“Of course.”
“So please proceed.”
She told the story in her vaguely foreign-shaded language, th’s becoming v’s, vowels elongating, the strange rhythms of Eastern Europe like a gravy over her words. She ran a rooming house, and had done some things in her past that made it clear that she wasn’t the sort to cry to the cops. Various folks in town found that useful, and she became used to extremely virile types overpaying for two nights and disappearing without a trace. It was known as a place where you could go to earth. A few weeks ago, a big slugger had come to rent. Handsome, well-dressed, wonderful personality, catnip to women, lots of cash. She too was attracted, even if he’d quickly taken up with one of her roomers, Polly Hamilton (“Ze noize from ze room. Mattress springs—bonk, bonk, bonk—all night long!”). Finally, she figured out who he had to be, and he read it in her eyes, and they had a friendly chat. He didn’t seem too concerned. He thought he was invulnerable. In fact, they frequently went places as a threesome, the stud and two very attractive gals. Nobody ever really noticed, it was so amazing! It was because he was so relaxed all the time, so happy and outgoing, and people were drawn to him. They’d even gone to the police station a few times!
Sam nodded, taking this in without comment.
But the situation had changed radically last Wednesday: an earlier conviction had finally caught up to her, and a letter from Immigration ordered her deported as an undesirable alien, even proclaiming a date by which she must be gone from the United States, under penalty of arrest and imprisonment. She began to weep.
“I cannot go back. There is nothing there for me, and war will come, mark my words. I have nobody in the world, and what I’ve built here is more than I’ve ever had. I cannot lose.”
“All right,” said Sam evenly, reaching out to put a calming hand on her shoulder, “let’s see what can be done. I can offer no guarantees. But if you figure significantly in the apprehension of John Dillinger, I will write a strong letter on your behalf to the Director of Immigration. Moreover, our Division has considerable influence in Washington and that influence will be deployed to the maximum. I can have a lawyer draw this up as a formal agreement or I can ask you to trust me. I’d prefer the latter, because it’s faster and less complicated, and more confidential.”
“I understand. You seem trustworthy.”
“Excellent.”
“So first I offer you this. He has had surgery to change his face. A man cut him or scraped him, he says he almost died. Polly and I nursed him. He was in bandages for a week and now he’s taken them off, obviously. I have to say, it didn’t do much good. It’s the same Johnny, only now he’s what one would call droopy or melted. But the same face, the same bright eyes, the same crooked smile and hearty laugh. To me, it was a lot of pain and anguish he suffered for nothing.”
“Good to know,” said Sam. “I’ll alert my men.”
There was a pause, as if neither could think of a ploy, Sam not wanting to seem too greedy and forceful, Anna Sage not wanting to give up Johnny without at least some Theater of Regret.
“Mrs. Sage,” Sam finally said, “I think you know where we are. This doesn’t work unless you can put Johnny in our hands.”
“You won’t hurt him?”
“We never shoot first. But . . . these situations can be tricky, tough to handle, even with the most experienced of men. When the guns come out, what happens next is sometimes hard to control. So I will say that it is not our intention to shoot him. I have specific instructions, to that end, from Washington and my Director.”
“I just fear some trigger-happy child with a gun.”
“Mrs. Sage, the agent in the front seat will be the arresting officer. He has much experience in these matters and is noted for his calm disposition. Why don’t you ask him?”
She turned and fixed Charles in her strangely huge and mesmerizing eyes. It was like being seduced by Gloria Swanson.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I will make no promises neither. But I can say that I have no desire, no need, no hunger to kill nobody. I’m too old and salty to give a damn about reputation or fame. I don’t need the ruckus, the attention, the paperwork. I just want to get those cuffs locked, put him in the paddy, and then go out and fall off the wagon for the first time in five years.”
She actually smiled.
“All right,” she said.
The Marbro Theatre. On Halsted. For the air-conditioning and the beauty of the movie palace itself, not the movie, which only the girls wanted to see, Little Miss Marker, with that annoying little tot Charles could not abide. Tomorrow night, probably the 7:30 show. She’d call if it changed.
