the Moonshine War (1969) (8 page)

Bud and his brother Raymond, and Virgil Worthman were standing at the corner down from the hotel entrance, probably waiting for Long, when he came out and walked right up to them.

Long took them by surprise. He spoke first, asking if Mr. Baylor had talked to them.

"About what?" Virgil Worthman said.

"If you have to ask then he didn't," Long said, "so I'll tell you myself."

"I don't know," Bud Blackwell said, "if we should be seen talking to you. They say you tell a person by the people he hangs out with."

"You won't have to talk," Long said. "Just get the wax out of your ears and listen."

Bud Blackwell glanced at his brother. He said, "Hey, you know who this is? Somebody mus
t h
ave hosed him off, because this here is The Hog Man."

Frank Long hit him in the mouth. Bud might not have gone down, but the curb tripped him and he fell hard in the street. He got up wiping his hands on his thighs; his right hand slid around to his back pocket and came out with a bone-handle clasp knife that he put to his mouth to pull the blade out with his teeth.

"Open it," Long said, "and I'll shoot you dead for assaulting a federal officer. You can come at me, boy, but if you use the blade or these others horn in, then out comes Sweetheart." Long patted the hard bulk of the automatic beneath his coat.

One thing about Bud Blackwell, whether it was to be knives or guns or a fist fight, he didn't stand around talking about it. He threw the knife underhand to his brother Raymond and went for Frank Long, who was waiting with his big bony fists and his reach advantage. He jabbed Bud hard in the mouth with his left and slammed the right into Bud's cheekbone; he took a couple of Bud's wild swings on his shoulder and forearm and waded in again with the jabs and hammered Bud's bloody mouth with the right and held up from throwing it again as Bud went down on the sidewalk and this time didn't get up.

Frank Long waited for Bud's brother Raymond and Virgil Worthman to look at Bud--both of them stooping over him--then gave them time to look up at him and make up thei
r m
inds whether they were going to take a turn or pick up Bud and go home. Evidently they weren't having any, Long decided, because they didn't say a word or make a move.

"When that boy wakes up," Long said, "take him over to see Mr. Baylor and you all listen to what he says. I've done enough talking for a while."

Long had come out to take a walk and look over the main drag and maybe stop in a cafe for his noon dinner. But he changed his mind now and went back to the hotel, up to 205. There was no sense in fooling around, he had decided in the past few minutes. If these hardcase boys were going to gang him, it was going to take more than conversation to make them think in the light of reason. He was going to have to bust a few heads as well as stills. In his room Frank Long took off his hat and suit coat and laid the .45 automatic on the night stand as he sat on the bed. He lighted a thin cigar and picked up the telephone. Those smart-aleck boys wanted a fight, Jesus, he'd order up more fighting than they could stomach. When the operator came in, Long gave her the number of the federal Prohibition director in Frankfort. The operator took his name and room number and said she'd call him back and he hung up the receiver. Long waited.

They'd be surprised to hear from him, since he was supposed to be on a leave of absence. He'd told them he was needed at home because of sickness in the family.

When the operator called back she said the circuits were busy but that she would keep trying.

He said all right and hung up again. When the operator did get through to Frankfort probably the line would be busy. Then, it wouldn't be busy, but the phone would ring for about an hour before anybody in the office decided to answer it. Then the fat woman clerk would get on and he'd tell her who he wanted and she'd say he was out and didn't know when he'd be back. He'd give another name and the fat woman clerk would sound put-out as she said, all right, just a minute, and another hour would go by while the fat woman clerk stood over the water cooler talking to another woman clerk and the phone receiver lay on the desk, off the hook. He sure didn't enjoy waiting or taking crap like that from women who thought they were the cat's ass. There hadn't been any women clerks in the Army, but Jesus there had been enough waiting. The Army was famous for it: hurrying a man up and then making wait. Though it hadn't been a bad life, even with the low pay and usually lousy food and having to wear leggings and thick-soled shoes. In his life Frank Long had farmed, worked for a mine company, gone through the ninth grade of school, had served twelve years in the U
. S
. Army, Infantry and then Engineers. He had made sergeant and had a pretty nice room of his own in the barracks, but they never let him go to Officer's Candidate School and get a chance at th
e s
oft life. Hell, he'd probably be in today if they'd made him an officer. He didn't have anything against the service, but when someone told him they were looking for federal Prohibition agents it sounded good. You wore a regular suit and the pay wasn't bad; you were given a badge and a gun. Long wasn't sure what the gun would be, so he swiped a BAR he liked and took it along with him when he was discharged.

The old man, Mr. Baylor, had asked him, "What do you get out of this? A five-dollar-amonth raise?" Probably he wouldn't even get that. He'd put in his expense sheet and get a hard time from the fat woman clerk who would act like it was her money she was giving out.

The other way, keeping the whiskey himself--the minimum he stood to make would be forty-five hundred gallons times five dollars a gallon. Or, at the bootlegger's price of five dollars a fifth he could make over a hundred thousand bucks.

Hell yes, he had thought about it. He'd thought about it most of the time the last couple of days: find the whiskey, get somebody who knew what he was doing to ship the stuff out by truck to Louisville, and split the profit with him: some bootlegger who knew the market and ways to get to it. Long had a file on some pretty good boys. Some wanted, some in jail, some just released. One in particular Long couldn't get out of his mind, the perfect guy for a deal like this one, somebody who had the knowledge and experience to sell the whiskey and, at the same time, somebody who could be trusted. Hell, the man had been a dentist before becoming a bootlegger. You had to be pretty upstanding as well as smart to be a dentist.

