“It doesn’t make sense to me either,” confessed Les. “But I know they got long-term thinkers, and soldiers like you and me can’t figure on their level.”
Tony had to admit that was true.
“So you want me to look around, see what I can nose out?”
“Not quick enough. No, I want to plug this up now, fast, and get back to business.”
“Don’t go to war. These old Eye-ties can have a hundred guns on the street in an hour, all of ’em looking for you. They’d go hard, and full-time, on you. I’d hate to see that.”
“Wouldn’t think of it. But if there was one guy putting all this together and someone were to rub him out, who would know? Nobody would put it together. They’d think it was some old feud. You guys are famous for your feuds, and they get settled in every alley in Chicago six nights a week.”
“It’s true. Maybe it’ll change, but it’s true.”
“So here’s my plan. I’m guessing Mr. Nitto would give this to someone high up. Someone who could make phone calls and get answers. He’d have a rank or something. I know you got ranks, divisions, sort of like the army.”
“It’s all in Italian, so you wouldn’t understand. But there are four ‘underbosses’ that basically run each quarter of the city and report only to Mr. Nitto.”
“That’s what I figured. So I figure it’s one of them. They’re the only ones with the power to get the answers. He’s snitching to the Division each time he’s able to put two and two together from reports that a certain guy will be at a certain place, like Wolf Road, or the Biograph, or a street corner in St. Paul.”
“How do you find the right guy?”
“Here’s how. You go, one at a time, to each guy. You say to him, or to one of his guys, real casual-like, ‘Say, Louie’—or whatever his name is—‘Say, Louie, I got a call last night from my old pal Les—you know, Baby Face Nelson.’ ‘Yeah?’ says Louie. ‘Yeah,’ you say. ‘He’s back in town, hanging out in Morton Grove at a motel called The Star. He’s trying to put together a big job. Thought I ought to share with you.’ ‘Good man,’ says Louie.”
“Okay,” said Tony.
“So, we go to The Star Motel in Morton Grove, or whatever. If the Division jumps us, we know it’s Louie. If they doesn’t, we know it’s not.”
“Les, I hate to say it, but that’s a crazy plan. If the Division hits you, you’re probably going to be dead.”
“Nah. For two reasons. First, I’ve upped our firepower. I’ve got a Monitor, real handy in the backseat, plus it’ll cut right through the Division cars. They only have one guy who can shoot, far as I can tell. He’ll be there, but I know him, and if I put a pill through him, they’ll break and run, and that’s my plan. Plus, second, we’re waiting for them. If we can, we’ll cut and run, but, if not, we’ll go to the Monitor and leave their heaps smoking in the road.”
Tony regarded him with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. “Man, you got balls. I never heard of anyone with balls like that.”
“I just want to nail the guy who got Johnny and Homer. And even dumb-bunny Charlie. If I get that Division gunslinger in the process, so much the better. This is the only way I can figure out how to do it.”
But Tony couldn’t get over it.
“You got the biggest set in the world. You make Capone look like a little purple nancy!”
48
McLEAN, VIRGINIA
The present
HIS IPHONE RANG. It rarely did. He hated it, and seemed only to get bad news out of it, and kept trying to lose it, but people kept bringing it back to him. He almost never gave out the number, and those few to whom he did knew better than to call frivolously, if at all, unless absolutely necessary, by which he meant an announcement that the world was ending.
He looked at it, saw a Texas area code in the number box, followed by integers of a certain familiarity, and then recalled he had given the number to Bill Lebman, Hyman Lebman’s very helpful dentist grandson in San Antonio.
“Swagger . . . Hello, Bill.”
“Mr. Swagger.”
“That’s Bob, Bill.”
“Thank you. Bob, your visit sort of haunted me, and I was sorry I couldn’t do more. And you do remember that I said Grandpa was worried about Treasury agents because of the National Firearms Act and so he started keeping very careful records?”
“I do.”
