Handsome Harry

by James Carlos Blake

  I kept the sight on him as he came down to the sidewalk.

  My mother would think it was a damn dumb way to get myself killed, Mary said.

  Now Leach was at his car and he laughed at something the other guy said. I raised the sight to his grinning skull face.

  Mary said she could be wrong but it didn’t seem a very self-respecting way to even the score.

  He got into the car and I sighted on him through the windshield.

  Then the car drove away and he was gone.

  To this day he’s got no idea he came this close to getting his clock stopped.

  Lucky b-b-bastard.

  I worked the bolt to empty the magazine, and then picked up the rounds and put them in my pocket and set the Enfield against the wall. Then I looked at Mary for the first time since we’d come into the room.

  She was wiping tears off her face and laughing her wonderful laugh.

  Then we were out of our clothes and on the bed and having so much fun we were probably breaking a dozen laws.

  We spent the night in the hotel and slept late. We had a room-service brunch and then took in a movie—Duck Soup, a new Marx Brothers that made us laugh so hard our stomachs hurt. When Groucho told a guy You’re fighting for this woman’s honor, which is more than she ever did, I thought of John and Billie for some reason.

  We headed for home around midafternoon. In Lafayette we ate an early supper and lingered a while over coffee and cigarettes. Shortly before sundown, as we were going through Rensselaer, we heard a radio report that I’d killed a cop in a Chicago garage and made a clean getaway.

  Holy Joe, Mary said, next they’ll be accusing you of shooting Abe Lincoln.

  We were almost to Shytown when the news item was repeated, once again in the breathless, rat-a-tat, edge-of-your-seat style the radio guys love to use in reporting violent crime—but this time with a correction. The slayer of Police Detective Somebody-or-other was not Harry Pierpont, the fugitive Michigan City escapee, murderer, bank robber, and member of the Terror Gang. It was another member of the gang—John Hamilton, also known as Three-finger Jack Hamilton. The identity of the cop killer had been confirmed by Hamilton’s woman companion, one Mrs. Elaine DeKant, whom Hamilton deserted near the scene of the crime and who’d been arrested by police. Mrs. DeKant positively identified Hamilton’s photograph at police headquarters and confirmed that he was missing two fingers, which he’d told her he’d lost in the war. She claimed she knew him only as Orval Lewis, an independent investor. Mrs. DeKant led police to the apartment Hamilton had been renting under the name of Lewis and the landlord also identified his picture. Mrs. DeKant was being held in the Cook County Jail on charges of accessory to murder and abetting a fugitive.

  The report went on to say that citizens all across the country were outraged by the Terror Gang’s second killing of a police officer. Acting on information that the gang was in their city, Chicago police were on a rampage, pulling raids all over town and snaring dozens of crooks in the process.

  As soon as Mary and I got home we called the gang together at our place. Opal came with Russell and Charley, but Tweet was working, and Patty had stayed at the apartment in case Red showed up there. Nobody’d heard a peep from him since the news of the shooting. We figured he might’ve skipped town, but even so, he’d get word to us as soon as he could. Russ and Charley said they’d never seen so many squad cars prowling the streets. It was no night to venture outside, so we stayed put, playing cards and keeping an ear to the radio for news about Red.

  Around ten o’clock there was a knocking at the door—two slow raps, then three quick ones, our call sign. John opened up and there Red stood, smiling sort of hangdog and sporting a badly swollen eye that was shaping up into a world-class shiner. John tugged him inside and closed the door and we all gathered round and slapped him on the back, happy as hell to see him.

  The girls ran up and gave him hugs. They’d been worried about him, of course, although they hadn’t been pleased to learn of Mrs. DeKant. According to Opal, Patty didn’t say anything about the woman when she heard the news, only that she hoped Red was safe, wherever he was. But it was obvious she was both hurt and furious.

  Charley asked what happened, and Red said he’d tell us the whole story if somebody would get him a goddamn drink. I poured everybody one while Mary got a piece of steak from the icebox for him to hold on his eye, then we all settled ourselves in the living room.

