“Day after tomorrow, you mean?”
“Right.”
“What is it?”
“A snatch.”
Fine. Now I was mixed up in a kidnapping; I could see myself, being strapped into the chair, telling the reporters in the gallery how I was a private detective gone undercover to retrieve a farm girl.
“Interested?” Karpis asked.
“I might be,” I said.
“Decide by tomorrow. We’ll be driving back to Illinois, to a tourist court near Aurora. We’re meeting some people there, to go over the plans.”
“I appreciate the offer.”
“We can use you. We were counting on having Candy Walker, you know. And we don’t really have time to go pull somebody else in.”
“How could Walker have helped you, if he was recovering from plastic surgery?”
Karpis shifted his smile to one side of his face; it didn’t look any better there. “We just need someone to stick by the women. While we pull the snatch, and for a time, after. Easy work. Candy could’ve cut it, even with bandages on his puss.”
“I see. Well…”
“You’d only get half a cut—half of which goes to Candy. Or to Lulu, that is. We look after our own.”
“That’s only right.”
“Still, it should run five grand. What do you say?”
Five grand!
“I’ll, uh, sleep on it.”
“Good. Maybe you can get to know Lulu while you’re at it.”
“You got to be kidding…she just lost her man…”
“She’s going to need comforting. She needs somebody to look after her.”
“Well, uh…”
He put a fatherly hand on my shoulder; he was younger than me, and I owned suits that weighed more than he did—but his words carried weight just the same.
He said, “Guys like us got to pick our girls from the circles we move in. My first real girl was Herman Barker’s widow. Took up with her before Herman’s body was cool. It’s nothing to be ashamed of—just the facts of life in this game.”
“I do feel sorry for the kid,” I said, referring to Louise. This was perfect, actually: Karpis was trying to fix me up with the girl I’d come here after.
He slipped his arm around my shoulder. “Don’t feel like you’re getting sloppy seconds, Jimmy. Mind if I call you Jimmy? For example. I took up with a lot of whores in my time, but I never had any complaints about their personalities or their morals or brains or what-have-you. You can always trust a whore.”
That might make a nice needlepoint for Mildred Gillis to hang on her farmhouse wall.
“Now, Dolores, she was the sister-in-law of a guy I used to do jobs with; she’s been with me since she was sixteen. Don’t get the idea she’s fat, either—she’s just knocked up. Second time. We decided to have this one— what the hell.”
“Uh, congratulations, Karpis.”
“Thanks, Jimmy.”
I noticed a small figure walking across the farmyard toward the barn; he had a bottle of liquor in one hand, tommy gun slung over one arm.
Nelson.
“What’s he up to?” I asked.
“Oh—just taking his friend Chase some refreshment.”
“His friend who?”
“Chase. John Paul Chase. Guy worships Nelson; adores him.” He let out a nasty snicker that went well with his smile. “If Helen weren’t around, I think they’d be an item.”
“What’s Chase doing in the barn?”
“Staying there.”
“What do you mean?”
Karpis shrugged. “Staying there. He sits up in the loft with a rifle and keeps watch out that little window or door or whatever it is. See?”
I looked over toward the barn, and saw the open loft door, but nothing else.
