Cockran nodded and she bent over and kissed him on the forehead, her right breast pressing into his left shoulder. “Thanks. You‘ve been swell and I haven‘t.”
42.
Was She Losing Her Touch?
Chicago
Friday, 16 August 1929
7:00 a.m.
Was she losing her touch? Mattie McGary wondered as she sat up in bed, wide-awake at 7:00 a.m., and tossed the covers aside. What did Cockran need? An engraved invitation?
When Mattie was covering the uprisings in the French colonial empire, especially Morocco, she learned French and was struck by the word aventure which could mean either “adventure” or “love affair”. To Mattie, the dual meaning was serendipitous because her field assignments, when she was lucky, had been accompanied by a new love affair on several occasions. But not recently, she reflected with a sigh. The last time was six months ago in Paris where she spent a week in bed with Ted Hudson, a gorgeous blond American MID agent, an old boyfriend with whom she had enjoyed an off-and-on affair, mostly off, since 1924. She hadn’t really wanted to resume the affair but she needed someone to rub in the face of her last lover, an artist and former French Legionaire who had cheated on her. Ted had been happy to oblige. The payback having Andre see her together with Hudson in all their old haunts was delicious, the obligatory sex with Ted less so.
Mattie sighed again. The promise of her summer aventure was melting. Mattie had expected better. After all, Anne Dawson had warned her of Cockran‘s reputation on the Gold Coast and had said it affectionately because she clearly liked Cockran, maybe even loved him a little. But, as a happily married woman, she confessed, she wasn‘t his type. Cockran, she had confided to Mattie, was drawn to unhappily married women, the more attractive and intelligent, the better. Mattie was still single but, at the advanced age of 29, she believed her experience ought to count for something, certainly as much as any young Gold Coast matron. But so far luck had not been with her. And Mattie knew it was better to be lucky than good.
No, things didn‘t look promising with Cockran. And that would make it more difficult to learn what she needed to know. Her people had heard of the Collins‘ journals and wanted her to search his room for them, especially any references to “Thorpe” or “Blackthorn”. But his room had already been ransacked by the time she arrived, having bribed the maid $5 to let her in. The journals were nowhere to be found. She didn‘t like searching his room but it had to be done.
Mattie looked at her wristwatch. 7:30. She had left a wake-up call for eight but her thoughts had brought her mind awake. She got out of bed, walked naked to the bathroom, and turned on the shower. Maybe she would have a better chance with Cockran on the train.
She stepped out of the shower ten minutes later and was toweling herself off when she heard a rapping on the door. Cockran‘s early, she thought, so she started to put on a robe. She stopped. Might she have her chance right now with just a towel? Definitely, she thought, just the towel. She looked in the mirror and held the towel up with one arm across her breasts. Good, she thought, and walked to the door, leaving the chain on and opening it with her left hand to look into the bruised face of Robert Rankin, his left arm in a sling.
“Whoops! Robert! Where‘ve you been? What happened to your face? Hang on, I just stepped out of the shower.” She closed the door, undid the chain and turned the knob. When she reached the safety of the bedroom, she shouted “it‘s okay to come in.”
A moment later, wrapped snugly in a terrycloth robe, she listened to Rankin‘s story. When he finished telling her about the Royal Dublin Hospital volunteer, she smiled. You could add Detective Sergeant Robert Bruce Rankin to the list of those Winston didn‘t tell everything.
“I think we should take the assassination threat seriously, Robert. I‘ll call Winston now.”
“But Miss McGary, the woman was quite emphatic. No telephones.”
“You‘re such a boy scout, Rankin,” Mattie said. “I’ll talk in code. Winston will know what I mean. She placed the call but, in the event, the hotel operator at Churchill‘s hotel in Banff Springs told her that the Churchill party‘s train had left yesterday evening.
“Robert, call Bourke. He‘s in room 943. Tell him to come on over as soon as he can. I‘ve got breakfast coming at 8:30 for the two of us. Call room service for yourself.”
