The Front Man

By Sydney Latta

One of the leading characters of this historical novel was a close thirteen-year acquaintance of the author while in prison. Notes that the former had accumulated during his confinement of several decades contained accounts of three "jobs" for which this gang, formed in the early 1940's, were never charged. The Front Man describes the ground work of an outside member whos ingenuity was responsible for three of the Nutmeg Gang's successful heists. As with any historical novel, a side story connects the facts with a humorous, romantic and exciting adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sydney Latta
• Release date: Nov 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370371815

Sydney Latta

The author is a North Carolinian born in 1934 who attended Duke University prior to enlisting in the U. S. Army and serving as a Russian language intelligence analyst, first at National Security Agency then with U.S. Army Security Agency for five years in Germany. He returned to the states in 1961 and had a 35-year career as an insurance adjuster handling major property losses across the country. During his extended term in the Texas prison system for dispatching a methamphetamine dealer, he had a series of weekend issue crossword puzzles (Polymaths) published in London's FINANCIAL TIMES. It was also during this period that he met two of the characters depicted in THE FRONT MAN. He now resides in Kansas.

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The Front Man

By Sydney Latta

Copyright 2017 Robert S. Dail

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

(Note: if you copy and paste this into your manuscript, be sure to remove the paragraph returns that may appear at the end of each line)This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1 - Autumn 1943

As being pursued by unseen demons, the husky teen pedaling a scarred Iver Johnson was flat-out ignoring the raw and frenzied warnings of Houston’s lunch hour traffic. Unfazed by this Beethovian chorus of screeching brakes and howling horns, he kept at his feverish pace, the stampede of charging vehicles in this determined youngsters mind posing no more threat than those tranquil oaks along the paths winding through Herman Park. Not a minute later any sensitive viewer would have marveled at that clever maneuver by which he’d cleared the curbing with both wheels at once, then breaking to a sudden stop and setting his kickstand with what appeared to have been one single fluid effort.

Stranger still were the two sly shifts of his head, those earnest stares toward both far reaches of the sidewalk, preludes to an obvious dismissal of a presumed fear he was being observed. Signs that he possessed some measure of weird and quirky judgment? Perhaps not, but to that same mindful observer any evidence of this teen being in danger at this late stage of his approach must be far less genuine than within those brief moments before – his blasé acceptance of greater risks faced barreling hell-bent-for- leather through mad tangles of deadly traffic. Though whatever the motivations spurring this grown kid’s breakneck arrival, terminated as it had been by such patently belayed and overplayed caution, the youngster appeared to be home free tingling the overhead bell once entering Charley Parrot’s Barber Shop.

Home in its way too, this shop had often been, a home-away-from-home for this young man’s father, a retreat in which to disappear for hours, sometimes overnight sitting in Saturday night games of table-stakes poker. And there were weekends too messy for fishing; too late of season for hunting or too early for breaking up the garden. And there were those god-awful Saturdays simply too damned full of a bickering Bessie Collins Thurston; the male of the more blessed primates yet to be conceived who could spend two consecutive weekends cooped up with Bessie and not be facing assault charges by Monday morning. A reasonable and considerate husband, the elder Hardy Thurston had performed for Bessie just about as often as any rational woman might have hoped from an advancing middle-aged man; and ALRIGHT! Bessie was still easy enough to look at, but HELLO! Bessie Collins had been well along the road to Spinsterville when he’d discovered her at the cafeteria where, at this day of our tale, she still rings the register. Their mutual discovery occurred not long after her father passed away, creating a void providing Bessie’s long-awaited sense of release to do all of the things her girlfriends had been doing since the Armistice.

The kid had chanced along in ’26 a wee bit late in life as the gynecologists may oft be prone to phrase it; and while the aging Hardy had not been shopping for one whit more responsibility than simply staying alive – keeping Bessie’s mortgage free roof snugly over his head – their growing boy, within seven or eight years, had fallen smack into the Bessie-trap: Unhesitating subservience… right up to here. On the plus side the new yearling was absorbing a considerable mountain of crap that had earlier been hurled at Papa. Here was Scooter in the wings for sympathizing with Bessie’s whining, her bitching and moaning… not least of all for mowing the yard, feeding the dog and toting out the garbage.

