“Ain’t that the truth,” Kathryn said, popping and stretching the paper and turning over the fold. She knew Gable was swimming in top-shelf tail, and even with the teeth and ears she’d go to bed with the son of a bitch. Mainly because the son of a bitch was Clark Gable, and every time she saw his picture in some dime-store rag or below the movie marquee she’d know she’d made him shake and quiver.

 

Kathryn lit a cigarette, crossed her legs, and dangled one leg loosely, rocking it back and forth, reading on and thinking that she could use a new pair of good shoes, until George came out of the back room smelling like a Mississippi smokehouse.

 

“They want it.”

 

“Want what?” she asked, bored and distracted.

 

“The money.”

 

“Well, of course the Kid wants the money.”

 

“He said it would be taken care of.”

 

“Is he here?”

 

“No,” he said. “They rang him up for me.”

 

“Then hell, no, no one is getting the money,” she said. “Tell those Jews you want to see Kid Cann himself, live and in person, or this deal ain’t going to happen.”

 

“But Kit . . .”

 

“Go on,” she said. “George?”

 

He turned around and looked over his shoulder.

 

“Trade them out a thousand.”

 

“Right now?”

 

“Right now,” she said, blowing some smoke into the ceiling fans. “I want to go shopping.”

 

 

 

 

 

AGENT JOE LACKEY ARRIVED ON THE MORNING TRAIN FROM Kansas City, his right arm still in a sling from where he took a spray of machine-gun bullets. But he wore a smile on his big-nosed face and stepped down onto the platform in a sharp gray felt hat and blue serge suit. Jones shook hands with him in an awkward fashion and grabbed his old friend’s grip as they headed toward the entrance and bright light.

 

“You sure you’re ready?” Jones said. “When Hoover said you were back on the job—”

 

“Don’t you know I’m left-handed, Buster?”

 

“That’s a lie.”

 

“Well, I’m left-handed now. So what does it matter?”

 

Doc White waited for the agents by the main entrance to the small station, only a couple miles from the Urschel house, deep in the warehouse district. White stepped up and met Lackey, pumping his hand. “I thought you really got hurt. Hell, they just winged you.”

 

“Good to see you, Doc.”

 

“I better get a beer for those flowers I sent,” White said. “I thought you were dying.”

 

Jones dropped Lackey’s luggage in the trunk and walked around to the passenger side of a brand-new Plymouth the local office supplied. He reached into a front seat and pulled out a folded map that he neatly pulled apart and spread flat across the wide hood of the car. The two agents joined him, the hood still hot as a skillet, and they all leaned over a big, sprawling view of the United States, with all its rivers and man-made borders, state lines, highways, and cat roads. Jones had drawn a big circle in red ink, and in several cities he’d penciled in phone calls, letters, and tips. Every crank, nut job, and honest tip was flagged.

 

“What we’ve got is a radius that stretches about six hundred miles,” Jones said. “We take in Saint Louis, Kansas City, extend over to Santa Fe on the west and Nashville to the east. I’d put the far point north being Davenport and down south somewhere around Corpus Christi. It’s a needle in a haystack for sure.”

 

“You don’t think the shack was far,” Lackey said in his funny Yankee accent.

 

“I think they took Mr. Urschel on a little joyride up and around,” Jones said. “Hither and yon. They telegraphed they were far to the north. The two yokels who watched him, not the gunmen, had to mention a half dozen times that Oklahoma and Texas were to the south. They furnished him with clothes with the goddamn labels still stitched in ’em showing Joplin, Missouri. This whole deal is south.”

 

“Down on the border?” Lackey asked.

 

“I don’t think that far.”

 

“Just ask Buster if you want to take a flight somewhere,” White said, leaning loose and lean as a stick on the fender. “He’s studied every airline’s flight schedule there is. ’Bout to make us both cross-eyed.”

 

“Saw the report,” Lackey said. “You can narrow down the flights?”

 

“We can narrow the ones that didn’t fly the night of the storm,” Jones said. “I have two airlines I like.”

 

They were on the fifth floor of the Federal Building ten minutes later. Colvin had given Jones his office, and he’d tacked schedules on a large board, along with maps of Okalahoma and Texas and Missouri. Telegrams and letters had been sorted in bins, and mug shots were tucked into a half dozen binders on the desk. Jones worked from a small black typewriter on the desk, and at his elbow there was a cup of cold coffee and his cold pipe.

 

“You’re going stir-crazy,” Lackey asked, “aren’t you?”

 

“I’m not much for secretarial work.”

 

Lackey took his hat and jacket off and hung them by the door. He closed the door behind the two of them with a light click, but you could still hear the telephone bells ringing and the hard clack of the typewriters and the chatter of Teletype machines. The air was smoky and stale, and all the action of the days since Urschel returned home made the office air smell sour with nervous sweat.

 

Jones sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. He was in his shirtsleeves and wore a gun rig over his shoulder.

 

“I’d open a window, but they’re painted shut.”

 

“I’d shoot out the panes,” Lackey said. “How do you live like this?”

 

Jones shrugged.

 

“Listen,” Lackey said. “I haven’t put this in a report yet. But after you got reassigned, I picked up where you left off on the Union Station massacre.”

 

“Not much to follow,” Jones said.

 

“You remember requesting the phone records for Dick Galatas in Hot Springs? From the pool hall?” Lackey asked. “Well, the son of a bitch called Joplin twenty times after we picked up Jelly Nash.”

 

Jones nodded. “Let me guess.”

 

“That’s right, that old grifter Deafy Farmer. It’s taken me some time to run down the calls out of Farmer’s place, but the wires were burning up while me and you and Sheriff Reed were on that train. We didn’t stand a chance.”

 

“Who’d he call?”

 

Lackey leaned in and placed his elbows on his knees, his short red tie dipping from his neck. “A rental. False names. When we found the place, it was littered with cigarette butts and rotgut gin. They left plates of spaghetti on the counter half eaten.”

 

“You get a description?”

 

“Two neighbors saw a man ducking in and out. Never made a fuss. Never too social.”

 

“Floyd?”

 

Lackey shook his head. “Fella was described as pale-skinned with pale bluish eyes. Muscular and mean-looking. He carried golf sticks with him every night.”

 

“Son of a bitch,” Jones said. “Verne Miller.”

 

“The witnesses picked him straight out of a hundred photos. That rotten bastard killed Otto, those two detectives, and one of our own.”

 

“Who else?”

 

“No one saw him, but I’m hearing Harvey Bailey.”

 

“I figured that from the start.”

 

“Miller won’t go quietly,” Lackey said, working a cigarette from a pack and then finding a lighter in his sling. “Listen, Hoover’s been asking about how Nash was killed.”

 

“What’d you say?”

 

“I said there was a lot of confusion in that car.”

 

“He’ll have the bullet reports by now,” Jones said. “Hoover knows.”

 

“You think Sheriff Reed meant to kill him?”

 

“Gun went off while he was trying to set aim.”

 

Someone rapped on the pebbled-glass door, and a nameless young agent walked in and passed a typed note for Agent Gus T. Jones. “How ’bout we get you something to eat?” Jones said. “You like chop suey?”

 

“What’s that message?”

 

“This?” Jones said, adding the slip to the growing mound of paper on his desk. “Some detective in Fort Worth named Weatherford. I’ll call him when I get around to it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

16

 

George drove Kathryn past all the old Saint Paul places, the Saint Paul haunts and whatnot, chattering on about The times they had, the nights they danced, and how all of it was coming around again, sister. The Boulevards of Paris nightclub. The Hollyhocks. Green Lantern Saloon, Plantation—George smiling like a bastard when they rode past the Plantation because he once screwed her there in a toilet stall—and then on to the big brick Hotel Saint Paul on St. Peter Street, where George said Leo Gleckman ran the show on the whole third floor, pointing out the floor like she couldn’t count from the bottom. Gleckman was Saint Paul, and the Kid ran Minneapolis, but sometimes those two Jews did business on each other’s turf, and in their ancient traditions this all made sense to them. But Kathryn said she could never understand trust between a couple of hoods. She’d met Gleckman once at the Boulevards of Paris, and about the only thing that struck her about the fella was the beautiful camel hair coat he wore and the ruby stickpin—big as a nut—pinned to his tie.

 

“Whatta you think?” George asked, pulling into the Hotel Saint Paul portico. “We get a suite?”

 

“We got enough?”

 

“Couple hunnard,” George said, looking in the rearview, with the back window obscured by pretty packages, hatboxes, and bags. “You sure can drop some coin.”

 

“I wanna go to the Hollyhocks tonight,” Kathryn said, slumped in the big Cadillac’s passenger seat, arms crossed over her breasts. “I want that Hollyhocks steak, cut an inch thick. Blood rare.”

 

“Fine by me,” George said. “Hell, I like steak.”

 

“I wanna wear the new dress.”

 

“It’s a hell of a dress.”

 

“I like red.”

 

“Red was made for you, sweetheart.”

 

“And the rings. The necklace I showed you at Cohen and Samolson?”

 

“We’ll get ’em tomorrow.”

 

“George?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Do you love me?”

 

“You’re the Little Wife, aren’t you?”

 

“I guess.”

 

A nigger in a military-looking suit opened the passenger door and about scared Kathryn to death with his big toothy grin, her thinking about the rings and bracelets that she’d buy and plain forgetting they were parked outside the Hotel Saint Paul. He held the door open and called her ma’am in a voice that sounded just like a white person’s.

 

“Checkin’ in,” George said, with that movie-star grin he practiced sometimes in the mirror. “Kit, we got it. Why not enjoy it?”

 

“And tonight?” she asked, one foot out the door.

 

“It’ll all go according to Hoyle. Do I look worried?”

 

They took a room on the tenth floor—a suite, just like George promised—and when she threw open the drapes and unlatched the window she felt a loosening of the nerves, not unlike the way a good martini can loosen your legs a bit. George fetched his cigarettes while she looked down on Saint Paul, at all the rooftops and all those poor bastards punching the clock for some ungrateful fat man. Secretaries. Housewives. Maids. All of ’em suckers.

 

George was behind her. She could feel his heavy cigar breath on her neck and smell the cigarette burning in his fingers. The city still seemed foreign as hell, with the summer and all. Whenever she thought about Saint Paul, it froze her to the bone.

 

“You wanna try on those stockings?”

 

“Why don’t you wait, you goat.”

