F. B. I. Showdown Page 2

Hymie didn’t stop his camera now, didn’t take it away from that writhing, burning figure that screamed away his last tormented moments on Earth.

  And Frank and a few of the ringleaders were close to that pyre, and the red flames lit up their savage, elated faces; and now they did not attempt to disguise the sadism which had actuated them and brought about this tragedy.

  The screaming went on, high and awful, Someone shouted, “There ain’t enough gasoline, I reckon,” so Frank stood out for all to see and tossed the part-full can with an underhand throw so that it landed right at the burning man’s feet.

  The grass was burning for a square yard or so around, and now more gasoline gurgled out of the can and added to the flames and sent them flaming up around the limbs and body of the writhing, agonised prisoner. Almost immediately after that the screaming stopped and the man stood silent in his bonds and then sagged. And then the bonds burned through and he fell on his face in the burning grass,

  Just at that moment the gasoline can blew up, and small gouts of flaming fuel came shooting all around the lynching party. They scattered in alarm, and then, realizing there was no danger, they stopped running and started to laugh loudly to show they hadn’t been seriously scared. It sounded wrong and indecent with that corpse roasting.

  Frank started to marshal the party after this; he drove them to their cars and told them to get moving back to town. It seemed they were going to leave the charred body just like that. Someone must have said something on the subject, for Frank immediately turned and with grim humour said, “What the hell, you don’t think the cops are gonna look far when they see who it is, do you? That is, if he can ever be identified. Old Mouthy’s given ’em so much trouble I reckon they’d pin a medal on us if they knew what we’d done.”

  Everyone who heard laughed again, and again it held that false, strident note—the note that creeps in when men are out of their depth but are hard at it, trying to kid themselves they’re all right, that nothing’s going to happen to touch them. But Hymie noticed that a lot were pretty quick to get into their cars and drive away. You might have thought that some were suddenly sobering....

  Hymie pulled into the column, but he didn’t follow them down the Warren Bridge highway. Where it joined with the Washington Road by the big, new hatchery, he pulled left and headed north through the night. Another car pulled out after him, and it made Hymie sweat because he had just witnessed a murder and this was one of the accomplices driving hard behind. But in time this second car pulled into a farm road, and then Hymie went on through the night alone.

  He had changed his mind about staying in Warren Bridge overnight; instead, he would drive to Washington, where he lived, and put up at some hotel if the goshdarned politicians and military hadn’t taken all the beds. He wasn’t expected home until the following day, and he wasn’t going to be with his wife one minute earlier than she was expecting him....

  He felt something coming up within him, and he stopped and got out of the car and was sick by the side of the road.

  He thought, hell, thinking of his wife on top of what he had just seen was enough to make any man empty his stomach. He drove on and wondered what the boss would say when he came in with that film he’d just shot.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JAILBREAK

  It was in the no-talking period. Johnny Delcros had been using his eyes and again he was speculating. He said, “Get someone out there—a dame, say—she could shine a mirror up into that swine’s face an’ he wouldn’t know where he was shootin’.”

  His lips didn’t move. They shuffled round the prison compound, grey, dejected, listless men. The “swine”—the cop with the automatic rifle up top on the wall—shouted, “Sew your lips down there. If I catch the guys that are talking, I’ll roast ’em!”

  The noise went on; no one appeared to be talking, but everyone carried on with their conversation. Exercise was a good time to exchange views on a variety of subjects, starting with the prison diet, going through discourses on the characteristics (generally unfavourable) of their warders, and even including speculation on the possibilities of—escape.

  A number of men were committed to it. Johnny Delcros, with Egghead Schiller and a man named Joe Guestler, were perhaps the ringleaders. There were about a dozen planning a break, all long-term men with only a part of their sentences completed. Delcros was in for another five years—he had been convicted on five charges of robbery with assault. One of the charges hadn’t been his, and he lived now with a sense of grievance and injustice.

