Weatherford slowed the lead automobile, and Jones crawled out, stretching his legs and putting on his hat. He waited for the other men to join him on the long ribbon of highway. He took his time as they gathered, filling his pipe bowl with cherry tobacco and finding a stick along a gully. The sun was half down on the long plain and cast a long, hot wave of shimmering light on the hard-packed earth and through the dead tree branches.

 

Jones got down on one knee in front of the men and drew a box for the Shannon place, their barn, a pigpen, and a handful of outbuildings. He noted the direction of Armon Shannon’s place and where the trouble would come from if there was trouble.

 

“And they have dogs,” he said. “I don’t know how many. But if you got to shoot ’em, shoot ’em. But I’d prefer we keep quiet and not tip our hand.”

 

“How far?” Agent Colvin asked.

 

Jones looked up at the young man and then at the setting sun. He could feel the heat on his face as he smoked and studied their situation a bit, coming back to that long canyon so many years ago. The dead horses, and Rangers exposed, with only a few boulders for cover.

 

“Boys, we’ve got about twenty-six miles to go over slow roads,” Jones said. “We might reach the place before dark, but even if we did I doubt we’d be able to finish the job before it got black. There’s only one road into it, and that’s as plain as the devil. We can’t creep up on the place because it’s so flat you can see an ant a mile off. The only way to get in there is just head straight in, and for that we need daylight. I’ve done enough shooting in my time not to want to go barging into a strange place where the odds are all on the other side. My judgment is to back off, go down to Fort Worth, and get a little sleep, then hit this place at sunrise.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

21

 

 

Saturday, August 12, 1933

 

They waited the next morning nearly ninety minutes for Sheriff Faith and the deputies he’d promised to show. Jones walked from car to car, idling on the lone highway, clicking the timepiece open and closed in a nervous fashion, while the hands crept up to six, the sun well on its way. He didn’t hesitate when he said to hell with ’em, and the caravan moved on northwest from Rhome on Texas Highway 114, passing over the railroad tracks at Boyd and motoring on through the pasture and worthless farmland till they neared the county road turnoff to the Shannon place. The morning sun shone sharp and bright into the vehicle’s windshield while Jones unhitched the circular clip of the Thompson, checking the rounds of ammunition, as Doc White loaded the two thumb busters he wore from a belt rig, smoking down the last of a hand-rolled cigarette and spying the farmhouse growing in the distance.

 

Agent Colvin drove the automobile this morning, some kind of Ford, or perhaps a Chevrolet, and beside him in the passenger seat—much to Gus T. Jones’s disliking—was Mr. Charles Urschel, holding a handsome duck-hunting shotgun with a French walnut stock, his pockets loaded down with more buckshot. The man had just had a fresh haircut, the back hairline shaved up high and tight above his earlobes, and you could see the white, untanned skin for a good inch on his thick neck, talcum powder on the collar. Jones shook his head. Hell, what was a man to do?

 

He’d been cabled at the Blackstone Hotel, where they domiciled the night before, direct from Hoover himself, that Urschel was to accompany the raiding party. Hoover said to keep him back from the action, if there were action, as a spectator, requested special by the governor of Oklahoma.

 

“This is gonna be like kicking over a hornet’s nest, Mr. Urschel,” Jones said. “And there’s no telling what kind of desperadoes will be shooting their way out. So I’d ask that you stay back near the vehicles. Behind them, to be more exact.”

 

Urschel said nothing, just watched the windshield like it was a moving picture, while the automobile wheeled past a crooked mailbox tacked to a cedar post, an open cattle gate, and zipped down a potholed road, kicking up big, thick balloons of dust and grit. The back window dulled with a brown haze so thick that Jones couldn’t see the men following.

 

“Get within a quarter mile of that front porch, Mr. Colvin,” Jones said. “Don’t even draw your weapon unless you hear a shot.”

 

The eastern skyline lit up hard and clear blue, and soft, rounded shadows fell from the columned, one-story house and lay down long across the rows of dead corn and live beans, trailing and crooking up strings tied to a dozen or so poles. Jones felt he’d stepped back a bit, with a cluttered heap of old wagons, a rusted mule plow, scythes and gears, and the spinning windmill, creaking and turning as slow as the second hand of a watch.

 

Colvin stopped, and killed the engine. Men piled out of cars, careful to close the doors with a light touch. With shotguns, pistols, and three machine guns, the detectives and federal agents started down Boss Shannon’s gully-washed drive, shadows retreating at their feet.

 

That’s when they heard the dog’s breath and feet, and saw the little brown shape bound—almost in midair—for the men.

 

 

 

HARVEY BAILEY COULDN’T FALL ASLEEP EARLIER THAT NIGHT. Ma Shannon had cooked up four whole chickens, along with some mashed potatoes and slices of tomato. She’d even made a lemon icebox pie—although they’d been so famished the pie was still warm to the touch, but nice with a side of coffee and poor cigars on the front porch. Underhill and Clark had decided to sleep at Armon’s shack, where he kept a stack of French naturalist magazines, and Miller slept on the Shannons’ couch, smoking and listening to an orchestra from a top hotel in Dallas. Harvey found himself on the porch, lying on a cot and staring across the pasture, sweating like a son of a bitch and wishing they’d go ahead and a get some kind of word on George so he could take a decent shower and kick the dust off his shoes and this godforsaken shithole.

 

But the stars were electric. Being in the city, he’d forgotten just how many there were, and on a hot summer night, not a cloud in the sky, it was just the kind of blackness up there that led a man to contemplate things, where he was headed, with a few rough directions and some half-formed ideas.

 

And so he took the cot off the porch and made his way behind the Shannon home, far from the artificial light that spilled from a kitchen window, everyone alone and asleep, the din of the radio-signal static—already signed off for the night—sounding like an ocean’s surf.

 

He found a spot of even ground and used both hands to hoist his bad leg up onto the cot. He lay there, staring skyward, in nothing but a pair of BVDs and black socks, and he lifted a cigarette from his pack of Chesterfields, thinking to himself that he’d once believed in the order of man and church and family and now the only order making any sense was chaos. He wondered if he could go back to the farm with his wife and boy and get back behind a mule, hang up the keys to the big cars and put the fancy suits back on the hangers, to collect dust on the shoulders. You just stand there before those teller’s cages and feel your heart up in your throat, hand on the pistol, and, by damn, you feel like God.

 

Could you get that from planting a turnip? Were you any less a man on the other side of a banker’s pen?

 

Harvey smoked two cigarettes. He wished for a drink, but he drifted off for a few hours without it. At first he thought it was the morning light that had woken him, but, as he turned on one elbow, he heard the automobiles from way off, knowing this was a one-way road to the Shannon place. He reached for the .38 under his pillow, hoping to see a sixteen-cylinder midnight blue Cadillac, as he stood and almost sleepwalked in the early sunlight across stones and pebbles, watching three long black cars appear and, far off, men crawling from vehicles, men in cowboy hats with guns. And the sight of them startled him, sent him scrambling back and jumping onto the porch, pain shooting from his heel up through his calf, as he woke Verne Miller, who clutched his Thompson on the old couch like a spent lover, and told him to get his crazy ass up because the G had arrived and was about to come a-calling.

 

Miller calmly got up and tucked his pant legs into his boots. He sat on the couch, checking the weapon’s load, and placed a fresh cigarette in the corner of his mouth. With those cool blue eyes trained on Harvey Bailey, he said: “Wake the old man and woman. Go fetch Wilbur and Jim and Potatoes. And let the dogs out. Give those G-men a nice welcome.”

 

 

 

 

 

THEY WEREN’T LIKE ANY BULLDOGS JONES HAD EVER SEEN, brown mongrels with jaw muscles as tight as walnuts, bounding—almost flying—in solid muscular leaps across the dusty ground and launching themselves at Bruce Colvin. He turned his back, careful not to fire and wake the house, but the dog caught a solid bit of his arm and chewed and tore, not letting go. Colvin spun wild and tried to knock the hound away.

 

Doc White leveled a bowie knife into the mongrel’s back, and it yipped and fell away, skittering far off, yelping and spinning crooked, as if chasing its tail, away and wide in endless loops into the dead cornfield.

 

The other dog followed and grabbed hold of Gus Jones’s boot, ripping and thrashing. But Jones didn’t feel a thing through the thick leather as he kicked the damn beast ten feet, the animal giving a good cry before darting after the other.

 

Colvin ripped the material of his suit coat and bound the bloody upper arm, pulling a loose tooth from his torn flesh and gritting his own teeth, trying like hell not to flinch in front of the older men.

 

“Thanks,” Colvin said.

 

White wiped the blade on his pant leg and slid it into the scabbard.

 

“Right outta hell,” Doc said.

 

 

 

 

 

CHARLIE FOLLOWED THE MEN, WHO WERE SPREADING OUT FROM the gravel road with weapons hanging from their hands, up and over a small hill, and approaching the farmhouse from the front. There were fourteen in all, including himself, and six of them took a wide loop around the house to cover the back of the property near the barn. Guineas scattered high up and into an old oak and stared down with their small eyes, calling out in a high yell that sounded like a woman’s screams. The old agent, Jones, hadn’t said any more to him, even as Charlie’d crawled out of the automobile with a Browning he’d only fired once and tagged along with the agents in the high, dead grass. The old man using hand signals to send men around to side windows as he mounted the steps at first light and knocked on the door with all the confidence of a Fuller Brush salesman.

 

He pulled back the screen door, Charlie glancing off at a sprinting rooster, before hearing the six rifle shots from a side window, sending the old man diving from the stairs and scrambling into a gully, where five of them had found lousy cover to return fire, until the whole house was pocked with bullet holes.

 

“I guess they’re awake,” Jones said. “Kinda hopin’ I could wake ’em gentle.”

 

The old man took refuge next to Charlie and aimed his machine gun at the door, sighting for any movement in the windows. Three more rifle reports—BLAM, BLAM, BLAM—from a window. The men ducked, and Jones returned with a long rat-a-tat-tat from the Thompson, elegantly raking the house siding. He reached into his coat pocket for another loaded round and snicked it into the frame. The windows had all been busted out, the doorframe hung loose and crooked from a single hinge.

 

The guineas and chickens grew quiet. That lone black rooster sprinted back and forth across the fine dirt, too foolish to find cover.

 

And then there was a hard blast from the rifle and half a dozen shots from a cracking pistol. Charlie could just make out the shape of the man from the broken window, as he’d up and disappear, up and disappear, like a metal silhouette from a Midway gallery.

 

Charlie took careful aim, waiting for the son of a bitch to pop his head up just one more time. But as he sighted down the barrel he felt the weight of a hand pressing the gun down, and he turned to see Gus Jones, hard light refracting off his glasses, making him appear goddamn blind, or egg-eyed like Little Orphan Annie.

 

“They’re coming out,” Jones said. “Hold it.”

 

Charlie didn’t see a thing. In the silence, a hawk circled the Shannon property, taking in all the foolishness from a great height. For some reason, Charlie wanted to blow that son of a bitch out of the sky, too.

