I drove Ma down to her cabin. Each white frame structure was divided into two numbered rooms. The half a cabin I’d be sharing with Louise was down a few doors. I began carrying Ma’s things in for her; she immediately stretched out on one of the twin beds and began to read a Photoplay magazine with Claudette Colbert on the cover. It took me two trips to cart her stuff in, by which time she was asleep, snoring, the magazine folded over her generous bosom, Claudette’s smiling face rising and falling.
I decided to have a nap myself. In my own room. There were twin beds here, too, several feet apart, and I hoped to keep it that way tonight. Your client’s daughter, I reminded myself. The stiffening in my trousers at just the thought of her, however, indicated my client’s best interests were probably not going to be served, in this little puce-papered room.
First order of business was to use the indoor plumbing each room seemed to have. As I stood there emptying my bladder I reflected on how nice it felt to be back in the twentieth century — even if there was a bug the size of your thumb in the bathtub at my right. I didn’t bother to kill it. Live and let live. Took off my pants and took my nap.
A knocking at the door awoke me. I checked my watch and it was a little before two o’clock. I took the automatic out from under my pillow and went to the open window, where sheer curtains fluttered in a slight summer breeze. I peered out through them.
A big man — barrel-chested, six foot two, ruddy, round-faced, dark-haired, early thirties — was standing there in his shirt sleeves and suspenders. The butt of a .45 peeked out of his waistband.
It took me a few seconds, but then I realized who it was. I’d seen his picture in the papers often enough.
Charles Arthur Floyd.
Pretty Boy.
He knocked again. “Lawrence? Jimmy Lawrence?”
I cracked the door, gun in hand out of view. “That’s right,” I said. Doing my best to keep recognition out of my voice and face. “Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Charlie Floyd,” he said, and smiled. He had a small, cupid mouth, but a big smile, because when he smiled, his whole round face lit up. Like Polly Hamilton, he had apple cheeks. “I been hearin’ some good things ’bout you from mutual acquaintances.”
“Such as?”
His smile continued, but some strain was starting to show. “Nelson, Karpis, so on. Open up. Let me in. You can see both my hands and my gun. You surely got a gun on me, so what’s the worry?”
I stood back, eased the door open, held the gun on him.
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.