True Crime (24 page)

The next afternoon I was tooling up Highway 19 through McHenry County—its green rolling hills interspersed with rich farmland, lakes and the occasional gravel pit—behind the wheel of the nicest automobile I ever sat in. Though only a ’32, the Auburn had quite a few miles on her, which had helped me land the sporty two-seater (we were keeping the top up today) at a reasonable price. It was just the kind of automobile every man dreams of owning, to impress the girl riding next to him. Unfortunately the “girl” next to me had more miles on her than the Auburn.

She was wearing a hat that fit snugly on her skull, like something an aviator might wear, only floral. Her baggy dress was an off-white with light purple flowers that clashed with the hat and the snow-white seat cushions. Of course, she was sitting on a cushion of her own, an air cushion that boosted her up so she could peer out the windows; even with the air cushion, she was so squat she barely rose above the dash. Right now she was leaning forward, turning the tuning dial of the Motorola radio built under the dash, the needle on its little round face spinning like a hand on an out-of-control clock, as she desperately searched for hillbilly music.

“The music this radio gets is just plain lousy,” she said, turning off Bing Crosby singing “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.” There was an accusatory note in Kate Barker’s voice, as if had I been more careful in picking out this particular vehicle, I might have been able to get one that played “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine” continuously.

But we’d been through all that when I picked her up, around 1:00
P.M
., at the Pine Grove apartment. She’d taken a look at the Auburn coupe I’d arrived in and made a face like a displeased five-year-old.

“You bought a two-seater!” she said, standing on the sidewalk, a bag in either hand, romance and movie magazines stuffed under one arm, oversize purse under the other. “I wanted a touring sedan!”

I was standing alongside the car, leaning against the fender; it was as supple as a pretty girl’s hip. Shrugging, I said, “You said a twelve-cylinder Auburn. With a radio, which this has. I had to call all over town to find a used one, and had to pitch an extra hundred bucks in at that.”

She frowned at me, then frowned at the Auburn. “We got a big family. We need more than two seats.”

“You also need more than one car. Look, I was just trying to get what you asked me to get, Ma.”

She shook her head vigorously. “And I like black. That’s blue.”

She was right: it was as blue as Sally Rand’s eyes.

I said, “I can’t take it back—it’s a used car: ‘All Sales Final.’”

“Well…it is an Auburn V-Twelve. I do like my Auburn V-Twelves.”

“With a radio, don’t forget. I was lucky to find one that way.”

“Well, all right.”

I put her suitcases in the trunk. “Could I have that extra hundred I had to give?”

“You’ll get it,” she snapped, and went around to the rider’s side and waited for me to open the door for her. I did.

Once we’d got outside of Chicago a ways, into the farm country, her spirits perked up, even if she couldn’t find any hillbilly music on the radio.

“Goodie goodie!” she said, clapping her fat little hands together, a romance magazine open on her lap.

“What?” I said. I was concentrating on my driving; despite being a two-seater, the Auburn was a big car, much bigger than my Chevy coupe, and it drove a little like a barge. On the other hand, it was fast. I had to work to keep it down at fifty. My Chevy shimmied like your sister Kate when I went a mile over fifty.

She was saying, “He had the ring…”

“What?”

“He had the flat…”

“Huh?”

“But she felt his chin…”

“You okay?”

“And that was that!” She turned her face toward me and that ungodly flabby pan split in a smile. “Burma Shave!”

“Oh,” I said, and went back to my driving.

From then on she was on the lookout. There must’ve been an industrious Burma Shave advance man working this territory, because the little signs, spaced a hundred feet or so apart, seemed to pop up every few miles, like wooden weeds.

And it kept Ma busy.

“Your beauty boys…is just skin deep…what skin you got…you ought to keep. Haw haw! Burma Shave!”

She did have a faint mustache on her upper lip; maybe she was a potential customer…

I was still wearing the window-glass wire-rim spectacles and straw hat, but today I had on a brown suit, as well as my automatic in a shoulder holster. I hadn’t carried the gun in a while, and it felt heavy under my arm; made me uncomfortable. For one thing, if I got stopped by a state cop for speeding (and with this Auburn under me, with a mind of its own toward how fast it wanted to go, that was possible) I would have some embarrassing questions to answer—like why I was carrying a driver’s license under James Lawrence’s name, when this gun was registered to somebody called Nathan Heller. And for another thing, I just plain didn’t like carrying guns.

