“Huh?”
He gestured to his face. “Plastic surgery. Her boyfriend’s Candy Walker, and Candy’s got pretty hot lately. Pictures in the paper, wanted circulars. You know. So he’s getting his face done over. And Lulu’s nervous about it. She don’t like docs. Except me, of course. And I don’t operate on anything but banks.”
“I hear you’re a regular surgeon,” I said.
He liked that; when he smiled his lip curled up, like he was smelling something unpleasant. “I open ’em up and remove the money,” he said. “Yeah. I’m a regular bank surgeon.”
Fred wasn’t listening to any of this, nor was Ma. She and her younger son were sitting on the window seat like a courting couple, Fred holding her hand and her looking moon-eyed at him, as they spoke in hushed tones.
Doc gestured to an overstuffed lounge chair opposite the sofa and bid me sit. I sat. He pulled a straight-back chair from someplace and sat near me.
“You been with the Boys long?”
“Just a year or so.”
“Oh, yeah? Where you from, originally?”
Piece by piece, I fed him the Jimmy Lawrence background story: born in Canada, raised in NYC, union slugger, Lepke’s boy, murder rap, plastic surgery, cooling off in Chicago.
From across the room, Nelson—sitting on the arm of the sofa next to his wife Helen—was sneering. He called out, “I’m checkin’ up on you, Lawrence. Understand? I used to work for the Boys, you know. I’m going to make some calls.”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
He hopped off the arm of the sofa. “Maybe I should do that right now. Maybe I should drive into town and make those calls….”
“Sure,” I said.
Nelson stood there for a moment, then sat back on the arm of the sofa, one hand on his tommy gun, other on his wife’s shoulder.
“This is a nice farmhouse,” I said to Doc Barker. The furniture was all relatively new, and the walls seemed to have been papered recently, a pleasant pink-and-yellow floral pattern; the carpet that pretty much covered the oak floor was oriental. It clashed, but it wasn’t cheap.
“It’s a nice farmhouse,” Doc agreed.
“Where are the owners?”
“Verle’s out farming, where else? His wife and the two little boys are off at the store. We sort of sent them out, for while Doc Moran operated on Candy.”
“I see. Why no phone? They can obviously afford one…”
“Party line,” he said. “The Gillises do a lot of business here at the farm.” By “business” he meant the place was used as a cooling-off joint, a hotel for outlaws on the run. He went on: “Can’t do that kind of business over the phone—not when half the county’s listening in.”
“I see.”
Suddenly, through the draped archway at left, emerged yet another attractive brunette, with a heart-shaped face, brown eyes and a generous figure filling out a stylish sand-color dress with a lace collar, her plump tummy pushing at the sheer fabric. The most distinctive thing about her right now, however, was her ashen face.
All eyes were on her.
Louise—Lulu—sat forward, but reared her head back, biting her knuckles; she was like a teenager watching a Dracula picture.
Doc stood. “Dolores—what is it? What’s wrong?”
She swallowed. Covered her mouth with one hand, lowering her head. Then she raised her eyes and said, softly, “The bastard’s killed him.”
Louise screamed.
Doc walked over to Dolores. “Candy’s…?”
“Dead,” she said.
Doc moved quickly through the archway.
I thought for a moment, then followed; nobody tried to stop me. Louise, however, was being held back by the two women beside her.
In the kitchen—a big country kitchen with enormous cabinet and sink with pump and old-fashioned stove and an oak icebox—spread out on the long kitchen table like an enormous Christmas turkey, was a man, naked to his waist; his face was rather handsome and very blue.
On the stove in the background a teakettle whistled, as if scolding somebody.
That somebody just might have been the tall, rather distinguished-looking man of about forty, dark hair streaked with gray, who stood near the corpse with forceps in a trembling hand. Eyes under shaggy, twisting eyebrows looked right at me—they were dark and rheumy—and, as if he’d known me all his life, he said to me, “Poor beggar swallowed his tongue. I pulled it up with these”—he meant the forceps—“and tried artificial respiration on him, but he died. He just died.”
