He sat but couldn’t relax. The sun was still high, but the shadows had begun to lengthen, and the lake, its blue immensity visible here and there between gaps in the busy landscape and structure of the exhibits to the far side of the Midway, provided a famous Chicago windy bluster to keep things cool and the mosquitoes from forming mobs around human flesh. He had switched, it being a hot day, to informal clothes; that is, a khaki suit, his black tie, and a new-bought indulgence, a tan fedora, brim low, shielding his eyes. He sat alert, conspicuously aware of the Government Model .45 nesting in floral-carved leather under his left shoulder, and the two full magazines of hardball wedged into a leather keeper of his own design over his right kidney. He ate the chocolate-covered frozen treat, not noticing it much because his eyes were so busy noticing other things, such as the thin crowd of humanity that trickled by, mostly adults with squads of beat-to-hell kids, all messy in melted ice cream or clingy puffs of cotton candy, as well armed with pennants, little-kid horns, all sorts of crap meant to soak the rubes’ nickels and dimes.
He couldn’t really feel at ease. If the judge his own self had come all the way out from town to deliver a message, it meant that somebody very high up in the as-yet-nameless organization had given the order, and the judge, a king in a little fiefdom, had popped to like a PFC. The judge’s involvement, instead of a mere phone call, carried its own weight in communication; it said to Charles that a decision had been reached, that plans were afoot, and he was to be a part of them, no matter what his own inclinations were.
It wasn’t long before a gent came over—he seemed to arrive from nowhere—and sat next to Charles. A well-turned-out character too, in a double-breasted blue pinstripe, shiny black shoes, and a straw Panama up top, very sporting. He was olive-skinned but quite handsome, in a picture-show kind of way, and had a whiff of cologne to him, and a white carnation bright on his lapel. It certainly wasn’t an outfit you wore to a fair, not even a World’s Fair.
He carried a newspaper with him, and paid no attention to Charles, but when he flipped the paper open, Charles saw that it was six days old, last Sunday’s Tribune, and it wore the vivid eight-column headline DILLINGER GANG STRIKES SOUTH BEND. A batch of photos darkened the center of the page, and Charles didn’t have to look to know that Mel Purvis was prominent, plus dramatic shots of bullet holes in glass, with Joe (“Heroic Teenager”) Pawlowski and detectives bending to examine spent shell casings.
The fellow seemed to notice Charles’s interest, and said, “Say, isn’t that the limit? These hoodlums go in and shoot the hell out of a nice little town like that, kill a cop, wound four, use machine guns on Main Street. What a shame!”
Charles nodded glumly.
“I hate that stuff,” the man continued. “Men with guns, shooting the hell out of everything, messing everything up. Know what we need? Strong law enforcement, men who can go gun to gun with these bandits, who can shoot better, faster, straighter. But I guess men like that are hard to find.”
“Wouldn’t know about that,” Charles said guardedly.
“I think you would, Sheriff,” said the man, turning to face him, displaying a taut, intelligent face, exquisitely shaven, though a blue-steel blur of shadow highlighted his dark eyes, set off by a white inch of scar across the knobby cheekbone. His personality was like his wardrobe: spotless, perfectly fitted, regal, yet fluid and creamy. “I hear you’re the best shot in the Division, and they brought you in from the South to go gun to gun with Johnny and his pals. I think I spot a suspicious bulge under your jacket. Heavy iron, serious iron.”
“Okay, I’m here. This is the meet. What’s the play? Who are you?”
“No names. But you’re no hick. You know how it works and who’s doing what. You know that in most circumstances, you and the people I represent work on opposite sides of the street.”
“I get that.”
“But our interests momentarily converge. What you want, what we want. This crap has to end, for everybody’s sake, so we look at the options and we chose you as our vessel. You come highly recommended, because I know you’re not so rigid, you can’t deal with reality in an adult manner. Not like most of these kids in the Division, all full of Ohio State boola-boola, who don’t really get how it can work and want to throw everybody in the hoosegow.”
