Handsome Harry

by James Carlos Blake

  Mary and I rented a furnished two-bedroom in an apartment building two blocks from the Ohio. We were Mr. and Mrs. Harold Wahl. The other bedroom would be for John and his Chicago girlie—if I was able to find her. Russell and Charley took a two-bedroom in the same building and down the hall from us, and Red and Shouse rented a place a few blocks away. Copeland had gone off to his own place in Chicago and to be with Patty. I told him Russ and I would see him there in a few days.

  We stored the stolen Chrysler and the Studebaker in a downtown garage and then we all went out and bought ourselves some legitimate cars. Mary and I went to the Ford place, me in my phony specs and my skimmer and green bow tie, and I bought a new V-8 Victoria. The car had a radio, a clock, leather seats, dual wipers and horns, whitewall tires—the works. I told the salesman the Vickie was a fifth-anniversary present for my wife and gave Mary a big hug and a pat on the rump and she blushed fetchingly and told the sales guy I was the best husband a girl could ask for. We then took in a movie, and then went shopping for clothes and I bought some tailor-made suits for myself and a pair of red shoes and some pretty dresses and underthings for Mary. In one store, she held a sheer nightie in front of her and said Pardon me, but can you see through this?

  It was a line from the movie we’d just seen in which Jean Harlow asked a salesgirl the same question. I smiled and answered with the salesgirl’s line: I’m afraid you can, my dear.

  In that case, Mary said in Harlow’s line, I’ll take it.

  We had supper with Russ and Charley that night in a restaurant down the street from the apartment house. They’d gotten themselves some dapper new duds too, but I was the sharpest dresser in the bunch and always would be, if I say so myself. Charley had bought a Terraplane roadster with a rumble seat and was happy as a kid with a new toy. He said the car was a rocket, just like the ads claimed. Russ said a Terraplane was a fine car, all right, but it tended to draw attention, which was why he’d got himself a plain Essex sedan. Charley ribbed him about that, saying a young man like Russ ought to have a sporty car with which to impress the ladies, not some crate better suited for a fogey.

  Take it from one who knows, my boy, he told Russ, youth is fleeting.

  I know it, Russell said, and I’d prefer it to fleet into old age instead of an early grave.

  We had a fine time, the most relaxed we’d been since the breakout. The night was cool, and as we strolled toward home the air smelled faintly of the river and burning leaves. Mary said fall had always been her favorite time of year. Charley gestured at the city lights all around us and said This, ladies and gents, is a proper refuge—among the urban multitude.

  Cincinnati’s all right, Russell said, but I’ll take Shytown any day.

  But of course, mon ami, Charley said—there’s the best of all multitudes to hide among.

  Chicago soon enough, I said.

  The next day Mary telephoned home and her sister Margo gave her an earful of big news. The night before, a dozen state and Indytown cops armed to the teeth had stormed into the apartment. A dozen more had surrounded the building in case anyone tried to get away. The street out front was full of flashing red lights and the whole neighborhood was in a hubbub. The cops ransacked the place, emptying dresser drawers and closets onto the floor, overturning beds, using flashlights to search up on the roof and down in the crawl space. We’d been ratted by Ralph Saffell, supposedly because he was afraid we were going to harm Mary. The guy in charge of the raid was Matt Leach, the Indy state police captain whose name I was already sick of hearing. He threatened to arrest both Margo and her mother if they didn’t tell him where Mary was. Mrs. Northern was so scared she was a blubbering mess, but of course didn’t know anything to tell except that Mary had run off with me. Margo came through like a champ, though, telling Leach she was partly deaf and asking him to please repeat his questions and speak a little louder, constantly interrupting him to ask if he’d like a cup of tea or maybe a cookie, all in all just exasperating the bejesus out of him with a lot of harebrained doubletalk.

  Mary was laughing so hard on the phone she was in tears and had to blow her nose. After she hung up she said Margo wanted me to know that Leach had a bad stutter that got even worse when he was in a state.

  Margo said the m-m-madder he gets, the f-f-funnier he talks, Mary said.

