You couldn’t tell. Not a bit. It was just a picture of a mid-’20s American lawman, proud of self and devotion to duty and social rectitude, incorruptible, brave, willing to shoot it out with anybody for the safety of the citizen. It was almost a poster for a movie called I, Lawman that only got made in its country’s mind, and like all symbols, it did not yield its secrets easily.
Part II
7
THE BANKERS BUILDING
CHICAGO
June 1934
HE SQUARED IT WITH THE JUDGE, who agreed it should be kept quiet, as Charles’s absence might lure criminals. He told no one else except his deputies and his secretary where he was going and what he was doing, and them as little as possible. He packed his two suits and six white shirts and one black tie in his one suitcase, along with a pair of Sunday go-to-church brown oxford long wings, a pair of dungarees for rough work, and underwear and handkerchiefs. And his elaborately engraved .45 shoulder holster, though he left his own gun at home. He also took five hundred in cash, in small bills, from a squirrel fund he’d started on his own behalf, unknown to anybody.
His wife drove him to the station, not even in Little Rock but a full day’s drive away, across a flat and bleak landscape littered with broken-down trucks, past sad Hoovervilles rotting in the middle of nowhere, past fallow fields ruined by drought, and parched forests and dry riverbeds. The destination was Central Station in Memphis, where no one would see him by accident.
Bobby Lee had the backseat. He was handsome enough, a towhead, long and lithe at eight, who should have been the leader of the gang. But his hair was always a thorny mess, his mouth full of drool that spilled onto and encrusted his lips, and his tongue never seemed quite right, the way it probed and rolled like a mollusk of its own accord. He couldn’t sit still either, and was always twisted up as if his own limbs were rope, ensnaring him, and he squirmed and bumped against them.
“Da go bye,” he said.
“Yes, Bobby,” said Charles. “For a time, Da go bye. You be good and take care of Mommy.”
“Da go bye,” Bobby said again, for answering wasn’t his forte.
She finally said, “Where will you stay?”
“Well, guess I’ll rent a studio somewhere. One room, foldout bed. Can’t have roommates, my nightmares’d wake them up.”
“You should get help, Charles.”
“Some doctor asking me questions about my secrets? It’s just war things, no way to get rid of them. I’ll just sweat them out. Nobody needs to know my business.”
“You don’t share much with me. You’re so locked up.”
“You knew that. It ain’t like I pulled it on you.”
“I thought you’d soften. But that war just hardened you. You’ll never soften.”
“Da go bye,” said Bobby from the rear, and in the mirror Charles saw that his boy’s nose had leaked a gobbet of snot and, leaving a glistening trail, it had lodged in the corner of his mouth.
He caught Illinois Central 244 to Chicago. It was a rum-dum old thing, its black steam engine a manifesto of industrial purpose, in the colors of grime and grease, spewing cumulus roils of smoke as it went out into the world in general, and its own nine cars in particular, so that no window was clear, the smell of carbon lurked everywhere, and tears came to the eyes. The caravan behind it was all pre–Great War stock, with the smell of must and mold in the cars, to say nothing of sweat, vomit, and blood. A lot of living, and even some dying, had been done in those old cars. At least the government had sprung for a sleeping berth in the Pullman car and he didn’t have to ride sitting up with all the poor Negroes headed north in hope of better times. The meal in the dining car, served by waiters in jackets that may have once been white but were no more, was certainly edible, but well beneath the mythical standard of the fabulous Panama Ltd., one of the most luxurious trains in America, which had regularly run this up from New Orleans route until two years ago, but as the Depression wore on and times got harder, no matter what Mr. Roosevelt promised, the big money went away, and luxury services like gilded vacation trains with it.
—
THE BANKERS BUILDING, 105 West Adams, upon whose nineteenth of forty-one floors nested the Chicago Office of the Justice Department, Division of Investigation, was a brawny structure; its gigantic profile would block the sun for miles if it weren’t for all the other equally brawny structures on the same mission. Charles had seen Chicago and was not impressed, as he had seen London and Paris and Miami and not been impressed either. The size and breadth of the Bankers Building meant nothing to him, nor did its immense stairway design, steps for a giant to reach heaven, all in brick, with friezes of Greek ideals of the foundation of civilization standing ceremonial guard over the glorious, shiny brass and mahogany of the Adams Street entrance.
To Charles, buildings hardly registered, nor did the thousands of Chicagoans who filled the street of the nation’s second-largest city. You couldn’t fathom a Depression here, as the suited-and-hatted citizens ran this way and that, dodging the heavy traffic, wincing at the smell of the thousands of cars, telling themselves to ignore the insane clamor of urban life at its full intensity, while, like circling Indians, the elevated trains roared around them in the circular conceit called the Loop. Charles wasted no time gawking, swallowing, and Wow!-ing. He was too old. He was too salty. He had killed too many men. Besides, there was something that had to be handled. Its name was Melvin Purvis.
“You’ll like Mel,” Cowley had said, after having lassoed Charles into the job. “He is a decent man, an intelligent man, a brave man, and an honorable man.”
“Yes sir. May I ask, what is his problem?”