“Well, I didn’t know the half of it. The way this happened, I remembered an old bookcase of Grandpa’s and that we’d dumped all the books in it in a box, and I thought maybe . . . Well, I finally found the box.”
Swagger was interested.
“Please, go on.”
“At first, nothing. But one of the books, still in its dust jacket, was something called The Postman Always Rings Twice. Crime thing, about a cook and a wife who kill her husband and almost get away with it. Anyhow, it didn’t seem like his kind of thing. He didn’t read novels, especially murder novels, he was more into history and stuff. So I opened it and it wasn’t the novel at all. He’d just wrapped the dust jacket around it as a security measure. It was his journal.”
“Did you find anything?”
“I think so. It’s too much to tell, let me fax you the relevant pages.”
“Please do.”
“I need a fax number.”
Bob grabbed the hotel guidebook, found the number.
“It’ll be a few minutes,” said Bill.
“You’re the best, Bill. Really, above and beyond.”
“My pleasure,” said Bill. “Hope this helps.”
—
DECEMBER 22, 1934: A CURIOUS ENCOUNTER
He came in late. Mackinaw jacket (it was in the 40s outside), fedora, work pants, and boots. Tall, thin, gaunt. Odd thing, he had a bandage on his right ear, or on the top half of it. Hard eyes, sunken cheeks, wary, cautious. I know the type, man hunters, I’ve seen enough of them. Not cops, but the kind of cops that specialize in hunting men.
He waited for the last customer to slip out, then moseyed over.
“Sir,” he said, “have you got a few minutes to entertain a proposition?”
“I do,” I said. “But times are hard, and I’m not buying much.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out what I recognized to be the compensator of a Colt Monitor, just like the one, maybe the one, I’d sold a couple months earlier to Jimmie Smith.
“You should recognize this,” he said.
“May I ask where you got it? Last I saw, it was attached to a rifle I sold to a young gentleman from West Texas.”
“It’s legit, at least in that no one else claims ownership. I came by it in ways I’d prefer to keep to myself, if it’s all the same to you.”
“I’m known as a fellow who can keep his mouth shut.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. I just use it to establish bona fides. It so happens, again by ways I’d prefer to keep to myself, I have access to a rather unusual cache of weapons. Some are full-automatic—”
“See, right there, that’s trouble. Before June, no problem. But there’s this new law on the books, and right now it’s against the law to even possess such a gun without a federal tax stamp. Do you have the tax stamp?”
“No sir.”
“I was you, I’d take these guns to a bridge over a big, deep river at midnight or later and one by one dump ’em in, and think no more of it. That’s the safe way.”
“I can’t do that. Good men fought bad men with these guns, and death was involved on both sides. Can’t just toss ’em. It wouldn’t be right. I know you have connections with law enforcement people here in Texas. I’m sure there’s plenty of small departments who’d like a weapons upgrade for these dangerous times but can’t afford it. It seems to me you could see these guns channeled, one at a time, to such departments. I’d like to know that they could save a law
agent’s life sometime down the road.”
“It’s a tall order,” I said. “The new law is federal, and headquarters people don’t care much for the locals and for local ways of doing things. If they stick their nose under the tent, it’s hell to pay to drive them out.”
“You’d make money; it’s not charity I’m after. You’d do swell, I guarantee it. I’m not on the far side of the law, by the way, I’ve broken no laws. These came to me via an honorable means, and at present nobody’s looking for them or has even thought of them. So they’re pretty clean.”
I wanted to help him. His intentions certainly seemed good, and he wasn’t out to make the big money. But the new law was unsettling. No one had yet figured if it was going to be the start of a crusade or one of those things nobody bothered to pay attention to. Or, worse, first one, then the other. And I didn’t want to end up in Alcatraz.
“You’ll have to tell me what they are, sir. I can’t do anything more to it without that knowledge. I also have to convince myself you’re not a Treasury officer yourself, and this isn’t a way of bringing Mr. Lebman down. I know those boys are interested in me. I have friends in law enforcement and they have told me.”
