*
Dock told us to take the body to a gravel pit about two miles farther down the road, just past the Aurora town line. There was a bottle of lye under the sink, and Rabbits gave it to us. "You know what to do with this, don't you?" she asks.
"Sure," Johnnie says. He had one of her Band-Aids stuck on his upper lip, over that place where his mustache never grew in later on. He sounded listless and he wouldn't meet her eye.
"Make him do it, Homer," she says, then jerked her thumb toward the bedroom, where Jack was laying wrapped up in the bloodstained sheet. "If they find that one and identify him before you get clear, it'll make things just so much worse for you. Us, too, maybe."
"You took us in when nobody else would," Johnnie says, "and you won't live to regret it."
She gave him a smile. Women almost always fell for Johnnie. I'd thought this one was an exception because she was so businesslike, but now I seen she wasn't. She'd just kept it all business because she knew she wasn't much in the looks department. Also, when a bunch of men with guns are cooped up like we were, a woman in her right mind doesn't want to make trouble among them.
"We'll be gone when you get back," Volney says. "Ma keeps talking about Florida, she got her eye on a place in Lake Weir--"
"Shut up, Vol," Dock says, and gives him a hard poke in the shoulder.
"Anyway, we're gettin' out of here," he says, rubbing the sore place. "You ought to get out, too. Take your luggage. Don't even pull in on your way back. Things can change in a hurry."
"Okay," Johnnie says.
"At least he died happy," Volney says. "Died laughin'."
I didn't say nothing. It was coming home to me that Red Hamilton--my old running buddy--was really dead. It made me awful sad. I turned my mind to how the bullet had just grazed Johnnie (and then gone on to kill a fly instead), thinking that would cheer me up. But it didn't. It only made me feel worse.
Dock shook my hand, then Johnnie's. He looked pale and glum. "I don't know how we ended up like this, and that's the truth," he says. "When I was a boy, the only goddam thing I wanted was to be a railroad engineer."
"Well, I'll tell you something," Johnnie says. "We don't have to worry. God makes it all come right in the end."
*
We took Jack on his last ride, wrapped up in a bloodstained sheet and pushed into the back of that stolen Ford. Johnnie drove us to the far side of the pit, all bump and jounce (when it comes to rough riding, I'll take a Terraplane over a Ford any day). Then he killed the engine and touched the Band-Aid riding his upper lip. He says, "I used up the last of my luck today, Homer. They'll get me now."
"Don't talk like that," I says.
"Why not? It's true." The sky above us was white and full of rain. I reckoned we'd have a muddy splash of it between Aurora and Chicago (Johnnie had decided we should go back there because the Feds would be expecting us in St. Paul). Somewhere crows was calling. The only other sound was the ticktock of the cooling engine. I kept looking into the mirror at the wrapped-up body in the backseat. I could see the bumps of elbows and knees, the fine red spatters where he'd bent over, coughing and laughing, at the end.
"Look at this, Homer," Johnnie says, and points to the .38, which was tucked back in his belt. Then he twiddled Mr. Francis's key ring with the tips of his fingers, where the prints were growing back in spite of all his trouble. There were four or five keys on the ring besides the one to the Ford. And that lucky rabbit's foot. "Butt of the gun hit this when it come down," he says. He nodded his head. "Hit my very own lucky piece. And now my luck's gone. Help me with him."
We lugged Jack to the gravel slope. Then Johnnie got the bottle of lye. It had a big brown skull and crossbones on the label.
Johnnie knelt down and pulled the sheet back. "Get his rings," he says, and I pulled them off. Johnnie put them in his pocket. We ended up getting forty-five dollars for them in Calumet City, although Johnnie swore up and down that the little one had a real diamond in it.
"Now hold out his hands."
I did, and Johnnie poured a cap of lye over the tip of each finger. That was one set of prints wasn't ever going to come back. Then he leaned over Jack's face and kissed him on the forehead. "I hate to do this, Red, but I know you'd do the same to me if it'd gone the other way."