Barney had noticed the gun this morning; I hadn’t been wearing the straw hat and eyeglasses, but I was in the brown suit and the gun in the shoulder sling bulged a little. Like Little New York said, I couldn’t afford a tailor as good as his.

“Is that what I think it is?” he said, frowning, nodding toward my left arm. He was waiting for his turn, shooting pool with a couple of his sparring partners. I’d gone looking for Barney in the small gym in the traveler’s lounge at the Morrison Hotel, and when I hadn’t found him, had gone next door to Mussey’s, and had.

Mussey’s was a pool, billards and bowling hall next door to the Morrison and was a major meeting place for the sporting fraternity. Theatrical celebrities mingled with those of the boxing, baseball and racing world, as well as a certain number of con men and racketeers. The second floor was where billiards and pool ruled the day, and that was where I’d found Barney.

I admitted to him that I was heeled.

He shook his head, taking his turn; missed his shot. His sparring partners chuckled—they had to grab the occasional victory over Barney here, because in the ring they didn’t have a prayer.

“I don’t like it when you pack that thing,” he said, uneasily, nodding toward the bulge under my arm. “Pallbearin’ ain’t my idea of a good time, you know.”

“If you feel that way about it,” I said, smiling gently, “don’t come to my goddamn funeral.”

“Jesus, Nate, can’t you find a better business to get in?”

“I hate it when Jews say ‘Jesus.’ It confuses me.”

“Nobody likes a wise guy,” he said, grinning in spite of himself, and took his turn. Made the first shot, missed the second. One of the sparring partners elbowed the other one and they traded sideways grins.

“Seriously,” he said, “why don’t you find some other business? I could probably use you on my staff—”

“Christ, you and Sally! Nobody likes my trade, everybody wants to put me to work as their fuckin’ maid or something.”

Barney put an arm around me. “I hate it when half-Jews say ‘Christ.’ It confuses me. But you can say ‘fuck’ all you want. That don’t confuse me in the least.”

“Is that what I am, half a Jew?”

“Yeah, and half a Mick, and full of shit. That’s Nate Heller. Now, get outa here while I try to catch up with these guys.”

“Before you blow your next shot, let me tell you why I looked you up this morning.”

“Tell.”

“I’m going to be out of town awhile, and you’re going to have to cover for me, where my night watchman duty’s concerned. Okay?”

“Sure,” he nodded. “How long you be gone?”

“Not sure,” I said.

“What’s up, exactly?”

“Looking for a girl,” I said.

One of the sparring partners said, “Who ain’t?”

Barney said, “Don’t get killed or anything, okay, shmuck?”

“Okay, pal. Don’t you have a fight in a few weeks?”

“More like a month,” he said, bending to shoot.

“That’s a unique way of training you got there,” I said, and he missed his shot.

“The game laws ought…to let you shoot…the bird that hands you…a substitute! Haw haw!” Ma Barker grinned at me. “Burma Shave!”

There wasn’t much to say to that; I just kept driving. We were well into the afternoon, now, and Wisconsin. Taking Highway 89, which had just turned from nice spanking-new pavement into gravel. I kept the Auburn at forty-five. Somehow, even though this wasn’t my car (except for a hundred bucks’ worth of it, anyway), I hated to think of those shapely blue fenders getting nicked by those wicked little rocks.

I hadn’t done much cross-country driving, and, on these two-lane highways, each oncoming car we encountered made for a nerve-racking experience. The Auburn was wide enough, and the roads narrow enough, to make meeting the occasional road hog border on meeting your Maker. This was heightened by Kate Barker’s humming hymns, something she did whenever she couldn’t find hillbilly music on the radio or a Burma Shave sign to read.

“On a hill far away,” she bellowed suddenly, “stood an old rugged cross…”

“Burma Shave,” I said.

She glared at me; we weren’t getting along as well today as yesterday. “That’s disreligious,” she said.

“I suppose it is.”

“What church do you go to?”

“None to speak of, Ma.”

She tsk-tsked. “That’s very sad. Very sad.”

“I suppose it is, Ma.”

“You’re sure to fry in eternal hell, you know.”

“I’ll have company.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing. Look up ahead.”

“Oooooh!” she squealed. “The bearded lady…tried a jar…she’s now a famous…movie star! Burma Shave! Haw haw!”

