“Cut it out.”

 

“Hold on, sugarpie.”

 

“See how you like it,” she said, laughing, and reached out and grabbed his pecker like she was trying for first prize in a tug-of-war, and the boy’s eyes got real big, and he toppled over into the water, and stupid old Cleo Brooks didn’t run but had to be bold and not a scaredy-cat and found herself on top of the boulder without a stitch, sunning herself from where the light broke out and warmed the stone. She rested on her elbows and closed her eyes, and figured that boy would run off with his sore pecker in his hand, but instead when she blinked in the dimming sun—thinking maybe a cloud had passed—she saw him standing over her, dripping and smiling, kneeling down and grabbing for her ankles.

 

“Close your eyes, sugarpie.”

 

“I ain’t your sugarpie,” she said, but let him lay flat on top of her and kiss her hard on the mouth, feeling for his crooked ole pecker and mumbling things he’d probably learned in romance stories from his mama’s ragged copies of Cosmopolitan. When he called her “darling” and “my love,” she snickered, and, boy, that’s when he took the chance and stuck it on in, and said, “If you don’t breathe, you won’t have a baby. It’s true.”

 

And so Cleo Brooks took a big breath, closed her eyes, and puffed out her cheeks, as the preacher’s son rode her like he was high on an old-fashioned bicycle going down a rocky path.

 

The whole meeting on the rock didn’t take ten seconds.

 

When he finished, her not feeling a thing, he crawled off her and walked over to his clothes and got dressed. Not looking at her till he knotted his tie tight at the throat. He tossed down a crumpled dollar she knew he’d stolen from the collection plate.

 

He shook his head and sat, saying, “You tricked me. You got the devil in you. Like all women. You tricked me.”

 

And that was the story that all Saltillo and part of Tupelo heard as her little white belly had grown large and she’d stood before his father on the front steps of the church, the preacher not willing to dirty the sanctuary with the likes of a tricky little girl like Cleo Brooks.

 

She had a daughter. The dumb boy went off to Bible college.

 

When Ora said let’s pack up and leave Mississippi, Kathryn didn’t hesitate. They bundled up the baby, packed two suitcases, and got on the train to Memphis and then onto Fort Worth. She took on the name Kathryn after a fancy woman who used to tip big at the Bon-Ton after a manicure.

 

Kathryn finished the cigarette on blind Ma Coleman’s porch, letting the wind take the ash and scatter it everywhere. She thought about how things mighta been different if she could have stayed in Saltillo, but none of the paths seemed that appealing to her.

 

She spotted the truck from a ways off, coming down the dirt road, kicking up the grit and the dust, and she stood from the wooden steps and walked blind, shielding the sun with her hand over her eyes until the truck stopped down by that beaten mailbox and out walked George R. Kelly, lugging two suitcases, his fine hat crushed and crooked on his head and sweat rings around his neck and dress shirt.

 

“Son of a bitch,” he said, walking. “Son of a bitch.”

 

Kathryn walked to meet him, not caring if her bare feet tore on the gravel, and stepped halfway up the road. “Where you been, you dumb ape?”

 

“You’re sore at me? If that doesn’t beat all.”

 

“Yeah, I’m sore. Took you long enough.”

 

“You and Louise took the car and ten thousand dollars.”

 

“I told you I’d be here.”

 

“You’re sore.”

 

“I’m sore.”

 

George let out all his breath, slipping his hat down over his eyes. He shook his head like she was the one who’d gone plain nuts.

 

“We got to bury the loot.”

 

“Grandma won’t be too pleased.”

 

“Grandma doesn’t have to know,” he said. “She’s blind.”

 

“She knows everything.”

 

George shook his head, as if contemplating a hell of an arithmetic problem. “Do you at least have a drink for me?”

 

 

 

 

 

“YOU KNOW WHY I CALLED,” CHARLIE URSCHEL SAID.

