True Crime

by Collins, Max Allan

  “How many acres does Gillis have here?”

  “Eighty.”

  “Is that big?”

  “Not really. Not small, though.”

  Birds were singing. I wasn’t used to seeing this much sky; in Chicago, in the Loop, you have to raise your head to see any sky. And the last bird I heard sing in the city was Anna Sage’s parakeet.

  I asked, “Can he make a living at it?”

  “He could if the prices were right. The livestock’ll get that barley. He can’t afford to sell it for what it’s going.”

  “You ought to be able to make a living with land like this. Crops like these.”

  She shrugged, walking ahead of me now. Not holding my hand—leading the way.

  “Mr. Gillis does all right with his sideline,” she said.

  “You mean taking in house guests.”

  She nodded.

  “You ever stay here before?” I asked her.

  She nodded again. “A few times.”

  We were at the edge of the barley field, now. Some stones were scattered about, some of them nearly boulders, big cold seeds not worth planting. She pointed.

  “That grass is Mr. Gillis’ hay. He’s got about six acres in grass. For the cows and horses.”

  We walked along, skirting a patch given to more stones and nettles. “Always a patch or two a farmer can’t tame,” she explained. “There’s the corn.”

  I walked behind her, like an Indian, down green rows of corn only a few feet high. Silo corn, she said; planted late to keep it green. It would go eight feet. Up ahead, she said, was some corn Gillis had planted around the end of May.

  I followed her down these rows, too, but they were damn near as tall as I was. The air here smelled sweet; up ahead Louise was breathing it in, smiling. At home.

  We passed a field of yellow sweet clover, on our way to a field of (she said) alfalfa. She picked off a few tiny purple flowers, saying, “Relish for the cows.” Gillis only had a couple acres of alfalfa, not enough by her way of thinking. We walked past another field (oats, she said) cut and shocked, which she dismissed as pig feed.

  “Because of the price?” I asked.

  “The price,” she nodded. “My daddy got two dollars for an eighty-pound tin of milk, few years back. Now it’s less than a dollar.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “It’s the banks. That’s why I don’t think it’s so bad, what Candy and the others do.”

  “Rob banks, you mean.”

  She glanced at me, brown eyes wide. “Sure. All the banks ever do is foreclose on farmers.”

  We were to a big white-flowered field, riffling in the slight morning breeze. Buckwheat, she said.

  “Just an acre,” she went on. “Used for chicken and hog feed. You know what he could get selling it? Penny a pound.” She shook her head. “Farmer’s life.”

  “But you miss it, don’t you?”

  She was looking at the ground, watching her feet as she walked. “Maybe. A little.”

  I followed her down into a hollow and we sat under some trees. Another bird was singing. I asked her what kind it was.

  “Robin,” she said. “He doesn’t know from the Depression.”

  “Why don’t you go back home, Louise?”

  “Home?”

  “The farm.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  She was sitting with her knees bunched up, clutching her legs with clasped arms; she had nice legs, by the way. White. Smooth.

  “I was married. Still am, really.”

  “I see.”

  “He was bad to me. Worse than my daddy, even. He was a lot like my daddy, really. Maybe that’s why I took up with him.”

  That seemed a pretty fair insight for a girl who was part farm girl, part moll. Louise was somebody who had the promise of being her own person, if she could just break away from the sordid world Candy Walker had introduced her to.

  “Couldn’t you go back to your daddy?” I asked.

  “Would he take me back?”

  A rhetorical question, but I thought about answering it, anyway.

  Before I could, she answered it herself: “He wouldn’t want me back. I’m a sinner. A fallen woman. And as for Seth, he’d probably shoot me. He said as much.”

  “He did?”

  She hugged her legs, as if chilled. And it wasn’t chilly.

  “He said if I ever took up with another man, he’d see me dead.”

  I thought about telling her what her father had told me—that her husband Seth had already taken up with another woman (or two), and could care less about getting her back, at this point; it had been a year, after all.

  “And even if Seth wasn’t a problem, I don’t know if I’d want to go back to my daddy even if he’d have me. Go back to some stupid little farm after the life I’ve seen?”

  I didn’t point out that we seemed to be on a stupid little farm at the moment, and that the life she’d seen with Candy Walker was a squalid nightmare.

  But I did say, “Maybe you should start over. Just go to a big city and find a job.”

  She released her legs and stretched them out in front of her; the pink dress was up around her knees. Nice calves, as we say down on the farm.

  She said, “I did have some typing in school. I had almost two years of high school, you know.”

  “You speak well. Express yourself well.”

  She liked hearing that; she gave me a broad, toothy smile that was as refreshing as that sweet smell back in the corn rows. She said, “I read a lot, you know. I like the movies, too. I always thought I’d be…you’ll laugh.”

  “No I won’t.”

  “An actress. There, I said it, go ahead, laugh. Every dumb little farm girl wants to run off to the big city and be a star.”

  “Sometimes it works out,” I said, thinking of Sally.

  “Well, at least I ran off. I don’t suppose my life is so different from being in show business.”

  “You’re sure on the road a lot.”