“Shit,” Doc Barker said. “I tried to talk him out of this, you goddamn quack. Face-lift my ass. What good did you do Old Creepy and Freddie?”
Snootily, as if forgetting the dead man stretched out before him, Moran said, “They seem satisfied.”
“You’ll never put the knife to me, quack. Shit! You killed him.”
Moran put the forceps away, in the standard medical black bag which was on the table next to the corpse. “An unfortunate, an unavoidable…mishap.”
Then, behind me, a woman was in the doorway, screaming.
Louise.
“Candy!” She pushed past me and flung herself across the half-naked corpse. “My candyman…oh my candyman…” Tears streamed down her face.
“You bloody butcher!”
It was Nelson pushing past me this time, tommy gun still slung over one arm.
The little man grabbed the doctor by the shirtfront and lifted him off the floor and tossed him bodily into the icebox, with a clatter. Moran slid to the floor, sat there for a moment, then stood and brushed himself off, raised his head, dignity preserved.
“My good man,” he said to Nelson, “I did not even touch Mr. Walker. I merely adminstered the ether”—he pointed to a wadded towel on the table—“I did not begin cutting. You will notice not a single drop of blood in this room.”
“Not yet,” Nelson said.
“Your threats fail to concern me,” the doctor said. “My services to you—you people, in so many ways, are I should think invaluable. The occasional…slip-up, well. That can’t be helped.”
There was a back door, a kitchen door, and Dr. Joseph P. Moran walked to it rather grandly, and exited. Nelson looked out the window.
“He’s getting in his car,” he said.
Doc Barker said, “Going into town to drink and chase the skirts, no doubt.”
Fred Barker, who’d entered after Nelson, said, “He already smells like a brewery. I think he went into this operation soused.”
“I’m going after him.” Nelson patted the machine gun.
Doc thought about that, then nodded. “You can make those phone calls and check up on our friend Lawrence here, while you’re at it.”
Nelson glanced at me. “Good idea. Why don’t you ride along with me, Lawrence. Maybe we can get to know each other better.”
“Why not?” I said.
Dolores was moving Louise away from the corpse; Louise was sobbing, the little pink beret dangling at an odd angle, about to fall off any second. Fred Barker’s girl Paula came in with the sheet she’d got from somewhere and covered Candy Walker up.
“Who’s going to take care of me now?” Louise asked. “Who’s going to take care of Lulu now?”
She was looking right at me when she asked it, but I didn’t answer. Her little pink beret fell off and I bent and handed it to her.
Then Ma Barker was standing in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips.
“Wrap him up and put him somewheres,” she said. “It’s after six and I want to start supper.”
Louise shrieked, but while Paula comforted her, Fred and Helen and Dolores, as detached as meat-packers, wrapped the blue-faced body in the sheet and carried him out of the house, into the barn.
Ma Barker was scrubbing the kitchen table down, humming a hymn, when I went out the back door to go into town with Baby Face Nelson.
“BABY FACE” NELSON AND HIS WIFE HELEN
30
Something odd happ
ened on the four-mile drive into Beaver Falls.
Nelson acted civil toward me.
I have no explanation, other than possibly the lack of an audience, prompting him to abandon, at least temporarily, his Cagney pose. Or perhaps it was his having to leave the tommy-gun appendage behind, settling for a modest .45 Army Colt stuck in his waistband. But as we rode in the Auburn, with me at the wheel, top down, he smoked a cigar, leaned back, relaxed, and shared his insights into Doc Moran with me.
“You know,” he said, blowing smoke out easily, sun low in the sky and streaming through the cornfields as we whisked by, “Candy Walker was a fuckin’ chump to let that drunken sawbones near ’im in the first place.”
“Really?” I said. I took one hand off the wheel and pushed the window-glass wire-frames up on my nose.
“Sure. When you get back, get a load of Freddie Barker’s fingertips. The doc did a scraping on them last spring. You know how this genius surgeon goes about that?” He grinned, cigar atilt, gesturing with both hands, relishing the gore he was about to describe. “He loops rubber bands around their fingers, at the first joint. Then he sticks a hypo of morphine in each fingertip—how’s that for laughs? Then starts scraping. With a scalpel, like he’s sharpening a pencil.” Nelson laughed, a high-pitched giggle like a kid. “Really carves the ol’ meat off. Ha ha ha!”
