“I’m going to be out of town awhile, and you’re going to have to cover for me, where my night watchman duty’s concerned. Okay?”
“Sure,” he nodded. “How long you be gone?”
“Not sure,” I said.
“What’s up, exactly?”
“Looking for a girl,” I said.
One of the sparring partners said, “Who ain’t?”
Barney said, “Don’t get killed or anything, okay, shmuck?”
“Okay, pal. Don’t you have a fight in a few weeks?”
“More like a month,” he said, bending to shoot.
“That’s a unique way of training you got there,” I said, and he missed his shot.
“The game laws ought…to let you shoot…the bird that hands you…a substitute! Haw haw!” Ma Barker grinned at me. “Burma Shave!”
There wasn’t much to say to that; I just kept driving. We were well into the afternoon, now, and Wisconsin. Taking Highway 89, which had just turned from nice spanking-new pavement into gravel. I kept the Auburn at forty-five. Somehow, even though this wasn’t my car (except for a hundred bucks’ worth of it, anyway), I hated to think of those shapely blue fenders getting nicked by those wicked little rocks.
I hadn’t done much cross-country driving, and, on these two-lane highways, each oncoming car we encountered made for a nerve-racking experience. The Auburn was wide enough, and the roads narrow enough, to make meeting the occasional road hog border on meeting your Maker. This was heightened by Kate Barker’s humming hymns, something she did whenever she couldn’t find hillbilly music on the radio or a Burma Shave sign to read.
“On a hill far away,” she bellowed suddenly, “stood an old rugged cross…”
“Burma Shave,” I said.
She glared at me; we weren’t getting along as well today as yesterday. “That’s disreligious,” she said.
“I suppose it is.”
“What church do you go to?”
“None to speak of, Ma.”
She tsk-tsked. “That’s very sad. Very sad.”
“I suppose it is, Ma.”
“You’re sure to fry in eternal hell, you know.”
“I’ll have company.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Look up ahead.”
“Oooooh!” she squealed. “The bearded lady…tried a jar…she’s now a famous…movie star! Burma Shave! Haw haw!”
Sally hadn’t been crazy about my leaving on this little jaunt. In fact, she’d been downright angry.
“You really disappoint me, Nate. Really disappoint me!”
We were sitting at her breakfast table having coffee.
“Why is that, Helen?”
“I just thought you were smarter than—than to behave in such a
“Suicidal.”
“Going out among those…crazy maniacs!”
“Most maniacs are a little crazy.”
“Right—like you!”
I’d made a big mistake: with the exception of Frank Nitti’s role and the Jimmy Lawrence cover, I’d told Sally the whole story—the farmer’s daughter in the clutches of the Barker gang, and how I was going undercover to bring her back alive, as Frank Buck would say.
“Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
“Yeah, I think so. A job.”
“You’re trying to…redeem yourself, in some childish way. You’ve been feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself, for the way you were used in the Dillinger shooting, that you’re looking for some way to build your self-respect back up. So you take on this ridiculous case! You go out among killers and thieves and risk your life for a few dollars, just to play knight and save the fair damsel-in-distress! Shit, you’ve gone
“Helen, it’s not just a few dollars. It’s the first real money I’ve seen all year, outside of that reward money.”
“I don’t see you denying you’ve gone simple.”
“I’ve always been just a simple soul. That’s what’s so adorable about me.”
“Don’t butter me up, you louse.
I didn’t say anything.
Sally sighed; stirred her coffee absently. Then she looked up with wet eyes. “I’m sorry I said that.”
I sipped my coffee.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned her, should I?”
I shook my head no.
“It still hurts you, doesn’t it? Losing her.”
“Ever talk to an amputee?”
That startled her.
She said, “Not really.”
“Well, they say the worst thing about losing an arm, a leg, is that sometimes you can still feel it there. Even though it’s been cut off. In the night, for example, it itches sometimes. The limb that’s been cut off.”
“You are a sentimental dope, aren’t you, Heller?”
“Takes one to know one, Helen.”
A tear was gliding down her smooth, round right cheek. “Well, then, you sentimental dope, why don’t you mount your white horse and go riding off after your damn damsel. Shit! Why don’t you mount the nearest damsel instead…let’s go back to bed…”
“Let’s,” I said.
Later, she touched my shoulder and said, “I don’t know if I want to see you, when you get back.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe I want to let go of you now, so that…if something happens to you, it won’t hurt so bad.”
“It’s up to you, Sally.”
She looked hurt. “You called me Sally.”
“So I did. I’ll call you Helen again, if you let me back in, when this is over.”
