True Crime (34 page)

We were gathered much as the night before, in the same smoky room, only now sun was filtering through the sheer curtains, dust motes floating, as Doc Barker said, “Ever hear of a guy named Nate Heller?”

He was sitting right next to me when he said it; I felt myself starting to shake. The gun was under my arm, but my hand was on my knee, a world away.

They’d been talking about the possibility of the feds marking the bills. It had happened in the Bremer snatch, and the dough had been so hot no fence wanted to touch it at first, though they finally sold most of it at a ten percent discount. Karpis said in this case they’d insist on used, non-consecutive bills, and set up for a fast ransom exchange—too fast, Karpis hoped, for the feds to get serial numbers recorded.

Floyd had suggested they sit on the money awhile, but float a few bills out just to see what happened. Karpis suggested the way to do that was remove some bills from Hoover’s wallet and substitute ransom money.

“If the bills are hot,” Karpis had said, “then Hoover’ll be the first to pass ’em. The papers’ll report the bills turning up, in whatever city he passes ’em in—Washington, D.C., most likely—and we’ll know right away if we need to fence the cash.”

Nelson said, “Anybody know a good hot-money fence? I hear Doc Moran’s gone out of business.”

A few smiles greeted this slice of gallows humor, and then Doc Barker made his remark about Nate Heller.

I glanced across the room at Dillinger, playing Sullivan, in fedora and dark glasses; below the mustache there seemed to be a trace of a smile.

“Yeah, I know him,” Karpis said. “He runs the Parkview Hotel in Havana. That’s a good thought. Heller’s a good prospect for moving the cash, if it turns out the feds marked it.”

I let some air out, and Doc glanced at me. “You okay, Lawrence? You sound like some old geezer gaspin’ his last.”

I managed a grin. “You should’ve seen me before I gave up smokin’,” I said.

He smiled briefly, and with his sunken cheeks it was like a skull smiling; then he turned his attention back to Karpis, who was asking for the group’s permission to sit on the money till they’d determined whether the feds had marked it or not; and, if so, to go ahead and fence the dough before the split. There was a general agreement on the subject.

After the final briefing, we drifted outside. Dillinger, or Sullivan—take your pick—strolled up to me, unable to suppress his wry smile. He glanced around to see if anybody was within earshot, and then quietly said, “You went white as a ghost in there, pal. What’s wrong—d’you think you were the only Nate Heller in the world?”

“I guess if there can be two of you, there can be two of me.”

He shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”

We were about an hour from Chicago. Karpis, Floyd and “Sullivan” left around two o’clock in one car; at three, Nelson, Chase, and the Barker brothers took off in another. I was to leave at four, driving Ma in the Auburn, followed by the Ford sedan, driven by Dolores, with Louise and Paula and Nelson’s wife Helen riding.

Not long after the Nelson car had taken off, I found myself back in the puce-papered room, in bed with Louise. There were worse ways to kill an hour, but she was starting to wear me down. I don’t mean to make like she was a real hot tomato or something, a regular sex fiend—no. She seemed to enjoy the act, all right, only she liked the attention, more. She liked being held. She liked being close to me. And I liked being close to her.

Maybe having been with a woman as strong as Sally made me appreciate this more dependent girl. I liked being looked up to; leaned on. The role of protector was attractive to me, just as attractive as her big brown eyes and blond bobbed hair and pale skin and…

And now and then it occurred to me how short a time I’d known her. That in those two days or so, I’d had her half a dozen times. I felt funny about it, though I didn’t quite know why—I just knew it was more than some kind of guilt over sleeping with my client’s daughter.

Now we lay between the sheets, naked, my arm around her. She had her head nestled in the crook of my arm, cheek against my chest, a pink-nailed hand against my chest as well, playing with the hair there.

“How’d you like to be free of all this?” I asked her.

She cocked her head and the brown eyes blinked. “Free of all what?”

“This. This life—on the road. On the run. Living with crooks, Louise.”

She smiled, put her head back on my chest. “You’re no crook to me. You’re just my Gentleman Jim….”

“Remember what we talked about yesterday? The big city, and you finding a job?”

“Y—yes. But that was just talk.”

“It wasn’t just talk. You know, there’s nothing binding you to this life, anymore.”