  Pearl showed up at noon with a half-dozen driving licenses for each of us, two apiece from Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Everyone’s licenses carried correct physical descriptions—hair and eye color, height and weight—but each license was of course in a different name. From the common kitty I repaid her the four hundred she’d lent us and threw in another hundred, which at first she wouldn’t accept. She said she didn’t charge interest on loans to friends and the licenses were an inexpensive favor, since she had a plentiful supply of them. She finally took the money when I told her I’d burn it otherwise. She had lunch with us and then headed back to Kokomo.

  That night I called my mother. She said the cops had showed up at the farm two days in a row after my last call to her, but they hadn’t been there since. She scanned the woods and roads all around the property with her field glasses several times a day but hadn’t spotted anyone keeping surveillance on the place. She said my father and my brother Fred had cut a clearing behind the barn to make a good hiding place for our cars. I told her I’d be seeing her the next day, and she said all right, but to call her again for a report before I got too close.

  It was a pleasant drive, cool and sunny, and the Vickie ran smooth as a Swiss watch. Russ and Charley followed us in Charley’s roadster. Mary sat huddled against me and sang along with the radio. The past two nights had been the first we’d spent in complete privacy, just the two of us under one roof, since before I’d gone to prison, and naturally we’d made the most of them. She was still feeling giddy from the good time we’d had. We stopped for lunch at a barbecue joint in Sidney and I called my mother from a phone booth there. She said the coast looked clear, but be careful just the same.

  Lima was on our way and I wanted to have a look at it. Russell and Charley weren’t crazy about the idea. They thought the risk of being recognized by somebody in Lima wasn’t worth taking until we were ready to spring John, and we had agreed to wait at least a week to let the dust settle. Charley had also convinced the rest of us that we didn’t even need to case the town—it was little more than twenty miles from St. Marys and he’d been familiar with the place since boyhood. He even knew the layout of the jail. Back in his insurance days, one of his clients had been the Allen County sheriff, and he’d visited the jail more than once to discuss the sheriff’s policy. According to Charley, that man had been a hard case, and we might’ve had our work cut out if he was still alive and in office. The present sheriff, on the other hand, was some guy who’d sold used cars until a few years ago when the Depression ruined his business and he decided to run for office. How much trouble could a car salesman give us?

  Russell agreed. And they were right, of course—there was no need to go into Lima until we went there to deliver John. But it didn’t seem right to be so near the jail that was holding him and not even go by and look at it. What if he happened to be looking out the window at the time and he and I saw each other? I could give him the high sign—Hang on, brother, I’m coming. He’d done as much for me with the girlie show under the Crow’s Nest. But how do you explain something like that without sounding a little sappy? I said I only wanted to have a quick look for myself and I’d wear my specs and with Mary at my side we looked like some ordinary couple and I wouldn’t even get out of the car.

  It’s unwise, Pete, Charley said, but…. He gestured like Have it your way. I could see that Russell was displeased too. They said they’d wait for us at a small café down the road.

  I drove through town slowly. At the courthouse, a guy in a suit was sitting on a bench next to the entrance and leafing through a magazine. We circled the block slowly. Attached to the rear of the building was the jail—a sort of annex w
ith a side-door entrance to the sheriff’s office, exactly as Charley had described it. The annex contained the sheriff’s private living quarters as well as the jail.

  I stared hard at the barred windows of the annex, straining to see if anybody was looking out, but I couldn’t tell. Just in case John was taking a gander I stuck my arm out of the car and held a fist up high and shook it.

  Cop, Mary said.

  I jerked my arm back in as a police car turned the corner up ahead and came our way. To our right was a house with a FOR SALE sign and I slowed the Ford to a crawl and pretended to point out some aspect of the house to her, trying for an impression of young marrieds shopping for a home. She nodded and pointed at the house too and then glanced past me as the cop went by and she whispered that he’d slowed down and was giving us the eye.

  All in a heartbeat I imagined the way he was looking at us—like he had all the authority in the world because he had a badge, and like we better watch our step or else.

