Макс Коллинз - True Crime

Fred, Doc and I filled in the hole; Fred used the same shovel he’d used on Moran.

We headed back, each of us but Nelson with a shovel over his shoulder, like Snow White’s dwarfs, our footsteps on the grassy ground the only sound in the clear, dead night. Not a cricket nor a farm animal had a thing to say in the immediate aftermath of Doc Moran’s murder.

Nearing the lights of the house, I somehow managed to ask Nelson about that envelope Moran had claimed his attorney had.

“That’s where you fit in,” Nelson grinned.

“What do you mean?”

“Those phone calls I made. One of ’em, I checked with Nitti. Nitti himself.”

“And?”

“They got to Moran’s lawyer.”

“Killed him?”

“No! Bought him. Chicago, remember?”

“So Nitti told you Moran could be killed without any worry of...”

“Right. And Nitti wanted him dead.”

“Because he passed hot money...?”

“That, and Nitti was just as nervous about how the doc’s drinking was going to his mouth as we was.”

“Oh.”

“Didn’t you know that’s why you was here? To hand Doc Moran his passport to the next life? D’you really think Nitti wanted him back in Chicago just to pull a rabbit outa some bimbo or something?”

That was one little thing Nitti hadn’t told me, in generously providing me with Jimmy Lawrence’s identity and the accompanying cover story: that I’d been sent here to set Doc Moran up.

And now here I was, right in the middle of a nest of public enemies and who could say I wasn’t one of them?

I was an accomplice, now. In my way, I’d helped kill Moran. I hadn’t seen it coming. I couldn’t have stopped it. But I was there; here. I filled in the hole.

I knew where the bodies were buried.

By eight o’clock that evening, the farmhouse was humming with leisure activity: Dolores and Helen were sitting on the sofa listening to Burns and Allen on the radio (Gracie was still looking for that missing brother of hers) and Ma had found a little table to work one of her jigsaw puzzles on, sitting on the window seat as she did, feet not touching the floor; Mildred Gillis was doing needlepoint in the sitting room with the piano, her boys spread-eagled in the middle of the floor, playing a board game, getting loud occasionally and getting shushed accordingly; a penny-ante poker game was going on in the kitchen, the players crowded down at one end of the banquetlike table — Fred and Doc Barker, Verle Gillis and Baby Face Nelson were playing. Despite the stakes, everybody seemed to be taking the game quite seriously, especially Nelson, whose displeasure and glee seemed disproportionate to the nickels and dimes he was alternately losing and raking in. I played a few hands myself, stopped when I was thirty cents ahead — and Nelson glared at me like I was leaving with everybody’s money.

You would never have guessed two men died tonight. Certainly not one of them on this card-and-change-strewn table. And cheerful Fred Barker, with his ready-to-smile mouthful of gold teeth, did not seem like somebody who’d killed a man with a shovel recently.

I, on the other hand, felt exactly like a man who’d help dig — and fill — a grave.

I went out into the almost cool night, walking around the farmyard, getting a feeling of where the buildings were. This was made easy by several electric lights on tall posts. Some of the cars were parked out back, but others (I surmised) must’ve been in the barn. The hayloft door stood open. Crickets were chirping and there was manure in the air. I found Karpis sitting on the porch, in the swing, gently rocking. The porch light wasn’t on, but I could see him fine. He looked small, slight. Which he was.

He smiled at me and nodded; the smile was meant to be friendly but it was just unsettling.

I leaned against one of the porch pillars.

“It was bound to happen,” Karpis said matter-of-factly.

“What’s that?”

“Doc Moran.” He lifted his shoulders, set them back down. “Just a matter of time.”

“I guess.”

“You look like killing don’t agree with you.”

“It’s not my favorite thing.”

“Me either. Oh, I don’t mind putting a little muscle into a stickup, waving a gun around. Don’t even mind winging a guy. But I don’t look to killing for my fun.”

From the living room, laughter came from the radio; Gracie had said something funny again.

“Now, you take Freddie,” Karpis said, amused, smiling his ghastly smile, “he’s a born killer. Sometimes it shocks me a little to see how free and easy he is with a gun. He don’t mind gunning down somebody that gets in his way — cop or hood or ordinary joe, it’s all the same to him.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Karpis went on: “Maybe it’s being raised in the Ozarks; maybe all those hillbillies are like that. I don’t know. Could be it runs in the family — their older brother Herman died shooting it out with the cops, and Doc, hell, he’s got quite the itchy trigger finger himself.”

“Ma seems harmless enough.”

The swing made a creaking sound as he rocked; it seemed louder than the crickets and other night sounds, and the muffled radio from within the house.

“Yeah, Ma’s harmless all right. She’s quite a character, though.”

“She doesn’t seem to mind what her boys do for a living.”

Karpis smiled some more and moved his head side to side. “Anything her boys do is okeydoke with Ma. They can do no wrong.”

“They seem to feel the same about her.”

“Well, look how she sticks by them. Sometimes she travels with us, and Freddie and Doc and me are just three brothers taking care of our widowed momma, should anybody ask. Foolproof cover. What could look more innocent?”

The swing creaked; laughter from the radio.

I said, “I didn’t know Nelson ran with your gang.”

“Usually don’t, but I’ve known him for years and he’s sharp and loyal and there’s nobody braver. We’re hooking up for something big.” He gave me a long sideways appraising look. “You strictly a rackets guy, or do you ever work for a living?”

I sat in the swing next to him; Karpis stopped rocking, but it rocked on a little anyway, on its own steam.

I said, “I don’t get you. You said something like that at supper, and I didn’t get you then, either.”

He sighed, and started gently rocking again; I joined in.

“Now look,” he said, as if explaining the obvious to a small child, “we’re strictly heist guys. We done some branching out into kidnapping, but that’s just another kind of stealing. Plus, our gang’s on the fluid side...”

“Fluid?”

“Yeah — people come and go. Me and the Barker boys have been together a long time, but we worked with dozens of guys, from time to time. Not tight and organized like you rackets guys.”

“What’ve you got against rackets guys?”

He made a face. “They’re too picky about what they’ll let you steal. They don’t like the kind of stealing that gets the heat turned on ’em; they’re in more public-service-type business.”

“Public service?”

“Yeah — pussy, drugs, bookmaking. That ain’t crime. That’s business. True crime’s you when get out and work for a living, like robbing a bank, or breaking into a place, or kidnapping somebody. Really give some effort to it. The rackets guys aren’t up for that. Yet at the same time, when those guys get mad at you, well, Jesus... anything can happen.”