Макс Коллинз - True Crime

Purvis was leaning on his elbows, his hands clasped together prayerlike; he smiled impishly and shrugged.

“That’s what I figured,” I said. I stood up.

“Where are you off to, Mr. Heller?”

“I don’t feel confident enough that this individual is Dillinger to give you specifics of where you might find him. There’ve been too many people who look like Dillinger lately almost get their heads shot off by overeager lawmen. I don’t think I want to be part of that.”

“And you think I’m capable of that?”

“I think you want a dead Dillinger awful bad.”

“Sit down, Mr. Heller.”

I just stood there.

“Please,” he said. He gestured with an open hand. “Sit down.”

I did.

“Your concern is noted,” he said. “Perhaps justified. The Little Bohemia debacle has served to make yours truly look a little trigger-happy. That I admit. But consider this: if I shoot the wrong man, if I shoot an innocent bystander, I’ll find myself the next day back in South Carolina mowin’ my daddy’s yard.”

“I doubt that,” I said, charmed a little in spite of myself. “You’re a lawyer, and that daddy you mentioned is rich, I hear.”

“You hear right. That just means he has a bigger yard for me to mow. Times are a little hard to be hangin’ out a shingle. I need this job, Mr. Heller. Can I call you Nathan?”

“Nate.”

“Call me Melvin, if you would. I need this job. I don’t need to mess it up — not any further. Little Bohemia was the last mistake I can afford to make.”

“So if I give you this information, you won’t fuck it up.”

He didn’t flinch at the harshness of that; he just shrugged again. “I’ll try not. Who can say? Public enemies don’t tell you when or where they’re going to be, or what they’re going to do. A crystal ball is not part of a special agent’s government issue.”

“Who said it was?”

“You did, Nate. You asked me, in effect, to guarantee that if you give me some information, I won’t... foul up. Correct? How can I guarantee you anything, other than I’ll give it my best shot?”

The guy was sincere — he had a touch of Southern bullshit, and a streak of pomposity — but he was for real.

“I don’t know,” I said, glancing around the room at the young agents scurrying about, going no place. “I don’t know if these college boys can cut the mustard.”

“Nate,” Purvis said, leaning forward, looking like a puppet come to life. “The division has found it infinitely more sensible to teach intelligent men to be manhunters than to try teaching manhunters to be intelligent.”

“Don’t make me sick.”

“I notice you didn’t go to the police with this—”

“No, I didn’t go to the cops. The head of their Dillinger detail isn’t fond of me.”

“Ah. Captain Stege. Seems to me I heard that you and he weren’t close. But even without Stege, I wonder if you’d go to Chicago’s finest — a corrupt, lazy, unskilled bunch of louts, as we both know. My people, however, have gone to school. For which you deride them, but they’ve gone to school, and not just college. They’ve learned to photograph fingerprints and where to look for them. They’ve learned how to use a microscope. They’ve learned the science of ballistics. They learned how to shoot every weapon, from a pistol to a machine gun. Nate, the criminal mind is clever — but the scientific mind is always its superior.”

“Let me ask you something.”

“Of course.”

“Tell me the inside story on the Kansas City Massacre.”

At Union Station in Kansas City, federal and local officers ushered gangster Frank “Jelly” Nash from a train to a car that would take him to Leavenworth. Just as they’d piled into the car at Union Station, a big man with a tommy gun showed up, quickly joined by two other gunmen, and all three sprayed the car with bullets, killing four lawmen, and Nash.

Purvis cocked his head back. “It’s one of the two events that gave the Justice Department the punitive power it has today. The other, naturally, being the Lindbergh kidnapping.”

“I see.”

“When I became a special agent, I was limited in the cases I could investigate. My duties were largely... inquisitorial. I couldn’t even make an arrest. When I ran down my man, I was compelled by law to call in a local policeman or a U.S. marshal to snap on the bracelets.”

“And the Kansas City Massacre changed all that.”

“Yes. It, and the Lindbergh tragedy. The public revulsion that followed the Kansas City Massacre, particularly, got us more money, more men and better backing — and better laws. The heavy artillery we needed to meet the hoodlums on their own battleground and take ’em for a cleanin’.” He stopped, realizing he was lecturing, falling into one of his standard spiels for the press, probably; he seemed a little chagrined, but also seemed to catch that I was leading him on. “But why am I telling you all this? You’re on the fringes of law enforcement yourself — surely you already know it.”

“And have you nabbed those responsible for the Kansas City Massacre?”

Purvis shifted in his seat; his confidence was suddenly undercut by an apparent nervousness. “One of the men, Verne Miller, was found dead in a ditch.”

“A Syndicate hit.”

“Apparently.”

“Why, do you suppose?”

“For botching the job. For killing the man they were there to rescue.”

“Nash, you mean.”

“Certainly. And for killing police officers and federal agents. For bringing the heat down on the lawless.”

“That last I can buy.”

“What don’t you buy?”

“Nash was the target. Because he knew too much. Surely you know that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“All right, Melvin. Have it your way. Nash wasn’t the target; he just got accidentally machine-gunned. Who else are you looking for, in connection with the massacre?”

“Well, the other two killers, of course — ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd and Adam Richetti.”

“What if I said that was a load of hooey. That Floyd and Richetti weren’t there.”

His thin lips pursed. “I’d say you were mistaken.”

I shook my head, smiled humorlessly. “Well, I hear they weren’t there.”

“You’re mistaken.” And finally some sarcasm crept into the drawl: “Unless your sources of information are better than mine.”

“Melvin, some things you can’t find out looking through a microscope.” I rose. “I’ll see you later.”

“Sit down, Heller. Sit down!”

I didn’t.

I said, “I may have seen Dillinger. I’m going to check into it a little more. You see, the guy who may be Dillinger is hanging around with a client of mine’s girlfriend. And if you and your college boys get her killed, my client’s going to be unhappy with me. So I’m going to take it nice and easy on this one. I’ll get back to you.”

The muscles in his jaw were pulsing. “Is that your final decision, Mr. Heller?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. And don’t bother having any of these Harold Teens try to tail me... you and your boys have been embarrassed enough lately.”

His jaw muscles still jumping, he said, “There’s reward money in this, Heller.”

“I know there is. I mean no offense, Purvis. I’ll be back in touch.”

“Soon?”

“Soon.”

With Cowley, I thought.

And left.

I spent the afternoon tailing Lawrence and Polly for what I assured myself was one last time. Around noon I’d driven back to the apartment house on Pine Grove, near the lake, and, with suitcoat and hat off and tie loosened, had just got settled in on the rider’s side with my newspaper when a Checker cab pulled up, and Lawrence and Polly came out and got in. Lawrence was in shirt sleeves and bow tie and straw hat and yellow slacks; and Polly was in a yellow dress and matching hat. They looked like an advert for butter.