Inside her bedroom, Mattie dropped her robe and began to dress. No seducing Cockran this morning, she thought, but the train to California was still ahead of them. Time would tell.
8:30 a.m.
Cockran was skeptical. “It can‘t be McBride and his men. I know his reputation. He couldn‘t handle a rifle if his life depended on it. It‘s not his style. Shooting old men and women is all he‘s good for. Close range. Back of the head. I also can‘t imagine why the IRA would have a second squad here in America just for Winston. It doesn‘t make sense.”
“It‘s not a chance we can take,” Mattie responded. “We need to warn Winston. It will be difficult to reach him before California as we will be on the train. We can make a phone call at one of the stops, but if he‘s not in his hotel room at Vancouver when we call, we‘ll miss him.”
“A telegram?” asked Cockran.
“Possibly. But we‘ve got to be careful. I think I have a code that could convey an element of danger to him but I could do it much more easily if he could hear my voice.”
Mattie stood up. “I‘ll think about a telegram. Meanwhile, let‘s plan our day.”
“Miss McGary...Mattie,” Rankin said, “I think you and Mr. Cockran should assume you are under surveillance. We should be especially careful in booking our train passages.”
“I don‘t have that much experience evading surveillance. How about you, Bourke?”
Cockran grinned. “I‘ve had training but you couldn‘t tell it from Central Park and yesterday with Nitti. Do you have any pointers for us, Detective Sergeant?”
“Yes,” said Mattie, “how do you propose the three of us getting to California without being noticed?”
As they discussed various methods of deceiving whoever was after them, it quickly became apparent that Rankin had no better ideas. It would do no good to lose any tail at the hotel because Union Station and the Northwestern Terminal would be staked out as well.
“So we won‘t go to the train stations,” said Cockran. “We make them think that but we head in the opposite direction.”
“I don‘t understand,” said Mattie.
“It‘s simple. Rankin here goes down to the Drake‘s concierge. His size makes him unmistakable and the arm in the sling more so. He orders three train tickets, the two of you to San Francisco and me back to New York. They‘ll find out. We know they have inside contacts here at the hotel. Otherwise they couldn‘t have gotten access to our rooms.”
Mattie visibly stiffened at this but managed to ask, “What does that accomplish?”
“It means that once they slip a bribe to the concierge, they‘ll be waiting for us at one of the train stations. But we won‘t be going there. We‘ll be on our way to St. Paul.”
“St. Paul?” Rankin and Mattie said together.
“Yes. Northwest Airlines and the Great Northern have a special arrangement. I saw it in the Tribune yesterday. We can take a flight from Meigs Field this afternoon and catch a train this evening from St. Paul to San Francisco via Spokane, which arrives Monday evening. Rankin can catch a direct train to San Francisco which will get him there earlier.”
“So how will we get these tickets?” asked Mattie.
“I have a friend. Fitzgerald, the commodities trader who got us the bank account information. Once I give him a call, he‘ll arrange for tickets and have them delivered here.”
Mattie was skeptical. “But even if they won‘t be staking out Meigs Field, won‘t we have to lose anyone who tries to follow us from the hotel?”
“Not if it works as I anticipate,” said Cockran. “I should be able to persuade my trader friend to let me borrow his chauffeur f
or an hour and meet us at the Drake‘s service entrance.”
“Well, Mr. Cockran,” said Mattie, “you seem to have thought of everything. Are you sure you haven‘t done this sort of thing before?”
“Not recently,” Cockran said. “But I was in counterintelligence in MID during and after the war. Then in Ireland, I had to evade British agents in setting up some of my interviews. Look, let‘s get to it. Robert, you go downstairs, order the tickets for tomorrow afternoon for all three of us, the two of you to San Francisco and me to New York. Then get some rest. I‘ll arrange the details for the other tickets. We‘ll meet back here at noon.”
9:30 a.m.
