdale. The desk just sent it up. Didn’t say who from.”

  We heard the dead bolt working and then the door opened a few inches on its chain. “Where’s it—”

  LQ yanked the guard aside and I stepped up to the door and gave it a hell of a kick, snapping the chain and knocking the guy on the other side backpedaling and down on his ass. I went in with the revolver raised. LQ shoved the guard staggering past me and hustled in behind me and closed the door.

  Ragsdale was gawking at us from the sofa where he sat in his underwear and with a girl on his lap. I knew him from a photograph Rose showed me. Husky, paunchy, thick head of oily hair, fleshy drinker’s nose. The girl scooted off him in a half-crouch, holding her shoulders in a shrug and her hands turned back at the wrist in a gesture that said she had nothing to do with this. You could see she wasn’t wearing anything under her white slip.

  “What the hell?” Ragsdale said. He started to reach for his pants but I pointed the Colt at his face and shook my head. He raised his hands chest-high and sat back.
I picked up the pants to make sure they didn’t have a gun in them and tossed them aside.

  LQ ordered the other two guys to stand with their noses and palms against the wall and they were quick to do it. A girl in just bra and panties appeared at the bedroom door, looking scared but keeping her mouth shut. Another cool pony. I took a look in the bedroom to be sure there was no adjoining door, then waved both broads in there and shut them inside.

  There was an open valise on the table against the wall and I sidestepped over to it and saw that it held a .380 semiautomatic and a few lean packets of greenbacks held together with rubber bands. One pack of hundreds, a couple of fifties, the rest all twenties and tens. Three, four grand at most was my guess.

  “Listen, can I say something?” Ragsdale said. He was bouncing back fast from his surprise—and he’d figured who was running the show and was talking to me. Rose said they called him Willie Rags.

  “Just let me say something, okay?” he said. I stood there and stared at him.

  “Look, I know who sent you boys. Just tell me what them wops want. You aint wop, are you? Look Mex to me—no offense, hell, I like Mexes. Anyway, what they want? Money? Want to know whose slots I’m pushing? Well, all right, all right, we can discuss all that. We can straighten everything out, guys like us, right?”

  He’d probably fast-talked his way out of plenty of jams before. Rose had spoken to him on the telephone once. “Talks like a guy on the radio,” he said.

  “Listen, I know you guys aren’t gonna shoot me,” he said. “Not here. Hotel fulla people. Shit, it’s Houston but it aint Dodge City. They probably told you get the money I made off those slots, right? Plus a little interest on top? Probably said knock me around some, teach me a lesson. Okay, all right, won’t be the first ass-kicking I ever took. But look, the money on the table’s all I got on me. You want more than that you gotta wait till morning. I’m meeting a guy in the morning with lots more cash. But you don’t want me all beat up when I meet him, right? Might make him suspicious, know what I mean? Would you hand over a bunch of money to a guy all beat to shit? What you oughta do, you oughta hold off on the ass-whipping till after I get the dough from this guy. That’s good business sense, and you boys are businessmen, I can tell. So let’s talk a little business while we wait for the man with the money, what do you say?”

  I stared at him with an expression like I might be thinking it over.

  “Listen,” he said, “tell me what kinda deal you got with the Maceos. Maybe I can cut you something better, you know what I mean? I mean, no harm in talking, is there?” He pronounced their name MAY-cee-o, the same way the Maceos themselves said it, like Texans, which is what they considered themselves to be.

  I looked at LQ. He pursed his lips and shrugged like What the hell.

  Ragsdale caught LQ’s expression and took encouragement from it. He patted the sofa and said to me, “Come on, pal, sit down. No harm done. Let’s talk business.”

  I lowered the gun, and he chuckled and patted the sofa again. I uncocked the .44 and slipped it into my waistband under my coat as I started to step past him to the other side of the sofa. Then brought the ice pick out of my inside coat pocket and drove it into his heart.

  If you can get them off guard like that you can do it quick and neat and fairly quiet. They give a little grunt and that’s it. I yanked the pick out and he started to fall forward but I caught him and positioned him so he’d stay seated. A red spot the size of a quarter was all the blood there was. His head was slumped to one side and his eyes were open. He looked like he’d just been asked a stumper of a question. I closed his eyes and wiped the pick on his undershirt and put it back in my coat.

  The other two still had their faces to the wall and looked like they were trying not to even breathe.

  “Tell those Dallas assholes we know it’s their machines Willie Rags was pushing,” I said. “Tell them Rosario Maceo says don’t cross the line again.”

  I picked up the valise and we hustled out of the room and over to the elevator. Brando patted the girl on the ass and said, “Let’s go, honey.”

  She blushed and worked the levers and down we went. She looked a little disappointed we hadn’t brought anyone out in handcuffs.

  I t was normally an hour’s drive between Houston and Galveston, but we went back by way of Kemah and League City, a pair of burgs just inside the Galveston County line. We had a list of all the places where Ragsdale had put in his Dallas machines and we stopped at each one to have a talk with the owner—a dozen or so cafés and about as many filling stations and pool halls.

