Flying Crows (22 page)

XX

RANDY

KANSAS CITY

1997

Instead of being large, overstuffed, loud, and self-important as Randy had unfairly imagined and expected, Jules Perkins was sophisticated, trim, smooth, cool. But he wore a small black leather holster on his right hip. There was no weapon in it, but the message was, I'm one of you, Lieutenant.

No you're not, buddy!

But Randy couldn't yell that. Perkins had written in the preface to
Put
'Em Up!
that his version of the Union Station massacre saga came directly out of 20,000 pages of the FBI's own files on the case. Perkins had obtained them over a period of several months through a Freedom of Information request.

Randy needed Perkins and his files because they were the last stop. There was nowhere else to go in the search for Birdie Carlucci's story.

Randy had already confirmed what the woman at the Kenwood residence unit had said. There were no Carluccis living in or around Kansas City. A further check with the public library's computerized phone and city directories of the past turned up the fact that there never had been. Plenty of Carls and Carltons and Luccis but no Carluccis.

He had then gone to a computer in the police department's records office and typed in the name
Birdie Carlucci
. Nothing came back, meaning there was no record of an arrest or a witness or incident report in Kansas City proper or the metropolitan area—Kansas and Missouri—involving anyone named Birdie Carlucci. There were also no Carluccis in the police files.

He had looked for Birdie's name in the index of every book on the Union Station massacre he could find, including Perkins's. The listing in
Put 'Em Up!
went from
Ca frey, Raymond J.
to
Christman, Earl.
No Carlucci in between. And there was no Birdie in the
B
's.

He also went through several true-crime-type write-ups on the Inter-net and the library's cross-reference system of old newspaper stories. None had a listing or a mention of anybody named Carlucci or Birdie as a witness or anything else connected to the massacre and the investigation that followed.

That was why Randy, after waiting impatiently for six weeks, was sitting now in the large Ward Parkway home of Jules Perkins, the world's number-one expert on the Union Station massacre. The house was a two-story mansion, one of many along the fifteen-block tree-lined parkway that ran southwest from Country Club Plaza, Kansas City's oldest and most elegant shopping area. The city's richest and best-known people had traditionally lived on Ward Parkway, and for the most part that was still true. Perkins's house was south of the mansion Tom Pendergast lived in before going to federal prison in the forties for insurance fraud. A star pitcher for the Kansas City Royals now lived a block farther south.

Randy, like most everyone else in Kansas City, knew the writer's story. Perkins had worked briefly as a reporter in St. Joseph, Missouri, before going to law school in Kansas City and becoming a criminal lawyer and then the well-known and prosperous author of crime novels he was today.
Put 'Em Up!
was one of his few books of nonfiction. Perkins's twenty-plus novels were mostly about the Italian mob's alleged influence on gambling, prostitution, city hall, and most everything else in Kansas City in the late seventies. Perkins's real money and prominence came from the hit television series KANSAS CITY, which was based on the books. The hero was a former assistant district attorney who served seventeen years in prison for strangling his beautiful wife after he discovered her in bed with a mob gunman who was suppying her with cocaine. Upon release from prison, the hero became a private investigator and a crusader dedicated to eradicating organized crime from Kansas City. Randy enjoyed the TV series more than the books.

The six-week delay in Randy's being able to see the great man was because Perkins was away as writer-in-residence at a college in Oregon.

“I'll give you my time and my sources on one condition, Lieutenant,” Perkins said to Randy. They were seated across from each other at a long library table in Perkins's study, a majestic room of leather-covered furniture, dark woods, and hundreds of books. The walls were mostly covered with floor-to-ceiling shelves, black-and-white photographs of cops and lawyers, and framed copies of covers from Perkins's many books.

Perkins stated his one condition.

“When we're through, you tell me what this is all about. It's a bit unusual for a cop to be running down leads on a crime that was committed sixty-four years ago, even one as important as the Union Station massacre. If you've got something that truly resolves it once and for all, I want to know what it is. I've spent almost ten years on this mystery. Deal?”

