“We split the dough, and I want you gone,” Harvey said. “You hear me? I’ll find my way.”
Miller nodded. “Vi’s in Brooklyn.”
“Go to Brooklyn, anywhere but Chicago. Karpis told me Frank Nitti blames you for the world’s problems. You
Miller nodded.
“Verne?”
Miller pulled up his body to his crooked knees, wrapping his arms around them, and lit a cigarette. Karpis walked back into the room, and Harvey turned to watch him, the light from the single bulb cutting a swath up to Karpis’s feet.
“Fred’s sick,” Karpis said. “Real sick. He’s got problems coming from both ends. Said it was the chop suey. Did you guys eat the pork?”
“Give ’im a soda,” Harvey said.
“We did,” Karpis said. “Shits running through him like a freight train.”
“We’ll make do,” Harvey said.
Karpis put his hands in his pockets, trying to rearrange the whole plan in his mind. But he shook his head, “Nope. Won’t work.”
Harvey looked down to Miller, and Miller cut his eyes up to Harvey, Harvey knowing this was Miller’s last chance, the last few hours he could make a score in Chicago. If there had been another way… any way.
KATHRYN WAITED FOR GEORGE AND GERALINE AT THE FENCE TO the racetrack on the Enchanted Isle, the little girl and the big lug in the same toy car, zipping around turns, Gerry at the wheel while George laughed and held on to his hat with one hand. They came skipping out from around the exit, George having turned the front brim of his fedora up so that he looked like a stooge. Still wearing the sunglasses after the sun had gone down.
The three of them walked side by side down the Avenue of Flags, where a couple women had chained themselves to a pole, one wearing a stitched cloth that read PROTEST FASCIST TERROR. GERMAN CONSUL HERE. Men stood by and watched the broads like they were sideshow freaks, a couple of coppers standing by, waiting for a key or someone to cut the chain. About halfway down the wide avenue, Kathryn spotted two men, elbow to elbow with thousands of sweaty folks with sore feet, walking back into the fairgrounds, the crowd splitting around them, the two fellas talking and walking in a casual, relaxed way. One was a tall and skeletal thing, wearing a Western suit and boots, the other, in a white linen suit, was shorter, and thick around the middle, wearing Western boots and a pair of glasses.
She clutched George’s arm and pulled him into her, a loving couple after a fine old day at the Fair, resting her head on the mug’s shoulder, reaching down and gripping Geraline’s sweaty little hand. The girl looking up at Kathryn and narrowing her eyes with that goddamn “What gives?” that she’d gotten down pat.
One of the men tipped his cowboy hat to the fine family and kept on walking. George started to whistle “Stormy Weather” as they passed.
“George?”
“I sure am hungry.”
“Did you-”
“What?”
She pulled him in closer, following the fat, heavy crowd, bustling with souvenir hats and balloons and pinwheels for the kiddies, out onto South Michigan, walking damn-near a goddamn mile south to find the big open lot where they’d parked that road-tired Ford. Geraline crawled in the backseat and lay down without a word, tuckered out from the long day.
“I shoulda got a hot dog,” George said, knocking the car into gear and heading west over the river and back over to Cicero to dump the Ford. They’d get some sleep at the Astra, George said, pack and leave for Memphis in the morning.
“You really think we can make it to Cuba?” she asked.
“You can practically see the place from Key West,” George said. “We have a nice drive down the coast and then hop a boat.”
“I remember
“You bet. And rum.”
“Shoulda known you’d care for rum.”
“Joan Blondell sure was a knockout in that picture.”
“Why don’t you ring her up, then?” Kathryn said. “See if she’ll iron your shirts.”
The traffic thinned out over the river but nearly stopped when they got outside Cicero, streets closed off for this big, crazy NRA parade, with tons of folks carrying banners and American flags, pictures of Roosevelt on sticks. Lots of blue eagles and all that hooey.
“Think about all the people we’ve put to work,” George said, smiling, mashing the clutch, shifting to neutral, the engine chugging behind an endless line of cars. Window down, arm hanging out the window. “You bet ole Uncle Sam is in overdrive, paying those G-men to look for the Kellys.”
“Maybe you can get a blue eagle tattoo on your ass.”
“Maybe I will.”
George pulled into the alley beside Joe’s Square Deal Garage and killed the lights. Kathryn reached back and tried to shake Geraline awake, but the girl was exhausted, and they left her in the backseat, taking a side door and walking into the big open space where several boys were giving a big Hudson a once-over.
One of the men leaned back out from under the hood and smiled. Harvey Bailey wore a big shit-eating grin.
Verne Miller walked in from a back room, holding a Thompson loose in his right hand. Alvin Karpis. One of the Barker boys.
“Hey, George,” Harvey said. “Think you got something that belongs to us.”
George looked to Kathryn, back to Harvey, and squared his shoulders.
“Guess you don’t have it on you right now,” Harvey said, grinning.
George shook his head. Kathryn was about to tell that bastard to go straight to hell when Harvey asked them if they’d be interested in a little business proposition.
Kathryn stepped in front of George and said, “Start talking, and make it fast.”
36
Karpis drove the Hudson, the armored tank with the bulletproof glass, the steel-plated doors, and the revved-up eight-cylinder engine. Harvey and the boys piled into George’s dusty Ford since ole George wanted to lose the car anyway, Karpis telling Joe Bergl and some grease monkeys to switch out the smoke machine into its cab. When they snatched the dough, they’d leave the Ford on Jackson Street, pile into the Hudson, and be on their way. But, brother, Kathryn Kelly wasn’t having any of it, didn’t want her man involved in some two-bit snatch and grab, even after learning Fred Barker had a mean case of the shits. Harvey decided not to lecture her on the nature of the country’s fine Federal Reserve system, instead only telling her that there were banks and then
