Handsome Harry (33 page)

After the job, John would be taking Billie to meet his family in Mooresville before heading for Arizona. I’d drive the Blueberry to In
dianapolis and sell it to our ex-con pal Elmore Brown, then check into a hotel and wait for Mary to get to Indy with my Buick. Maybe we’d visit my mother, depending on whether the cops still had the place under surveillance. Charley and Russ and Opal would go on to Tucson ahead of us. We all had Tweet’s phone number to call and find out where everybody was.

Y
owsa, what a drive! I have to tell you, that Terraplane could
move.
John had first turn at the wheel and we barreled up the Florida coast at sixty-five miles an hour with hardly a stoplight along the way except for St. Augustine and Jacksonville. Then we were roaring over Georgia clay roads, passing farm trucks in clouds of red dust, honking slowpokes out of our way, slowing only as we went through the burgs. We didn’t get chased by a cop till after I took the wheel and we flew through a stop sign going through Macon. I gave him the shake as soon as we cleared town.

What we mostly talked about as we went along was Mary and Billie. He asked if I was serious about going to live in Miami and settling down and I said I was. Was he serious about settling in Mexico? He said he sure was. He wanted to know when I was going to do this settling and I said I hadn’t exactly decided yet. When was he going to do his settling in Mexico? He hadn’t exactly decided yet either. I said I didn’t know about him, but I found it very comforting to have such solid plans for the future. We were both grinning to beat the band and he asked what was so damn funny. I said what did
he
think was so funny. He said I asked you first. We laughed so hard it was all I could do to keep the car on the road. It took us a while to get ourselves under control, then nobody said a word for the next hour.

Sometime during that drive he told me a story about Billie I’ve never forgotten. Back when they were on their first date, she told him she’d had a lonely childhood on the reservation, she never had many friends. Her only steady company for years was a cat she’d found by
the side of the road and named Ling Ling. The name sounded Oriental to John, and he asked if it was a Siamese. Oh no, she said, nothing like that, it was just a regular cat with one head.

In Atlanta we bought a sack of burgers and bottles of cola and then went winding up into the mountains. We had to turn the heater up high against the increasing cold. I was wowed by how well the Terraplane held the road as it leaned through the curves, John grabbing tight to the dashboard whenever the tires let a little screech and the car started to drift before I muscled it back under control. Still, the mountains slowed us down and they strained me to the bone. By the time we hit Chattanooga that evening I was glad to let him do the driving again.

I snoozed in the backseat as we sped through the night, then somewhere near the Kentucky line I woke to a siren and a flashing red light behind us. They stuck with us at over seventy miles an hour down a straight dirt road in country so dark we couldn’t see a thing outside the headlight beams. If a cow had stepped out in the road, that would’ve been all she wrote. I picked up the Thompson from under a coat on the floorboard and leaned out the window and fired a bright yellow burst over their roof. They must’ve hit the brakes with both feet, they faded out of sight so fast.

Around four in the morning we crossed the river into Indiana. I took the wheel and John curled up in back. Come daybreak my eyes felt red as the sunrise, like they had sand under the lids. I stopped in Terre Haute for gasoline and another refill of the coffee thermos. John woke up and asked if I wanted him to spell me, but I said I was doing fine and go ahead and sleep some more.

And we did it. We rolled into Chicago shortly before noon. It was cold but sunny and bright. The car was gray and brown with mud and dust but the engine still purred like a happy cat. We parked in a public garage at the end of the block from Red’s place.

Patty answered my knock and threw her arms around me and smooched me all over the face, then gave John the same swell welcome.

Red stood there beaming at us and said Bedamn if you boys didn’t get here with time to spare. Hell, we got most of three hours yet.

P
atty made us a lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, potato salad and Cokes. All was well between her and Red, and we were glad to hear they’d decided to join us on the Arizona trip and were packed and ready to go. We ate, then showered and put on fresh clothes. Red kissed Patty at the door and said he’d be back in no time.