 

“I was just thinking—”

 

“Thinking what? That you’d get a poke because it’s Saturday? I’ve got to get my hair done. Put some paint on these nails. What do you say I call up the front desk?”

 

“That’s what you do in a joint like this,” George said, wrapping his big hairy arm around her small waist and pulling her into him, smelling her neck like a lion on a lamb. “You pick up the phone at the Hotel Saint Paul and it’s like rubbing up a genie. Whatever you want, it’ll be here.”

 

“Anything?”

 

“Go try it out.”

 

“George?”

 

The curtains ruffled in the hot wind and covered her face and eyes, and then there were rooftops much uglier than you’d think, splattered with tar and sprouting vents and hot steam and smoke. Never looked like this from the street. George kept on smelling her and burying his sharp whiskers into her ears. “Mmm?” he asked.

 

“Screw the Hollyhocks,” she said. “Let’s order dinner here. And a bottle of gin.”

 

“The day’s a waste without it.”

 

“I do love you,” she said, nodding to herself.

 

“ ’ Course you do. My little honey.”

 

“You call about the meet,” she said. “I hope it’s somewhere that I can wear that dress.”

 

“I’ll make sure of it.”

 

Kathryn moved from the curtains and across the open space of the suite, with the big brass bed all made up with big goose-down pillows and soft, cool silk sheets. She found a dressing mirror near the bath and studied her reflection for a bit. The way the long black dress hugged her hips and tits and made her shoulders seem strong and athletic. She unpinned the beret and shook her hair loose, and then found George’s hands on her again, unbuttoning the dress from around her waist. She kept her eyes on herself in the mirror as the dress dropped to a heap on the floor and she stepped from it in nothing but her silks and stockings, the new pair of shoes keeping her tall and high up on her toes. Her eyes met George’s in reflection, and her first thought was Goddamn, that monkey needs a shave, but she passed over the thought and imagined him as Gable or William Powell and not a Memphis bootlegger. She stretched her arms up over her head and, reaching backward, held him close.

 

George placed his burning cigarette in her mouth. And it was all like that, slow and steady, with the hot wind and bleeping cars from the open window, until they were sweaty and tired and lazy-boned in the silk sheets.

 

The phone rang, and George said “Yep” a couple times before hanging up.

 

“You ever heard of the Mystic Caverns?” George asked.

 

“What is it?”

 

“A club.”

 

“In some caves?”

 

“Cann’s place,” George said. “You can wear the red dress. He said look for the entrance that’s an ape’s mouth. Now, does that make a lick of sense?”

 

Kit flipped over on her stomach, nude as Eve, and rocked her legs up to her butt and down again in thought. George had the ashtray on his hairy chest, and she thieved his cigarette and thought for a long while.

 

“You think we could do this again?”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“What’s that? The kidnapping, you dumb mug.”

 

“I don’t see why not.”

 

“You pull five of these, George, and we nab a million . . . You know, the Kellys just might be somebody.”

 

“He wants us to bring the money.”

 

“All of it?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“What if we’re robbed?”

 

“Whatta you think I am?”

 

Kathryn flipped over again and stared at the ceiling. “I got an idea.”

 

 

 

 

 

THEY SHOOK HANDS IN THE MOUTH OF THE APE—FANGS AS HIGH as a picket fence; huge eyes, crazy and wide; with flared nostrils and a red carpet for a tongue. Kid Cann reached for Harvey Bailey’s elbow and steered him inside the Mystic, all smiles and pride, the tunnels, he said, having been dug out along the Mississippi River cliffs for their sand, now were the hottest nightspot in town. “It’s a cool fifty-eight degrees year-round. How ’bout that?”

 

“What about the winter?” Harvey asked, following the Kid down a long tunnel and turning into a wide cavern. “You’d freeze your dick off.”

 

“We’re a hunnard and fifty feet below ground. It gets cold, we turn up the heat.”

 

A floor show had started at the end of the cavern, more tunnels branching off into bars and bathrooms, and probably some places to gamble and whore. A colored orchestra played Arabian music while a white woman prowled around onstage, not a stitch of clothing on, nothing but a couple huge fans made out of ostrich feathers. Men whistled and clapped. The woman was goddamn gorgeous, with wonderful tits and fat nipples.

 

“You know who that is?” asked the Kid. His hair looked wet from all the oil, slapped down tight on his skull, with an inch part down the middle. He was wide-eyed and weak-chinned, wearing a tuxedo, smoking a cigar, and backslapping and shaking hands as good as any two-bit politician. “Miss Sally Rand, on loan from her World’s Fair performance in Chicago.”

 

“Perfect tits,” Harvey said. “Wonderful tits.”

 

The Kid nodded and leaned in a bit toward Bailey. A foot shorter, he looked up, and played a bit with his black bow tie. “How much we talkin’?”

 

Harvey told him, and the Kid’s eyes grew big.

 

“Where you boys gettin’ all this money?”

 

“You talkin’ about Kelly?”

 

The Kid didn’t say anything, only twirled the fat cigar in his big lips, hoping the Arabian music would fill up the silence. He shrugged and puffed and puffed, spilling the smoke from the side of his mouth. Miss Sally Rand flitted around on that big white stage, the darkies not seeming to notice as they boomed their drums and played their horns, the white woman covering up her cooch with one fan of feathers and her ta-tas with the other, then switching the two so goddamn fast you weren’t sure if you saw the ta-tas or the cooch or even a little ass, and it stayed with you like a drunken memory.

 

Harvey smiled. “Kelly’s with us.”

 

“He didn’t mention it.”

 

“Well, he should have. Is he here?”

 

“I don’t want no trouble,” Kid Cann said. “I hear you’re with Verne Miller.”

 

“He’s not trouble.”

 

“Last time I saw him, he broke my tooth with a .45.”

 

“But he didn’t kill you,” Harvey said. “That’s gotta count for something.”

 

The men stood there facing the first tunnel and watched the crowd. Every con man, jewel thief, hustler, pimp, murderer, high-class whore, and top-shelf yegg in the state was in the gorilla’s belly, swilling the legal hooch and tossing away their cash on the wheel or cards.

 

“What’s a fella got to do for a drink?” Bailey asked.

 

Kid Cann motioned with his head toward another tunnel, a dimly lit little elbow where coffins had been carved into the soft sand walls and men in black bodysuits stitched with skeleton-bone designs would jump out at you or pinch a girl’s ass all in fun. And Harvey didn’t see it coming when some poor bastard grabbed his elbow to scare him and Harvey turned and punched the skeleton right in the nose, sending him flat against the cave wall and sliding down to his ass.

 

The Kid laughed and muttered, “Christ,” and walked to the bar, snapping his fingers at the barman, and the barman reached under the till for a crystal decanter of what would be the good stuff. He poured out two thick measures in crystal glasses, and Harvey pulled out a cigar from his linen suit that he’d taken from Sawyer at the Green Lantern. There was a big painting above the bar all done up in oils and canvas, and Harvey had to do a double take before realizing that was Nina herself, thinking back on times when he’d poked her.

 

“Switchin’ money ain’t a problem,” the Kid said, before taking a sip, swishing the glass around in his hand. “But I want to shake hands with you and Kelly on twenty percent.”

 

“You’re killing me.”

 

“That’s a lot of dough.”

 

“I had ten percent in mind.”

 

“A man has to think about the heat that will come with that kind of cash.”

 

Harvey nodded and glanced away from Kid Cann and down the polished mahogany bar that seemed to go on forever, spotting Dock Barker and that ugly mug Alvin Karpis, who was a dead ringer for Boris Karloff, goddamn Frankenstein and the Mummy all in one. Miller had followed Harvey into the caves and stood like a pale ghost at the end of the bar, talking to some bottle blonde, with her big tits crammed into a sequined gown. The lamps’ glow was soft and pleasant, and the caverns had a soft coolness, while the negro music from the bandstand rebounded and echoed throughout the walls.

 

Harvey offered his hand, but the Kid shook his head.

 

“Let me know when Kelly gets here,” Harvey said, and knocked back the whiskey. “Verne’s already left my stash with your boy, Barney what’s his name.”

 

“Why you need Kelly’s dough?”

 

“Because we got a deal. You really want me to answer all these questions? That would make you an accessory. Now, how ’bout another drink? I want to get back and watch Sally Rand tickle her cooch with a feather.”

 

Little Kid Cann smiled at him, ashing his cigar on the lip of the bar but never for a second taking his eyes off Harvey Bailey. Mean little bastard.

 

 

 

KATHRYN WORE THE RED DRESS, LOOKING LIKE SHE BELONGED on the cover of Photoplay, the wide, regal collar high on her neck, the padded shoulders, the silk material that hugged her ass and legs and draped down past her knees. Most people didn’t even seem to mind the big bump on her belly and even moved out of her way and bent over backward to be polite. And she’d smile and touch her protruding stomach and newly done hair. The hotel had sent up a couple women to wash and style while another gave her a manicure. George sitting by the radio the whole time in a hotel bathrobe, listening to Buck Rogers with real interest, occasionally nodding to some twist and turn in the plot. But he’d allowed one of the women to cut and oil his hair proper, even giving him a close shave and slapping him down with some sweet-smelling bay rum. He had a new suit, new dress shirt, and a pair of class A two-tone shoes.

 

She held on to his strong arm as they moved from the sluggish heat off the river and into the big ape’s mouth, Kathryn thinking instantly about that monkey Kong and feeling like she was being swallowed whole in the beast. Fay Wray slapping away those big fat fingers that groped her day and night. But Wray knowing that the big beast was just lovestruck over her and that he’d protect her from those crazy darkies with spears, and damn well even climb up the Empire State Building for her. She patted George’s hairy knuckles with her free hand, and they were out of the gorilla’s soft throat and into the belly, and the whole joint was hopping. A nigger orchestra had the room on its feet, and women danced on white-linened tables, kicking plates and champagne bottles, and men knocked back whiskey and smoked, while a ball of excitement grew in Kathryn’s stomach. You felt that way when you were in the place that you were meant to be. This was the heat, this was the action. The bee’s knees in the belly of the beast.

 

“Oh, George.”

 

“What’d I tell you?”

 

“You crazy mug.”

 

“Whatta ya’ think, a girl or a boy?” he said, pointing to her stomach.

 

This the tenth time he’s told the same joke.

 

“It’s a monkey, for sure.”

