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
“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.
