Ace Atkins - Infamous

“The smoke was a nice touch,” Harvey said, relaxing a bit, leaning back into his seat. Karpis drove at a nice clip, not fast, but not so slow as to be noticed. “What kinda bank has two guards for all that dough?”

Karpis hit a little bump in the road, the tail of the Hudson scraping the pavement, just as they were set to cross Halstead, a green light speeding them on to Joe’s Square Deal Garage. That’s when that damn little Essex coupe came out of damn-near nowhere, honking its horn and T-boning their Hudson right toward a streetlamp. Karpis tried to right the car, but it kept going straight for the light, scattering two beat cops right before the car crashed.

Everything was still for a few seconds. Cracked glass and busted machine parts in the road. Harvey felt like his heart had stopped but now could feel it jackhammering in his chest.

And then Harvey heard the women scream from the Essex, and that was everything.

“I WANT TO SEE MR. NITTI,” KATHRYN SAID.

“Mr. Nitti ain’t here.”

“You tell that wop son of a bitch that I know where he can find Verne Miller and Harvey Bailey.”

The fella shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

“Who’s that?” Geraline asked.

“Some stooge.”

“Thought we’re leaving.”

“Let me tell you something, sister,” Kathryn said. “Don’t ever let a man tell you the rules. Set ’em yourself.”

Geraline nodded. She was smoking and drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer at the Pabst Blue Ribbon Casino, which stayed open after most of the lights along the Fair Midway had dimmed. Kathryn fished for another cigarette and tapped the end of her silver cigarette case on the edge of the table. Those bastards had no right to force George on a job at midnight, right while the heat was all over them, Gus T. Jones and the G-men crawling all over the city. They shoulda done him a solid and let ’im skate.

“I like your hat,” Geraline said.

It was a fine little beret she’d bought along the Streets of Paris, sold to her by some gal who walked those streets with a mirror on her back. Kathryn reached up on her head and tossed the beret to the little girl. “Take it.”

“You’re all right, Kit,” the girl said, trying on the hat, a Lucky hanging from the corner of her mouth.

“You gotta go back.”

“I don’t wanna go back.”

“Your parents are sick with worry.”

The girl shrugged. “They don’t care a rat’s ass about me. My daddy always said I was nothing but another mouth to feed, and he’d be good and goddamn glad when I could look out for myself. And so here I am.”

“You can’t go with us.”

“I can carry your bags,” the girl said, taking a sip of beer. “Your guns. I can run errands. Get your clothes pressed, shine your shoes.”

“Don’t do that,” Kathryn said. “Don’t ever play the stooge.”

The fella walked back into the casino bar and leaned down to Kathryn and whispered in her ear. She tossed a dollar on the table and followed, walking down the empty streets of the Fair, the neon and bright lights all gone, leaving nothing but the barren, weird shapes of the exhibits.

“What’ll they do with all this stuff after the Fair?” Geraline asked.

“Tear it down.”

“They built this just to tear it all apart?” she asked, mouth hanging open. “What a waste.”

“The American way, sister.”

The fella led them up the steps, twenty-seven of them, Kathryn knowing because Geraline was counting under her breath, up to the House of Tomorrow, an octagon-shaped building with a garage occupied by a little airplane, making it seem clear that every family would be zipping around the skies in the future. The house walls were made of plate glass.

He left them on the top of the house, rails wrapping the sides, where she soon saw a big black Cadillac pull down the drive and kill the lights.

“Who’s Frank Nitti?”

“The kind of guy that doesn’t have any boss.”

“George doesn’t have a boss.”

Kathryn smiled and squashed a cigarette under her toe.

Nitti bounded up the steps, a crisp wind cutting off Lake Michigan, Geraline nearly losing the beret. Nitti was short and swarthy, with a fat mustache, slick hair, and a hundred-dollar pin-striped suit.

One of the two gimps on each side of him asked, “You know how to find Verne Miller?”

She nodded.

“What you want?” the other stooge asked.

“I want you get Verne Miller outta my hair.”

Nitti nodded. Kathryn told them about Joe Bergl’s garage.

“There’s another fella with him,” she said. “My husband. I want him left alone. You sabe , Frank?”

Nitti caught her eye and nodded before turning and heading back down the steps.

“That’s it?” Geraline asked.

“You better believe it,” Kathryn said.

“I heard in the future, we’ll only take pills and not eat or drink.”

“The future is a bunch of hooey,” she said. “Stuff for weak-minded saps. Come on.”

THE HUDSON’S RADIATOR BOILED OVER AND STEAMED UP INTO the flickering lamplight as the men dashed out onto Halstead, carrying their guns and canvas bags, the two coppers running toward them telling them to stop. One held out his hand and reached for his gun while women screamed from inside the Essex, a man slumped at the wheel. A young woman wandered from the car with blood across her face while Miller stood in the middle of the street and mowed down the copper, machine gun chattering, toppling off the cop’s hat and sending him to his knees and face, and then he scattered bullets at the other cop, who jumped behind a newspaper stand. Sparks of electricity rained down onto the top of the Hudson from the broken streetlamp, and a fine rain misted the street.

The copper was dead, a new path set, and Harvey grabbed two bags himself, while Karpis stopped a Plymouth and yanked a man from behind the wheel.

The other copper took shots from inside the stand, hitting Barker’s fingers. But the pain just made Barker madder, and he squeezed off six rounds from his pistol with his good hand at the fleeing cop.

The men tossed the bags into the Plymouth’s trunk, and Karpis yelled for Miller, who kept on spraying the clapboard newsstand to shit, kicking off the magazines hung from clothespins and busting up the lot of white lights hung from the roof. “Come on, goddamn you,” Karpis yelled, clutch in, racing the motor and then tearing off down Halstead, taking some wild turns before doubling back and heading back toward Cicero.

“Clockwork,” Harvey said, catching his breath.

“I didn’t see ’em,” Karpis said. “That bastard came outta nowhere.”

“You coulda swerved,” Verne Miller said.

“You didn’t have to kill that cop,” Karpis said.

“Fresh out of flowers, Kreeps,” Miller said.

“Son of a bitch,” Karpis said.

“What?”

“We’re outta gas.”

They drove for another mile and then bailed out and stole another car, pointing a Thompson between the driver’s eyes. Harvey sat beside Karpis with Miller, George Kelly, and that moron Dock Barker in back, Barker whining about a bullet knocking a ruby from his pinkie ring. The men didn’t say another word till they pulled through the bay doors of Joe’s Square Deal Garage and closed them shut.

Karpis popped the trunk and grabbed a bag, Barker and George Kelly grabbed the others, all of ’em tearing into them with folding knives and emptying out the fat sacks onto the card table.

Harvey said he needed a drink. Joe Bergl passed him a bottle of rye. He took a pull and handed it to George Kelly, who took a longer pull.

The table filled with fat, tightly bundled stacks of envelopes.

Karpis tore into another to find the same.