Макс Коллинз - True Crime

I let go of him. “Shit!”

“You must’ve been coming up as they were going down. Why ? What’s this about, Heller?”

“Grab a tommy gun and come with me — I’ll explain in the elevator.”

“Are you serious?”

“Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd and the rest of your public enemies’ list are in two cars down on the street, waiting for your precious goddamn director. Get a gun!”

He went to a closet and unlocked it quickly and grabbed a tommy gun from a rack and an extra magazine and didn’t ask any more questions, just followed me out in the hall.

My red-haired elevator guy was waiting; he grinned when he saw me coming, then the grin faded as he saw Cowley bringing up the rear with the Thompson.

We got on, and went down.

I filled him in quick: “There’s a fake state attorney’s car in front, to pick Hoover up. It’s a snatch. Three men in the car, including Alvin Karpis and Pretty Boy Floyd — two of ’em dressed as cops. There’s a backup car parked across the way, in front of the Edison Building, with extra firepower. Baby Face Nelson and Fred Barker are in that.”

The elevator guy was glancing over at me, swallowing.

Cowley said, “How’d you happen onto this?”

“Time for that later. When did they move Hoover’s dinner party up?”

Cowley squinted again, wondering how the hell I was so on top of all this. “They called before noon,” he said. “Courtney and the commissioner wanted it earlier. So they could just go over after work and not have to wait around.”

I was getting my gun out from under my arm.

Cowley touched my arm. “You just stay back. I’ll appreciate having you covering my butt, but you stay the hell back, understand?”

I grinned at him. “I wish you wouldn’t swear like that. I hate to hear it, coming from a good Mormon.”

He smiled, nervously, and the elevator guy set ’er down and opened the cage and Cowley took the lead, his footsteps slapping the marble floor as he headed toward the front door.

Where a short, slightly stocky man in a dark suit had his back to us — Hoover — with another short man in a straw hat and white pants and blue coat — Purvis — just about to go out the inner doors into the vestibule and out onto the sidewalk.

“Stop!” Cowley called, running, tommy gun in one hand, pointing up.

But they were through the doors, now, and moving across the vestibule, and Cowley sprinted, and I was right behind him.

He must’ve gone through the inner doors just seconds after Hoover and Purvis; I caught up a second or so later, and heard Cowley yell, “Hit the deck!”

And saw Hoover, a dark little man whose eyes were as white in his face as a minstrel’s, look back, and Purvis, reacting faster, reach for one of his arms to pull him down.

In a cop’s uniform, Dillinger, a.k.a. Sullivan, was holding open the back door of the black Hudson with the red and green headlights, for Hoover to get in.

All this I took in in a split second, ’cause that’s all it took for Purvis to yank the startled Hoover by the arm and flatten him unceremoniously on the pavement while Cowley opened up with the chopper.

The burst of bullets put a row of puckers across the heavily plated Hudson, kissed little spider webs into its bulletproof glass, and Dillinger caught at least one of the slugs, as he reared back from the impact, with a yowl, but tumbled in the back of the Hudson and the rider in front, Karpis, reached back and pulled the door shut and the Hudson pulled away, while Cowley moved forward, spraying it with slugs.

Purvis was up and his revolver out and he took some pot-shots at the fleeing car; Hoover, on his belly, looked up with wide, wild eyes and then got on his knees and, keeping low, scrambled for the doors, and shouldered them open and he cowered against the wall. I was standing there with my gun out, keeping an eye on Cowley’s butt, like I’d been told to. I looked at the shaking, sweating director of the Division of Investigation and he glared at me, said, “What are you looking at?”

I looked back outside.

Traffic was light, but what few cars there were were slamming on brakes, and running up onto sidewalks. A Model A drove up on Cowley’s side of the street, on the walk, and Cowley had to let up fire. He moved out into the middle of the street, and started back in firing, as the Hudson narrowly missed some of the confused, frightened motorists who’d stumbled onto this.

The Hudson, despite its portholes in the doors for gunplay, hadn’t fired a shot. It had, according to plan, ducked down Quincy, which was just a glorified alley, down the mouth of which was where Cowley now stood with his machine gun spewing.

That was when I saw the backup, a roadster, come careening around onto Clark.

I pushed open the glass door and yelled, “Cowley! Your flank!”

Purvis, who was backing Cowley up, saw the car coming and hit the pavement.

Barker was driving and Baby Face Nelson was hanging out the rider’s side, half-standing on the running board, with a tommy gun of his own in his hand. He had a crazed look on his face. He loved his work.

“Sons of fucking bitches!” was his war cry, or one of them anyway — he said more, but you couldn’t hear it over his chopper.

I fired a few shots over the roadster — I couldn’t make myself fire at Nelson, and to this day I can’t tell you why — but it was enough of a distraction to make him pull the Thompson and fire into the street, and that gave Cowley the split second he needed. He dove in the alley, and ducked in a recessed doorway, and the roadster did a screeching U-turn on two wheels and raced back toward Adams, disappearing around the corner.

Then they were gone — both the Hudson and the backup.

And there was nothing left but some startled pedestrians and shaken-up motorists, and two special agents whose suits and faces were dirty and rumpled from rolling around on the pavement.

Cowley came around the corner; the tommy gun was pointing down now, but smoke was still curling out its barrel. He’d gone through both magazines. He looked tired, washed out. Purvis was just standing there, gun in hand, like a kid who just ran out of imaginary Indians to shoot.

I was still standing there holding the glass door open with one hand, the automatic in the other. Nelson and the others hadn’t got a look at me — at least not enough of one to recognize me, I didn’t think. That was a break.

Hoover was plastered against the wall, within the vestibule. Shaking. Eyes open wide. He really seemed terrified.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I said.

He swallowed. “What?”

“Being afraid in a situation like this.”

His eyes flared; he stepped away from the wall. “What’s your name, mister?”

“My name’s Heller.”

“If you prize your job, you’d better watch your tongue.”

He thought I was one of theirs; a fed. That was a laugh.

“And I’ve never seen such pathetic shooting,” he said. “You seemed to aim deliberately high—”

“Mr. Hoover?”

“What?”

“Fuck you.”

I went out onto the street and joined Cowley.

Who said, “How’s the director doing?”

Purvis was over talking to a couple of the motorists whose cars were up on the sidewalk, calming them down. A crowd was gathering; not a large one.

“A change of diaper, and he’ll be a new man.”

Cowley ignored that. “What’s this about, Heller? How’d you happen onto this?”

“I didn’t. I been undercover looking for a runaway daughter. I fell in with a nest of thieves, you might say. I just shook loose from ’em this afternoon, and was on my way here to warn you, when I saw it was coming down early.”