so’s he could recognize me.”
“But Nelson and the others are a different story.”
He exhaled some more smoke; it made a sort of question mark in the air. “Yeah,” he said. “They might pick up on my voice, or my eyes. Plastic surgery don’t change you as one hundred percent as people think.”
“Yours ain’t bad,” I said.
He sighed heavily; a weight-of-the-world sigh. “It cost me. And it wasn’t just one operation. It was a whole series of ’em, out West. No hack like Doc Moran.”
“He’s dead, you know.”
“Lot of that going around.”
This time I was the one who laughed humorlessly. “Threatening me, John? Or referring to your own greatly exaggerated demise?”
He sneered. “What do you think?”
“I think you went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get officially dead. You should’ve dropped off the face of the earth by now. Why get back in the game again, so soon, or at all—when you went through so much trouble getting out?”
The sneer got nastier. “Guess.”
“I’ll take a wild one—money. Death is free, but only if you really die, right? Take Piquett—he wouldn’t come cheap, not for a scam this size. He’s risking disbarment, after all.”
Another laugh. “He risks that every day. But, no, he didn’t come cheap.”
“Or Zarkovich and O’Neill, either.”
“No.”
“Or Anna Sage.”
“Or Anna Sage,” he admitted.
The muffled sound of hillbilly music could be heard from the tourist camp, behind us; Ma had finally found her station.
“Does Polly Hamilton know?”
“That I’m alive? No. You’re part of a select group, Heller.”
“No names, remember? It does explain why you came to my office personally, to put me in motion where Polly Hamilton was concerned. I came to think you were just some con man Piquett hired. You did it yourself, though, to keep the circle nice and tight. A secret like this isn’t easily kept. Fewer conspirators the better.”
He said nothing.
I swigged the Coke; finished it. Tossed the bottle into the trees. “Yeah, it must’ve cost you, really cost you—or you wouldn’t be risking your new face out in the open like this…not to mention this lunatic plot to kidnap Hoover. Jesus! You really believe the government’ll pay you people off?”
“Yeah,” he said, testily. “I think they’ll pay. And I don’t think they’ll even tell the public it ever happened.”
That hadn’t occurred to me.
I said, “You figure they’ll put on a press blackout till they get Hoover back.”
“I do. And after. They got a lot of press and prestige tied up in that fat little bastard. He’s riding my ‘death’ like a rodeo pony.”
Ma’s hillbilly music in the background lent some color to his remark.
I grunted a laugh. “Must frustrate you—here you are ‘dead,’ and the fuck-ups you fooled, you used, are using you to make themselves look like Saturday afternoon heroes.”
“G-men,” he said, derisively. “They’re going to kill us all, you know. That’s why I went out my own way, on my own terms. The feds, they’re dopes, they’re fuck-ups, they’re boobs—but they got money and time on their side. It’s over. This whole damn game is over. Even a chowderhead like Nelson can see that.”
Male laughter came from up by the cabins; they were taking Karpis’ advice and making merry.
I said, “Well, Floyd sees the writing on the wall, all right. He said much the same thing as you, this afternoon. He said it was just a matter of time.”
“Well, it’s true, and this snatch is risky but it stands to stake every man one of us to a ticket out of this outlaw life.”
“Yeah, and you get a double share.”
He nodded, smiling; under the mustache, I could see the famous wry wise-guy Dillinger smile, pushing through the tight, new face. “Over a hundred grand. That ought to buy me a farm.”
“If this job doesn’t buy all of you the farm.”
He put a hand against my chest, flat; there was more menace in the gesture than in all of Nelson’s tommy-gun waving. “Why?” he asked. “You planning to pull the plug on us, Heller? You the undercover man in the woodpile?”
“No names, remember?” I said, suddenly a little scared. “I’m not here to pull anybody’s plug.”
“Why
