True Crime

by Max Allan Collins

  The little woman came through an archway behind the counter, to the left of the wall where a dozen room keys hung. The little woman weighed about 210 and stood five nine. She could’ve put Baby Face Nelson in her back pocket and sat on him—of course his tommy gun might’ve goosed her some. She had a blue-and-white floral house-dress on, very cheery, but she looked as depressed as the economy.

  “I never seen you before,” she said, looking at me wearily, warily. She was in her thirties, I’d wager, but most people would’ve said forties—her hair in a graying bun that seemed about to unravel, several chins stacked on each other. A pretty face was buried in there somewhere. Green alert eyes.

  “We never met, ma’am.”

  “But you’re one of them.” Accusingly.

  “I guess I am.”

  Heavy sigh. “How many cabins you need?”

  “Two.”

  She got a pair of keys off the board behind her. Handed them to me. Looked at me slow and hard.

  “Stay away from my Eddie and Clarice.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I got two young ones—Eddie seven, Clarice eight. They already think your friend Nelson’s the cat’s meow. I don’t want ’em shining up to any more of your kind.”

  Even though I wasn’t an outlaw, really, I resented her attitude. “Our money’s good enough for you,” I pointed out.

  “That’s my husband’s doing. If he hadn’t done time, he wouldn’t be so partial to you people.” She shook her head side to side; her lower lip trembled—like she was angry, or about to cry, or both. “You’ll be the death of him yet.”

  Or maybe he’d just do some more time. He had to be a greedy type, her ice-cream-cone licker out on the bench; there were plenty of tourists, this time of year, to fill a tourist camp like this, in the heart of the Fox River valley. But they’d pay perhaps a buck and a half for a room for a night. The tourists about to descend on Fox Valley Courts would be paying twenty times that.

  I drove Ma down to her cabin. Each white frame structure was divided into two numbered rooms. The half a cabin I’d be sharing with Louise was down a few doors. I began carrying Ma’s things in for her; she immediately stretched out on one of the twin beds and began to read a Photoplay magazine with Claudette Colbert on the cover. It took me two trips to cart her stuff in, by which time she was asleep, snoring, the magazine folded over her generous bosom, Claudette’s smiling face rising and falling.

  I decided to have a nap myself. In my own room. There were twin beds here, too, several feet apart, and I hoped to keep it that way tonight. Your client’s daughter, I reminded myself. The stiffening in my trousers at just the thought of her, however, indicated my client’s best interests were probably not going to be served, in this little puce-papered room.

  First order of business was to use the indoor plumbing each room seemed to have. As I stood there emptying my bladder I reflected on how nice it felt to be back in the twentieth century—even if there was a bug the size of your thumb in the bathtub at my right. I didn’t bother to kill it. Live and let live. Took off my pants and took my nap.

  A knocking at the door awoke me. I checked my watch and it was a little before two o’clock. I took the automatic out from under my pillow and went to the open window, where sheer curtains fluttered in a slight summer breeze. I peered out through them.

  A big man—barrel-chested, six foot two, ruddy, round-faced, dark-haired, early thirties—was standing there in his shirt sleeves and suspenders. The butt of a .45 peeked out of his waistband.

  It took me a few seconds, but then I realized who it was. I’d seen his picture in the papers often enough.

  Charles Arthur Floyd.

  Pretty Boy.

  He knocked again. “Lawrence? Jimmy Lawrence?”

  I cracked the door, gun in hand out of view. “That’s right,” I said. Doing my best to keep recognition out of my voice and face. “Who wants to know?”

  “My name’s Charlie Floyd,” he said, and smiled. He had a small, cupid mouth, but a big smile, because when he smiled, his whole round face lit up. Like Polly Hamilton, he had apple cheeks. “I been hearin’ some good things ’bout you from mutual acquaintances.”

  “Such as?”

  His smile continued, but some strain was starting to show. “Nelson, Karpis, so on. Open up. Let me in. You can see both my hands and my gun. You surely got a gun on me, so what’s the worry?”

  I stood back, eased the door open, held the gun on him.

