by Guy Bolton
Michael dipped a finger into the water. Hot, but not too hot. He slipped off his pajamas and climbed into the tub.
When he was a little younger he’d never really understood that his mother was an actress. She went away every few months, came home a little late some nights but she was always there to give him a bath and tuck him into bed. Usually she’d read him stories from the Bible, occasionally other books. He’d fall asleep thinking of King Arthur or of Cain and Abel, of Isaac, of Jonah and the great whale.
His mother hadn’t read to him that final night. She said she would come and say good night but he’d fallen asleep before she’d had the chance. She died, and he couldn’t stop thinking that she’d never said goodbye.
He shifted in the tub and his skin squeaked against the sides. Thinking of her now, Michael held his breath and sank, leaving his hands floating on the surface.
He couldn’t remember the last thing she’d said to him but he wished he could. He was sure that somewhere, hidden in those words, was the answer to everything. Then the thought crossed his mind: what would happen if he didn’t emerge? What would happen if he stayed here, resting at the bottom of the tub? Would he find himself closer to her?
Michael lay perfectly still. He watched the bubbles rise from his neck then closed his eyes. He felt a great pain in his chest but pushed the thoughts away. He allowed his mind to drift like a branch on the ocean. He pictured his mother’s smiling face. His body receded deeper into the water, his mind floating high above. His breathing slowed. He felt calm. He wasn’t going to die; he was simply going to another place. Like walking through a door into an unseen room.
Dr. Felton turned a corner onto the surgical ward. He held a clipboard up against his chest, his other arm twisted behind his back so no one could see his hands shaking.
Three F.B.I. agents spilled out of the elevator. Felton turned to stare at a bulletin board to avoid making eye contact. He was wearing a surgical mask but he didn’t want to risk anyone recognizing him if questions were asked. And they were bound to be asked.
In his periphery, he could see the agents turn toward the nurse’s station. He waited until they were out of sight then continued onward down the hall with his eyes down.
Two policemen stood outside the patient’s door talking quietly between themselves. They straightened as he approached and looked at him suspiciously.
Felton held up his clipboard. “Post-op checks.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then the two men stepped aside.
He closed the door behind him when he entered but there was no lock; he’d never noticed that before.
The patient lay still on a bed near the window. Two tubes ran into his arms, another into his nose. The lights were dimmed but he could see his eyes were closed. He was probably still unconscious.
“Mr. Gibson,” he said softly, approaching the bed.
No reply. He clicked his fingers in front of his face, then clapped his hands. The patient’s eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. Good: verbal and motor responses were low.
Dr. Felton went to the foot of the bed and looked at his charts. The patient had come out of surgery only minutes ago and was categorized as critical but stable. He’d had a single entrance wound three inches below the sternum. There was no exit wound. The bullet was recovered from his chest cavity. Most of the damage to his insides had been successfully repaired but further operations might be required at a later date. Blood pressure was low but heart rate was stable.
The doctor took a syringe from his left coat pocket, a glass vial from his right, then looked over his shoulder to check no one was watching. He nodded redundantly, as if giving himself the all-clear.
Dr. Felton sank the needle into the 200-milligram bottle of liquid morphine. He filled the barrel and quickly thumbed the plunger. A thin squirt shot into the air. Leaning over the patient, he slid the bed sheet down, exposing a large gauze bandage covering most of the breastbone. His fingers searched along the fringes of the bandage until he found a circle of loose flesh above his waistline.
This dose of morphine would cause respiratory depression within the next minute or so. Cardiac arrest would follow shortly after. Death might only take a few minutes more. There was no chance of revival.
The next doctor wouldn’t check on him for at least another half-hour. By then there would be nothing they could do. He doubted they’d even perform an autopsy. Post-op mortality was incredibly high. Fewer than one in five people would survive the night after an operation like his anyway.
Holding his breath, Felton slid the needle into the fat surrounding the stomach muscles and pressed the plunger. He had a watch in his breast pocket and he took it out, his eyes following the long hand as it crawled round the dial. After a minute had passed he put the watch back in his pocket. With his index finger he lifted an eyelid. The pupils were constricting into black pinpoints as the opiates took full effect. He took a penlight from his breast pocket and held it above the man’s face. His eyes didn’t respond to the light.
Felton leaned closer and listened to the sound of his breathing. Shallow and uneven. He listened as the breaths quickly lost their depth until his chest was barely rising.
The end came quickly, barely two minutes after he’d given him the injection. There was a soft rattle in his throat and a final outward rush of air.
It was done. A thousand dollars for five minutes’ work.
The door opened. Felton’s heart rose into his throat. He spun quickly to see a nurse standing with one hand still on the doorknob.
“Dr. Felton?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“We have an ambulance arriving imminently. All doctors are to report to the Emergency Room.”
There was no small talk in the Chevy carrying Carell to the airport. The motorcade drove the back routes, up Franklin Avenue toward the Rowena Reservoir, avoiding all main roads as they made their way toward Grand Central Air Terminal at Glendale. Carell looked back every few minutes, making sure they didn’t have a tail.