Randy was caught. He wanted this man's help and information. But he also wanted to protect Birdie Carlucci's privacy.

“Deal,” he said. One thing at a time.

Randy knew from
Put 'Em Up!
that while there was good evidence from the FBI files that Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Righetti were probably not involved, there was nothing conclusive on the identities of the other possible gunmen. That remained the major mystery. Another hoodlum of the times named Verne Miller was a major suspect, but he had not been tied to it beyond a doubt.

Perkins, in his book, had pretty much determined what happened that day out in front of Union Station. Two or possibly three armed men were waiting outside to spring Jelly Nash as he was being taken from the train to a car for the drive back to Leavenworth. They had not come with the intention of killing anybody or even of firing a shot but just to flash their tommy guns, yell “Put 'em up!” at the escorting cops and federal agents, and speed away from the scene with a freed Nash. But one of the lawmen sitting in the backseat of the officers' car accidentally fired a shotgun, blowing off the back of Nash's head and igniting a frantic and confused firefight that cost four more lives.

The main theory on the identities of the gunmen was that they were Miller and some locals who had been either hired or persuaded by mob friends of Nash to do the job.

“OK, what do you want to know?” Perkins asked Randy.

“Was there anybody connected to the case in any way named Carlucci, Birdie Carlucci?”

Perkins put his thin fingers to the sides of his head, which was barely covered with a few carefully combed strings of black hair. Perkins was thinking. Randy figured his age at somewhere between fifty-five and sixty. It was hard to tell for sure. Clearly, some of his enormous book and TV earnings had been spent on his hair, if not his face.

Now Perkins was shaking his head. “I don't remember any such name, but let me check. If he was involved, I'll have it here somewhere. I had a secretary organize all eighty-nine volumes of the FBI files under a very good cross-reference system.”

Eighty-nine volumes? Randy was impressed.

Motioning for Randy to keep his seat, Perkins moved first to a desk in a corner of the room and typed some things into a computer. “All names, dates, and pertinent info is in here.”

Within a minute or two, Perkins was again shaking his head. “Nothing. No Carlucci, Birdie or otherwise. Come see for yourself.”

Randy stepped over to and behind Perkins. There on the computer screen was the same kind of listing blank that Randy had found in
Put 'Em
Up!
There was the name of Caffrey, the federal agent killed on June 17, 1933, and then, as in the book index, somebody named
Christman, Earl.
No Carlucci.

“Done. There was nobody connected with the Union Station massacre in any way whatsoever who was named Birdie Carlucci,” Perkins pronounced. “Now, please, Lieutenant, tell me what this is all about.”

“Anybody with the first name or nickname of Birdie?” Randy asked.

Perkins shrugged but turned back to the computer. “That's harder, because most of these listings were only by last name. But I can cross-reference and see what I come up with. If the name were Jim or Bob, it would be more difficult.”

After a hundred or so movements of his fingers on the keyboard and a few minutes, he said, “No Birdies.”

Randy had watched the screen. He saw it before Perkins said it. There were no Birdies. “On witnesses to the actual massacre—right outside in front of the station itself. How many were there?”

“Hard to say accurately. One count would have it up in the hundreds. A lot of people decided afterward that they had seen things that would get them a little ink in the papers and attention at home. Some even went on to lie under oath at Righetti's trial. Hoover wanted them to see Righetti so they saw Righetti.”

“What about real—confirmed, credible—eyewitnesses?” Randy was not through yet.

“Only a handful, apart from the surviving lawmen who were there, and most of them lied for Hoover too. For the real folks it was a normal busy morning, with taxis dropping off passengers and the like, but people were minding their own business. Not until the first shots were fired did anybody really turn to look, and by then it was pretty much over. Everything happened in a little over a minute.”

“Any of those eyewitnesses a kid—a boy in his late teens?”

“White?”

“Yeah.”

“There were some redcaps out front, but back then the feds and the cops didn't see black people as reliable witnesses.”

Perkins went back to the computer one more time. Within only a few seconds, he said, “Nope. No young white male eyewitnesses. All of them were in their thirties or older—or were female.”

