I admitted to him that I was heeled.
He shook his head, taking his turn; missed his shot. His sparring partners chuckled—they had to grab the occasional victory over Barney here, because in the ring they didn’t have a prayer.
“I don’t like it when you pack that thing,” he said, uneasily, nodding toward the bulge under my arm. “Pallbearin’ ain’t my idea of a good time, you know.”
“If you feel that way about it,” I said, smiling gently, “don’t come to my goddamn funeral.”
“Jesus, Nate, can’t you find a better business to get in?”
“I hate it when Jews say ‘Jesus.’ It confuses me.”
“Nobody likes a wise guy,” he said, grinning in spite of himself, and took his turn. Made the first shot, missed the second. One of the sparring partners elbowed the other one and they traded sideways grins.
“Seriously,” he said, “why don’t you find some other business? I could probably use you on my staff—”
“Christ, you and Sally! Nobody likes my trade, everybody wants to put me to work as their fuckin’ maid or something.”
Barney put an arm around me. “I hate it when half-Jews say ‘Christ.’ It confuses me. But you can say ‘fuck’ all you want. That don’t confuse me in the least.”
“Is that what I am, half a Jew?”
“Yeah, and half a Mick, and full of shit. That’s Nate Heller. Now, get outa here while I try to catch up with these guys.”
“Before you blow your next shot, let me tell you why I looked you up this morning.”
“Tell.”
“I’m going to be out of town awhile, and you’re going to have to cover for me, where my night watchman duty’s concerned. Okay?”
“Sure,” he nodded. “How long you be gone?”
“Not sure,” I said.
“What’s up, exactly?”
“Looking for a girl,” I said.
One of the sparring partners said, “Who ain’t?”
Barney said, “Don’t get killed or anything, okay, shmuck?”
“Okay, pal. Don’t you have a fight in a few weeks?”
“More like a month,” he said, bending to shoot.
“That’s a unique way of training you got there,” I said, and he missed his shot.
“The game laws ought…to let you shoot…the bird that hands you…a substitute! Haw haw!” Ma Barker grinned at me. “Burma Shave!”
There wasn’t much to say to that; I just kept driving. We were well into the afternoon, now, and Wisconsin. Taking Highway 89, which had just turned from nice spanking-new pavement into gravel. I kept the Auburn at forty-five. Somehow, even though this wasn’t my car (except for a hundred bucks’ worth of it, anyway), I hated to think of those shapely blue fenders getting nicked by those wicked little rocks.
I hadn’t done much cross-country driving, and, on these two-lane highways, each oncoming car we encountered made for a nerve-racking experience. The Auburn was wide enough, and the roads narrow enough, to make meeting the occasional road hog border on meeting your Maker. This was heightened by Kate Barker’s humming hymns, something she did whenever she couldn’t find hillbilly music on the radio or a Burma Shave sign to read.
“On a hill far away,” she bellowed suddenly, “stood an old rugged cross…”
“Burma Shave,” I said.
She glared at me; we weren’t getting along as well today as yesterday. “That’s disreligious,” she said.
“I suppose it is.”
“What church do you go to?”
“None to speak of, Ma.”
She tsk-tsked. “That’s very sad. Very sad.”
“I suppose it is, Ma.”
“You’re sure to fry in eternal hell, you know.”
“I’ll have company.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Look up ahead.”
“Oooooh!” she squealed. “The bearded lady…tried a jar…she’s now a famous…movie star! Burma Shave! Haw haw!”
Sally hadn’t been crazy about my leaving on this little jaunt. In fact, she’d been downright angry.
“You really disappoint me, Nate. Really disappoint me!”
We were sitting at her breakfast table having coffee.
“Why is that, Helen?”
“I just thought you were smarter than—than to behave in such a suicidal fashion!”
“Suicidal.”
“Going out among those…crazy maniacs!”
“Most maniacs are a little crazy.”
“Right—like you!”