 

 

 

 

 

HARVEY KICKED WILBUR UNDERHILL OUT OF BED WITH THE heel of his shoe, tossed him his pants and machine gun, and told him to load up. Jim Clark was already on Armon’s porch, grabbing ammunition for two .45 automatics and packing as many bullets as he could hold in his pants, slipping into his felt hat, even though he only sported an undershirt, grinning for the gift of a morning gunfight. They’d loaded into Harvey’s Buick, Armon providing useless directions down the one-way road, and nearly made it to old Boss Shannon’s barn before the law opened up on them, three quick bullet holes appearing out of nowhere, random and thorough, through the windshield, cracking it as cold as ice and sending Harvey veering, fishtailing the Buick, but then mashing the goddamn accelerator and heading straight for the mouth of the barn. Chickens fell under tires, feathers flying up into the air, as he braked near the old slatted barn, crisscrossed with shafts of fine light, Underhill and Clark already out of the machine and scampering high up into the hot hayloft to find a good vantage point to do some shooting.

 

Harvey made his way into a stall with a half door and saw three men in cowboy hats, holding rifles, take aim from atop black sedans.

 

“Can I get some help?” Harvey yelled up to the loft.

 

Underhill answered with a violent spew from the Thompson that shook the entire government sedan, flattening tires, busting out windows, and leaving it pockmarked and sagging, the exclamation of a busted radiator spewing steam. In the silence that followed, government men sprinted from behind the automobile and headed for the front of the farmhouse, right before two quick pistol shots from Jim Clark cut down one of them at the knees, and a stream of hard chatter from “Mad Dog” Underhill’s reloaded drum kicked up the dust and grit in a trailing poof right up to the fine shoes of another federal agent, while yet another agent took a flying leap right up and over the chest-high fence of a hogpen.

 

One of the men looked to be dead.

 

Another crawled up and under the axles of Boss Shannon’s farm truck.

 

The shots continued from the front of the old, single-story farmhouse—rifles, Thompsons, and some pistols, in a small, merry band—Harvey knowing Miller could use some help, and maybe, just maybe, they could get off some shots to clear a way out.

 

Harvey yelled for Underhill to give cover, as he hurried the best he could on that bum leg across the open chicken ground and rapped on the back door, yelling for the Shannons to open the goddamn door. He turned to see goddamn Armon right behind him, calling out for his pa.

 

Boss opened up, wild-eyed and sweating, crying that Harvey Bailey had brought the law to his homestead, and Harvey told the old man to put a sock in it. It was George and Kathryn that had landed these bastards on his land.

 

“I ain’t goin’ down without a fight,” Boss said. “You can’t just come on a man’s property and start a-shootin’.”

 

“Where’s Verne?”

 

“He got hit.”

 

Harvey followed a crooked trail of blood on the slatted wooden floor into a bedroom, where Miller sat with his butt against a metal bed, wrapping his shoulder with his shirt and gritting his teeth as he tied it up tight. He still held on to the machine gun, his naked upper body covered in blood and sweat, and when he moved to a busted-out window for a look-see, it was on his tail, slow and deliberate, getting a good view of the G-men, hiding like cowards behind a row of vehicles they’d moved down from the main road.

 

“You all right?”

 

“Peachy,” Verne Miller said, a slight tic in his right eye.

 

“Wilbur cleared out three of them,” Harvey said. “How many out front?”

 

“Eight. Maybe ten.”

 

“Peachy.”

 

“The Buick still out back?” Miller asked.

 

“Gassed up,” he said. “Keys in it.”

 

“We can’t make it down the road. It’s cut off.”

 

“We can make it,” Harvey said.

 

Miller shook his head. “What about them?”

 

“Who cares? Long as we get the boys.”

 

“Young girl’s pregnant.”

 

“Where is she?”

 

“Totin’ a pistol. She grabbed it out of my hand.”

 

“And Ma?”

 

“She’s shooting, too.”

 

“Hell of a family,” Harvey Bailey said. “Always wondered where Kathryn got her set of balls.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

22

 

Nearly an hour passed, and no one had fired a shot. Colvin ran down through the gully and found Jones conferring with Doc White and Joe Lackey about setting fire to the barn, while Charlie Urschel eyed down the twin barrels of his shotgun, just waiting for one of those chickens to stick its head out. Jones gave the order to toss some kerosene lanterns into the hayloft and told Colvin to shoot down every last bastard who came running from that barn. They had one man dead, two men in some rough shape, one in a pig trough and another bleeding under a tractor. Jones studied the agent’s face to make sure he understood all this but only saw the neatly parted hair and eager eyes of that young agent from back at Union Station in Kansas City. “Keep your head down. You hear me, son?”

 

Jones exchanged glances with Lackey.

 

Colvin nodded, and scurried back down in the gully to the gauntlet of bullet-filled cars blocking the road from around back of the house. Urschel remained, sighting that damn shotgun, arms starting to tremble from fatigue.

 

There was the sound of glass breaking, and a few minutes later they smelled and saw the smoke drifting, lazy and slow, in the hot, airless day. The gunshots started again, the rat-a-tat-tatting of the Thompson, the rapid fire of automatics. Young men yelled and returned fire. Jones told a couple detectives from Dallas to keep their eyes trained on the front porch and windows, and he ran for the barn with Detective Ed Weatherford in tow.

 

Bullets zinged past Jones, and he ducked behind the shithouse, the smell something awful, and Weatherford followed, falling down at his boots.

 

The lanky detective found his feet, brushing off his pants and grinning, having a hell of a time, as he pointed the barrel of his pistol around the old outhouse and squeezed off some shots.

 

“You see ’em?”

 

“I hear ’em,” Weatherford said. “You think it’s Kelly?”

 

“It ain’t Greta Garbo.”

 

“They got a Thompson.”

 

“So do I.”

 

“He ain’t no expert,” Weatherford said. “That’s just a lie.”

 

“You wanna test that theory?”

 

Weatherford grinned. “You first.”

 

 

 

 

 

HARVEY FRIED SOME EGGS IN A BLACK SKILLET WHILE VERNE Miller counted out the rest of the ammunition on the kitchen table, divvying it all out in old coffee cans. Ma Shannon trained a shotgun out the salon window, already brought to tears over her shot-up china and brand-new RCA, while Potatoes held a .22 rifle, watching the rear of the house and the rolling black smoke coming from their barn. Boss was off somewhere, trading duties of watching the child and taking up the gun. The baby girl had run wild through the house, screaming and crying, while bullets had zipped past her in what a superstitious man might call a miracle. Somewhere in the house, he heard old Boss singing a lullaby.

 

“Y’all got any bacon?” Harvey asked.

 

“In the icebox,” Potatoes said.

 

“I looked in the icebox.”

 

“I guess I was thinkin’ of my icebox.”

 

“You think you could run back to the house and fetch me up a pound?”

 

“No, sir,” Potatoes said. “Not right now. I just seen them two bank examiners run behind the shitter. What in the world are they doin’ here?”

 

“Armon, were you dropped on your head as a youngster?” Verne Miller asked, five guns ready to go. He placed a .45 in his belt and carried the Thompson to the window beside the boy.

 

“Now, that’s a hell of a question, Verne,” Harvey said, cracking an egg into the hot skillet. He figured since they were going to be in here a while, there was no sense in starving.

 

“This is the greatest day of my life, fellas,” Armon said. “I sure am glad my family’s here to see it.”

 

Ma Shannon turned from the busted window and spit some snuff on the floor.

 

“You need to get them out of here,” Miller said.

 

“How come?”

 

“How come?” Miller asked, shaking his head.

 

Old Boss Shannon walked into the kitchen, rocking the baby girl in his arms, while the child’s teenage mother thumbed bullets into her rifle and took careful aim on the law outside.

 

“Can you give us cover?” Harvey asked the boy.

 

“I’ll die tryin’.”

 

“Potatoes?”

 

“Yes, sir?”

 

“I wish you’d quit saying things like that.”

 

 

 

 

 

THE SMOKE WAS SOMETHING TERRIBLE, AND JONES BURIED HIS face into his forearm as big clouds of it would scatter on past, bringing tears to his eyes, the heat tremendous. He held the Thompson’s grip in his right hand and peered out again at the big barn’s mouth, the flames licking up high in the loft, tearing at the walls and boiling the paint, black smoke pouring out of stalls as the timber beams started to crack and fall. A milk cow and two swaybacked horses trotted out and off into a field with heavy-hoofing steps while two black shadows appeared in the barn’s mouth, loose hay sparking electricity at their feet. The men held hats across their faces and waved their arms to dispel the coils of black smoke coming through every crack in the barn.

 

A big crash inside the barn and out rushed a pug-nosed thug in an undershirt, firing off .45s in each hand and running for a Buick that’d been parked sideways out behind the Shannon place. His face was soot black like a minstrel-show player, and his eyes were like eggs, wide with meanness and fear.

 

The son of a bitch didn’t get five feet before the boys opened fire on him, giving him a short pause, him spinning in a comical dance and then falling face-first into a pile of cow shit. He tried to rise up, lifting his head, but his face fell right back.

 

The second man appeared high in the loft, raking his Thompson back over the automobile blockade and trying to grab hold of a rope pulley. He was bone thin and wore a rumpled suit, scurrying down the rope while holding down the trigger, twirling halfway to the ground before Jones had a hell of a clear shot at the bastard, taking quick aim with a short burst of the machine gun. Maybe three bullets wasted before the man fell and rolled, foot caught up in the ropes, dangling upside down like a broken puppet.

 

He sprayed the Thompson a final time before it gave out and fell to the ground.

 

From where Jones stood, he could hear the man crying for the Lord Jesus.

 

“Funny how they always get religion,” Ed Weatherford said.

 

“Come on.”

 

Jones walked from behind the shitter, up far and around the open land between the house and the barn, while three men now covered the rear of the property. He kicked over the portly man in the undershirt. His face was covered in shit, but a quick eye on his mug told Jones they’d just brought down Jim Clark, escapee from Lansing back in May. And if logic followed . . . He turned and walked a few paces to the man hanging by a single leg and swinging back and forth. Yep, just who he thought.

 

“Hey, Mad Dog.”

 

“Go fuck yourself.”

 

Jones reached into his pocket and tore into the rope with a folding knife, dropping the bastard in a fallen heap, where he rolled and moaned, his teeth bright pink and red in a frozen smile at his last breath.

 

 

 

 

 

HARVEY HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD LIKE THE way old Ma Shannon handled a Winchester. She’d spit some snuff and take aim. She’d squeeze off a shot and lever out the round, plugging in a fresh bullet and spitting in a steady rhythm. She turned to Harvey, who watched her in amazement, and said, “Don’t just stand there. Pick up a weapon, you fool.”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

Harvey grabbed a pistol, an old .38, and stuffed a handful of bullets into his pant pocket. Verne had changed into a fresh shirt he’d taken from Boss, the material stretched tight against his chest, with the sleeves riding halfway up his muscular forearms.

 

He put down the skillet of eggs and thanked Harvey.

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

“If the boy covers us, you think that old Buick will ride it out?”

 

“You’d rather take a tractor or a cow?”