“But I been with Candy ever since—”

“Candy’s dead.”

She still had her head against my chest, as if listening to my heart. “But I’m with you, now—aren’t I?”

“Right now you are, yes. But I’m not Candy Walker. I’m not an outlaw.”

“You aren’t?”

“No. I don’t live in tourist cabins and farmhouses and the back seats of cars. I live in Chicago, Louise.”

“That doesn’t make you not an outlaw.”

She had me there.

“Well,” I said, “I’m not.”

“What are you, then? A gangster?”

She’d apparently heard of Chicago.

“No. Louise, listen to what I’m saying. I’m saying I can help you go straight.”

She lifted her head again; the brown eyes narrowed—I’d hurt her feelings. “I’m not a criminal. I may’ve sinned, but I’m not a criminal.”

“I know you aren’t. But wouldn’t you like to have a fresh start? In Chicago, maybe?”

“Sure. But you make it sound so…easy.”

“It is easy. Besides, I’ll be there to help you.”

She lifted her head to smile at me, pursing the beestung lips. “Good, ’cause I’d need help.”

“Of course, the first thing I think you should do is go home.”

The smile faded. “Home?”

“To see your father.”

“Oh. Oh, I don’t know about that…”

“You ought to set things straight with him. You owe him that much. And you owe it to yourself.”

“I wouldn’t want to see him alone.”

“Who says you’d be alone?”

“You’d go with me?”

“Sure. Right there by your side.”

“Then I’ll think about it,” she said. Snuggling closer.

I was helping her; I knew I was helping her. But I still felt like a dyed-in-the-wool bastard. For all my soft soap about setting things straight with her father, I knew damn well she’d do just fine never seeing the old boy again; I just wanted to deliver her and collect that thousand bucks.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell her the truth—but what if I did, only to have her take a powder? That would be that grand her father promised me, you’d see going out the door with her.

And/or she might spill to Ma Barker and Helen Nelson and the rest of the mamas, some of whom were pistol-packing, and that wouldn’t fit in with my plans.

So at four I was on the road with Ma Barker, one last time, for one final round of Burma Shave readings, hymn humming and the eternal quest to find hillbilly music on the Auburn’s radio.

Ma, with a freshly curled head of Shirley Temple hair, interrupted those three favorite pastimes of hers now and again for some actual conversation.

“Big responsibility,” she said, kidding me, “havin’ a whole houseful of women to look after….”

“I figure they can look after me, Ma,” I said, smiling at her.

She smiled back, that oddly attractive smile that found its occasional way out of her homely countenance, saying, “You’re gonna treat that little gal right, aren’t you?”

“Lulu, you mean? Sure.”

“Got a good little gal, there. Don’t let ’er get away.”

“I’ll try not, Ma.”

But conversation was the exception not the rule, as most of the time she devoted herself to her usual interests, and I was grateful. Because my mind was going faster than the Auburn. Racing ahead to things I had to do…

I parked the Auburn in an open space in front of the big brick three-story on Pine Grove, where the real Jimmy Lawrence once lived. Shortly after, Dolores pulled in half a block down. I glanced at my watch: five-fifteen. The Hoover pickup was set for ten till seven. Plenty of time.

I carried the girls’ bags in for them, and they all pitched in (except for Ma, of course) and it was around five-thirty when everybody’s things had been deposited in an appropriate bedroom.

The last of these was one Ma showed Louise and me into, a small room decorated in shades of blue; there was a double bed with a baby-blue spread. Sounds romantic, but there was also a picture of Jesus over a doily-strewn dresser.

“You kids can bunk in here,” she said.

Louise said, “Thanks, Ma—you’re a saint.”

I thanked Ma, too; I couldn’t quite go the rest of the way, Jesus picture or not.

Ma said, “Jimmy, I know you’re supposed to stick by us, ’specially this afternoon…but I need some things.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Come with me.”

I followed her, Louise in tow.

We ended up in a big white modern kitchen. Ma opened the Frigidaire for me to see mostly empty shelves.

Ma spread her arms like an angel its wings. “What am I going to cook for supper, if you don’t go to the store for me?”

What, indeed.