  Those bastards and their goddamn badges!

  I suddenly saw red. I stopped the car and was going to give him a look of my own and let’s see what he did about it, but Mary flung her arms around my neck to keep me from turning and said No, Harry, and kissed me hard. We had our eyes open and she was watching the cop over my shoulder. We stayed like that for a while and then she pulled away and let out a long breath.

  I turned and saw the cop now more than a block away and still going.

  Let’s scram, baby, Mary said. This burg gives me the willies.

  We parked the cars in the clearing in the woods behind the barn. I was halfway to the house with a suitcase in each hand when Mom came running out the kitchen door, saying Harrrr-eeee. She hugged me for dear life and kissed my face all over and laughed as happy as a child when I picked her up and swung her around. My father and Fred came out and smiled shyly at Mary and ducked their heads in greeting at Charley and Russ as I introduced everybody all around.

  As I said before, as far as my mother was concerned, her Harry could do no wrong. Whoever stood against me was her bitter enemy and whoever was my friend was her bosom pal. She took an immediate shine to Russell and Charley, of course, and they both thought she was a pip. I’d been a little leery about Mom’s reaction to Mary, though, since she’d never thought any girlfriend I’d ever had was good enough for me. When I’d told her about Mary on the phone, she’d said Yes, well, she sounds very nice—and there was no mistaking the skeptical coolness in her voice.

  I’d told Mary that my mother might seem a little standoffish and not to take it seriously, but it turned out there was nothing to worry about. My mother was no dope, and as she told me later, the minute she saw me and Mary together she knew it was the real thing for both of us and that Mary would be protective of me. They adored each other.

  Mom made one of my favorite meals for supper—spaghetti and meatballs, with vanilla ice cream for dessert. We sat around the table for a good while afterward, smoking and sipping coffee and talking about everything except prison, which Mom didn’t want to hear a word about. When we called it a night, Mary was tickled pink to find out my mother was no prude and had prepared a room for us to share. When we were alone at last, she said That’s some momma you got there, pal.

  We stayed for two days, sleeping late in the mornings and eating huge leisurely breakfasts. Fred showed Charley and Russ his shotguns and his hunting rifle, and the guys showed him their .380s. Fred wanted to shoot the pistols, and they were willing to let him, but we decided not to take a chance on pistol shots being heard by the wrong ears. We had a picnic one afternoon in the woods way behind the house, and when Mary went wading barefoot in the little creek I was reminded for some reason of the time she’d spouted water at me at the river park in Indytown.

  All in all, it was a good visit. As we got ready to leave, Mom fixed us sack lunches to take with us. She made Russell and Charley swear they would always consider her home their home, and she hugged Mary tight when they said goodbye.

  At the cars, I kissed Mary goodbye and she got into Charley’s Terraplane and they started back to Cincy.

  Russell and I headed the other way.

  Northern Indiana—Indian country, we’d started calling it—was very risky ground. According to the latest news, the state police were convinced we were hiding somewhere in the region. The highways were full of police patrols, and we ran into two roadblocks before we got to East Shy. We were wearing our usual road disguises and carried driving licenses identifying me as Len Richardson and Russ as Douglas Gould. On the backseat were a pair of briefcases and a scattering of real estate brochures. We were ready to duck down and floor it if a cop went for a gun, or even if we were asked to step out of the car, but at both roadblocks a cop simply gave us the once-over through the window, looked at the stuff on the backseat, and let us by.

  Sheetz wasn’t in when we stopped by his office, so we left his money with Hymie Cohen. He said Sonny was pleased with how well things had gone in St. Marys and he had another deal for us. I asked what it was and Cohen said he didn’t know, I’d have to talk to Sonny, who wouldn’t be back for a few days. I said maybe I’d be in touch.

  When we got to Chicago we squirreled the Vickie in a downtown garage and then headed over to Opal and Patty’s apartment, trading smiles with the goodlookers on the sidewalk and keeping our eyes on every passing cop car. Russell said the safest he’d felt since we’d busted out of M City were the two days he’d spent in Chicago with Opal the week before. All those strangers on the streets, all that wonderful big-city indifference. Perfect for guys on the dodge.

