Макс Коллинз - True Crime

Back behind the bar, the plump strawberry blonde looked scared; her father, Kurt, was standing near her, expressionless, but looking our way.

Moran sat back down. “One word from me, Baby Face — and your goose is cooked . Understand? Cooked.”

Nelson, jaw muscle throbbing, leaned forward and patted Moran on the arm, soothingly, while the doctor stared into the blackness of the bourbon.

“There, there, Doc,” Nelson said, “don’t talk that way about your pals. We’re on your side. Aren’t we, Jimmy?”

I nodded.

“You’re a great guy, Doc. Just a little tight right now. Now, can you drive back yourself? Or would you like one of us to drive you?”

“I can drive myself.”

“Okay. When you’re ready, come on back to the farmhouse.”

“Well. I’m ready, now.”

“Good. Come along, then.”

“I’ll drive myself.”

“Fine.”

The doctor stood, moved slowly away from the booth. We followed him out onto the street. It was dusk, now.

Nelson smiled at him as we went toward the Auburn. From the sidewalk he called out to us.

“Don’t forget!” Moran said, walking unsteadily, pointing a shaky finger at us. “I know where the bodies are buried. I know where the bodies are buried...”

When we got back just after sundown, everybody (almost) was eating at the kitchen table. The table was covered with an oilcloth, and the oilcloth was covered with bowls of food. Fried chicken. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. Corn on the cob. Cottage cheese. Freshly chopped cabbage. Stacks of white bread. Pitchers of milk; slabs of butter. Biscuits the size of saucers. The smells in the room were warm and good. Around the table sat various public enemies and their molls, chowing down.

“Find a chair!” Ma said to us as we came in. In a calico apron that was too small for her, stocky Ma was milling around, refilling the bowls of food, keeping the chicken frying over at the stove, running the whole damn show. “Get it while it’s hot!” She sounded like a newsie.

Nelson, Moran and I took three of the four empty places at the long table. The remaining place was for Louise, or Lulu as they called her here; she was, I thought, understandably absent.

No one bothered to make introductions, though there were several people at the table I hadn’t seen before. Despite the fact that I’d seen a blue-faced corpse on this table an hour and a half ago or so, I found myself digging right in. I was hungry, the food smelled good, tasted better, and what can I say? Ma Barker was a hell of a cook.

As the meal wore on, I began finding out who the various people were. Quite obviously the lanky man of about forty in coveralls was Verle Gillis, owner of the place, pale blue eyes set in his weathered face like stones; and next to him, a few years younger, a heavyset woman with a sweet face and dark hair in a bun and sad dark eyes was his wife Mildred. Next to Mildred were two boys, one about eight, the other ten or eleven. But for the years between them, they could’ve been twins and had the father’s lanky build and the mother’s almost angelic face — without the sad eyes. The boys were well-behaved; the only talking they did was some whispering back and forth.

“I appreciate your hospitality, Mr. Gillis,” I offered, after a while. I was working on a breast of chicken.

“Our pleasure, Mr. Lawrence. There’ll be no charge for your stay, by the by.”

“Well, that’s very kind.”

“Just remember us to Chicago.”

“Well, uh, sure. Glad to.”

Verle leaned toward his wife and whispered; she nodded, then said, “Mrs. Barker — I want to thank you kindly for preparing dinner.”

“I enjoyed it,” Ma said. She was finally sitting down and eating, starting her first plate when most of us were on our second or third. Doc Moran, however, seemed morose and was picking at his first.

Ma went on: “I apologize for taking over your kitchen like I done while you was gone. I just figured it was gettin’ late and I should start ’er up.”

Mildred said she was “happy” Ma had taken over; but I didn’t think Mildred meant it.

Ma did, however, saying, “Well, I hope you’ll let me pitch in again while I’m here. I just love cookin’ for my boys.”

Fred, sitting to one side of her (she was at the head of the table, of course), spoke through a mouthful of potatoes; what he seemed to say was, “Nice to have your good home cookin’ again, Ma.” Or something.

One by one everybody complimented Ma, and meant it — hurting Mildred’s feelings, I thought — though Fred’s girl Paula seemed to like the glass of liquor she had brought to the table more than the meal.

In the brightly lit kitchen I noticed for the first time just how hard the faces of the women were. These women — all of them naturally attractive, and well-groomed, if occasionally overly made up — were in their early twenties; but they had a hard, worn look that made them seem ten years older. But it was an oldness age didn’t have anything to do with. A sixteen-year-old prostitute is old that way.

With the exception of Helen Nelson: She had a smooth, young face. Worry seemed never to have crossed her consciousness.

She and her husband flirted, giggling with each other, throughout the meal. It was as though they were newlyweds. Later I learned they had two kids and had been married for years.

Down at the other end of the table, opposite Ma, was a slight man in glasses with his hair combed back, with a tight mouth and gray, dead eyes. I’d been in the room fifteen minutes before he introduced himself, suddenly.

“I’m Karpis,” he said.

I’d guessed that.

“The folks around here call me Old Creepy,” he said. “I don’t know why.” And he smiled. It was a ghostly, ghastly smile. It was a smile a mean kid wore when pulling the wings off a bug. He was pulling part of the wing of a chicken off, at the moment.

“Or O.C.,” Nelson corrected.

“Or O.C.,” Karpis allowed. “I’ll answer to that.”

I nodded to him. “Glad to meet you, Karpis.”

He held up a greasy hand. “We can shake hands later. I understand your name is Lawrence.”

“That’s right.”

“From Chicago.”

“As of now.”

“And connected.”

“Well, yeah.”

“I’ve had dealings with the Chicago Boys before.”

“Really.”

“I’m not crazy about Chicago. A plain Kansas boy like me, I prefer the wide-open spaces. I like to be able to make a getaway through a field or a farmyard, down a dirt road, across a dry creek bed. In Chicago, the city — it’s all asphalt and traffic and big buildings. Who needs it.”

I swallowed a bite of mashed potatoes and gravy. “It’s nice out here. I could be a convert to this country life.”

Karpis nodded; the glasses and slicked-back hair made him look like a math teacher. But that smile would give Lon Chaney the willies.

He said, “You’ll find the company better, too, I think. We work for a living, unlike your hoodlum pals.”

He returned to eating his chicken. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I didn’t feel like following up on it.

Ma said, “Somebody ought to go up and drag that girl down here. She needs to eat.”

She meant Louise.

Dolores, sitting next to her man Karpis, said, “I don’t think so, Ma. She’s had quite a shock. She’s crying her fool head off. I don’t think she could keep anything down.”

Ma shook her head, looking at the remaining food on the table. “It’d be criminal to waste this good food,” she said. “The poor little thing ought to come down and eat.”