23
GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS
July 21, 1934
THE JOINT WAS OLD; it was two farmhouses joined together on a nice piece of land just east of Curtiss Field—the roar of the engines arrived with regularity—and it had been a roadhouse for what seemed like centuries, one of those quiet places that nobody notices and yet is somehow always there, a reliable second choice for hooch or food. It had green-shuttered windows, gables, a riot of vegetation curling up its walls, and stood in a grove of trees. In the night, it sent shafts of light into the trees, which pitched shadows of leaves and branches everywhere in a kind of curlicue of light-dark, very pleasant to the eye.
Les got there first, with Fatso and Jack, and chose a dark booth at the back of the bar and settled in. A waitress came by; he ordered a Coca-Cola and the others took Hamm’s on draft. Then Jimmy Murray showed, a legend in the business, who, out of deference, was always called Mr. Murray. He’d put together the biggest train job in history, in Rondout, Illinois, back in ’24 for the Newton Gang. Nobody died, a lot of dough changed hands, and it entered outlaw history as the near-perfect job, if later Jimmy was nabbed for it and did a few years.
They talked shop for a bit, spending time, until Johnny and Homer arrived, Mr. Murray more or less running the show, making sure everything had been arranged according to the specifications of his plan. He also reported on his latest intelligence on the train, due in on Friday, August 10, from Des Moines, the train among all the August trains that would probably carry the most swag, as he had found that, quite often, the smaller federal depositories moved cash only once a month, usually on the second Friday. The damned safe would be busting with cash, and he hoped they had a good guy with the soup, as that stuff was tricky, you didn’t want to get too fancy with it since you could blow up the goods along with the steel, as well as blow your arms off.
“He’s good. Uses it underground, a miner. He knows how it is planted and detonated,” said Jack. “He did a demo for me downstate. He was good enough to blow the hinges off a car trunk without damaging the spare inside.”
Then a shadow fell across the table, and they looked up and saw that it was Johnny, the star himself, almost as if he’d arranged his own backlighting, Hollywood-style; he looked fine, as usual, in a sharp double-breasted, a striped tie pinned tight in a round starchy collar, and a straw boater low over his eyes. He looked more like Gable than a gangster. He’d grown a little mustache, and he had the twinkle in his eye that just drew everybody in.
“Is this the Our Gang comedy cast?” he asked, heartily. “Where’s Spanky?”
That drew a laugh, and he squeezed in, gestured to the barkeep for something on tap, and looked at them all with some benevolence showing on his big face.
“So nice to be together again. The best guys I ever worked with! Les, a pleasure. Helen’s okay, I hope. And the great Mr. Murray, genius and master planner. And you other palookas, soldier boys in our war on the banks. You guys are the best!”
Handshakes and backslaps commenced all around, as with any bunch of men getting together to get lubed up a bit, smoke, and talk business. And if Johnny was the star, he didn’t play it up as much as he could have but was generous in attentions to his fellow pros. But Les, sober, had to s
tart off on a sour note.
“Where is he?”
“Homer?” asked Johnny, struggling to get one of Fatso’s stogies lit off Fatso’s match. “Oh, you know Homer, he comes and goes. He said he’d be here, but no sign of him.”
“That sonovabitch. We need another gun on this job,” said Les.
“Maybe that slug softened his head,” said Johnny. “That was a hard conk. He said he had a headache for a month.”
“Christ!” said Les. “If he isn’t making bum jokes, he’s not showing up.”
“Les,” said Jack, “he was sure there covering for you and Johnny and me when we were getting back to the car at South Bend.”
“The one thing you can count on with that guy,” said Les, “is that you can’t count on a goddamned thing.”
“Les, just relax,” soothed Johnny, big brother of them all. “Maybe he’ll show, maybe he won’t. That’s Homer. He’s still a solid man when the lead is whistling. And anyhow, I’m sure we can run this with five guns instead of six. Don’t you think we can, Mr. Murray?”
