Pretty Boy Floyd

  But now, he was in the forest, where the deer lived, and the bear, and foxes and bobcats and turkeys; he was alone, as a hunted animal is alone. Beulah and Rose were probably less than two miles from where he stood, but they were in a store, or a garage, with people around them, and a cafe close by. They were in the realm of people—he was in the place of animals. He could run and be free—or he could go back to where the people were, and be a captive. Richetti was already in custody. It wouldn’t be long before Mr. Hoover’s boys figured out who he was, if they hadn’t already.

  Hearing the voices of the men, Charley had a longing to go back—the lonely, gloomy woods did not entice him.

  But he remembered Jeff City; he remembered Big Carl, the night before his death. Jeff City had brought its own loneliness, and its own heavy gloom.

  Charley put the pistol back in his pocket and walked on into the woods, kicking himself for not having the foresight to take a shot or two at the turkeys. He might’ve got lucky; a turkey would have kept him in grub for several days. He resolved to keep his eyes open as he walked—he might be lucky twice, and end up with a fat gobbler for supper.

  21

  Agent Purvis felt fortunate. The dry goods store in Salem had a nice fedora, and it was last year’s model, which meant it was cheap. As he was paying for it, one of the young agents from the Cleveland office came running in to tell him that two suspects had been captured near East Liverpool.

  “East Liverpool?” Purvis said. “I thought Liverpool was in England.”

  “Don’t know about that, sir,” the young agent said. “East Liverpool is in Ohio—it’s just down the road.”

  But before they got to the car, the message was amended by even more recent information from another one of the Cleveland agents: one suspect was in custody, not two. The East Liverpool sheriff was of the opinion that the captured man was Adam Richetti, though the prisoner denied it.

  “Richetti’s just a small fry,” Purvis said. “What about Floyd?”

  “One of them made it to the trees,” the young agent said. “They ain’t been able to flush him out yet.”

  “If the Director heard you use the word ‘ain’t,’ you’d soon be back to shining shoes in the railroad station,” Purvis said. “The Director insists on good grammar.”

  The young agent blushed. He was too overcome with embarrassment to venture another opinion during the fast ride to East Liverpool.

  “That’s the trouble with local law,” Purvis said, as they sped along the narrow road. “They always catch the small fish, and let the big fish swim away.”

  “I expect they’ve surrounded Pretty Boy by now, if it’s him,” the driver said.

  “I doubt it,” Purvis said. “Not unless they’ve managed to surround the entire state of Ohio.”

  As they were passing through East Liverpool, headed for the scene of the conflict, Purvis happened to notice two stylishly dressed, attractive young women standing outside a garage. One wore a pink hat. A mechanic was hosing water into the radiator of a late-model Ford.

  “Hold on a minute,” Purvis said, looking back over his shoulder at the young women.

  “I thought you were married,” the agent driving said, looking at Purvis with a smirk.

  “Just slow it down,” Purvis said. “Those girls don’t look like they’re from here.”

  “How would you know, we only been in town thirty seconds ourselves,” the young agent said.

  “Hey, bud,” Purvis said sharply. “Why don’t you try using your foot, and not your brain. Put your big foot down on the brake pedal, and leave it there—if you do, I think the car will stop.”

  “Then what?” the driver said, annoyed by Purvis’s tone.

  “Then turn around, and take me back to that garage,” Purvis said. “And cut the wisecracks—they might be Charley Floyd’s molls.”

  When the G-men drove up to the garage, the mechanic was screwing the cap back on the radiator. Beulah had the money Charley had given her in her hand. Rose was already in the car, waiting.

  “Hurry up, Beulah,” she said. “The boys are gonna be frozen.”

  Melvin Purvis jumped out of the car, just as Beulah handed the mechanic the money.

  “Hello, ma’am,” he said, to Beulah. “Could I ask you a few questions?”

  “What are you, a masher?” Beulah asked, impatient. “Can’t you see I’m in a hurry?”

  “In a hurry to go where?” Purvis asked.