  Schiller—he’d never had any hair since the day he was born, but had never quite realized what a handicap it was in his life of crime—Schiller was in on a ten-year rap and had served two only. Guestler was one of the Savannah Gang, and he’d got life for his part in an automobile hold-up in which a girl had been assaulted and her escort killed while trying to stop them getting away. Erd Savannah had been given full penalty, and Guestler was lucky to have got away with life.

  Louie Savannah, Erd’s kid brother, Ed Hankman, Jud Corbeta, and one or two other boys were in on the proposed break. Hankman and Corbeta were both part of the old Savannah Gang and were serving fifteen years apiece. Louie, who had only been eighteen at the time of the stick-up, was also in for fifteen.

  That length of time all in one place isn’t to be contemplated calmly, so the Savannah Gang had got together to plan a break out. They weren’t getting far when Egghead Schiller and Johnny Delcros were invited to join in the attempt. Egghead was Johnny’s pal, and Johnny knew of a way of getting guns into prison. He wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Egghead, how he did it; but they knew he wasn’t talking tall words, because one day he showed them a Smith & Wesson .38, and a week later he had ammunition for it. Egghead had an idea it was Johnny’s girlfriend who brought the stuff in, and one of the warders was paid not to look when the things were passed. He couldn’t see how else it could be done.

  But Johnny had the damnedest ideas for a prison break. His idea was to get enough guns, start shooting and rush the wall, get over, and drop down to where his dame would be waiting with a fast car. That was the only thing the Savannah Gang could think up, also.

  Egghead used to listen, but didn’t say anything. This day he heard Johnny come out with his theory about blinding the warder up on the wall with a reflecting mirror and then he told him what was on his mind.

  They shuffled round, heads bent, dust coming up from the sun-dried concrete as their feet stirred it into motion. Egghead looked up at that high concrete wall, with the catwalk twelve feet above their heads, and the railed walk right on top of that twenty-foot high ring of ferro-concrete. There were guards leaning along that top rail, and more guards lounging about the catwalk.

  Egghead looked everywhere but at Johnny Delcros, while words came thin and harsh through his tight-drawn lips. And he said, “You got somep’n crawlin’ in your head if you think I’m gonna try’n get over that wall with you.”

  Johnny looked everywhere but at Egghead and snarled, “Hey, you ain’t got cold feet, have you?”

  Egghead said, dispassionately, “I would have, ef I joined in a break over the wall—permanent cold, I guess, along with the rest of me.” He looked at one solitary white cloud that drifted against the blue of the North Carolina sky and whispered, “I got me better ideas, Johnny. But they don’t include the Savannah mob.” He made a nasty sound in his throat. “Them dumb clucks!”

  That was better—Egghead wasn’t quitting and was talking of other ideas.

  Johnny said, quickly, “If you got better ideas, Eggy, you don’t go without me, see? I’m gonna bust outa this place, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Egghead pacified him. “Sure, Johnny, we bust out together when we go, but we don’t need more’n you an’ me, so we don’t say anything to the Savannah outfit, see?”

  They shuffled around on probably the last circuit before the whistle went for form up for the cellblocks. Egghead spoke with care, stopping when any of the prisoners were
near enough to hear. It wouldn’t be nice for them if the Savannah mob got to know they were being double-crossed—even in jail things could happen.

  Egghead’s voice came thinly to the fight-calloused ears of his buddy. “I never did like the idea of rushin’ that wall. One or two of us might get over, but what ef you’n me stop this side o’ the wall with a bullet in us? That’d be no go, now, wouldn’t it, Johnny?”

  “So what? So I got to doin’ some thinkin’. We’ll let the Savannah boys go ahead with their plan, but we’ll sneak out ahead of ’em, see?”

  Johnny said, “Why don’t we tell ’em, Eggy? It would be better, in case they find out themselves. They’re poison, that mob.”

  “Sure they’re poison. That’s why we say nothin’—nothin’, d’you hear, Johnny? You’n me’ll make this break together. There’ll be no room for the Savannah mob, an’ ef we tell ’em, d’you think they’ll let us go without ’em?”

  A prison guard came down and started shouting for fall in. Johnny said, viciously: “I want for to paste him cross the mouth before I leave this joint. For why? Because that guy shoves us around more’n any other guard, an’ I don’t like being shoved around.”

