Макс Коллинз - True Crime

“Yeah. Ask Doc Moran.”

Karpis raised a lecturing finger; he looked even more like a math teacher, now. “Okay, so maybe Chicago did okay Moran’s exit — maybe even requested it — but they didn’t pay for it. Killing people for money don’t appeal to me, or anybody connected with me. I’ll leave that to the rackets guys.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re no Chicago hoodlum.”

The Auburn keys were in my pocket.

“I’m not?”

I edged my hand near the gun under my arm.

“No,” Karpis smiled, “you’re from out East. You’re a fish out of water, in Chicago. You looking for some honest work?”

I sighed relief. To myself, that is.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Something real big’s coming up, soon.”

“How soon?”

“Friday.”

“This Friday?”

“This Friday.”

“Day after tomorrow, you mean?”

“Right.”

“What is it?”

“A snatch.”

Fine. Now I was mixed up in a kidnapping; I could see myself, being strapped into the chair, telling the reporters in the gallery how I was a private detective gone undercover to retrieve a farm girl.

“Interested?” Karpis asked.

“I might be,” I said.

“Decide by tomorrow. We’ll be driving back to Illinois, to a tourist court near Aurora. We’re meeting some people there, to go over the plans.”

“I appreciate the offer.”

“We can use you. We were counting on having Candy Walker, you know. And we don’t really have time to go pull somebody else in.”

“How could Walker have helped you, if he was recovering from plastic surgery?”

Karpis shifted his smile to one side of his face; it didn’t look any better there. “We just need someone to stick by the women. While we pull the snatch, and for a time, after. Easy work. Candy could’ve cut it, even with bandages on his puss.”

“I see. Well...”

“You’d only get half a cut — half of which goes to Candy. Or to Lulu, that is. We look after our own.”

“That’s only right.”

“Still, it should run five grand. What do you say?”

Five grand!

“I’ll, uh, sleep on it.”

“Good. Maybe you can get to know Lulu while you’re at it.”

“You got to be kidding... she just lost her man...”

“She’s going to need comforting. She needs somebody to look after her.”

“Well, uh...”

He put a fatherly hand on my shoulder; he was younger than me, and I owned suits that weighed more than he did — but his words carried weight just the same.

He said, “Guys like us got to pick our girls from the circles we move in. My first real girl was Herman Barker’s widow. Took up with her before Herman’s body was cool. It’s nothing to be ashamed of — just the facts of life in this game.”

“I do feel sorry for the kid,” I said, referring to Louise. This was perfect, actually: Karpis was trying to fix me up with the girl I’d come here after.

He slipped his arm around my shoulder. “Don’t feel like you’re getting sloppy seconds, Jimmy. Mind if I call you Jimmy? For example. I took up with a lot of whores in my time, but I never had any complaints about their personalities or their morals or brains or what-have-you. You can always trust a whore.”

That might make a nice needlepoint for Mildred Gillis to hang on her farmhouse wall.

“Now, Dolores, she was the sister-in-law of a guy I used to do jobs with; she’s been with me since she was sixteen. Don’t get the idea she’s fat, either — she’s just knocked up. Second time. We decided to have this one — what the hell.”

“Uh, congratulations, Karpis.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

I noticed a small figure walking across the farmyard toward the barn; he had a bottle of liquor in one hand, tommy gun slung over one arm.

Nelson.

“What’s he up to?” I asked.

“Oh — just taking his friend Chase some refreshment.”

“His friend who?”

“Chase. John Paul Chase. Guy worships Nelson; adores him.” He let out a nasty snicker that went well with his smile. “If Helen weren’t around, I think they’d be an item.”

“What’s Chase doing in the barn?”

“Staying there.”

“What do you mean?”

Karpis shrugged. “Staying there. He sits up in the loft with a rifle and keeps watch out that little window or door or whatever it is. See?”

I looked over toward the barn, and saw the open loft door, but nothing else.

I said, “Doesn’t anybody take turns with him?”

“No,” Karpis said. “Nelson told him to take that post, and he didn’t even blink. Just does whatever Nelson says. Sits up there and reads Western pulp magazines and keeps watch. Three days, now. Sleeps there, too — but I never knew a man to sleep lighter. Nice to have him around.”

“Hell, he didn’t even have supper with us.”

“Nelson took some out to him. He treats Chase fine — like a faithful dog.”

“Is there anybody else here I haven’t met yet?”

Karpis flashed that awful smile. “Not that I can think of, offhand.”

He went inside and I followed him; he joined the poker game, taking Nelson’s empty chair. I watched for a few moments, then went into the living room, where Burns and Allen were just getting over. When George had said “say good night, Gracie,” I asked Karpis’ girl Dolores about sleeping arrangements.

“You could take Doc Moran’s bed,” she suggested. “It’s free.”

“No kidding.”

“There’s a lot of bedrooms in this house, but they’re all taken. The Nelsons sleep upstairs, and Alvin and me have an upstairs bedroom, and so do Paula and Fred, and Candy and Lulu too, or anyway they did.”

“Where did Moran sleep?”

She pointed behind her. “There’s a sewing room back by the kitchen, and the two Docs each had beds back there. Cots, actually.”

“Where do the farmer and his wife sleep?”

“There’s a Murphy bed in the sitting room.”

This was turning into home away from home.

“The boys sleep in there, too,” she continued, “in pallets.”

“Sounds like a full house.”

“Sure is. Could be a topsy-turvy one tonight, though. Last I knew Paula was upstairs in her and Fred’s bedroom nursin’ Lulu.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and Lulu don’t want to sleep in her and Candy’s bed tonight. She wants to sleep with Paula.”

“Think Fred’ll go along with that?”

She grinned; she had a much better smile than her boyfriend Karpis. “He would if he was included. But he’ll have to go sleep alone in that other bedroom, I guess.”

I decided to go up and see how Louise was doing. I found brunette Paula standing out in the hall, smoking, ever-present glass of whiskey in one hand.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said. Smiling. Sultry.

“How’s the kid?”

“Lulu? Busted up about it.”

“It’s a tough one.”

“She’s asleep, now. Poor thing.”

“Best thing for her.”

Paula brightened. “You want to do me a favor?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Go in and look after her for me. Keep her company.”

“She doesn’t even know me...”

Paula swatted the air with her cigarette in hand. “She won’t wake up till September. But if she does, somebody should be with her.”

“I guess I could sit in there awhile.”

“That’s not what I mean. You need a place to sleep, right? Bunk in with her.”

“Don’t be foolish.”

She crooked her finger, like she was summoning a child. I complied. She leaned in with me in the doorway, where I could see Lulu, curled up in a fetal ball, pink dress way up over pretty white legs. She was sleeping deeply on one of two twin beds that were pushed close together. The bedroom was regularly the boys’ room, obviously. There was a balsa wood model plane hanging from the slanted ceiling, which was papered in dark blue with silver stars, a child’s idea of the nighttime sky.