Handsome Harry

by James Carlos Blake

My car, Russell said. John’s the one who kicked his ass, why didn’t he steal his car? Oooh, that low son of a bitch. He stole my car.

  Yeah, I’m pretty sure he did, I said.

  Jesus, he said, world’s crawling with fucken thieves.

  Watch your language, babydoll, Opal said—ladies present.

  Russ was still swearing about it when we got to the restaurant, and he swore about it periodically during the meal, and he swore even louder when we got back to the house and he had to crank up the Model T by hand.

  Mary and I entered the house quietly, listening hard for sounds of battle. We didn’t hear anything until we were down the hall and caught the huff and puff of lovemaking coming through their door. Mary smiled and squeezed my arm. We went in our room and undressed and slipped into bed.

  You did good, kid, I said, and she held me closer and giggled against my neck.

  The next day’s paper brought the news that Knuckles Copeland had been collared. He’d been in his car parked outside a hotel over on North Avenue and having a loud, drunken wrangle with some hooker when the cops showed up in response to the desk clerk’s call. Next thing they knew they’d caught themselves a member of the notorious Dillinger Gang, as the newspaper put it.

  Copeland wouldn’t be able to tell the cops anything except where we’d been living the last time he’d seen us, although as I said before, we didn’t think he’d ever rat us. But none of us trusted Shouse, and that afternoon we all moved once more, Billie and Mary renting another house for us.

  Racine, oh man! It wasn’t the hairiest job we ever pulled—that was the East Chicago heist that was yet to come—but Racine was a close one. A real kick.

  We decided we didn’t need anybody to replace Shouse, that the five of us could handle the job okay. We stole a new blue Buick in Highland Park. John and I tossed to see who drove and he won. We left my Vickie and Red’s roadster in a garage in Waukegan.

  We got into Racine at half past two. It was sunny but chilly and a wind was coming off the lake. We knew the fed money had been delivered that morning and that the bank would be at its fattest shortly before closing, after taking in the day’s deposits. There was no parking on the street in front of the bank, so the plan was to park in the lot behind the building and then make our getaway through the back door.

  If I had it to do over again, I’d work out the getaway a little better, especially the part about the back door.

  Red had the street, and the rest of us went in. Russell had the stopwatch again and stuck close to the front door. John strolled over to the bank president’s desk and Charley went to the table in front of the teller cage and pretended to fill out a deposit slip while I went up to the big front window with a Red Cross poster rolled under my arm and a little spool of tape in my coat pocket.

  I shook open the poster and exchanged smiles with a middle-aged couple seated on a couch waiting to see someone. As I taped the poster to the glass, blocking the view of passersby on the sidewalk, I said Don’t forget to give generously. The man said he always donated to the Red Cross. It had been real nice to him and his buddies during the war.

  John and the president, a good-sized guy, went into the cage together without anybody paying them much mind and the big man started working the combination on the vault. Charley was looking at me, ready to move. There was a short line of customers at the only teller window open for business. At the far end of the cage a teller behind a window with a little CLOSED sign on it was counting a stack of greenbacks.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I said, your attention please. The citizens all looked at me and I pulled the .45 and said This is a robbery. You know who we are and you know we mean business.

  There was the usual big-eyed astonishment and a few little squeals and I told them to button their lips and get down on their stomachs, now, and they dropped like they were doing a group exercise. A plump brunette with her hair in a bun lay down on her back with her eyes closed. I tapped her leg lightly with my toe and said On your stomach, honey—this is a holdup, not a meeting with the board of directors. One of the other women snickered, a looker in a red dress. The brunette blushed and rolled over.

  Fat Charley had the tommy out and was at the window of the money-counter, saying something I didn’t catch except for the word reasonable. But that moron teller made a grab under the counter—and bam, Charley shot him off the stool.

  Women screamed and some of the men started to raise up to see what happened. I yelled for everybody to stay down and shut the hell up or we’d shoot them all.

  The teller had hit the alarm. We could hear it ringing outside the bank and I knew it was sounding in the police station. According to the plan, as soon as we’d been in the bank for three and half minutes Red was to go back to the car and have it running and ready to roll when we came out the rear door. But if the alarm sounded sooner, he’d get back to the car immediately.

