Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [147]
Nathan thought the problem was quality, not quantity. Only two of the ten agents in Oklahoma City, he told Hoover, were sufficiently “competent” to handle a major case. The best, Frank Smith, the old Cowboy who had survived the massacre, was assigned to pursue Floyd full-time, and he began making the rounds of Oklahoma sheriffs and snitches, dredging up what tips he could. But Nathan could see the writing on the wall. If a posse of a thousand men couldn’t find Pretty Boy Floyd, the chances that the FBI’s young and inexperienced agents—already burdened with searches for Dillinger, the Barkers, and many others—would succeed were close to zero.
Chicago, Illinois The Irving Hotel, Room 234bt
Fred Barker sat at the table in his pajamas. Dr. Joseph Moran, his eyes rheumy and bloodshot, leaned over and grasped his fingers, a scalpel already in his hand.
“You ready?” Moran asked.
Beside them Karpis looked on, transfixed. They had come to Dr. Moran’s office after dinner, carrying overnight bags with underwear and fresh shirts. The doctor was a sad-eyed drunk who coughed a lot and had a pulsing red vein in his nose. Moran had fought in World War I and trained at the Tufts medical school in Boston, then had done a brief stretch in Joliet for performing illegal abortions. On his parole in late 1931 he had gone to work for a Touhy-controlled union in Cicero, and had performed successful surgeries on several of Roger Touhy’s men. When Capone interests took control of the union the following spring, Moran had gone into private practice.
The ever cautious Karpis, asking around for someone who could alter their fingerprints, had heard about him in an underground tavern.bu When they arrived that evening, Moran wrapped rubber bands around the first joint of each of Barker’s fingers. Then he mixed a batch of a purplish antiseptic liquid and swabbed it on his fingertips. When Barker’s fingers went numb, Moran injected each one with cocaine.
Barker took a deep breath. “I’m ready,” he said.
Moran leaned over and slowly began whittling the meat off the end of one of Barker’s fingers. Karpis couldn’t believe it; it was exactly like sharpening a pencil. Thanks to the rubber bands there was little blood, but as the skin sliced away, Karpis could see even the doctor growing pale. Freckles on Moran’s forehead pulsed. He was sweating.
When Moran finished carving the fingers on Barker’s right hand, he excused himself and stepped into a back room. “How you feeling?” he asked when he returned a moment later. “You want a drink?” It was obvious the doctor did. “Yeah, I’d take a drink,” Barker said. “I’d take about anything I could get right now.”
Moran handed Barker a bottle of whiskey and he drank deeply, lifting the bottle with his left hand. It took another ten minutes for Moran to carve the ends off the fingertips on Barker’s left hand. When he was done he applied large cotton swabs to both hands and wrapped them in bandages. “I’m gonna give you a shot of morphine,” Moran said, “because you’re gonna start hurtin’ in a few hours.”
The doctor led Barker into an adjoining room and laid him on a bed. In minutes Barker was asleep. “Come on,” Moran said to Karpis. “I’m gonna work on you now.”
Karpis sat at the doctor’s table.
“What the hell is it you’re going to do?” he asked.
“Well, your face is kind of lopsided,” Moran said. “I’m going to straighten it up.” He described the series of incisions he planned to make around the temples and how he would use them to pull the skin of Karpis’s face taut. Karpis had no idea what he was talking about. “You just be damn sure you know what you’re doing,” he said.
Moran gave Karpis a shot of morphine. In minutes Karpis felt as if he