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By Root 2314 0

to a head when Volney Davis arrived from Chicago and began demanding his cut of the ransom. The money was an increasingly sore subject. Dock had kept it for a while, but eventually they decided to stow it at Bill Weaver’s lakeside cottage. It fit into two Gladstone bags, and Karpis gave it all to Weaver, but warned him never to leave it in the house unattended. Weaver wasn’t the brightest soul, however, and the next time they visited the cottage they discovered the house unlocked and empty. They found Weaver walking on the beach and roundly cursed him. After that Fred and Karpis took the money and buried it in the soft dirt beneath Karpis’s garage.

By mid-summer only Ma Barker remained in Chicago, lost in her jigsaw puzzles. Karpis drove over to visit her one weekend and found she was doing surprisingly well. He and Dock took her to see a movie. To their horror, the film was preceded by a newsreel warning moviegoers to be on the lookout for Dillinger, Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Karpis, and the Barkers. Karpis scrunched low in his seat as their pictures flashed on the screen. “One of these men may be sitting next to you,” the announcer said. Karpis pulled his hat low over his forehead. Afterward he made the rounds of Cicero taverns, trying to deduce whether the Syndicate was after them. An old friend told him to beat it. Karpis got the message. He quickly returned to Cleveland.

Weeks crept by. Fred and Karpis talked about taking an Ohio bank, but until the money ran out there was no rush. Delores got pregnant and asked Karpis whether she should get another abortion; he didn’t have the heart to put her through it again, so he would soon be a father. Then one night in July, Karpis showed up for work at the casino and Art Heberbrand took him aside. “An hour from now, there’s going to be a couple of guys coming in, we want you to talk to ’em,” he said. Karpis asked if they expected trouble. “No, no, no trouble,” he said. They waited in the office until darkness fell, and Heberbrand rose from his chair. “Let’s walk out to the parking lot,” he said.

Karpis followed. Outside he sat on a car’s running board and wondered what all the mystery was about. Finally one of Heberbrand’s men materialized and said, “They’re here, boys.”

“Come on,” Heberbrand said.

Karpis followed him toward a Ford sedan. Inside were two men. Karpis immediately recognized the driver. He couldn’t believe it: it was Pretty Boy Floyd. Beside him sat Adam Richetti. Heberbrand made the introductions. The four men took seats in a shack at the back of the parking lot. Floyd was morose. “Chances are we’ll both get killed or get caught in the end,” he said. “But I’m hoping that we both get killed rather than get caught.” Karpis nodded. He knew the feeling.

Floyd hemmed and hawed a few minutes before coming around to the purpose of his visit. He wanted to take a bank with the Barker Gang. As he put it, “Us guys would like to make some money if you guys got anything that you’d like to take that you need more guys on.”

Karpis thought about a Cleveland bank Fred had been casing. “Well, we might have something in a few weeks, but I’m not too certain about it,” he said. “But you know how these things are. It may be good, it may be bad. If you guys are willing to go on it and we need someone, how’ll we get ahold of you?” Floyd pointedly declined to reveal where he was hiding. “You can get hold of me through these guys here, they know how to get ahold of me,” he said. Afterward Karpis watched Floyd drive off. “I wish to Christ you hadn’t even let them guys know we’re around here,” he told Heberbrand.

“Hell, I thought all you guys stick together.”

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Karpis said. “We could have been with Dillinger, we could have been with this guy or that guy, but we didn’t want no part of ’em. These guys, they seem to get jumped up every week or so. Just any day now I expect to see where Dillinger’s been hopped up and maybe even killed. It won’t be long. These guys, I don’t know, they just seem to draw the heat wherever they go.”

Karpis never saw Floyd