True Crime (32 page)

Karpis’ cabin was identical to ours, except with the beds on the opposite side of the room. In addition he’d had some folding chairs brought in. Everybody found chairs or sat on the edge of one of the beds, which was where I ended up, over to the far left, by the wall, facing Karpis, who, looking more and more like a schoolteacher, stood by the facing wall where he’d tacked a big homemade grease-pencil map of the Chicago Loop.

Floyd was the last to come in, with his hungover partner Sullivan in tow, the little-man-who-wasn’t-there at dinner, an average-looking guy in a dark suit, wearing sunglasses and a fedora, despite being indoors. They took seats across the room, near the door, where I couldn’t quite see ’em.

It was a little warm, a little stuffy in the room, with all these men crowded in, most of them smoking; no cigars in the crowd, at least. There was a breeze tonight, coming in the half-open windows, and it was appreciated. Most of the men were in shirt sleeves; I wore the lightweight white suit, gun tucked under my arm. If I was going to play in the World Series of crime, I figured I ought to have my bat along.

Karpis, in a white shirt buttoned to the neck and baggy brown pants, stood with folded arms, slouching a little. He was, like me, wearing his window-glass wire-rims. “I guess everybody knows our objective.”

Nelson laughed, but bitterly. “We’re going to snatch the big fed. The loud-mouth son of a bitch who calls us yellow rats from behind a goddamn desk. We’re going to snatch him, haul in the big dough, and then fuckin’ kill him.”

“
No
,” Karpis said, pointing a finger at Nelson like a kid in his class. “We
don’t
kill him.”

“Why?” Nelson said. It was almost a whine.

“Because,” Karpis said, “he’s more trouble to us dead. Better we embarrass and disgrace and humiliate the bastard, and
then
cut him loose, than have him be a dead hero for the feds and press to rally ’round.”

From across the smoky room came Floyd’s voice. “I agree. The son of a bitch likes to call us ‘vile’ and ‘vicious’ and ‘mad dogs’ and that. Kill him and we make him look right.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Nelson said evenly.

Floyd said, “That’s just handin’ Hoover’s attorney general boss more ammunition against us. Then he just sticks another son of a bitch in Hoover’s chair, and what’s to gain? The days ahead is gonna be hot enough.”

Karpis took over. “George, listen. Sure, picking Hoover for our mark comes partly out of wanting to even scores with the son of a bitch. Make him look bad, make him look stupid, put him on the spot. Of course. But the real point of this, the main point, is to grab a public figure so important the government’ll cough up some real dough to get him back. The fact it also makes the feds look sick is just frosting on the cake.”

Doc Barker was sitting next to me; he seemed impatient as he said, “Quit chasing your tails, fellas. I ain’t convinced yet this is even gonna come off. I’m not in unless somebody can show me how this fool thing can really work.”

Fred Barker nodded, said, “Yeah. Yeah, me too!”

Karpis said, “That’s why we’re here, Doc.”

Doc said, “From what you told me before, I take it you’re planning to snatch Hoover right on the street, right in front of the feds’ own office building.”

Jesus.

“Last time we tried something in the Loop we damn near got our asses shot off,” Barker was saying.

“That’s not fair, Doc,” Karpis said. “If we hadn’t got in that accident, we’d been in the clear.”

“Bull
shit
. You got in a accident ’cause of traffic, and then them cops swarmed on us like flies on shit.”

“The basic plan was sound, Doc. We can make it work this time.”

“You’re going to use the
same
plan as for the post-office heist?”

Karpis smiled a mildly embarrassed version of his ghastly smile. “Well, yes, sort of, as a stepping-off point anyway—the Banker’s Building is right across from the post office, where we made the other hit. Direct across. We can build on that same plan, and learn from our mistakes.”

Doc was shaking his head. “Learn from our mistakes? What you should learn from that post-office flop is not to pull jobs in the Loop. City jobs are a bitch in general. Now, in the country, shit, you can hit a place, drive like hell, know your back roads and you’re home free. But in the city, fuck.”

Karpis was getting worried. “Come on, Doc, keep an open mind….”

“You got traffic to deal with, cops on every block, one call and the word’s out to hundreds of radio cars…shit. And a plan that went bust one other time. Creepy, I’m surprised at you.”

Nelson said, “Doc, you knew what this was about coming in—why bitch now?”

