Infamous (51 page)

One of the two gimps on each side of him asked, “You know how to find Verne Miller?”

She nodded.

“What you want?” the other stooge asked.

“I want you get Verne Miller outta my hair.”

Nitti nodded. Kathryn told them about Joe Bergl’s garage.

“There’s another fella with him,” she said. “My husband. I want him left alone. You
sabe
, Frank?”

Nitti caught her eye and nodded before turning and heading back down the steps.

“That’s it?” Geraline asked.

“You better believe it,” Kathryn said.

“I heard in the future, we’ll only take pills and not eat or drink.”

“The future is a bunch of hooey,” she said. “Stuff for weak-minded saps. Come on.”

THE HUDSON’S RADIATOR BOILED OVER AND STEAMED UP INTO the flickering lamplight as the men dashed out onto Halstead, carrying their guns and canvas bags, the two coppers running toward them telling them to stop. One held out his hand and reached for his gun while women screamed from inside the Essex, a man slumped at the wheel. A young woman wandered from the car with blood across her face while Miller stood in the middle of the street and mowed down the copper, machine gun chattering, toppling off the cop’s hat and sending him to his knees and face, and then he scattered bullets at the other cop, who jumped behind a newspaper stand. Sparks of electricity rained down onto the top of the Hudson from the broken streetlamp, and a fine rain misted the street.

The copper was dead, a new path set, and Harvey grabbed two bags himself, while Karpis stopped a Plymouth and yanked a man from behind the wheel.

The other copper took shots from inside the stand, hitting Barker’s fingers. But the pain just made Barker madder, and he squeezed off six rounds from his pistol with his good hand at the fleeing cop.

The men tossed the bags into the Plymouth’s trunk, and Karpis yelled for Miller, who kept on spraying the clapboard newsstand to shit, kicking off the magazines hung from clothespins and busting up the lot of white lights hung from the roof. “Come on, goddamn you,” Karpis yelled, clutch in, racing the motor and then tearing off down Halstead, taking some wild turns before doubling back and heading back toward Cicero.

“Clockwork,” Harvey said, catching his breath.

“I didn’t see ’em,” Karpis said. “That bastard came outta nowhere.”

“You coulda swerved,” Verne Miller said.

“You didn’t have to kill that cop,” Karpis said.

“Fresh out of flowers, Kreeps,” Miller said.

“Son of a bitch,” Karpis said.

“What?”

“We’re outta gas.”

They drove for another mile and then bailed out and stole another car, pointing a Thompson between the driver’s eyes. Harvey sat beside Karpis with Miller, George Kelly, and that moron Dock Barker in back, Barker whining about a bullet knocking a ruby from his pinkie ring. The men didn’t say another word till they pulled through the bay doors of Joe’s Square Deal Garage and closed them shut.

Karpis popped the trunk and grabbed a bag, Barker and George Kelly grabbed the others, all of ’em tearing into them with folding knives and emptying out the fat sacks onto the card table.

Harvey said he needed a drink. Joe Bergl passed him a bottle of rye. He took a pull and handed it to George Kelly, who took a longer pull.

The table filled with fat, tightly bundled stacks of envelopes.

Karpis tore into another to find the same.

And another, until letters littered the oil-stained floor.

Harvey sat down in a rickety chair and rested his head in his hands. Miller stood across from him, white-faced and still holding the Thompson. Dock Barker started to open every goddamn letter as if it were a letter from Momma.

“We just stole the goddamn mail,” Karpis said, and started to laugh. “What a hoot.”

“I don’t get it,” Dock Barker said, ripping open a couple more envelopes. “What do ya mean?”

“We got the mail, you idiot,” Harvey said. He lit a cigarette and leaned back into the hard chair, shaking his head. Karpis started to laugh like a maniac, looking more and more like a fella you called “Kreeps.”

George Kelly rubbed his lantern jaw, shrugged, and reached for the rye on the table.

But Miller clenched his teeth, dropped his machine gun on the floor, and kicked it to the wall, sending it spinning across the smooth concrete floor and shooting off a short burst of bullets.

“Take it easy, Verne,” Karpis said. “This stuff happens. Have a drink. Get laid every once in a while. I hear Vi’s screwing half of New York.”

Miller turned and came for him, reaching for Karpis’s throat and choking the ever-living shit out of the ugly bastard before Harvey and Dock could pull him off. Harvey had to reach a forearm across his friend’s throat and pull him back like a dog.

When Harvey felt Miller relax, he followed him into the back room they’d shared for the past week. He watched him pack his suitcase: a pressed shirt, two pairs of trousers, a regulation .45, and some fresh drawers. A rusty faucet dripped, hanging crazy and crooked from a back wall.

“Where you headed?” Harvey asked.

Miller shrugged.

“You know Karpis was talking out his ass?”

“He was telling the truth.”

“You don’t know that.”

“She can do what she wants,” Miller said. “See you ’round, Harv.”

He offered his hand, and Harvey shook it.

Harvey, wrung-out, walked back to the card table and sat down. Miller walked out of the back room and reached for the latch on the bay door, rolling it open.

A large car sat idling outside, headlights shining bright into the big garage.

Four men crawled out of the car, and they stood in loose shadows with shotguns hanging from their hands. Harvey started to stand, and Karpis put his strong hand on his shoulder. Barker stopped tearing into the envelopes, mouth wide open.

In the bright light—so bright you had to squint—Miller looked back at Harvey. He offered him a weak smile, walking outside and moving to the car’s backseat. A shadowed hand went on his arm, but Miller tossed it aside, getting into the car himself. Harvey could now see the car was a Cadillac as it backed into the alley and sped away. Verne Miller’s battered suitcase stood alone by the door.

“You goddamn son of a bitch,” Harvey said. “You called Nitti.”