  “But even a typist. A secretary. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? That’d be a step up, and in a big city. I can’t stay on with the Barkers and all. With Candy gone, I just don’t see why I’d stay.”

  I touched her shoulder. “Why not go home, at least give your father a chance? Then you can go to the big city, if you like. I got friends in Chicago, for instance. Maybe I could help out.”

  She touched my face with a hand that smelled nicely of grain; the hand she’d cracked the barley stalk with. She said, “You really are sweet, my Gentleman Jim.”

  She really did read, didn’t she? The romance magazines, that is.

  She was saying, “How can anybody be so good and honest as you?”

  Since I was a liar trying to manipulate her into doing my client’s bidding, I couldn’t wholeheartedly agree with her.

  So I just said, “I’m not, really. I just think a girl as pretty as you doesn’t need a life as shabby as this.”

  I thought she might take offense, but she didn’t.

  She raised her skirt. Lifted it slowly, up over her thighs. Up to a yellow fringe between her legs. No underthings.

  She wasn’t bashful, this girl.

  “I know Candy is fresh in his grave,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and you’re here—and I want you. I need you. You could make me feel better.”

  This would go over real big with my client.

  I said, “I don’t think I should, Louise.”

  She reached behind her and was unbuttoning the dress; then she was easing it down to her waist and her breasts were round and her nipples were pink and I unbuttoned my trousers.

  I was getting a Sheik out of my billfold when she said, “No. You don’t need that.”

  “You want me to…?”

  “Pull out when it’s time? No. Don’t worry. I can’t have kids.”

  A more sensitive man might’ve had his ardor dampened by that remark; but I was still caug
ht up in the sweet smell of corn and the fringe between her legs and pink nipples and I had her on the grass, under the trees, her bottom small and firm and yet soft in my hands, as I slid in and out of her, went round and round in her, as she moved beneath me with a yearning that went beyond the moment, and she moaned and groaned and cried out when she came, and so did I. Then she was sitting up and in my arms, a bundle of flesh and undone clothes and sobbing.

  Pretty soon I put my pants on.

  That’s when I noticed, not far from where we’d just got to know each other, biblically speaking, a patch of ground without any grass.

  The grave where Candy Walker and Doc Moran lay entwined, much as Louise and I had been.

  A wave of nausea hit me, as strong as the smell of ammonia. But there was nothing in my stomach, so nothing came up.

  But Louise, standing now, hands behind her, buttoning, said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “We better get back for breakfast.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hmmm,” she said. Noting the patch of grassless ground. “Wonder what’s planted there.”

  Nothing that’ll grow, I thought.

  “Let’s get back,” I said.

  Breakfast was under way, when we did, and Paula—having the alcoholic’s standard plate of hardly any food (but no glass of whiskey yet)—smiled wickedly at Louise, recognizing what I can best if rudely describe as the freshly fucked look on Louise’s face, and Louise blushed, and I frowned at Paula, but nobody else noticed anything. We sat and ate. Ma wasn’t cooking, this time, but Mrs. Gillis did a pretty fair job of it herself. Scrambled eggs and bacon and fried potatoes with gravy and glasses of milk all around.

  Ma seemed a little blue about it, actually—especially since her boys Fred and Doc were bent over their plates, inhaling the stuff.

  Karpis was sitting next to me, his girl Dolores next to him. “You can freshen up in our room,” he said. “Right across from yours.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Towels and a mirror and a basin. You’ll have to come downstairs and get some fresh water, though. If you want to shave, anyway.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do look a little scruffy.”

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “We don’t stand on ceremony, here.”

  Nelson was eating a plate of food that would’ve fed a man twice his size; sitting right across from me, next to his cute little brunette wife, he said, “I hear you’re coming in with us. Taking Candy’s place.”

  At the phrase “taking Candy’s place,” Paula laughed, and a few heads turned toward her with expressions that said they didn’t get it. But the moment quickly passed, thank God.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And I’m pleased to be in such high-flying company.”

  Nelson smiled; his mustache looked both wispy and fake, like he was a kid who pasted on each strand with glue, one at a time. “Good to have you aboard. Sorry about the ridin’ I give you yesterday. Chicago says you’re aces, so there’ll be no more complaints from me.”

  “Thanks, Nelson.”

  “You can call me B.G.”

  For Big George.

  “Sure, B.G.,” I said.

  I was shaving in Karpis and Dolores’ room when Karpis came in, his creepy smile on display.

  “You forgot these,” he said.

  He was holding out my glasses. I had set them on a dresser last night before I went to bed, and had, frankly, forgot to put the damn things on this morning.

  “Thanks,” I said, gliding the razor across my throat.

  “I notice they’re window glass,” he said.

  I wondered if I had the nerve to use a razor to kill a man.

  “So are mine,” he said, tapping the side of his wire-frames.

  “No kidding,” I said. Shaving.

  “Got to change our looks as best we can, in this business. I try to wear ’em all the time. You get used to ’em after a while.”

  I smiled at him in the mirror. “I still forget sometimes. The plastic surgery’s a help, but glasses add to the basic change of appearance. Don’t you agree?”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Karpis said. He put the glasses down next to me. “Now, we’ll be leaving today, throughout the morning and early afternoon. In several cars, at staggered times.”