Charles finished his last bit of Eskimo Pie, wiped his lips and fingers with a napkin, and got out his makings and began to assemble a tailor-made. Getting it together deftly, he put it to his lips and fired it up with a Zippo he carried, snapped the lighter shut with a power-thumbed clack, and looked across the boulevard choked with humanity parading by.
“I’m here to listen, so you’d best make your pitch.”
“Good man, all business. Okay, here it is. I am here to talk about Johnny, Homer, Pretty Boy, and that king of all screwballs, Baby Face Nelson. You know who Roger Touhy is?”
“May have heard the name.”
“West Chicago. Tough guy, bootlegger, all-around bad citizen. Here’s the joke: Baby Face Nelson was such a nutcake that Roger Touhy kicked him out of his outfit! He was too crazy for Roger Touhy, who’s as crazy as a burning duck!”
“If I get him in my sights, I will finish that issue for good,” said Charles.
“I want to put him in your sights. That’s what this is about. We hear things. We get information from cribs, brothels, clubs, truckers, safe houses, people on jobs or on the grift. We knew two days early about South Bend, from the guy who owns the tavern they worked out of. So here’s the deal. When I have something, someone will call your office and tell you Uncle Phil wants to talk. You go across the street to a phone booth, right down on State, outside of the Maurice Rothschild main entrance. Pretend to talk on the phone, but hold the cradle lever down. When it rings, let the lever up and I’ll give you the latest.”
“Not so fast. You guys can be slippery. How do I know this isn’t some kind of deal to screw us up so bad, the Division gets closed down? I need assurances, guarantees. I’m not just rushing in with twenty agents and machine guns because some guy with whorehouse cologne tells me to.”
“Fair enough. You have to be protected. Okay, I’m going to give you info on a meet Baby Face has set up next week in Mount Prospect, in the northwestern suburbs. He needs to get going on something quick because he didn’t make the score he thought he’d make in South Bend and he needs the dough to get through the winter. He’s meeting with some pals late on a country road. Off the main stretch. You’ll get a map tomorrow. You check it out. You’ll see I’m dealing aces.”
“Okay, next question: why? What’s in it for you? These guys take a lot of heat, but nobody notices or talks about you. You’re not interesting compared to machine guns on Main Street.”
“Hey, Sheriff, none of your beeswax. It’s been decided, that’s all you need to know. The breeze is blowing your way. Fly your kite or go away and shut up forever.”
17
WOLF ROAD
CHICAGO
July 15, 1934
“BABY, can’t we stop, spend the night in a cabin?” said Helen.
“No, sweetie, I know it’s tough, but we’re almost there. I got to make this meet.”
Les pushed the Hudson through the steamy night. It had been over 100 all day, suffocating hot, but he roared through the heat like he rolled through everything, hard and remorselessly, fueled by his surging anger at everything that was not Helen. Ahead, at last, the glow of Chicago’s bright lights blurred the horizon. It had been a hell of a grind from Sausalito, almost the breadth of the continent away, where he and Helen and J.P. had headed straight off the South Bend job. Distance was safety, they all knew.
But now it was time to get to work.
“You want me to drive a while, Les?” asked J.P. from the backseat.
“No, pal,” said Les. It was a quirk of his. He liked to do the driving. He could put himself behind the wheel as the hou
rs turned into days with few ill effects. And now, so close to the meet, he didn’t want to relinquish control—heat or not, fatigue or not. He wanted to get there, get something set up, get something started. As a professional, he had a great work ethic.
“Couldn’t we go to a club, Les?” said Helen. “I could use a Coca-Cola. You know, the Rainbow or the Crystal Room?”
“Cops are watching ’em all. You forget how famous I am now. I’m bigger than Gable!” He laughed.
“You ought to go to Hollywood, Les,” said J.P. “You’re handsome enough to be a star.”
“Aw, they put makeup on you, like a dame. Not for Les, no sir.”
Illinois rolled past, the Hudson’s engine devouring the pavement. When they were within twenty miles of city limits, Les looked for a solid north–south route, found it, and turned north. Here the lights were sparser, the roadhouse opportunities less available, mostly everything was closed down. But that also meant little traffic, and that meant few cops, and he motored on, gliding through the night.