 

“I don’t care for jail, Harv.”

 

“Jail isn’t my biggest concern.”

 

“Potatoes, you see those fellas behind the barn?” Harvey asked. “I want you to keep firing at them till we get the car turned around. Can you do that?”

 

Potatoes nodded.

 

“Good boy.”

 

“You ain’t gonna leave us, are you?” Boss Shannon said. “You cowards.”

 

“They’re goin’ for help,” Potatoes said.

 

“My foot,” Boss said. “They’re hightailin’ it out. You boys just try, and them cops will shoot your insides out!”

 

“I’m not dying in this place,” Harvey said.

 

“That’s what a man does.”

 

“Do I look like Davy Crockett?”

 

Verne Miller clutched the Thompson and held the handle to the back door. He looked to Harvey Bailey and waited a beat before snatching it open and running for the shot-up Buick, the ground under them seeming to disappear.

 

 

 

 

 

THE BUICK DIDN’T MAKE IT A HUNDRED FEET BEFORE THAT sharpshooting kid from the Oklahoma field office blew out two tires and the rear windshield. The machine came to a crashing stop into a heap of old wagons and mule plows, and Jones watched as two men climbed out a side door and went running into the rows of dead corn. Jones looked to Doc White and Weatherford, and they followed, Agent Colvin and the rest of the men turning to the house, where an old man with white hair and in overalls emerged from the front door, hollering, “Don’t shoot,” while carrying a small child. “Don’t shoot, we ain’t part of them.”

 

Jones was swallowed into the rows of corn, sunlight bleeding through the brown stalks, seeing the shadow of Doc White moving by his side. Without a word, Joe Lackey had taken a couple detectives with him to run the perimeter, where the gangsters would be flushed out. But soon there was another shadow to Jones’s left, and the image startled him for a moment before he realized the silent, hulking shape was Mr. Urschel.

 

The man was talking to himself, in such a low voice that Jones could not hear—or understand—what he was saying. But Jones suddenly became aware that Mr. Urschel had gone crazier than a shithouse rat.

 

The rows had been irrigated at one time, but now the earth was hard as stone, gullies dug crooked and without care, the parched cornstalks brushing against each other lighter than paper and dwarfing the noise from the farmhouse and burning barn. The air smelled acrid and burnt, more so in the heat of the day, cicadas gone wild in the trees, Jones feeling the sweat soaking his shirt and his hatband. He had to stop to clean his glasses, and, when he would stop, so would Urschel, almost in shadow of the old agent, and then they would move on deeper into the corn.

 

There was gunfire. Close.

 

And then more gunfire, men yelling.

 

Jones ran, trying to find his way out of the corn, but only finding more and more, turning to see he was alone now, Urschel and White gone. And now more gunfire came within the cornfield, and he turned and listened, but the shots hadn’t come from one direction but from all around him. He heard feet, the breaking of stalks, and Jones ran in that direction, suddenly finding himself out of the field and running alongside of it, seeing a loose group of men running for the main road, yelling and pointing, and Jones knew that someone had gotten away.

 

Another shot from the field, and Jones was back inside now, back in the heat and stalks and loose, lazily planted rows, catching his breath and calling for Doc, finding his knees with his hands and mopping his face and glasses again.

 

He saw a form at his feet.

 

“Doc?”

 

When he looked through the lenses, he stared straight into the eyes of Detective Ed Weatherford, who lay on his back, staring crazy-eyed and wide-mouthed up at the sun, as if paralyzed by its power. In death, Weatherford still looked as if he was waiting for the perfect moment to speak.

 

Jones held the Thompson and listened. He spotted some broken stalks—broken down fresh, where the insides still showed a bit of green—and he followed the trail, a wild zigzagging, deep into the heart of the planting, to where he saw the broad, sweating back and freshly cut hair of Charles F. Urschel, leveling his 16-gauge on a man who had fallen to the ground but held himself upright on his elbows with a broad smile.

 

Jones walked up behind him.

 

“I have him, Mr. Urschel.”

 

The man didn’t answer, only breathed hard out his nose, sweat rolling down from his hair and down into his eyes, making him squint with the sting of the salt.

 

“I have him.”

 

“No. No, it’s not.”

 

“Sir?”

 

Urschel lowered the gun and rubbed out the salt with his fists. “That’s not one of ’em. Who are you?”

 

The man, now flat on his back, lifted his hands in a small truce, laughing a little bit. The nervous laugh of a man trying to get a hold of the situation.

 

“Why, Mr. Urschel, that there is Harvey Bailey,” Jones said. “The gentleman bank robber.”

 

“Jones,” Bailey said. “Been a while.”

 

Jones took off his Stetson and fanned his face. He reached down with a right hand and hoisted Harvey Bailey from the hard earth. “Harvey, if a head bobs up anywhere around here, or another shot is fired, I promise I’ll cut you in two with this machine gun.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

23

 

 

Wednesday, August 16, 1933

 

George was no fun at all. Here he was in the stylish Hotel Fort Des Moines—a suite, no less—with a pile of dough, a new Chevrolet with fresh plates, and two of the hottest babes outside a Hollywood lot, and still he complained about being bored outta his skull. Kathryn had picked up her gal pal Louise at the train station that morning, her carrying a hatbox in one arm and Ching-A-Wee in the other, and they’d spent the day shopping and getting their hair and nails done before coming back to see old sad-sack George, lying on the big king-size bed in his boxer shorts, holding an unlit cigar in his teeth and reading the funny papers, probably Blondie, because George sure thought Dagwood was a real hoot, making those tall sandwiches and singing in the bathtub. But he’d been reading the damn thing since they came back and not once had he even cracked a smile.

 

So what did the good wife do? She and Louise put on a little fashion show for him. Kathryn changed into a very stylish red dress with a shoulder cape, gauntlet cuffs, and a straight-as-straight skirt. Ching-A-Wee sat like a prince at George’s feet, yapping and barking with approval and all, because that royal dog had class.

 

George just grumbled and asked how much dough they’d dropped.

 

Louise picked out this queer green number to model, with wide, puffy sleeves and a big fat bow at the neck. She didn’t bother with the hat, only fussed over her shoes—soft, velvety slippers—turning in time to Duke Ellington on the radio.

 

George turned back to the funnies, cigar loose and wet, and Ching-A-Wee got pushed off the bed for licking his bare toes.

 

With their red lips and red nails, Kathryn and Louise were quite a matching pair, just like they’d always been in Fort Worth, ready for a night out after working a double shift at the Bon-Ton barbershop, filing nails and telling grizzled oilmen they were handsome.

 

George didn’t bother to look up from the top fold of the paper when prodded for the next outfits, only grunted again, scratching himself and reaching to the nightstand by the big old bed to put down the cigar and take a pull of bourbon straight from the bottle, a loaded .38 nearby.

 

“You gonna light that thing or just play with it?” Kathryn asked.

 

“Yeah, Georgie,” Louise said. “Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy.”

 

George folded the paper and began to fool with that new lighter he’d bought in Saint Paul, flicking it on and off, and watching the flame with the bored interest of a drunk.

 

“What kinda luck,” Louise said. “Your grandmother dying and leaving you all this dough.”

 

“Yeah,” George said, staring over her shoulder and out the window. “Lucky me.”

 

“How’s the Bon-Ton?” George asked, not because he cared but because he felt like he had to say something.

 

And that was pretty damn foolish, because Louise was a hell of a looker. Big brown eyes and full lips, long muscular legs like a dancer. Some folks thought she had kind of a square jaw like a man and were taken aback by the way she talked rough and drank heavy. But that’s what made Louise Louise. She was a hell of a gal. If you wanted fun, you rang up Louise.

 

“Tips aren’t bad,” Louise said. “Meet some nice fellas.”

 

“Since when do you like men?”

 

“George!” Kathryn yelled from across the suite.

 

“And now it’s a secret?”

 

Louise caught George’s eye and smiled. George grinned at her.

 

And so it was like that, a little loosening of that tension that always existed between them. Ching-A-Wee wandered over to the piles of clothes and made a little nest in the silk and lace and turned around three times before lying down.

 

They’d only just checked into the hotel, getting in from Chicago the night before, and already the whole suite was a goddamn mess. Open champagne bottles and empty bottles of gin and bourbon. Two half-eaten plates of T-bones, fat and gristle congealing into purple and gray, making the poor doggie about go nuts, and untouched desserts they’d ordered at four in the morning, mainly just because you could order such a thing at four in the morning at the Hotel Fort Des Moines if you were staying in the presidential suite. There were newspapers from five different cities, movie-star magazines, and horse-racing tip sheets.

 

George didn’t move from the bed. He only belched and exchanged the funnies for a new copy of True Detective that Kathryn had picked up for him at the cigarette stand in the lobby. She knew he was hoping to see some pictures of the Urschel job inside, but instead the issue featured “How the Sensational Boettcher Kidnapping Was Solved.” She thought George was studying up on how the G nailed the bastards, but, after several minutes of her and Louise sorting through who had bought what, George looked up from the magazine, with its illustration of a startled man on the cover with a gun in his face, and said, “Do you really think you can learn to play the piano in an hour if I order this course?”

 

“Son of a bitch,” Kathryn said, and tossed her new, spiffy hat onto the carpet.

 

“Says right here it’s a money-back guarantee.”

 

“Just like the course you bought on how to hypnotize folks.”

 

“Worked on Potatoes.”

 

“That’s a true test.”

 

George started to laugh and thumped the page with his fingers. “This company also sells rings that say ‘Kiss Me, I’m Still Conscious.’ Maybe I should order a couple for you gals.”

 

“Yeah, George,” Kathryn said, studying some new lines across her face in the mirror. “That’d be a hoot.”

 

She saw Louise standing behind her, holding up the pair of black silk robes they’d bought in both fists, the ones they both adored with the white fur trim. Louise had the devil’s grin on her big lips, and Kathryn smiled back, knowing just what the girl planned. And they both scurried off like a couple schoolgirls needing a smoke into that huge tiled bathroom, big enough to park a Cadillac, and they kicked off their clothes down to their silk slips, cocking their legs and tugging on thigh-high stockings and high-heeled shoes with cute little bows. Louise was less curvy than Kathryn, with a flat chest and no hips of note, but she had an athletic look, reminding Kathryn a lot of Babe Didrikson only with a much better face.

 

Kathryn stood shoulder to shoulder with Louise, each of them in a black satin robe, sash untied, showing off their slips—Kathryn’s black and Louise’s white—and then the long, tight stretch of black stockings. Kathryn jutted out her hip bone and sank a hand right onto that handle.

 

Louise grinned at her in the reflection.

 

“What are you two gonna do?” she asked.

 

Kathryn dabbed on a little more lipstick and then leaned into the mirror and fingered down the makeup across her left eye. “Whatta you mean?”

 

“Just hop from hotel to hotel?” Louise asked. “Dance till the money runs out?”

 

“George doesn’t dance.”

 

“Come off it, sister.”

 

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

 

“Looks like Georgie boy needs some action.”

 

“Just like a kid,” she said. “C’mon, let’s get on with it.”