He’d swiped a Plymouth in Naperville the day before and swapped its Illinois plates with a set of Ohio tags he’d got from Pearl. The car was in the parking garage, next to his black Packard. We got the guns and vests out of the Terraplane and put on the vests. All of us wanted to go in the bank but somebody had to drive and stick with the car, so we did a three-way coin toss. Red and John came up tails and I showed heads. I got behind the wheel of the Plymouth and we headed for the First National Bank in East Chicago.

If you ever need proof that you should never hit a bank without casing it first, this job is it. We didn’t even know what the parking situation would be like. I figured that if I had to, I’d double-park in front of the bank. If a cop came by and told me to move along while John and Red were inside, I’d fake motor trouble till they came out, and then I’d deal with the cop any way I had to. It wasn’t the kind of planning that would’ve made old Herman Lamm tip his hat to me.

As luck would have it, there was a parking place almost directly in front of the place. I slid into it and cut the front wheels away from the curb, ready for a fast getaway, and I left the motor running.

They might as well put up a sign saying Reserved for Bank Robbers, Red said. I tell you, boys, this is getting
too
fucken easy anymore.

Maybe we should tie one hand behind our backs, John said. Or wear a patch over one eye.

Yeah, Red said, like pirates—
Arrrgh.

John slipped the Thompson under his overcoat and Red checked the chamber of his .380 and put the pistol in his coat pocket. I had my .45 beside me on the seat.

We’ll be right back, John said. And they got to it.

They’d been inside less than three minutes when a uniformed cop came down the street, walking in my direction. We wouldn’t know until we read the papers the next day that the police station was only a block away. I didn’t hear an alarm, but we knew some banks had alarms that sounded only in the police station, so as not to tip off the robbers. The cop didn’t look too concerned, though. If he was responding to an alarm, it was another case of thinking it wasn’t for real. Then he pushed open the door and froze, and I figured John or Red had seen him coming and got the drop on him. He went inside and the door closed.

But somebody had hit a silent alarm, all right, because here came more cops running my way, all of them with guns in their hand. Eight of them, maybe ten, some in uniform, some in plainclothes. I watched through the windshield as they shooed pedestrians away from the bank and took cover behind cars or in store entrances. None of them was aware of me. It was like watching a movie. I set the .45 between my legs and eased the car into gear, ready to boom us out of there the instant the guys made it into the car.

I felt my heartbeat in my throat. It seemed a long time before the bank door opened and out they came. John was holding some citizen in front of him as a shield, and Red had the money sack in one hand and his pistol against the ribs of the cop who’d gone inside. As they started toward me, a uniformed cop stepped out from the recessed entrance of the store next door and yelled something and the citizen dropped to the sidewalk, giving the cop a clear shot at John, and
bam-bam-bam-bam—
he popped him four quick ones.

John took them all in the chest, staggering back against the bank’s brick wall, then cut loose with a rattling blast of the tommy
that sent the cop jolting backward like he was having a fit and dropped him to the sidewalk in a bloody heap. John scooted up beside Red and the hostage cop and I reached over the seat and pushed open the back door as the three of them hustled up to the car in a tight knot. Somebody was yelling
Don’t shoot Hobie, don’t shoot Hobie
but some of the cops started shooting anyway. As John dove into the car the hostage cop broke free and all the cops opened fire. Red grunted and sat down hard on the sidewalk with the sack of money tight under one arm and then the other arm jerked and his gun went skidding under the car. Bullets were cracking off the sidewalk and chipping the brick wall and punching the car. John rolled out and grabbed Red and heaved him up and into the car and tumbled in behind him, and how he didn’t get hit I’ll never know.

I gunned the Plymouth away from the curb with the tires squealing. The open back door struck a parked car and crunched half off its hinges as we tore through a huge clatter of gunfire, bullets thunking into the car and making starbursts in the windshield. Then we were around the corner and out of sight of the cops, and John was able to wrench the broken door nearly shut and tie it closed with his belt.