He hit the far reaches of Touhy Avenue at about 1, right on schedule. He’d planned it perfectly. Turning east on Touhy, he took that road in, just north of Chicago, until at last he hit Wolf Road, another through and through, and turned north again. Closer in, more stuff, but most of it silent, the roadway empty—he still obeyed the occasional traffic light, just in case—and headed toward Mount Prospect, his actual destination just north of it, a little road to nowhere where he and the boys had rendezvoused before and knew well.
He hoped Jack Perkins had come up with the soup, as they called the volatile liquid explosive nitroglycerine. You’d have to blow the safe on his next objective, which wasn’t a bank but a mail car on a streamliner, meant to be intercepted just out of Chicago. Mr. Murray, who had a long record of setting up jobs going all the way back to the Newton boys, had scouted out this one and said the take would be six figures. Mr. Murray should know, as he’d set up the Newtons’ biggest robbery, at Rondout, downstate, fifteen years ago. He was a solid, reliable guy who planned carefully and knew all the tricks.
So Jack would be there to report on his nitroglycerine quest, and so would longtime pal Fatso Negri, and Carey Lieder, a mechanic with aspirations of joining the big boys who had in fact fronted Les the big chunk of luxury automobile he now drove.
Beyond Mount Prospect, he slowed. Country here, few lights, it wouldn’t get bright for another few miles, when they skirted Wheeling, which is why it was such a great spot for a meet.
“I think it’s pretty soon,” said J.P.
“Hard to find the goddamned road,” said Les. “No road markers out here or anything. No lights. Just prairie and trees. What a boring place!”
“But you don’t want no action, do you, Les?”
“You’re right. And I’m not sightseeing neither. I ain’t no tourist.”
They rolled onward, Les checking his watch—1:45 a.m.—and in a bit hit the mark.
Miller was a nondescript farm road that ran west, unpaved, designated only by a billboard on the northeast corner for Standard Oil, showing a happy family packed in the car on a vacation trip: The Open Road—It’s the American Way! it said.
“Okay, folks, we made it. Helen, honey, an hour here, read a magazine or something, and then we’ll check in someplace and you can take a shower and get some sleep.”
“It sounds so great. I’d kill for twenty-four hours of uninterrupted rest.”
“You don’t need to kill nobody, honey. That’s Daddy’s job.”
They turned left, onto Miller, and drove about a quarter of a mile, over a rise in the road, then downhill into a dip. The big Hudson tossed dust as it progressed, and then Les slid off the road and parked.
They sat quiet as the dust settled and the big car cooled down, occasionally offering a mysterious click or snap or crunch. Les patted the wheel.
“Nice doggie,” he said. “You relax now too while Les takes care of business. You okay, Helen?”
“Yeah, babe. I’m fine. I have the new Modern Screen.”
“So who do I look more like? Gable or Fredric March?”
“You remind me more of the New York guy, Cagney.”
“He’s too Hell’s Kitchen.”
“No, Les, she’s right,” said J.P. “You’ve got his pep, his quick moves, his guts.”
“Yeah, yeah, I see it now. Hey, good thing there’s no grapefruit around.”
“You better not, Les,” squealed Helen, laughing. “I’ll smack you right back!”
“I know you would, sweetie.” Les laughed, getting out of the car. He lounged against the fender, enjoying the night sky, the lower temperature after a July scorcher cramped in the car. The breeze fell gentle against his face, the crickets buzzed, occasionally a shooting star left an incandescent blur across the black vastness up top. Up there, far away, pinwheels and comets blazed, but it meant nothing to him other than display. He just saw fireworks. He glanced at his watch, whose radium dial told him it was 1:50, and just at that second headlight beams swung his direction as one car, then another, both Fords, turned off Wolf and down Miller, raising their own mild spumes of dust as they approached. He waved.
The two cars pulled off and parked not far from his, and he felt a surge of warmth as his guys piled out. Fatso and Jack were in the first car, Carey Lieder in the second.
“There they are,” said Les. “The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift and his electric corncob.”