I’d made a big mistake: with the exception of Frank Nitti’s role and the Jimmy Lawrence cover, I’d told Sally the whole story—the farmer’s daughter in the clutches of the Barker gang, and how I was going undercover to bring her back alive, as Frank Buck would say.
“Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
“Yeah, I think so. A job.”
“You’re trying to…redeem yourself, in some childish way. You’ve been feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself, for the way you were used in the Dillinger shooting, that you’re looking for some way to build your self-respect back up. So you take on this ridiculous case! You go out among killers and thieves and risk your life for a few dollars, just to play knight and save the fair damsel-in-distress! Shit, you’ve gone simple on me.”
“Helen, it’s not just a few dollars. It’s the first real money I’ve seen all year, outside of that reward money.”
“I don’t see you denying you’ve gone simple.”
“I’ve always been just a simple soul. That’s what’s so adorable about me.”
“Don’t butter me up, you louse. Damn, this makes me mad! You ought to go running back to that—that little actress of yours in Hollywood—this is just her style…this is just the sort of romantic bullshit she’d fall for. Why don’t you call her on the phone, Heller—my treat! Long distance, person to person, Hollywood. My treat—my pleasure!”
I didn’t say anything.
Sally sighed; stirred her coffee absently. Then she looked up with wet eyes. “I’m sorry I said that.”
I sipped my coffee.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned her, should I?”
I shook my head no.
“It still hurts you, doesn’t it? Losing her.”
“Ever talk to an amputee?”
That startled her.
She said, “Not really.”
“Well, they say the worst thing about losing an arm, a leg, is that sometimes you can still feel it there. Even though it’s been cut off. In the night, for example, it itches sometimes. The limb that’s been cut off.”
“You are a sentimental dope, aren’t you, Heller?”
“Takes one to know one, Helen.”
A tear was gliding down her smooth, round right cheek. “Well, then, you sentimental dope, why don’t you mount your white horse and go riding off after your damn damsel. Shit! Why don’t you mount the nearest damsel instead…let’s go back to bed…”
“Let’s,” I said.
Later, she touched my shoulder and said, “I don’t know if I want to see you, when you get back.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe I want to let go of you now, so that…if something happens to you, it won’t hurt so bad.”
“It’s up to you, Sally.”
She looked hurt. “You called me Sally.”
“So I did. I’ll call you Helen again, if you let me back in, when this is over.”
She wept as I held her; when I left, later that morning, she was mad again. Not speaking.
“Beneath this stone…lies Elmer Gush…tickled to death…by a shavin’ brush! Haw haw! Burma Shave.”
“Beaver Falls,” I said.
“Huh?” Kate Barker said.
“That’s Beaver Falls, up ahead.”
We were on U.S. Highway 151, now, and it entered the little town along a shady street where two-story clapboard houses with front porches with pillars and swings, wide windows
and pointed roofs, sat on big lawns, looking prosperous unless you noticed how many of them needed painting. We glided through the downtown, where the trees disappeared in favor of electric posts, and two-story brick buildings stared each other down on either side of Front Street—hardware store, boot shop, floral shop, tavern, J. C. Penney, movie house.
Ma turned around in her seat, as we passed, straining to look back. “What’s playin’? What’s playin’?”
“Huh?”
“At the movie house!”
“Oh.” I looked back; winced when I saw what it was. “Manhattan Melodrama,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I seen that. I like Clark Gable, but not when he dies at the end.”
About four miles outside of Beaver Falls was a farm, the mailbox prominently marked gillis. I slowed and turned in the gravel drive. Chickens scooted out of my way. Over to the right was the two-story farmhouse, pretty good size, a swing on the pillared front porch, wide curtained windows, pointed gabled roof, much like the houses in Beaver Falls, only no curling paint. At the left and curving back behind the house were several other structures, among them an unpainted tool shed, a pump with windmill tower, a faded red barn, a silo.
There were no other autos around; I got out of the Auburn, went around and opened the door for Kate Barker. The lawn and house were fenced in with unbarbed wire, and a few pine trees were spread about the lawn in an undiscernible pattern, providing shade. Up on the porch of the house, the door opened and a small man in a rumpled white shirt and equally rumpled brown pants came down the steps quickly and Ma moved toward him.
