“Doc,” Nelson said, an edge in his voice. “Why don’t you let Karpis lay it out for us?”
Karpis laid it out.
He pointed to the map as he spoke, using a grease pencil to trace various routes.
They had inside word that Hoover was coming in tomorrow morning to spend a day at the Division of Investigation’s Chicago bureau, giving the boys in the trenches pep talks and confabbing with Purvis and Cowley. Of more interest to Karpis, however, was Hoover’s evening dinner date with State Attorney Courtney and the Chicago police commissioner. This was a pass-the-peace-pipe powwow initiated by Hoover, seeking to build more cooperation between the feds and the local cops; my guess was the state attorney and the police commissioner were going along with the meeting in order to ask for Purvis’ ouster. The cops had covered the feds’ trail any number of times (the Probasco “suicide” fall, for one thing) and all they’d got in return was bad-mouthing in the press by self-aggrandizing Little Mel. So a meeting was in order.
None of this was anything Karpis went into; these were simply thoughts that flitted through my brain as he stated that Hoover was planning dinner with Courtney and the commissioner at seven o’clock at the Bismarck Hotel. Shortly before seven, a car from the state attorney’s office was to pick up Hoover at the Banker’s Building and escort him to the Bismarck.
“Where’d you get that kind of inside dope?” a smiling Nelson asked.
Karpis smiled his awful smile. “Friends in high places,” he said, and let it go at that.
My guess was attorney Louis Piquett had sniffed this piece of news out; he had plenty of lines into Courtney’s office.
Karpis’ basic plan was simple if cunning. The state attorney’s car was distinctively decorated: a black Hudson with one red and one green headlight, and a red star on the spotlight. Karpis had arranged with “our favorite underworld garage, in Cicero” to have another Hudson similarly decorated — and, in addition to police siren, equipped with such accessories as bulletproofing, shortwave radio and a sliding panel in the doors through which guns could be fired.
Karpis planned to have this car pick up Hoover.
The real state attorney’s car, in a city parking garage near City Hall, would have a convenient flat tire, delaying the Hoover pickup a few minutes — long enough for the ringer to make the pickup instead.
Karpis was drawing on the map, saying, “If the pickup goes smooth, our Hudson just continues on down Clark to Jackson and turns west — like we were heading back to the Bismarck. After that we switch cars.”
Nelson said, “We’ll have a extra car stashed? Where?”
“In a loading dock in this alley,” Karpis said, pointing to the map. “It’s after work; deserted. We stuff Hoover in the trunk of the second car, and drive away, nice and easy.”
Doc said, “Fine and dandy, if the snatch goes smooth. What if it’s queered at the scene? What if some fed recognizes somebody, or wants to look at ID, or they send a different car? What if the shit hits the fan, right there in front of the Banker’s Building?”
Karpis just smiled patiently through all this. He said, “We got all that covered. There’ll be a backup car with extra firepower parked across the way, in front of the Edison Building — on Adams, kiddy-corner from the Banker’s Building. If shooting starts, they cover the escape by opening fire from another direction. And if the snatch goes smooth, they cruise down Adams — dumping tacks behind ’em like bread crumbs, making flat tires and jamming traffic. At LaSalle, the backup car’ll head north, dropping more tacks, to throw the laws off the trail — and ditch their car and switch in an alley off Franklin and Monroe to a new car. And drive away.”
Doc was smirking, skeptical as hell. “All of this in the Loop. Creepy, you’re dreaming.”
Karpis said, “No, Doc — you’re sleeping. Think. Between six and seven, the LaSalle Street district is deader than a doornail. The market shuts down at three — everybody’ll be out by six, easy. On our way in, both the backup and the Hudson’ll take different routes — and if on the way in we see a lot of cops or anything else out of the ordinary, well fold it up. Either car’ll have the right to fold it — if the Hudson gets there and the backup isn’t in position, that means they chose to fold. If the Hudson wants to fold, they just drive on by the Banker’s Building, east on Adams, without stopping.”
Then Karpis went through the escape route — the one that would be taken should the job go sour. The Hudson would turn hard down Quincy, and take a very tight turn down the alley, Rookery Court. Then would pull west on Adams, and once there, if traffic’s heavy, use the siren, crossing LaSalle and Wells, going under the El. After another block on Adams, the Hudson would take a left and go south on Franklin Street. If the siren had been in use, it would be turned off here. Two short blocks later, the Hudson would cut across Jackson and dodge into a narrow, barely noticeable alley behind the fifteen-story building on the northeast corner. This alley led into a system of several alleys, the main, widest one of which was where the loading dock was, with the extra car.
“It’s a two-bay loading dock,” Karpis said, “nice and deep — a car can enter it and not stick out in the alley at all.”
Whether the snatch went smooth or soured, the Hudson would end up here, pulling into the bay next to the second car; everybody would tumble out, putting Hoover (gagged by now) in the trunk of the second car. Of the three men who picked up Hoover, two would be in Chicago police uniforms; they would quickly strip out of those with street clothes underneath — and drive out of the bay and onto Van Buren, going west.
Doc was starting to look less skeptical; but he still asked, “What about real cops? Two to a block, in the Loop, you know.”
Karpis shrugged like Jack Benny. “Supper hour, Doc. Streets are good and empty of uniforms ’tween six and seven.”
Doc nodded slowly. Then said, “Streetcars? Traffic?”
“Both’ll be slow at that hour, that part of the Loop.”
Nelson was nodding, too, saying, “And what traffic there is’ll mostly be people coming into the Loop, for dinner and an evening’s fun ‘n’ games — not going out, like we’d be doing.”
Doc said, “But State and Wabash and the streets around there will be hopping.”
Karpis shrugged again. “That’s in our favor. If an alarm is sounded, the cops’ll have to break through that traffic to get to us. By the time they reach the Banker’s Building at the southwest tip of the Loop, we’ll’ve switched cars.”
Doc thought about that.
Karpis went on. “The Hudson’ll only be on the street for about four blocks, remember. A few minutes at most.”
Karpis then went into the deployment of men: three in the fake state attorney’s car; two in the backup car; one at the loading dock waiting with the second car; another to disable the real state attorney’s car at the city garage near City Hall.
And me — I’d be baby-sitting the ladies, in Ma Barker’s apartment on Pine Grove Avenue. I might be there for weeks — as long as it took for Hoover to be ransomed, plus some cooling-off time. The men didn’t want to hook back up with their ladies till they were sure the Hoover grab was a success. Nobody wanted his girl serving time on this one.
Also, the guy who’d disable the state attorney’s car had a bigger job than just kicking the nail in the toe of his shoe into the tire on a Hudson. First he’d have to go up a fire escape to get into the garage (which was serviced by carhops); then he’d have to hang around on the street and watch the state attorney’s real delivery boys go after their car and, when it turned out they were delayed by a flat tire, try to delay whoever it was from calling the office.