  I nodded. “Not a good idea to travel in a caravan.”

  “Nothing that attracts attention is a good idea.”

  This might work out. If I could just get Louise in the Auburn—the two-seater Auburn—I could drive away with her, and break off from this fun group before they were any the wiser.

  I said, “I, uh…I’m getting attached to Louise.”

  Karpis flashed his sick grin again. “You’re a fast worker.”

  “She’s a nice kid.”

  “And lonely. You must peddle a pretty slick line to the ladies, Lawrence.”

  “I get by. You mind if she rides with me?”

  “Not at all. I’ll give you directions to the tourist court, before you leave.”

  “I’ll take the Auburn, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure. Why not.”

  Karpis nodded and went out.

  I dried my face off, left the big bowl of soapy dirty water on the bureau and went across the hall to the farm boys’ bedroom. Louise wasn’t in there.

  I found her in the room next door. A yellow-papered room with a big double bed with a bright yellow spread. She was packing.

  She looked over her shoulder at me. “This was our room. Candy’s and mine.” She gave her attention back to packing.

  “You okay, Louise?”

  “I’m fine.” But she didn’t sound fine.

  I went over to her, touched her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “I’m an evil girl. Just like my daddy always said.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We did it. You and me. Fornicated. And Candy not even dead a day. How could I be so bad?”

  “It was my fault. I made you do it.”

  That wasn’t true, and we both knew it, but it made her feel better to hear it. She turned to me and put her arms around me and pressed the side of her head to my chest.

  “Don’t think badly of me for it,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t ever.”

  “I just needed to be loved. And you were so nice. I wanted you. I had to have you.”

  “You’re a beautiful girl, Louise, and I’ll never forget making love to you under the trees.”

  She liked the sound of that; it was sappy and romantic, like the romance magazines she was packing with her clothes. Her and Ma Barker.

  She smiled up at me and went back to her packing.

  I said, “I’m going to drive you today.”

  I’d decided not to spring my notion on her to flee our fellow outlaws and return her home to daddy. Not just yet.

  She said, “We’re going to that tourist camp near Aurora, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s kind of a nice place. Can we share a cabin there? I mean, do you want to?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Hand me my scrapbook, please. Over on the dresser.”

  I got it for her; it was a big fat book, bulging with clippings.

  “What’s in this?” I asked her.

  She laid it in the suitcase, on top of her clothes, but opened it up to show me. I saw a headline: BANK GUARD SHOT.

  “It’s all Candy’s press notices,” she said, like she was talking about an actor. “I’m even in some of them.”

  I leafed through it. Bank robberies, a gas station stickup, jewelry store, the Bremer kidnapping. I even found the duplicate of the clipping her father had shown me, in which she (an “unidentified moll”) was pictured, that is, sketched.

  As I turned the pages, she was looking down at them with a fond, nostalgic little smile.

  “Candy made his mark,” she said. “They can’t take that away from him. Or me.”

  She closed the book, and close
d the suitcase.

  “Excuse me.” It was Karpis, peeking in.

  “Change of plans,” he said. “You’re going to drive Ma. She says the Auburn’s hers, and you’re her driver, and that’s that. No use arguing with Ma.”

  He smiled that smile and was gone.

  “No use arguing with Ma,” Louise said, smiling a little herself, but meaning it.

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” I said. “At the tourist camp.”

  She put her arms around me and gave me a kiss. A long romance-magazine kiss.

  And then I left.

  Because there was no use arguing with Ma.

  35

  So Ma and I went back on the road, back pretty much the way we came—down Highway 19, turning onto 22, heading south toward Aurora. Ma couldn’t find any hillbilly music on the radio, but she did discover a fresh batch of Burma Shave signs along the way, and read them to me, haw-hawing. In between she’d hum her hymns.

  I didn’t mind Ma. I was used to her. I wished she was Louise, so I could get the hell out of this, but I was used to her. I was getting used to this highway driving, too; passing slower moving traffic—the occasional slowpoke in a Model T, the farmer hauling a hayrack—with some confidence, now. The Auburn could overtake another vehicle with relative ease, despite these narrow two-lane highways.

  Like Ma said: “Keep well to the right…of the oncoming car…get your close shaves…from the half-pound jar! Haw haw.”

  Burma Shave.

  It was late morning when we reached the tourist camp, several miles north of Aurora on a curve of the highway outlined by whitewashed stones that parted midway like the Red Sea; there a gravel drive led in to a court where against a backdrop of lush trees half-a-dozen two-room white frame cabins were arranged in a gentle arc, with a larger cottage in the middle. As you pulled in the drive, a neon sign, burning pointlessly in the sun, said FOX VALLEY COURTS, and NO VACANCY. In case you couldn’t make out that the sign was lit, a card in the window of the central, larger cabin repeated the NO VACANCY message in bold black letters. A lanky man in his forties in a Panama hat and a white shirt with sweat circles and tan baggy pants sat on a bench, one knee pointing north, the other pointing south; he was weathered and tan and licking an ice-cream cone.

  I got out of the Auburn, leaving it running, and went over to him.