 

George snatched a waiter by the arm and thumbed through a fat wad of cash in a silver clip. He tucked a few bills in the man’s open pocket and told him to bring a bottle and a setup. And the waiter was back in two seconds with two more waiters, hauling in a table from the back and a couple chairs because there wasn’t a free place to sit. George turned and waved to someone, and then Kathryn noted a little man standing near the tunnel to the bar, a short, little Jewy fella with grease-parted hair, puffing on a big fat cigar. He reminded her of a fighter, short and mean and tough as hell because his height had made him that way.

 

“Who’s the gimp with the donkey dick?”

 

“That’s the Kid,” George said.

 

“No foolin’?”

 

“No foolin’.”

 

The waiter made a big show about the whiskey being bonded and not like that sorry hair tonic colored with wood chips they used to sell at the Boulevards of Paris. They brought ice in a silver bucket and crystal glasses and bottles of ginger ale, and George passed out more wads of bills, all of that money floating away making Kathryn feel just like who she should be, wanted to be, and was. She felt a little hand on her shoulder and saw Kid Cann, grinning, his other hand on George’s shoulder, whispering for a moment in George R. Kelly’s ear, and then trailing away, with a firm pat on her back, like she was A-OK.

 

“What was that?”

 

“Keep smilin’, doll.”

 

“What?”

 

“Bailey’s here. Verne Miller, too.”

 

“Goddamn. Son of a bitch.”

 

“You said it.”

 

“Whatta we do?”

 

“We can amscray or you can birth that baby. We’re in a pinch.”

 

Kathryn felt the fat mound on her belly and readjusted the heft. She took a long sip of the whiskey and ginger ale, and contemplated. “Okay. Okay. Only five g’s, and don’t you dare ask ’em to join us. Those two bastards are going to stink up this whole town for me, ruin my fun, and I’d just as soon be back in the Cadillac halfway to Cleveland.”

 

“Still stuck on Cleveland.”

 

But Kathryn wasn’t listening, only taking a breath, knowing the Kellys were cornered, and it was best to brass the son of a bitch out and wait till the next job. Goddamn George. She moved her hand from underneath his, thinking how nice it would be if some airplanes would knock him out of his big tree.

 

“ ’ Twas beauty,” she said.

 

“What?”

 

“I want a convertible.”

 

“A what?”

 

“In Cleveland, I want you to trade out your car for a convertible. Cadillac makes the most darling coupe. I saw the ad in Redbook.”

 

George reached for the whiskey, pouring it like it was a glass of milk at the end of a long day. The nigger band stopped and then started again with some booming jungle beats, a naked white woman wandering onto the stage holding only a big fat balloon, her pale ass hanging out for all those musicians to see.

 

“What’s this?” Kathryn asked. “The sacrifice?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

17

 

They brought ’em into Kid Cann’s office, a cavern carved behind the club’s stage. The walls were smooth blond wood slapped over the sandstone, the joints expertly sealed so that the orchestra sounded like they were playing a hundred miles away or under the river. Harvey nodded at Kathryn Kelly and George, too, but wanted them to know this was all business. The Kid had a small bar padded in black leather by his desk, and Harv helped himself to a little refresher of bourbon with club soda, a little ice and bitters. He stood near the desk and waited for the Kid and his boy, Barney Bernbaum, to get on with the show, take their money, trade it out, and let the whole deal be settled.

 

“You unnerstand the twenty percent?” the Kid asked.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” George Kelly said, finding a soft, curved leather chair to park in and cross his legs and smoke, resting his hat over his big foot.

 

“And I don’t want no trouble,” the Kid said. “What you got goin’ with Harv and Verne don’t have a thing to do with me.”

 

“It’s decided.”

 

Harvey smiled over at George, letting George know the two of them were settled but that he also knew that George was trying to muscle him out.

 

“Can I see it?” the Kid asked.

 

George thought for a moment and ran a hand over his big jaw and nodded. Kathryn stood behind him by the door, and Harvey had to look real good to see if she’d gotten fat or if George hadn’t knocked her up.

 

“Yeah,” George said, snapping his fingers. “Give it to ’im, Kit.”

 

Kathryn waddled up to the desk, her long, painted fingers on her swaying stomach, and she dropped her big belly on the desk, turning her back to all the men in the room and hoisting her dress. Harvey thinking Oh, shit, here we go, what’s this broad about to pull, but then the dress reached high over her legs, showing her ass, and stretched over her stomach, and with a big thud on the desk out flopped the ninety g’s.

 

The door opened and in walked the other Jew, Barney Bernbaum, and he was all smiles, holding the door for Verne Miller, who followed, with a tight, twitchy mouth, and coldly looked to each one of ’em before resting his back against the far wall, scouting, and placing his hat back on his head, slow and delicate. All of ’em knowing Miller packed two Army-boy .45s on each flank and could take each one of ’em out without dropping his cigarette.

 

Barney joined the Kid at the desk and thumbed through the big stacks of dough. Harvey knocked back the drink, poured some more. George was looking up at the ceiling like he was trying to count the tiles. The orchestra played louder now, and you could hear the muffled notes a bit more, the ceiling shaking, and from the minuscule cracks in it came a fine white powder, looking like dandruff or cocaine, splatting Harvey’s drink until he looked up to what George saw and knew it was just that natural sand shaking loose.

 

Barney nodded to the Kid. The Kid’s wide-set snake eyes took in the room, and he screwed up his Jew mouth, nodding back. The Kid picked up a big, ornate phone and spoke a handful of words into the receiver before hanging up. “Drink up. Money’ll be here in a jiff. Go play the wheel.”

 

“You think we’re soft?” George asked. “I prefer to leave this joint with all my money.”

 

The Kid shrugged. “Suit yourself, Georgie.” Miller uncrossed his arms, and left his lookout by the door. He joined Harvey at the bar, and Harvey filled a glass with ice and some tonic. Miller lit a cigarette to go with his ice water.

 

“So you boys gonna tell me the score?” the Kid asked. “You know I’m dying to know.”

 

“You don’t know?” Harvey Bailey asked, kind of laughing to himself and taking a last puff from a cigarette and squashing it in a glass ashtray. “You got the most wanted man in America right here in your establishment. Our little boy Georgie has grown up. Look at him—the mastermind, the criminal genius, the man with nerves of steel . . .”

 

“You don’t mean . . . ?” the Kid asked. “Come on.”

 

“You betcha,” Harvey said. “Can you believe it? Remember how this mug used to stutter, ‘S-s-sir, c-c-can I tag along on a j-j-job?’ You know he puked in his hat before we robbed that bank in Sherman?”

 

George played with his hat and would not look at him.

 

Verne Miller laughed.

 

George played with his hat and wiped some imaginary dust from his shoe.

 

“Remember that one job where he double-parked that ole Packard and attracted every traffic cop in that podunk town?” Harvey asked.

 

Miller nodded and gave a sliver of a smile, knowing what Harv was doing, and took a sip of ice water, rattling the glass. You take a man like George, play with his head a bit, get him off his game, and he’ll start thinking sloppy and not worrying about things like counting or watching where fat satchels of cash were laid.

 

A cloudy head just plain neutered a fella.

 

 

 

 

 

HARVEY BAILEY WAS A TWO-BIT ASSHOLE. KATHRYN COULD RUN down her boy on occasion, but George R. Kelly was still her man, and this was school-yard bullshit that she didn’t care for a bit. She prayed to the Lord in heaven that George would just reach into that beautiful tailored jacket, pull out that .38, and plug that big-nosed bastard in the forehead.

 

“Whatta they call you now, George?” Verne Miller asked, his jaw muscle flexing like walnuts.

 

George wouldn’t look at them. Look at them, George, meet their gaze, and don’t back down an inch. George wouldn’t look at ’em.

 

Harvey smoked, all delicate and womanlike, and said, “ ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly. Rat-a-tat-tat.”

 

“You even know how to fire a chopper, George?” Miller asked. “I can teach you sometime.”

 

George would not look at them.

 

The big guy just picked a space on the wall behind those two hoodlums and watched it like a cultured man might sit in a museum, or some such fancy place, and contemplate the lines and dots in a painting and make some kind of gibberish remark about the lines and dots forming a whole image. Kathryn had read of such four-flushers in Collier’s.

 

“Most wanted man in America,” Harvey said. “Got to take off my hat. We didn’t think you had the nuts.”

 

“Why don’t you shut up, old man,” Kathryn said, walking the room and standing behind George and placing her long fingers on the back of his chair and then touching his shoulder. “You think ’cause you stole a bunch of loot in your day? Let me tell you something. Back in the old days, my granny could’ve busted a jug wide open. Look at you. You can’t even walk without a cane. Like an old woman.”

 

Bailey raised his eyebrows and straightened his tie, running the silk through his fingers and sliding the silver clip tight. That nut job Miller just stood beside Bailey, staring at Kathryn, like the staring was gonna do one bit of good and like she hadn’t seen that intimidation show a thousand Saturday nights with him and Vi when he’d slap her silly and send her to the powder room with paint running off her eyes.

 

“Whatta you lookin’ at?” she said. “You crazy hophead.”

 

George wouldn’t look at ’em.

 

Not one damn bit.

 

Wouldn’t meet the men’s eyes. He reminded her of a schoolkid taken to task.

 

“Miller, you wanna know why you can’t find Vi?” Kathryn asked, the veins running hot and feeling her heart beating double time. “It’s ’cause she don’t wanna be found. She’s prowling New York with some Hollywood producer with a fat wallet while you and Harvey play grab ass for the dregs of what we earned. You know what? She told me you never could please her. Said holding your prick in her mouth was like playing with a kid’s pencil.”

 

Miller lurched forward. Harvey Bailey caught his right arm.

 

Harvey laughed and checked his watch.

 

“C’mon, George,” said the Kid. “Harvey’s just having some fun. Drinks on me.”

 

George took a big breath, and put his hands to his knees and stood tall, holding his hat.

 

“We’ll wait outside,” George said, mumbling.

 

He followed her from Kid Cann’s fancy-ass office and down a long, long sandstone hall and back into the smoky air and nigger music and ladies who didn’t give a shit that midnight was long since over.

 

“Look at all them knucklehead Cinderellas.”

 

“You got a strange way of talkin’, Kit.”

 

She grabbed his arm, feeling his labored breathing against her ribs, as they headed back toward the big ape’s mouth, seeing the big ape teeth, and Kid Cann’s goons making a show of parting as they came on through, and stepped out of the cool and into the heat. Over the Mississippi, you could see Saint Paul and a couple of rusted-out drawbridges real clear, one of ’em holding a passing freight, with a lot of racket and strain, red lights flashing and flashing.