He then poured the lye over Jack's cheeks and mouth and brow. It hissed and bubbled and turned white. When it started to eat through his closed eyelids, I turned away. And of course none of it done no good; the body was found by a farmer after a load of gravel. A pack of dogs had knocked away most of the stones we covered him with and were eating what was left of his hands and face. As for the rest of him, there were enough scars for the cops to I.D. him as Jack Hamilton.
It was the end of Johnnie's luck, all right. Every move he made after that--right up to the night Purvis and his badge-carrying gunsels got him at the Biograph--was a bad one. Could he have just thrown up his hands that night and surrendered? I'd have to say no. Purvis meant to have him dead one way or the other. That's why the Gees never told the Chicago cops Johnnie was in town.
*
I'll never forget the way Jack laughed when I brought them flies in on their strings. He was a good fellow. They all were, mostly--good fellows who got into the wrong line of work. And Johnnie was the best of the bunch. No man ever had a truer friend. We robbed one more bank together, the Merchants National in South Bend, Indiana. Lester Nelson joined us on that caper. Getting out of town, it seemed like every hick in Indiana was throwing lead at us, and we still got away. But for what? We'd been expecting more than a hundred grand, enough to move to Mexico and live like kings. We ended up with a lousy twenty thousand, most of it in dimes and dirty dollar bills.
God makes it all come right in the end, that's what Johnnie told Dock Barker just before we parted company. I was raised a Christian--I admit I fell away a bit along my journey--and I believe that: we're stuck with what we have, but that's all right; in God's eyes, none of us are really much more than flies on strings and all that matters is how much sunshine you can spread along the way. The last time I seen Johnnie Dillinger was in Chicago, and he was laughing at something I said. That's good enough for me.
As a kid, I was fascinated by tales of the Depression-era outlaws, an interest that probably peaked with Arthur Penn's remarkable Bonnie and Clyde. In the spring of 2000, I re-read John Toland's history of that era, The Dillinger Days, and was particularly taken by his story about how Dillinger's sidekick, Homer Van Meter, taught himself how to rope flies in Pendleton Reformatory. Jack "Red" Hamilton's lingering death is a documented fact; my story of what happened in Dock Barker's hideout is, of course, pure imagination . . . or myth, if you like that word better; I do.
In the Deathroom
It was a deathroom. Fletcher knew it for what it was as soon as the door opened. The floor was gray industrial tile. The walls were discolored white stone, marked here and there with darker patches that might have been blood--certainly blood had been spilled in this room. The overhead lights were cupped in wire cages. Halfway across the room stood a long wooden table with three people seated behind it. Before the table was an empty chair, waiting for Fletcher. Beside the chair stood a small wheeled trolley. The object on it had been draped with a piece of cloth, as a sculptor might cover his work-in-progress between sessions.
Fletcher was half-led, half-dragged toward the chair which had been placed for him. He reeled in the guard's grip and let himself reel. If he looked more dazed than he really was, more shocked and unthinking, that was fine. He thought his chances of ever leaving this basement room in the Ministry of Information were perhaps one or two in thirty, and perhaps that was optimistic. Whatever they were, he had no intention of thinning them further by looking even halfway alert. His swelled eye, puffy nose, and broken lower lip might help in this regard; so might the crust of blood, like a dark red goatee, around his mouth. One thing Fletcher knew for sure: if he did leave, the others--the guard and the three sitting in tribunal
behind the table--would be dead. He was a newspaper reporter and had never killed anything much larger than a hornet, but if he had to kill to escape this room, he would. He thought of his sister, on her retreat. He thought of his sister swimming in a river with a Spanish name. He thought of the light on the water at noon, moving river light too bright to look at. They reached the chair in front of the table. The guard pushed him into it so hard that Fletcher almost tipped himself over.
"Careful now, that's not the way, no accidents," said one of the men behind the table. It was Escobar. He spoke to the guard in Spanish. To Escobar's left sat the other man. To Escobar's right sat a woman of about sixty. The woman and the other man were thin. Escobar was fat and as greasy as a cheap candle. He looked like a movie Mexican. You expected him to say, "Batches? Batches? We don't need no steenkin batches." Yet this was the Chief Minister of Information. Sometimes he gave the English-language portion of the weather on the city television station. When he did this he invariably got fan mail. In a suit he didn't look greasy, just roly-poly. Fletcher knew all this. He had done three or four stories on Escobar. He was colorful. He was also, according to rumor, an enthusiastic torturer. A Central American Himmler, Fletcher thought, and was amazed to discover that one's sense of humor--rudimentary, granted--could function this far into a state of terror.
