Макс Коллинз - True Crime

Fred wasn’t listening to any of this, nor was Ma. She and her younger son were sitting on the window seat like a courting couple, Fred holding her hand and her looking moon-eyed at him, as they spoke in hushed tones.

Doc gestured to an overstuffed lounge chair opposite the sofa and bid me sit. I sat. He pulled a straight-back chair from someplace and sat near me.

“You been with the Boys long?”

“Just a year or so.”

“Oh, yeah? Where you from, originally?”

Piece by piece, I fed him the Jimmy Lawrence background story: born in Canada, raised in NYC, union slugger, Lepke’s boy, murder rap, plastic surgery, cooling off in Chicago.

From across the room, Nelson — sitting on the arm of the sofa next to his wife Helen — was sneering. He called out, “I’m checkin’ up on you, Lawrence. Understand? I used to work for the Boys, you know. I’m going to make some calls.”

I shrugged. “Fine.”

He hopped off the arm of the sofa. “Maybe I should do that right now. Maybe I should drive into town and make those calls...”

“Sure,” I said.

Nelson stood there for a moment, then sat back on the arm of the sofa, one hand on his tommy gun, other on his wife’s shoulder.

“This is a nice farmhouse,” I said to Doc Barker. The furniture was all relatively new, and the walls seemed to have been papered recently, a pleasant pink-and-yellow floral pattern; the carpet that pretty much covered the oak floor was oriental. It clashed, but it wasn’t cheap.

“It’s a nice farmhouse,” Doc agreed.

“Where are the owners?”

“Verle’s out farming, where else? His wife and the two little boys are off at the store. We sort of sent them out, for while Doc Moran operated on Candy.”

“I see. Why no phone? They can obviously afford one...”

“Party line,” he said. “The Gillises do a lot of business here at the farm.” By “business” he meant the place was used as a cooling-off joint, a hotel for outlaws on the run. He went on: “Can’t do that kind of business over the phone — not when half the county’s listening in.”

“I see.”

Suddenly, through the draped archway at left, emerged yet another attractive brunette, with a heart-shaped face, brown eyes and a generous figure filling out a stylish sand-color dress with a lace collar, her plump tummy pushing at the sheer fabric. The most distinctive thing about her right now, however, was her ashen face.

All eyes were on her.

Louise — Lulu — sat forward, but reared her head back, biting her knuckles; she was like a teenager watching a Dracula picture.

Doc stood. “Dolores — what is it? What’s wrong?”

She swallowed. Covered her mouth with one hand, lowering her head. Then she raised her eyes and said, softly, “The bastard’s killed him.”

Louise screamed.

Doc walked over to Dolores. “Candy’s...?”

“Dead,” she said.

Doc moved quickly through the archway.

I thought for a moment, then followed; nobody tried to stop me. Louise, however, was being held back by the two women beside her.

In the kitchen — a big country kitchen with enormous cabinet and sink with pump and old-fashioned stove and an oak icebox — spread out on the long kitchen table like an enormous Christmas turkey, was a man, naked to his waist; his face was rather handsome and very blue.

On the stove in the background a teakettle whistled, as if scolding somebody.

That somebody just might have been the tall, rather distinguished-looking man of about forty, dark hair streaked with gray, who stood near the corpse with forceps in a trembling hand. Eyes under shaggy, twisting eyebrows looked right at me — they were dark and rheumy — and, as if he’d known me all his life, he said to me, “Poor beggar swallowed his tongue. I pulled it up with these” — he meant the forceps — “and tried artificial respiration on him, but he died. He just died.”

“Shit,” Doc Barker said. “I tried to talk him out of this, you goddamn quack. Face-lift my ass. What good did you do Old Creepy and Freddie?”

Snootily, as if forgetting the dead man stretched out before him, Moran said, “They seem satisfied.”

“You’ll never put the knife to me, quack. Shit! You killed him.”

Moran put the forceps away, in the standard medical black bag which was on the table next to the corpse. “An unfortunate, an unavoidable... mishap.”

Then, behind me, a woman was in the doorway, screaming.

Louise.

“Candy!” She pushed past me and flung herself across the half-naked corpse. “My candyman... oh my candyman...” Tears streamed down her face.

“You bloody butcher!”

It was Nelson pushing past me this time, tommy gun still slung over one arm.

The little man grabbed the doctor by the shirtfront and lifted him off the floor and tossed him bodily into the icebox, with a clatter. Moran slid to the floor, sat there for a moment, then stood and brushed himself off, raised his head, dignity preserved.

“My good man,” he said to Nelson, “I did not even touch Mr. Walker. I merely adminstered the ether” — he pointed to a wadded towel on the table — “I did not begin cutting. You will notice not a single drop of blood in this room.”

“Not yet,” Nelson said.

“Your threats fail to concern me,” the doctor said. “My services to you — you people , in so many ways, are I should think invaluable. The occasional... slip-up, well. That can’t be helped.”

There was a back door, a kitchen door, and Dr. Joseph P. Moran walked to it rather grandly, and exited. Nelson looked out the window.

“He’s getting in his car,” he said.

Doc Barker said, “Going into town to drink and chase the skirts, no doubt.”

Fred Barker, who’d entered after Nelson, said, “He already smells like a brewery. I think he went into this operation soused.”

“I’m going after him.” Nelson patted the machine gun.

Doc thought about that, then nodded. “You can make those phone calls and check up on our friend Lawrence here, while you’re at it.”

Nelson glanced at me. “Good idea. Why don’t you ride along with me, Lawrence. Maybe we can get to know each other better.”

“Why not?” I said.

Dolores was moving Louise away from the corpse; Louise was sobbing, the little pink beret dangling at an odd angle, about to fall off any second. Fred Barker’s girl Paula came in with the sheet she’d got from somewhere and covered Candy Walker up.

“Who’s going to take care of me now?” Louise asked. “Who’s going to take care of Lulu now?”

She was looking right at me when she asked it, but I didn’t answer. Her little pink beret fell off and I bent and handed it to her.

Then Ma Barker was standing in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips.

“Wrap him up and put him somewheres,” she said. “It’s after six and I want to start supper.”

Louise shrieked, but while Paula comforted her, Fred and Helen and Dolores, as detached as meat-packers, wrapped the blue-faced body in the sheet and carried him out of the house, into the barn.

Ma Barker was scrubbing the kitchen table down, humming a hymn, when I went out the back door to go into town with Baby Face Nelson.

Something odd happened on the four-mile drive into Beaver Falls.

Nelson acted civil toward me.

I have no explanation, other than possibly the lack of an audience, prompting him to abandon, at least temporarily, his Cagney pose. Or perhaps it was his having to leave the tommy-gun appendage behind, settling for a modest .45 Army Colt stuck in his waistband. But as we rode in the Auburn, with me at the wheel, top down, he smoked a cigar, leaned back, relaxed, and shared his insights into Doc Moran with me.