  Man gave me no choice, Red said. Which none of us had doubted for a minute.

  He and the respectable Mrs. DeKant had taken the roadster he’d given her to a garage that morning to get the fender straightened out. The mechanic said the job wouldn’t be difficult and the car would be ready by one o’clock. They took a taxi to his secret apartment and cavorted for a time, then had a late lunch at a café and went to a movie. It wasn’t till after four that they got back to the garage.

  There was no one around when they went in, but the roadster was in a garage bay, the fender nicely straightened. Red and Mrs. DeKant were admiring the fine job when two men came out of the office—one in overalls and obviously the night garage man, and the other one as obviously a plainclothes cop. Whatever tip he was acting on, the cop didn’t know Red by sight, that was obvious too, or he wouldn’t have come out of the office without a gun in his hand.

  The guy flashed his badge and asked Red if the car was his. Red said no, it was his wife’s, and asked Mrs. DeKant to show the man the registration. She gave Red a look but dug the paper out of her purse, and as she handed it to the cop Red said he’d show him his driver’s license and reached into his coat.

  The cop said to keep his hands out of his pockets and was fumbling for his gun when Red pulled a pistol and shot him twice. He fell on his ass with thin streaks of blood spurting from his chest and he tried to plug the wounds with his fingers, then babbled something and fell over and shut up.

  Bastard got blood on my shoes, Red said. Did I get it all off?

  I didn’t see any blood on either shiny shoe, but he took a hanky from his jacket and gave both another wipe.

  If he hadn’t gone for it, Red said, he could be having a cold beer right now. But no, he had to go for it.

  What could’ve happened did, Charley said.

  The garage man had thrown up his hands and backed away, saying Not me, not me, and then ran out of the place as Red got behind the wheel of the Auburn. But the keys weren’t in the ignition so he grabbed the woman by the hand and they hustled out to the street. He was impressed by the respectable Mrs. DeKant—she didn’t let out a squeak or cry or in any way lose her nerve. She looked scared, Red said, but she kept her mouth shut, and despite her high heels she was moving right along with him as he fast-walked toward an alley halfway down the block.

  Then somebody with a gun was hollering at them from across the street. Red made him for another plainclothes and figured the only reason the guy didn’t shoot was the risk of hitting the woman. The cop ran into the street without looking and a car braked hard and swerved to keep from clipping him and the cop jumped back and fell down.

  Red hated to leave Mrs. DeKant to the wolves, but you do what you have to. He said So long, baby, and sprinted off around the corner and into the alley. He came to an intersecting alleyway and turned into it and ran past several back doors before entering one with a green dragon on it. There were so many back doors along there the cops couldn’t know which one he went into.

  He’d figured the place for a Chinese restaurant and it was—and that was good because Chinks generally know how to mind their own business. He went through the kitchen, giving hard looks at the cooks and dishwashers like he was an immigration man on the prowl and they got out of his way fast. Then he ambled out into the crowded dining room and nodded pleasantly at the few people who looked at him in passing. He walked out the front door and flagged down a taxi and went to his Orval Lewis love-nest to retrieve the Packard. He knew Mrs. DeKant would describe it to the cops, so he switched the
plates on it and drove down to a certain auto shop in Hammond and left it there to get a new paint job.

  He returned to Chicago on an interurban. The sight of all the cops on the streets made him jumpy as hell and he rode the trolley to the end of the line, then caught a cab to a hotel eight blocks from the apartment he shared with Charley and the girls. He waited till the taxi was out of sight, then walked home.

  Opal said You’ve been home? You seen Patty?

  Red gave her a glum look and nodded and took the steak off his eye. How you think I got this shiner?

  Opal said Ha! and clapped her hands, and Billie and Mary laughed like happy kids. Actually, Red was the only one in the room who didn’t look amused.

  Tell us, Red, Billie said.

  It’s humiliating, he said.

  I hope so, Mary said. So tell us and take it like a man.

