“He plays people like a hand of cards, I’ll give you that. As for why I’m here, it’s strictly a mission of mercy — and it’s with Nitti’s full okay.”
“Make me believe that.”
I told him, in enough detail to convince him, that I was here to retrieve Candy Walker’s moll Lulu for her ailing farmer father.
He seemed to buy it, farmer’s kid that he was himself; but he said, “I can check on this with a phone call.”
“I know you can. But do you really want Nitti to know you’re in the neighborhood? He’s not exactly going to be tickled pink about what you’re planning for tomorrow, you know.”
Dillinger got out a new cigarette, lit it up; in the orange glow of the flame, his mask of a face gave little away. “He’s not going to know I was involved — unless you tell him.”
“Why should I tell him?”
He didn’t answer me. Instead he said, reflectively, “I suppose you’d like to just take the girl and scram. Just hop in one of these cars and rescue the fair maiden, and not get caught up in tomorrow’s business.”
My answer to that flatly posed question would be crucial; I could see it in his face, hear it in his voice, if just barely — he was doing his best not to tip his hand.
But I could tell what he wanted to hear — and what he didn’t want to hear.
So I said, “Hell, no. I’m in.”
He studied me. “You’re in?”
“Hell, yes. Twenty-five gees worth, I am.”
“You’re supposed to be a stand-up guy, Heller. So honest you quit the force and all. Why all of a sudden are you willing to get in the kidnapping racket?”
I put on my best smirk; inside I wasn’t smiling. “Hoover’s nothing to me. The feds gave me nothing but grief, when you were staging that ballet at the Biograph. Make ’em look as stupid as you like, and squeeze as much dough out as you can.”
He studied me.
“Look, I can use twenty-five gees, friend. I had two clients in the last month and a half — and you were one of ’em.”
He drew on the cigarette.
I said, “But I’m not in for murder, understand. I want your word Hoover won’t be killed. Even if they don’t fork over the dough.”
He said nothing for a while. Fiddles were playing on Ma’s radio station.
Then he said, “You got my word,” and held his hand out for me to shake.
I shook it.
“Hell,” I said, “all I got to do is bunk in with some good-looking women for a few weeks. I had worse jobs.”
Dillinger laughed; a genuine laugh. “Yeah. There’s worse ways to score twenty-five grand. And when it’s over, you can take the skirt and blow.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“But Heller — if you’re stringing me along — if you fuck this up for me — you’re dead. Got that? Plain old dead.”
“Understood.”
He threw the latest cigarette away; it sizzled in the grass, and we walked back around front of the tourist cabins.
As we walked, I said, “You were some actor, back in my office that time. You really had me going.”
He smiled. “I always have had a smooth line of bull.”
Me, too, John. Me, too.
39
We were gathered much as the night before, in the same smoky room, only now sun was filtering through the sheer curtains, dust motes floating, as Doc Barker said, “Ever hear of a guy named Nate Heller?”
He was sitting right next to me when he said it; I felt myself starting to shake. The gun was under my arm, but my hand was on my knee, a world away.
They’d been talking about the possibility of the feds marking the bills. It had happened in the Bremer snatch, and the dough had been so hot no fence wanted to touch it at first, though they finally sold most of it at a ten percent discount. Karpis said in this case they’d insist on used, non-consecutive bills, and set up for a fast ransom exchange — too fast, Karpis hoped, for the feds to get serial numbers recorded.
Floyd had suggested they sit on the money awhile, but float a few bills out just to see what happened. Karpis suggested the way to do that was remove some bills from Hoover’s wallet and substitute ransom money.
“If the bills are hot,” Karpis had said, “then Hoover’ll be the first to pass ’em. The papers’ll report the bills turning up, in whatever city he passes ’em in — Washington, D.C., most likely — and we’ll know right away if we need to fence the cash.”
Nelson said, “Anybody know a good hot-money fence? I hear Doc Moran’s gone out of business.”
A few smiles greeted this slice of gallows humor, and then Doc Barker made his remark about Nate Heller.
I glanced across the room at Dillinger, playing Sullivan, in fedora and dark glasses; below the mustache there seemed to be a trace of a smile.
“Yeah, I know him,” Karpis said. “He runs the Parkview Hotel in Havana. That’s a good thought. Heller’s a good prospect for moving the cash, if it turns out the feds marked it.”
I let some air out, and Doc glanced at me. “You okay, Lawrence? You sound like some old geezer gaspin’ his last.”
I managed a grin. “You should’ve seen me before I gave up smokin’,” I said.
He smiled briefly, and with his sunken cheeks it was like a skull smiling; then he turned his attention back to Karpis, who was asking for the group’s permission to sit on the money till they’d determined whether the feds had marked it or not; and, if so, to go ahead and fence the dough before the split. There was a general agreement on the subject.
After the final briefing, we drifted outside. Dillinger, or Sullivan — take your pick — strolled up to me, unable to suppress his wry smile. He glanced around to see if anybody was within earshot, and then quietly said, “You went white as a ghost in there, pal. What’s wrong — d’you think you were the only Nate Heller in the world?”
“I guess if there can be two of you, there can be two of me.”
He shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”
We were about an hour from Chicago. Karpis, Floyd and “Sullivan” left around two o’clock in one car; at three, Nelson, Chase, and the Barker brothers took off in another. I was to leave at four, driving Ma in the Auburn, followed by the Ford sedan, driven by Dolores, with Louise and Paula and Nelson’s wife Helen riding.
Not long after the Nelson car had taken off, I found myself back in the puce-papered room, in bed with Louise. There were worse ways to kill an hour, but she was starting to wear me down. I don’t mean to make like she was a real hot tomato or something, a regular sex fiend — no. She seemed to enjoy the act, all right, only she liked the attention, more. She liked being held. She liked being close to me. And I liked being close to her.
Maybe having been with a woman as strong as Sally made me appreciate this more dependent girl. I liked being looked up to; leaned on. The role of protector was attractive to me, just as attractive as her big brown eyes and blond bobbed hair and pale skin and...
And now and then it occurred to me how short a time I’d known her. That in those two days or so, I’d had her half a dozen times. I felt funny about it, though I didn’t quite know why — I just knew it was more than some kind of guilt over sleeping with my client’s daughter.
Now we lay between the sheets, naked, my arm around her. She had her head nestled in the crook of my arm, cheek against my chest, a pink-nailed hand against my chest as well, playing with the hair there.
“How’d you like to be free of all this?” I asked her.
She cocked her head and the brown eyes blinked. “Free of all what?”
“This. This life — on the road. On the run. Living with crooks, Louise.”