Sally hadn’t been crazy about my leaving on this little jaunt. In fact, she’d been downright angry.

“You really disappoint me, Nate. Really disappoint me!”

We were sitting at her breakfast table having coffee.

“Why is that, Helen?”

“I just thought you were smarter than—than to behave in such a
suicidal
fashion!”

“Suicidal.”

“Going out among those…crazy maniacs!”

“Most maniacs are a little crazy.”

“Right—like you!”

I’d made a big mistake: with the exception of Frank Nitti’s role and the Jimmy Lawrence cover, I’d told Sally the whole story—the farmer’s daughter in the clutches of the Barker gang, and how I was going undercover to bring her back alive, as Frank Buck would say.

“Don’t you see what you’re doing?”

“Yeah, I think so. A job.”

“You’re trying to…redeem yourself, in some childish way. You’ve been feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself, for the way you were used in the Dillinger shooting, that you’re looking for some way to build your self-respect back up. So you take on this ridiculous case! You go out among killers and thieves and risk your life for a few dollars, just to play knight and save the fair damsel-in-distress! Shit, you’ve gone
simple
on me.”

“Helen, it’s not just a few dollars. It’s the first real money I’ve seen all year, outside of that reward money.”

“I don’t see you denying you’ve gone simple.”

“I’ve always been just a simple soul. That’s what’s so adorable about me.”

“Don’t butter me up, you louse.
Damn
, this makes me mad! You ought to go running back to that—that little actress of yours in Hollywood—this is just her style…this is just the sort of romantic bullshit she’d fall for. Why don’t you call her on the phone, Heller—my treat! Long distance, person to person, Hollywood. My treat—my pleasure!”

I didn’t say anything.

Sally sighed; stirred her coffee absently. Then she looked up with wet eyes. “I’m sorry I said that.”

I sipped my coffee.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned her, should I?”

I shook my head no.

“It still hurts you, doesn’t it? Losing her.”

“Ever talk to an amputee?”

That startled her.

She said, “Not really.”

“Well, they say the worst thing about losing an arm, a leg, is that sometimes you can still feel it there. Even though it’s been cut off. In the night, for example, it itches sometimes. The limb that’s been cut off.”

“You are a sentimental dope, aren’t you, Heller?”

“Takes one to know one, Helen.”

A tear was gliding down her smooth, round right cheek. “Well, then, you sentimental dope, why don’t you mount your white horse and go riding off after your damn damsel. Shit! Why don’t you mount the nearest damsel instead…let’s go back to bed…”

“Let’s,” I said.

Later, she touched my shoulder and said, “I don’t know if I want to see you, when you get back.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe I want to let go of you now, so that…if something happens to you, it won’t hurt so bad.”

“It’s up to you, Sally.”

She looked hurt. “You called me Sally.”

“So I did. I’ll call you Helen again, if you let me back in, when this is over.”

She wept as I held her; when I left, later that morning, she was mad again. Not speaking.

“Beneath this stone…lies Elmer Gush…tickled to death…by a shavin’ brush! Haw haw! Burma Shave.”

“Beaver Falls,” I said.

“Huh?” Kate Barker said.

“That’s Beaver Falls, up ahead.”

We were on U.S. Highway 151, now, and it entered the little town along a shady street where two-story clapboard houses with front porches with pillars and swings, wide windows and pointed roofs, sat on big lawns, looking prosperous unless you noticed how many of them needed painting. We glided through the downtown, where the trees disappeared in favor of electric posts, and two-story brick buildings stared each other down on either side of Front Street—hardware store, boot shop, floral shop, tavern, J. C. Penney, movie house.

Ma turned around in her seat, as we passed, straining to look back. “What’s playin’? What’s playin’?”

“Huh?”

“At the movie house!”

“Oh.” I looked back; winced when I saw what it was. “
Manhattan Melodrama
,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I seen that. I like Clark Gable, but not when he dies at the end.”

About four miles outside of Beaver Falls was a farm, the mailbox prominently marked gillis. I slowed and turned in the gravel drive. Chickens scooted out of my way. Over to the right was the two-story farmhouse, pretty good size, a swing on the pillared front porch, wide curtained windows, pointed gabled roof, much like the houses in Beaver Falls, only no curling paint. At the left and curving back behind the house were several other structures, among them an unpainted tool shed, a pump with windmill tower, a faded red barn, a silo.