“He is one of those men cursed by beauty.”
Charles had nodded. As an analyst of human strength and weakness, he knew that the handsome ones could be tricky. It’s something an infantry officer and a cop pick up on fast.
They get used to being the center of attention. They expect things to go their way. They don’t like to take orders, especially from the many less attractive than they are. They move at their own pace. Sometimes they seem not to hear what is said to them. They are very stubborn, not out of commitment to a certain line of logic but to the idea that their beauty confers on them certain divine rights. The moving pictures and the fancy magazines have only exacerbated these problems, for on-screen the handsomest man is always the best, the champion of the show, the lure of all the gals, the hero of all the guys, and your real-life pretty fellow too often comes to assume the same of himself, except he has yet to do a thing to earn that reputation. So problems—little, knotty difficulties, little spats, grudges, pissing contests, garbled communications, slights too slight to mention but annoying to suffer, a sense of self-importance—all make every transaction with the handsome man more bother than it should be.
Charles’s strategy in all things was aggression, which is why he wanted to get himself set up with this handsome man early on, and before even glancing across the crowded squad room that dominated the floor, he went straight to Purvis’s office, told the secretary who he was and hoped the office chief had a few minutes for him.
Or was he the office chief? That was the issue here. The Director sometimes liked things a little blurry so that the after-action reports could be adjusted most favorably, and who exactly was in charge of this group of Division investigators was unclear. Purvis got all the attention and, called the Clark Gable of the outfit, was the face the public knew, for better, for worse. He was learning that with fame went criticism, always. Sam basically ran the place as an investigative entity, and he was a wheeler-dealer, an organizer, an insanely hard worker, with his own line to the Director, and he talked with the august personality many times a day, while Purvis was more or less out of the inner circle.
“And you will do me a favor, if you can,” Sam had said. “To all outward purposes, please treat Mel as if he’s in
charge of the office. The men will become restless if they know there’s confusion at the top. All details should reach me through Mel. I don’t want him feeling bypassed. Is that all right?”
“I think I can handle that,” said Charles. He knew from the army and county politics that organizations were seldom as straightforward in life as they were on paper. You had to play to the real, not the ideal.
“And then there’s Clegg,” Sam had said. He went on to explain that Clegg, another inspector who was supposedly the tactics genius, was technically in charge at Little Bohemia, and if the public didn’t know his name, the men of the Division did. Thus, he took most of the unofficial blame. But he was old Division, actually predated the Director’s appointment, and so no official approbation could be affixed to him. And he was the sort quite happy to pass the blame along and act as if nothing had happened. His career would not be affected. But he had been delicately “adjusted” out of the tactics-and-training job and now was almost purely an administrator.
That left the tactics part of the job open, and Charles had a pretty good idea who’d get it, first because he knew a thing or two about such matters, having led more than fifty raids in the Great War, and also because as an outsider without a constituency he could be easily sacrificed if things got balled up again. He sensed that going in, and had no problem with it, as he planned to let nothing get balled up.
Purvis turned out to be quite a nice fellow—if anything, even softer than Sam Cowley had seemed. As Sam had said, he was remarkably handsome, maybe thirty, with movie-star blond hair smoothed back, as was the Hollywood style, an aquiline profile, and white even teeth. He dressed impeccably, also like a movie star, his shirt starched, his tie, held rigid by collar bar, of the latest foulard plumage in deep red, his suit a three-piece example of top-of-the-line tailoring, glen plaid in the style made fashionable by the Duke of Windsor, everybody’s candidate for best-dressed man in the world, and he put out a handful of manicured fingers and said, “Call me Mel, Sheriff. Glad to have you aboard.”
As he stood and reached, Charles noted another unfortunate reality. Purvis was short. Handsome and short: tricky combination.
“Very pleased to be here, sir.”
“Please sit down. Light up, if you care to. I’m going to have a cigar myself, care for one?”
“No thank you, sir. I’m an old country boy, committed to rolling my own.”
Purvis took out, trimmed, and lit up a stogie as big as a torpedo, enjoying each step in the ritual to full sensual potential, and also using it to forestall his little lecture, as if even now he hadn’t planned on what to say. Charles noted the stall while he rolled a tailor-made to perfection—a small skill God gives those with gifted hands—and lit and enjoyed his own smoke break. He picked a fleck of loose tobacco off his lip, then turned to face his new semi-demi-quasi-partial-who-knew-what boss.
Purvis started with flattery, not realizing Charles was invulnerable to it, even if he appreciated the energy.
“You may be country, but you’re no hick, not if the records are any indication. All those raids in the war. Victory in seven gunfights, including the famous Blue Eye First National affair, you against three city boys, heavily armed, and you polished them off.”
“Luck had something to do with it.”
“Luck and marksmanship and guts, I’d say. Anyhow, right now my name is mud around here—around everywhere, as a matter of fact—because of that mess in Wisconsin. If I believed the rumors, I’d be packed and have my tickets back to South Carolina in my pocket. You know that?”
“I am aware, sir. Don’t know the details.”
