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Karpis shook Ma’s hand, then returned to her apartment, where he had left his Ford. He threw in a briefcase with his .45s and clips. Willie Harrison was there, and Karpis agreed to give him a lift to his wife’s house in Gary. After that, it was every man for himself.

Chicago, Illinois Friday, September 14

That night Helen Ferguson stood on the corner by the Sears store, frightened and alone. Cowley had decided against watching or following her, apparently fearing it would tip the Barkers off or even place Ferguson’s life in danger. Once again, she was on her own.eb

At 10:00 a Chevrolet sedan approached at a high rate of speed, stopping suddenly in front of Ferguson. She stepped into the front seat and the car drove off. Cowley’s men didn’t hear another word from Ferguson for twenty-six hours, when she called the Chicago office. She had made contact, she said, but not with Fred Barker. For twenty-four hours she had driven nonstop through the streets of Chicago with Dock Barker and his friend Russell Gibson. As Ferguson told it, Gibson had driven while Dock Barker sat behind her, cradling a machine gun. The two men claimed Freddie had gone to Kansas City but were careful to reveal little else. At one point, Dock pointedly asked Ferguson about a rumor that she had been picked up by the government. She denied it.

Cowley wasn’t sure how much of Ferguson’s story to believe. She said she had a follow-up rendezvous the following week. When the appointed night came, Ferguson again stood outside the Sears store. This time no one showed up. It was the end of Helen Ferguson’s useful service to the Bureau. A month later Cowley approved her request to take half-ownership in a Toledo whorehouse.

As September gave way to October, the FBI was no closer to catching Karpis and the Barkers than it had been a month before.

17

A FIELD IN OHIO AND A HIGHWAY IN ILLINOIS

September 18 to November 27, 1934

“Fuck you.”

—PRETTY BOY FLOYD TO SPECIAL AGENT SAM McKEE

The story of the Kansas City Massacre as told by Michael “Jimmy Needles” LaCapra was everything Hoover could have wanted. Pacing a Wichita, Kansas, jail cell in the predawn hours of September 1, LaCapra told agents he had learned details of the massacre from his brother-in-law, one of the mob boss Johnny Lazia’s henchmen.

What happened, LaCapra said, was this:

Late on the night of June 16, 1933, barely two hours after learning FBI agents were bringing Frank Nash to Kansas City the next morning, Verne Miller had driven to Union Station. The FBI knew this much was true; they had traced calls Miller made from a pay phone outside the station around midnight. But surveying the ground for the rescue was only one reason Miller drove to the station, LaCapra explained. The other was to see Johnny Lazia, who held court at the station’s Harvey Restaurant. According to LaCapra, Miller asked Lazia for men to help him rescue Nash. Lazia demurred, saying he didn’t want the heat that would bring.

Instead, LaCapra said, Lazia had mentioned someone else, a man who had arrived in Kansas City with his partner that same evening: Pretty Boy Floyd. Floyd was staying that night at the Sexton Hotel, where one of Lazia’s men ran a gambling parlor. According to LaCapra, Lazia had taken Miller to meet Floyd; short of money, Floyd agreed to help out, apparently after Miller emphasized that there would be no gunplay involved. LaCapra wasn’t certain whether a third man—a “little wop”—might have participated in the massacre. The agents assumed the “little wop” was Adam Richetti.

It was Floyd, LaCapra said, who had shouted “Hands up!” the next morning outside the station, a command that was greeted with a gunshot from the lawmen’s car. In the ensuing gunfire Floyd was wounded in the left shoulder, presumably by a ricochet. Afterward Floyd fled to a safe house, where a doctor had treated his wound. Miller, meanwhile, had returned to see Lazia and apologized for the heat the massacre would bring. Afterward Miller fled. Once his wound was bandaged, Floyd was smuggled out