Red Highway by Loren D. Estleman Page A

cocked toward the sounds that came from the monstrous machine. The big radio was Virgil’s only link with the outside world, and he was determined to make use of that link whenever possible.
    On February 14, 1929, one year and eight months after Virgil Ballard had begun his stay in McAlester, seven men were found machine-gunned to death in a garage on Chicago’s North Clark Street. Within two days, it was announced over the barbershop radio that the probable instigator of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was none other than Al Capone, and that one of the suspected killers was Fred (Killer) Burke, former Midwestern bank robber, late of the Detroit Purple Gang.
    When Virgil heard this, he almost dropped the month-old copy of Liberty he had been pretending to read and looked up at the ugly speaker. He had met Fred Burke, back in the Farrell days. At that time, Burke had been a skinny punk who spent most of his time following Virgil wherever he went and begging the older robber to show him the big Luger “just one more time.” Finally the strain of ducking the punk had gotten to be too much and Virgil had talked Farrell into giving the kid his walking papers. And now they called him “Killer.” Virgil shook his head and turned to an article about Lenin.
    When he wasn’t sitting within earshot of the radio, Virgil was busy operating the steam press in the laundry. He had been at it so long that he had begun to take pride in his work, folding the damp gray prison uniforms just so, so that he could put a sharp professional crease right down the sleeves and along the seams, just as he had seen his mother do with a flatiron when he was a boy. He called it “the Ballard press,” but only to himself. Pride in one’s accomplishments behind bars was not likely to be received favorably by one’s fellow inmates at McAlester. But he still felt satisfaction when he saw a hardened con walking the yard with the Ballard press prominently displayed on his uniform. Indeed, the only time he didn’t dwell over the passage of time in prison was when he was swinging down the heavy top of the big press and listening with satisfaction as the steam hissed solidly out through the apertures in the side.
    Doubly satisfying to him was the knowledge that his “servant,” the man who carted the laundry to and from the press, had been a vice-president of a multimillion-dollar corporation on the outside. Unfortunately for him, some young efficiency expert had discovered that the big shot had been dipping into the till to support an extravagant mistress, and here he was. Virgil enjoyed ordering him around and read him out unmercifully whenever he dropped a load of freshly pressed uniforms, which happened often because the man suffered from arthritis. He felt superior to the older con, for one simple reason: Bank robbers were more honest than embezzlers. “You know you’re being robbed when a guy pokes a gun in your ribs and demands money,” Virgil told him once, “but when one of your own employees goes wrong, he can steal you blind before you realize it.” The man had merely glared at him with a pained look on his face and turned away to pick up a fresh batch of uniforms.
    One day in October, 1929, the ex-big shot failed to show up. When his replacement arrived, Virgil asked him casually what had happened to “John D. Rockefeller.”
    The ruddy-faced replacement looked at him a moment before he spoke. “He’s dead.”
    â€œDead?” Virgil was taken aback. “What happened? Did he fall off his wallet?”
    â€œSearch me,” shrugged the other. “All I know is, a buddy of mine who works in the hospital says they carried him out this morning with the sheet over his face.”
    It wasn’t until late that afternoon, when Virgil was listening to the radio in the barbershop, that he figured out what had happened. A deep-voiced announcer boomed out