“Arthur, Arthur,” Ma said hugging him to her; he was sort of stocky himself, but she still seemed to smother him, slapping him on the back. His hands clung loosely to her back, but he was glad to see her, too, saying, “Ma, gee, Ma, it’s good to see you…”
I was getting her bags out of the back when another small figure, in a white shirt and a bow tie and a dark unbuttoned vest and gray baggy pants, came bolting down the steps, feet making a clapping sound. The chickens on the lawn scattered. He had a tommy gun slung over his arm and I swallowed as he approached and pointed it at me. I felt like joining the other chickens.
“Who the hell are you?” he said. He sounded like Jimmy Cagney and I wondered if it was on purpose, maybe to offset his boyish features.
“I’m Jimmy Lawrence,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Don’t you know?” He laughed, like I was the dumbest shit he ever saw. He pointed a thumb back at himself. “I’m Big George.”
“Big George?”
“Nelson!” he said.
Baby Face Nelson said.
29
Ma let loose of her boy Arthur long enough to call out to Nelson: “He’s from Chicago.”
Nelson manufactured a sneer, over which the faint beginnings of a mustache were more threat than promise. “So am I. So what?”
“I’m here on an errand,” I said, “for Frank Nitti.”
The sneer faded, and he blinked. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“No,” I said.
Ma and Arthur wandered over. Arm in arm. She said, “I called and checked on him.”
Without taking his pale blue eyes off me, Nelson said to her, “Did you check with Nitti?”
“No. I called Slim.”
“Slim Gray?”
“Yeah, and he said this guy was jake.”
He thumped my chest three times with the side of the tommy-gun barrel. “I don’t care if he’s jake—I just want to know if he’s Jimmy whosis.”
“Lawrence,” I said, stopping the barrel of the tommy gun with my palm, before it could thump me a fourth time.
Nelson’s eyes flared. “Don’t touch my gun.”
“Then don’t poke me with it.”
“Yeah? Well, fuck you.”
“I got no beef with you, Nelson. But I’m not going to stand here and be bullied and just take it, understand?”
The tommy-gun nose lowered; chickens were making noise in the background. He said, “I got no beef with you, either, Lawrence—if you’re from Nitti. If you’re a goddamn fed, you’re fuckin’ dead.”
Arthur stepped forward and put a hand on Nelson’s arm; both men were about the same size, but Arthur “Doc” Barker had haunted brown eyes and rather sunken cheeks in a baby face of his own, black widow’s peaked hair starting high on his forehead, and my instinct was he was more dangerous than Nelson.
“Watch your language around my ma,” Doc Barker said, in a flat monotone that, unlike Nelson’s Cagney impression, was menacing without trying to be.
Nelson shook the hand off irritably, but said, “Yeah—okay. Okay.” I said, “You really think a fed would be smart enough to get this far?”
Nelson thought about that, while Doc grinned and said, “Hell no!”
Ma was trundling across the lawn toward the porch, stacks of movie and romance magazines under her flabby arms, leaving the bags for the boys to carry.
“Somebody want to help me with Ma’s things?” I asked.
They both did, Nelson still lugging his tommy gun; it was like an appendage.
ARTHUR “DOC” BARKER
Inside the front door we faced the second-floor stairs; a hallway alongside the stairs ended in a closed door. To our left was a sitting room, with a piano and a fireplace and some overstuffed furniture but no people. To our right an archway where floral drapes stood open and fluttered with the summer breeze coming in open windows in the living room beyond. Doc Barker nodded for me to set the bags by the stairs—“We’ll work out sleepin’ quarters later,” he said—and I followed him into the living room, which was larger than the sitting room and just as nicely furnished—but well-populated.
