“You bloody butcher!”
It was Nelson pushing past me this time, tommy gun still slung over one arm.
The little man grabbed the doctor by the shirtfront and lifted him off the floor and tossed him bodily into the icebox, with a clatter. Moran slid to the floor, sat there for a moment, then stood and brushed himself off, raised his head, dignity preserved.
“My good man,” he said to Nelson, “I did not even
“Not yet,” Nelson said.
“Your threats fail to concern me,” the doctor said. “My services to you—you
There was a back door, a kitchen door, and Dr. Joseph P. Moran walked to it rather grandly, and exited. Nelson looked out the window.
“He’s getting in his car,” he said.
Doc Barker said, “Going into town to drink and chase the skirts, no doubt.”
Fred Barker, who’d entered after Nelson, said, “He already smells like a brewery. I think he went into this operation soused.”
“I’m going after him.” Nelson patted the machine gun.
Doc thought about that, then nodded. “You can make those phone calls and check up on our friend Lawrence here, while you’re at it.”
Nelson glanced at me. “Good idea. Why don’t you ride along with me, Lawrence. Maybe we can get to know each other better.”
“Why not?” I said.
Dolores was moving Louise away from the corpse; Louise was sobbing, the little pink beret dangling at an odd angle, about to fall off any second. Fred Barker’s girl Paula came in with the sheet she’d got from somewhere and covered Candy Walker up.
“Who’s going to take care of me now?” Louise asked. “Who’s going to take care of Lulu now?”
She was looking right at me when she asked it, but I didn’t answer. Her little pink beret fell off and I bent and handed it to her.
Then Ma Barker was standing in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips.
“Wrap him up and put him somewheres,” she said. “It’s after six and I want to start supper.”
Louise shrieked, but while Paula comforted her, Fred and Helen and Dolores, as detached as meat-packers, wrapped the blue-faced body in the sheet and carried him out of the house, into the barn.
Ma Barker was scrubbing the kitchen table down, humming a hymn, when I went out the back door to go into town with Baby Face Nelson.
“B
ABY
F
ACE
” N
ELSON AND HIS WIFE
H
ELEN
30
Something odd happened on the four-mile drive into Beaver Falls.
Nelson acted civil toward me.
I have no explanation, other than possibly the lack of an audience, prompting him to abandon, at least temporarily, his Cagney pose. Or perhaps it was his having to leave the tommy-gun appendage behind, settling for a modest .45 Army Colt stuck in his waistband. But as we rode in the Auburn, with me at the wheel, top down, he smoked a cigar, leaned back, relaxed, and shared his insights into Doc Moran with me.
“You know,” he said, blowing smoke out easily, sun low in the sky and streaming through the cornfields as we whisked by, “Candy Walker was a fuckin’ chump to let that drunken sawbones near ’im in the first place.”
“Really?” I said. I took one hand off the wheel and pushed the window-glass wire-frames up on my nose.
“Sure. When you get back, get a load of Freddie Barker’s fingertips. The doc did a scraping on them last spring. You know how this genius surgeon goes about that?” He grinned, cigar atilt, gesturing with both hands, relishing the gore he was about to describe. “He loops rubber bands around their fingers, at the first joint. Then he sticks a hypo of morphine in each fingertip—how’s that for laughs? Then starts scraping. With a scalpel, like he’s sharpening a pencil.” Nelson laughed, a high-pitched giggle like a kid. “Really carves the ol’ meat off. Ha ha ha!”
“Did the operation take?”
Nelson smirked, the wispy beginnings of his mustache riffling in the breeze like fringe on a curtain. “A couple of Freddie’s fingers got infected—one thumb swelled up like a blimp. They took him to a vet and got ’im some medicine, but he was burning up with fever for about a week.”
“But did the operation take?”
Nelson laughed again, same high-pitched giggle, blew out cigar smoke in a fat circle. “Take a look at his