 

Kathryn went into the room first, George still studying True Detective—the back pages, mind you—as she whisked shut the long draperies to block out the hard afternoon light and crawled up onto his right flank, grasping the magazine and throwing it with a flutter to the floor. Lousie wasn’t far behind, hopping onto the bed with a giggle and crawling up close on George’s other side.

 

George’s mouth opened, and the wet cigar fell to his chest. “Dang it.”

 

Louise lay on her back, the robe opening up wide, and crooked her right leg so she could dangle the other off her knee, kicking the high heel back and forth. “Nice digs,” she said, looking up at the gilded fixture over the bed. “Real nice.”

 

“Whatta you think?” Kathryn asked, nuzzling close.

 

“It’s a little dark,” George said.

 

“You said you’re getting bored.”

 

“I am bored,” George said.

 

Kathryn leaned into him and kissed him full on the mouth. He didn’t resist, not like George Kelly ever resisted.

 

“Why don’t you tell your gal pal to take a walk?”

 

Kathryn gripped his throat with her strong, long fingers and pressed him down to his back, straddling his chest. Louise saddled up to her, walking on her knees, and looked down at George, shaking her head with disappointment.

 

“What are we gonna do with him?” Louise asked.

 

“Make him talk,” Kathryn said. “See if he’s a rat.”

 

“You two broads are crazy,” George said. “Damn, it’s dark.”

 

“Shut up, George,” Kathryn said, slapping him across the mug. “Do we need to draw you a diagram?”

 

 

 

 

 

FEDERAL AGENTS REPLACED THE WINDOWS AND FILLED THE bullet holes in the old Shannon place the best they could. And for three days they sat on the farmhouse, waiting for George and Kathryn Kelly to drive on back to the homestead and greet the old folks with their newfound loot. But going into late afternoon that Wednesday, Jones knew it wasn’t going to happen. Kelly was too smart for that—now thinking of him as just Kelly, trying to figure out the man’s mind-set and cunning. A sharp criminal who’d worked with Verne Miller and Bailey.

 

Jones walked back around the house and followed a rutted path to that big garage Kelly had constructed, his own personal rabbit hole. Inside they’d found all manner of weaponry and bullets, car parts, motor oil, and tins of gasoline. Buried deep in back, agents had also found boxes and boxes of Mrs. Kelly’s private things. Fox, mink, rabbit, and monkey coats. Perhaps fifty gowns, and an entire box bulging with the lady’s unmentionables—garters, slips, brassieres, and the like—smelling of the sweet lavender of the sachet packed within.

 

Jones knew that it was a solid plan to study on those you were hunting. From the garage constructed earlier that spring—learning details of the construction from old Boss—he knew that Kelly was an organized man, a man of detail and planning. He’d taken special care of this little rabbit hole, a place to patch up and reload if the heat had come down. But now the son of a bitch was out and on the open road to God knows where.

 

If the Shannons knew, they sure weren’t telling. For two days Jones had sat with them in the county jail, asking questions till they’d fall out of their chairs from lack of sleep, praying to the Lord God for a sip of water. He hadn’t talked to that kid Armon, aka Potatoes, for five minutes before the kid pissed his overalls.

 

Doc White walked through the mouth of the old garage, which was growing hot and stale with the heat and buckets of dirty oil.

 

“I didn’t know any woman could own so many pairs of drawers,” White said. “She could pick out a fresh pair for the rest of her life without ever taking to scrubbing.”

 

He held in his hands a telegram he passed on to Jones. He read it.

 

“Hotel Cleveland?”

 

“They checked in under the name of the Shannons,” White said.

 

“This was five days back.”

 

“Still a trail, Buster.”

 

Jones closed up the box he’d been searching through and walked out into the fading daylight with White. “Let’s head back to Dallas. I’d like a little time with Bailey for Hoover’s goddamn paperwork, but we won’t get a word. Bailey’s a hard ole nut.”

 

“That son of a bitch got caught at Kelly’s hideout while taking shots at us,” White said. “I figure a little cooperation is in order.”

 

“Hell, I know Bailey. I’ve known the bastard for about as long as I’ve known you. He’ll say he stopped at the farm to buy some ears of corn.”

 

“I say we go to Cleveland.”

 

“They’re not in Cleveland,” Jones said.

 

“We can’t keep the news of the raid blacked out forever. The story’s gonna break.”

 

“Once the Kellys get word, they’ll go underground,” Jones said. “It could take months to flush ’em.”

 

Doc looked back at the barn and shook his head, “And all we got is a fistful of panties.”

 

“You reckon she’ll come back for ’em?”

 

“The drawers?”

 

“The Shannons.”

 

“Everybody loves their momma,” White said.

 

Jones mopped his face and eyes in the fading sunlight and nodded. “Keep the boys stationed here, let’s see what turns up. C’mon, let’s go talk to Harv.”

 

 

 

 

 

HARVEY BAILEY KNEW FROM THE START THAT HE WAS GONNA get along just fine with the head jailer, Deputy Tom Manion. A tall, gangly sort, with a contented fat belly and a pleasant weathered laugh. A gentleman, a genuine Spanish War hero, and, the way Harvey saw it, a fella with a price tag hanging from his nose. On Harvey’s third night in the Dallas County Jail, Manion had grown comfortable enough with him to share a cup of coffee and a couple of cheap cigars, talking on the rotten state of things in the world, and how Manion figured he could do a lot better than the current sheriff, who didn’t know one end of a gun from another, an elected politico with no heart.

 

Harvey Bailey leaned into the bunk and studied the end of his cigar. “That’s the way of the world. The men who do the real work are never in charge.”

 

“You said it, Mr. Bailey.”

 

“Mr. Manion?”

 

“You can call me Tom.”

 

“Tom, what have you heard about my affairs?”

 

“Well, I think that federal man from San Antonio is planning on shipping you to Oklahoma City. He said there’s gonna be a big trial for you and the Shannons. He sure is an arrogant little cuss.”

 

Harvey nodded, climbing off the bunk and walking to the narrow little barred window that looked out onto a back alley.

 

“I want you to know I didn’t have a thing to do with that kidnapping,” Harvey said, still dressed in a suit but without his tie or shoes. “They just made me the goat.”

 

“I believe you, Mr. Bailey,” Manion said. “I know of your reputation.”

 

“I make an honest living.”

 

Manion laughed. “Sure thing, Mr. Bailey. What’s it like robbing banks?”

 

Harvey shrugged. “Not much different from any other job, I guess. You put a lot of work into the planning and detail. A good yegg knows the risks and the payoff.”

 

“You get nervous?”

 

“Never have,” Harvey said, walking toward the bunk. “Just don’t have it in my nature.”

 

“You married?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You want to talk to your wife?”

 

“I don’t bring her into my business.”

 

“She’s kinda in it now.”

 

“She’ll be fine.”

 

“I bet she’s worried sick.”

 

“She knows I’ll be home soon.”

 

“Doesn’t look that way,” Manion said. “Mr. Gus Jones has a solid case.”

 

“I know that,” Harvey said. “That’s why I intend to escape.”

 

Manion laughed. “You sure are a pistol, Mr. Bailey. I’d get worried if this wasn’t the safest jail in the whole state of Texas. In case you forgot, we have you on the sixth floor. You’d have to bust through me, the jailer working the desk, make your way downstairs, and then out the front door past a whole mess of deputies. And still find yourself an escapee in downtown Dallas.”

 

Harvey shrugged. “We’ll see.”

 

“A real pistol.”

 

“I’d just stopped off in Paradise to rest my leg. How was I to know I’d stepped into a federal raid? George Kelly and all that mess. It’s gotten to the point you don’t know who to trust.”

 

“I do appreciate the company,” Manion said, leaning into the ladder-back chair and studying the one barred window. “Usually all we get is cutthroats and niggers. Only good thing about them niggers is, they sure can make music. We just got this ole boy in the other day, came into town from Mississippi and got charged for shortchanging a whore. He plays some mighty fine guitar.”

 

“Well, bring ’im in here.”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Who’ll know?”

 

“I guess you’re right,” Manion said, a big smile on his face. He swatted his tired old hat against his leg as soon as he’d made up his mind and jangled the keys on his hip. “Maybe round up a nip for us, too?”

 

“I wouldn’t complain.”

 

“Be right back, Mr. Bailey,” Manion said. “Don’t go nowheres.”

 

Bailey pointed the end of his cigar at Manion and the cell door and winked. “Don’t worry. I’m six floors up, remember?”

 

A few minutes later, Manion returned with a rail-thin negro, wearing a thrift-store suit and carrying a battered guitar. The negro was just a kid, maybe a teenager, down in the mouth, and looked to be just rousted from his sleep.

 

“Play a song for us, boy,” Manion said.

 

“What do you want to hear?”

 

“What songs do you know?”

 

“I know ’em all.”

 

“You know ‘The Wreck of Old 97’?”

 

“Sure, everybody knowed that.”

 

“Play it.”

 

The boy began to pick the guitar and sing about a cloudless morning on a mountaintop, watching the smokestack below on that old Southern railroad, and the way he twanged his voice and made the words sound pretty, Harvey could close his eyes and think he was listening to a white man. “That ole 97, the fastest train / Ever ran the Southern line.”

 

“What else you know?”

 

“ ‘Birmingham Jail’?” the boy said.

 

Manion uncorked the bottle and took a sip of some bonded Tennessee whiskey and passed it on to Harvey. Pretty soon, a trusty pushing a broom was watching the men through the bars, and he smiled a big negro grin before breaking out into a jig and dancing around. Manion cracked open the door and let him in, and, man, that started it, the trusty walloping around on his brogans, slapping his knees and twirling, the negro guitarist wiping his brow and accepting a tin cup of whiskey from Manion, who was real careful not to let a negro drink from the bottle.

 

“You Mr. Bailey, ain’t you?” asked the guitar picker.

 

“I am.”

 

“I read about you in the paper,” he said. “They say you the best bank robber that ever was.”

 

“If I was that good,” Harvey said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

 

They finished off the bottle, and Manion tossed the trusty keys to his desk and told him to fetch up another bottle, and the boy returned a short time later. The guitar picker, who called himself R.L., launched into “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine” with a grin and a wink, singing that if he could only erase the lines from his face and bring back the gold in his hair.

 

“Goddamn, you make me feel old,” Harvey said. “Sing something else.”

 

“Been working on a little tune,” R.L. said, tuning his guitar a bit, “About a ‘Kind Hearted Woman.’ ”

 

“Damn, you can play, boy,” Harvey said.

 

“Didn’t come cheap.”

 

“How you figure?”

 

“I sold my soul to play.”

 

Harvey turned up the bottle and looked to Manion, yapping it up and slapping his knee, resting his hands on his fattened belly with his tin star pinned upside down on his old chest. Harvey nodded, “Every man’s got his price.”

 

The negro was halfway into the song, the trusty using his broom as a dancing partner, when Harvey heard the heavy boots on the jail floor moving closer. Manion was up, slapping his thighs and keeping time, the bottle hanging loose in his hands, and didn’t turn till he heard the metallic squeak of the cell door flying open.