Mattie looked both ways and saw no one following her as she entered the Western Union office. She stood at the long table along one side of the office and filled out the yellow telegraph form: H—TRAVEL PLANS CHANGED. STOP. MISSION IN DANGER. STOP. ARRIVE SF 6:25 P.M. MONDAY VIA PORTLAND.—M. She took it over to the counter, paid the cashier, and waited five minutes until the telegram had been sent and she received a confirming copy. She was bothered by the threat to Churchill. That was unexpected. Not what they had anticipated. Not at all. Things were slipping out of control.
Mattie left the Western Union office and headed back to the Drake. The morning was bright and clear and she was enjoying herself as she contemplated the prospect of flying to St. Paul followed by a long train journey with Cockran. She stopped short, however, and did a double take when she passed a diner on the corner where, bold as brass, she saw the hulking figure of Tommy McBride, his ample posterior almost swallowing the shiny red stool on which he rested. He was talking in an animated fashion, between huge forkfuls of food, to a thin-faced man beside him with greasy hair, a receding chin and a long jagged scar on the side of his face.
Mattie was less than a block from the Drake and she hesitated. Should she risk going back to the hotel and alerting Cockran or should she look for a phone booth? Her question was answered when, at that moment, she spotted across the street a familiar bell-shaped emblem, prominently displayed on the outside of a wood and glass structure. Not waiting for the light, she dodged traffic as she crossed the street and entered the phone booth. Her taped ankle was holding up fine. With her back to the diner, she dialed the Drake and asked for Cockran‘s room and didn’t notice the two men swivel on their stools as the big man grinned and gave his scar-faced companion the thumbs up sign.
43.
Halt! Federal Agents! Hands Up!
Chicago
Friday, 17 August 1929
9:30 a.m.
Mattie waited outside the phone booth for Cockran to arrive, careful to keep the structure between her and the diner across the street as McBride and his companion lingered over their coffee. When McBride turned his face to talk to the man beside him, Mattie could see bright red splotches on his face. Good, she thought. She hoped it felt as bad as it looked.
She sighed with relief when, five minutes after her telephone call, Cockran and Sergeant Rankin arrived. She had on a battered canvas baseball cap to hide her red hair. Cockran was intense and focused. He quickly outlined the rudiments of running a three-man surveillance team, two behind the suspects on either side of the street and one of them in front, forming an isosceles triangle. They would switch positions when either man turned so that at least one and usually two of them would keep the two targets in sight.
Mattie had never seen this side of Cockran before and she liked it. The man clearly was obsessed with getting McBride. The three of them dutifully fell into a surveillance triangle when McBride and his companion, a man with a jagged scar on his cheek, emerged from the diner and headed south, Rankin on point and Mattie and Cockran in the trailing positions. McBride and Scarface turned left or right several times as they walked, leading Mattie to believe they knew they were being followed. But the triangle held and Cockran was on the point when the two men turned right and headed down a dark side street. For a brief moment, until Mattie and Rankin reached the intersection, Cockran and the two men were out of their sight.
Mattie was on the near side of the street and Rankin on the far side when they reached the intersection and turned right. Mattie stopped and gasped and turned toward Rankin, a look of fear in her eyes. Cockran and the two men were nowhere to be seen.
Rankin broke into a sprint, wordlessly passing Mattie who ran after him. She saw him reach his right hand inside his jacket where she assumed he kept his service revolver. Mattie started to do the same for her Walther automatic centered in the small of her back but she settled for shifting it to the front when she saw Rankin had not unholstered his weapon.
Mattie could hear the low rumble from the idling engine of a motorcar as they reached the entrance to a narrow alley between two apparently deserted four story warehouses.
“Halt! Federal agents! Hands up!”
Mattie and Rankin stopped and stared at two men in grey suits and dark ties, each holding a gold badge in his left hand and a .38 revolver in his right. McBride and Scarface stood behind them, broad grins on their faces. Cockran was still nowhere in sight.
Mattie and Rankin slowly lifted their hands in the air and one federal agent carefully frisked them and relieved them of their weapons while the other kept his .38 revolver trained on them. Then he cuffed their hands behind them as McBride walked up to Mattie.