"Handcuffs?" the guard asked, also in Spanish, and held up a pair of the plastic kind. Fletcher tried to keep his look of dazed incomprehension. If they cuffed him, it was over. He could forget about one chance in thirty, or one in three hundred.
Escobar turned briefly to the woman on his right. Her face was very dark, her hair black with startling white streaks. It flowed back and up from her forehead as if blown by a gale-force wind. The look of her hair reminded Fletcher of Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein. He gripped this similarity with a fierceness that was close to panic, the way he gripped the thought of bright light on the river, or his sister laughing with her friends as they walked to the water. He wanted images, not ideas. Images were luxury items now. And ideas were no good in a place like this. In a place like this all you got were the wrong ideas.
The woman gave Escobar a small nod. Fletcher had seen her around the building, always garbed in shapeless dresses like the one she wore now. She had been with Escobar often enough for Fletcher to assume she was his secretary, personal assistant, perhaps even his biographer--Christ knew that men like Escobar had egos large enough to warrant such accessories. Now Fletcher wondered if he'd had it backward all along, if she was his boss.
In any case, the nod seemed to satisfy Escobar. When he turned back to Fletcher, Escobar was smiling. And when he spoke, it was in English. "Don't be silly, put them away. Mr. Fletcher is only here to help us in a few matters. He will soon be returning to his own country"--Escobar sighed deeply to show how deeply he regretted this. ". . . but in the meantime he is an honored guest."
We don't need no steenkin handcuffs, Fletcher thought.
The woman who looked like the Bride of Frankenstein with a very deep tan leaned toward Escobar and whispered briefly behind her hand. Escobar nodded, smiling.
"Of course, Ramon, if our guest should try anything foolish or make any aggressive moves, you would have to shoot him a little." He roared laughter--roly-poly TV laughter--and then repeated what he had said in Spanish, so that Ramon would understand as well as Fletcher. Ramon nodded seriously, replaced his handcuffs on his belt, and stepped back to the periphery of Fletcher's vision.
Escobar returned his attention to Fletcher. From one pocket of his parrot-and-foliage-studded guayabera he removed a red-and-white package: Marlboros, the preferred cigarette of third-world peoples everywhere. "Smoke, Mr. Fletcher?"
Fletcher reached toward the pack, which Escobar had placed on the edge of the table, then withdrew his hand. He had quit smoking three years ago, and supposed he might take the habit up again if he actually did get out of this--drinking high-tension liquor as well, quite likely--but at this moment he had no craving or need for a cigarette. He had wanted them to see his fingers shaking, that was all.
"Perhaps later. Right now a cigarette might--"
Might what? It didn't matter to Escobar; he just nodded understandingly and left the red-and-white pack where it was, on the edge of the table. Fletcher had a sudden, agonizing vision in which he saw himself stopping at a newsstand on Forty-third Street and buying a pack of Marlboros. A free man buying the happy poison on a New York street. He told himself that if he got out of this, he would do that. He would do it as some people went on pilgrimages to Rome or Jerusalem after their cancer was cured or their sight was restored.
"The men who did that to you"--Escobar indicated Fletcher's face with a wave of one not-particularly-clean hand--"have been disciplined. Yet not too harshly, and I myself stop short of apology, you will notice. Those men are patriots, as are we here. As you are yourself, Mr. Fletcher, yes?"
"I suppose." It was his job to appear ingratiating and frightened, a man who would say anything in order to get out of here. It was Escobar's job to be soothing, to convince the man in the chair that his swelled eye, split lip, and loosened teeth meant nothing; all that was just a misunderstanding which would soon be straightened out, and when it was he would be free to go. They were still busy trying to deceive each other, even here in the deathroom.