 

George sat on the hood of his midnight blue sixteen-cylinder and started a Camel. He motioned to her, seeing if she wanted one. She shook her head and walked near him, kicking away the river gravel with her fine slippers and holding the hem of her dress, catching in the summer wind. The action still playing out the ape’s mouth, and if you looked over at the Mystic Caverns you’d think the beast was alive, with those glowing eyes, and the heat and smoke coming from between those picket teeth.

 

“George honey?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“What’re you sorry for?”

 

“They’re just some rotten crooks. You don’t have to look up to ’em no more. You outclass ’em all.”

 

George sat on the hood of the car, in the shadow and darkness, and smoked for a few minutes, looking a bit drunk, watching those flashing red lights with all his attention.

 

“But George? Meet their eyes next time. Let ’em know you’re the heavy in this picture.”

 

“I was looking for something.”

 

Kathryn saddled up and skedaddled up onto the hood, pinching his smoke, and watching the gears and whirlycues of the drawbridge lay it all flat and even. Her stomach felt oddly flat and empty.

 

“The Kid’s got a secret door,” he said. “Right behind the desk. Looks real good and hid in that fancy woodwork, but it sure as shit is there.”

 

“How do you know it’s not a secret safe or some nonsense?”

 

“ ’ Cause it ain’t.”

 

“George?”

 

They noticed two black Cadillacs, new ones but only eight-cylinder, pull in front of the Mystic Caverns. Some tough Jew boys holding fat grips in their hands crawled out, and the doormen moved the hell out of their way. The business had begun.

 

“Here we go.”

 

“George?”

 

“Open the trunk, sweetheart,” George said. “And give me your coat.”

 

“What for?”

 

“To hide the big gun.”

 

“Oh, God,” she said, smiling. Knees weak and face flushed. “Oh, George.”

 

“Keep the motor running, and don’t turn into a woman if I come out blazing.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

18

 

 

Thursday, August 10, 1933

 

You remember ole Pedro Posado?” Doc White asked. He and Jones were about a thousand feet above North Texas, heading back to Oklahoma City, in a brand-new aircraft belonging to a buddy of Urschel’s, an executive with Sinclair Oil. White had to yell out the question on account of the single engine humming and shuddering the cabin. But, thank the Lord, it was blue skies today, making it easy work for Jones to check the rough terrain through a pair of binoculars.

 

“How could a man forget Pedro Posado?” Jones asked.

 

“What do you think drove him?”

 

“Meanness.”

 

“I don’t think so,” White said. “He was restless. All those Mexicans were restless back then, the government in collapse, everyone wantin’ a piece, thinking about putting beans on the table.”

 

“Nothing killed that woman but plain-out meanness,” Jones said, studying his hand-inked map and looking back out the oval window, following the natural borders—rivers and roads and fence lines—across the flat, dusty earth below them. It was a cloudless day, and everything from this altitude looked in good order.

 

“What was her name?” White asked.

 

“Conchita Ramirez.”

 

“That’s right. Conchita Ramirez. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear the screams.”

 

“I try and not study on the past.”

 

“Pedro ran into that drugstore when he saw us. Where was that?”

 

“Shafter.”

 

“He pulled a gun on you and—”

 

“Doc, can we pay attention to the matter at hand?”

 

“You recall the newspapers?”

 

“Called us ‘killers,’ ” Jones said.

 

“Hell, ole Pedro is the one who’d blowed her legs and hands off.”

 

“I was there. You don’t need to color a story when a person knows how it goes.”

 

“We find the boys who nabbed Mr. Urschel and we won’t have time to blink.”

 

“You don’t think I know that, Doc? What am I gonna do, offer ’em flowers first?”

 

“Verne Miller ain’t no Pedro Posado.”

 

“How do you know? Maybe Verne Miller is Pedro Posado’s long-lost cousin.”

 

“You see anything?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“How are you supposed to tell one shack from another?” White asked. “You know how many shacks with pigs and goats there are in Texas?”

 

“I know the layout.”

 

“And you know absolute this is the route of that airline? The one that didn’t fly in that storm?”

 

“It’s down there somewhere. The science’ll prove it.”

 

“Science? They’ll be long gone.”

 

“Leaving a trail. Like they always do. How’s this any different?”

 

They landed back in Oklahoma City three hours later, ears ringing as they shook hands with the pilot and trudged back to the borrowed car. Jones noted a man at the edge of the tarmac talking with Colvin. The man was youngish but didn’t dress like an agent. He had more the look of a local cop, with a dandy’s boots and a dime-store suit. Jones greeted them both, and Colvin introduced the fella as a detective from Fort Worth.

 

“You fly over Wise County?” the detective asked. The man was tall and bony, with giant slabs of teeth and the smile of a tent-show preacher or a roadside huckster selling snake oil.

 

“We did.”

 

“You find what you’re looking for?”

 

Jones shook his head. “Was getting dark. More to see tomorrow.”

 

“I sent you some messages.”

 

“Give that name again?”

 

“Weatherford.”

 

“I’ve been busy, Mr. Weatherford.”

 

“You’ll find what you’re looking for in Paradise,” he said.

 

“You sound like a preacher.”

 

“Just outside the town is a known hole-up for some Fort Worth gangsters.”

 

“You think they took Urschel? Because from what we know so far, this is too big of a job for some local boys.”

 

“They ain’t ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, like the papers say.”

 

“I never believe what I read in the papers,” Jones said, opening the door and placing his satchel in the rear of the car.

 

“Can I buy you ole boys a cup of coffee?” Weatherford asked. “It’ll be worth your time.”

 

Doc White joined the men at the car, but no introductions were made. Doc just stood there and hitched up his pants while Jones adjusted his hat brim, the setting sun in his eyes, Weatherford an inky cutout before him. “Doc, this fella’s from Fort Worth and says he’s done cracked the case.”

 

Weatherford crawled in back of the Plymouth and smiled. Jones didn’t like the way the bastard smiled, him watching Jones’s eyes in the rearview until they found a small diner just off Eighteenth Street.

 

On the table between them, Weatherford threw down a mug shot of a fella named George Barnes from Memphis, Tennessee. A bootlegger sent to Leavenworth in ’28 for running hooch to some Indians.

 

“You got to be pulling my leg,” Jones said.

 

 

 

 

 

THE FAMILY GATHERING TURNED INTO A DINNER PARTY, AND the dinner party to chaos. Charles F. Urschel’s nerves were on edge even after taking two strong drinks, before brushing his teeth and returning back downstairs. The staff had cooked up a wonderful meal of roasted quail with red potatoes and summer corn. Big Louise made a particular show of bringing out the platters and talking about how careful you had to be with those little birds’ wings or they’d just dry right on up. Water was refilled. Tea and coffee were poured. Kirkpatrick said grace at the end of the table and then raised his glass to Charlie, thanking those present for a job well done. And those present included the nervous young man on his immediate right, taking a seat by his stepdaughter, Betty, Charlie just hearing moments ago that she planned to take the federal agent to cotillion with her that very weekend.

 

“Thank you, Kirk,” Urschel said. “Miss Louise can outcook a gangster anytime.”

 

“What on earth did they feed you?” some society woman Charlie didn’t know asked from down the table.

 

“Humble pie,” Charlie said.

 

And there was laughter and toasts and the clinking of glasses. Miss Louise patted Charlie’s back with her fat hand and returned to the kitchen until called again, the door swinging to and fro behind her. But just as Charlie smiled over at Berenice and cut into his quail, the lights faltered and sputtered out. The air-cooling machine went silent, replaced by the sound of nervous laughter and talk. Miss Louise and some of the servant boys brought in candlesticks under their black faces and set them down the long, long table that Tom Slick had purchased on one of his trips to Europe.

 

“Here’s to Oklahoma Gas and Electric,” Urschel said.

 

More nervous laughter, and someone said, “It’s just a fuse. Don’t worry.”

 

The conversation soon steadied, and Urschel’s eyes adjusted in the dark, but his breathing had become a bit squirrelly, and he didn’t feel like touching any of the food. “Are you okay, Charles?” Berenice asked from his left.

 

And he nodded.

 

“I’ll be right back,” he said, excusing himself and taking a candle from the kitchen. He mounted the great staircase in bounds of two and three steps, cupping the flame in his hand, until he found his bedroom door and then the walk-in closet, seeking out his shotgun from under some old hats and winter scarves. The shells were found in his hunting coat, and he loaded the barrels and crept to the window, finding the entire street had gone dark. The houses down Eighteenth were blackened in both directions, the streetlights extinguished.

 

He breathed, and moved over the soft carpet, slipping the weapon behind some tall, thick drapery. The room smelled of Berenice’s Parisian perfume and his old cigars, and he had to wipe the oil from his fingers, not knowing if it was from the gun or the quail.

 

Charlie walked down the steps, the candle’s flame sputtering out, as he heard the laughter and dinner chatter, the glow of the dining room giving him light enough to see. When he reached the landing, he found he was nearly out of breath and a bit dizzy, and he held on to a post fashioned in the shape of a pineapple. Tom Slick had said pineapples brought wealth or meant wealth.

 

Charlie Urschel was quite dizzy.

 

He breathed, and righted himself, just before the young federal agent walked onto the landing with his annoying clacking shoes. “Sir?”

 

Charlie looked up at him and studied a face filled with concern.

 

“They treated me like a dog,” Charles Urschel said, mouth completely parched. “Kept me on a three-foot lead.”

 

“Yes, sir,” the young man said. His name escaped Charlie. “I know.”

 

“You must find them,” Charlie said. “A man can’t live like this.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“And when you do, I want to be notified immediately,” Charles Urschel said. “I want a chance to speak with them privately.”

 

The young man just studied him, and Urschel turned back toward the kitchen, all of a sudden wanting all these people out of his home, most of them he didn’t even know. Society women, garden club members, and members of the club who thought they’d earned a ticket to see the show. He was tired of all the concern and well-wishes and Berenice’s pity as she lay next to him in the one o’clock hour, Charlie hearing the chimes but unable to move from the sweaty sheets, arms in spasm, as he lay on his back in complete failure.

 

Five policemen turned to him in wonder when he walked onto his own sunporch.

 

Two men guarded the walkway from his house, holding guns and asking if they might walk with him.

 

Three more policemen sat in the kitchen, listening to the radio with the colored help, the power back on, all of ’em laughing at Amos ’n’ Andy, while Big Louise finished up setting the ambrosia on a silver platter.