 

In the doorframe stood Gus T. Jones and another old man, carrying a six-shooter.

 

Jones looked at the scene, his mouth downturned like it was the sorriest goddamn thing he’d ever witnessed. He shook his head with pity for all the weakness in the world, removed his hat, and said, “I sure hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

 

 

 

 

 

KATHRYN WOKE UP WITH A SPLITTING HEAD AND A DRY MOUTH and only vague memories of a county-line roadhouse where she and Louise had danced on the bar, with George working out a sloppy slugfest with two country goons. She remembered there had been a lot of laughter and fun and a queen’s share of gin, but after that most of the details were fuzzy. She thought she recalled losing Ching-A-Wee when taking him out for a squirt at the hotel, but she felt the dog breathing between her legs and knew all was well, and she kicked off the covers and stumbled to the bathroom, making a cup of her hand and lifting water to her mouth.

 

Her skin felt like paper, and then she looked in the mirror and saw her face was paper.

 

Sometime in the night she’d pulled on one of those Part-T masks that came free with one of those Hollywood magazines, and right now she was staring cold-eyed into the face of Jean Harlow. She peered out the bathroom, and there sleeping in the big, rough-and-tumble bed were George Raft and Joan Crawford.

 

Crawford had a big hairy leg and a bare chest. Raft was wearing a pink slip.

 

She drank the water, the slivers of morning piercing her eyes as she tore the elastic from her head, remembering patches of how it had all been such a hoot. The three movie stars out in Des Moines, the big bankroll in Joan Crawford’s thick fingers, laughing and drinking and all being fine till one of the country boys asked Miss Crawford if she’d like to suck his pecker.

 

George didn’t hesitate with the knuckle sandwich.

 

Prison makes a man a little edgy, Kathryn guessed.

 

She scooped up Ching-A-Wee and rustled at Louise’s shoulder until the eyes opened in Raft’s mug and she heard, “Hey, what gives?,” Louise tearing the mask from part of her face and then flipping over to face the wall. More gin and champagne bottles, the trays of food on the carpet this time, steak bones gnawed clean, and little piles of doo-doo by the front door.

 

George had thrown his dress pants over a lamp, his two-tone shoes kicked off by the bathroom.

 

Kathryn slinked into her feathered robe and feathered slippers and carried Chingy over to the elevator, where the nicest old man asked her, “What floor?,” and she said, “The lobby,” and then the old man asked her if she’d like to get dressed first. And Kathryn said she paid enough money to dress any way she pleased, and, if that didn’t please the staff, then so be it.

 

She bummed a smoke from the doorman and let Chingy take a squirt and sniff a bit. The doorman, growing nervous with the wind fluttering up her silk robe and Kathryn not bothering a bit to pull it down, offered to bring the dog back to the suite.

 

Kathryn shrugged, the morning sun a real son of a bitch, and elevatored up to the top floor. All along the hallway morning papers had been laid out, all clean and neat. Kathryn scooped up the first one she saw, tripping along to the presidential suite and scratching her behind a bit, yawning and stretching, the fat paper hanging loose in the palm of her hand, above the fold declaring U.S. WARSHIPS TO PROTECT CUBANS, and then flipping on over to see KIDNAPPERS’ NEST RAIDED.

 

And there she stopped and stood, mouth open, not even awake yet, to see a picture of her mother with Boss Shannon and dumb old Potatoes, who was fool enough to look right into the lens and smile. A smaller headline read, “Desperado ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly and Wife Still at Large.”

 

“Goddamn,” she said. “Goddamn.”

 

She threw open the door to the suite, flung open the curtains, nobody stirring in the big bed until she swatted George—still looking like a fool as Joan Crawford—who shot off his ass and reached for the gun, aiming at Kathryn’s heart.

 

“Cool it, Joan,” Kathryn said, throwing the paper in his lap. “The G’s got ’em. They raided the farm four days ago. They’re onto us.”

 

Louise stirred in the bed, complaining and tossing in the tangled sheets until she fell with a loud thud to the floor.

 

“Get dressed,” Kathryn said. “Both of you.”

 

“What gives?” Louise asked.

 

“We’re headed back to Texas to rescue my family,” Kathryn said, reaching for the pistol in George’s loose hand and then prying the mask from his face until the elastic broke from his thick neck.

 

“What’s that gonna do, Kit?” he asked, looking a lot uglier than Joan Crawford. “It’s too late.”

 

“The hell it is,” she said. “You brought my kin into this and now you’re gonna get ’em out.”

 

“Me and what army?”

 

“I don’t care how you do it,” she said. “Take your pecker out of your hand and make some calls to all those hoods that you brag about knowing. Call in some favors, make some bribes. I don’t give a good goddamn. Just get my momma.”

 

“Quit your crying,” George said.

 

“I’m not crying,” Kathryn said, knowing she’d started.

 

A toilet flushed, and Louise came startled from the bathroom, carrying her hatbox, already dressed with her hat all crooked. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.

 

Kathryn bit into her knuckles, still holding the gun. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. How’d they know?”

 

George didn’t say a word, keeping a fat finger running over the words in the news story and then turning the page.

 

“I said how’d they know?” she said.

 

George didn’t say anything for a few moments and then closed the newspaper in his lap. He looked up at Kathryn with the most confused of expressions as he asked, “Who in the hell is ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

24

 

That was a hell of a thrilling conversation,” Doc White said. “You expected him to sing?” Jones asked.

 

“Well,” White said, turning to Jones on the steps of the Dallas County Jail, “if I were in that predicament, facing that long of a stretch, I’d be open to some straight talk.”

 

“But you’re not in that predicament.” Gus Jones affixed his Stetson on his head and squinted into the afternoon sun. A long shadow fell from the jail and sliced down the marble steps. “If it were you, you’d react a certain way. J. Harvey Bailey is a different breed.”

 

“Sounds like you admire him.”

 

“I wouldn’t call it admiration, Doc. It’s understanding the animal.”

 

“Shit, Buster. I never knew you were so goddamn wise.”

 

“You sure are funny today, Doc. You could be Will Rogers.”

 

A government sedan rolled up to the curb below. The wind shooting down the long avenues and through the cracks of concrete and the glass buildings was as hot and dry as the desert. He recalled visiting Dallas twenty years back, and there wasn’t a building more than a few stories tall. Now the whole center of town reached to the damn clouds, keeping all the familiar hotels and shops in shadow.

 

“I just think Harv is pulling our leg,” White said. “Said he was only at the Shannons’ place to grab some shut-eye. Who’s gonna believe that?”

 

“He confessed he’d just robbed two banks. The man was tired. He has a bum leg.”

 

“You believe him?”

 

“Now, why in the world would a man confess to robbing two banks if he hadn’t?”

 

“To loosen the noose from the Urschel job.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“When I got up, you ask him about Kansas City?”

 

“Shit, I forgot.”

 

“Aw, hell, Buster. You’re just trying to be contrary. In the old days, we’d just tie Bailey to a mesquite tree and set his feet on fire till he told us what we wanted to know.”

 

“If Bailey was a weak-minded fool, I’d contemplate that. You think I forgot about those that got killed? But he’s not gonna give himself up, or Miller. You could toss a rope around his neck and he’d stick to the same story.”

 

The two men crawled into the black sedan and it pulled away, Joe Lackey turning from the front passenger seat and resting his head on his forearm. “Nothing?”

 

“Nope,” White said. “Buster’s gone soft on us.”

 

“He confessed to working two jobs with Clark and Underhill.”

 

“He say where in the hell’s Verne Miller?” Lackey asked. He wiped a drop of sweat off his big nose with a forefinger, his face swarthy and wet under his gray felt hat.

 

“Said he hadn’t seen Verne since he escaped from Lansing. Said they played a round of golf.”

 

“Bullshit,” Lackey said. “Two men saw Miller dart out of that cornfield. You ask him about Union Station?”

 

“Said he read about it in the papers.”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“Well, of course it’s all bullshit,” Jones said. “You know, I’m getting tired of being second-guessed. I get enough of that from Mary Ann. What’d you get from the Shannons?”

 

“Good ole Ma sez Kathryn Kelly is a fine Christian woman who has a mental deficiency for bad men.”

 

“And Pa?” Jones asked.

 

“Nothing new,” Lackey said. “Same as before. Said Kelly threatened to kill him and his family if they didn’t help.”

 

“Kelly wasn’t there when he picked up the gun,” Jones said.

 

“Yeah,” Lackey said, nodding. “He didn’t have much of an answer for that. And says he never saw Verne Miller. Every time I mentioned Miller, I thought the old guy would piss himself.”

 

The drive took them out of the downtown, past an old warehouse reading PERKINS DRY GOODS COMPANY, and onto the highway headed northwest to Love Field, where they’d arranged for an airplane back to Oklahoma City. They passed roadside courts, filling stations, and new Wild West highway attractions, Passion plays, and Alamo reenactments, the whole town of Dallas spilling out onto what used to be a dirt trail and now had been paved, leading to damn-near everywhere. One of the motor courts had been built in the style of an old Spanish mission, complete with tile and stucco, and it advertised authentic rooms for two dollars a night. Down Highway 77, a roadside diner advertised A MEAL LIKE MOM’S for only two bits.

 

“You can find everything you want out here,” Jones said. “Everything a man needs.”

 

Western-wear shops. Steak houses. A billboard facing the road into town read JOBLESS MEN KEEP GOING. WE CAN’T TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN. Another billboard promised that tuberculosis was PREVENTABLE AND TREATABLE

 

The driver pulled off the main highway and past a gate opening onto the tarmac. They followed a side road to a large, open hangar where a single-engine silver airplane was being fussed over by several mechanics. Special Agent Bruce Colvin waited inside along with the young sharpshooter from his office, Bryce. Bryce held two rifles, one in each hand. Colvin’s hair was neatly greased, and he held a perfectly steamed hat in his long fingers.

 

Jones stood from the machine and tipped his hat to Bryce. Bryce nodded back.

 

“You boys ready to head home?” Jones asked.

 

Colvin approached and shook his head, and all five agents, including the driver, walked out onto the tarmac as the airplane sputtered to life and moved out onto the runway, the sound of the engine stopping conversation and deafening their ears.

 

Colvin simply handed him a postcard from the Hotel Fort Des Moines. Some heat could be headed your way. Much cooler up north. Will wire gas money soon. Love, Sis.

 

“Too late now,” Jones said.

 

“They left in a hurry,” Colvin said. “Left a bunch of clothes and receipts. And . . . dog turds.”

 

“She brought her damn dog?”

 

“A Pekingnese,” Colvin said, and reached into his breast pocket. “According to personal papers found at her home in Fort Worth, the dog’s name is Ching-A-Wee.”

 

“Ching-A-What?”

 

“We got Kelly ID’d. But now he’s traveling with two women. One we’re pretty sure is the wife, but we’re not sure.”

 

“Never been to Des Moines,” Jones said, climbing aboard the airplane.

 

 

 

 

 

“YOU THINK HE’LL BE SORE?”

 

“Who?” Kathryn asked, driving white-knuckled down Highway 69 somewhere in Oklahoma way past midnight, running that little Chevrolet—the one they switched out for the Cadillac coupe in Chicago—just as fast as that standard six would go.

