Макс Коллинз - True Crime

“I’ll try not, Ma.”

But conversation was the exception not the rule, as most of the time she devoted herself to her usual interests, and I was grateful. Because my mind was going faster than the Auburn. Racing ahead to things I had to do...

I parked the Auburn in an open space in front of the big brick three-story on Pine Grove, where the real Jimmy Lawrence once lived. Shortly after, Dolores pulled in half a block down. I glanced at my watch: five-fifteen. The Hoover pickup was set for ten till seven. Plenty of time.

I carried the girls’ bags in for them, and they all pitched in (except for Ma, of course) and it was around five-thirty when everybody’s things had been deposited in an appropriate bedroom.

The last of these was one Ma showed Louise and me into, a small room decorated in shades of blue; there was a double bed with a baby-blue spread. Sounds romantic, but there was also a picture of Jesus over a doily-strewn dresser.

“You kids can bunk in here,” she said.

Louise said, “Thanks, Ma — you’re a saint.”

I thanked Ma, too; I couldn’t quite go the rest of the way, Jesus picture or not.

Ma said, “Jimmy, I know you’re supposed to stick by us, ’specially this afternoon... but I need some things.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Come with me.”

I followed her, Louise in tow.

We ended up in a big white modern kitchen. Ma opened the Frigidaire for me to see mostly empty shelves.

Ma spread her arms like an angel its wings. “What am I going to cook for supper, if you don’t go to the store for me?”

What, indeed.

“If you make me out a list, Ma,” I said, “I’ll go shopping before the stores close.”

She sat and scribbled a list.

I’d been planning to make my own excuse to leave, saying I needed to go to my apartment to pick up a few things for the duration of my stay; but she was saving me the trouble. Karpis had asked that I stay close to the phone all afternoon and evening, just in case the need for some sort of backup developed. But now I had Ma, who this very moment was handing me her grocery list, to cover for me.

“Come on, Louise,” I said, holding my arm out to her, “keep me company.”

“Sure,” she said, taking the arm.

Ma wasn’t sure about that. “Now, Alvin and Arthur said the girls was to stay around home, today.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but you wouldn’t want to send a man to the store alone , would you?”

That she gave some serious thought.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’ll get my hat and go with you, m’self.”

“I’ll take Louise,” I insisted. “You can’t leave here. If Alvin or Doc, uh, Arthur should call, they won’t want to talk to one of these silly girls. They’ll want to talk you, Ma.”

She nodded sagely.

Then she smiled her oddly nice smile and made two limp wrists and brushed the air with them, saying, “Shoo, then, you two, shoo!”

We walked through the living room on our way out. Paula was lounging on the green mohair sofa in Ma’s generous living room, ever-present drink in hand. She smiled and winked and lifted her glass in a one-sided toast, saying, “Ya make a damn cute couple, you two,” smug in her matchmaking abilities. Nearby, Helen Nelson seemed melancholy, sitting by a window, obviously worrying about her husband. Dolores was in her room, unpacking her things. Ma, with nothing to do in the kitchen, sat back down to her unfinished puzzle of the country church.

That was where I came in.

And soon Louise and I were in the Auburn, heading for the Loop.

“Just what store are you going to, anyway?” Louise asked, after a while.

We were tooling up Lake Shore Drive, the Gold Coast whizzing by on our right, the lake shimmering at our left. Up ahead the Drake stared me down, like a stern scolding face; sorry, Helen.

“No store,” I said.

“No store?”

“I’m just getting you away from that place.”

“You are?”

“I am.”

“But I–I left all my things back there! My clothes... my brush... my scrapbook...”

I looked at her. “You’re leaving everything behind, Louise. Understand? Everything.”

She didn’t understand, but she didn’t say anything.

It was almost six when I pulled the Auburn in the alley behind my building and squeezed it in the recessed space next to my Chevy coupe where Barney’s Hupmobile sometimes was but right now wasn’t. I took her by the hand like a child and moved right along and she had to work to keep up. Past the deli on the corner, the El a looming reminder we were back in the city, to the door between Barney’s Cocktail Lounge and the pawnshop, and up the stairs, four flights, her feet echoing mine as she followed me up.

I unlocked the office door.

“But this is a detective’s office,” she said, looking at the lettering on the door’s frosted glass.

“That’s right.”

I shut the door behind her. She stood clutching her purse to her, looking around.

“Isn’t that a Murphy bed?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. Back behind the desk, pulling the phone book out of a drawer.

“Gee. I saw furniture like this at the world’s fair.”

“Everybody did,” I said, looking for the number.

“Whose place is this?”

“A friend,” I said, dialing.

“Wonder if he needs a secretary.”

“Who knows,” I said, getting a busy signal.

I sat behind the desk. Yanked the window-glass wire-frames off and flung ’em in a drawer. So, the line was busy over at the Banker’s Building. It was just five after six. The pickup wasn’t to be made till six-fifty. Plenty of time.

She sat across from me in the chair her father had sat in not long ago.

“Why are we here?” she asked. Her eyes wide and brown and confused.

“It’s a safe place,” I said. Drumming my fingers on my desk.

“What about Ma, and Paula and everybody?”

“They’re in the past, sugar.”

“The past.”

“That’s right. And you’re leaving the past behind you, understand?”

“No. Not really...”

“Do you know what’s happening today? What’s set to happen in about forty-five minutes?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“A kidnapping. Do you want to be part of that?”

“No,” she said. But she didn’t seem sure, as if I was posing some abstract problem that went way over her head.

“Forget Ma and Paula and all of them. Got it?”

“Why?”

“Because those people are going to be in trouble. You don’t want to be in trouble, do you?”

Her face fell, her eyes got even wider. “Why... you’re not going to rat on them...”

“Never mind what I’m going to do,” I said, dialing again.

Busy signal.

“I don’t want you to rat on them,” she said. “Jim. Please don’t.”

“You’re with me, now, remember?”

“Jim...”

“Are you with me now?”

“Yes...”

“Then you’ve got to go along with me. You went along with Candy Walker, you can go along with me, for Christ’s sake.”

“Please don’t yell at me, Jim. Please don’t yell.”

I didn’t know I was.

“Sorry,” I said.

She stood; leaned her hands against the desk, and those big brown eyes I loved so much begged me. “Jim, if you call the police, leave Ma and Paula and Dolores and Helen out of it. Please. You got to promise.”

“Okay. I promise.” But I was thinking about the police she’d mentioned. Maybe I should call them. But I figured Cowley and Purvis would want to handle this themselves; it would mean the difference to them between a feather in the cap or a major embarrassment. Squelching the kidnapping themselves beat hell out of having the local cops pull their director’s butt off the burner.