True Crime (33 page)

Nelson pointed toward the map and said, “I want the backup car, parked on Adams there.”

Karpis nodded. “My thoughts exactly. You and Freddie.”

Freddie grinned, goldly, and nodded. “I’ll be wheel man.”

“Doc,” Karpis said, “you got the dock. The loading dock. All you got to do is baby-sit the switch car.”

Doc didn’t seem thrilled about it, but he nodded.

Karpis said, “Chock and Sullivan and me’ll baby-sit Mr. Hoover, incidentally. We got a place waitin’. Nobody else in this room needs know where that place is. Just rest assured it’s safe. Once the ransom’s delivered, I’ll find everybody and distribute the wealth.”

As an outsider to the ways of the outlaw, I was surprised to find that no one objected to this arrangement; the thought of a double cross never arose. They trusted each other. Or at least they trusted Karpis.

Then Doc nodded toward me. “What about Lawrence?”

“He baby-sits the girls.”

There was some laughter.

“Nice work if you can get it!” Floyd hooted, still out of view.

Even Doc smiled. “Where do I sign up to get
my
harem?” he said.

Nelson didn’t find it funny. “You got a job to do, Lawrence—do it! And no funny business.”

Fred grinned and said, “Don’t you worry about your better half, George—Lawrence’s already got his hands full with Lulu.”

That wasn’t a particularly witty remark, but there was more laughter, nonetheless, some of it from Nelson this time. Nobody seemed to mind that I’d taken over for Candy Walker with “Lulu” so quickly; it was just part of their world.

Floyd’s voice said, “Seriously, fellers—I think we oughta talk money. Jim mentioned he’d been promised five grand—and that sounds kinda low to me, even if his job is on the soft side.”

Doc said, “I’m for that. Lawrence’ll fall just as far as the rest of us, if it all comes down around us. Kidnapping’s kidnapping.”

Nelson jumped up. “He don’t get a full share. No way he gets a full share.”

Fred said, “Some of his share’s got to go to Candy.”

“Candy’s got no kin,” Doc said. “So it goes to Lulu.”

Nelson laughed, sat back down. “So it goes to Lawrence after all.”

There was some more general good-natured laughter, and Karpis pushed the smoky air with his palms, the teacher quieting his class. “We come to money, then. Fine. You might as well know an extra cut comes off the top.”

“Fuck!” Nelson said. “What for?”

Karpis said, “There’s a silent partner.”

“Who?” Nelson demanded.

Karpis shook his head no. “No name. That’s why they call it ‘silent,’ B.G.”

There were some smiles at the use of the initials; Nelson didn’t pick up on it, but Karpis was gently deriding him.

Karpis went on. “Our silent partner is bankrolling the job, out of his share. If it queers, he takes the loss. Also, he provided the inside dope on Hoover’s activities.” He nodded toward the map. “And he helped me put together this whole shootin’ match.”

Floyd’s voice: “It’s fair, George. It’s only fair.”

Doc Barker was nodding, and Fred said, “It is fair.”

Nelson, disgruntled, said, “Yeah, yeah. Okay.”

Karpis smiled benignly. “We got a big pie to cut up, George. We
are
talking about five hundred thousand dollars.”

Five hundred thousand dollars
!

Suddenly I heard myself talking.

“You really think the government is going to meet that?” I asked.

Karpis said, “Yeah, I think so. I can’t guarantee it. But I think they’ll meet the ransom demand, yeah.”

I didn’t, but held back further comment.

Nelson was putting his two cents in. “Uncle Sam can just print us up some money,” he said, “and if he don’t—then we
will
kill Hoover, and won’t that be sweet.”

Doc, not liking the sound of that particularly, said, “Then what?”

Nelson grinned; he was shifting into high-gear Cagney. “Then we grab Cummings or the president or somebody, and let’s see ’em fuck with us
then
.”

Nobody countered that. Just no arguing with logic, I guess.

Karpis said, “Here’s the way the money shakes down. We’re going to pay Lawrence twenty grand off the top, and give Lulu five, out of respect to Candy. Any argument?”

No argument.

“That gives each of us fifty grand and pocket change.”

The room was quiet as church, while everybody contemplated the new start that could mean. That could indeed get Chock Floyd “across the river,” in style.

“Get some rest, boys,” Karpis said. “Drink and be merry if you like—if you ain’t alone, show her a good time. And sleep till noon. But at one, meet back in this room, for a final run-through. Because tomorrow’s opening night, already.”

People stood up, started moving out.

That was when I got my first good look at Chock Floyd’s friend Sullivan, and he got his first good look at me.

We both recognized each other, and why not?

He was the man who’d called himself John Howard, when he came to my office last month—the traveling salesman who hired me to follow his “wife,” Polly Hamilton.

It was the longest few moments of my life, standing there in Karpis’ room near the door, about to go out, heart in my throat as I looked in the face of a man who knew I wasn’t Jimmy Lawrence.