 

“Mr. Charlie?” she asked with a smile that dropped when she saw his face.

 

He could only compose himself in the guest bath, and, even after a few minutes, there was knocking to see if it was occupied. He set the lock, turned on the faucet, and ran cool water in the darkness, splashing it on his face. When the lights flashed on, he was still sitting on a closed toilet, gripping a brass handrail, his feet pressing against the wall before him.

 

With the illumination, his legs dropped, one and two, to the tile. He splashed more water on his eyes and returned to the head of the table, saying he’d been a bit ill but please continue with dessert. Berenice wore a curious expression, and he reassured her with a smile, his shaky hand dropping his linen napkin to the floor.

 

When he reached under the table, he noted Miss Betty Slick’s hand groping that young federal agent right between his legs as if she were kneading bread. Charlie righted himself in his large chair, and added some sugar to his coffee, slowly stirring. “Well now, son. Tell us, how did you come into the employ of Mr. Hoover?”

 

 

 

 

 

THEY WERE FINE, FAT, ROSY-CHEEKED PEOPLE FILLED WITH pep and life. The wife was the kind of woman who kept the Lane Bryant catalog by her freshly scrubbed toilet, checking out the latest fashions for portly women, while her old man read Abercrombie & Fitch over a morning bowl of Shredded Wheat, fancying himself the outdoors type, priding himself on crapping regular. They lived in a contented newish bungalow, not far off the streetcar line in Cleveland Heights. And the old man, Mr. K. R. Quigley, probably gave Mrs. Quigley and their precocious—if not annoying—daughter a peck on the cheek before doffing the old hat and rambling down to the automobile dealership, where he’d now sold Mr. R. G. Shannon, prosperous farmer out of Paradise, Texas, two brand-new Cadillacs.

 

“I have to say I was a bit surprised to see you two, again,” Mr. Quigley said. “I figured that custom sixteen-cylinder job would last you some time.”

 

Mrs. R. G. Shannon—Ora, if you please—knew why the son of a bitch was really surprised to see the Shannons again and it had nothing to do with the performance of the machine. Mrs. Quigley had called them out at a sit-down restaurant in June as a couple of four-flushers, raising her eyebrows at a couple hicks financing the top-of-the-line Cadillac and doubting that a nice farmer’s wife from Texas could even recognize a Hattie Carnegie gown—bought in New York City—black and long, with silver buttons from the top center down to the bottom of the skirt, and done in a very fine wool crepe.

 

But, my God, what was Mrs. Shannon wearing tonight, along with some quite attractive new baubles? What is that, you fatty old bag? Oh, yes, that’s nothing, just a little trinket made of fifty-five diamonds and a square-cut emerald solitaire ring. Nothing, really. Had you not noticed them before, you wretched housewife with mannish hands and bad posture? I don’t care if your closets are filled with husky-catalog fashions and your kitchen shelves with Bisquick, Swans Down Cake Flour, and rows and rows of Campbell’s soup.

 

“May I get you more coconut cake?” Mrs. Quigley asked. “The secret really is Baker’s. The triple-sealed package keeps it tender and nut sweet. Not to mention sanitary.”

 

“I am quite all right.” Kathryn dabbed the corners of her mouth. “A bit rich for me.”

 

“But I followed the recipe,” she said. “I’m so very sorry.”

 

“It was quite tasty,” Kathryn said. “Quite sweet. But a woman must watch her figure.”

 

The couples sat in a family room with a large window facing a perfect lawn shadowed in maple and elm. The radio had warmed up and broadcast the national news out of New York, and although Kathryn wasn’t paying much mind she heard damn well nothing of Charlie Urschel. Apparently there was some trouble with those banana eaters down in Cuba, and they’d gone and overthrown their dictator or some type of mess. There were more NRA parades and Blue Eagle mumbo jumbo, news from the World’s Fair, where the station would be live tomorrow, broadcasting Buddy Barnes, from the Pabst Blue Ribbon Casino.

 

“Was the engine too much, Mr. Shannon?” Mr. Quigley asked, setting down the plate scraped clean of icing. “She can devour some oil.”

 

“Call me Boss,” George said, getting all corny and full of himself. He wore a new navy suit and new oxblood shoes, a new pair of rimless glasses fashioned in an octagonal shape. He’d been told they’d give the angles of his face a new dimension. “No. It wasn’t the engine. The little wife here just had her heart set on that sweet little number when she saw it in McCall’s.”

 

“Redbook,” Kathryn said, giving the old stink eye to Mrs. Quigley’s fat ass, waddling under the apron’s bow, as she picked up their plates and headed into her kitchen domain.

 

“Redbook,” George said, working on his third piece of coconut cake, a cigarette burning on the edge of the plate. “When she saw that little coupe, she said, ‘Hot damn. Now, that’s a peach.’ ”

 

“Didn’t expect you to pay the entire balance in cash,” Mr. Quigley said. “I don’t think I ever had that happen.”

 

“If George doesn’t drop his pin money somewhere, he’ll burn a hole in his pants,” Kathryn said, crossing her legs and taking up a smoke, finding great delight when fat little Mrs. Quigley rushed back into the room to flick open a lighter. Must’ve been some commission.

 

“ ‘ Pin money’?” she asked.

 

“Of course,” Kathryn said. “The other night I sent ole Boss out with eighteen hundred dollars, and the little man here lost the whole thing. Isn’t that right?”

 

George shrugged and pulled out a money clip bulging with cash. “You two ever seen a thousand-dollar bill?”

 

Mrs. Quigley’s eyes went askew and then refocused on Kathryn’s face, to see if the couple was pulling her leg. She opened her mouth, but before she uttered a word in skipped the little daughter, stopping the conversation cold, the precocious little moron who had already regaled them with five songs at dinner and two tap-dancing recitals with about as much delicacy as a bloated hippo.

 

“Well, well, well,” Mrs. Quigley said, “Janey wanted to say good night and show you her certificate. Did I tell you she has won an art contest for Rinso soap? She is so very talented. Her little cartoon will be in a national magazine this fall. Can you believe it? It’s called It’s Wonderful! and features the most delightful little story about a woman who just can’t get her laundry to smell or look right. You know, Mrs. Shannon, it really is a fine product. If you soak your clothes in it, it’ll save you from scrubbing.”

 

“I don’t scrub nothing,” Kathryn said, blowing smoke from the corner of her red mouth. “I got a nigger woman who does all that.”

 

Little Janey, with her pinned bobbed hair and little sailor suit, looked at her mom and her mom at her. Her mother patted her little butt and scooted her off to bed, the little girl dishing out groans and protests that would’ve brought a belt from the real Ora Shannon, with her alcoholic breath and ten-cent perfume shining around her like a stained-glass halo.

 

“Where are the two of you headed next?” Mr. Quigley asked.

 

George looked to Kathryn and winked. “Chicago.”

 

“The Fair?”

 

“Figured we got to go,” George said. “Everybody in the whole gosh-dang world will be there.”

 

“We were there last month,” Mrs. Quigley said, all-knowing and smug. “I felt as if I’d entered another country, different worlds, all in Chicago. They even have an exhibit from Sinclair Oil with dinosaurs that look as real as you and me. They eat and putter about, make noises that scared little Janey a bit. She thought they were real beasts.”

 

“Ain’t that quick, huh?” Kathryn asked.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“The kid. A little slow on the uptake.”

 

“We must be gettin’ along,” George said, hand on Kathryn’s back, Kathryn grinning at the woman. “We sure do appreciate the meal. That was a mighty fine pot roast. I hadn’t had a meal like that since my youth. Hats off. And those biscuits? Just as fine as my mother’s.”

 

“If you change your mind on that coupe,” Mr. Quigley said with a wink, “you let me know. Number’s on the card.”

 

“I think that little baby out there is just the ticket,” George said. “I think we’re gonna drive her flat out tonight and not stop till we hit Chicago.”

 

“An exciting life for a farmer,” Mrs. Quigley said, raising her eyebrows.

 

“You can bet on it, sister,” Kathryn said, turning for the door. “See you in the funny papers.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

19

 

Don’t feel bad about it, Harv,” said Kreepy Karpis, the yegg with the face of Frankenstein. “I mean, Jesus H. Coulda happened to anyone. The son of a bitch ambushed you. That ain’t fair.”

 

Alvin Karpis. Alvin Fucking Kreepy Karpis sat beside Harvey in an identical leather chair, smoking an identical two-dollar cigar, at Nina’s cathouse at one in the morning, trying to give Harvey Bailey advice on how to handle his business. The much younger yegg and that goddamn moron, Dock Barker, had pulled some pretty impressive jobs, but Harvey Bailey had been knocking over banks since Karpis was swiping gumdrops at the five-and-dime and tugging at his pecker in the school yard.

 

Both men wore Japanese robes provided to them by the management, a steady punch of Kid Cann’s who took over when Nina died. The place was class all the way—red velvet furniture, polished wood, brass fixtures, and burning gas lamps just like in the old days. Jesus, he hoped they laundered the robes.

 

“So George Kelly kicks in Kid Cann’s door,” Harvey said, pointing out the action with the cigar tip, “holding that Thompson, and tells the Kid to toss him the coin or he’d spray the whole place, colored orchestra and all. Verne had gone back into the joint to talk up that fan-dancin’ snatch, or things mighta been different. But it’s just me and the Kid sharing some fine whiskey and talking about the G coming down hard on all the rackets. I’m tellin’ you, there was a time when I woulda seen Kelly coming like the light on a fucking freight train.”

 

“What’d the Kid do?” Karpis asked, his hangdog face showing disappointment even when curious. You could stick a knife in the guy’s hand and he’d look the same. No pulse, no emotion. “George must have a big set of ’em to bust in like that.”

 

“Or he’s fucking stupid,” Harvey said. “The Kid tossed over the two grips. Hell, what’d he have to lose? He’d already made the cut and left one bag for me and one for George. I think the little Jew found some amusement in it.”

 

Harvey blew out some smoke, pondering the situation, watching it float up to the second-floor railing that looked down upon the salon and waiting customers, hungry and jazzed for it.

 

“And he walked out with the two bags?”

 

“You know the hell of it, Kreeps? You don’t mind if I call you that?”

 

“Not you, Harv. Always looked up to you. I know my face ain’t pleasing to some.”

 

“Well, the hell of it is, I don’t think George wanted the money,” Harvey said, ashing the cigar into a jade tray in the shape of a woman with spread legs. “He wanted to give me the big fuck-you because I laid his ears back in front of his woman. That’s just plain pussy-crazy.”