 

“Yes, sir,” Bruce Colvin said. “We got within a few hours of catching them in Des Moines. Their coffee wasn’t even cold. Their car was spotted in Buffalo. Yes, sir, we’re onto them.”

 

Charlie shook his head. “Not that.”

 

“Yes, sir,” young Bruce Colvin said. The young boy always looked spit-polished and clean, suit creased to a knife-edge. Hair neatly parted and oiled, a Phi Beta Kappa key hanging loose from a watch chain. “I see.”

 

“Figured you hadn’t had time for a proper meal.”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Is your steak good?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“So you know what I want to discuss?”

 

“May I say something first?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“She’s a fine girl.”

 

“Oh,” Charlie said.

 

The young man had met Charlie at the Cattlemen’s steak house right in the heart of the warehouse district, the cows so damned close it wasn’t but a few minutes between them taking a breath and sizzling on your plate. He cut a fat slab off the porterhouse and pointed the end of the bloody fork at Bruce Colvin.

 

“You are an impressive young man,” Charlie said. “I know you have the best of intentions.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Colvin said. The federal agent had yet to touch his steak, a buzzing conversation of cowboys and roughnecks all around them. A waiter stopped by the table and refilled their glasses of sweet tea and then disappeared. Colvin used his napkin to wipe some nervous sweat from his forehead. “I thought you and Mrs. Urschel might not be pleased, and there are some complications you should know about.”

 

“Because of the ongoing legal matters.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Isn’t this a private matter?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Does Agent Jones know?”

 

Colvin nodded, and took a small bite of his steak. Above him loomed the head of a long-horned steer with yellow glass eyes. The eyes were as large as golf balls.

 

“There’s been some trouble with the Shannons,” Colvin said. “We might not be able to bring them back to Oklahoma City for trial.”

 

Charlie listened and continued to chew the meat, along with the fat and gristle, remembering coming here with Tom Slick, the restaurant being one of Slick’s favorites because he didn’t have to rub elbows with the hucksters always trying to pick his pocket. Charlie remembered Slick sitting right here in this very booth, offering some solid advice on women, talking about one argument or another that Charlie had had with his late sister. What was that? Something about the women who gave you the worst trouble were the only ones worth having. Just what did he mean by that?

 

“There’s a hearing tomorrow in Dallas,” Colvin said. “We expect the judge to extradite, but their attorney will no doubt fight. He will appeal, and this could drag on.”

 

“What’s Agent Jones say?”

 

“He said he’ll take care of it.”

 

“How?” Charlie asked.

 

“I don’t know. Agent Jones is pretty determined to bring them back.”

 

“I don’t give a good goddamn about the Shannons,” Charlie said. “They treated me decent.”

 

“They were accomplices.”

 

“They’re not to blame. They’re simple and weak-minded.”

 

“We will find the Kellys,” Colvin said. “You have my word.”

 

“They’re not to blame either.”

 

“Sir?”

 

“I want to tell you something, Mr. Colvin, and I want you to listen. I need you to do me a favor, and I understand it may not be easy.”

 

“Anything, sir.”

 

“I want you to realize this favor has nothing to do with your relations with my niece. You understand?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Do you know how to tap a man’s telephone line? This damn thing doesn’t stop or end with the Kellys.”

 

The boy looked as confused and mindless as the steer over his head. His blue eyes widened as he leaned in and whispered, “Who?”

 

Charlie looked up from his steak for a moment and then began to saw into the meat closest to the bone. “The son of a bitch who just walked through the door.”

 

Colvin craned his head, and said, “That’s Mr. Jarrett.”

 

“That’s your villain in this picture,” Charlie said. He broke off a piece of toast and sopped up the blood and juices. “He lunches here every day.”

 

“Sir?”

 

 

 

JONES HAD ARMON SHANNON BROUGHT TO THE LITTLE WINDOW-LESS room in the basement of the Dallas Courthouse. Nothing but a small table and a couple chairs, an ashtray, and a pitcher of ice water. The pitcher had started to bead up and sweat in the airless heat. Jones removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, exposing his hand-tooled rig and .45. He paced the room, studying on what he knew about old Potatoes’s situation, until the boy was hustled in, manacled at the wrist and ankle, and seated with a firm hand.