He was numb with the speed of recent events. He couldn’t believe how quickly his life had deteriorated. He’d never even had a chance to call his wife and daughter. He hoped the police wouldn’t arrest them. He’d make arrangements as soon as possible to have them moved to a secure location. And then hopefully soon they could come and join him in Chicago, whenever that would be.
The car headlights picked out the sign to the air terminal. Carell began to feel impatient, checking his watch every few seconds. It was nearing midnight. He gripped his wrists with his hands.
“How far are we from the terminal?”
“Another mile, sir.”
His ears pricked up at the sound of a propeller engine. Through the window he could see the taillights of a Ford Trimotor coming in to land. That must be his plane, ready to take off as soon as they arrived. Then, when the roar of the engine subsided, Carell heard a distant whining noise. Another plane? No; he knew exactly what it was. His face bleached of color. It was sirens.
Two hundred feet down the road, three police cars swerved sideways across a small intersection, blocking the way ahead. Doors swung open and faces appeared above the barrier, then long metallic barrels. Shotguns, they were armed with shotguns. It was an ambush.
Carell watched helplessly as the first Chevy hurtled forward at top speed, plowing into the barricade of squad cars, trying to punch a way through.
A row of armed policemen opened up and he saw the car spin out and skid to a stop, glass windows shattering in a bloody haze.
The second car also charged forward, slewing left and right before it ground to a halt. Three of his gunmen came out, shooting down the street toward the squad cars, firing and maneuvering as only ex-soldiers would.
Gibson wound down the window and opened up with his machine gun, shouting obscenities as he riddled the roadblock with automatic fire. Nelson swung right onto a side road but that too was blocked.
More shots rang out and bullet
s starred across the windshield.
Carell yelled, “Go back. Go back!”
Nelson thrust the car into reverse and twisted his head to the rear. Carell watched through the rear window as the car accelerated backward. It was no use: two more police cars blocked their way. He saw a line of plainclothes policemen raising their weapons from behind their cars. They were surrounded.
Carell lunged forward and dipped his head as a ripple of precision gunfire took out the glass in the rear window. He saw Gibson’s head explode across the front windshield. Nelson shouted out in pain as his shoulder was peppered with shotgun spray.
More shots rang out and took out the tires. The car lost traction on the road, skating backward before slamming into a parked truck behind them. Carell was thrown sideways; his head hit the passenger door and warm blood spilled from a small cut on his crown.
“Nelson. Nelson, we have to go.” Nelson didn’t answer. His body had lolled forward; his head was slumped over the steering wheel.
Carell kicked out. “Goddammit, Nelson! God damn you!” Ignoring the pain in his whiplashed neck, he looked around and weighed his options. Through the side window he could see the police slowly approaching from the opposite end of the street. There was an alley leading onto an apartment block twenty feet to his left. It was his only chance; everywhere else was surrounded.
Dazed and injured, Carell opened the door and wriggled out onto the asphalt. He crawled toward the cover of the alleyway. Shattered glass littered the road and tore at his elbows; he dragged himself to the curb and hid beneath a parked car to catch his breath and pull the glass splinters from his arms. Wiping the blood from his face, he lifted his head in time to see two more of his men cut open with shotgun fire. There were panicked shouts; he heard one final burst of machine gun fire echo off the surrounding buildings, then the firing stopped.
A sudden silence followed. Then, through the ringing in his ears, Carell could hear muffled shouts. The detectives had spread across the street, screaming at his five remaining bodyguards. “On the floor,” they kept shouting, “drop your weapons!” He craned his neck to see his surviving men drop their guns and raise their arms, lowering themselves slowly to the floor.
He turned to crawl toward the alleyway when several strong hands grabbed at his feet and dragged him back from his ankles. He looked up to see two plainclothes detectives standing over him, shotguns held squarely in their shoulders.
“Stay exactly where you are,” one of them said.
As Carell lay helpless on his back, the remaining men of the club’s security detail were manhandled to the ground, wrists girded with iron handcuffs and carried away toward a line of unmarked police cars.
He was considering whether to make a suicide run for freedom when he heard a sharp crack followed by a long burst of gunfire. Carell looked up to see Nelson stepping out of the car, opening up on a row of police cars with a Thompson carbine. His shirt was blood-soaked, his teeth bared and eyes black with hatred. He swung round, firing wildly all around him. The first detective holding Carell was hit in the leg, long arcs of arterial blood spurting across the asphalt. The other was hit in the neck. He clutched his throat and fell to the floor gurgling.
Nelson kept on firing, shooting up the police cars, clearing a path ahead. Carell glanced swiftly to his left and right. The policemen were huddled behind their cars, ducking under cover. Nelson was running toward him now, pushing his way forward. He was coming for him; they were going to make it out of here.
Nelson was only a few feet away when three loud shots rang out and his chest ruptured in a fine spray of red mist. He looked at Carell then closed his eyes—a prayer, a sigh of defeat, perhaps—before his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor. Nelson twitched briefly then lay perfectly still.
Carell felt neither regret nor shame for the death of his driver and bodyguard, only mild pangs of irritation. Nelson had failed him. All his men had let him down and each of them deserved to die.
