EXCERPT 14, FLY IN THE MILK
Johnny Beam’s father didn’t let a losing streak keep him from planning the game to end all games as Chapter 2 ends in Fly in the Milk, ebook available wherever ebooks are sold:
Railroad and shipping traffic slowed to a near standstill and the mines followed suit. Survival became the watchword. Money got tighter. The poor no longer had anything extra for the occasional bet. Savvy Scandinavians knew how to hunker down and batten down the hatches. The lowlife sunk lower and the ladies of the night, faced with dwindling clientele, moved southward to Minneapolis, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans and points west.
To complicate matters, Clarence was growing soft. At least that’s the way he looked at it. He’d always maintained a policy of never getting close to any of his ladies. If they got knocked-up, it was a trip down to the yellow shack by the railroad tracks where the wrinkled old veterinarian would take care of things. Either that, or leave town.
The new, soft Clarence not only had settled down with one of his stable, he was going to be a father. And he never would’ve been in that situation if Ethel Mae weren’t such a fine-looking woman with a good head on her shoulders, as he told anyone willing to listen.
He was now over thirty and the idea of a son didn’t sound that bad to him, except it meant he was going to have to feed, clothe and put a roof over their heads. The mother of his child wouldn’t be a whore no more.
As the fear of the Depression sank further into the fabric of the nation, the gambling crowds grew even smaller. Cash flow slowed to a half-frozen trickle. Clarence felt a little panic now and then. Like maybe it was time to pack up and leave. On to greener pastures, as the Swedes liked to say in that particular sing song way of theirs: On tuu greenah pastuhs….
Being adaptable, he soon tapped into a growth industry: bootleg liquor. In the years after the introduction of the Volstead Act, the sale of illegal alcohol kept the wolf away from many doors across America. Clarence was able to develop a steady income by hawking booze provided to him by a former customer from his brothel days.
The new decade came in cold, dry and dark. The expected birth was only a few months away. Ethel was getting fatter every day. Clarence had never seen anyone eat like that, let alone a woman. They had a little boxy house in the North End. All the working girls were gone and the only gambling to be had was strictly high-stakes poker with the elite.
Clarence had found poker to be a horse of a different color. Sadly, cards were not one of his strengths. Big on feelings and hunches, he never quite felt it with the cards, and the other players were too smart and too rich. When their cards were bad they played it close to the vest and folded. When their cards were good they could buy Clarence out of a pot, overwhelm his limited personal resources.
Best he could do was break even, or, on a good day make enough scratch for a week’s food. He took solace in the fact that he was still close to the guys with the dough. When you were close to the fire, there was always a chance to get warm.
Clarence Walker Brown Junior came into the world at St. Catherine’s Hospital in Bay City, Wisconsin, on March 2, 1930, a healthy strapping baby with his father’s muscles and his mother’s good looks.
Clarence couldn’t help but stare at the boy and feel his fatherly pride swelling. This here was some boy.
The new father proceeded to give family life his best try. He changed his ways some and took jobs doing favors for some of the big wheels from the card games. Little paid favors—whatever they might request. He did the collecting for Jimmy Fuller’s pinball and bowling machines. He chauffeured for Zenith businessman, James P. Baker, who had taken pity on Clarence one night after winning a large pot in which Clarence was holding the better hand but was forced to fold because of a lack of funds.
The reformed pimp continued his effort at family life for close to two years, spending a good chunk of dough to rent a house out in the South End of town so Ethel Mae and little Clarence could get away from the seedy side of things.
Sometimes he’d sit in the kitchen and stare mournfully out the windows at the miles and miles of flat empty land. Land that once was expected to hold the streets and neighborhoods of the future “Chicago of the North.” Any hope for a real city on that tundra had been lost October of 1929 when the stock market crashed.
Clarence often felt an emptiness inside him, a longing for the big city. Busy streets, downtown traffic and smoky nightclubs. An environment in which he could thrive.
Denied this, he gamely went through the teething and the diapers and being cooped up with Ethel Mae when she wouldn’t stop yammering. He lived through the cold winter months and the frigid, damp, non-existent spring. Got through the bouts of claustrophobia and Ethel’s drinking binges and the looks of superiority from his employers.
December of 1932 brought change along with the snow. Prohibition was over and tavern owners were dreaming of the sights and sounds of a full barroom, while the citizenry was busy figuring what items they could go without to afford alcohol. For Clarence, repeal of prohibition proved to be a double-edged sword. First there was the decline in profit from the sale of illicit alcohol, which, when all had been tallied, had proven to be a source of income that, if not for his frequent gambling losses, would have been considered quite good for the time. On the other side of the coin, the new liquor-fueled optimism in the air—or perhaps recklessness—brought his dice games back in favor. With the addition of some new players, a ten-percent rake off the top began to look pretty fine, especially when he could make it grow by playing in other hustlers’ games.
And then came the Big Losing Streak.
The faster he made it, the faster he lost it, longest such streak of his life. His debts grew faster than the snowbanks. Every gambler knows—at least the good ones—about the ups and downs, but he’d never seen nothing like this. The strain began to get to him. He was drinking heavily and his head hurt most of the time.
Then one frosty February night, when there seemed to be no end to the torture, the idea—The Plan—came to him. A scheme to make one big score. Fleece the suckers and escape this hole he’d somehow fallen into. The time and the mood were right.
Clarence had been around long enough to be accepted in Bay City, at least to fellow gamblers. He was part of the scene. His speech, his clothes and his mannerisms had become more Wisconsin than Chicago and his peers treated him accordingly.
As he’d come to grips with this change from big-city smoothie to small-town hustler, Clarence often battled with disgust and self-doubt. His overwhelming need to escape what he now saw as a slow road to the grave allowed him the moral distance to plan a con of his long-time associates. He actually did struggle with feelings of guilt, at times. He believed himself an honest man but could usually find a sufficient rationalization to ease any concerns that might rise to the surface of his mind.
Some of the guys… well, he knew he’d feel kind of bad if they got fished. But the rich guys, he’d gladly take to the cleaners like a pile of cheap suits.
He fed the flames of anticipation among the locals with stories of dice games run by cash-laden Negroes from Chicago with fancy suits, hair straightener and manicures. How these big-time gamblers would cover any bet you could make and smile if they lost. Clarence sold the tales like you sell a kid on the circus, with wild yarns of gigantic pots and of empires won and lost on a single roll of the bones. In the throes of a dull, tedious winter, the brethren were easily led, as the only way to reach Florida back then was a damn long train ride.
It took Clarence a month of phone calls and letters and telegrams to put it all together. He had hyped, cajoled, wheedled and promised, and by the time all was said and done, a series of big-dough games in Zenith and the Minnesota Iron Range had been arranged for a four-day, Friday-to-Monday span.
The final game was to be on a Monday evening in the East End of Zenith at the mansion of J.P. Baker.
A house full of whiskey-addled titans of commerce and industry and enough money to retire to New Orleans in antebellum style would be waiting.
(End of Chapter II)
T.K. O’Neill’s crime novel Fly in the Milk is available on ebook at online bookstores, including Barnes and Noble, ebookit, Google, iBookstore (Apple), Amazon, Sony Reader Store, Kobo (Borders) and Ingram Digital.
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