  Ragsdale must’ve thought he was being smart just because he stayed away from any joint that already had our machines in it. Maybe he thought the Maceo brothers wouldn’t care that he was working in Galveston County so long as he dealt only with joints free of Maceo machines. Maybe he was so dumb he thought they wouldn’t even hear about it. But Sam Maceo had friends everywhere and they had eyes and ears all over. They reported everything they heard that might mean some outsider was working this side of the county line. Sam would then pass the information to Rose and Rose would decide what to do about it.

  What set Rose off about Ragsdale and the Dallas outfit wasn’t just the money they were siphoning out of a few mainland joints. What galled him was their lack of respect. He couldn’t blame outsiders for wanting to get in on Galveston’s easy money, but he did blame them if they tried to get in on it without Maceo permission. Sometimes Rose would let an outside bunch work its game on the county mainland—never on the island—but only for a percentage of the gross. If the outside outfit thought the Maceo cut was too high, Rose would shrug and wish them luck and that was the end of the discussion. Only fools tried to work their game in Galveston County without Rose’s blessing. Those who did try it could count on Rose taking swift measures to set things straight.

  I was one of the measures he could take.

  So were about two dozen other guys, the bunch of us known as “Rose’s Ghosts.” We saw to it that Maceo territory was defended and Maceo will was done. We were a fairly open secret—even the chief of police and the county sheriff knew about us—but you’d never see a word about us in the papers except as “person or persons unknown.” Besides discouraging outside outfits from crossing the Galveston line, we protected the Maceo interests in neighboring counties. We collected the Maceos’ money—the daily take from Maceo clubs, the cuts from places renting Maceo equipment, the loan payments from businesses staked with Maceo cash. We kept the grifters out of the Maceo casinos. Hell, we kept them off the island altogether. We came down hard on drunkrollers and room thieves, even harder on strongarms and stickup men. Although few of the good citizens ever said it out loud, most of them knew that the real law enforcement in Galveston wasn’t the cops—it was us.

  It was in the Maceo brothers’ interest to keep their gambling rooms honest and make sure the hotels and the city streets were safe. The “Free State of Galveston,” as everybody called it, was the most wide-open place in Texas, probably in the country, and what kept the highrollers and big spenders coming was the knowledge they wouldn’t be cheated at the tables or robbed on the streets. Like the cathouse district that had been doing business on the island ever since the Civil War, the Maceos ensured the town a steady prosperity—even now, while the rest of the country was getting hammered by the Depression. It was a benefit not lost on the islanders, who knew a good thing when they had it.

  Rose was a master of backroom business with the local politicians and the cops. One recent morning when I’d gone to Rose’s office to deliver some cash I’d collected in Texas City, the secretary hustled me right in, even though Rose had the county sheriff in there with him.

  I handed Rose the bag and he peeked in it and took out a half-inch pack of hundreds and dropped it on the desk in front of the sheriff.

  “There you go, Frankie,” he said. “A little contribution for the Lawmen’s Association.”

  I’d seen the sheriff coming and goin
g from Rose’s office many a time and we had sometimes exchanged nods. But I doubted he’d ever accepted money from Rose in front of anybody, and he looked uneasy about it.

  As the sheriff put the money in his coat, Rose pointed at me and said, “You know Jimmy here, don’t you, Frank? Let me tell you, they don’t come any better than this kid. A real whiz at taking care of business, you know what I mean? And he got a sharp eye. Don’t miss a thing. He sees something and click, it’s like his mind takes a picture of it.”

  The sheriff gave me a careful once-over and we exchanged one of our nods. We all sat there without saying anything for a long moment before the sheriff made a show of checking his watch and saying oh Christ he was late for an appointment. He said so long to Rose and let himself out. When the door shut behind him Rose and I turned to each other and laughed.

  The look the sheriff gave me had been both wary and somewhat impressed. Like everybody else, he knew Rose wasn’t one for openly praising anybody, not like Sam, who was always telling guys how swell they were, no matter if they were a crooked local judge or a visiting shoe salesman from Tulsa, some regular highroller from Houston or a whorehouse bouncer who came in once a week to drop ten bucks at the blackjack tables. It wasn’t any wonder Sam handled the public-relations end of things. Most city officials from the mayor on down were personally acquainted with both brothers, but it was Big Sam, as everybody called him, who dealt with them in public. He was the happy glad-hander, the drinking buddy with a thousand jokes—or, when it was called for, the gracious host of impeccable manners. He was the one to hand over the big contributions to the latest charity drives and to help local politicians cut the big ribbons with the outsized scissors, to bring in big-time celebrity entertainers to perform for free at civic events, to serve as the sponsoring host at sporting competitions and bathing beauty contests. He paid for smart orphan kids to go to college and made large weekly contributions to all the local churches. Sam used charm and generosity to promote the Maceo interests, and Rose used the Ghosts to protect them. They were a perfect team. And I knew that under his goodbuddy exterior Sam was no less serious than his big brother. Rose called the shots, but he always consulted with Sam first, always sought his advice. They were damn close brothers and partners to the bone.