“Believe me, I am not connected in any way with the federal government.”
“Were you?”
“Again, it would be my business. I don’t think you’ll find any record of me or files anywhere. I’m not on any wanted list, as I said. To them, it’s as if I don’t exist. And, at least right now, they’re not looking for these guns. They’ve got other fish to fry and probably won’t settle down and pay attention to them for some years, if at all.”
He wasn’t exactly drunk, but I could smell the rye on his breath, and his overly precise diction was that of a fellow concentrating hard on avoiding slurring.
“Well, tell me, then, what exactly are you talking about?”
“It would be two Thompson guns, drums, mags. There’s a Super .38 and a couple .45 autos. One of the .45 autos is a newer C model, and has been worked on, so that it’s ready for fast fire out of the holster. It’s a fine gun and served its owner well. Then, there’s a Remington riot gun, their Model 11, semi. Finally—and I guess this is the one that’d turn heads—there’s the Colt Monitor.”
It was news I didn’t want. I’m pretty sure who Jimmie Smith was and unsure how to feel about the fact that I’d sold him so many weapons over the years. I knew it was a big vulnerability and could bring me down, and my family as well. It was an extremely awkward piece of business that I did not want anywhere near my life.
“I suppose, then, I can guess where you got them, if I’ve read the newspapers in the last month.”
“Sir, I just want these guns passed on AND placed where they’ll do some good. I also don’t want to get nabbed with them myself. It would complicate things a bit. I’m not in this for the money. In fact, I have a crisp, new thousand-dollar bill right here I’ll happily give you. Let it be an advance on any expenses you yourself incur in trying to place the guns well. When that’s done, you figure out how you want to handle it financially and that’ll be fine by me.”
Of course then I knew exactly where the guns had come from. The thousand he offered me was part of the same stack of bills that now rested in my account across the border, with which Jimmie Smith had paid for his Monitor.
“You make it hard to say no, but I have no choice in the matter. You deserve credit for trying to do the right thing, but who knows how the federals would act if they got whiff of such a thing. Do you see?”
He nodded.
“My best advice, now that I understand that destroying them would be a sacrilege: wrap them carefully—I’ll give you the makings of a very long-lasting Cosmoline solution—and bury them. Disguise the site well so that nobody bumbles onto them. In that condition, they can last almost indefinitely. And then . . . wait. That’s all. Let the years pass, pay attention to the situation. Maybe a decade or so down the road, times will be different. Maybe there’ll be an amnesty on these National Firearms weapons, maybe your own disposition vis-à-vis your employers will be adjusted and whatever happened to drive you away will be forgotten and their return can be effected. In the meantime, nobody’s using them on banks, small-town cops, strikers, postal carriers, what have you.”
“I suppose that’s my only recourse.”
“Here, I’ll assemble a package for you. No charge. My pleasure to help keep the guns now and saved for sometime in the future when they and the men who fought with them can be properly acknowledged.”
“Thank you, sir.”
So I hustled downstairs, quickly grabbed the Cosmoline components, gathered them in a cardboard box, and returned. I gave him some instructions about preparation and he seemed fine with it. And though he was shabby, by the gravity of his carriage and the maturity of his remarks, I believed him to be a capable man, rye on the breath or no rye.
“Thank you again,” he said, and shook my hand.
“I wish you luck,” I said.
“I guess I’ll stick ’em in the ground near my hunting shack. Ain’t nobody going to find them out there,” he said.
49
ON STAKEOUT
CHICAGO
Mid-November 1934
THE THOMPSON RESTED heavily on Charles’s lap, an awkward fit because the curve of the drum pitched it at an angle so that sight wings and bolt dug in his legs. Ahead of him, he saw dark streets, an El station that looked like a fortification against the invading Hun, a lot of blinking Schlitz and Hamm’s signs in white, red, and blue from the windows of the still-open bars along Grand Street. This one wasn’t The Yellow Parrot; it was The Red Bird, avian monikers being fashionable among the Windy City’s barkeeps.