Now the bell above Charley Parrot’s glass door has settled down, the barber shop cool, as deadly quiet as a chilled morgue; the low murmur of the Mills Brothers wafting from the Philco perched on the shelf above the drink box purring in too soft volume to suggest any hint of warm cozy ambience. The lone customer sitting stiff and upright was being attended by Himself – Charley Parrot, since 1921 the sole proprietor and first-chair operator. Two assistants had wandered out for lunch, leaving the cold silence of this remaining pair for one to speculate they’d been joshing about this young intruder before he’d entered. The truth was no mystery; the boy’s approach had for certain been playfully observed, Charley Parrot nudging the tall over-sized gent he’d been trimming, both to follow those reckless maneuvers with wide-eyed amusement as each flippant motion had unfolded. By the time the young Hardy had capped his arrival with that cloak-and-dagger drill on the sidewalk – poses one might recognize from pages of Maugham’s ASHENDEN – trimmer and trimee alike could have been but a hair short of bellowing aloud: ‘Good afternoon, Charley,’ this from the lad now hanging his jacket on the second tree, no small distance from the plate glass window. His trousers were a dusty green; once-upon-a-time matching the somewhat brighter short-waisted jacket. This was being carefully adjusted that its glimmering gold Western Union patch above the front packet shouldn’t attract the eye of any nosy pedestrian. An orange-brown touring cap, a jaunty relic of the past decade favored by old man Rockefeller and Bobby Jones wannabees in plus fours, lay cocked above his left ear.

‘How’re you, Scooter?’ Charley Parrot never lifting his eyes from the close work with the razor he was performing with intense caution behind Albert Herring’s ear.

‘Aw…now come on, Charley! You said you wouldn’t call me Scooter no more.’ When unnerved among adults, as he was visibly becoming this very second, the lad’s not-quite-settled voice often harked back to its former pitch, a washed-out tinny drawl not unlike that of Bessie who’d been whining with it all her life. His heel taps ringing on the tiles, the youngster stepped with haste to the rear of the shop whence his rattling among the ice-chilled bottles could be heard as he’d produced an Orange Crush. He fished a bright pack of nabs from the giant Lance jar, the dime from his pocket, placing it atop the counter by Charley’s lavatory. In a jiff it had been unregistered… swiped straight into the side pocket of the owner’s starched white coat.

‘Thank’ee, Hardy… or might you now prefer Mister Thurston?’ And here was their long-running cat-and-mouse game, one they had been toying with through the years since the demise of Hardy-the-Elder. The younger had come along since pre-school days as Scooter to everyone in the neighborhood, his old man forbidding ‘…any of that pissy-assed junior crap.’ Even naming the child Hardy had been at Bessie’s firm insistence, and by the time he’d reached twelve he’d already had his bellyful of Scooter from grown-ups. After his dad’s funeral, an event not altogether unwelcomed, it was long past time to have claimed Hardy for himself.

‘Plain Hardy still works just fine, Charley,’ managing to force this out while looking around with no meager amount of anxiety, combing through the scattered sections of the morning’s CHRONICLE lying among the padded chairs along the wall. ‘The GAZETTE come in yet Charley? I’ve only got my half-hour y’know.’ With a sigh of dejection he had turned toward the unconcerned barber.

‘Look there in the back room…hanging in my coat. Keeping it there until you came in…It might have been swooped up by some other customer.’ From the barber there had erupted a mumble followed by muffled guffaws from the large man whose face now addressed the black and white mosaic tile floor, his head forced beneath the smirking barber’s hand.

‘You’re just one full-time rascal, Charley Parrot. That’s what you are. You get your bones off a’wagging me. All along you had to know that’s what I’d come in here for.’ Without looking he plopped himself into the nearest chair, the buff margins of the latest POLICE GAZETTE opened wide, the first Wow! already hooted by the flushed seventeen year old. With fingers in staccato tempo he skinned the cellophane from his pack of nabs, shoving one of the peanut butter morsels into his mouth, every bit of it, mincing the crackers with his tongue before swishing it all down with a long pull from the tangy orange soda. As a minor miracle the brown-ribbed bottle had then found its own way to the metal table, an enraptured young Hardy Thurston, his heart and soul, his total being, galvanized by yet another week’s staggering photos in the GAZETTE. Several hushed moments had then lapsed while he flipped pages one after another…’God Damn! Charley. Have you seen this one?’ His outburst accompanied by a spontaneous leap to his feet, his arm-wide spread of the pulp magazine’s pages now flashed toward the busy barber.

White shirts were sporting bullet holes. Dobbs hats had rolled across the sidewalk, one into the gutter near a U.S. mailbox. Camelhair top coats were flung open to reveal puddles of blood. The photo offered on the rough pulp page of the GAZETTE failed to capture the quality of the Brooks Brothers’ suits, nor the sheen of the Florsheim wing-tips, but it didn’t require the glossy pages of ESQUIRE to reveal the fact that three well-heeled grease balls had been eliminated in the recessed doorway of a Bronx trattoria. This much was evident, sufficient to send a thrill into the likes of an aspiring young Hardy Thurston.