  “In a hurry not to be looking at your ugly puss, for one thing!” Beulah said, indignant. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Agent Melvin Purvis, Bureau of Investigation,” Purvis said, holding up his badge. “And if I’m not mistaken, you’re Beulah Baird—and that’s your sister, Rose, sitting there in the jalopy,” he added, pointing at Rose.

  “Mister, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Beulah said, her indignation rising. “How dare you come around here bothering me when I’m in a hurry?!”

  “It’s my job, ma’am,” Purvis said, calmly. “You are Beulah Baird, aren’t you?”

  Beulah gave him her iciest look. “Mister, if you must know, I’m Jean Harlow,” she said. “And my friend over there in the car is Mary Pickford.”

  “Sure, and I’m Herbert Hoover,” Purvis said. “I think we better go down to the sheriff’s office and have a little chat.”

  “What’s going on?” Rose asked, sticking her head out the window.

  “This bozo acts like he’s arresting us,” Beulah said. “He’s been plenty rude to me already.”

  Three more agents had stepped out of the car. One agent reached in the Ford, flipped off the ignition switch, and took the car keys. The fact that she was outnumbered only made Beulah angrier.

  “Hey, you jerk, who asked you to kill my motor?” she said.

  “Want me to cuff these molls, boss?” the agent asked.

  “Why, no,” Purvis said, adjusting his new hat a little. “I wouldn’t think of handcuffing Mary Pickford and Jean Harlow. You bring Miss Pickford, and I’ll bring Miss Harlow, and we’ll all go along politely to the sheriff’s office.”

  “I’ll make you think politely when my lawyer hears about this,” Beulah said, digging in her heels.

  She got out her compact and made them wait several minutes, while she combed her hair and powdered her nose.

  22

  In the night he heard dogs, but the dogs never got very close. Charley figured that was because the men handling them didn’t want to take a chance of getting plugged by Public Enemy Number One.

  As soon as it was light, though, he began to hear the airplane, buzzing not more than fifty feet over the trees. Dogs and an airplane meant an all-out search. Once or twice, he sneaked within sight of the road, hoping to dash across it, but every time he got within dashing distance, two or three police cars went by. He had no way of knowing what Richetti had told them, or whether the girls had been picked up, though he assumed they had. Local sheriffs couldn’t commandeer an airplane to buzz the treetops. The fact of the airplane meant that Mr. Hoover must be involved. And if Mr. Hoover was involved, he was going to have to keep well down into the woods and walk a long way before he could hope to cross the road, much less sneak into a town and steal a car.

  Charley had made it through the night without a fire—a fire would surely have brought the dogs. He wrapped up in his overcoat, and slept for a few hours with his back against a tree. Every time he nodded off, he dreamed about turkeys. Once he dreamed about pigs. He was getting pretty hungry. The thought of three or four pork chops or a turkey drumstick with gravy and stuffing popped in and out of his daydreams. He could imagine exactly what a bite of stuffing or a nice, greasy pork chop would taste like.

  Charley knew, though, that daydreaming about tasty meals wasn’t going to save him. He figured that a twenty-five-mile walk north, through the thickest woods he could find, would put him beyond the cordon of G-men and local deputies with deer rifles. He knew better than to let himself panic, too. He wasn?
??t caught; they could fly the spotter plane until it ran out of gas and not spot him, if he kept to the deep woods. As long as he was free and kept disciplined and on the move, he felt he had an even chance. It was chilly, and he was hungry, but it wasn’t cold enough yet to freeze him. His one regret on that score was that he had left his warm gloves in the car. He wasn’t going to starve, either, not for a few days. He could eat acorns, the same as turkeys, and he did nibble a few. They were too mealy to taste very good, but they were edible. By good luck, he walked by a wild pecan tree and picked up a few little hard-shell pecans that the squirrels had missed. The little creeks ran with clear water, so he wasn’t thirsty. He knew he could get through the day and another night without weakening; maybe even two days and two nights. Twenty-five miles in thick underbrush was a fair walk, but it beat the alternative. He remembered something Big Carl had told him, one night while he was in Big Carl’s cell, watching him down a steak.

