Their odds weren’t bad, actually. Dillinger struck me as cagey enough to stay dead. If he survived that tommy-gun burst in front of the Banker’s Building, he’d be careful as hell before sticking his neck out again — attached as it was to that new face of his.
Cowley also agreed to keep my name out of it; the press never heard about my role in the action, and the kidnapping aspect was quashed, as well. The way it was given to the press (and they bought it) had Hoover, Purvis and Cowley stumbling onto the Continental Bank being cased for a heist. Rumors of the heavyweight public enemies involved did make the papers, but the Division of Investigation wouldn’t confirm them. Losing a catch that included Nelson, the Barkers, Floyd and Karpis would’ve made the division guys look like saps, so they withheld the names. The “gang” members were unidentified, the official release went.
The papers ate the story up (G-MEN IN LOOP GUN BATTLE) and Hoover was portrayed as the hero of the piece.
I didn’t care. My concern was keeping out of the papers, so Dillinger/Sullivan, if he had survived, wouldn’t think I betrayed him; he might strongly suspect, but he wouldn’t know. Nobody had seen me there, despite my having leaned out the door to fire a few shots over Nelson’s head, late in the fray. All Dillinger could know for sure was what the rest of them knew: that I skipped with the girl. The only difference was he knew why.
And to Nelson and the others, of course, I wasn’t Nate Heller: I was Jimmy Lawrence.
And Jimmy Lawrence was, effectively, dead. Frank Nitti had assured me of that. He had sent for me Monday afternoon, to ask me what really went down at the Banker’s Building. When I told him I’d defused that situation, he was pleased with me, and furious with everybody else.
“Kidnap Hoover! Crazy bastards. The heat that’d bring down woulda made this summer look like the North Pole. I owe you one, Heller.”
“No, Frank — you don’t owe me anything. No more debts either way, between you and me.”
“What d’you mean, kid?”
“I mean, I asked for a favor, and you did me one — but at the same time you used me to finger Doc Moran. I was there when he was killed, Frank. I was part of it — just like when Cermak’s boys tried to gun you down. Remember?”
“Only when I breathe. Look, Moran was already dead. He was walking around, but he was long dead. You had nothin’ to do with it.”
“Sure. Fine. Just I don’t owe you anything, and you don’t owe me anything. Clean slate. Okay?”
“Sure, kid. Except for one last favor I’m gonna do you.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m gonna spread the word Jimmy Lawrence went swimming in cement shoes. Just to keep those crazy bastards from comin’ lookin’ for you.”
“That I would appreciate, Frank.”
“My pleasure. And you don’t owe me nothin’. And, Heller?”
“Yeah?”
“Get a shave. Take a bath — you smell like a brewery.”
Sound advice, touching as it did on two of Nitti’s fields of endeavor.
And today, almost a week later, I’d taken it. Bathed. Shaved. Stopped the sauce. And come to see Sally.
“It’ll pass, Heller.”
“I keep seeing her eyes, Helen. In my dreams. That’s why I kept drinking; when I was passed out, I didn’t dream. Not that I can remember, anyway. But if I sleep, I see her eyes. The dead way.”
“Shhh. Shhh.”
“Helen.”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you hold me.”
“Why don’t I.”
She held me, and I slept. No dreams.
No Sally, after November.
She left soon after the fair closed; it had disturbed her, what happened then. It was our last night together — that is, the last night of our long summer together. She’d looked out the window at the Gold Coast and said, “Today they completely demolished the Century of Progress. They tore down flags, they tore down streetlights, they tore down walls. It started out being souvenir hunters, but it turned into mass vandalism. It was terribly frightening, Nate... Nate? Nate, this time why don’t you hold me?”
I had, that one last time. It disturbed Sally, and I think it disturbed Chicago, to realize the fair was finally over. The illusion of a streamlined future was just so much scrap lumber now, in this city mired in a dreary present.
We never got back together, Sally and me, after our summer. We remained friends over the years, but she married (several times) and she wasn’t the kind to fool around. She was a very moral girl, Sally Rand.
But she stayed in show business. She never made it in the movies, really, but she kept on fan-and-bubble dancing throughout her life. That wasn’t all, of course — through the thirties she lectured on intellectual and political topics, speaking out for republican forces in the Spanish Civil War; she even went to college, earned a degree. Shortly before she died in 1979, I spoke with her on the phone; I asked her why she was still doing her fan dance after all these years.
“Don’t be so up-tight, Heller!” she’d said. “I do it because I still like doing it. Better than doing needlepoint on the patio.”
I sent a wreath that said, “Good-bye, Helen.” I didn’t go the funeral; it was in California, and I was in Florida, and try to avoid funerals, particularly my own, which at my age is a good trick.
As for the rest of them, well, I kept track of some; others just faded into a well-deserved obscurity.
Still others found a place in history, at least the sort of history “true crime” buffs thrive on.
I remember feeling strangely numb, reading the write-up in the paper, when Inspector Sam Cowley and Baby Face Nelson met for the second time.
November 1934. Cowley and another agent stumbled onto Nelson, his wife and John Paul Chase, their car stalled, spouting steam from a bullet caught in a wild gunfight with several other feds down the road. Helen dove for cover, as Cowley, in a ditch, traded tommy-gun fire with Nelson, who strode slowly, inexorably toward Cowley, machine gun spraying slugs. Cowley hit Nelson several times, but Nelson came on, his tommy gun blazing, sweeping the gun in flaming arcs across the ditch, bullets tearing across Cowley, killing him. A nearby construction worker said later, “It was just like Jimmy Cagney.”
Soon Lester Gillis got in the car and asked his wife to drive. “I’ve been hit,” he said. He had seventeen bullets in him. Helen and Chase abandoned his naked corpse in a drainage ditch.
Helen testified against Chase and got a reduced sentence; Chase went to Alcatraz, mellowed, and painted oils.
Doc Barker was captured in Chicago in January 1935; he was living in the Pine Grove apartment at the time, out having an evening stroll when Purvis captured him; Doc was unarmed, and when Purvis asked him where his gun was, he said, “Home — and ain’t that a hell of a place for it!”
Ma and Fred had taken a two-story white cottage on Lake Weir in Florida when the feds surrounded the place and demanded their surrender. Someone within the house opened fire, and the agents riddled the cottage with slugs. Fred was found with eleven bullets in him; Ma with three. Both were dead.
Nobody had ever heard of Ma Barker, at this point; but the Division of Investigation had a dead old lady on their hands. So J. Edgar’s publicity boys turned her into the brains of the gang and created the legend of the “bloody mama,” avoiding the public embarrassment of having murdered a little-old-lady nonentity — at the same time, giving the newly rechristened Federal Bureau of Investigation that much further glory. Ma was never on a public enemies’ list, nor was she ever charged with a crime, let alone indicted. She was just an Ozark ma who loved her boys, if not wisely.