  He figured Patty had heard about the shooting on the radio news and was probably a little put out by the mention of Mrs. DeKant, and so he’d been cautious in approaching their apartment. The door was deadbolted from inside, so he tapped the call sign on it, ready to run if she should greet him with a weapon in her hand. But when the lock turned and the door swung open he saw that she’d been crying and that her hands were empty. She opened her arms wide to receive him saying Baby, baby, are you all right, I’ve been so worried, and he figured true love had the upper hand, that his minor indiscretion meant little to her compared to the danger he had so narrowly escaped.

  They hugged tight and he told her he was fine, just fine, there was no need to worry anymore, Daddy Red was home safe and sound. He was thinking he was a pretty lucky fella to have such an understanding woman.

  She wanted to have a look at him, so he took a step back and that gave her all the room she needed to swing the rolling pin she’d picked up from the table by the door.

  That first one caught him on top of the head and his legs nearly buckled. He fell against the doorjamb and she was hollering something but all he understood of it was low-down bastard and DeKant cunt—and wham! the pin caught him on the eye like a Dempsey haymaker.

  I tell you, boys and girls, he said, I saw some stars. A goddamn rolling pin. I felt like one of those dumb bastards in the funny papers. Pardon my Japanese, ladies.

  The girls were grinning like keyboards.

  She barely missed him with the next swing or she would’ve busted his skull into as many pieces as she did the poor lamp she hit instead. And then he was outside and hightailing it, not catching what she said as he took his leave but fairly certain that it wasn’t endearments.

  I’m lucky I’m alive to tell the tale, he said. You think this eye’s bad, look here.

  He bowed his head so we could see a purple lump the size of an egg showing through the thin hair near his crown.

  He wondered if anybody had a sofa he could borrow use of for a while. Mary said he could use ours, even though somebody who two-timed Patty didn’t deserve any kindness.

  Maybe not, he said, but I sure as hell deserve another drink.

  I thought he did too, and I poured him a big one.

  So here I am, he said. This morning I had two girlfriends and now I’ve got none. Don’t tell me how fast things can change.

  Opal said she knew for a fact that Patty had never liked a fella as much as she liked him, and if he played his cards right he might be able to wheedle forgiveness from her. But brother, he better be serious about it because if he pulled a stunt like this Mrs. Whoever again, he’d have Patty and her to deal with.

  Mary stuck a finger in Red’s face and said Me too, Jack, you hear me?

  Yeah-yeah-yeah, Red said.

  Considering the size of that knot on your head, Russell said, I’m surprised you can hear anything but bells.

  Red cupped a hand to his ear and said Come again?

  The next day’s papers gave front-page play to the shooting, of course. The Chicago P.D. declared all-out war on the Terror Gang and formed a special squad whose sole mission was to hunt us down and take us in, dead or alive. Considering that they called themselves the Shoot-to-Kill Squad, there wasn’t much question about which way they preferred to do the job. The special outfit was headed by some hotshot captain and was composed of fifty handpicked guys, the toughest mugs on the force. Fifty guys. Man, that’s an army.

  In a related report, all charges against Mrs. Elaine DeKant had been dropped and she had been released from custody after the state attorney determined that she had been duped by John (Three-finger Jack) Hamilton and absolved her of any complicity in the murder of Detective Sergeant Somebody-or-other.

  An editorial said that the plague of foreclosures and loss of property across the country in these hard economic times made it possible to understand—but certainly never condone—the anger that prompted so many citizens to cheer our depredations against the banks. But murder was another matter. Murder was indisputably beyond the pale and could not but outrage all moral men. Especially heinous was the killing of a police officer. The police were, after all, the sanctioned defenders of the social order, and to take sides against them was no less than to side with the forces of anarchy and etcetera, etcetera.

  Charley said the piece was so moving he had half a mind to turn himself in.

  We kept off the streets for the next few days. John dyed his hair red and Red dyed his black, and both of them were growing mustaches. Russell had Opal buy him a pair of phony specs like mine and John’s. I did drive Red down to Hammond one night to pick up his Packard, now painted a solid black. He switched the plates on it again and stored it in the same parking garage where John and I kept our cars.