 

The deputy locked the metal door behind him.

 

“You and George are good buddies, I suppose.”

 

Armon said nothing.

 

“Your daddy says you look up to him.”

 

Armon looked at the floor.

 

“Would you like some ice water?”

 

Nothing.

 

Jones poured a couple glasses and pulled up a chair near Armon. The boy just sat and sulked, not lifting his eyes.

 

“You’re in a hell of a pickle, son,” Jones said. “I don’t think you need a high-dollar lawyer to explain that. You’re looking at a lifetime in prison. You need me to tell you a little bit about those animals who live there?”

 

The boy lifted his eyes.

 

“’Spec not. I bet your friend Mr. Kelly might’ve told you a few of the highlights from when he was in Leavenworth.”

 

“Prison can’t hold ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly.”

 

“ ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly. Yes, sir. Desperado hero. You think a man’s a hero for holding a gun to a fella’s spine and keeping him hostage? You need to get into your thick head that’s just plain old-fashioned cowardice. You need to be thinkin’ about your own self. Your wife and that little girl of yours. You’ll be feeble and gray before you see ’em again. A good chance that baby will be taken by the state on account of her parents being in prison.”

 

“My wife wasn’t party to this.”

 

“How are we to know if you’re not talking to us? Your daddy is a smart man. He told us a good bit, and I gave him my word that we’d make that known in court.”

 

“I’m not a rat.”

 

“You learn that from a Cagney picture? Hell, son, you’re just a farmer. Look at the dirt under your nails.”

 

“I won’t rat on ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly.”

 

“He ain’t Billy the Kid.”

 

“You want me to stand up for the bankers and oilmen?”

 

Jones rubbed his face, took a sip of water, and leaned back in his chair. “I came to you because I told your daddy I’d try. This is a favor, son, and it won’t come ’round again. You need some plain talk and understanding of this predicament. You think Kelly and your stepsister would do the same for you?”

 

“I know they would.”

 

Jones took another sip and grunted. “You want to bet?”

 

“Kit told me you coppers would try and buddy up. She said y’all can’t breathe without telling a lie.”

 

“I’m offering you time. You’re young enough that you can still claim some of it. Your story doesn’t have to go like this.”

 

“Go to hell.”

 

“Boy,” Jones said, sadly, “that just doesn’t sound right coming out of your mouth. I knew you’d be like this, and some of the fellas thought they might be able to get you to tell them where to find the Kellys by stomping the ever-living shit out of you. I told them that wasn’t necessary. I figured you had a level head.”

 

“You figured wrong.”

 

Jones stood.

 

“How much they promise you?”

 

“They ain’t paying me.”

 

“I’d at least ask something for my child,” Jones said. “Don’t be foolish. You know Kathryn spent up toward two thousand dollars just on panties, shoes, and such? They’re living it up. Big parties, spending sprees, booze, and high times. I bet they’re laughing at the ole Shannon family.”

 

“They’ll bust us out.”

 

“You think George is worried about you?” Jones asked, slipping into his suit jacket and reaching for his hat.

 

Armon looked down at his manacled legs. “Fuck you.”

 

“Boy, those words just don’t fit your mouth,” Jones said. “High times. While your youngun is about to be sent to the orphanage, they’re popping champagne bottles.”

 

“They’ll bust us out.”

 

“Sure,” Jones said, reaching for the door. “Did you know Kathryn doesn’t even speak to her other kin? They’ve tried to call and write her for years, but she thinks she’s too good for ’em. Just like she thinks she’s too high-hat for you, Potatoes.”

 

“That’s a lie.”

 

“I’m a trained investigator, son.”

 

“She visits her grandma in Coleman ever since I know’d her. She loves that old woman. Stick that in your pipe, copper.”