  He came in, shut the door behind him. His hair was dark as an Indian’s and parted in the middle, slick with grease. He had tiny brown eyes and a large nose.

  “Put the shootin’ iron away,” he said. Still friendly. Still smiling—but just barely.

  “Nobody mentioned your name,” I said.

  “Well, you know who I am.”

  “You’re Pretty Boy Floyd.”

  He flinched at the name. “Don’t believe that newspaper shit. Nobody calls me that. Nobody but dumb-ass feds.” He stuck out his hand; it looked like a flesh-colored catcher’s mitt. “My friend’s call me Chock. Short for Choctaw.”

  “Choctaw?”

  “That’s what they call my favorite home brew, back in the hills where I come from.” He drew back the hand to pat his generous belly. “I got a weakness for it, as you can plainly see.”

  Then he stuck the hand back out, and I put the gun in my waistband and shook hands with him. He had a firm grip; he may have had some fat on him, but he had more muscle.

  He sat on the edge of one of the twin beds. “I’m the one who should be suspicious, Jim. Care if I call you Jim?”

  “Jim’s fine. Why should you be suspicious?”

  He shrugged. “I never heard of you before Nelson called me this morning.”

  I shrugged. “I got pulled in on this at the last minute.”

  Floyd nodded, tsk-tsked. “Shame about Candy Walker. Worked with him a few times. Nice feller. Nice of you to fill in, though. I hear you’re tied in with the Chicago crowd.”

  “Yeah. So to speak.”

  He pointed a finger at me. Gently. “You don’t want to go calling any of your friends, now, ’tween now and tomorrow.”

  “Oh?”

  He shook his big head slowly side to side. “Frank Nitti wouldn’t approve of what we’re up to.” Then he grinned like a mischievous kid with a private joke, that little mouth turning up at the corners and sending his apple cheeks into high gear. “No, sir!”

  “Why wouldn’t Nitti approve?”

  “You don’t know the lay of the land yet, do you, Jim? Well, what the hell—you will soon enough. Plenty of time for that.” He glanced at a pocket watch. “We’ll be having our meet, ’fore too long. You et yet?”

  “I didn’t have lunch. Slept through it.”

  “We’re having barbecue tonight. The feller what runs the place stocked up on chickens and ol’ Ma’s gonna cook for us. I hear she’s a whale of a cook.”

  “Ma Barker? Yes she is.”

  “Hey, Jim—sit down. There’s a chair over there—use it. You’re makin’ me nervous.” He said this with good humor, and he didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body; but, unlike certain smaller men who waved tommy guns around, this was a big bruiser of a man, who could hurt you slapping you on the back for luck.

  So I sat down.

  “Where you from?” he asked. “Before Chicago, I mean.”

  I gave him the standard Jimmy Lawrence spiel, a piece at a time; we talked for fifteen minutes. He seemed nice—I liked him. But he was obviously pumping me for information, checking me out, getting a feel for whether he could trust me or not.

  Pretty soon he slapped his thighs with two catcher’s mitt hands, stood. “I could use a Coke-Cola. How ’bout you? I’m buyin’.”

  I said okay, and followed him outside. We walked up to the central cabin, where the man in the Panama hat was no longer licking an ice-cream cone, though its tracks were evident on his trousers, his legs still pointing north a
nd south. Near his bench, just under the NO VACANCY sign in the window, was a low-slung icebox of Coca-Cola, into which Floyd pumped a couple of nickels and withdrew two small, icy bottles.

  We sat on the bench with the guy in the Panama; Floyd talked about the weather—how the heat wave seemed to have let up some—and the guy nodded while I just listened. We drank our Cokes, slowly. The little woman glanced out angrily through the screen door now and then. She didn’t like Floyd any more than she liked me, apparently.

  A big brown Buick touring sedan pulled in around three, and Baby Face Nelson got out; he was wearing an unbuttoned vest and a snap-brim hat but no gun. Staying in the car were his wife Helen, in front, and Fred Barker and Paula in back.

  Nelson strutted over to Floyd. “How are you doing, Chock?”