Jimmy Murray said, “Well, Johnny, six would be better, but five will work. Depends on how much fuss these Post Office boys care to put up. And I have to say, one less split, let’s not forget that. Drink to one less split!”
He raised his drink, and all came up in unison, even Les’s glass of Coke, if a bit late and without much energy.
“Okay, Les, you’re the boss, brief me on the play and tell me what I’ve got to do to keep my new girlfriend in mink and diamonds, and cover the miserable nags that I have such a gift for picking.”
Les pretty much reiterated the Murray plan, and Mr. Murray chipped in now and then with clarifications or amendments. Even the guys who’d heard it a dozen times ate it up, and Johnny was with it in an instant.
“I’ve never worked nitro before,” he said. “I’m a little shaky there. You guys sure it’s safe?”
“Yeah,” said Jack, “this guy’s a genius with it. The best deal with nitro is, you don’t need a lot. You don’t need wires, batteries, a plunger, that kind of stuff. And you can control it very precisely, which is why it’s so helpful in coal mining. You can kind of chisel a vein out, if you need. You carry it in a box packed with excelsior. Then you put it in locks or hinges, or whatever you’re going to blow, with an eyedropper. A little dab’ll do ya.”
“How does he blow?”
“You just use a regular fused blasting cap. Drop in the soup, cram in the cap—see, I’m talking about a lock here—maybe tape it to the lock. Then just light the fuse, three seconds later the fuse pops the ignition mix—little bang—and that produces enough shock to light the soup—big bang. Very concentrated blast area, cleans out the guts of the lock or blows the hinge free.”
“Just don’t forget to bring the matches,” said Johnny, and everyone laughed.
It was a happy time. The waitress kept bringing brews from Augie, behind the bar, as well as on-the-house plates of onion rings, pork rinds, pickles, little sausages on the ends of toothpicks, even some raw oysters. It was fun being a bank robber if you got to hang out with Johnny D. Maps came out, routes were examined, Fatso updated the group on Carey’s progress with the cars, and the guys had a nice night out, as, in time, the conversation drifted to baseball—Johnny was a big Cubs guy and had been to a batch of games since South Bend. And of course, finally, broads, and everyone gave Johnny the floor, for he had a gift at picking up lookers and going all the way around the track with them. But he was a gentleman about it, not one of these so-then-she-sucked-my-cock guys, and managed to communicate the sophistication of exchange he had achieved with new gal Polly without resorting to Anglo-Saxon.
Then track tips, hot ponies being named; then Mob gossip, what was Nitti up to, who would run the South Side for him now that Alberto Mappa was in the hospital with the gout—some said syph!—and on to where were the rackets going, what was the future of armed robbery in a land where all cops were in instant communication via radio, how big would the Division get, and wasn’t this little punk Purvis a pain in the ass with his yip-yap for the papers every day? Fatso had heard that even the Director was getting sick of it!
Then, close to midnight, the new assignments were set—Jack would find a tourist cabin and a safe joint to stage from, and Fatso would put together a cache of a thousand rounds of .45 for the Thompsons, Les would scout alternative getaway routes, while Mr. Murray would monitor his Rock Island sources for any changes in the schedule, track route, train makeup, whatever. Johnny, the hottest man in America, would just stay put.
Then it was time to go, the tab was paid, and the boys filtered out, sadly giving up the comforting swish of the four-bladed ceiling fans that pushed the Wayfarer Inn’s atmosphere into motion and kept everyone cool, if not quite to air-conditioning standards. They wandered into the parking lot, now empty except for their cars, where shadows of vegetation cut intricate silhouettes into the lights from the gabled windows, the air was tropical thick with humidity and bug life, and a whisper of moon occasionally slithered free of the low clouds. “Stormy Weather” on the radio somewhere. The banshee howl of big-piston jobs turning over at Curtiss arrived and departed regularly.
Les pulled Johnny away, into the shadows.
“Really, Les,” Johnny said, misunderstanding Les’s need for a private tête-à-tête, “don’t worry about Homer. That’s just him, nothing personal. He’s a kind of a flighty guy, and this Conforti gal is teaching him stuff he didn’t know existed.”