Slowly he removed the dark glasses and there my name was, in his eyes: “Heller,” they said, narrowing. Hell, he was as shocked as I was.

And there we stood, blocking the way.

“Move along, gents,” Nelson said. “We baked in this oven long enough.”

I swallowed; said, “Sure.”

My onetime client swallowed, nodded, put the dark glasses back on, moved out the door and I followed him out into the breezily warm summer evening, my hand drifting toward the automatic under my jacket as I walked.

The men were milling about, out in front of Karpis’ cabin, some of them having further smokes. Nelson tapped Sullivan on the shoulder and Sullivan looked at him from behind the dark glasses, with a tight, blank expression.

Nelson said, “You sure we ain’t worked together before?”

Sullivan smiled politely, shook his head no.

Nelson looked confused, momentarily, said, “You seem familiar. Huh. Well, what the hell.”

And he walked over to Chase and began talking, smoking.

I smiled at Sullivan.

Because I knew.

I knew why he hadn’t given me away to the others. And I knew he’d had just as long and sweaty a last few minutes as I had.

He was lighting a cigarette; his hand was shaking—it was barely perceptible, but I caught it.

I stood close to him, put a comradely hand on his shoulder. Spoke so low he could barely hear me.

But he heard me.

I said, “Let’s talk, Johnny.”

And John Dillinger nodded, and we began to walk.

“I’m surprised to see you, John,” I told him.

“Let’s leave names aside, Heller, here on out, okay? Some people got big ears.”

“But neither one of us better have big mouths, right? We can’t afford to give each other away, can we?”

We stopped in front of the central cabin; Karpis and Dolores were sitting on the bench, having Cokes. I put a nickel in the low-riding icebox and opened the lid and slid a bottle out for myself. Dillinger stood and watched me through the dark circles of the glasses, fedora brim pulled down. He was smoking, looking relaxed, calm; but I could feel his nervousness in the air, like electricity crackling between us.

We strolled around back; found a tree to stand under. No one else was around. It was a clear, moonlit night; we could see each other fine. Not that he wanted to see me.

Dillinger didn’t like this at all. On the other hand, I was getting a perverse sort of charge out of it. I’d thought the house was coming down on my head, minutes ago; now I knew I was sitting on top.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me. Clipped words. He took off the dark glasses, slid them in his shirt pocket behind his pack of smokes. He didn’t have a gun.

I took a sip of the Coke. “Let’s start with you,” I said. “Who knows you here? Knows who you really are, I mean.”

He exhaled smoke. “Just Floyd.”

“Not Karpis?”

He shook his head no.

“But you’re the silent partner Karpis was talking about,” I said.

He nodded.

“And Karpis seems to’ve been in on the planning, all the way…”

He shrugged. “He is,” he said. “But he thinks I’m just some friend of Chock’s. I’m supposed to be a guy from Oklahoma wanted for murder, who had a face job.”

“That isn’t far wrong.”

He gave out a short, humorless laugh. “Anyway, I never worked with Karpis. I met him once or twice. But not so’s he could recognize me.”

“But Nelson and the others are a different story.”

He exhaled some more smoke; it made a sort of question mark in the air. “Yeah,” he said. “They might pick up on my voice, or my eyes. Plastic surgery don’t change you as one hundred percent as people think.”

“Yours ain’t bad,” I said.

He sighed heavily; a weight-of-the-world sigh. “It cost me. And it wasn’t just one operation. It was a whole series of ’em, out West. No hack like Doc Moran.”

“He’s dead, you know.”

“Lot of that going around.”

This time I was the one who laughed humorlessly. “Threatening me, John? Or referring to your own greatly exaggerated demise?”

He sneered. “What do you think?”

“I think you went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get officially dead. You should’ve dropped off the face of the earth by now. Why get back in the game again, so soon, or at all—when you went through so much trouble getting out?”

The sneer got nastier. “Guess.”

“I’ll take a wild one—money. Death is free, but only if you really die, right? Take Piquett—he wouldn’t come cheap, not for a scam this size. He’s risking disbarment, after all.”

Another laugh. “He risks that every day. But, no, he didn’t come cheap.”

“Or Zarkovich and O’Neill, either.”

“No.”

“Or Anna Sage.”

“Or Anna Sage,” he admitted.

The muffled sound of hillbilly music could be heard from the tourist camp, behind us; Ma had finally found her station.

“Does Polly Hamilton know?”

“That I’m alive? No. You’re part of a select group, Heller.”

“No names, remember? It does explain why you came to my office personally, to put me in motion where Polly Hamilton was concerned. I came to think you were just some con man Piquett hired. You did it yourself, though, to keep the circle nice and tight. A secret like this isn’t easily kept. Fewer conspirators the better.”

He said nothing.

I swigged the Coke; finished it. Tossed the bottle into the trees. “Yeah, it must’ve cost you, really cost you—or you wouldn’t be risking your new face out in the open like this…not to mention this lunatic plot to kidnap Hoover. Jesus! You really believe the government’ll pay you people off?”