 

“What’d you say to him?”

 

“I told him he’d about pissed his pants before a job—and that’s God’s own, I’m telling you. I didn’t think he’d pull his shit together. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the same nervousness each and every time. I don’t know how he pulled this one off. This thing in Oklahoma blows the fucking mind.”

 

“The Urschel job?”

 

“Can you believe it?” Harvey asked. “I read in Time magazine that it was the biggest ransom ever paid. Since we broke out, I been running my tail off around three states on nickel-and-dime bullshit, and here goes big, dumb George Kelly, knocking on the door of the top oilman in the Midwest—Step this way, please—goddamnit.”

 

“How much?”

 

“Two hunnard grand.”

 

“I wish someone would’ve fingered him to me,” Karpis said, crossing his bare feet at the ankle, taking a sip of booze, a hit of the cigar. “Must’ve been cake.”

 

“You better believe it,” Harvey said. “But kidnapping? C’mon. That’s not an honest man’s work.”

 

“Really,” Karpis said, smiling big while biting down on the cigar. “Ain’t money respectable?”

 

“You know the G likes the goddamn Touhy brothers for kidnapping that brewer—what’s his name? They might get the goddamn chair for that mess.”

 

“Let me borrow a hankie. I might cry.”

 

“Are you drunk?”

 

“I’m just plain happy, Harvey. High on life.”

 

“Who’s your whore?”

 

Karpis readjusted in the big, fat chair and pointed up to the railing cut into the ceiling. A redheaded girl, with pink lips and wearing a pink slip, waved down to the men. The girl Harvey had been with joined her, and she stared down, wrung-out, at Harvey, smoking a cigarette and motioning him back up with the crook of her finger.

 

“I got her all night,” Harvey said. “I swear to you, Kreeps, that little girl’s pussy is electrified. Does an old man good to get some fresh young tail. Gives me some real pep.”

 

“You goin’ after George?”

 

“He’s got my dough.”

 

“There’s more banks,” Karipis said. “More jobs. I could cut you in on a li’l somethin’ we’re workin’.”

 

“That’s mighty white of you, Kreeps, but Miller kinda got his heart set on acing George Kelly off the board.”

 

“Suit yourself.”

 

“He’s right, you know,” Harvey said, his cigar failing him, and he reached out to a whore that strolled by and told her to bring him more matches. He swatted her large, meaty ass and sent her on. “You don’t steal from another yegg. You cross that line and you’re like every egg-sucking bean counter. We lose that and we ain’t nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”

 

The whore tossed Harvey some kitchen matches, and he got the cigar going again and leaned his head back, his mouth breaking into a grin, seeing that young whore up there smiling back, a blond angel in the ceiling. If he wasn’t so goddamn wise, he’d think the punch loved him. That’s why you go to Nina’s: whores who could sell it all night long.

 

“The G won’t let him keep it,” Harvey said, wresting his hand loose off the chair, cigar burning warm in his fingers. “They’ll hunt that poor son of a bitch for the rest of his days.”

 

Over a cold brick fireplace hung an oval portrait of Miss Nina herself, a black-eyed beauty who smelled like sunshine and sweets and could do things to a man that he’d never forget. Harvey recalled her well. What was that, fifteen years ago? There were boundaries then, and rules, and the law knew ’em and the crooks knew ’em, and there wasn’t this jackrabbitin’ that was going on today. Today, a criminal was treated like some kind of social outcast. A bum with a tainted mind. A greedy leper.

 

“I’m done,” Harvey said, swilling the drink. “I want my coin, and I’m throwing in the towel.”

 

“There’s a guy who can cut your face to look like anyone you please. He can burn your fingerprints off, too. How’s the G going to find a man then? You’d be someone else, and no file will say you ain’t.”

 

“A man keeps his word,” Harvey said. “I just want what’s mine. What I earned. What’s wrong with that?”

 

“I don’t like to do a whore more ’an once,” Karpis said. “You do them more ’an once and they start thinking that you like ’em and they’ll want some kind of tip.”

 

“You walk into the bank, put down the cash, and get your farm back,” Harvey said. “You take that foreclosure notice and tell them to stick it far and high up their ass.”

 

“Ain’t a girl a fine thing?” Karpis said, stumbling up onto his feet, drink sloshing in his hand. “I think I’ll have a second helping.”

 

“People today. Greed. Pussy-mad.”

 

 

 

 

 

THE NARROW RUTTED ROAD SWOOPED SOUTH SIXTEEN MILES from Decatur, the seat of Wise County, Texas, where Jones and Detective Ed Weatherford had just met with the vice president of the First National Bank. The men’s badges had opened up the file of Mr. Boss Shannon, a respected cotton farmer who always kept about five hundred dollars in his savings account and was known to pay his mortgage on time. But Jones had also asked where they might find the biggest know-it-all in Wise County, and the vice president laughed and gave the name of their former examiner. And that examiner was called, and, after some telephone back and forth, the vice president raised eyes over half-glasses and told the men the examiner never saw how Boss ever made a living on the few acres of cotton he raised.

 

Handshakes were made, and they were off in the Plymouth with official papers of the bank, Jones working for First National and Weatherford the new examiner. They’d tell Boss he needed to sign a new note, since that fella in Arkansas had barely paid off the interest.

 

“How’s them charts and graphs and such working out, Mr. Jones?”

 

“They’re coming.”

 

“But they all point to where we headed.”

 

“United Airlines has a twin-engine come out of Fort Worth that flies that route regular.”

 

“But didn’t fly during the storm.”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“You brung that map?”

 

“I brung it.”

 

“If we get into a nest of desperadoes,” Weatherford said. “Just want you to know, I’m a fair shot.”

 

Jones replied with a grunt, hot afternoon wind passing through the open car window, as a telephone pole painted white appeared just as the bank examiner said it would. Jones slowed and turned onto an even more rutted, narrow path, the kind built for horse and carriage but not a Plymouth. A dwelling came into view—a slatted-together, tin-roofed shotgun job. No paint, and a stone fireplace barely finding purchase on a back kitchen. As he braked the automobile, scattering a mess of guineas up onto the roof and into a dead mesquite, a smallish man—more like a boy—walked out onto the uneven porch wearing nothing but a pair of threadbare overalls and smoking a long cigar like Jones had seen in the mouths of city politicians.

 

A barefoot girl holding a child joined him, and they stared with vacant eyes as Jones got out on the running board and offered them a smile. “You Mr. Shannon?”

 

“I’m Armon. You lookin’ for Boss?”

 

“We are.”

 

“Back the way you come,” he said. “Down another mile. Boss is my daddy.”

 

The baby wore a sagging diaper and groped for the girl’s fattened bosom, crying for some tit, till the boy told them both to git on inside, the door slamming with a hard thwack behind them.

 

“This part of his property?” Jones asked. Weatherford crawled out of the car, grinning with his big teeth and removing his sweaty hat from his head and fanning his face. He recognized the layout of the shack, too.

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“We come from First National,” Weatherford said. “Need a signature on a note he signed.”

 

The boy looked at the two men—in cowboy hats, suits, and boots—and studied their faces in the high afternoon sun, the cicadas going wild in the distant parched trees. Guineas, growing nervous, in a low cackle. His face was a puzzle of confusion, but he didn’t say anything, just dropped his left hand inside his overalls and found his pecker to scratch.

 

“Don’t suppose you could spare some water?” Jones asked.

 

“Yes, sir,” Armon Shannon said. “We gots some water. Out back. Supposin’ you need a cup?”

 

“That’d help,” Jones said, watching the boy hop from his perch barefoot, waking an old, sleeping hound—a Walker, with long, flea-bitten ears—that loped up and around and down under the shade of the porch.

 

“How’s the corn?” Weatherford asked, giving Jones a sly grin as they walked side by side. Weatherford’s shadow had absorbed into his.

 

“Shoot,” Armon said. “Dying or dead.”

 

“You had much rain?”

 

“A week back,” Armon said. “But ’tweren’t good enough. Didn’t do nothing but bring on the worms. Them worms are greedy as hell, eat down half an ear in a night. You think they’d leave a few kernels.”

 

The boy stopped suddenly and kicked at the dusty, well-worn ground that scratching chickens had made smooth. He pointed to a boarded well with a pulley and old tin bucket. “You can use that ole dipper there.”

 

“Just you and your wife?” Weatherford asked, stepping up as Jones dropped the bucket down deep into the well, hearing it hit bottom with a solid splash.

 

“Her people live a mile away. My people, too. When you got the kinfolk so close, a man don’t want for nothin’.”

 

“And you got ’nother in the oven?” Weatherford asked.

 

“Wore a goatskin, but the dang thing musta sprung a leak.”

 

“You know you can get ’em made of rubber these days.”

 

“I know,” Armon said. “I seen ’em at the drugstore.”

 

Jones pulled the bucket back to daylight and used that old dipper to find a drink just a mite cooler than the air and tasting so deeply of rust and minerals that it soured his face. The action wasn’t lost on Weatherford, who foxed those eyebrows and wandered over to a pen with a couple fat sows and piglets wallowing in caked mud and slop, chickens scrambling and clucking at his feet, waiting for them to drop a crumb. Too dumb to find some shade.

 

“Radio said it might break a hunnard today.”

 

“That so?” Jones said, placing the dipper back on a twisted nail and wiping the rust onto his pressed pant leg.

 

“Our water ain’t cold branch, but glad we got it,” Armon said. “Say, would you boys like to share a watermelon? She’s a mite puny but just sure would wet the whistle.”

 

The men sat along the open porch, Armon Shannon cutting into the small, round fruit with a pocketknife and handing over generous slices—for the size—to the two men. Jones pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket, careful not to expose the thumb buster, and gripped the rind.

 

“You got some salt?” Weatherford asked, before sinking his big teeth into a slice, the red juice running down his chin onto his silk tie. He took aim at the old hound, who’d come back out from under the porch, and spat seeds at the dog’s head.

 

Armon skedaddled on in, fetching some salt. Door thwacking closed behind him.

 

“How’s the comparison?” Weatherford asked.

 

“What do you think?” Jones said, tasting the watermelon, and making out the tin of a barn roof reflecting a mile or so to the southwest, thinking he wanted to meet Boss Shannon before the sun went down.

 

Armon came back with a saltshaker and passed it to Weatherford.