“Did the operation take?”
Nelson smirked, the wispy beginnings of his mustache riffling in the breeze like fringe on a curtain. “A couple of Freddie’s fingers got infected—one thumb swelled up like a blimp. They took him to a vet and got ’im some medicine, but he was burning up with fever for about a week.”
“But did the operation take?”
Nelson laughed again, same high-pitched giggle, blew out cigar smoke in a fat circle. “Take a look at his fingertips when we get back. You’ll see.”
I knew what I’d see. I’d never seen a fingerprint job that had taken; in every case I knew of, the telltale whorls stubbornly returned, forming patterns still discernible, if streaked with scar tissue.
“He’s got a big mouth, too, the doc. Comes in town and boozes and chases the local gash. Of course he knows better than to even look at one of our women.” He gave me a sideways glance that let me know that was a warning partially directed at me. “But Verle and Mildred got a nice thing going, usin’ the farmhouse as a cooling-off joint and all, so we got to be careful around the locals. Don’t need no drunken sawbones spillin’ his guts to every hunk of quiff he meets.”
“Why do the Barkers put up with him?”
The wind blowing as we sped along put Nelson’s cigar out; he relit it, shrugging. “Like the old bastard himself said, he’s useful. He did do some face-lifts that turned out, well…okay. Like on O.C.”
“O.C.?”
“Old Creepy. Karpis. Oh, yeah, you ain’t met him yet. He went to town with Mildred and her boys. Dolores is his broad. Hell of a guy. He’s from Chicago, too, from the back o’ the yards, like me. Hell, you’re from Chicago. Maybe you met him?”
“I only been in Chicago a year or so.”
“Oh yeah—you’re from out East.”
Was he trying to be cute, fishing like that? Or just making conversation? Maybe Nelson was more complex—and more intelligent—than I’d first given him credit for.
I said, “So Moran gave Karpis a face-lift?”
“Yeah—a pretty good one. O.C. didn’t have no earlobes, and that’s the kind of thing that sticks out on a wanted circular. And Moran did manage to fix him up with something that’s more or less like lobes. And O.C. had a busted nose since he was a kid and Moran straightened that. And tightened his face up. But his face is real scarred along his cheek by his ear. Both cheeks, I mean.”
“But it served its purpose, the face-lift.”
Nelson shrugged again. “I guess. I think O.C.’s changed his looks more from combing his hair straight back and wearing glasses than from what Moran done, but he seems satisfied. Enough that Walker wanted a face-lift, too. Big sacrifice for a ladies’ man like Walker to let that doc carve on his puss.” He laughed again, one short guttural laugh, but still high-pitched. “Well, he’s a ladies’ man in hell, now.”
We were coming up on Beaver Falls, now. Maple trees and two-story clapboards.
“I still don’t get it,” I said. “Why does Moran act like he’s so invaluable? There’s plenty of underworld docs around, doing first-rate face-lifts.” I took a hand off the wheel to gesture alongside my right ear. “See any scars on my face?”
“No,” Nelson admitted. “But Moran’s been valuable to the Barkers and Karpis in a lot of ways. I shouldn’t have to tell you he’s connected to the Chicago Boys, which can come in handy. And other ways.”
“Such as?”
Another shrug, another cocky puff of the cigar. “He was fencing hot money for ’em. He handled the Bremer ransom.”
“I thought that was Boss McLaughlin’s piece of work.”
“Him and Moran.”
“But the feds got McLaughlin, didn’t they?”
Like that other hot-money fence, James Probasco, ward-heeler McLaughlin had been hung by his heels from the Banker’s Building by the feds, seeking a third-degree confession; he hadn’t talked, but he was facing five years in Leavenworth anyway. He was still better off than Probasco, who as you may recall when similarly dangled did a dive into the cement court of the Rookery Building nineteen stories below.