“You know better,” Karpis said.

“You’re a goddamn liar.”

“If I were a double-crosser, you’d be with ’im,” Karpis said.

“I’m going after those bastards.”

“You want to be dead?” Karpis said. “Go ahead.”

Harvey stood and walked to a brand-new Ford parked sideways near the bay doors. He looked around the big garage and then back to Karpis. “Where the hell’s George?”

JONES STOOD AT THE CORNER OF ADAM AND HALSTEAD A FEW hours later. They’d pulled a white sheet over the dead policeman—a long-faced cop by the name of Cunningham—and before the man was hauled away, Jones saw he’d been mauled up pretty good. He’d figured it for a machine gun even before the women in the Essex had confirmed it, along with the other beat cop who’d been hit in the shoulder. Doc White stood over at the newsstand and spoke to a little runt of a fella who sold newspapers and movie magazines. The man was pointing to the bullet holes and shredded magazines, saying God had protected him with big stacks of the evening editions.

The newspaper boys had taken their pictures, asked their questions, and gone.

A few onlookers stood and watched at first light. But the streets had been cleared, the cars towed and the glass and metal swept up.

An hour earlier, he and Doc had been on Jackson Street, interviewing the bank messengers and the guards. They’d searched that Ford and found the smoke machine. In the Hudson, they’d found a first-aid kit and two boxes of .45 ammo.

The men had worn bandannas at the robbery, and no one at the wreck recalled much. The fella that owned the newsstand said he was pretty sure they weren’t colored.

“Kelly?” Doc White asked them as they walked back to their vehicle.

Jones nodded. “Fits. He’s here.”

“One of the women gave a description sounds a hell of a lot like Verne Miller.”

“What about Bailey?”

“Didn’t hear of anyone sounded like Bailey.”

Jones watched a city worker take a wrench to a fire hydrant and start hosing away the beat cop’s blood. “Lot of misery for a few sacks of mail.”

“Any other night could’ve been more ’an a million.”

“You want to stay here?”

“Only sure bet is the Arnolds.”

“What Colvin do with ’em?”

“Did like Kathryn Kelly asked,” Doc White said, striking a match and cupping his hand around a cigarette. The morning wind sure felt like fall. “Holed ’em up in the Shangri-La Apartments in O.K. City till she gets word.”

“Could they be tipped off?”

“Colvin was careful.”

As they walked to their car, a big truck with slatted wooden sides ambled up to the shredded newsstand, dropping off morning copies of the
Tribune
, local police blaming Kelly for the robbery and the cop killing. 10,000 LAWMEN HUNT “MACHINE GUN” KELLY.

37

Saturday, September 23, 1933

K
athryn took a drink with George’s brother-in-law, Langford Ramsey—just calling him “Lang”—on the front porch of his bungalow in a fine Memphis neighborhood, right around the corner from Southwestern College. He had a fine car and a fine little wife and a fine job as a local attorney, George telling her twenty times that Lang was the youngest man in the state in practice. She liked Lang from the start after they’d rolled into Memphis that morning, dog-tired and muscle-cramped, and here this young boy and his wife had set their dining-room table with fried chicken and potato salad, iced tea, and lemonade spiked with gin. The lemonade just hitting the spot after they’d taken to the porch while George washed up and changed, expecting his sons at any minute.

“I’m so glad y’all are here,” Lang said.

He was a nice-looking boy, skinny and rich, a doughy face, but with nicely cut hair and beautiful manners. He called her ma’am, which annoyed her a bit. But he’d also blushed when she’d crossed her bare legs and lit a cigarette, and after their third lemonade he’d confided a bit about his wife, who was a restless girl from a good Memphis family who Lang said was under a doctor’s care for frigidity.

“Hell, just get her drunk, Lang,” Kathryn said. “Always works.”

“I like you,” he said.

“Back at you.”

“Your little girl is beautiful.”

“Yeah?”

“She was so helpful in the kitchen.”

Kathryn wanted to warn him to watch his valuables. But instead she just smoked and took in the smooth green lawns, blooming crepe myrtles still spotted from a morning shower, and the young oaks that had grown just tall enough to shade the street. Fallen leaves skittered down the streets in bright little whirls. You noticed those type things when you were a bit high.

“You have to realize we were all taken aback to hear from George.”

“How long has it been?” Kathryn asked.

“Until he came through Memphis a few weeks ago, I hadn’t laid eyes on him for seven years,” Lang said. “I didn’t know till then that he’d been remarried.”

“We’ll be married three years tomorrow.”

“He did well for himself,” Lang said. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like Joan Crawford?”

She smiled at him. “George says nice things about your sister.”

Lang nodded. “We miss him. His boys miss him.”

“He got so nervous when you said they were visiting.”

“I think it’s only right,” Lang said. “They should know their father. Don’t get me wrong, F.X. is a fine man and a good husband.”

“What’s he do?”

“He’s a big-time advertising executive. Have you seen those ads for Rinso soap?”

“That woman with the awful BO? You bet. The way her friends don’t want to take her to the movies and her husband stays late at the office. It’s a riot.”

“He came up with that.”

“On the level?”

“On the level,” Lang said. “Listen, I wish you all could stay here, but with Geneva and her new husband, I thought it best—”

“It’s sweet that you found a place for us.”

“George stayed with Tich last time,” Lang said. “His wife and kids are in Paducah visiting her mother. He said it’s no trouble at all. He’s a funny little guy, kinda ornery, but don’t let him fool you. He’d give the shirt off his back for my family. Did I tell you he was a cripple?”

“You want me to speak to your wife?” Kathryn asked.

Lang reached for the pitcher of lemonade and gin. “About what?”

“Being frigid,” Kathryn said. “A fine catch like you . . .”