At the left, against the wall with a mirror hanging over it, was an overstuffed bristly cream-color mohair sofa on which sat three women, all of them rather attractive. On the near end of the sofa a cute brunette with wavy hair falling to her shoulders and bright dark perky eyes was smiling up at Nelson, who stood next to her, putting a possessive hand on her shoulder, letting me know this one was his. I could hardly blame him—even though she was sitting down, it was easy to see she had a nice little shape on her, under the thin beige frock, legs crossed under the pleated skirt. On the other end of the sofa was another brunette, with eyes the color of the dark liquid in the glass she held in one hand and a slightly puffy face that indicated the dark liquid wasn’t Dr. Pepper; still, look of the alky about her or not, this one was a looker too, with startling curves under the navy dress with its white polka dots and white collar and white trim.
Between them was a blonde. She wore a pink dress and a little pink beret and she was the best-looking dame of the bunch, her hair bobbed and her eyes big and brown and so far apart you almost had to look at them one at a time. She had beestung lips and rosy cheeks and a complexion like a glass of milk—pasteurized.
The whites of her big brown eyes, however, seemed at the moment to match the pink of her outfit, and she was clutching a hanky in a tight little fist. She’d been crying, and the other two women—the one with the drink in her hand especially—seemed to be giving her some support, some comfort.
The pretty blonde with the bobbed hair and the big brown eyes was Joshua Petersen’s Louise, incidentally. The girl I’d come to fetch.
While I was taking in these good-looking apparent molls, Ma Barker was hugging another of her boys, who’d been sitting on the window seat over by the open windows, but had jumped up upon his beloved mother’s entry.
“Freddie, Freddie,” she was saying, “my good little Freddie.”
“Aw, Ma,” he was saying. “Don’t embarrass me!”
But he clearly loved her attention, grinning with a mouthful of gold, his head on her shoulder as she pressed him to her.
He pushed his mother aside, however, when he caught a glimpse of me.
He was wearing a white shirt and brown
pants, was in his early thirties, short, shorter even than Nelson, sandy-haired, shifty-eyed, sunken-cheeked. He looked a lot like his brother Doc, but not as stocky.
“Who’s this?” he said, nodding at me, his cheerfulness dropping away so completely it was hard to remember it’d ever been there.
Doc, standing beside me, pointed a thumb at me; we were just inside the doorway, the archway drapes whispering behind us. He said, “He drove Ma here from Chicago. She says he’s here to see Doc Moran, for the Boys.”
Fred frowned, said, “We don’t like tyin’ in with rackets guys.”
I said, “That’s not what they say in St. Paul.”
The frown eased into something approaching a faint smile. “We don’t like tyin’ in with Chicago rackets guys. How long you intend stayin’?”
“Overnight okay? I could stay in town—”
“No!” Nelson said. He was still standing by the wall, next to the sofa and the perky brunette. “You’ll stay right here till I say different.”
I decided not to push Nelson in front of his girl. I said, “I’m your guest, so it’d be bad manners to do it any other way than yours.”
Nelson smiled at that, smugly, and the little brunette beamed up at him; she was nuts about him. Maybe that perky look in her eyes meant she was a little nuts period.
Then Doc started introducing me around. “That’s Helen, Big George’s wife,” he said, indicating Nelson and his brunette, “and the little lady with the big drink is my brother Fred’s girl, Paula. That’s Fred of course.”
Fred nodded to me and I nodded back. Paula saluted me with her drink and gave me a sly, sexy smile and Fred frowned at her and she stuck her tongue out at him. I made like Buster Keaton.
I moved tentatively toward the sofa and Nelson lifted his head warily; but I wasn’t approaching his wife. I stood in front of Louise and asked, “Who might you be?”
The big brown eyes blinked; pink tongue flicked out nervously over red beestung lips. She looked to each side of her, at each of the two women, as if asking if she should answer. As if she needed permission.
“This is Lulu,” Doc answered for her. “Candy Walker’s girl.” He took me by the arm and pulled me gently away, buttonholed me. “She’s out of sorts at the moment,” he whispered, “’cause her boyfriend’s getting carved up in the kitchen.”
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