‘Now you just watch that nasty language there, Scooter-boy. I’ve got a very reverend man-of-the-cloth in this here chair. D’you hear me, Scooter? You mind where you are. Y’hear me?’

The sheepish kid again, his face fiery red, his knees weakened; not quite wobbling, if just not. He’d backed his rump into the chair from which he was now pleading forgiveness. ‘Oh, God, mister. I’m real sorry, sir…really am. It’s just…it’s just I seem to get plumb carried away when I see shi…when I see stuff like’s in this here.’ Hardy’s sensitive young head had sunk between his knees, his breathing transformed into short heaving draughts.

‘We see thee to be truly repentant,’ came the ripened and sugar-cured baritone. ‘Go now, my son, and suffer thy tongue to sin no more.’ The right reverend gentleman’s thumb had closed upon its ring finger, the pair tracing a cross in the dead silent space separating him from the humbled youngster. It was a fractured Hardy Thurston now impatient to breathe less discomforting air, who was springing again to his feet to yank the jacket from its chrome hook before dashing to Charley Parrot and giving him a firm hug about his waist. He had then scrambled without another word through the ringing door and without the least attention given to surveillance the wild pedaling teen had blended once more into the early afternoon traffic of Houston, heavy still though somewhat smoother as lunch hours themselves were being digested as fleeting memories.

‘Christ a’mighty, Charley, you’ve never been so right. That is one wild-ass weird kid. So that was ol’ Thurston’s boy,’ more statement than query by Albert Herring now staring after Hardy’s back as he wheeled into the flow of vehicles.

Charley Parrot wiped the razor and put it aside. ‘Yep, that was his brat alright. A bit weird as you’ve just so noticed…impressionable as all hell. Bessie says she can’t much make heads nor tails of him lately. But you sure as hell nailed him to that cross you was drawing out there, Albert. Ha, ha! Sure they don’t call you artful Al for nothing, do they Albert?’

The big man turned in the plush leather seat to peer into the face of Charley Parrot. ‘Where in hell did you dig up that man-of-the-cloth business, Charley? The kid was so nervous he could hardly breathe.’

‘Well…felt is cloth. Green felt’s cloth too, ain’t it, Albert? Ha, ha!’ Al Herring had begun to chuckle with him as his head went under the spray for his shampoo.

**

It had been a deflated Hardy Thurston taking several minutes for regaining his composure. Those embarrassing childish discomforts borne beneath the admonishments hurled upon him in the barber shop – warnings from Charley Parrot and that priest guy in his chair – may have been serious enough to bruise his conscience within their own jurisdiction, but they were harmless once the shop had faded hull down behind him. With a reborn defiance he was pedaling again, darting around delivery trucks and tradesmen, some of them creeping along by necessity in their attempts to match posted numerals with addresses scrawled on invoices and work orders. His own eyes were scanning the long-stemmed mirror mounted on his handle bars, one tall enough to capture a tail four, even fire lengths behind if the spacing remained just so. He was day dreaming of the pros, the hired wheels who always kept an eye peeled upon cars following them, and no sooner had this Hollywood-nurtured gem of gangland wisdom flashed through Hardy’s fantasizing illusions…Ahah!

There it is again. That glowing yellow four-door Chrysler! Windsor? No, the same Royal that had shadowed him about this same time last Monday. At the next intersection he palmed the hydrant for an instant stop. The pickup and red panel truck had soon breezed through. The bright canary…and as sure as the devil makes okra…by damn, that same little guy! That same white cap. Hardy’s fantasy alit upon this fellow reporting to Mr. Tyndall (his boss) about how long he spent at lunch breaks. This was too much for a coincidence. Twice in four days.

At a distance Hardy tagged behind him through the Heights on Houston’s north side, then a mile or even more up Airline Drive where the diminutive driver, a small bobbed-haired woman in a baseball cap, suede jacket and slacks had pulled into the open produce market. Two bushel bags of potatoes were being stowed in the Chrysler’s trunk as she chatted with the owner.

The delusive mind of the tender-aged Hardy Thurston had denied asking itself why a professional tail would drive anything so outlandish as a yellow Chrysler. Any cinch so easily followed must be equally a cinch to be ditched.

The rumbling in Hardy’s tummy reminded him that his nibbled lunch was waiting on a side table in Charley Parrot’s shop, but now a deep gray dullness had overtaken the sky, the air already less than comfy as he polished off the pack of nabs and Orange Crush at the Sinclair station in the south end of Airline. Wind gusts were showing teeth, toppling a wood bench while a trash barrel rolled merrily across the station’s concrete apron. Even cycling like the crazed squirrel in a cage it would take the better part of a half hour to complete his journey to Western Union on Washington Avenue. There was that long leg west, the wind on his flank and the rain, once it started, would cut through his clothes like nails.