“If you make me out a list, Ma,” I said, “I’ll go shopping before the stores close.”

She sat and scribbled a list.

I’d been planning to make my own excuse to leave, saying I needed to go to my apartment to pick up a few things for the duration of my stay; but she was saving me the trouble. Karpis had asked that I stay close to the phone all afternoon and evening, just in case the need for some sort of backup developed. But now I had Ma, who this very moment was handing me her grocery list, to cover for me.

“Come on, Louise,” I said, holding my arm out to her, “keep me company.”

“Sure,” she said, taking the arm.

Ma wasn’t sure about that. “Now, Alvin and Arthur said the girls was to stay around home, today.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but you wouldn’t want to send a man to the store
alone
, would you?”

That she gave some serious thought.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’ll get my hat and go with you, m’self.”

“I’ll take Louise,” I insisted. “You can’t leave here. If Alvin or Doc, uh, Arthur should call, they won’t want to talk to one of these silly girls. They’ll want to talk you, Ma.”

She nodded sagely.

Then she smiled her oddly nice smile and made two limp wrists and brushed the air with them, saying, “Shoo, then, you two, shoo!”

We walked through the living room on our way out. Paula was lounging on the green mohair sofa in Ma’s generous living room, ever-present drink in hand. She smiled and winked and lifted her glass in a one-sided toast, saying, “Ya make a damn cute couple, you two,” smug in her matchmaking abilities. Nearby, Helen Nelson seemed melancholy, sitting by a window, obviously worrying about her husband. Dolores was in her room, unpacking her things. Ma, with nothing to do in the kitchen, sat back down to her unfinished puzzle of the country church.

That was where I came in.

And soon Louise and I were in the Auburn, heading for the Loop.

“Just what store are you going to, anyway?” Louise asked, after a while.

We were tooling up Lake Shore Drive, the Gold Coast whizzing by on our right, the lake shimmering at our left. Up ahead the Drake stared me down, like a stern scolding face; sorry, Helen.

“No store,” I said.

“No store?”

“I’m just getting you away from that place.”

“You are?”

“I am.”

“But I—I left all my things back there! My clothes…my brush…my scrapbook…”

I looked at her. “You’re leaving everything behind, Louise. Understand? Everything.”

She didn’t understand, but she didn’t say anything.

It was almost six when I pulled the Auburn in the alley behind my building and squeezed it in the recessed space next to my Chevy coupe where Barney’s Hupmobile sometimes was but right now wasn’t. I took her by the hand like a child and moved right along and she had to work to keep up. Past the deli on the corner, the El a looming reminder we were back in the city, to the door between Barney’s Cocktail Lounge and the pawnshop, and up the stairs, four flights, her feet echoing mine as she followed me up.

I unlocked the office door.

“But this is a detective’s office,” she said, looking at the lettering on the door’s frosted glass.

“That’s right.”

I shut the door behind her. She stood clutching her purse to her, looking around.

“Isn’t that a Murphy bed?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. Back behind the desk, pulling the phone book out of a drawer.

“Gee. I saw furniture like this at the world’s fair.”

“Everybody did,” I said, looking for the number.

“Whose place is this?”

“A friend,” I said, dialing.

“Wonder if he needs a secretary.”

“Who knows,” I said, getting a busy signal.

I sat behind the desk. Yanked the window-glass wire-frames off and flung ’em in a drawer. So, the line was busy over at the Banker’s Building. It was just five after six. The pickup wasn’t to be made till six-fifty. Plenty of time.

She sat across from me in the chair her father had sat in not long ago.

“Why are we here?” she asked. Her eyes wide and brown and confused.

“It’s a safe place,” I said. Drumming my fingers on my desk.

“What about Ma, and Paula and everybody?”

“They’re in the past, sugar.”

“The past.”

“That’s right. And you’re leaving the past behind you, understand?”

“No. Not really…”

“Do you know what’s happening today? What’s set to happen in about forty-five minutes?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“A kidnapping. Do you want to be part of that?”

“No,” she said. But she didn’t seem sure, as if I was posing some abstract problem that went way over her head.

“Forget Ma and Paula and all of them. Got it?”

“Why?”

“Because those people are going to be in trouble. You don’t want to be in trouble, do you?”