“It’s not that, Johnny. Listen, I didn’t want to run this in front of the guys because maybe there’s some stuff you don’t want getting out.”
“Okay, kid, shoot. Out with it. What is it? Tell Father O’Malley.”
“It ain’t nothing like that. Johnny, I’m worried.”
He told him the story of the strange guy showing up on the crest, the marksman who almost nailed him on the button from a hundred fifty out with a .45 auto.
“Good shooting,” Johnny had to admit.
“Yeah, the shooting was terrific. They say the Division is bringing in Western gunfighters—you know, cowboy experts who’ve got notches on their pistolas—to take us on. No more Mickey Mouse lawyers who get scared if they have to shoot and don’t like guns because they’re so loud. Experts, cool hands, old Texas Rangers and cow-town marshals, you know the type. Gun buzzards.”
“Maybe so. As yet, haven’t met a guy who could outdraw or outshoot me. But it’s changing, that I grant you. As this radio stuff spreads, it could be that—”
“It’s not that, Johnny. It’s not how good the guy was; it’s that he was there at all. What, he just shows up? How could that happen? Not a one-in-a-million chance, when the bank has already gone tilt five seconds earlier when the two State cops show. It’s like two double snake eyes, one after the other. It never happens that way.”
“Well . . . of course it can, and I bet it has. The dice don’t know what number is up. They just end up where they end up.”
“That’s what everybody keeps saying. But I say no. Not in this universe anyhow.”
“Okay, what are you getting at?”
“There’s a leak,” said Les.
“What?”
“Somebody’s talking.”
“How would they know? They’ve got nothing to leak. Kid, I’m just an Indiana farm boy, but who could put a picture together on us? We’re all over the place, we’re here, we’re there, we’re everywhere, we’re nowhere.”
“Only one outfit. You know, the Eye-ties and the Jews.”
“I’m not getting it. What the hell do they care?”
“I’ve got some ideas, but figure them later. Just think about it from a feasibility point of view. We sort of live with, and off, the big outfit. They control all the joints we visit, the taverns, the whore cribs, the clubs; even this joint here, they have a piece of it. If someone hi
gh up wanted to put the picture together on us, he could. Wouldn’t be easy, would require lots of calling, lots of figuring, information gathering, and organizing, this, that. Finding out what eyes are seeing and ears are hearing all over the place, then sitting down with all of it and putting it together like a jigsaw. It could be done, if for some reason Nitti wanted it done. He’d have a guy high up, probably his slickest, smartest guy, not a machino guy or an enforcer but a thinker, he’d have him put it together.”
“Just because it’s possible,” said Johnny, thinking it over, “don’t make it probable. It seems like a lot of trouble. What’s the point? We all know it’s going to be finished sooner or later, once they get the radios in all the cars and do away with the state-line or county-line bullshit and make the fast guns illegal. I know the big-score days are ending, just as you do, and, just as you do, I want one big one, one more perfect hit, and then I want to buy land and a house overlooking the Pacific in Tijuana, with you and Helen and the kids on the left and Homer and Mickey, and maybe their kids, on the right. I’ll be with Polly, and when Billie gets clear, I’ll send for her, and she and Polly can work it out, maybe Anna will sort of keep it straight, and everybody will live happily ever after.”
“That’s what I want too, Johnny, except without the Homer-and-Mickey part. But, yeah, Mexico, warm skies, sun, palms, forever. My kids would be so happy there.”
“Then we’ll make it happen. Forget about the Italians. They got other things to worry about, like where the dough’s going to come from now that Prohibition has gone away, and then there’s income taxes, as Capone found out, and which goombah wants to take over which territory and which goombah he has to torpedo in order to do that. They hate each other as much as they hate us, maybe more, and they hate each other more than they even hate the cops, and they don’t give a damn about the Division, which hasn’t even noticed them. It’s not in their interests to conspire against us.”
“Well . . .” said Les. Being a trifle emotional, he couldn’t keep the anguish out of his face.
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