He raised his eyes and focused on a wispy-haired man in a white shirt standing over Nelson with a smoking revolver clasped awkwardly between both hands.
Captain Simms kicked the driver’s gun away and strode over to Carell, his short-barreled Colt aimed directly at his head. He’d never killed anyone before, never once fired his service pistol in all his years as a policeman. A strange feeling surged up in his chest. Pride, maybe. He’d taken one life to save the lives of his men.
“Get up,” he said.
Carell sat upright and propped himself up on the parked car. He shook his head.
“You take me in, they’ll do whatever it takes to shut me up. I’m as good as dead.”
Simms turned around. Redhill was shouting orders at his agents. One of his men from the Bureau was dead, killed by Carell’s men, and the frustration was visible on his face. He wondered how he got that scar.
“We can protect you,” he muttered to Carell, not even certain he wanted to. “The F.B.I. want Frank Nitti, not you.”
Carell shook his head. “I have a wife and kid to think about.” He looked at Simms long and hard, and for a brief second Simms thought he saw a smile forming. He knew then that Carell would never turn witness. As four Bureau agents circled them, Simms realized what he was about to do.
“Don’t—”
But it was too late. Carell looked the armed agents in the eyes, pushed himself up, reached inside his jacket and pulled out his pistol. The end came so fast he never even felt the hail of bullets that swept him off his feet.
Simms’ ears rang, his shoulders sagged. He wiped Carell’s blood off his face with the back of his coat sleeve and looked around, surveying the bloodbath. Four injured officers, two dead; six dead gangsters. All this, for what?
Taking a deep breath, he walked back toward where Redhill was standing. “I want anyone alive put into a car. Get the wounded to hospital. No one else is dying here tonight.”
He looked solemnly back at Carell’s body for a long moment, then, without saying another word, walked slowly back toward his car.
By far the largest of all main passenger stations in Los Angeles, Union Passenger Terminal was a mission moderne to house all of the three major rail companies operating in the West. Tonight the terminal was heaving with throngs of travelers, long lines of people at the ticket counter and crowds of passengers frantically making their way through the platform underpass as they tried to get the last trains out of the city.
Craine made it to Union Station at nine minutes to midnight. He rushed through the ticket concourse, weaving in and out of pedestrians as he tried to find Peterson before he left for Chicago. Unable to see through the crowds, he stepped up onto a wide leather chair and surveyed the room. There were hundreds of people here, blank faces hidden under dark hats and thick coats. Peterson could be anywhere.
Craine elbowed his way through the crowd to the departures board. Four trains departed in the next half-hour, but Peterson should be on the midnight Challenger train from platform two. He had a bare-bones plan of stopping Peterson from leaving, arresting him before he got on the train, but he didn’t know any more than that. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that this wasn’t going to be easy.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he registered a man in a long brown coat darting through the crowd. He turned in time to see Peterson disappear into the underpass leading to the platforms. He couldn’t have been more than fifty yards away.
Craine started to run after him as inconspicuously as he could, treading lightly on the balls of his feet, keeping his balance as his shoes slid on the polished tile flooring. He felt a rush of excitement. He’d found him; he wasn’t too late.
He crossed the concourse only to find himself at the back of another mass of bodies queuing through the long underpass to the ticket barriers at platforms two and three. He’d lost sight of Peterson.
He stood on tiptoes but couldn’t distinguish Peterson through the sea of matching hats. He tried to edge his way slowly forward
but the low-ceilinged tunnel was filling rapidly: a late train from Santa Fe had pulled into the station and disembarking passengers were pouring out from the egress gates at platform three. At the same time, a tightly ranked crowd was pushing against them toward the adjacent platform two, forcing their way through the underpass tunnel, desperate to make it through the barriers and onto the Chicago Challenger. Rich and poor alike were left shuffling forward, waving their tickets, shouting at the barrier guards that they couldn’t miss their train.
Standing at the platform gates were two ticket inspectors and a uniformed officer waving through passengers one by one. Craine knew Simms would have called ahead and instructed the station to check what tickets they could for a sight of Peterson but there was a chance they wouldn’t recognize him or that the message hadn’t got through. With so many people and so little time, Peterson could easily talk his way onto the train.
Now what? Think. He tried to make eye contact with one of the ticket inspectors but they were almost thirty yards away; he was about to call out when he caught sight of two familiar faces up ahead. One of them he’d seen only once or twice before in passing. He worked the door at the Lilac Club. The other was Vincent Kinney.
A moment of flop sweat panic before Craine pulled down his hat and lowered his gaze. Why was Kinney at the station? Carell had sent them here, of course he had. They must be here for the same reason he was. But if they found Peterson before he did, they’d kill him the first opportunity they could.
Raising his eyes quickly, Craine saw the second man take off his hat, pass a hand through thinning hair and look all around him. They were less than twenty feet away, half-way between him and the platform gates leading directly onto platform two. If they moved even slightly in his direction, they’d spot Craine immediately. The man turned back to Kinney and the two men shared a private conversation. He read what he could in their muted gestures: we need to find him, their faces said, we need to find him right now.