  “Can’t complain,” Floyd said.

  Nelson nodded to me. “Lawrence.”

  I nodded back to him.

  The guy in the Panama hat jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, grinning the same way, and pumped Nelson’s hand.

  “Good to see you, Georgie,” he said.

  “You look good, Ben.”

  Ben turned his head to grin proudly at the still-seated Floyd, pointed with a thumb at Nelson. “We was in Joliet together,” Ben said.

  Nodding sagely, Floyd said, “It’s good to have friends.”

  The screen door flew open and a boy and a girl came running out, pell-mell. The boy was towheaded and wearing a blue-and-red-striped shirt and denim pants; the girl was dark-haired and wore a blue-checked gingham dress. They both had the pretty face I’d suspected had once been their mother’s.

  They ran to Nelson immediately, crowded around him, bouncing up and down, laughing.

  He tried not to smile as he said, “What makes you think I got anything for you?”

  “Oh, I know you do, Uncle George!” the boy said; the little girl was just squealing.

  Nelson’s dark-haired wife hung out the car window with a goofy smile on her face, adoring her husband and his way with kids.

  Holding his hands up like a traffic cop, Nelson said, “Okay, okay—maybe I did bring something for you. Maybe I did. You know how the game goes…”

  He sat on the bench where his Joliet pal Ben had been sitting; Ben was standing by the screen door, now, wearing a big shit-eating grin, watching his kids being catered to by Baby Face Nelson.

  The two kids stood and waited for the signal.

  Nelson held his hands up in the air, like somebody had said, stick ’em up, and said, “Okay—search me!”

  The kids, squealing, yelping, began to search, looking in his every pocket, and coming back with candy—Tootsie Rolls, mostly, but some jawbreakers and other hard colorful candy, too.

  When the kids each had a fat handful of candy, Nelson stood and waved his hands, saying, “Okay, okay—you got me. Now promise you won’t eat any of that till you had your supper?” And he winked elaborately at them, and they squealed some more and ran off God knows where.

  The little woman had been standing watching all this out the screen door. Nelson noticed her, smiled her way, said, “I stocked up on candy ’fore I left Beaver Falls. Didn’t want to disappoint the little rascals.”

  She looked out at him coldly, then receded back into the house.

  Nelson shrugged, asked Ben for some room keys. Ben dutifully went inside and came back out with them.

  Before he got back in the car to drive to his cabin, Nelson said to Floyd, “We never worked together. Looking forward to it.”

  “Likewise,” Floyd nodded, smiling.

  But the men didn’t shake hands. There was mutual respect, here, but this was an uneasy truce, just the same. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig sizing each other up.

  Nelson grinned at me, wolfishly; the mustache still looked fake. “You don’t even know what this is about yet, do you, Lawrence? Ha ha ha! You’re in for a surprise.”

  Then he got in the Buick with his wife and the others and drove a few doors down.

  “Let’s walk,” Floyd said.

  Hands in our pockets, we strolled aimlessly around back, through the trees, down to the riverbank. Trees on both sides of the river reflected off it; the sun looked at itself on the peaceful shimmer of the water.

  We sat on the sloping ground, looking down at the river; there wasn’t any beach to speak of, right here. Floyd plucked a weed and chewed on the end of it.

  “Ever think about getting out of it?” Floyd asked.

  “Out of what?”

  He smiled; cheeks seemed about to burst, and they were a burning red. “This life of crime, friend. This ol’ life of crime.” He looked out toward the trees across the river. “Wouldn’t you like to cross over there, and just be done with it?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “You probably better off with those Chicago Boys.” He said “Boys” like “bow-ahs.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They’s business men.”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  He grunted a laugh. “We’s small fry. Kind gets gobbled up by the bigger fish.”

  I knew what he meant. There would always be room for the Capones and the Nittis; like Karpis said, the Syndicate was in “public-service-type business.” The outlaws were a dying breed. And some of them seemed to know it.