 

“George,” Louise said. “Your husband. Remember him?”

 

“How can I forget George?” Kathryn asked, taking the wheel in one hand and reaching for her silver cigarette case with the other. Louise flicked open the lighter and got her smoking, as she breezed through another dead town, slowing down for two quick moments to pass over some railroad tracks. “George has the loot.”

 

Louise had begged her to stop off in Kansas City and get some sleep, but Kathryn said she wasn’t gonna stop till she got to Coleman. She needed to get back to Texas, talk to Grandma, and figure out some kind of plan to spring Ora from jail, maybe Potatoes and Boss, too.

 

“They’re gonna write songs about you two.”

 

“Thanks for being a sister and not telling George you knew about Urschel.”

 

“How could I forget Charles Urschel? You’ve been talking about the man for months. Called him your ‘sugar daddy.’ ”

 

“And you’d be best served to wash that from your mind unless you want the G crawling all over your ass, too.”

 

The highway was open and clear at this time of night, only a train heading north, the Chevrolet running side by side in the opposite direction, light from the passenger cars strobing and flicking across the women’s faces. Kathryn smoked and held her right hand aloft, shaking her head at the goddamn insult of it all, seeing her mother in the papers, turning her head from the camera and being called a dirty, rotten kidnapper. The damn nerve, them using a photograph of Kathryn from when she’d been pinched on that shop-lifting beef in Fort Worth. It was a hell of a bad photo, with her in a frumpy dress and not looking her best. And now the copper who’d gotten her out of that mess was dead. Poor old dearly dead Ed Weatherford. She just might break down and cry at his passing.

 

“You don’t worry George will leave you?”

 

“He’s right behind us.”

 

“What makes you so sure?”

 

“I’m sure.”

 

“That’s some kind of faith, sister.”

 

“It’s not faith, Louise.” Kathryn glanced into the rearview and saw Chingy sleeping on a feather pillow she’d stolen from the Hotel Fort Des Moines.

 

“You know, you can train a man just like you train a dog. Only instead of biscuits, you use your snatch. It’s true.”

 

“I hear marriage neuters ’em.”

 

“It’s a reward system. All men are pussy-crazy. You know that. They can’t help it. It’s in their damn ape brain. Everything a man does—a real man, anyway—he does it for pussy. Think about George. Why does he take so much time dressing, shining those shoes, and fussing over his hair? You know he has his eyebrows thinned to look like Ricardo Cortez? I shit you not.”

 

“I don’t think my pussy has ever trained a man. The only thing my pussy does is get me into trouble. Sometimes my pussy just doesn’t think. Bad kitty.”

 

“Listen, we go through Dallas, I’m dropping you at the train station. I’ll give you some dough to get home, and then I don’t want you saying a word about any of this. You hear me? I want you to amscray from all this mess.”

 

“Sure had a good time,” Louise said. “I can’t believe that hick told George to suck his peter.”

 

“He told Joan Crawford to suck his peter.”

 

“It was still George.”

 

“It’s all mixed up.”

 

“You still never told me about your big plan.”

 

“What big plan?” Kathryn asked.

 

“What you’re gonna do with all that dough.”

 

“I’ll tell you one thing that I’ve promised myself for a long time. The first time I saw it mentioned in Redbook magazine. I’m going to that goddamn World’s Fair. Everyone on God’s green earth is going to be there, and I’m not going to be left out. And we’re going to stay at the very top hotels, eat at the very best restaurants, and go to every single exhibit there is even if it’s all scientific and boring. Did you know they have chariot races like in olden times?”

 

“That’s fine and all, Kit. But what about after? The World’s Fair ain’t forever.”

 

“Don’t get pushy. You sound like George. I’m sick of that worried mind. It’ll kill you.”

 

“I’m just saying . . .”

 

“It’s my road, sister,” Kathryn said, pressing down the accelerator and passing a truck loaded down, all crooked and crazy, with chicken coops, feathers crossing over the windshield like it was snowing in August. They scattered and blew away in the hot night air.

 

“Sorry to hear about Albert, too.”

 

“That’s his road,” Kathryn said. “He got pinched. His own fault.”

 

“He was a swell guy.”

 

“You screw ’im?”

 

“Sure,” Louise said. “Didn’t do much for me. But he sure enjoyed it. I felt sorry for the fella. He’d gotten all sloppy and started to cry. Said he missed his wife.”

 

“You’re bugs.”

 

“You’re bugs.”

 

And they laughed. Kathryn flipping her silver cigarette case over to Louise, Louise taking a cigarette and snapping the case shut, and Kathryn telling her she was thick. She said she wanted Louise to have it.

 

“Come on.”

 

“Come on, nothin’,” Kathryn said. “You’re my pal. We got to stick together.”

 

“George is A-OK, Kit.”

 

“I suppose.”

 

“If he meets you in Texas, you better know you got yourself a good egg.”

 

“You really think they’ll write songs about us?”

 

“Sure.”

 

Kathryn mashed the accelerator onto the floor.

 

“What kind?”

 

“Who knows?” Louise said, smiling. “Say, you hungry?”

 

“I’d like that nigger Cab Calloway to sing about me. He sounds better than any ole white man I ever heard. You ever listened to that song ‘Minnie the Moocher’?”

 

“Watch out,” Louise yelled, pointing at a pair of gleaming eyes coming up fast, and Kathryn swerved, barely missing a mangy dog with sagging old tits. Knocked up and left on the roadside to starve.

 

“What about magazines?”

 

“Of course,” Louise said. “This is big. Movies, too. What you and George did is better than being famous.”

 

“What’s better than being famous?” Kathryn asked, tossing the spent cigarette into the night air, leaving her hand outside to trail and feel the wind between her fingers, nothing but Mr. Moon to keep ’em company while they headed south on 69, some kind of purpose giving her kick.

 

“Jean Harlow is famous,” Louise said, studying the etching on her new silver cigarette case and rubbing her fingers into the initials KK. “Kit Kelly is infamous.”

 

Kathryn didn’t stop smiling until dawn broke over the city of Dallas.

 

 

 

 

 

HARVEY BAILEY COULD SLEEP ANYWHERE. HE’D TRAINED HIS mind to let all the worry and strife go, and doze off in a bed, in a car, on the ground—didn’t matter much. He could be on the run, maybe an hour from a job, heart racing a bit, and still he could shut his eyes and take in a nap. You never knew when you needed your wits about you, and it was the suckers and fools who kept themselves plied with coffee or cocaine till the paranoia made them screw up, coppers seeing them trip from a mile away. He was dreaming in jail, as often he did, floating somewhere between memory and fantasy, feeling he was back with his wife and two boys, even the one who died before he could crawl. They were in Iowa on the third farm that he’d bought from his fat bootlegger’s roll, where the fields were blanketed in yellow wildflowers and spindly wild onions that made the cows’ milk sour but tasty. And he sat at the head of the table, covered in red-and-white oilcloth, that stretched on for miles, and he felt a lot of pride in them all being together like that, saying prayers and all, while he mashed some apple pie with the sour milk, chilled from that creek that cut straight across the land like a vein of good health.

 

The boy—his namesake—was cuddled into his wife’s breast, and he could feel himself smile at the child, a warmth spreading into his chest, and the child turned from the wet nipple to his father, his eyes nothing but empty sockets and limitless space. A great shame flooding from his heart to his toes, knowing that he had killed the boy, backing over him in that goddamn Packard. His heart seized in his chest, and he shot up from the bunk, unable to breathe, tangled in wet sheets and holding tight on to the rails.

 

“Mr. Bailey.”

 

It took a few moments for Harvey to realize he was on the sixth floor of the Dallas County Jail.

 

He was locked down solid and fucked ten ways to Sunday, and the thought of it gave him so much relief that he caught his breath and found his feet on concrete warmed by yesterday’s sun. As he turned, he faced the negro guitar player from Mississippi, R.L., who outstretched his skinny arm with the longest fingers he’d ever seen, handing him a simple metal cup filled with water.

 

Harvey took it, wondering how the boy knew his mouth was so parched.

 

“You was dreaming.”

 

He looked at him.

 

“You was running from something,” R.L. said. “Your legs and arms were pumping something fierce.”

 

“What time is it?”

 

“Four o’clock.”

 

“When?”

 

“In the morning.”

 

“Why’d you wake me?”

 

“I didn’t wake you, sir,” the boy said. “I was mopping the floor and seen you had some troubles.”

 

“I don’t have troubles.”

 

“You spoke the way a grown man talks to a baby. Does that make sense?”

 

Harvey finished off the cold water and handed the cup back to R.L., who held on to a filthy mop matted with dirt and hair. Light spilled from the metal door down the hall, cracked enough for Bailey to see Manion sitting on his fat ass, smoking a cigar, snorting and laughing it up with a trusty.

 

“More,” Harvey said.

 

R.L. disappeared back through the cracked door to stand before Manion to ask permission to fill the cup. Harvey walked to the narrow, oblong window, scratching his pecker, and held on to the bars, studying the drop and the route the alley took out into the downtown. He felt the thickness of the metal in his fingers and pushed his face through, just to catch a bit of wind but also stealing more comfort, being inside and paying for what he’d done.

 

“Once you sell it, you can’t take it back.”

 

The boy held the metal cup through the bars. Harvey just stared at him. “You spades always talk in riddles?”

 

“Your soul,” R.L. said, whispering. “You sell it and it’s gone. Ain’t no return policy on that.”

 

“How can you sell something you don’t have?” Harvey asked. “It’s all applesauce for simple folks.”

 

“I ain’t no simpleton,” R.L. said. “Take the water.”

 

The whole jail corridor was dark except for the slice cutting through the door, Manion gone from the chair now but a cloud of smoke left in his place. The boy’s face bony and skeletal, big-eyed and serious. “I’m givin’ you warning. You be careful for Mr. Manion. He’ll rip your guts out. He’s not your mark.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“You make a deal with that man and he’ll own you.”

 

“Go peddle your goofer dust somewhere else,” Harvey said, tossing the empty cup to the floor, the clang sounding like a symphony along the concrete and metal doors. “I write my own goddamn ticket.”

 

“I know’d an old fella once that could talk to dead folks,” R.L. said. “You can say it ain’t true. But he swears on it. He said they come to you when you’s asleep because then you won’t doubt them.”

 

“Leave me alone, boy.”

 

“Watch out for Mr. Manion.”

 

“I’m gonna own that fella.”

 

“Don’t take this as disrespect,” R.L. said, gripping the mop in both hands. “But I think it’s in the reverse.”

 

“Is he gonna steal my soul?”

 

“Seems like you done sold that long ago.”

 

Harvey heard the skinny boy walk down the hall, the door clanging shut and locking with a final snap, reminding him of a tight cord breaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

25

 

The manager of the Hotel Fort Des Moines wore one of those pencil-thin mustaches—the thinnest mustache Jones had ever seen—and smelled like he’d dunked his boiled shirt in some sweet-smelling perfume. All these characters were the same, dirt under their nails and grits in their mouth, till they slide into a suit and get a fancy title, and then they’re Douglas Fairbanks. The man had protruding buckteeth, and black hair growing from his nostrils.