Nelson continued. “The feds got McLaughlin, yeah—but he didn’t talk. And Moran still has fencing connections. Plus, like he’s always remindin’ us—he knows where the bodies are buried.”
“I see.”
“Pull in there,” Nelson said, motioning to a parking place in front of a store called Hubbell’s.
We left the Auburn at the curb and Nelson, his coat buttoned over his waistband, where the .45 was tucked, smiled and tipped his hat at a fat farm housewife with a faded brownish-blond marcel and a pretty little girl with corn-yellow hair in tow. The fat farm housewife and the little girl both smiled and the housewife said, “You’re Verle’s relation, aren’t you?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“We could all use some rain for the corn.”
“We surely could, ma’am.”
The mother and daughter walked on by, and we went into Hubbell’s, whose store window was a display of fishing rods, and the narrow, yellow-painted interior proved to be a hardware store of sorts in front—hammers and nails, fishing rods, a wall display of jackknives—and a bar in back, with three side booths.
“This is where Verle picks up his messages,” Nelson said, sotto voce, behind a hand.
“Interesting place.”
Nelson smirked. “Half hardware store, half bar. Ever seen the like?”
“Nothing better, if you’re in the mood for a claw hammer and a shot of whiskey.”
Moran was down at the far end of the bar, bending over a bottle of bourbon and a tall glass, giving what was left of his attention, after the bourbon got done with it, to a busty corn-fed barmaid of twenty-five or so with short curly strawberry-blond hair, wearing a white apron over a red-and-white checked house-dress, looking very homey, wiping the bar with a rag while she smiled and listened to Moran’s smoothest line of bull. He was selling her a shopworn matinee-idol smile, gesturing with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around the tall glass. If this was a movie, John Barrymore would play him and Joan Blondell her.
A man of about fifty was working the counter in the front, hardware half of the store; he had thinning blond hair and a shovel jaw and a disgusted look.
“Can’t you keep your friend away from my daughter?” he asked Nelson.
Nelson said, “Sorry, Kurt. You shouldn’t oughta let her tend bar, if you don’t want her meetin’ men.”
With tight anger, Kurt said, “Just because she’s divorced don’t mean she’s loose.”
“Did I say that? Anything for Verle?”
“Nothin’.”
�
�Can I use the phone?”
Still disgusted, Kurt nodded, and Nelson went behind the counter; he nodded to me, then toward Moran. I got the picture.
I went down and sat by Moran.
He turned and cast his rheumy gaze upon me. He was wearing a dark suit with a dark tie and a dark vest; it wasn’t as hot a day as we’d been having, and there were fans going in here, so he wasn’t sweating, and looked very professional, very proper. If a little tanked.
“Do I know you, young man?”
“I’m staying out at the Gillises. I walked in on the last act of your latest operation.”
He lifted an eyebrow, placing me, then nodded gravely, but I could tell Candy Walker’s death didn’t mean a damn to him; he’d seen too many outlaw and gangster patients die to be too concerned. And, in his defense, they were lucky to have him, often working under unsanitary conditions in cellars and hotel rooms, patching up hoodlums who could go nowhere else but to a “right croaker” like him for the tending of a bullet wound that would not get reported to the police, or to bring him a knocked-up moll or prostie so he could “pull a rabbit,” or to fix a too-familiar face, or what-have-you. The underworld needed its Doc Morans.
He offered his hand. “Joseph P. Moran. Doctor.”
“I know. I’m Jimmy Lawrence.”
He had a strong grip, but his hand was trembling. Whether from drink, fear or palsy, I couldn’t tell you.
The strawberry-blond strudel behind the counter started moving down the bar with the rag, and Moran called out to her, “Don’t leave, my dear! We’ve so much else to discuss.”
She smiled at him, a pixie smile in a prettily plump face, and said, “There’s always later, Doctor.”
“A misnomer, my dear. As my former patient, Candy Walker, may now realize…‘later’ is a commodity that can prove rare indeed.”
She didn’t understand that, so she giggled at it, and moved on down the bar, where a scruffy, apparently unemployed gentleman in coveralls had found a quarter to spend.
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