  I’d been in Shytown before, of course, plenty of times. My first visit was back when I was sixteen and a buddy and I went to a cathouse near the Loop. We’d heard it was one of the best in town, and I have to admit the girl I had was fine-looking and good at her work. But the whole experience was like going to a friendly clinic for treatment of a minor medical condition. It was…efficient, I guess you could call it, but no more satisfying than getting a haircut. I never patronized a whorehouse again.

  I told Russell about that memory and he said he knew what I meant, that he’d never taken much enjoyment in whores either, except for one time in Detroit when he’d had a Chinese girl who was fresh off the boat and couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He described her as a real beauty with not a hair on her snatch, although he’d been disappointed to discover that it wasn’t sideways, like he’d always heard it was on Orientals. I chuckled at the old joke, and I said I’d always heard that the only trouble with Chinese girls is that half an hour later you were horny again.

  He hadn’t told Opal he was coming. When she answered the door and saw who it was she squealed in surprise and threw herself on him and nearly knocked him down. She was a Mack truck with a terrific laugh.

  Copeland and Patty showed up around noon and we all took lunch together at a restaurant down the street. Like Opal, Patty Wilson Cherrington was divorced. She was a leaner version of her sister, with the same pretty face and wonderful smile but with brown hair and a lot sexier build. She was working in a nightclub, mostly as a hatcheck girl, but she was a fine dancer and sometimes got to fill in for a regular member of the club’s troupe. She had a quicker tongue than Opal and wasn’t one to take anybody’s guff. It was obvious she was too good for a mug like Knuckles, but most strong women don’t have it easy finding a man worthy of them, and I figured she was simply marking time with Copeland till the right guy came along. None of us knew it yet, but Patty’s right guy was just around the corner.

  Because the sisters’ place was a one-bedroom with twin beds, Patty and Knuckles went to his apartment to give Russ and Opal their privacy. I slept on the foldout sofa, and Copeland hadn’t been kidding about the ruckus Opal and Russ made in bed. She whinnied as they went at it, and when she hit her climax, Christ almighty. Russell sounded like a man getting strangled and fighting for his life. If the only thing you knew about sex was how it sounded when people like Russ and Opal
did it, you’d never bother to lose your virginity.

  The next day Russell and I went to a riverside junkyard that was a front for a black market in guns and we bought three .45 army automatics. One for me, one for Russ, and one for John, who’d always said it was the gun for him. A .380 is plenty of pistol, but a .45, well, suffice it to say that it was specifically designed to stop even crazy demons like those Moros in the Philippine war. The way the old soldiers tell it, those fanatical little ragheads would keep coming at you with their machetes even after being shot more than once with a .38. But not even a Moro could stand up to a battle ax, which is what the .45 hits like.

  We had lunch with Opal and then I went to the address Pearl had given me, a five-story apartment house a few blocks over from the El. The name Evelyn Frechette was on the foyer mailbox for apartment number twelve, third floor. I went up and knocked on the door but got no answer. A rummy-looking janitor replacing a pane in a window at the end of the hallway said he hadn’t seen her since she’d left for her job the afternoon before. He claimed not to know where she worked, only that she was a checkroom girl somewhere. I borrowed a sheet off his work-order pad and wrote her a note saying I was a friend of John D’s and to give me a call. I put down Opal’s number and signed it Pete and folded it and slid it under the door.

  She called at three in the morning. The phone was next to the sofa and its ringing woke me from a sound sleep. She had a smoky sort of voice and sounded a little drunk. She wanted to know what news I had about Johnny.

  I suppose I could’ve explained things to her on the phone, but I was irked about being jolted awake in the middle of the night, and it chafed me all the more that she was tipsy.

  I said I didn’t want to talk about it on the telephone, no telling who might overhear her end of the conversation, so why didn’t she name a place where we could meet in the morning?