 

“We’d like to see the room,” Agent Colvin said, leaning into the reception counter, seeming to take some confidence in standing next to Jones even though Colvin was at least a head taller. Colvin folded his hands on the polished wood and waited.

 

“The guests never checked out,” the manager said. “It’s still occupied. You don’t have the authority—”

 

“Didn’t I show you my tin?” Jones asked.

 

“I can’t give you a key to a private suite,” the manager said. “The Colemans are fine people.”

 

“Give me the goddamn key,” Jones said.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Colvin, grab the key,” Jones said. “I’m tired of this horseshit.”

 

Jones nodded to Colvin, who turned the corner of the front desk and snatched the key from the hook, the little man trying to block his escape, holding up a single finger. “You try to stop us, and I’ll knock that smirk off your face,” Jones said.

 

The agents took the stairs to the room. The hotel manager trailed like a yippy little dog at their boot heels, telling them they better stop or he’d call the police chief himself.

 

“I want all telephone tolls from this room and from every pay phone in this hotel,” Jones said, taking off his hat and holding it at his side. “I want to interview every bellhop, doorman, and maid. Check taxicabs, restaurants, and down at the train station. Do we know what kind of car they were driving?”

 

“The two women left in a white Chevrolet sedan,” Colvin said. “This year’s model.”

 

“What about Kelly?”

 

“No one saw him leave.”

 

“Sure they did.”

 

Colvin tried the lock with the key and pushed open the heavy oak door into the suite. Lots of newish, streamlined furniture, Oriental rugs, and the like. The hotel manager wedged himself into the threshold and stretched his arms from frame to frame, red-faced and sweating, and the sight of his struggle brought a grin to Jones’s face.

 

“Just how much did he tip you?” Jones asked.

 

“Excuse me, sir?”

 

“Kelly.”

 

“You mean, Mr. Coleman?”

 

“No, I mean Mr. Kelly, you dumb sack of nuts.”

 

Colvin stepped over a pile of clothes and wet towels, already pulling out his leather-bound fingerprint kit to pull prints from the telephone, glasses, lamps, and doorknobs, while Jones picked up a stack of reading material on a nightstand. The Chicago Tribune. True Detective. Spicy Stories. On the floor, he found yesterday’s Des Moines Register torn to pieces.

 

“Trouble will follow,” the manager said, mopping his face with a laced handkerchief. “Trouble.”

 

“You can’t get much more trouble than having ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly in your presidential suite,” Jones said. “Don’t you read the papers?”

 

“I think you’re confused,” the man said. “Mr. Coleman wasn’t a gangster. He was a gentleman farmer. They were fine people with beautiful clothes . . . Oh, my Lord.”

 

“You sure stepped in it.”

 

The hotel manger looked down at the carpet, all green and plush and dotted with land mines of dog shit. He lifted up a dandy heel and spun around on one leg, confused as to what to do next. He turned and twirled and about fell over, holding on to his ankle, not daring to set down the wingtip.

 

“Scrape it off,” Jones said. “Listen, partner, you know you’re lucky to be alive. You just gave domicile to the most cunning, cutthroat, evil son of a bitch in this United States of America. ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly gets an itchy finger and he just might shoot up your whole damn lobby and take you out in the process. Human life isn’t any more to him than a fly on a cow’s ass.”

 

“Oh, my Lord.”

 

“Now, get outta here and let us work,” Jones said. “Send up those two agents in the lobby.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“And be quick about it.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“And scrape off your damn shoe,” Jones said, stopping the man midtrack at the door’s threshold. “You’re dragging shit all over creation.”

 

Doc White and Lackey came rambling on inside the suite. White said, “The ladies lit out yesterday ’bout five. Kelly right behind, took a cab to the train station.”

 

“You get a taxi number?”

 

“Working on it,” Lackey said, chewing gum and looking around the suite. “Nice digs.”

 

“Those girls say where they were headed?”

 

“Nope,” White said.

 

“Mrs. Kelly seemed upset, according to the bellhop,” Lackey said. “He said she sure was in a hurry.”

 

“And Machine Gun?”

 

“Not so much,” White said. “Had a couple gin cocktails in the bar before calling the taxi. He tipped the doorman twenty bucks from a roll the size of his fist. While he was waiting, he seemed to be studying things, and told the doorman, ‘Don’t ever get between your wife and her momma.’ ”

 

“What’s that mean?” Colvin asked.

 

“Means she’s not too keen on having Mrs. Ora Shannon in federal custody,” Jones said. “Where are her people from?”

 

“Mississippi?” Lackey said.

 

“Can we send a man from the Birmingham office?”

 

Colvin nodded.

 

“Who the hell was this woman with her?” Jones asked. “I wonder if she has kin anywhere else? Doc, you take Bryce and go down to the train station. We got ’em flushed, and now—”

 

“Now what?” Lackey asked.

 

Jones walked across the suite to a large wooden dresser and stared into a large oval mirror. Across the mirror someone had written the words GO TO HELL G-MAN JONES.

 

In the reflection, he watched Lackey, Colvin, and White flank him, reading the words scrawled in red lipstick. Lackey popped his gum. “What the hell’s a ‘G-man’?”

 

 

 

 

 

CHARLIE URSCHEL ASKED BETTY TO TAKE THE WHEEL OF THE Packard and just drive, him sitting in silence, as she wheeled around the manicured streets and wide avenues of the Heritage Hills neighborhood, until he made up his mind and told her to go ahead and turn onto North Broadway heading south, and then to cut over and down on Robinson toward the downtown and the Colcord Building, where the Slick Company had their offices. They found an open space not far from the botanical gardens on Sheridan, and from that spot he could see the Colcord entrance and the parking garage across the street, where the son of a bitch would emerge well before five o’clock in that garish Buick sedan, painted canary yellow, with wire-spoked wheels.

 

“You want me to wait?” Betty asked.

 

“I’m waiting, too.”

 

“What are we waiting for?”

 

“Mr. Jarrett.”

 

“Does Mr. Jarrett need a ride?”

 

“Of sorts.”

 

“Can I have fifty dollars?”

 

“What are you going to do with fifty dollars?”

 

“Buy a dress.”

 

“You have two closets full of the best dresses.”

 

“I need a new one. They’re having a sale on summer dresses at Katz’s. Lord, it’s hot. What’s for supper?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“I hope Louise makes chicken. I love chicken.”

 

“Betty, we need to talk.”

 

“I knew it. I knew it.”

 

“No one else will listen,” Charlie said. “Your mother thinks I should see a doctor for my nerves.”

 

“I don’t think you’re nuts, Uncle Charlie.”

 

“Then you know why you just can’t trust a man of little acquaintance.”

 

“Uncle Charlie, I’m sixteen years old. I know about men.”

 

“No, you don’t. You can never know what’s in a man’s heart. He’ll deceive you. He’ll look right into your eyes and smile while he cuts you. We can’t let him win.”

 

“Uncle Charles.”

 

Charlie reached into the pockets of his suit and found them empty. He patted his pants and looked in the glove box. Betty sighed and reached into her little pocketbook and gave him her matches. He had a dead cigar in his mouth and got it going. In the side mirror of their machine—a Packard sedan of this year’s make—he stared into his bloodshot eyes and uncombed hair and then back at the glass doors to the office, knowing the bastard would be coming out soon, and that’s when he’d grab him, catching him off guard, and walk with him on his evening stroll back to his home, back to the house he shared with his family, and sit down with him, look him dead in the eye, and tell him he knew. Charlie looked at the little mirror and wiped his cheek, as if he’d felt the wetness of a rotten kiss.

 

“Not all men are bad.” Betty fanned herself with a loose hand, wiping the perspiration from her lip. “You haven’t even given him a chance. All the boys I know are just that: boys. I’m so very sick of boys, Uncle Charlie.”

 

“The nature of man is deceit.”

 

She turned to him, slinking back into the driver’s seat and staring at his face for a long while. She shook her head and told him that his heart had grown hard and that he had no right to stop her from her private matters. But he heard only a bit of it, seeing Jarrett appear from a side entrance and stroll down Robinson, walking across the street. Charlie felt his heart hammering in his chest, his mouth dry, and felt the slickness of his hand on the door handle.

 

But he did not move. His muscles had frozen.

 

“Deceit,” Charlie said, smoking on the cigar, getting the burn to go real quick, and stopping for a moment to pick tobacco from his tongue. “You cannot come into a man’s house, eat his food, drink his liquor, and then stab him in the back.”

 

Betty grew quiet and they sat in the Packard for a long while, Charlie watching the streets and spotting men he knew—friends from the club, salesmen who dropped by his office peddling useless wares, Masons with their secret handshakes and antique codes—walk along the familiar route. Shadows slanted, long and soft, with a hazy summer weight.

 

He smoked down the cigar until he felt it burning into his flesh, feeling the ropes and chains, tasting that goddamn rusted water in his mouth.

 

“He did no such thing,” Betty said. “He was a gentleman. He does not touch liquor.”

 

The garish Buick rolled out of the garage and headed down Sheridan, out of sight for a moment, and Charlie reached over and mashed the starter and told Betty to just drive.

 

“He is a liar,” Charlie said, muttering to himself. “A goddamn thief of my time.”

 

Jarrett turned south on Gaylord, and Charlie motioned for them to follow. Jarrett doubled back on Reno, well out of the way for a man who should be returning to his family north of town, and then drove flat-out fast, heading east for miles.

 

The Buick dipped south on Pennsylvania into the Stockyards, and with the windows down in the summer heat you could get a good whiff of the stale hay and fetid cow shit, and Charlie figured Jarrett was about to have what they called “a meet” with some square-jawed hoodlum to divvy up money made as cowards with guns. They would play cards and drink homemade liquor and laugh about all the suckers in the world.

 

They could not win.

 

The Buick rolled on, and Betty mashed the brakes hard as a long trailer filled with cattle blocked the road, away from the holding pens, where you could hear the confused animals trying to communicate, shuffling and bumping into one another, their dumb heads sticking out of broken slats in the fence.

 

Charlie hit the dash and cursed, and then noticed Betty staring and apologized for his indecency.

 

“Drive me home.”

 

The Packard idled.

 

“Betty?”

 

He turned to see his niece with her head in her hands, her delicate sunburned shoulders shaking. He put his hand on her small arm.

 

“What?”

 

She didn’t answer, just tapped her patent leather shoe from the brake and gently touched the accelerator.

 

“I won’t hurt him,” Charlie said. “But he must know I’m not a fool. Don’t ever let a man treat you as a fool.”

 

“Bruce is a fine man. He’s such a fine man.”

 

She drove slowly for several blocks, under the shadow of a train trestle, until Exchange Street ended, and they were surrounded by a loop of railroad tracks, a turnaround for cattle cars. Charlie just stared, facing the dead end, tossing his spent cigar into some high weeds littered with the broken glass and burned oil drums of derelicts and bums, the losers of this world.

 

“Which one is Bruce?”