  “Take this ‘Pretty Boy’ shit. And ‘Baby Face.’ Those ain’t names nobody who knows us calls us. That’s newspaper shit. Only I don’t think it starts with the newspapers.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I think it’s Cummings and Hoover trying to make saps out of us.”

  Cummings was the U.S. attorney general, the man who was spearheading FDR’s war on crime.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Why? They make us sound like mad dogs so they look like big heroes when they catch us.”

  “They haven’t caught you yet.”

  He shook his head. “Matter of time. Matter of time.”

  “My experience with the feds is they’re pretty goddamn lame.”

  Floyd nodded, chewing on the weed. “But they’s so many of ’em.”

  “Yeah. And they got guns now. They can cross state lines, and they got guns now.”

  “I got so little to show.”

  “Huh?”

  “I been at this since I was in my twenties. Just a kid. And I got so little stored away. This life is expensive, you know.”

  “They say you gave a lot of your money away.”

  He smiled, almost shyly this time. “I did some of that. I ain’t no Robin Hood, like some’d have you think. Took care of my friends, in the hills, is all. And they took care of me. And mine.”

  He sat and stared at the river.

  Then he said, “I got a boy, nine. Just a tad older than that boy of Ben’s. And I got a pretty wife.” He chewed the end of the weed; then turned eagerly and said, “Want to see?”

  “Sure.”

  Grinning, he dug his wallet out of his back pocket. He showed me a snapshot of his wife—a lovely dark-haired woman in a white dress and hat; standing near her, putting a supportive arm around her, was a beaming kid in a white shirt and slacks.

  “Good-looking kid,” I said. “Honey of a wife, too.”

  He smiled, looking at the picture; after a while the smile faded, but he kept looking.

  Then he put it away in the wallet; stuffed the wallet in his pocket.

  I said, “They were dressed nice—look healthy, well-fed.”

  Floyd nodded. “I been providin’ for ’em. But in the long run, what? This life can’t last. I’m gettin’ too old for it. And the times is passin’ me by. It’s time to get across the river.”

  I didn’t follow him. I said so.

  He smiled. “Sometimes you got to do something that common sense says not.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a impossible job. Like a score so big, you can make a new life.”

  My mouth felt dry.

  I said, “Is that the kind of job going
down tomorrow?”

  He nodded—just the trace of a smile on the cupid lips.

  I said, “All I know is it’s a kidnapping.”

  “Did you know it’s a big shot? A national figger, like the damn papers put it?”

  I felt something cold at the base of my spine.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, it is, Jim.” He rose.

  He began to walk up the slope.

  I followed.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “How much did they say you’d be getting?”

  “My cut? Something like five gees.”

  “It’ll be more. I promise you that.”

  We were through the trees, now.

  “Who, Chock?”

  “I don’t want to tell you, unless I know you’re in. In all the way. In for sure.”

  “I’m in. Who?”

  “One of them that’s out to end us.”

  “Who.”

  “Not ‘who.’ Hoover. John Edgar Hoover. Attorney general’s right-hand man. Better hurry, Jim—it’s gettin’ time for Ma’s barbecue….”

  “PRETTY BOY” FLOYD

  36

  Shortly after Floyd and I came back around the front of the tourist camp, a Ford sedan pulled in, driven by Doc Barker. Karpis rode in front with him, and Dolores and Louise were in back. The guy in the Panama hat, Ben, fetched their cabin keys. Louise saw me through her window, beamed and climbed out of the sedan and all but ran to my side. I’d known her less than twenty-four hours and there she was, clinging to my arm like life was a sinking ship and I was a piece of floating wood.

  I walked her down to the room, carrying her bag.

  “Twin beds,” she said. “Too bad.”

  “Louise,” I said. “I’m not so sure what happened this morning is something we ought to repeat….”

  She pretended to be hurt by that; the wide-set brown eyes looked comically woeful. God, she looked cute—the bobbed blond hair, the rosy cheeks, pouty lips, slight but rounded figure well displayed in a form-fitting pink-and-white-print cotton dress with a shoelace bow at the neck. She sat on the edge of one of the beds and hiked her skirt up to where the milk of her thighs said hello above her rolled stocking tops.