Escobar switched his attention to Ramon the guard and spoke in rapid Spanish. Fletcher's Spanish wasn't good enough to pick up everything, but you couldn't spend almost five years in this shithole capital city without picking up a fair vocabulary; Spanish wasn't the world's most difficult language, as both Escobar and his friend the Bride of Frankenstein undoubtedly knew.
Escobar asked if Fletcher's things had been packed and if he had been checked out of the Hotel Magnificent: Si. Escobar wanted to know if there was a car waiting outside the Ministry of Information to take Mr. Fletcher to the airport when the interrogation was done. Si, around the corner on the Street Fifth of May.
Escobar turned back and said, "Do you understand what I ask him?" From Escobar, understand came out unnerstand, and Fletcher thought again of Escobar's TV appearances. Low bressure? What low bressure? We don't need no steenkin low bressure.
"I ask have you been checked out of your room--although after all this time it probably seems more like an apartment to you, yes?--and if there's a car to take you to the airport when we finish our conversation." Except conversation hadn't been the word he used.
"Ye-es?" Sounding as if he could not believe his own good fortune. Or so Fletcher hoped.
"You'll be on the first Delta flight back to Miami," the Bride of Frankenstein said. She spoke without a trace of Spanish accent. "Your passport will be given back to you once the plane has touched down on American soil. You will not be harmed or held here, Mr. Fletcher--not if you cooperate with our inquiries--but you are being deported, let's be clear on that. Kicked out. Given what you Americans call the bum's rush."
She was much smoother than Escobar. Fletcher found it amusing that he had thought her Escobar's assistant. And you call yourself a reporter, he thought. Of course if he was just a reporter, the Times's man in Central America, he would not be here in the basement of the Ministry of Information, where the stains on the wall looked suspiciously like blood. He had ceased being a reporter some sixteen months ago, around the time he'd first met Nunez.
"I understand," Fletcher said.
Escobar had taken a cigarette. He lighted it with a gold-plated Zippo. There was a fake ruby in the side of the Zippo. He said, "Are you prepared to help us in our inquiries, Mr. Fletcher?"
"Do I have any choice?"
"You always have a choice," Escobar said, "but I think you have worn out your carpet in our country, yes? Is that what you say, worn out your carpet?"
"Close enough," Fletcher said. He thought: What you must guard against is your desire to believe them. It is natural to want to believe, and probably natural to want to tell the truth--especially after you've been
grabbed outside your favorite cafe and briskly beaten by men who smell of refried beans--but giving them what they want won't help you. That's the thing to hold onto, the only idea that's any good in a room like this. What they say means nothing. What matters is the thing on that trolley, the thing under that piece of cloth. What matters is the guy who hasn't said anything yet. And the stains on the walls, of course.
Escobar leaned forward, looking serious.
"Do you deny that for the last fourteen months you have given certain information to a man named Tomas Herrera, who has in turn funneled it to a certain Communist insurgent named Pedro Nunez?"
"No," Fletcher said. "I don't deny it." To adequately keep up his side of this charade--the charade summarized by the difference between the words conversation and interrogation--he should now justify, attempt to explain. As if anyone in the history of the world had ever won a political argument in a room like this. But he didn't have it in him to do so. "Although it was a little longer than that. Almost a year and a half in all, I think."
"Have a cigarette, Mr. Fletcher." Escobar opened a drawer and took out a thin folder.
"Not just yet. Thank you."
"Okay." From Escobar it of course came out ho-kay. When he did the TV weather, the boys in the control room would sometimes superimpose a photograph of a woman in a bikini on the weather map. When he saw this, Escobar would laugh and wave his hands and pat his chest. People liked it. It was comical. It was like the sound of ho-kay. It was like the sound of steenkin batches.
Escobar opened the folder with his own cigarette planted squarely in the middle of his mouth with the smoke running up into his eyes. It was the way you saw the old men smoking on the street corners down here, the ones who still wore straw hats, sandals, and baggy white pants. Now Escobar was smiling, keeping his lips shut so his Marlboro wouldn't fall out of his mouth and onto the table but smiling just the same. He took a glossy black-and-white photograph out of the thin folder and slid it across to Fletcher. "Here is your friend Tomas. Not too pretty, is he?"