“Yeah,” he said, testily. “I think they’ll pay. And I don’t think they’ll even tell the public it ever happened.”

That hadn’t occurred to me.

I said, “You figure they’ll put on a press blackout till they get Hoover back.”

“I do. And after. They got a lot of press and prestige tied up in that fat little bastard. He’s riding my ‘death’ like a rodeo pony.”

Ma’s hillbilly music in the background lent some color to his remark.

I grunted a laugh. “Must frustrate you—here you are ‘dead,’ and the fuck-ups you fooled, you used, are using you to make themselves look like Saturday afternoon heroes.”

“G-men,” he said, derisively. “They’re going to kill us all, you know. That’s why I went out my own way, on my own terms. The feds, they’re dopes, they’re fuck-ups, they’re boobs—but they got money and time on their side. It’s over. This whole damn game is over. Even a chowderhead like Nelson can see that.”

Male laughter came from up by the cabins; they were taking Karpis’ advice and making merry.

I said, “Well, Floyd sees the writing on the wall, all right. He said much the same thing as you, this afternoon. He said it was just a matter of time.”

“Well, it’s true, and this snatch is risky but it stands to stake every man one of us to a ticket out of this outlaw life.”

“Yeah, and you get a double share.”

He nodded, smiling; under the mustache, I could see the famous wry wise-guy Dillinger smile, pushing through the tight, new face. “Over a hundred grand. That ought to buy me a farm.”

“If this job doesn’t buy all of you the farm.”

He put a hand against my chest, flat; there was more menace in the gesture than in all of Nelson’s tommy-gun waving. “Why?” he asked. “You planning to pull the plug on us, Heller? You the undercover man in the woodpile?”

“No names, remember?” I said, suddenly a little scared. “I’m not here to pull anybody’s plug.”

“Why
are
you here? And why the hell are you calling yourself Jimmy Lawrence? When I heard that name kicked around, I had to wonder. It’s common enough, but…”

“Nitti gave it to me to use. I’m helping
you
, really. He figured it’d be good having somebody named Jimmy Lawrence wandering around,
after
the Biograph.”

Dillinger flicked the stub of his cigarette away, smiled mildly, said, “Nitti’s smart. Too fuckin’ smart for his own good. He’s gonna die of being smart someday.”

“He plays people like a hand of cards, I’ll give you that. As for why I’m here, it’s strictly a mission of mercy—and it’s with Nitti’s full okay.”

“Make me believe that.”

I told him, in enough detail to convince him, that I was here to retrieve Candy Walker’s moll Lulu for her ailing farmer father.

He seemed to buy it, farmer’s kid that he was himself; but he said, “I can check on this with a phone call.”

“I know you can. But do you really want Nitti to know you’re in the neighborhood? He’s not exactly going to be tickled pink about what you’re planning for tomorrow, you know.”

Dillinger got out a new cigarette, lit it up; in the orange glow of the flame, his mask of a face gave little away. “He’s not going to know I was involved—unless you tell him.”

“Why should I tell him?”

He didn’t answer me. Instead he said, reflectively, “I suppose you’d like to just take the girl and scram. Just hop in one of these cars and rescue the fair maiden, and not get caught up in tomorrow’s business.”

My answer to that flatly posed question would be crucial; I could see it in his face, hear it in his voice, if just barely—he was doing his best not to tip his hand.

But I could tell what he wanted to hear—and what he didn’t want to hear.

So I said, “Hell, no. I’m in.”

He studied me. “You’re in?”

“Hell, yes. Twenty-five gees worth, I am.”

“You’re supposed to be a stand-up guy, Heller. So honest you quit the force and all. Why all of a sudden are you willing to get in the kidnapping racket?”

I put on my best smirk; inside I wasn’t smiling. “Hoover’s nothing to me. The feds gave me nothing but grief, when you were staging that ballet at the Biograph. Make ’em look as stupid as you like, and squeeze as much dough out as you can.”

He studied me.

“Look, I can use twenty-five gees, friend. I had two clients in the last month and a half—and you were one of ’em.”

He drew on the cigarette.

I said, “But I’m not in for murder, understand. I want your word Hoover won’t be killed. Even if they don’t fork over the dough.”

He said nothing for a while. Fiddles were playing on Ma’s radio station.

Then he said, “You got my word,” and held his hand out for me to shake.

I shook it.

“Hell,” I said, “all I got to do is bunk in with some good-looking women for a few weeks. I had worse jobs.”

Dillinger laughed; a genuine laugh. “Yeah. There’s worse ways to score twenty-five grand. And when it’s over, you can take the skirt and blow.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“But Heller—if you’re stringing me along—if you fuck this up for me—you’re dead. Got that? Plain old dead.”

“Understood.”

He threw the latest cigarette away; it sizzled in the grass, and we walked back around front of the tourist cabins.

As we walked, I said, “You were some actor, back in my office that time. You really had me going.”

He smiled. “I always have had a smooth line of bull.”

Me, too, John. Me, too.