Nelson strutted over to Floyd. “How are you doing, Chock?”
“Can’t complain,” Floyd said.
Nelson nodded to me. “Lawrence.”
I nodded back to him.
The guy in the Panama hat jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, grinning the same way, and pumped Nelson’s hand.
“Good to see you, Georgie,” he said.
“You look good, Ben.”
Ben turned his head to grin proudly at the still-seated Floyd, pointed with a thumb at Nelson. “We was in Joliet together,” Ben said.
Nodding sagely, Floyd said, “It’s good to have friends.”
The screen door flew open and a boy and a girl came running out, pell-mell. The boy was towheaded and wearing a blue-and-red-striped shirt and denim pants; the girl was dark-haired and wore a blue-checked gingham dress. They both had the pretty face I’d suspected had once been their mother’s.
They ran to Nelson immediately, crowded around him, bouncing up and down, laughing.
He tried not to smile as he said, “What makes you think I got anything for you?”
“Oh, I know you do, Uncle George!” the boy said; the little girl was just squealing.
Nelson’s dark-haired wife hung out the car window with a goofy smile on her face, adoring her husband and his way with kids.
Holding his hands up like a traffic cop, Nelson said, “Okay, okay—maybe I did bring something for you. Maybe I did. You know how the game goes…”
He sat on the bench where his Joliet pal Ben had been sitting; Ben was standing by the screen door, now, wearing a big shit-eating grin, watching his kids being catered to by Baby Face Nelson.
The two kids stood and waited for the signal.
Nelson held his hands up in the air, like somebody had said, stick ’em up, and said, “Okay—search me!”
The kids, squealing, yelping, began to search, looking in his every pocket, and coming back with candy—Tootsie Rolls, mostly, but some jawbreakers and other hard colorful candy, too.
When the kids each had a fat handful of candy, Nelson stood and waved his hands, saying, “Okay, okay—you got me. Now promise you won’t eat any of that till you had your supper?” And he winked elaborately at them, and they squealed some more and ran off God knows where.
The little woman had been standing watching all this out the screen door. Nelson noticed her, smiled her way, said, “I stocked up on candy ’fore I left Beaver Falls. Didn’t want to disappoint the little rascals.”
She looked out at him coldly, then receded back into the house.
Nelson shrugged, asked Ben for some room keys. Ben dutifully went inside and came back out with them.
Before he got back in the car to drive to his cabin, Nelson said to Floyd, “We never worked together. Looking forward to it.”
“Likewise,” Floyd nodded, smiling.
But the men didn’t shake hands. There was mutual respect, here, but this was an uneasy truce, just the same. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig sizing each other up.
Nelson grinned at me, wolfishly; the mustache still looked fake. “You don’t even know what this is about yet, do you, Lawrence? Ha ha ha! You’re in for a surprise.”
Then he got in the Buick with his wife and the others and drove a few doors down.
“Let’s walk,” Floyd said.
Hands in our pockets, we strolled aimlessly around back, through the trees, down to the riverbank. Trees on both sides of the river reflected off it; the sun looked at itself on the peaceful shimmer of the water.
We sat on the sloping ground, looking down at the river; there wasn’t any beach to speak of, right here. Floyd plucked a weed and chewed on the end of it.
“Ever think about getting out of it?” Floyd asked.
“Out of what?”
He smiled; cheeks seemed about to burst, and they were a burning red. “This life of crime, friend. This ol’ life of crime.” He looked out toward the trees across the river. “Wouldn’t you like to cross over there, and just be done with it?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“You probably better off with those Chicago Boys.” He said “Boys” like “bow-ahs.”
“Why’s that?”
“They’s business men.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
He grunted a laugh. “We’s small fry. Kind gets gobbled up by the bigger fish.”
I knew what he meant. There would always be room for the Capones and the Nittis; like Karpis said, the Syndicate was in “public-service-type business.” The outlaws were a dying breed. And some of them seemed to know it.
“Take this ‘Pretty Boy’ shit. And ‘Baby Face.’ Those ain’t names nobody who knows us calls us. That’s newspaper shit. Only I don’t think it starts with the newspapers.”
“You don’t?”
“I think it’s Cummings and Hoover trying to make saps out of us.”
Cummings was the U.S. attorney general, the man who was spearheading FDR’s war on crime.
“Why?” I said.
“Why? They make us sound like mad dogs so they look like big heroes when they catch us.”
“They haven’t caught you yet.”
He shook his head. “Matter of time. Matter of time.”
“My experience with the feds is they’re pretty goddamn lame.”
Floyd nodded, chewing on the weed. “But they’s so many of ’em.”
“Yeah. And they got guns now. They can cross state lines, and they got guns now.”
“I got so little to show.”
“Huh?”