  “Don’t get the big head—don’t get to thinking you’re smarter than the laws,” Big Carl said. “Some of them lawmen have been to school, and schooling’s an advantage, sometimes. There’s plenty of dumb cops, but the high-up ones usually ain’t the dumb ones. Once in a while you can outsmart them, but you can bet that once in a while they’re gonna outsmart you.”

  “What happens then?” Charley asked.

  Big Carl shrugged. “You tough it out,” he said. “When you can’t be smarter, the next best thing is to be tougher.”

  Charley figured the time had come to be tougher. If he could elude pursuit for a day or two, a lot of the locals would lose interest, and begin to miss pork chops and turkey dressing as much as he did. The soft ones would slack off, and go on back to their families. The G-men would have no choice except to stick to the chase, but the G-men couldn’t cover every patch of road in eastern Ohio. If he could keep hidden till he wore them down, he might make it. If he could just get a car and get down to Brad’s, Brad would drive him deep into the Cookson Hills and find him a hideout—the Feds could bring a hundred dogs, and still not find him there.

  Later in the day, moving north in the heavy brush, he had another piece of luck. He stumbled onto a deer hunters’ camp. The hunters hadn’t been gone many hours, and they had been careless with their garbage. Two coons were investigating it when Charley walked up. The coons gave ground reluctantly, but they gave ground. Charley scavenged half a can of baked beans, some bread scraps, a boiled egg that somebody had eaten only one bite out of, and a molasses cookie. It wasn’t hot, but it was food. There was also a whiskey bottle with a swallow or two in it, and a blanket that somebody had puked on and abandoned. Charley took it to wrap around his feet, in case he had to spend another night on the ground, which was highly likely. He figured three days at most, and the locals would begin to give up. The weather didn’t seem to be getting colder, which was a lucky thing, too.

  Charley’s worst problem turned out to be the Little Beaver River, which he knew he had to cross if he was to get far enough north to be safe. The first time he struck it, he walked a few miles along its bank, hoping it would bend in the direction he wanted to go.

  But the river refused to bend northward. There was a skim of ice along the edges of the water, from an earlier cold snap. Every time Charley thought about wading it, he felt his teeth begin to chatter. He knew he couldn’t afford to get his clothes wet; he was susceptible to sore throats and didn’t look forward to one, when he couldn’t even allow himself a fire.

  Charley kept walking along the riverbank, scaring up quail now and then, but no more turkeys. The Little Beaver was only ten yards wide—he kept hoping for a fallen tree, or an old bridge, or a low spot where he could just roll his pants legs up and wade. But no bridges, fallen trees, or low spots appeared. Finally, hoping for a little afternoon warmth to work with, Charley took off every stitch of clothes, put them in a bundle on top of his head, and waded the Little Beaver River. The water was so cold it numbed him—it was all he could do to keep moving. At its deepest, it was up to his armpits. The mud on his shins when he waded out was like an ice pack. But he scraped it off with a little stick, dried himself with the puked-on blanket, and got dressed. The airplane hadn’t been buzzing for a while, and for an hour or two before sundown, Charley’s spirits lifted. He had crossed the river, and he felt good. He was still free, and the G-men weren’t getting any closer. Another day of walking north, and he might be able to get a car. With a vehicle to make time in, it would be a long while before any lawman caught sight of Charley Floyd.

  That night, he slept in a deep hollow, under some sumac bushes. He had a warm dream about Ruby in her nightgown.

  But the next morning, the first sound he heard was the buzz of the spotter plane.

  23

  “It’s Mr. Hoover,” the sheriff said, offering Agent Purvis the receiver.

  Agent Purvis’s one consolation was that he’d had on his new fedora in the photograph that had appeared in many of the nation’s newspapers that very morning.

  The headline above the picture could not be said to be a consolation, though: “PRETTY BOY FLOYD ESCAPES HOOVER’S DRAGNET!” was the headline.

  “It’s Mr. Hoover, sir!” the sheriff said again, still holding out the receiver.

  Melvin Purvis took it, with reluctance.