 

The baby followed, naked as Eve, stumbling for her daddy’s leg and tugging for a slice of watermelon, pointing to her mouth like a jaybird. Shannon shook his head and cut off a miserly slice, placing it into the child’s tiny hands, the father opening the screen door for the child to wander back through. He finished off the watermelon and said he was headed ’round back to throw the rind to the hogs. As he turned the corner, Jones followed the child into the shack, hotter than the porch, catalog wallpaper of red flowers coming unglued from the walls. He heard the small feet scatter and then stop, and a rusted, tired squeak.

 

The two doors toward the front porch were shut, but Jones tried one, lightly letting it swing open with the natural lean of the house to find a baby’s high chair and a metal bed. The dead cornfield became the wavy lines in his drawing, the mineral well a well-defined X, and now the southeast room. The high chair. The shaving mirror on a travel trunk.

 

He walked farther into the shack and noted a kitchen to the northwest, and the northeast corner filled with a handmade bench and an old organ with sheet music to an old Fatty Arbuckle picture.

 

He turned back to the porch, walking soft in his boots, the screen door squaring up a big Texas sky, bright blue with heat, and not a cloud for shade. He saw Weatherford’s back and his hatless, balding crown. The detective continued to launch seeds into the dusty ground while Jones tried the other door to his right. As it opened, he found the teenage girl sitting atop a bare mattress, her gingham dress pulled astride of her fat, round bosom. Both mother and child turned to the old man, the child going back to the nourishment, but the mother had the look of a coyote, her eyes not leaving Jones until the old door, fashioned of square-headed nails and boards, closed with a final, hard click.

 

Jones returned to the porch as Armon rounded the corner, coming from the hogpen.

 

“Our thanks for the watermelon,” Jones said.

 

“I’ll tell Boss you come callin’,” Armon said, shaking the men’s hands before scratching his pecker and looking up high at the sun, as if either one could tell time, and giving an expression like he wished it would get on and set. “Gosh dang, it’s gettin’ hotter than nickel pussy.”

 

 

 

 

 

GEORGE STARTED ACTING STRANGE, STRANGER THAN NORMAL, the minute they got back to the Hotel Cleveland. He’d read off the front page of the Plain-Dealer, folded it crisply in half, and said, “Let’s get packin’, Kit.” Just like that. Didn’t explain a thing; just “get packin’ ” at four a.m., after three nightclubs, two cabarets, and one speakeasy. Both of them half in the bag, stumbling and fumbling, and George telling her to lay off when she pinched his ass in front of that sour-faced doorman as that little tan coupe was wheeled around from the garage. So she finally asked, “What gives?” and George told her about the goddamn wire story about a couple of Kid Cann’s Jews getting pinched by the G in Saint Paul.

 

“Did they say it was Urschel money?”

 

“What did I say?”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me back at the hotel?”

 

“Because that woulda started a discussion, and I ain’t in no mood for discussin’.”

 

“George, you are whiskey mean. You can drink beer all night, but the minute you touch the liquor—”

 

“Go suck an egg.”

 

They were on Highway 20, halfway to Toledo, before she spoke again, the bumpy road and headlights shooting into nothing but ribbons of road, making her sleepy.

 

“I got to use the can.”

 

“Piss in a bottle,” he said.

 

“It doesn’t function that way, in case you haven’t noticed.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“Why are you sore?”

 

“Those Jews didn’t have the money two days before they got sloppy and started to show off.”

 

“How’d they get pinched?”

 

“How else? Turned in by some lousy bank manager.”

 

“You said the Kid was smart and that he knew people, and no one would be the wiser. You said—”

 

“I know what I said, ’cause I’m the one who said it.”

 

Hessville. Woodville. Lemoyne.

 

The bastard drove straight on into the town of Assumption, this being about the time he needed to take a leak, and wheeled on into a roadside gas station and told the grease monkey to fill her up. The monkey unlatched the hood and flipped her open to check the oil, whispering and whoo-wheeing, until Kit got out and found the can herself.

 

“She sure is cherry,” the monkey said. “Her engine ain’t even broke in yet.”

 

“And my husband wants to trade her already.”

 

“Come again?”

 

“He wants to trade her.”

 

“Whatsthematta with him?”

 

“You name it, brother.”

 

They were back on Highway 20. Fayette. Pioneer. Columbia.

 

And then it was WELCOME TO INDIANA.

 

“I’m hungry.”

 

“Well, you should’ve grabbed a pig’s foot at the filling station.”

 

“You should go into radio.”

 

“Come again?”

 

“You should go into radio.”

 

“How’s that?”

 

“ ’ Cause you’re a goddamn comedian.”

 

Toast, eggs, and hash in Angola, staring out at signs south to Waterloo.

 

“Waterloo?”

 

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

 

“It’s where Napoleon got his ass kicked.”

 

She shrugged, and took some more cream in her coffee.

 

“You wouldn’t know that, ’cause you never went past the eighth grade.”

 

“Are you gonna sing me the Central High fight song?”

 

“I was big man on campus there.”

 

“Rah-rah.’ ”

 

“What’s eating you?”

 

George had a hard time getting settled into the new, smaller car, and about every other mile or so he’d have to tell her about it. Saying they should’ve never gotten rid of that big beauty and how they wouldn’t be having to go through all this mess in Chicago if she hadn’t been the one to go show up some salesman’s wife.

 

She crossed her arms across her chest.

 

“This is no fun at all.”

 

“I didn’t promise a rose-strewn path, sweetheart.”

 

“But if we got the money, you said we’d enjoy it. I ain’t had one enjoyable night since we left Saint Paul.”

 

“You were having fun last night.”

 

“Pull over.”

 

“What?”

 

“Pull over, you mug.”

 

And George slowed somewhere on Highway 20 in old Iowa, where the corn seemed to grow straighter and greener. And Kathryn held on to the Cadillac frame and stepped out on the running board, where she puked her goddamn guts out. George had a good guffaw at that, and she crossed her arms over her chest again and then leaned into the window frame, the sweet morning heat lifting the matted hair off her face, and she looked at all that goddamn corn, all those silos and cows. And, goddamn, she wanted to be back in the city again, at a proper hotel.

 

“I’m callin’ Louise.”

 

“Why don’t you just take out an ad? Or call up J. Edgar Hoover himself?”

 

“I’m callin’ Louise and have her meet us in Chicago.”

 

“You won’t call no one, not even your damn mother, till I say so.”

 

“Louise is fun. You can stay at the hotel and listen to Buck Rogers on the can. Me and Lou. We know how to have fun.”

 

“She’s a rotten whore. She’s worse than a man.”

 

“No woman is worse than a man.”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

There was that rotten, goddamn silence in the Cadillac till they turned up north and could smell Lake Michigan from the open windows and finally caught a big break of solid, civilized road. George pulled off and let the top down, and they saw they were only fifty miles from the city.

 

“I’m calling her.”

 

“Do it, and I’ll break your hand.”

 

“You wouldn’t lay a finger.”

 

George rolled up his sleeves to the elbow and plucked a Camel into his mouth. He fished into the back for his matches, but Kathryn took a long breath and reached into her little jeweled purse for a lighter. “You always lose ’em, George. I don’t think, since I’ve known you, you have ever been able to keep a book of matches.”

 

“How we met.”

 

And there it was, a lousy smile on her face. She leaned back into the big, plush seat and stared at the wide, open blue sky. “Yes, George. How we met.”

 

There were people playing in the sand and sailboats way out in the lake. And she had George stop long before they ever reached the city. She pulled off her thigh-highs and tossed them away, running into the sand and touching her feet to the water. George followed, lace-up two-tone shoes in his right hand, smoking and sullen, and found a spot to park his ass. He watched some kids playing on a rickety boat and tossed the cigarette away.

 

When she’d had enough, feeling a bit more solid and straight, the car no longer up under her and purring and driving and bumping and jostling, she came back to George and parked her ass on over next to him. She laid her head on his shoulder, always knowing that would get to the bastard.

 

“Say, George?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You never told me who fingered Urschel?”

 

“You never asked.”

 

“Goddamn. Well, I’m asking now.”

 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

 

“Well, why don’t you try me out?”

 

“What if I said it was Jarrett?”

 

“I’d say you’re a four-flusher,” she said. “Jarrett was Urschel’s buddy. If you used Jarrett, then how come you two dumb bastards took both of ’em?”

 

“Maybe, just maybe, it looked better that way.”

 

“Jarrett. Some laugh. Like I said, they should put you on the radio. If only you could sing.”

 

George picked up a handful of sand and let it drop loose and slow out of his fingers till there was nothing left but to brush his hands together and give the thumbs-up sign. “How do you think we knew when to grab Urschel? How come we knew they’d be on the back porch with the screen unlocked? You ever just figure that I might be pretty damn good?”

 

“It had crossed my mind.”

 

“You wanna screw?”

 

“Is that all you want from me?”

 

“Pretty much.”

 

“Room service?”

 

“In spades.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

20

 

Charlie Urschel dressed at dawn, ate his breakfast in the house kitchen with a negro driver, with whom he discussed baseball and New Deal jobs, and found himself alone on the sunporch with a cold cup of coffee and a dying cigar. He relit the damn thing three times before he had the plug fired up again, and he sat there and smoked, paralyzed, as the early-morning heat seemed to radiate off Berenice’s rose garden, already buzzing with flitting bees. The insects tried to fly through the metal screen, bouncing off several times before understanding the constraints and moving on. Soon Betty joined him, pulling the newspaper from under his elbow and, without a word, thumbing violently through the pages until she found something of interest, and sat like an Indian on the porch floor, laughing to herself, until she turned and said, “You must have had a hell of a time, Uncle Charles.”

 

He turned to her and studied the young girl’s face.

 

“You showed those kidnappers a thing or two.”

 

He opened his mouth but closed it, thinking of nothing.

 

“Say, Uncle Charles? What happened to Bruce?”

 

“Special Agent Colvin.”

 

“Nuts. He’s Bruce to me. He’s just a silly boy in a tie.”

 

“What are you reading? The funny pages?”

 

“Society.”

 

“What’s so funny about society?”

 

“Hey, did you see this? Carole Lombard is getting a divorce from William Powell. Says right here ‘They just decided all of a sudden they couldn’t agree.’ Well, isn’t that sad?”

 

“How’s that sad, Betty? You don’t even know them.”

 

“Are you kidding? I just saw From Hell to Heaven four times.”

 

“Nonsense.”

