Макс Коллинз - True Crime

He came in, shut the door behind him. His hair was dark as an Indian’s and parted in the middle, slick with grease. He had tiny brown eyes and a large nose.

“Put the shootin’ iron away,” he said. Still friendly. Still smiling — but just barely.

“Nobody mentioned your name,” I said.

“Well, you know who I am.”

“You’re Pretty Boy Floyd.”

He flinched at the name. “Don’t believe that newspaper shit. Nobody calls me that. Nobody but dumb-ass feds.” He stuck out his hand; it looked like a flesh-colored catcher’s mitt. “My friend’s call me Chock. Short for Choctaw.”

“Choctaw?”

“That’s what they call my favorite home brew, back in the hills where I come from.” He drew back the hand to pat his generous belly. “I got a weakness for it, as you can plainly see.”

Then he stuck the hand back out, and I put the gun in my waistband and shook hands with him. He had a firm grip; he may have had some fat on him, but he had more muscle.

He sat on the edge of one of the twin beds. “I’m the one who should be suspicious, Jim. Care if I call you Jim?”

“Jim’s fine. Why should you be suspicious?”

He shrugged. “I never heard of you before Nelson called me this morning.”

I shrugged. “I got pulled in on this at the last minute.”

Floyd nodded, tsk-tsked. “Shame about Candy Walker. Worked with him a few times. Nice feller. Nice of you to fill in, though. I hear you’re tied in with the Chicago crowd.”

“Yeah. So to speak.”

He pointed a finger at me. Gently. “You don’t want to go calling any of your friends, now, ’tween now and tomorrow.”

“Oh?”

He shook his big head slowly side to side. “Frank Nitti wouldn’t approve of what we’re up to.” Then he grinned like a mischievous kid with a private joke, that little mouth turning up at the corners and sending his apple cheeks into high gear. “No, sir!”

“Why wouldn’t Nitti approve?”

“You don’t know the lay of the land yet, do you, Jim? Well, what the hell — you will soon enough. Plenty of time for that.” He glanced at a pocket watch. “We’ll be having our meet, ’fore too long. You et yet?”

“I didn’t have lunch. Slept through it.”

“We’re having barbecue tonight. The feller what runs the place stocked up on chickens and ol’ Ma’s gonna cook for us. I hear she’s a whale of a cook.”

“Ma Barker? Yes she is.”

“Hey, Jim — sit down. There’s a chair over there — use it. You’re makin’ me nervous.” He said this with good humor, and he didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body; but, unlike certain smaller men who waved tommy guns around, this was a big bruiser of a man, who could hurt you slapping you on the back for luck.

So I sat down.

“Where you from?” he asked. “Before Chicago, I mean.”

I gave him the standard Jimmy Lawrence spiel, a piece at a time; we talked for fifteen minutes. He seemed nice — I liked him. But he was obviously pumping me for information, checking me out, getting a feel for whether he could trust me or not.

Pretty soon he slapped his thighs with two catcher’s mitt hands, stood. “I could use a Coke-Cola. How ’bout you? I’m buyin’.”

I said okay, and followed him outside. We walked up to the central cabin, where the man in the Panama hat was no longer licking an ice-cream cone, though its tracks were evident on his trousers, his legs still pointing north and south. Near his bench, just under the NO VACANCY sign in the window, was a low-slung icebox of Coca-Cola, into which Floyd pumped a couple of nickels and withdrew two small, icy bottles.

We sat on the bench with the guy in the Panama; Floyd talked about the weather — how the heat wave seemed to have let up some — and the guy nodded while I just listened. We drank our Cokes, slowly. The little woman glanced out angrily through the screen door now and then. She didn’t like Floyd any more than she liked me, apparently.

A big brown Buick touring sedan pulled in around three, and Baby Face Nelson got out; he was wearing an unbuttoned vest and a snap-brim hat but no gun. Staying in the car were his wife Helen, in front, and Fred Barker and Paula in back.

Nelson strutted over to Floyd. “How are you doing, Chock?”

“Can’t complain,” Floyd said.

Nelson nodded to me. “Lawrence.”

I nodded back to him.

The guy in the Panama hat jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, grinning the same way, and pumped Nelson’s hand.

“Good to see you, Georgie,” he said.

“You look good, Ben.”

Ben turned his head to grin proudly at the still-seated Floyd, pointed with a thumb at Nelson. “We was in Joliet together,” Ben said.

Nodding sagely, Floyd said, “It’s good to have friends.”

The screen door flew open and a boy and a girl came running out, pell-mell. The boy was towheaded and wearing a blue-and-red-striped shirt and denim pants; the girl was dark-haired and wore a blue-checked gingham dress. They both had the pretty face I’d suspected had once been their mother’s.

They ran to Nelson immediately, crowded around him, bouncing up and down, laughing.

He tried not to smile as he said, “What makes you think I got anything for you?”

“Oh, I know you do, Uncle George!” the boy said; the little girl was just squealing.

Nelson’s dark-haired wife hung out the car window with a goofy smile on her face, adoring her husband and his way with kids.

Holding his hands up like a traffic cop, Nelson said, “Okay, okay — maybe I did bring something for you. Maybe I did. You know how the game goes...”

He sat on the bench where his Joliet pal Ben had been sitting; Ben was standing by the screen door, now, wearing a big shit-eating grin, watching his kids being catered to by Baby Face Nelson.

The two kids stood and waited for the signal.

Nelson held his hands up in the air, like somebody had said, stick ’em up, and said, “Okay — search me!”

The kids, squealing, yelping, began to search, looking in his every pocket, and coming back with candy — Tootsie Rolls, mostly, but some jawbreakers and other hard colorful candy, too.

When the kids each had a fat handful of candy, Nelson stood and waved his hands, saying, “Okay, okay — you got me. Now promise you won’t eat any of that till you had your supper?” And he winked elaborately at them, and they squealed some more and ran off God knows where.

The little woman had been standing watching all this out the screen door. Nelson noticed her, smiled her way, said, “I stocked up on candy ’fore I left Beaver Falls. Didn’t want to disappoint the little rascals.”

She looked out at him coldly, then receded back into the house.

Nelson shrugged, asked Ben for some room keys. Ben dutifully went inside and came back out with them.

Before he got back in the car to drive to his cabin, Nelson said to Floyd, “We never worked together. Looking forward to it.”

“Likewise,” Floyd nodded, smiling.

But the men didn’t shake hands. There was mutual respect, here, but this was an uneasy truce, just the same. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig sizing each other up.

Nelson grinned at me, wolfishly; the mustache still looked fake. “You don’t even know what this is about yet, do you, Lawrence? Ha ha ha! You’re in for a surprise.”

Then he got in the Buick with his wife and the others and drove a few doors down.

“Let’s walk,” Floyd said.

Hands in our pockets, we strolled aimlessly around back, through the trees, down to the riverbank. Trees on both sides of the river reflected off it; the sun looked at itself on the peaceful shimmer of the water.

We sat on the sloping ground, looking down at the river; there wasn’t any beach to speak of, right here. Floyd plucked a weed and chewed on the end of it.