“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.
It 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 going 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.