  Johnny wanted to hear the rest of the plan.

  He got it over the evening meal. Egghead spoke above the noise of a thousand prisoners eating. There was a lot of noise, because the men said the food was getting worse and it had always been moderately lousy. Some of them set up a clamour with their plates and mugs, but it didn’t get them anywhere, and they shut up when the prison guards swooped quickly down among them. But it was a good opportunity for Egghead to get on with his plan.

  “Remember the time they gave Erd Savannah the gas? They got a workin’ party to clean up the death chamber the day before, remember? You’n me were on that job. We had to wash down the paint, scrub the floors, and put a shine on everything. You’d have thought they were afraid Erd might take his custom to another jail ef he didn’t like the look of his last sleepin’ room.”

  Johnny spoke through a mouthful of slush, cynically, bitterly. “That wasn’t for Erd. That was for the Governor, who’s a sensitive li’l lily an’ doesn’t like to see dirt, the lousy sonofasoandso.”

  Egghead got impatient and said, “Sure, sure, I know all that. But—d’you remember the covers for the walls an’ auditorium seats? The ones to keep the muck outa the gas holes? They got sent away for a quick clean, so’s they could be put up again when the show was over.”

  Johnny said, “We took ’em to the laundry chute and dropped ’em down to the bin.”

  Egghead said, “We gotta fix ourselves on to that cleanin’ up party next tine they fumigate anyone. Next time we’re goin’ down that chute together, see?” Johnny forgot and started to look at Egghead, recovered and stared down at his plate of food again. Egghead’s voice went on, “That bin’s only a floor below. I guess it won’t hurt us. And it opens into the loading bay where the laundry truck is!”

  Johnny was rapidly cottoning on.

  Egghead whispered, “Don’t you see, Johnny, that’s better’n goin’ over the wall with the Savannah mob. They’ll be on the run from the second the break’s attempted. Now, us, we might get half an hour or an hour’s start before anyone sees we’re missin’.” He leaned closer. Louie Savannah saw the action, and slowly put down his spoon.

  Egghead said, “We gotta have guns, both of us, that’s all. We stick the truck driver up, then lie back among the baskets an’ let him drive out through the gates. Ef he double-crosses us, we give it him in the back of the head.”

  “An’ when we get out of the district?” Johnny with the heavy, fight-marred countenance was better with his fists than with his brains.

  “We still give it him in the back of the head,” Egghead growled. “I ain’t comin’ back into this place, Johnny, no, not never. So I guess this time it don’t matter what I do when I tote a gun.”

  Johnny said, savagely, “Bud, I’m right with you! This babe’s another they won’t bring back alive. Another five years in this place? Guess I’d be screwy as heck by that time, Eggy, just as you say, we go out together an’ we don’t ever come back, no, not never!”

  When they were told to stand back of their benches and march off to the blocks, Louie Savannah got a whisper across the table. “What’s cooking, you guys? You doin’ a lotta talkin’ just now. Shoot the works?”

  Johnny looked quickly at Egghead. It was only a fractional glance, but it told Louie they were up to something and were hiding it from him. Johnny came back across the table as they picked up the mark-time with their ill-fitting prison boots. “Aw, gee, Louie, it ain’t nothin’. Just a ball game we’d like to see in Charleston.”

  Louie said, “Yeah?” and then again, softly, “Yeah?” and then turned to look for Joe Guestler. He was arrogant, young Louie, and no sort of man. Now that Erd was gone he thought he should be boss of the outfit, and he tried to say what should be done in their planning. But he wasn’t like his brother when it came to organising, and that was why they hadn’t got anywhere with the breakout to date.

  Egghead saw the look and said. “He’s on to us, damn it. Fer crissake play the dummy or we’ll be in jake with the Savannah boys!”

  They made their break seven weeks later. Seven weeks isn’t a long time, but seven weeks in jail can seem an eternity, and after a time Johnny got tired of waiting and wanted to try for a break over the wall, just as the Savannah boys were urging.