Perkins stood and walked a few steps over to a large stand-alone four-drawer file cabinet against a far wall. The cabinet was made of a dark wood that matched the bookshelves and most everything else in the room. “Just for the sake of thoroughness, let me pull out a few of the actual files. It's conceivable something slipped through my system, although I doubt it.”

Randy went with him to the cabinet. There were the eighty-nine files. Perkins pulled open the top drawer, grabbed something from the front, and handed it to Randy. “You might get a kick out of seeing this anyhow— no matter what you're looking for.”

It was a file, three-quarters of an inch thick, held together at the top by silver brads that had been stuck through holes from underneath and then bent down. Most police files are fastened the same way.

The FBI cover sheet said, in big black letters on white paper:

FILE DESCRIPTION
SUBJECT KANSAS CITY MASSACRE
FILE NO. 62-28915
VOLUME NO. 1

Randy lifted the cover sheet. There, in all its stunning historical significance, was a copy of the original telegram the agent-in-charge of the Kansas City office sent that morning, informing J. Edgar Hoover of the massacre.

DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, WASHDC= OTTO REED CHIEF POLICE MCALESTER OKLAHOMA SPECIAL AGENTS FRANK SMITH AND LACKEY WITH FRANK NASH WERE MET UNION STATION THIS MORNING SEVEN FIFTEEN AM BY AGENTS VETTERLI AND CAFFREY AND TWO LOCAL DETECTIVES. NASH WAS TAKEN TO CAFFREYS AUTOMOBILE IN FRONT UNION STATION WHEN UNKNOWN PARTIES BELIEVED FOUR ALTHO DEFINITE NUMBER UNKNOWN OPENED UP WITH SUBMACHINE GUNS KILLING TWO LOCAL POLICE OFFICERS CHIEF REED FRANK NASH AND SHOOTING AGENTS CAFFREY IN HEAD FATALLY LACKEY SHOT RIGHT SIDE NOT BELIEVED FATAL FRANK SMITH ESCAPED UNINJURED VETTERLI NIPPED IN LEFT ARM LICENSE NUMBER OF SHOOTING CAR OBTAINED DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE. VETTERLI.

Randy knew from having read Perkins's book that the license number turned out to be of no help in finding anybody.

“Keep looking if you want to, lieutenant,” said Perkins. “Most of the first eyewitness material is in Volumes One and Two. I'll glance through the next couple just to see if something leaps out.”

Randy turned the pages and read, and Jules Perkins did the same. After ten minutes, Perkins said he had something that might be of interest.

“There's some stuff here about a kid—a white boy. I had forgotten about him. I didn't have him in my cross-reference file because nobody ever came up with a name. A couple of the fairly reliable witnesses, including one of the surviving federal agents, said there was a kid walking in front of the formation with Jelly Nash and the officers that morning. He was a
Star
boy, they said, selling newspapers. And just as they came out the big east doors he raised one of the papers above his head. The theory was that he was in cahoots with whoever was lying in wait and was signaling them to get ready,
here they come!
Obviously, if true, the kid would know for sure who the gunmen were because he was part of their team. So everybody looked hard to find him afterward.”

Randy concentrated on breathing steadily. “Who was the kid?”

“Haven't a prayer. If he existed, he disappeared. I mean, completely disappeared off the face of the earth. Nobody, not a soul in the FBI or the KCPD or anywhere else, ever got an ID or a lead on him, much less saw him or interviewed him. The
Star
had no record of such a kid working outside like that on that morning. Nothing turned up. Everybody, including me, finally decided he probably never existed. That's why I didn't put him in my book or cross-reference anything about him in the files. If he were real, let's face it, somebody would have come up with a name and the whole story by now. Of course, it's possible he was hired by some gangsters to be a signal lookout and they got rid of him afterward. Or maybe all that killing wasn't something the kid bargained for and he simply ran as fast and as far away as he could, on his own or with somebody's help. Who knows? And who cares anymore except me—and now you, lieutenant?”