 

Jones knocked on the door for the deputy. The door cracked open. “You sure are a tough nut, Potatoes. I just plain give up.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

27

 

 

Wednesday, August 23, 1933

 

Well, if the devil don’t walk among us,” Grandma Coleman said, spitting some snuff juice into an empty coffee can. Her hair was dyed the color of copper wire, framing a wrinkled complexion that resembled the skin on boiled milk. Sometimes Kathryn saw a bit of Ora in her grandmother, and sometimes, when the old woman grew cross, she saw a bit of herself. Mainly it was the way her cataracted eyes would gain some clarity—if only for a moment—and fix on something in her mind. Kathryn knew that look, had seen it in the mirror too many times when George would wander into the bathroom and ask her if she’d like to pull his finger or lift his leg to play a flat tuba note.

 

“Mornin’, Ma,” George said, leaning down and kissing the woman’s old sagging cheek. He’d showered and shaved, put on a fresh pair of gray pants and a short-sleeved white shirt without a tie. Grandma reached up and wiped away the filth of George Kelly, sticking out her old tongue like she had a bad taste, while Kathryn read the Dallas Morning News: SHANNON FAMILY FACES FEDERAL JUDGE.

 

“How ’bout some ham and eggs?” George asked as he poured a cup of coffee.

 

“Scat,” Ma Coleman said.

 

“Biscuits and gravy?” George asked, taking a sip, winking at Kathryn.

 

“I said shoo,” the old woman said. “I could smell your brand of evil soon as you crossed the threshold. You smell of sulfur.”

 

“Just some bay rum, Ma.”

 

“Git your own breakfast,” she said. “Shoo.”

 

George reached on the table for Kit’s silver cigarette case and fetched a Lucky, although he was a Camel man, and took a seat at the beaten table. “Can I have the funnies?”

 

Kathryn kept reading the front page, all about Ora, Boss, and Potatoes being in court later today and how the federal types had made a motion to extradite all three of them back to Oklahoma City, saying the outlaws had too many friends in Texas. “Son of a bitch.”

 

“I’ll give ’em back.”

 

“What?” Kathryn said.

 

“The funnies. Little Orphan Annie just got caught in a scrap with these pirates yesterday, and I wanted to see how the whole mess turned out.”

 

“George?” Kathryn said, snatching away the funnies.

 

“Come on, now, Kit.”

 

“Satan!” Ma Coleman said.

 

“Listen, we got to bust them out.”

 

“Annie and Sandy?”

 

“Quit trying to be funny,” she said. “They want to take my mother back to Oklahoma. They’ll hang her, George. I read they’re going to make us an example for what happened to Lindbergh’s baby.”

 

“Charlie Urschel ain’t no baby a’ mine.”

 

“I rebuke you,” Ma Coleman said, her glazed blue, sightless eyes shut. “Protect her, Lord. Seek the Lord’s forgiveness and repent.”

 

“Jesus H. Christ,” George said. “Would you shut her up?”

 

“I rebuke you, Satan,” the woman said, slapping the rough-hewn boards of the tabletop. “Bless this sister in Jesus’ name.”

 

“Ma?” George asked. “You still got those chickens? I’d like some eggs.”

 

“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

 

“Sure thing, Ma,” George said, slurping the hot coffee. “But can I get some eggs first? Bacon, if you got it.”

 

“We got to get to Dallas,” Kathryn said, finishing the story, reading over the last line about the kidnappers and their accomplices facing the chair. “If they take Ora out of Texas, they’ll kill her.”

 

“You want me to march into the county jail with my pistol and rescue my mother-in-law?”

 

“George, bring the machine gun.”

 

“I’d be dead long before I make it inside the joint.”

 

“Call some friends.”

 

“Albert won’t be much help.”

 

“Call Verne Miller.”

 

“Have you gone loony tunes? His best friend is in the slammer for something we did. Not to mention, we stole their loot. He’s got cause to be upset.”

 

“Then give it back.”