Autumn in Texas can be a fickle weather maker, the calm foggy-dewy morning often opening beneath cloudless skies; the sun, in its course, burning through the gray haze to promise yet one more gorgeous Indian summer day. Within minutes and far into the distant northwest there may be discerned a thin blue line, that dark hair lying flush upon the horizon and bearing down like some howling scalded dog, a mastiff with all of its killer ferocity. It’s called a blue norther and during its dreadful approach thermometers might drop forty or more degrees in half as many minutes.

Such a treat was this instant lavishing itself upon the hapless Hardy Thurston, now pitching his bike into the slot alongside one other standing in the rack on Western Union’s reserved street zone. Within the recessed doorway he made valiant attempts to shed the gallons of near freezing water absorbed during his raw 1812-ish retreat from Airline Drive. To little avail was all of his stomping and wiping, Hardy Thurston remained the wharf rat who’d overshot his wharf, grateful no customers were to be seen at the service counter, only Frank Hazelwood, neat and dry as toast, and straddling a stool while gloomily pondering his own drenched bicycle in the rack outside.

‘Jeez-Us! Scooter, you’ve taken one helluva shellackin’, ain’tcha? Oh wait...no, that’s not shellac…that’s just plain ol’ water. Ha, ha, ha! Where in hell have you pedaled in from…Tahiti? Ha, ha, ha!’

Hardy Thurston stared at Frank Hazelwood from under half-closed lids, offering a stern look that might turn granite to lava, still wiping his feet yet again on the tough rough straw mat inside the door. He shivered before removing his jacket, thinking to hang it on one of the maple pegs between the door and the counter, thought better of it and flung it over his shoulder, over a shirt already saturated. ‘You’ve been sittin’ in here all afternoon peeking up Betty Gray’s skirt I reckon. And I see you’ve managed to get yourself a handful of fat commercials to take out, all at your leisure of course. Have you changed all of your morning’s tips into green paper bills? Wouldn’t do being weighed down with all of that silver while you’re bucking that gale out yonder.’ He’d sidled within reach of Frank, taking the glowing Camel being offered to him. After the first long warm drag, ‘Thanks, at least you’ve done something right. Look, mine are fuckin’ mush…tea leaves ain’t in it.’ Hardy wadded his soaked Luckies and tossed them into the trash can, flicking his thumb at the windows. ‘I see the wind has got Sherrill’s Hardware sign in the middle of the street again.’

‘Yeah, you just missed it, or it just missed you, if you get right down to it. They’ve moved it a good twelve feet. Swept up the tubing a couple of minutes before you blew in…ha, ha!’

Hardy winced then gazed out upon the mess near the far curb. ‘Just what every fine young Texas boy needs, a band of whoopin’ Comanches and four hundred pounds of Sherrill’s Hardware riding down on his ass at sixty miles per. Is there any coffee?’ He’d reached to his throat, loosening the shrinking black tie and removing it altogether as he followed Frank down the short hallway.

‘Betty put a pot on when this blue baby started getting colicky. Mr. Tyndall figured those of us caught in it were bound to need a cup.’ Frank filled their mugs from the huge white enameled pot. Did you do any good this morning?’

‘Hmmph! A buck-sixty on seven. Not even two-bits per. Five commercials… two others from the War Department. You can’t expect anything from those. You?’

‘Two-ten for six. No War Deps but two of ‘em might as well have been in El-fucking Paso, and I split another one of those lousy-ass synthetic tires. Wide open. There’s no winning this game, Scooter. How much longer are we going to play this crap?’ Frank Hazelwood pulled out a fist full of the company’s familiar yellow envelopes. ‘Look here, five commercials and night already coming on. In this weather! And for what, Hardy?’

Hardy shuffled through them, handed four back to Frank. ‘I’ll take this one; it’s only three blocks from home. That’ll save you a bare leg northwest. Clear it with Betty.’

‘Will do. Hand me down one of those slickers and I’m out of here.’

Hardy stopped him with a hand to Frank’s shoulder. ‘What about Jake? He on the way in or has he just taken off?’

Frank reflected on Betty Gray’s speaking to Mr. Tyndall on his arrival only moments before the storm struck. ‘He stepped out with three or four just before I came in. Jake’s gotta be in as sad a shape as you unless he’s gone to ground, ‘cause every damn slicker is still on the wall except this one. Why?’ Frank then lit another Camel for himself, leaned into the jamb to the hallway focused upon Hardy, the question lingering on his face.