“You bitch!” McBride said as he slapped her in the face with the full force of his open palm, the sharp crack echoing in the otherwise silent alley. He caught the other side of her face and twice slapped her again until she could no longer keep back her tears. Her face was on fire but she didn‘t cry out. She wasn‘t going to give him the satisfaction. “You‘re going to pay for this, you bitch,” pointing to his face with his left hand.
“Put them in the car, boys,” McBride said and the two federal agents quickly moved to obey his orders. Pushed into the long motorcar, Mattie was startled to see Cockran slumped on the floor of the back seat, hands behind him, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, quite unconscious. Down at the end of the alley, Mattie could see a warehouse and a long metal door slowly rolling up as the motorcar moved toward it, McBride and his companion on the running board on either side, the two federal agents in the front seat. Once inside the warehouse, they pulled a groggy Cockran from the back seat and McBride slapped his face several times until his eyes opened and he was able to stumble forward under his own power.
All three hostages were lined up with their backs against the brick wall. The two federal agents had drawn their revolvers and McBride‘s companion, Scarface, was holding a Thompson submachine gun with one hand, the barrel pointing down.
This was not going to turn out well, Mattie thought. She flinched as she heard the explosive sound of automatic weapons chewing up the bricks twenty feet in front of her, fragments of brick and stone flying up in the air. She opened her eyes and saw three silhouettes in the open garage door. Her eyes adjusted and she could see the three men more clearly now. The two men on the flanks held Thompson .45 caliber submachine guns, gripping them with both hands, smoke trickling from the barrels. They were wide, olive-skinned men with thick necks, dressed in brown suits, fedoras pulled low. The man in the middle was tall, slender and olive-skinned also. His suit was beige and he was wearing two-tone brown and white wing-tipped oxfords. He was casually holding a pair of beige calfskin gloves in his right hand.
“Hold it right there, boys,” the man in the middle said in a low, menacing tone of voice.
44.
Mr. Capone Is A Peaceful Man
Chicago
Friday, 16 August 1929
11:45 a.m.
The automatic weapons fire had instantly brought Cockran to full alert, adrenalin flowing as he recognized the familiar figure of Frank Nitti. As he regained his senses, Cockran had been mentally kicking himself for walking into McBride‘s trap. He wondered briefly if Mattie had set him up but quickly discarded the thought. No, he had done this all by himself, his mind focused on reveng
e instead of stopping the IRA, an obsession about to get them killed.
“We‘re federal officers and you‘re interfering with an official investigation,” the senior of the two men said. He was balding and his ample belly matched McBride‘s.
“You‘re feds, are you?” Nitti said with a smile. “Let me see some identification.”
Both agents slowly extended both badges to Nitti, who inspected them closely.
“Commerce Department? Since when did they start giving out guns and badges?”
“I can explain,” the balding agent said, but Nitti cut him off.
“I don‘t want your explanations. I can see what‘s going on here. My employer, Mr. Capone, is a peaceful man. He deplores violence and murder in his territory. Mr. Cockran is behaving as instructed. He is attempting to leave town and you are impeding his efforts. As he is under our protection, we cannot have that. My employer was unfairly blamed for what is called ‘the St. Valentine‘s Day Massacre‘ and I fear he would be blamed for what was about to happen here. This is our town and we can‘t have anarchy on the streets now, can we?”
“I don‘t know who you are,” the bald agent “but this is a federal matter.”
Nitti spoke softly. “That is your problem, my friend, not mine.”
“What‘s my problem?” the agent demanded.
“The fact that you don‘t know who I am,” Nitti‘s voice a bare whisper now.
The Commerce Department agent laughed. “I don‘t need to know who you are. Take your two goombahs and get your greasy wop ass out of here. Capisce?”
“Capisco,” Frank Nitti whispered as he pulled a revolver from a shoulder holster inside his coat and, in one fluid motion, swung its barrel up until it touched the balding agent‘s forehead. He pulled the trigger at the same time, blowing out the back of the man‘s head, bone, blood and brain tissue flying into the face of the second federal agent.
The DeValera Deception Page 22