I took a lot of lefts and rights through the back streets. I don’t know if anybody tried to chase us, but if they did, we sure lost them. Then I doubled back to the main highway and mixed into the traffic heading for Shytown. Nobody around us seemed to pay any attention to the holes in our car or the mangled door. God bless the average Joe and his lack of interest in anything but himself.

Red was slumped on the seat, swearing and groaning as John checked his wounds. The front of his pants was soaked dark red. He had two bullets high in the leg, and John said none of the blood was from an artery and the wounds were nothing to worry about.

Fuck you, nothing to worry about, Red said. It ain’t
you
bleeding like a stuck hog.

Either bullet hit any higher and it would’ve been your jewels, John said. You’re damn lucky, man.

Oh yeah, Red said, I’m luckiern shit. Look here, Pete, how goddamn lucky I am.

He held up his right hand for me to see in the rearview. The tip of his ring finger had been shot off.

Looks like you’re
Two
-finger Jack from now on, I said. I was still riding high on the adrenaline charge.

John said Two-Finger Jack was a hell of a lot better than No-balls Jack, and we both went into a laughing fit.

Ha fucken ha, Red said.

At the saloon on Byron, Billie was parked to the side of the building. She lost her big smile quick when John and I helped Red out of the Plymouth and she saw his bloody pants and the red-stained handkerchief around his hand. We eased him into the Blueberry and I sat in back with him. John got behind the wheel and told Billie it was good to see her. We left the Plymouth where it was.

Billie was big-eyed with concern about Red, who was sweating hard despite the cold weather. Oh God, she said, how bad is it?

I’ll be okay, Pocahontas, Red said, but there goes my Arizona vacation.

Doc Moran’s is where we were headed. He was a good surgeon who’d taken a fall on an abortion rap. He’d managed to get his license back and still had a public practice, but prison had altered his attitude toward the law, and nowadays the biggest part of his income came from treating wounded fugitives on the QT. He received his official patients in a fancy office in a downtown hotel, but he also had a little clinic out at the edge of town where he tended to girls in trouble and guys like us.

We parked in the alley behind the clinic and took Red in through the back door. We were in luck and Moran was there. He was a little edgy about having us in his place and kept asking if we were sure we hadn’t been followed. As always, a handful of hundred-dollar bills did wonders to settle his nerves. He examined the wounds and confirmed John’s opinion that they weren’t as bad as
they looked. Red swore and said don’t try telling him they didn’t
hurt
as bad as they looked.

The doc said he’d have him patched up in an hour or two, and I gave him Patty’s number to call when the job was done. We told Red so long, we’d be back in a few weeks. He said to get him an arrowhead for a souvenir, and I said sure thing. But I’d never see him again.

We went back to his place and broke the news to Patty. For a minute she looked like she might cry, then took it like a good soldier and said Just our luck. She had the keys to Red’s car and would collect him when Moran called.

We dumped the money out on the table and tallied it. Sixteen thousand and some change. I gave Patty three grand to tide her and Red over and said I’d call every few days to see how he was doing. She said she didn’t really want to go to Arizona anyway. Who the hell wanted to risk a winter sunburn when you could stay nice and cool in Chicago?

I asked John if he wanted to hold half the take till we got together in Tucson and divvied up with Russ and Charley, but he said no, Mary was the company treasurer, give her the swag for safekeeping. We had a beer for the road, then John and Billie said adios and they’d see me in Tucson, and they left for his dad’s farm in Mooresville.

T
hat evening I drove to Elmore Brown’s garage a few miles south of Indy and sold him the Blueberry. He paid even less than usual because he’d have to replace the blood-stained seat before he could resell the car. One of his mechanics gave me a ride back into town and dropped me off at a hotel overlooking the river park.

As soon as I checked in, I called Margo to let her know where I was and that I was registered as Harry Roark. I told her Mary would probably arrive in town the next day unless she ran into bad weather
or some other slowdown on her way from Florida. Margo had heard the news about the robbery and that one of the bandits had been shot, and she’d been worried sick. I assured her we were all fine, that Red—the only guy in the gang she’d never met—hadn’t been hit as bad as they said and was being well tended.