 

“Doesn’t work that way, Kit,” he said. “Hell, I didn’t mean to take it. How was I supposed to know Kid Cann packed all the cash together?”

 

“They’re going to kill my mother.”

 

“You want them to kill your husband, too? We set our path a long ways back.”

 

Kathryn didn’t speak, flipping her cigarette case from side to side.

 

“We got to get out of Texas,” George said. “Today.”

 

“Satan,” Ma said. “The beast roams the earth as a lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

 

“Shut up, old woman,” George said. “I gotta think.”

 

Kathryn lay back and slapped George across the mug. “You’ve got to do something.”

 

“I’ve got to fetch up some eggs,” George said, rubbing the red mark across his unshaven jaw and standing from the table. “I’m going to take a bath, eat breakfast, and then for the rest of the day I’m going to get good and stinking drunk. You can do all the thinking today.”

 

“That’s your answer?”

 

“I’m not going to Dallas.”

 

“I’m going to Dallas,” she said. “They need a lawyer.”

 

“Go,” George said.

 

“Satan,” Ma Coleman said.

 

Kathryn tramped out of the room, the screen door swatting behind her. George wasn’t but two seconds behind, Kathryn wishing he’d waited a beat so she could muster up some good sniveling tears, but to hell with it.

 

“We need a new machine,” George said, jabbing his finger into her chest. “I’ll give you a few hundred, and you go to town and buy something, anything. Nothing flashy, but reliable. We’ll leave the Chevrolet here. Going to Dallas is outright lamebrained.”

 

She nodded, pulling long on a Lucky, burning the cigarette down to nothing but ash and flicking it from her fingers.

 

“And we need to bury the loot.”

 

“Here?”

 

“Right here,” George said. “When it’s safe, we can come back for it. If we get caught, it’ll always be here. We take only what we’ll need for a couple months.”

 

“Ah, jeez, George,” Kathryn said. “This is crummy as hell.”

 

“You want to lose it all?”

 

George was gone for a few minutes and came back from Ma’s old barn carrying a shovel under his arm and a fat leather grip in each meaty fist. “Kit? Go get us those thermos jugs we bought. Some big pickle jars, too, if they got the tops.”

 

So this is how it goes, Kathryn thought, life goes back to canning your goddamn crummy crops and waiting for a rainy day. She watched George walk far into a weedy pasture, where a muddy creek was crossed by a lone willow, limbs hanging loose and breezy over the stagnant water. When she turned, Grandma Coleman had felt her way to the screen door and was staring in the direction of that lone tree, her milky blue eyes seeing nothing as she coldly spit into her coffee can.

 

Kathryn touched her face without thinking, wondering what it must feel like to have a face like a road map.

 

 

 

 

 

“WHAT ABOUT COLEMAN?” DOC WHITE ASKED.

 

“I sent a couple agents,” Jones said. “They turn up somethin’, and we’ll fly back in the evening. Right now, just keep the motor running.”

 

Jones mounted the steps of the courthouse in downtown Dallas. He removed his Stetson at the door and politely asked a bailiff where to find the Shannon hearing, the man pointing down the hall, and Jones finding the courtroom packed with newspapermen. He brushed past all the men standing in the back row and wandered down to the front, where he spotted a clerk he’d known for some time, tapping the fella on the shoulder.

 

“Mornin’, John.”

 

“Buster.”

 

“Full house today.”

 

“Don’t you know it.”

 

“What you got ahead of the Shannons?”

 

“Two more on the docket,” the clerk said. “Shouldn’t take long.”

 

“They got counsel?”

 

“Fella named Sayres,” he said. “Came over from Fort Worth half hour ago.”

 

“I know him.”

 

Jones spotted the fat-bellied attorney with the bald head huddled up with Ora and Boss, Potatoes sitting off to the side, flipping and twirling the tie on his neck like a dog with a new collar.

 

“He’s gonna fight it, y’all movin’ ’em.”

 

“So I heard.”

 

“What’s it matter where they’s tried?”