  “Yes, sir?” he said, trying to force himself to at least sound brisk, though he had barely slept a wink for two days and two nights, and definitely wasn’t feeling brisk.

  “I thought I told you I wanted reports on the hour,” the Director said. “It’s been three hours since we talked—what’s your excuse?”

  “I’ve been interrogating Richetti, sir,” Agent Purvis said. “Also, I had to run out to the roadblock south of here. They picked up a bum that had just hopped off a freight—some of the locals thought it might be Floyd.”

  “But it wasn’t, I take it?” Hoover asked.

  “No, sir—it wasn’t,” Purvis admitted.

  “I don’t like the sound of this, Purvis,” Hoover said. “If a bum can hop off a freight, our Public Enemy Number One could hop on one—have you considered that possibility?”

  “Oh, yes, sir—we’re watching the railroads closely,” Purvis said. “Very closely.”

  “At night, too?” the Director asked. “Do you have men with decent flashlights?”

  “Oh, big flashlights. He won’t get on a train without us spotting him,” Purvis said.

  “Nonetheless, he’s gotten somewhere without you spotting him!” Hoover said. “Every hour you allow that killer to remain on the loose, the Bureau’s losing ground with Congress—they consider it an outrage, and so do I.”

  “I’m doing everything I can, sir,” Purvis said. “We’ve got the highways blocked, and the dirt roads, too. We’re keeping an airplane in the sky eight hours a day. We’re watching the railroads. He’s alone, and he’s cold and hungry. I don’t expect him to hold out much longer.”

  “Your expectations don’t concern me, Purvis,” Hoover informed him. “What I need are results. Don’t you realize that every newspaper in the U.S. is holding its evening edition, hoping for word that we’ve got Floyd? If we don’t get him soon, there will be more headlines glorifying his escape. People will start calling him Robin Hood again. Do you know how much damage this will do to the cause of law and order in our country?”

  “I think I do, sir,” Purvis said. Besides other troubles, he had a toothache, the result of biting down on a piece of venison sausage that happened to have buckshot in it.

  “Do you realize how much damage it’s doing to me?!” Hoover said. “This criminal’s already more popular than Dillinger. He’s more popular than the Barkers. If we don’t eliminate him now, he’ll be more popular than me!”

  “Oh, that’ll never happen, sir—you’re the head G-man,” Agent Purvis said.

  “And he’s Public Enemy Number One. He’s supposed to fall!” the Director shouted into the phone. “He’s not supposed to keep getting away, time after tim
e.”

  “He won’t get away, sir,” Purvis said, but he was talking to an empty phone—the Director had hung up.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure he won’t get away,” the sheriff said. “Ol’ Pretty Boy’s slippery.”

  “I’m not too sure he won’t get away, either,” Agent Purvis said. “I just don’t want to think about what’ll happen if he does.”

  24

  Ellen Conkle was in the process of attacking her smokehouse when she saw the young man walk up to her back door and knock. She had been putting off cleaning it out for almost a week now, and was not pleased at the prospect of being interrupted. By some standards her smokehouse looked fine: the corn and beets, the stewed apples, tomatoes, and snap peas that were her winter provender were stacked neatly, each on a separate shelf. Hams, beef, and sausages dangled from hooks fixed solidly into the roof beams.

  But, like it or not, smokehouses got dusty. Mouse nests showed up in the corners, and dust settled on the rows of jars. Ellen could never figure out where the dust came from, but it was her enemy. Once a month, she removed every jar, dusted it, wiped the shelves, swept out the mouse nests and an occasional snakeskin, and got the smokehouse looking proper.

  She had been at her cleaning almost an hour, long enough to get dusty and bedraggled, when she heard the young man’s knock. Ellen gave him an irritable once-over before announcing her presence. He was a solid-built, good-looking young fellow, wearing a suit that looked as if it had been slept in for a night or two. It was a blue, three-piece suit, with a red tie stuck in the coat pocket. There were stickers all over his pants leg, and a few days’ beard on his face. He had a thick, dark head of hair.