“Here are the details. We screwed up. No one is interested in any excuses, they just want results. Clegg screwed up, I screwed up, our people with the guns screwed up. Too much shooting, none of it to any purpose. The wrong people hurt. An agent lost. My standing with the Director is mud too. So if you can nab me Dillinger, not only are you doing your country a great favor, you’re helping Melvin Purvis of Florence, South Carolina, quite a bit too.”
“Yes sir.”
“We want you running a marksmanship-and-tactics class, maybe at the Chicago police firing range, twice a week. That’ll be a tricky sell, but our boys need to learn to shoot. They’re good fellas, smart too, but they joined to be professors of crime, not Western gunfighters. We have to get them up to the level of the men they’ll be fighting, and the truth is, these gangsters seem to be good shots and very bold in action. They should never be taken lightly. They are a formidable opponent. It is said that the one called, however improbably, Baby Face is the best marksman in the country with a Thompson gun, and Homer Van Meter and Red Hamilton aren’t far behind.”
“I will happily run a shooting-and-tactics course. The best tactic is: shoot first.”
“Excellent. Unfortunately, we fired first in Wisconsin and hit three innocent boys and alerted the gangsters.”
“Bad intelligence.”
“I’ll say. Okay, a few rules. First off, no talking to the press boys.”
“Got that.”
“Second, no glory. The Division gets the glory, not the agents, and the Director is the Division. I made a mistake early on and let myself become known. I talk too much, I can’t seem to make myself shut up. That’s why I’m in hot water. But I don’t know how to get out of it, because all the newspaper boys expect me to make a statement, and if I don’t, they’ll think something’s wrong. So the more I do my job, the worse off I am. Don’t make that mistake, Sheriff.”
“I won’t, sir.”
“Coat and tie, trimmed hair, clean-shaved, every day. I don’t need to tell you that.”
“Not a problem.”
“All communications and co-operations with other agencies, federal or local, through this office or Mr. Cowley’s.”
“Yes sir.”
“No shared intelligence with other entities, federal or local, without permission from myself or Cowley.”
“Check.”
“The Director wants his fellows to be clean livers. That means if you’re a drinking man, keep it quiet. If you need to cohabit, keep it quiet. No muss, no fuss. Got a car?”
“After I’m settled, I may bring mine up here.”
“We’ll issue you one until then. Mileage is half a cent per. No per diem unless you’re sent somewhere temporarily or it’s overtime. Incidentally, no overtime per se, not even in the form of a thank-you, and there will be plenty of twenty-four-hour days. Also, I’ll get you a list of Chicago joints where we’d not like to see you, gin joints, clubs, brothels of course, other known gang spots.”
“Yes sir.”
“Certain practices you have to get used to. This is a Mob town. We’re not interested in them, that’s for Treasury. They got Capone, not us. The Director has made Dillinger and the other bank boys our main focus. So you may have to show a blind eye to certain activities you run into that put money in the banks of fellows with Italian names, like Nitti.”
“I can handle that.”
“If you develop snitches, you have to share the intelligence with myself or Special Agent Cowley. We can’t have, and the Director will not abide, lone wolves, glory hounds, solo artists.”
“I understand.”
“Finally, I’d be delighted to see your new training ideas on paper. Can you do that?”
“If you don’t mind a misspelling or two.”
“I can live with that. I’ll have Clegg show you around. He’s tricky, very sour on his situation, but I know you can handle him.”
“Yes sir.”
“You’ll draw a weapon from the arms room. Most of the boys carry a .38 Colt revolver. There are some .45 automatics we got from Postal. Plus, of course, ten Thompson guns, five of the big Browning rifles, and five more of the Remington Model 11 riot guns. As for the handgun, you get to choose.”
“I’m a .
45 fellow. The army taught me how and now I’ve got the taste.”
“Suit yourself. And this.”
He opened his drawer and took out a badge, a chunk of oval bronze, well-worked, dull, and heavy.
“This makes it official. The younger boys like a swearing-in ceremony, but I’m guessing you’re a little grown up for that.”
“I don’t need no ceremony. Pinning it on is ceremony enough.”
Purvis pushed it over, Charles took it up.
“It is a war,” Purvis said. “Young, inexperienced troops against professionals of long standing and great tactics and courage. This is a great opportunity for you, but it’s also very dangerous. You’ll be point man on all engagements, you will get shot at a lot, you will have to shoot to kill, maybe a lot. Any day can be your last, and you won’t have Frank Hamer backing you up but Dink Stover instead, fresh out of Yale.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Mr. Purvis,” said Charles.
—
CLEGG WOULD BE TROUBLE. He wore dark attitude on his face and knew, unofficially at least, that Charles was his successor as tactics boss and he didn’t like it. He was heavyset, out-of-shape, shifty-eyed, well-dressed, and was called, as Charles would soon learn, Troutmouth by the boys, for his small but prehensile and overactive set of lips, always atwitch or aflutter or puckered up in sourness. His whole performance was smile-free, charmless, condescending, and self-important. Charles wouldn’t take this from any man, normally, but first day on the job had its own rules, so he wouldn’t be bracing Troutmouth for some time. But he looked forward to it.
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