‘We all need to talk, Franco. We really do. You know, all about what you and I…’

‘Stop right there, Hardy. You are exactly right; we need to talk…but you and me first. Get all of the details and the by-laws down in perfect order. That is numero uno. Second, we do not talk to Jake. Period! Jake? No Frank. Frank? – no Jake.’

‘You’re onto something are you, Franco?’ Hardy’s own query posed beneath clinched brows, his eyes studying Frank Hazelwood. Never throughout their close friendship since grade one had a proposal by either of these two been so adamantly rejected.

‘It’s more than any mere possibility, Scooter. That’s why we – meaning just the two of us – need to have a serious discussion. Drop over to our house Sunday morning; I’ll whip us up a breakfast. The folks are heading out to Brenham on Friday…spending the weekend with grandma. That suits you?’

‘That’s a winner, Franco. Now get cranked up or your light is going to run out on you. I’ll work out this change with Betty.’ They shook on it with Frank stepping lively through the front door, soon to roll away into a fading afternoon dulled already by this thick canopy of heavy wintry clouds. There could even be ice on the streets by six. The traffic snarls could be legion.

***

Sunday morning’s howls of the norther’s polar front had cut sharply into those sultry days of a dying autumn. Plagues of on-again-off-again bursts of cold rain had kept Western Union’s delivery teams sweating beneath their airless slickers for three days. This was a broadly welcomed sunny and dry if still breezy morning into which Hardy Thurston pointed his Iver Johnson toward a more southerly quarter of Houston. Heading south from the Heights he’d come upon Washington Avenue, considering a detour and poking his head in the office to chat up a cup of coffee; though recalling that Jake Adams had this Sunday’s watch he dismissed such notions, opting to avoid explaining this Sabbath mission to the cohort opposed with such vigor by Frank Hazelwood. Unpleasant enough had been clarifying this Sunday absence to Bessie, his mother ever professing her delight in their week-end breakfasts together, trying boldly to retain some small portion of the cooling family atmosphere they were already enduring before the death of Hardy’s father. Yet while Bessie had wandered off to bed bearing traces of a pout marring her still attractive if softening face, her only child hadn’t failed to notice that she’d not bothered to rise early this Sunday, neither with nor without intention to change his mind, content to remain under her own departed mother’s thick puffy quilts on this blustery morning, fraught as it was with the harsh spasmodic chills of winter’s hastening maturity.

‘So what’s this bone about Jake, Franco?’ This to be the opening topic of an unwritten agenda. Hardy had two places set at the round table in the breakfast room just off the kitchen. He’d spent many days and nights in this home of the Hazelwood’s, knew the pantry, the cabinets and drawers, each squeaky step and floorboard equally as well as Frank. Now he was sitting astride one of the caned chairs he’d maneuvered into the kitchen doorway, his arms folded across its tall back. From here he watched his capable host whipping a heavy fork through the bowl of eggs to be soft scrambled, a late dash of cold milk in an instant tempering the sizzling skillet. A fetching aroma of fresh biscuits had left their invisible presence about the rear area of the house, and while Frank’s may have lacked the delicate style of his mother’s, once slapped with a dab of butter and a swipe of molasses it would call for the palate of a Nero Wolfe or of Lucius Beebe himself to detect any difference in their texture or taste.

Frank had by this point killed half the glass of his brandy-laced orange juice before turning to Hardy. ‘Didn’t you know that Jake’s old lady was a Riley?’

‘So she was a Riley…there’s a heap of Rileys. I’m supposed to be impressed?’ Hardy pulled from his own laced juice.

‘You must have slept through each-and-every of your nine years of school, Mr. Van Winkle. I know damn well that you had a bone on for Meg Joyner. Surely you do remember?’

‘Sure I do, Frank, so what are you driving at?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Hardy, they’re first cousins. Jake’s mom is Meg’s aunt. Mrs. Joyner and Mrs. McAdams are sisters. Their brother, J.Q. Riley is a senior deputy here in the county; there’s still another brother in the state fire marshal’s office up in Austin. Their old man was the Riley who was deputy chief of police during the way-back-when. Meg’s grandfather. Jake’s too, but Jake McAdams plans to go to law school, Hardy. Told me so himself. Shooting for a judge’s bench. Now is this any sort of guy we should be talking to, unloading all the things we’ve talked about? Frank never skipped a beat at his work as he continued to gaze at Hardy Thurston in a manner demanding an answer. For most of the next minute Hardy’s impenetrable blank face would be his sole reaction, his mind struggling with thoughts of just how damn