 

“Let’s say I got reasons to distrust who’s minding the jail.”

 

The clerk nodded.

 

Jones leaned into the desk over the man’s shoulder and whispered, “Don’t burn your britches with the paperwork.”

 

The clerk heard him but didn’t say a word, and Jones walked away, back along the wooden walls, finely oiled and polished, and stood among the gaggle of newspapermen that nervously checked their watches and glanced down at the empty pages of their notebooks. He saw one of the men wore a watch with that cartoon mouse on it, and he thought these people sure were of a different ilk.

 

Didn’t take but five minutes before the Shannons were called, and the three of them stood with roly-poly Mr. Sam Sayres of Fort Worth. The judge heard the request from the federal prosecutor to have the family extradited from the Dallas district to that of Oklahoma City, where the crime occurred, and the judge looked over his glasses at Sam Sayres, and Sam Sayres argued that the Shannons were charged with crimes that happened in Texas and would be treated fairly only by Texans. He said it was widely known in the press that the Oklahoma authorities were looking for warm bodies to convict, and this decent Texas family needed a fair shake.

 

The reporter with the Mickey Mouse watch snorted.

 

The judge looked down at the Shannons, the ragtag lot of them dressed in clothes that looked to be borrowed from an undertaker. Armon and Shannon both wore black suits from another time, with out-of-date ties, and pants that hung down, loosely pinned and sloppy at the boots. Ma Shannon wore an old gingham farm dress and a small hat with feathers and a dead canary in the crown. They all looked as solemn and sorry as sinners at a tent revival.

 

“Motion granted,” the judge said.

 

Jones parted the newspapermen, walked down the center aisle, and grabbed a bailiff by the elbow, showing him his piece of tin and telling him he’d be taking custody. Another bailiff joined them, and Ma, Boss, and Armon were marched out of the courtroom through a side door and down a long hallway.

 

Their attorney shouted for an appeal.

 

The judge told him to take it up with the clerk.

 

“Your Honor, those agents are rushing my clients out of the courtroom.”

 

“They’re within their rights,” the judge said. “I just ordered their removal. If I were you, I’d hurry up and file that appeal—I can’t make an order without it.”

 

Sayres’s fat ass ran to the clerk. Jones passed him before the bench.

 

“Hurry up, goddamnit.”

 

“Can’t do nothin’ till I read ’em to make sure all’s in proper form, Counselor,” the clerk said.

 

Jones slipped on his hat, tipping the brim at the red-faced attorney shouting at the clerk.

 

Jones followed the armed men pushing the Shannons down courthouse hallways and through concrete bowels till the Shannons were out a side door and marching toward Doc White and the idling government sedan. He held the back door to the sedan open, an armed agent sitting with the family in the back. Jones found a spot up front.

 

“Go,” Jones said.

 

“You rotten son of a bitch,” Boss Shannon said.

 

“Good to see you again, Boss,” Doc White said. “Sit back and get comfortable.”

 

“I got to pee-pee,” Ora Shannon said. “I can’t hold it till Oklahoma.”

 

“Don’t worry, darlin’,” Jones said. “It’s a short flight.”

 

“Good Lord in heaven,” Ora said. “I’m not getting on no flying machine.”

 

“Flying machine? Darlin’, this here is 1933. We call ’em ‘airplanes.’ ”

 

“You’ll have to shoot me dead first,” Ora Shannon said. “It ain’t natural.”

 

“Natural as a crow’s wings.”

 

“Oh, pshaw.”

 

“What you did was illegal,” Boss Shannon said. “Don’t think I don’t understand my rights.”

 

“Was keeping Mr. Urschel tied up like a goat legal?”

 

“Don’t confuse a matter of the court,” Boss Shannon said, crimson-faced, from the backseat.

 

“Don’t confuse legal with what’s right.”

 

Doc White wheeled them past the front gate and onto the tarmac to the waiting airplane, a twin-engine DC-2 the director had chartered that morning. Four agents met the car and opened the doors, Jones noting two of the men carried Thompsons and the other two held shotguns.