 

“You think you’ll be in True Detective? I bet they’ll have a picture of the house, and a map to where they let out Mr. Jarrett. That would really be something.”

 

“It would be something.”

 

“Holy smokes! Hey, the newspaper says three men were arrested in Minnesota for passing notes from the Urschel kidnapping. They call ’em ‘known hoodlums,’ with ties to the Saint Paul underworld. Listen. ‘Detectives from both Minneapolis and Saint Paul police departments began an intensive search of gang hideouts and resorts in the Twin Cities.’ Say, they are going to catch those rat bastards.”

 

“Betty Slick.”

 

“Well, they are, aren’t they?”

 

“I certainly hope so.”

 

“Why do you think gangsters from Saint Paul had to drive all this way to get you? I mean, no offense, but there’s plenty of sugar daddies up there, too.”

 

“Is that what I am?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Hand me that paper.”

 

Charlie took it and scanned the headlines, reading the first two paragraphs and getting the idea.

 

“Do you still have plans to take Agent Colvin with you to the lake dance this weekend?”

 

“He said if I go, then he has to go as protection.”

 

“Ten years is quite an age difference.”

 

“If the situation was reversed. I mean, if I were the older boy, you wouldn’t find trouble with it? Besides, I’m not in love. I’m not ready for that.”

 

“I just don’t want you to become upset.”

 

“Mother of Mercy!” she said, clutching her chest. “Is this the end of Rico?”

 

Betty stood up from the comics she was reading and studied the colored newsprint ink that had bled all over her hands. She showed her palms and laughed, wiping them on her robe, and then turned to the table and plucked the cigar from Charlie’s finger and took a couple puffs, pacing the sunporch and blowing the smoke from the corner of her mouth.

 

She chewed the cigar into her molars, and said in a tough-guy voice: “You can dish it out, but you got so you can’t take it no more.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Edward G. Robinson. The strange-looking fella in Little Caesar?”

 

“I see.”

 

Charlie looked at the girl over the top of the newspaper headline, but the sun’s reflection on the doorframe distracted him. He stared at the reflection for a good while, transfixed by that hook latched tight in its eye, holding the door firm like it always held it. A light summer wind rattled the door, but the frame held. Charlie stood and walked to it, unlatching the hook and then hooking it again, counting the paces back to his seat and rubbing his face as he crossed and recrossed his legs with nervousness.

 

“Uncle Charlie?”

 

“How did they know?”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“How in the world did they know we were playing cards?”

 

“You always play cards.”

 

“Not always.”

 

“They saw the light.”

 

“They knew where to find us. The door was unlocked. They didn’t hesitate.”

 

“Calm down. You want me to get Mother?”

 

“Call your Agent Colvin back here. Right now.”

 

 

 

 

 

“BOSS, YOU GOT TO COME OUT OF THERE SOMETIME,” HARVEY Bailey said, tapping the end of his .38 through the moon cut in the outhouse door.

 

“Go away. Go away, both you sonsabitches.”

 

“I think he wants us to go away,” Verne Miller said.

 

“I done tole the sheriff. Sheriff Faith knowed you’s coming back.”

 

“Sheriff,” Harvey said. “Faith.”

 

“You gonna strip me nekkid and put me in with ole Hoover.”

 

“Open up,” Miller said, holding the stock on the machine gun, “or I’ll spray the shitter with this Thompson.”

 

“Boss, where are George and Kathryn?” Harvey asked.

 

“Gone. Long gone, and they ain’t comin’ back.”

 

“They called you.”

 

“I ain’t answerin’ no more questions. If you boys want to unload your clip on the shitter, then I guess I’ll die with my britches on my knees.”

 

“Good Lord,” Harvey said.

 

He walked through the dust and gravel and sat on the hood of the Buick. The heat had to be hitting damn near ninety, and what he wouldn’t give to be back in the cool green of a Minnesota lake or down in that fifty-degree cavern where nude women danced with feathers barely covering their snatches. He lit a cigarette and inhaled, thinking, goddamn, he’d already sweated through two shirts that very day.

 

The old woman came out of the farmhouse just about that time, the screen door slamming hard behind her, and she walked to the men, yelling for them to leave Boss alone, didn’t they knowed he’d been having the constipation now for a third day and if they didn’t give him some peace they might just bring on the hemorrhoids.

 

Miller tucked the machine gun up onto his shoulder and shrugged. He walked around the shitter twice and then paused to look at the old woman, who had the same strong jaw and mean black eyes as her daughter.

 

“All we want to know is where they went,” Harvey said. “I know they rang you up or sent a Western Union.”

 

“They said you was coming,” Ora Shannon said, dressed in a fifty-cent housecoat and curlers. “They said you’d tried to rob ’em and would come and threaten us, and, by God, I’ll call Sheriff Faith.”

 

“Then go ahead and call ’im, woman,” Miller said, sneering. “What are you gonna tell him? That we’re the only two looking for the most-wanted gangsters in America?”

 

“Lord God in heaven.”

 

“What?” Miller asked. “You think your hands are clean?”

 

“You filthy hoodlums. Filthy, shit-ass men.”

 

“I been called many things in my time,” Harvey said, adjusting the brim of his hat over his eyes and checking the Bulova on his wrist. “But never ‘filthy, shit-ass.’ Has a nice ring.”

 

“Go make us some chicken,” Verne Miller said. “And slice up some tomatoes from your garden.”

 

“I wouldn’t open a can of dog food.”

 

“A cool pie for dessert,” Miller said.

 

“Don’t do it, Ora,” Boss said from inside the outhouse. “Don’t you do it.”

 

Verne Miller squeezed a short burst of bullets into the outhouse door. The old woman screamed. She shrieked so hard that she emptied the air from her lungs and dropped to the earth, pulling out the curlers from her hair. “God . . . God.”

 

“God don’t live in the shitter, old woman,” Miller said. He rapped on the outhouse door with his knuckles and said, “You still with us, Boss?”

 

“You sonsabitches.”

 

“Still with us,” Harvey said, flicking the cigarette nub end over end into the dust. “Praise the Lord.”

 

They all heard the motor before they saw the dust and were silent, studying the automobile making its way down the long, winding country road. The shithouse door squeaked open, and Boss Shannon peeked his balding white head out, sniffing the air like a scared animal, checking to see what all the calm was about.

 

Harvey tossed him a pack of cigarettes and then his lighter.

 

“Go make some chicken.”

 

“Is that the sheriff?” Boss Shannon asked.

 

“No,” Harvey said. “That’s ‘Mad Dog’ Underhill and Jim Clark. And those two crazy bastards are gonna watch you, just like you and Potatoes watched Mr. Urschel. Now, let’s talk about George and Kathryn again.”

 

“She left her furs,” Boss said.

 

“Boss!” the old woman said.

 

“And her jewelry,” Boss said.

 

“Boss!”

 

“Well, it’s true. I know she’s your kinfolk, but I ain’t dangling out my bits and pieces for the likes of them.”

 

The car, a big green Lincoln, rolled to a stop, and Wilbur Underhill stepped from the driver’s seat and onto the running board. The white suit and straw boater looked cartoonish on the skeletal man with the big eyes and farmer’s features.

 

“What’d they say?” Underhill asked. Jim Clark pulled himself from the passenger door and didn’t take two paces before he whipped it on out and started to relieve himself on some skittering chickens.

 

“Miss Ora is gonna make us a big fried-chicken dinner and then—” Harvey said.

 

“And then what?” Underhill said, squinting into the sun.

 

“Then we gonna have a little come-to-Jesus meeting.”

 

“Did he just come out the shitter?” Underhill asked.

 

“That he did,” Harvey Bailey said.

 

“Well, hell. Open the door and let it air out. I needed a commode since the state line.”

 

 

 

THE THREE-CAR CARAVAN MADE ITS WAY NORTH WITH DETECTIVES from Dallas and Fort Worth, three government agents besides Doc White, Joe Lackey, Colvin, and Jones. One of the boys—a kid named Bryce—was promised to be a real Oklahoma sharpshooter, and, when Jones had doubted him, he’d tossed a poker chip into the air and blasted the center from it. Jones had nodded, said he’ll do just fine, and they’d loaded up a little later—three hours later than Jones would’ve liked—and now, with the sun falling across the hills, he thought about the layout of the Shannon place and having to make their way through the gate and around the house without causing some newspapermen sympathy.

 

“You know they have dogs,” Jones said.

 

He and Doc White sat in the rear of the sedan. Detective Ed Weatherford drove.

 

“You told me.”

 

“Bulldogs,” Jones said.

 

“I never in my life saw a trick like that kid pulled today.”

 

“He shouldn’t shoot so near the hotel.”

 

“You called ’im out, Buster.”

 

“Yeah. I guess I did. You see the way he pulled out the poker chip? He’d been saving it, just for this type of occasion.”

 

“They all aren’t college boys with neatly parted hair,” White said.

 

“You’re one to talk about hair.”

 

“Hell with you.”

 

Jones watched the hills smooth down to nubs and the miles pass by so low and flat you could spot a grasshopper at a hundred feet. And he didn’t like it a bit. He checked his watch, knowing the sun would be down long before they made Paradise. The sun looked like the end of a fire poker, melting across the plains. The scrub brush and mesquite flew past the window.

 

“Colvin tell you Urschel was flying down?” White asked.

 

“No.”

 

“He wants to go with us.”

 

“Hell.”

 

“He said he’d furnish his own weapon. A 16-gauge he uses to hunt ducks.”

 

“Why’d Colvin tell him?”

 

“He thought he’d put his mind at some ease,” Doc White said, rolling a cigarette on his trouser leg and sealing it with his mouth. “Said he’d been a mite nervous since he come back.”

 

“He can’t go.”

 

“That’s what I told him you’d say.”

 

“Last time I checked, Mr. Urschel didn’t sign my checks.”

 

“You don’t like the timing.”

 

“I don’t think we’ll fire a shot.”

 

“But if we do?”

 

Jones didn’t answer, just checked his timepiece and reached for the machine gun at his feet. “Let’s hope they throw poker chips at us.”

 

“You know how to shoot that thing?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Just seems you were against using such a device.”

 

“I was thinking on that. Thinking about the Indians who didn’t pick up an iron and tried to fight with the bow and arrow.”

 

“A .45 ain’t a bow and arrow.”

 

“Might as well be.”

 

Jones pulled the gold watch from his vest again and wound the stem.

 

“Would you quit checking that thing?” White said.

 

“Stop the machine,” Jones said.