  I went into the cage where John was swearing at the bank president for still twiddling with the vault combination. The prez looked up at me and said Did you hurt someone out there? Like he was going to do something about it if I had.

  I asked him his name and he said Weyland. Mr. Weyland, I told him, you have exactly ten seconds to open that vault or we’ll blow your brains out.

  I took a flour sack from my pocket and started cleaning out the cage drawers while John held his .45 to the back of Weyland’s head and counted One…two…three….

  The teller Charley shot was lying on the floor, holding his bloody arm and looking at me like I was Satan in the flesh.

  On the count of seven John cocked the hammer, and on the count of eight, abracadabra, the vault came open. He shoved Weyland in there ahead of him.

  Yes, John would’ve pulled the trigger. Me too. It’s a matter of maintaining authority as well as your self-respect. If you want to make idle threats, be a schoolteacher, be a preacher, be a newspaper editor. Do not carry a gun.

  A police siren was closing in. Bystanders were crowding at the sidewalk window, peeking around the edges of the poster. Everything’s a show to the citizens, everything’s an entertainment.

  I was emptying the last of the cash drawers when the cop siren sounded directly in front of the bank and I caught a glimpse of a squad car.

  Russell had put away the stopwatch and was standing off to the side of the front door, ready for them. A uniformed cop came ambling in and said loudly All right now, people, who set the darn thing off this time?

  Then he saw everybody on the floor and stopped short and tried to unholster his gun but Russ grabbed him from behind by his Sam Browne, yanked him off his feet and sent him skidding on the polished floor. He stripped the cop’s revolver from him and pulled him upright and slammed him against the wall and said to stick his hands in his pockets and leave them there or he’d shoot him in the eye.

  Then another cop came in, dangling a tommy gun in his hand like some woodchopper taking a break. Russell yelled Get him, Fats—and before the cop could raise the tommy, bam-bam, Charley shot him in the leg and he went down in a holler. Now the women couldn’t keep from screaming and the place became sheer pandemonium with all that shrieking and the squad car siren still going and the alarm jangling and jangling. Russell grabbed up the cop’s tommy and dragged him away from the door.

  John came out of the vault with a sack of money in one hand and his .45 in the other.

  Let’s amscray, I said. Russell ran over to the cage and covered the entrance from there while the rest of us made for the back door.

  Which we found locked. The lock was the size of a brick and the key wasn’t in it.

  One of them out there’s got the damn thing, John said.

  I said forget it, we didn’t have time to shake everybody down for it while more cops were on the way. We’d go out the front and shoot what we had to.

  The cop on the lobby floor was holding his bloody leg and crying like a baby. I grabbed Weyland by the collar and said he was coming with us and I told Russell to bring the
other cop. John pointed at the woman in red and said You too, sister.

  She said Who, me? He snatched her by the arm and pulled her along.

  The mob on the sidewalk scattered as we came out into the louder clamor, moving fast and holding the hostages close.

  On the right, Charley, John hollered.

  Charley fired a long burst at a pair of guys across the street with guns in their hands. People screamed and ran for cover and the two guys disappeared around the corner as bullets ricocheted and punched holes in parked cars and brought down a show window in a rain of glass.

  We ran around the corner, pulling the hostages along, Charley bringing up the rear and covering us. He fired another burst and I heard more glass crashing but nobody shot back.

  Then we were at the car and Red was revving the engine, saying Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!

  John told him to shove over and got behind the wheel. I slid into the backseat directly behind him. We made the hostages stand on the running boards and hold on to the window posts and I said if they jumped off we’d shoot them. Weyland was at John’s window and the woman at mine. The cop stood next to the front passenger seat and Red gripped him by the Sam Browne. Charley and Russ were in the backseat with me, Russ in the right-hand jump seat.

  Hang on, kids, John said, and he gunned the Buick out of the lot.