Baby Face, or so the rumor now went, was said to hang out there. Thus, Sam and Charles, as well as at least twenty Division agents in other cars, all with heavy weapons, sat along the street in anticipation. But, so far, no one had entered or left the place who looked remotely like the gunman, and the two agents inside at the bar hadn’t moseyed out to signal his arrival by means other than the street. It was nearly 4.
“I doubt he’d come this late,” said Sam. “He’s probably all snuggled up to Helen’s bosom about now.”
“When he ain’t killing folks, he’s a real homebody, ain’t he?” said Charles.
“You never thought he’d show, did you, Charles?”
No, Charles did not. The tip hadn’t come from Uncle Phil, so it seemed unlikely to be true. But that was the sort of objection that could not be raised, and so the whole parade was organized, rehearsed, and eventually lumbered into place, for what Charles knew would be a feckless evening.
“I guess I didn’t,” he said.
“Your mysterious ‘cop’ friend from Arkansas, he didn’t confirm, right?”
“It ain’t set up so I can call him. He calls me when he has something. It’s awkward, but it’s for his safety.”
“Charles, as your friend, I’m here to tell you there are many in the office and in Washington who don’t believe your story of the cop in the Chicago Gang Squad giving you info that the squad isn’t going to act on, for various reasons. First off, they aren’t that good. Second of all, we did check, and no one on that squad has an Arkansas background.”
“I may have blurred a few details,” said Charles, “to protect both him and us. I thought it was my call. The info’s been good so far.”
“Good? It’s been great!”
“You want me to stop?”
“God, no. We’re addicted to it. But can you brief me, just so I know where we stand. Off the record, which is why I chose now to bring it up.”
“Sure,” said Charles. He told it quickly: how the judge reached out to him, saying how he knew the boys sometimes needed to place certain info; how that had led to Uncle Phil: how Phil called him when he had hard information.
“Okay,” said Sam, “I think maybe you should write all that down, give it to me in a sealed envelope. I’ll sign it, have it notarized, and put it in my office safe. I don’t think anything will come of it, but I just don’t know how it’s going to play out. That is, unless Baby Face Nelson walks out of The Red Bird this second with his hands up.”
“Helen would never let him do that,” said Charles.
“You’re probably right,” said Sam.
“Now, since we’re talking man up, out of the office, and this subject is here, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“I’ll try to answer. Man up.”
“See, to me it seems like it’s foolish of the Italians to rat out the bank boys. The bank boys are getting all the attention, nobody’s doing much to the Italians. It seems like they’d encourage them, especially since they’re not stealing from the Italians. Baby Face is too smart for that.”
“Here’s my thought. They do see long-term, that’s their strength. Not next month, next year, even next decade. They know they’ll be here for keeps. So here’s what they’re doing. Their real target is us. The Division. They’re fighting us, not the bank robbers. They’re only using the bank robbers to get at us.”
Charles said, “I don’t get it. The bank robbers ain’t bringing us down. They’re making us better.”
“That’s it right there. Look at it from their point of view. The Director, who is a political genius, among his many remarkable attributes, is using the ‘crisis’ of the bank robbers to nurture the Division. Look at how we’ve changed in the past eighteen months: we’ve gone from a gaggle of career idiots, like Clegg, and inexperienced kids, like Ed Hollis, to a solid organization. We’ve acquired a reputation; we’ve acquired hundreds of snitches; we’ve learned tactics, techniques, skills, tricks. We’ve gotten powerful weapons like the Thompson in your lap. We’ve found a cadre of brave men who can shoot it out with anybody on the planet and win. Our scientific apparatus is the world’s best, and getting better. We’ve captured the public imagination and now they’re making movies about us, radio shows, and writing books and magazine stories. Boys used to want to be John Dillinger, now they want to be you, though they don’t know who you are so they want to be Mel Purvis. They want to be G-Men.”
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