His light was still on. I knocked. There was no answer. The door was unlatched. I hesitated a moment, then stepped inside, calling, “Teacher?”
The parking lot before Johnny One-Arm’s place was clogged with cars, arid people milled all around, men arid a few boys, no women. Voices were loud, angry. There was a cleared space before one of the cabins out back, the open door spilling yellow light outside. I saw Sheriff Jason and Johnny One-Arm inside. I could just see part of a still figure on the bed. The night was hot, even hotter than it had been before sundown. The men pressed around me were soaked with sweat, and a rank odor came from them. Billie Bob Hudson was just down the line from me, staring intently at the cabin door.
Now Sheriff Jason and Johnny One-Arm came out together to stand on the cabin steps. A mutter went up from the men around me.
“How about it, Jason? You going to arrest him now?”
“Yeah, or you going to wait until he kills another one?”
“You don’t do something, we will!”
“All right, folks! Just settle down now!” Sheriff Jason waved his hands for quiet, then turned to Johnny One-Arm. “Reckon you see how it is, Johnny. I’m going to have to arrest you.”
Johnny One-Arm’s rumble of laughter sounded. Then an ominous silence fell. Johnny One-Arm sobered and let his glance roam over the scowling faces.
“Maybe you’re right at that. Looks like I’d be safer in jail,” he said. He held out his arm. “Put the cuffs on me, Sheriff.”
“Now Johnny,” Sheriff Jason said uncomfortably, “you know I don’t tote handcuffs around with me. Just give me your word you’ll come along peaceful.”
“My word, Sheriff Sure, you’ve got my word, if it’s any good to you.”
I stepped forward. “He ain’t the Honky Tonk Killer!” My voice was embarrassingly high. But it continued to climb. “It’s not Johnny One-Arm!”
Sheriff Jason frowned down at me. “Kyle, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be home in bed.”
“Ask the teacher why he wasn’t in his room tonight.” I swung around to face Billie Bob. “And he wasn’t in his room but the light was on, when the last honky-tonk girl was killed!”
Everybody seemed to draw back as much as possible, leaving a few inches of cleared space between themselves and Billie Bob.
He stared at me in reproach. “Kyle, what are you saying?”
“I don’t care,” I said stubbornly. “You weren’t there both times, I don’t know about the first. And tonight I found this letter in your room?” I pulled a sheet of paper from my pocket and waved it.
“Give me that!” Billie Bob lunged at me.
“All right now.” Sheriff Jason stepped between us. “Let me have the letter, Kyle.”
The men closed in tightly around Billie Bob now as I handed over the single sheet of paper. Sheriff Jason ran his glance over it once, then read aloud:
Sugar I’m right sorry you all feel that way. But I can’t see it’s my fault you got let out teaching in Fort Worth cause it came out you was going around with a honky-tonk girl. You knew what I was when you started up. I know you asked me to marry you, Billie Bob. But I make twice more honky tonking than you do teaching. And I’m sorry you’re stuck in that tank town, but I can’t come join you, Billie Bob. I got me a new feller. An oilfield driller, makes good money. And does he ever like to spend it! Sincerely, Joy.
“Sincerely,” Billie Bob said bitterly. “She was anything but that. She is one of the devil’s own, pretty as a doll, but evil to the depths of her soul!”
“Were the others evil, Billie Bob? Betty Sue? Ethel Thompson? The one...” Sheriff Jason jerked his thumb. “...in there?”
“Yes!”
“The one in Fort Worth, she cost you your job, your good name. That’s why you’re down to teaching here. And this letter—” Sheriff Jason glanced down at it. “It’s dated the week Betty Sue was strangled. It was the last straw. Something went out of whack.”
Billie Bob’s hands jumped, one crawling up his shirt front, fingers plucking at the buttons. “I’m not crazy!”
“No, you’re not crazy.” Sheriff Jason’s voice was gentle. “But you killed those girls, didn’t you, Billie Bob?”
There was a long silence, not even a cough breaking it. The only sound was made by bugs splattering against the light bulb dangling almost over my head.
Then Billie Bob made a choking sound. “A man tries to be decent and then makes one mistake with some slut. They were all no good, worthless, good for nothing but to drink with men and take their money!”
“Maybe they were all of that, Billie Bob, but that’s hardly a reason to—”
Sheriff Jason stepped forward to take Billie Bob’s arm. “Come along. I’ll take you over to the county seat.” he looked over at me. “You go along home now, Kyle, it’s late.”
As Sheriff Jason led him away, Billie Bob glanced back over his shoulder. “You all have to understand. I didn’t want to kill them. It just seemed I had to, that I was meant to!”
The crowd was still silent, although feet shuffled now, and throats were cleared noisily. A few began edging away.
The silence was broken by Johnny One-Arm’s laughter. “Well! Since the excitement seems to be over, men, why don’t you all step inside, and I’ll sort of set ’em up on the house?”
The men, hot looking at each other and not looking at Johnny One-Arm, drifted away one by one.
Within a very short time, the last car had pulled away. They were all gone.
I looked up at Johnny One-Arm. He hadn’t moved from the steps.
Now he laughed again, but it was a muted, harsh sound, not his usual booming mirth. “Like Sheriff Jason said, kid, you’d better go along home.” Johnny One-Arm’s lips had a bitter curl. “It’s rather late, and you’re just a little young for honky tonking.”
Violent Mickey Cohen
by David Mazroff
Misshapen, monstrously evil, a spawn of Brooklyn’s worst slum was to muscle and murder his way to gangland leadership, defying both the Brotherhood and the police. Micky Cohen has escaped death — so far. But he lives in fear, knowing each day may be his last on earth. Meet—
There is no formal beginning to the story of Mickey Cohen, and as this is being written, no end. Mickey Cohen is still in prison. He was attacked there by cons on more than one occasion. There are no guns in the pen for men like him, and no bodyguards. There is a good chance he may be killed before he is released. If he is, it would surprise no one, because Mickey Cohen is notorious for his big mouth and his penchant for antagonizing men.
In the decade before 1951, when Cohen went to prison, gangland warfare and slayings in Los Angeles had become as regular as the rising sun. From 1951 until 1955, while Cohen was sitting it out in a prison cell, there wasn’t a single gangland killing in Los Angeles. The sudden quietude, the almost unbelievable serenity which swept over the city was understandable. Mickey Cohen had been taken off the streets.
No gangster in America’s black history of underworld mischief had a more lethal record of beatings, shootings, torture, and murder than this pint-sized would-be Napoleon. Mickey Cohen, nee Meyer Harris Cohen, was born in 1913 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. It was the very same area which spawned Lepke Buchalter and Gurrah Shapiro of Murder, Inc., Frankie Yale, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel, and hundreds of others who found their way into prisons, the morgue, or in dirty alleys bleeding and dying or dead from underworld guns.