  He laid on the klaxon and we went barreling down the streets in a steady blare, weaving through traffic and zooming past gawking bystanders and taking corners so sharply the car leaned hard and the tires howled and it was all the hostages could do to keep from flying off the running boards. I had my arm around the woman’s hips and held her tight against the door. Her dress was thin and she wasn’t wearing a girdle and didn’t need one, I can tell you. She let out a little screech every time we rounded a corner, but she was a good soldier, and Weyland held up well too. On one of the turns John scraped the right front fender against a taxi and the cop on the running board came this close to getting squished like a bug between the cars. He probably wasn’t even aware of the tears blowing off his face.

  A motorcycle cop coming from the other direction slowed down when he saw us, but I stuck the .45 out the window and he hunched down on the cycle and kept going the other way.

  In minutes we were in the clear. Charley was watching behind us and said there was nobody in pursuit. I had John pull into a side street and stop the car, then told the cop to get off and Weyland and the woman to get in with us and make it fast. Weyland wedged in between me and Charley and I pulled the woman down on my lap.

  See you suckers in the funny papers, Red told the cop and the bystanders, and off we went.

  John took a few side streets to shed the last of the gawkers, then got on a highway leading west out of town. He glanced down at the seat beside him where Red had opened the map with the getaway routes we’d laid out. Once we ditched Weyland and the woman and got out of their sight, we’d cut north and head for the hideout cabins by way of Waukesha and Menomonee Falls. All they’d be able to tell the cops is that we went west.

  We rolled past the city-limit sign and Russell hollered WAAAA-hoooo, giving the woman a start, and we whooped it up big.

  Weyland and the woman weren’t sharing in our high spirits. Now that they were in the car and the gunfire was done with and nobody was chasing us, they had to be wondering what came next.

  I asked her name and she said Ursula. I told her not to be afraid, we’d be releasing them soon. She said she wasn’t afraid, she was cold—it had been freezing out on the running board but she hadn’t realized it while she was hanging on for dear life. She was hugging herself in her short-sleeved dress and her arms had goose bumps. Weyland said she wasn’t kidding about the cold, his bald spot felt frozen. I gave him my hat and then worked out of my coat and draped it over Ursula’s shoulders. As I did, my hand brushed her breast and her face went rosy. The blush might’ve also had something to do with the erection I’d sprouted under her ass.

  Charley commended both her and Weyland on how well they’d handled themselves and thanked them for their assistance in our quest to achieve a more equitable distribution of America’s wealth.

  Red laughed. Fucken well said, pal.

  Hey Jack, lady present, I said. He turned to Ursula and touched his hat brim. Pardon my Portuguese, ma’am.

  John glanced at Ursula in the rearview and asked if she knew how to cook. She said of course she did. He waggled his brows and said maybe she’d like to tag along, hire on as our cook, see to it we got the proper nourishment to keep up the good work.

  She got rosy in the cheeks again and said she didn’t think her husband would like that. My stiffie was really nudging her bottom now. She shifted her weight to try to ease herself off it, but I had my arm around her and she only managed to position herself on it more snugly. I don’t think I could’ve smiled any wider.

  Red pointed at a dirt cutoff up ahead and John nodded. He slowed down and turned onto it and drove into a grove of trees hung heavy with red and yellow leaves and stopped the car. Without letting Weyland or Ursula get a look at it, Red took an Indiana license plate from under the front seat and got out to swap it with the one on the car.

  End of the line, folks, I said.

  That’s what they say when they’re about to bump off somebody, Weyland said. He was trying to make it sound like a joke, but his smile was stiff and I think he was afraid it’s what I had in mind. I pointed my index finger at him and said Bang. He flinched slightly and then everybody laughed, including him and Ursula.

  Bumped off, Charley said. Those ghastly cops-and-robbers movies have the whole world talking like gangsters.

  As Ursula started to step down from the car, I ran my hand over her rump—it was a sweet one, take it from me. She cut a look at me over her shoulder and I winked, and she showed that lovely blush again.

  I hated to make it worse for them in the cold by asking for my hat and coat back, but hey, the coat was custom-tailored, and it was my favorite hat.

  Red got in the car and John backed us toward the highway so Weyland and Ursula couldn’t get a look at the new plate. They watched us turn onto the road in reverse, and as we headed off, she gave us a little wave goodbye.