  Every night we met at our place to discuss our next move. It was time to clear out of Chicago for a while, on that we all agreed. What we needed was a vacation, and we preferred someplace warm. We decided on Florida, and the next day Mary and Billie went to a travel agency to see about rentals and got us a huge beach house in Daytona Beach.

  The only ones not going were Red and Patty. Russell brought Red fresh clothes from their place and he bunked on our sofa for three days. He called Patty several times a day before she finally accepted the phone from Opal and talked to him. They were on the line for half an hour before he joined the rest of us in the kitchen and said that all was not exactly forgiven but at least she’d said he could come home and they’d see how things went.

  I called Pearl and told her we were going to lay low for a while at a hiding place in Michigan, all except for Red. If she needed to get in touch she could do it through him. She said she didn’t blame me for not being more specific about where we’d be holing up, that if she had the same kind of heat on her she’d be extra careful too, even with her trusted friends. I said I knew she’d understand and we both laughed.

  We were packed and set to go when we got the news that Matt Leach and his boys had collared Ed Shouse in Paris, Illinois. Acting on a tip from some stoolie and working in partnership with the Paris police, Leach set up an ambush outside the hotel where Shouse was staying. When Shouse came out, accompanied by another man and two women, Leach yelled for them to surrender—which Shouse, yellow bastard that he is, immediately did. The other guy made a run for it and the cops opened fire. Somehow the guy got away, but in all the shooting, one Indiana cop was killed by another, taking a bullet through the eye. Must’ve been some show for the neighborhood.

  When he was grilled, Shouse gave the cops a lot of cock-and-bull about how we slept in bullet-proof vests every night and held daily combat drills in preparation against a sudden police attack. He said he’d left the gang because—get this—we were all too kill-crazy for his taste.

  He’d been identified as one of the men who delivered John from the Lima jail, and he stood charged as an accessory to murder. He admitted he’d been in on the break, but said he’d been assured by none other than yours truly that nobody would get hurt, never mind killed, never mind the county sheriff.

  Russell said he’d pay a thousand dollars for five minutes al
one with that bigmouth, car-thieving son of a bitch before they shipped him back to M City.

  Charley said Shouse lacked the sand to ever try a breakout on his own, and he believed we’d seen and heard the last of him. But like I’ve said before, we hadn’t.

  John telephoned Leach and told him what a good laugh we’d got out of his Keystone Kops caper in Illinois, but didn’t anybody ever tell him the police were supposed to shoot the bad guys, not each other? Maybe Santa Claus would bring him a shooter’s manual and an instruction book on police work.

  Christ, it was so easy to get the guy’s goat. He started st-st-stuttering and we all yelled Merry Christmas, Dick Tracy! Then John dropped the receiver in its cradle.

  We left town in a four-car caravan—John and Billie in the Blueberry, Charley and Tweet in his Terraplane, Russ and Opal in the Hudson, me and Mary in the Vick. Tweet was going with us only as far as Nashville, where she would catch a train to go visit her mom and sister in Arizona. She’d renewed her contract with the club and had a six-week break before going back to work. Charley offered to go pick her up in Tucson at the end of January so they could drive back to Shytown together, and she wasn’t the only one who thought it was a great idea. We decided we’d all make a grand-tour of it and go to Arizona from Florida, then cut back around to Chicago by way of Santa Fe, Denver, Kansas City, and St. Louis.

  In Indianapolis the others went on ahead while Mary and I stopped to visit with her mother and Margo. I’d wanted to go see my mother too, but the cops were still keeping an eye on the place and Mom didn’t want me to risk it.

  Mary’s mother greeted her with so many tearful kisses you’d have thought she hadn’t heard from her in years, even though Mary made it a point to phone her at least once a week and it hadn’t been three months since they’d last seen each other. During dinner at a restaurant, she told us Jocko was in prison in Danville, Illinois, on a two-year rap for receiving stolen property. Mary gave me a look that said Same old thing.