 

 

 

 

 

“I APPRECIATE YOU TAKING ME OUT OF THE CELL, MR. MANION.”

 

“Figured you’d like a change of view, Mr. Bailey.”

 

“Appreciate the coffee, too.”

 

“I do brew a fine pot,” Deputy Manion said. “Helps keep a man regular. Although I like to put away a bowl of cornflakes if I know I’m gonna drain a whole pot.”

 

They sat across from each other on either side of Manion’s old, battered wooden desk. Manion leaned back in a creaky old chair, scuffed-up old boots crossed at the ankle while he smoked a thin cigarette and slurped his coffee. Behind him, Harvey saw one of those old pendulum wall clocks, swinging back and forth, marking the hour past ten at night. A trusty was mopping down the long hallways and into Harvey’s old cell, the sheriff having decided to move Harvey up to the death cell on the tenth floor. The penthouse suite for the worst criminals, awaiting a hangman’s noose and trying to evade a lynching.

 

The death cell hadn’t seemed that much different from any other cell he’d ever seen. A bunk, a sink, and a commode. But the papers sure had a field day with the new home of notorious gangster Harvey Bailey, the mastermind behind the Urschel kidnapping and the Kansas City Massacre.

 

“So how’d you come into robbing banks, Mr. Bailey?”

 

“Well, Mr. Manion, I’m not going to mention any particular job.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“But I would say that robbing banks sure beats having a boss man.”

 

“You said it,” Tom Manion said, thumbing at a nostril and breathing in a big ole cloud of smoke. “If Sheriff Smoot knew you and I was in here chawin’ the fat, I’d be the one he’d be stringin’ up.”

 

“What kind of man is Sheriff Smoot?”

 

“He’s political. Fat-bellied and cowardly. To speak in a direct manner.”

 

“Is there any other way?” Harvey asked.

 

Manion put down the coffee cup and rested his arms across his fat stomach. He yelled down the hallway to the trusty to make sure he unplugged the commode that had made such a mess.

 

“You must’ve gotten on the man’s bad side,” Harvey said, taking a sip of coffee, checking out the row of keys over Manion’s head, already noticing the door to the stairwell had a thick lock. The only other ways down were by elevator or to jump six stories.

 

“No man likes to be recognized for what he is,” Manion said. “He knows I know, and that’s why he put me here on this shit detail.”

 

“You ever think of running against him?”

 

“For sheriff?” Manion asked, and cracked a smile. “Shoot . . .”

 

“Why not?” Harvey said. “Seems like a man with your record against the Spanish and all your service to Dallas would be quite an asset.”

 

“Mr. Bailey, please don’t take no offense,” Manion said, thumbing at his nostril again and flicking away what he’d found. “But you sure don’t know how these elections work. A man don’t get elected for being the most qualified. And I’ll hold you right there ’cause I’m not sayin’ I’m the best man for the job either. What separates any elected official is one thing you seem to know real well.”

 

“Money.”

 

“You are damn right, Mr. Bailey,” Manion said. “You know that’s what greases the ole wheels.”

 

Harvey stubbed out his cigarette. Manion leaned his fat ass forward and tossed him the whole pack. He got out from the chair with a big heave, pulled the coffeepot from the burner, and poured Harvey another cup.

 

“Want some sugar?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“You don’t need to be siring me yet,” Manion said. “Wait till you get convicted.”

 

“The papers already said I’m convicted. They say I killed all those men in Kansas City, too.”

 

Manion sat back down in his creaky old chair, flipped his old boots back on the edge of the desk, and found another cigarette. Harvey noted the edge of the desk had become smooth and worn with familiar heel marks. That wall clock’s second hand inched forward again in a herky-jerky jump of time.

 

The negro trusty walked back from the jail cells holding the wet mop, and even over the fresh scent of tobacco and coffee you could smell the toilet all over him and his wet hands and striped jail shirt and trousers. Manion looked at him and finally nodded in a haze of cigarette smoke, and watched as the negro wrung out the mop and pressed the button for the elevator.

 

Another sheriff ’s deputy rolled back the cage and let the trusty inside.

 

The cage door snapped shut, and the elevator headed down.

 

“How much do you figure?” Harvey asked, leaning back into his seat.

 

“For what?”

 

“To be sheriff?”

 

“More ’an I got,” Manion said, laughing, his belly shaking his resting hands.

 

“But let’s say a fella wanted to throw his hat in the ring. What would you need to get started?”

 

“Oh, hell, I don’t know.”

 

“Your best guess.”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Ten grand?”

 

“Ten thousand dollars?”

 

“I’m not talking chickens.”

 

“And just how would a fella come into that kind of luck?” Manion asked, his lips curving into a smile. The dumb bastard not even able to fake surprise. Not in the least. He was licking his cracked lips as he spoke.

 

“But if he did?”

 

“For ten thousand dollars, I’d ’spec a man could become governor of Texas.”

 

“I might know how to arrange something like that.”

 

“And why would you do that for me, Mr. Bailey?”

 

“For the good of the community.”

 

“Might I ask how a fella like you’d be privy to those kind of funds?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

Manion nodded, standing and stretching. He put a fist to his mouth to stifle a yawn. He opened the glass face of the clock, studied the timepiece he took from his pocket, and fingered back things about five minutes. He paced and smoked. He walked down the hall, leaving Harvey for a good five minutes while inspecting the work of the trusty.

 

“All goddamn niggers are lazy,” Manion said. “Still a mess.”

 

He reached for the telephone on the desk and called down to have the trusty sent back up to the sixth floor.

 

“When’s Sheriff Smoot up for reelection?” Harvey asked.

 

Manion sat at the end of his desk and stared at Harvey’s face to the point that Harvey felt the seat had grown hot, and he shuffled a bit. He just watched the man until life and blood and thinking returned, and Manion just nodded with his thick, fat neck.

 

“A man could run some kind of fine campaign with that,” Manion said. “Would do this community a lot of good. A lot of good.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

26

 

Kathryn had been knocked up by a goofy, redheaded son of a preacher the summer she’d turned fourteen. A boy she hadn’t given two thoughts about, but she had agreed to go with him to a nearby creek only after he’d asked her about a hundred times following those two-hour sermons. He hadn’t been too bad looking ’cept for that goofy old red hair, and in Saltillo he sure had been somebody, already applying to Bible college and wearing mail-order suits on Sunday while he strolled the rows, passing the collection plate. Studying back on it, Kathryn had to admit it was the collection plate that maybe did it. The church had two of them, and they’d been gold-plated, with red velvet bottoms, and when that dumb boy would stand at the row, waiting for the change and crumpled bills—crumpled so no one knew who was being cheap or too boastful, because, if you boasted on it, the preacher told you there wasn’t no reward in heaven—the boy would grin at her like her Sunday dress was made of gauze and he could see right down to her cotton panties. So here comes this lazy Sunday, sometime in the heat of the summer, just like it was now. Maybe that’s why Kathryn thought of it now, sipping lemonade and smoking a cigarette on her blind grandma Coleman’s porch, remembering them sneaking around the corner of the white clapboard church, cotton fields as endless as the ocean ’round them, him handing her a Fatima cigarette, while his daddy stood on the front steps and clasped men’s hands with two of his and complimented women on their silly, ridiculous, cheap hats, and would tear up at word of someone coming down with diphtheria or the piles.

 

The boy, who was only a couple years older, held the match under the Fatima and mentioned that it was a “fine ole day for a swim” and asked why didn’t she quit being such an old scaredy-cat. Oh, hell, how that had done it. Nothing could get Cleo Brooks—thinking of herself as another person back then—all steamed up like someone telling her that she was chicken. And so she’d shrugged, and said she just hoped he didn’t drown because she wasn’t gonna take the time to save him.

 

“I cleared out the snakes yesterday,” the boy said, his mouth opening wide, showing teeth that now in memory seemed a great deal like old Ed Weatherford’s, and maybe that’s why the detective had some familiarity to her.

 

She’d eaten lunch with her parents after the service, and while they’d gone to nap in the front bedroom she’d snuck out a back door and down a long dirt road for a mile or so, following a trail of barbed wire to where it had been cut to a path leading to a shaded forest filled with ancient oaks and hickory trees. The creek breaking into a sandy bend in a wide cut from her neighbor’s pasture.

 

The redheaded boy was there, still dressed in the mail-order suit, tie in his pocket and shoes knotted and hung on the root of a tree that grew straight out over the water. He played with a stick in the sand but smiled when he heard her swat away the limbs, leaves crunching underfoot.

 

“There better not be no snakes.”

 

“I swear on it.”

 

“And you try any funny business, boy, and I’ll scream my head off.”

 

“I swear.”

 

She walked down a smooth path, the trees giving the whole bend a nice stretch of cover like the top of a green circus tent. And she’d taken off her shoes and pulled her dress up to her knees, wading into the coolness of the creek that dipped over a rocky edge, flowing into a wide swimming hole that she’d been coming to since she could recall. The coldness of the water choked her breath, as she found the other side and took a seat beside the boy on a fallen oak.

 

He offered her another cigarette. And they sat there and smoked until the cigarettes were done. He just stood and walked down to the creek edge and began to take off his suit, hanging it beside his shoes just as natural as if he was in his own bedroom.

 

She knew her face must’ve turned red as she quickly turned away, eyeing his pale white hide from between her laced fingers, watching him toe at the water with his ole peter pointing up high and crooked as a wild divining rod searching for a well. He was skinny like a mongrel dog—she recalled that—and his ribs and stick-figure arms somewhat comical.

 

He immersed himself, spitting a fountain of water, and splashed and paddled around a bit, before calling her “a scaredy ole chicken,” and she told him to shut his damn mouth, with a sly little grin.

 

“You turn around and close your eyes,” she said. “And count to ten. I see you peeking, and I’m going to go straight home.”

 

“I swear on it.”

 

“I wish you’d say something else. The more you say that, the less I believe you.”

 

He paddled away and started to count to fifty. Dumb ole Cleo Brooks began to unbutton the front of her dress, getting down to her bloomers, and pretty soon those were heaped up on a hot rock, and she jumped on in the swimming hole, feeling that coolness around her, the relaxing sound of the creek bubbling over that sandy bend.

 

The boy paddled toward her.

 

She paddled away.

 

He got close, and she turned her naked butt to him.

 

She found herself in a little rocky elbow hidden under a jutting mossy boulder. The sunlight broke and scattered like ticker tape above her, and she reached up with her long, skinny arms to hold on to the rock’s point, shaking her head and telling that boy he better find his own real estate, mister.

 

“Scaredy-cat.”

 

“I ain’t scared of you.”

 

“How come you’re shaking?”

 

“I ain’t shaking.”

 

“Scaredy-cat.”

 

“I ain’t scared.”

 

He paddled to where he could stand and moved close, his long fingers reaching for her boobies like a fella trying to test the ripeness of fruit.

 

“Hey,” she said.

 

“That’s okay, sugarpie.”

 

“That ain’t how you touch a woman.”

 

“You ain’t no woman,” he said. “You’re a girl. And my brother tole me that a girl gets real excited when you touch her parts.”