Doc said, “I’m all for snatching Hoover. Its a sweet way to get even and get rich. Understood? But why not snatch him at the track—he likes the ponies, you know—or at the train station, when he comes to town, or leaves.”

Karpis said, “Those are city jobs, too, Doc.”

“Yeah, sure, but they’re easier to deal with than the goddamn heart o’ the
Loop.
Don’t forget—I was
there,
on that post-office heist. I saw the fuckin’ bullets fly.”

“Doc,” Nelson said, an edge in his voice. “Why don’t you let Karpis lay it out for us?”

Karpis laid it out.

He pointed to the map as he spoke, using a grease pencil to trace various routes.

They had inside word that Hoover was coming in tomorrow morning to spend a day at the Division of Investigation’s Chicago bureau, giving the boys in the trenches pep talks and confabbing with Purvis and Cowley. Of more interest to Karpis, however, was Hoover’s evening dinner date with State Attorney Courtney and the Chicago police commissioner. This was a pass-the-peace-pipe powwow initiated by Hoover, seeking to build more cooperation between the feds and the local cops; my guess was the state attorney and the police commissioner were going along with the meeting in order to ask for Purvis’ ouster. The cops had covered the feds’ trail any number of times (the Probasco “suicide” fall, for one thing) and all they’d got in return was bad-mouthing in the press by self-aggrandizing Little Mel. So a meeting was in order.

None of this was anything Karpis went into; these were simply thoughts that flitted through my brain as he stated that Hoover was planning dinner with Courtney and the commissioner at seven o’clock at the Bismarck Hotel. Shortly before seven, a car from the state attorney’s office was to pick up Hoover at the Banker’s Building and escort him to the Bismarck.

“Where’d you get that kind of inside dope?” a smiling Nelson asked.

Karpis smiled his awful smile. “Friends in high places,” he said, and let it go at that.

My guess was attorney Louis Piquett had sniffed this piece of news out; he had plenty of lines into Courtney’s office.

Karpis’ basic plan was simple if cunning. The state attorney’s car was distinctively decorated: a black Hudson with one red and one green headlight, and a red star on the spotlight. Karpis had arranged with “our favorite underworld garage, in Cicero” to have another Hudson similarly decorated—and, in addition to police siren, equipped with such accessories as bulletproofing, shortwave radio and a sliding panel in the doors through which guns could be fired.

Karpis planned to have this car pick up Hoover.

The real state attorney’s car, in a city parking garage near City Hall, would have a convenient flat tire, delaying the Hoover pickup a few minutes—long enough for the ringer to make the pickup instead.

Karpis was drawing on the map, saying, “If the pickup goes smooth, our Hudson just continues on down Clark to Jackson and turns west—like we were heading back to the Bismarck. After that we switch cars.”

Nelson said, “We’ll have a extra car stashed? Where?”

“In a loading dock in this alley,” Karpis said, pointing to the map. “It’s after work; deserted. We stuff Hoover in the trunk of the second car, and drive away, nice and easy.”

Doc said, “Fine and dandy, if the snatch goes smooth. What if it’s queered at the scene? What if some fed recognizes somebody, or wants to look at ID, or they send a different car? What if the shit hits the fan, right there in front of the Banker’s Building?”

Karpis just smiled patiently through all this. He said, “We got all that covered. There’ll be a backup car with extra firepower parked across the way, in front of the Edison Building—on Adams, kiddy-corner from the Banker’s Building. If shooting starts, they cover the escape by opening fire from another direction. And if the snatch goes smooth, they cruise down Adams—dumping tacks behind ’em like bread crumbs, making flat tires and jamming traffic. At LaSalle, the backup car’ll head north, dropping more tacks, to throw the laws off the trail—and ditch their car and switch in an alley off Franklin and Monroe to a new car. And drive away.”

Doc was smirking, skeptical as hell. “All of this in the Loop. Creepy, you’re dreaming.”

Karpis said, “No, Doc—you’re sleeping.
Think.
Between six and seven, the LaSalle Street district is deader than a doornail. The market shuts down at three—everybody’ll be out by six, easy. On our way in, both the backup and the Hudson’ll take different routes—and if on the way in we see a lot of cops or anything else out of the ordinary, well fold it up. Either car’ll have the right to fold it—if the Hudson gets there and the backup isn’t in position, that means they chose to fold. If the Hudson wants to fold, they just drive on by the Banker’s Building, east on Adams, without stopping.”