  John said he bet she wasn’t lying about being a good cook.

  Red bet she was good at a lot more than cooking and that her husband had no complaints about his love life. Right, Pete? I saw the fun you were having with her.

  I gave him the two-finger Up yours sign.

  Yeah, he said, that’s what I’da liked to do to her too.

  Russell thought it wouldn’t have taken much to talk her into joining us. She’s got the leaning, he said, I could tell.

  All the best ones got the leaning, John said, and got no argument from any of us.

  We made it to the cabins without incident. Even the weather was in our favor—a cold wind gusting off the lake and making it natural for everybody to stay indoors and out of sight.

  The take came to a hair under $30,000. Forty-five hundred went to Pearl and her informant and we took cuts of five grand apiece and put the remainder in the common kitty. On top of the money we still had from Greencastle, we were feeling like fat cats.

  We laid low for the next three days, enjoying the commotion we made in the news. Wisconsin lawmen promised to bring us to justice and blah-blah-blah. As we moseyed back to our cars in Waukegan by way of meandering back roads, the newspapers were still peddling panic to the citizens. As always, though, some of the letters to the editor made it clear that not everyone was howling for our scalps. There were plenty of citizens who didn’t think we were much worse than some civic officials and probably a lot less worse than most bankers.

  After the Racine job we took it easy for a while. John bought a new Terraplane, a sedan this time, so the car had room for a few pals. It was a deep blue color like none of us had ever seen on a car before, and he christened it the Blueberry. Red ponied up a hefty $2,600 for a new brown-and-yellow Packa
rd coupe with white-walled tires, spoked chrome wheels, and tan leather seats. He also let us guys in on a secret—he’d recently taken up with a hotel waitress named Elaine Dent Sullivan Burton DeKant, a moniker that got the laugh from us he expected. He said he’d asked her name one morning as she served his coffee at the restaurant and by the time she got done saying it he was ready for a refill. She told him she was divorced but she continued to call herself Mrs. DeKant because it sounded more respectable. In addition to the apartment he and Patty shared with Russ and Opal, Red had rented himself another place under the name of Orval Lewis, and that was where he was putting the blocks to the respectable Mrs. DeKant. He said she had the best melons he’d ever seen—out to here and with nipples that stuck up like thumbs. She was giving him such a good time that when he bought himself the new Packard, he made her a present of his green roadster and even promised to get the crooked fender fixed. We got a kick out of his monkeyshines, but Russell warned him that if Patty found out what he was up to she was liable to go at him and the respectable Mrs. DeKant with a butcher knife.

  We didn’t have any real close calls for about two weeks after Racine, not until the end of Prohibition—the fifth of December, who could forget?

  On the first night of legal boozing in fourteen years, all of Chicago went on a toot. Every nightclub and neighborhood beer bar was packed to the gills. People drank in the streets, dancing and singing, offering toasts to each other. I’d never heard a louder night, not even on New Year’s Eve. Drunks yahooing and klaxons honking and firecrackers blasting and—just like on New Year’s Eve—gunfire sounding all over town as citizens took the opportunity to try to shoot down the moon from their windows and backyards. The city put extra cops on the streets, but most of them got pretty drunk themselves.

  All our favorite speakeasies were now legitimate drinking joints, but with the heat on us more than ever after the ruckus we’d made in Racine, we hadn’t been sure it was a good idea to show ourselves in public on a night when half the city would be out carousing too. John suggested we go to the Silk Hat, a black-and-tan club with a great jazz band over on the south shore that he and Billie often went to and that he’d been recommending to the gang for weeks. None of the rest of us had gone there because we didn’t see any sense in driving that far for a drink and a dance when the Loop was full of great clubs. John and Billie liked it because even though it was spacious and drew big crowds its lighting was really dim—except for up on the bandstand—and couples could get pretty intimate without attracting attention. John told me Billie once blew him at their table and not even the party sitting next to them was the wiser. Besides, the Silk Hat was also dark in another respect—most of its crowd was Negro, and spooks weren’t inclined to blow the whistle on anybody. So that’s where we went to celebrate.