All three laughed, and J.P. got out of the backseat of Les’s Hudson and joined in the group hug and hand-slapping-hand, hand-shaking-hand, arm-pumping, backslapping greeting scrum. It looked like Notre Dame had just beat Navy 28–3.
“Man, you guys look good.”
“Glad you’re back, Les,” said Fatso.
“Now we can get stuff rolling,” said Jack. “And this time we’ll do it right.” He bent, waved, yelled, “Hi, Helen, how’s the girl?” and Les’s wife smiled, waved back.
The five of them moved over to a space between the cars and lounged on fenders and bumpers, enjoying one another’s company, lighting up, Jack the same brand cigar he’d smoked in South Bend, J.P. and Fatso firing up cigarettes.
“How’d she run?” asked Carey, pointing to the Hudson, wanting to make sure he got credit for his only tangible contribution to this confab of authentic big guys.
“Like a top,” said Les. “That Hudson builds some kind of machine. Hey, Jack can tell you, if the Hudson doesn’t move like a bat out of hell when Johnny punches it, we’re pinched in South Bend and looking at ten-to-twenty at Crown Point.”
“Yeah, and old Homer’s got a date with a certain big chair for clipping that cop!”
“Damn, that’s the only thing we did wrong,” said Les. “Should have left Homer at the curb!”
More laughter, though Jack’s was forced, for he remembered it was Homer who’d covered them all and kept the cops back when the battle was at its most pitched.
Then Les had his scoop.
“I got something big for you,” he said. “Johnny wants in on this one. He’s shacking up with a whore on the North Side, but this deal is so sweet and easy, he wants a piece of it. Having the big guy along will make it easy. I got a meet set up with him.”
“What about Homer?” Fatso wondered. “Did that slug in the head knock any of those corny jokes out of him?”
“Mickey got him back to St. Paul. He’s okay. It’ll take a while, but he’ll be back full steam. I don’t want him, we don’t need him, it shrinks the cut, so there’s a lot of reasons to keep him out. No Charlie Floyd, either, that dumb ox. He’s probably in the basement of some Anadarko whorehouse drinking up the last of his seven grand . . . Okay, let’s get down to it.”
“I got a line on soup,” said Jack. “It wasn’t easy, that stuff is hard to come by. But I know a guy whose brother is a mine foreman in Kentucky, and I drov
e down last weekend to see if he could put us on to it. It won’t be cheap, but he’s going to drive it up and handle it for us. He says otherwise we’ll blow ourselves up. It’s tricky.”
“Is he a solid guy?” asked Les. “Our work is tricky too.”
“For five grand, he’ll be Alvin friggin’ York. Yeah, he’s solid. Miner. That’s the hardest, most dangerous work there is. Have to be a hero to even think about making a living a thousand feet down for a buck an hour!”
“Okay, good. Five grand seems okay.”
“That’s good,” said Jack. “That’ll make him happy.”
The reports went on. Carey had two cars lined up, purchased cheap from a downstate car-theft ring operating out of Cairo, on the Mississippi. He said he’d get ’em in in a week, work ’em over, make sure they did eighty on the straightaway, were lively on the pedal, and had heavy-duty shocks for any hairpins that came along.
“I hope we don’t need ’em,” said Les. “I want this one to go easy, no gunfights in downtown anywhere, no high-speed escapes.”
“Amen to that,” came the chorus.
“Have you picked a site yet, Les?”
“Nah. I want to drive the whole Illinois section and see what’s best. Also, now that I’m thinking of it, Carey, you head down there too and find a school bus you can boost. We park that baby on the track and you watch how fast that train comes to a halt.”
“Hey, that’s good, Les.”
“Damned right,” said Les.
Fatso reported on the train itself. It was Illinois Central 909, originating in Iowa City. At six of its thirteen Friday stops it picked up money sacks from federal banks, all headed to the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. As Jimmy Murray had estimated, it could easily go over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and even stepped on five times—now six with Johnny, with the soup guy, cut in—that worked out to forty-one grand apiece, not bad for a night’s work.