  But Egghead said no, a wall break was no dice, and he talked Johnny out of it. Acting on Egghead’s instructions, when the Savannah mob got impatient and wanted to start things, Johnny told them he hadn’t got enough guns in for them yet. But to keep them quiet, he got in three guns and then some ammunition for the Savannah boys, with the promise of another couple to follow. He and Egghead already had flat .38 automatics....

  A man was gassed in the lethal chamber after three weeks of waiting—he had croaked a young girl who wouldn’t play the game as he wanted her to—but neither Egghead nor Johnny Delcros got on the working party to clean up the place.

  They were more fortunate when it was Parry Galowen’s turn to take the last walk. Parry was a man thoroughly respectable at heart. He believed in the institution of marriage, and in fact had had several wives. The trouble was, they had insisted on remaining well and healthy when it would have suited the elegant Parry to have been a widower. So, Parry eased them into a happier world.

  Now Egghead Schiller and Johnny Delcros were helping to ease Parry out of the world, and by all accounts Parry wasn’t liking the idea.

  As they shuffled off to get some cleaning materials, Johnny said, “I just bin talkin’ with old Rocky.”

  Egghead kept his mouth shut and said, “What about old Rocky?” shuffling along. Rocky—Philip Whitwam, nicknamed Rockefeller because he was forever babbling about the millions that had passed through his hands—was Johnny’s cellmate.

  “Rocky’s got on to the breakout.”

  Egghead jerked round quickly, surprised. “Ours—on the laundry truck?”

  “Naw!” Johnny drew his share of the cleaning rags and tramped out of the room and along the corridor to the lethal chamber. When it was safe he continued, “He’s heard about the Savannah boys’ plan. He thinks we’re goin’ out with them. So he wants us to do something when we get out.”

  “Yeah?” They were marking time in the corridor outside the chamber while an officer came up with the keys.

  “He’s mad at his brother. Old Rocky says he look the rap because there wasn’t no sense in his brother comin’ with him. But he says his brother ain’t makin’ no attempt to spring him from jail, like it was arranged. So he’s mad at him, an’ he wants us to look up his brother and beat him around the head a bit until he starts to do something.”

  Egghead said, “Like hell we’ll beat anyone around the head unless there’s dough in it for us!”

  Johnny Delcros got in a final whisper before the guard came along. “Old Ro
cky says he an’ his brother have got a million greenberries stashed away!”

  Egghead was saying, “Hell, he always talks in nice round figures,” when the guard was among them, bellowing to them to keep silent. They stopped marking time. In the distance a thin high wailing floated up to them from Death Row.

  The guard grinned a big grim and said, “Jeeze, the fuss dat guy kicks up. You wouldn’t think we wus preparing his suite for him, would ya?” Some of the working party gave back the big laugh he was expecting, and that put him in good spirits.

  They went in, and the screams of a man who had less than a day to live were lost as the soundproof door closed behind them.

  There were really two rooms inside that soundproof door. One was a big room with a long glass observation panel all along one wall. Here the prison doctor, the Governor, various officials of the State, and even a few Pressmen sat and watched while the prisoner took the last step out of this world. That room had to be prepared, too.

  On the other side of the observation panel was a room not much bigger than a closet. One wall was perforated with pipe-inlets, which led to a battery of carbon monoxide cylinders outside. There was one easy chair in the room, with wooden armrests to which the prisoner would be strapped when they brought him in. There was also a small but very heavy table screwed to the floor.

  No one knew why there was a table inside the gas chamber, but it appeared to be there out of custom, a relic of the days when a man was supposed to write his last letters before being taken out and hanged. Possibly the table was retained so that the solitary death chair wouldn’t look quite so alone and sinister and so disturbing to the incoming candidate for death.

  But Johnny and Egghead weren’t interested in the fittings. They had been here before—many times. On average that gas chamber was used every four or five weeks; for murder was a hobby to some and a profession to many more in North Carolina.

  They were taut, now that the moment had arrived. Inside their prison shirts were their guns. They were watching all the time, waiting for the opportunity to get out to the laundry chute.