John Walton tells the story of his mother and Crazy Eddie during his exciting presentations ~ she faces death again at age 89
Excerpt from her story in John's novel, “Gladys and Capone, the Untold Story”.
"She was in the kitchen with her companion, Barry Hayes, a retired commercial diver. They’d been companions the past six years. Not lovers. Gladys was adamant about that.
She’d had only one true love in her life, and that was a long time ago.
Barry was standing at the stove stirring the clam chowder when they heard the front door crash open.
Everyone in town knew Crazy Eddie was crazy. He even introduced himself that way. “Hi, I’m Crazy Eddie.”
Neither Barry nor Gladys knew that Crazy Eddie’s girlfriend finally had enough that morning, packed up their baby son and left, sending Crazy Eddie over the edge.
Never mind the damned squaw bitch, Eddie told himself when he came home and found her gone. But why’d she have to take his little boy?
That afternoon, only hours before he showed up at Gladys Walton’s house, Eddie strolled into a card palace over in Palo Robles and blew away three dealers. With a pump shotgun. Pandemonium, players scattering as he walked to the first table, leaned over the shoulders of the guests. “You dealt me bad cards, mother fucker!” And fired point blank. Another table and another, two men and a woman, dead and dying. Then he turned and walked out.
Seconds after the front door crashed in, Gladys saw him come through the archway into the kitchen. Not a shotgun now, a .45 pistol. Crazy Eddie had gone home for the hand gun, then made another stop on his rampage to another body.
Barry looked up, took a step, his fist clenched. That was all. The first shot hit him in the neck, the artery, blood spraying everywhere. He died instantly, but Crazy Eddie fired another bullet into Barry’s chest. For good measure.
Then he turned to Gladys.
Old woman, frozen in her chair. She hadn’t even screamed. Hand to her mouth, eyes wide. Eyes that, despite her age, still showed the fire of her fabled youth.
Crazy Eddie walked to her, didn’t say a word. He seemed to be thinking, studying her. Why didn’t she scream? Tough old bird. Slowly he raised the gun, placed it firmly to her forehead.
The barrel was hot. That’s all Gladys could think that first moment, how very hot on her forehead. She could not speak.
She waited, two seconds, three, four . . . So this was how her life was to end. Ninety years, not bad. Glamour, fame, adventure, lovers, children.
Well, she had lived more than most, that’s sure.
Five, six . . . The barrel burning a circle on her forehead. Of all the close calls she’d had, now this.
Seven, eight . . . Still staring, her vision blurred, and in her mind she started to see . . How trite, that old saying about your life passing before your eyes. But, there it was. True.
The knock on my dressing room door. My face in the mirror. No premonition, no sense that everything from then on would be marked before and after.
His eyes gray as fog. Not pearl gray like the fedora in his hand, darker. He holds a bouquet, two dozen red roses. “Long Stem,” he would remind me later, laughing, rolling me in his big arms across whatever bed we were in.
His voice. Nothing one might expect.
Then, few knew anything about him. Least of all me.
November, 1922. I was nineteen. He was twenty-three.'
Gladys Walton was 89 years old when Crazy Eddie broke into her home in the little coastal town of Morro Bay and she stared death in the face!