Then Karpis went through the escape route—the one that would be taken should the job go sour. The Hudson would turn hard down Quincy, and take a very tight turn down the alley, Rookery Court. Then would pull west on Adams, and once there, if traffic’s heavy, use the siren, crossing LaSalle and Wells, going under the El. After another block on Adams, the Hudson would take a left and go south on Franklin Street. If the siren had been in use, it would be turned off here. Two short blocks later, the Hudson would cut across Jackson and dodge into a narrow, barely noticeable alley behind the fifteen-story building on the northeast corner. This alley led into a system of several alleys, the main, widest one of which was where the loading dock was, with the extra car.

“It’s a two-bay loading dock,” Karpis said, “nice and deep—a car can enter it and not stick out in the alley at all.”

Whether the snatch went smooth or soured, the Hudson would end up here, pulling into the bay next to the second car; everybody would tumble out, putting Hoover (gagged by now) in the trunk of the second car. Of the three men who picked up Hoover, two would be in Chicago police uniforms; they would quickly strip out of those with street clothes underneath—and drive out of the bay and onto Van Buren, going west.

Doc was starting to look less skeptical; but he still asked, “What about
real
cops? Two to a block, in the Loop, you know.”

Karpis shrugged like Jack Benny. “Supper hour, Doc. Streets are good and empty of uniforms ’tween six and seven.”

Doc nodded slowly. Then said, “Streetcars? Traffic?”

“Both’ll be slow at that hour, that part of the Loop.”

Nelson was nodding, too, saying, “And what traffic there is’ll mostly be people coming
into
the Loop, for dinner and an evening’s fun ‘n’ games—not going
out
, like we’d be doing.”

Doc said, “But State and Wabash and the streets around there will be hopping.”

Karpis shrugged again. “That’s in our favor. If an alarm
is
sounded, the cops’ll have to break through that traffic to get to us. By the time they reach the Banker’s Building at the southwest tip of the Loop, we’ll’ve switched cars.”

Doc thought about that.

Karpis went on. “The Hudson’ll only be on the street for about four blocks, remember. A few minutes at most.”

Karpis then went into the deployment of men: three in the fake state attorney’s car; two in the backup car; one at the loading dock waiting with the second car; another to disable the real state attorney’s car at the city garage near City Hall.

And me—I’d be baby-sitting the ladies, in Ma Barker’s apartment on Pine Grove Avenue. I might be there for weeks—as long as it took for Hoover to be ransomed, plus some cooling-off time. The men didn’t want to hook back up with their ladies till they were sure the Hoover grab was a success. Nobody wanted his girl serving time on this one.

Also, the guy who’d disable the state attorney’s car had a bigger job than just kicking the nail in the toe of his shoe into the tire on a Hudson. First he’d have to go up a fire escape to get into the garage (which was serviced by carhops); then he’d have to hang around on the street and watch the state attorney’s real delivery boys go after their car and, when it turned out they were delayed by a flat tire, try to delay whoever it was from calling the office.

“That’s your job, Chase,” Karpis told Nelson’s lapdog John Paul.

Chase nodded.

“Just sap him or something,” Nelson said, offhandedly. “Don’t kill him or nothin’.”

Karpis underscored that. “
No
killing—if you can help it. We’re going to be
hot enough
. If they don’t believe they’ll get him back alive, they won’t pay the freight. We leave a trail of bodies, they’ll figure us to kill him for sure. Got that?”

Heads nodded.

“Now, we got a problem in possibly being recognized,” Karpis said. “I don’t think it’s much of one, ’cause Hoover and his people aren’t going to be looking for the likes of us to be picking him up for supper. But it’s a problem. So me and Chock and Chock’s pal Sullivan will do the pickup in the Hudson.”

Doc said, “Chock’s picture’s been plastered to hell and gone.”

“I know—but he’ll be in a police uniform, driving; he’s a big guy—he’ll look like your typical well-fed Chicago cop—won’t you, Chock?”

“Damn tootin’,” Floyd laughed.

Karpis pointed to himself with a thumb. “My face-lift and glasses and such makes me a good candidate for not being made. And Chock’s friend Sullivan doesn’t have a famous puss like some of the rest of us; he’ll be the other cop, the one in back. I’ll be in a nice suit and look like a state attorney’s assistant. And then the three of us’ll give J. Edgar a ride.”