Dr. Emmett Taulbee was his name.

Long got a two-ring binder out of his suitcase and sat down on the bed again as he opened it, flipping through pages of reports and "wanted" sheets until he recognized Dr. Taulbee's photographs, in profile and head-on.

There he was: Emmett C. Taulbee, D
. D. S
. Age fifty-one, a slight smile curling his lip and showing some of his upper front teeth. He must have thought they were something to show, though they protruded a little and were big horse teeth. Taulbee considered himself a ladies' man, and maybe there was some indication of that in the way he combed his wavy hair and let it dip down across one side of his forehead. He was also said to be a dude--wore expensive striped suits and detachable white collars on a blue shirt. His last known place of residence, Louisville, Kentucky. There was an address and a phone number, the typewritten phone number crossed out and another number written above it in pencil.

The photographs had been taken seven years ago, at the time of Dr. Taulbee's arrest for sexually assaulting a woman patient in his dentist chair.

At the trial the woman testified that she had been a patient of Dr. Taulbee's for several years.

No, he had not made advances or displaye
d a
n interest in her physically, not until sh
e w
as in his chair for the extraction of he
r m
olar. She said Dr. Taulbee placed the mas
k o
ver her nose and mouth and told her t
o i
nhale the gas slowly. She remembered th
e s
ound of breathing in the mask and the awfu
l s
uffocating feeling for a moment. Then she wa
s a
sleep. After that she remembered stirrin
g a
nd feeling a weight and something whit
e o
ver her, close to her face. She did not realiz
e a
t first that it was Dr. Taulbee partly on to
p o
f her on the chair. She thought perhaps sh
e w
as dreaming, until she felt something an
d m
oved her body and knew that her lowe
r b
ody was bare and that her legs were apart.

When she screamed Dr. Taulbee twisted of
f h
er. He stood with his back to her for
a m
oment, then hurriedly left the room. Th
e w
oman testified that she found her undergarment on the footrest of the chair. He
r s
kirt had been pushed up around her hips, bu
t h
er stockings and shoes had not been removed.

She was an attractive woman in her early thirties, the mother of three children. In questionin
g h
er, Dr. Taulbee's defense counsel playe
d w
ith the implication that the woman ha
d m
ade up the story as a means of smearing Dr.

Taulbee's name. Though they gave no reaso
n w
hy she would want to, nor did they accus
e h
er of it directly. The woman answered all questions calmly, candidly looking at Dr. Taulbe
e f
rom time to time to see how he was taking it.

Taulbee sat quietly most of the time. Occasionally he would smile or shake his head at the woman's testimony. His counsel did not put him on the witness stand, so the court did not hear from Dr. Taulbee. Though they did hear two additional women patients testify: one, that he had acted strangely and had touched her--held her arm or shoulder and had asked her if she was by any chance menstruating, because if she was the anesthetic might have an adverse effect on her. The other testified that upon leaving Taulbee's office after having had gas for an extraction, she felt her clothes disarranged, as if she had been sleeping in them or as if someone else had dressed her. Dr. Taulbee's license to practice was revoked and he was sentenced to one to three years in the State Penitentiary at Eddyville. While he was there his wife of twenty years divorced him.

Prison, Frank Long decided, was what changed the man's life. He met bootleggers and whiskey runners and evidently something about their business appealed to him. Dr. Taulbee was released after a year and was a good boy during the two years of his probation. Since then--during the past six years--Taulbee had been arrested four times for the possession of illegal alcohol, but had not been convicted even once. He was making money and sure had better lawyers than the one he had at the assault trial. Taulbee was a businessman with a working force and a good profitable operation that reached from Kentucky up into Ohio and over into Indian
a a
nd he would be just the one for a deal like this one. Hell, Taulbee was the only one Long knew of who could handle a hundred thousand dollars worth of grade-one whiskey.

He had met Taulbee twice, both times after raids on Taulbee's warehouses. The last time they had sat around the police station questioning Taulbee and waiting for his lawyer to come and Frank Long had got along pretty well with him. Taulbee didn't seem to be worried; he told some pretty good jokes and grinned when everybody laughed. Long liked a man who didn't let anything bother him. Sitting around there Taulbee gave everybody a cigar and said, well, now if somebody else could supply the whiskey and the girls, he'd as soon come to this jail as most of the speaks he did business with. He was honest, right out in the open, and they said he sure liked girls.

Long did not make a judgment about Dr. Taulbee's assault on the women. If he liked to do it to them while they were sleeping, that was his business, but Jesus, it was sure better when they were squirming around. It didn't seem enough to send a man to prison for. Those women had probably been asking for it anyway.

The more Long thought about it, the bette
r i
t looked to him. Long and Taulbee, partners.

One job, that was all. He wasn't about t
o t
urn criminal for life. One job and he'd tak
e h
is cut and go to California or somewhere. Jus
t o
ne job and not do anything wrong ever again.

Before the phone rang Long picked up th
e r
eceiver and waited and then said to the operator, "Listen, never mind that call to Frankfort. I got a number in Louisville I want you to get me."

Chapter
Five.

Dual Meaders told the filling station man ten gallons of ethyl and sat to wait, his elbow pointing out the window and his pale-looking eyes gazing straight ahead, half closed in the afternoon glare.

Behind him, in the back seat, Dr. Taulbee said, "Ask him where's a good place to eat."

The girl sitting with Dr. Taulbee, Miley Mitchell, a good looking eighteen-year-old girl with brown hair and nice dimples, said, "God, around here?"