 

The men pulled out Potatoes first, and he didn’t give them a bit of trouble as he mounted the aircraft steps, his father in tow behind. But old Ora Shannon was the wildcat she promised, shaking her head and saying, “I’ve never been in one of those things in my life and I’m not goin’ now.”

 

“Suit yourself,” Jones said.

 

He motioned for the agents, and they pulled the fighting old woman from the car, her back arching as she tried to claw at the men with manacled wrists, until she was held under her arms and by her feet, lifted high off the ground, and taken up the ramp. She launched a final fight at the top, right at the airplane’s door, thrashing and hollering, her screams drowned out by the approaching siren.

 

A sheriff ’s car had followed them from the courthouse. From the top of the stairs, Jones could see Sam Sayres in the front seat.

 

“Start her up,” Jones said, hollering.

 

An agent told the pilot. Men spun the props.

 

Sam Sayres waddled from the official car, hollering and cussing, holding a piece of paper aloft. Jones pointed to his ear and shook his head. White walked past him and into the DC-2. Jones smiled down on the tarmac and waved good-bye just as the wind from the props knocked the papers loose from the lawyer’s hands and sent them, scattering and tumbling, toward the tower.

 

Two minutes later they were in the air, headed back to Oklahoma City.

 

 

 

 

 

“GIVE ME A SIP,” KATHRYN SAID.

 

George passed the pint of Old Schenley, straight rye whiskey.

 

“Bottled in bond under U.S. government supervision,” Kathryn said, reading the label before uncorking the bottle.

 

“Makes me sad to see that.”

 

“I know, George,” Kathryn said, sliding up next to him on the edge of Ma Coleman’s front porch, the old woman finally in bed, door double-locked in case George decided to get frisky. “You were a hell of a bootlegger.”

 

“You mean it, Kit?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Better than Little Steve Anderson?”

 

“George?” Kathryn asked.

 

He snatched back the bottle of rye and took a healthy swallow.

 

“Don’t fuck up the moment,” she said.

 

“So that’s our new chariot?”

 

“Best I could do.”

 

“I said cheap,” George said. “Not broke.”

 

“The man promised she ran good.”

 

“I haven’t seen an old truck like that since I was running liquor.”

 

“Man said those Model A’s will run forever if you change the oil.”

 

“All she has to do is get us outta Texas, and then we can ditch her.” Kathryn looked up to the beaten porch, flooded with light from a kerosene lamp, bugs swarming at its brightness, at the spades and picks, a folded-up tent, coffeepot, metal cups, and an iron skillet.

 

“George, I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t go to Mexico. They got my mother.”

 

“If we stay,” George said, knocking back more rye, “they’ll hang us. That doesn’t do anyone any good.”

 

“I ’spec not.”

 

“You can bring Chingy,” he said. His eyes had grown bloodshot and his face flushed.

 

“Sam Sayres wants a thousand dollars.”

 

“Don’t you dare wire that money,” George said. “You think the G isn’t watching his office now?”

 

“We got to get it to him personal,” she said. “I called him today from in town. He walked around the corner and caught the telephone at some café. He says he’ll meet me if I bring the cash. Said they got Boss and Ora real good, and that they have nothing short of a lynch mob waiting for them in O.K. City.”

 

“Anyone you trust to deliver the dough?”

 

“Louise.”

 

“You call her?”

 

“Couldn’t find her.”

 

“Go figure.” George nodded, and passed back the rye. “Say, why does your grandma hate me so much?”

 

“She thinks you’re leading me down the primrose path to hell.”

 

“Ain’t it fun?”

 

“It was.” Kathryn took a swallow and made a sour face. “That’s some tough stuff, George.”

 

“Fresh out of champagne,” he said. “Say, how ’bout you and me and the pooch head back to Chicago? We’ll be protected. Safe. I know some joints where no white man will set foot. Only go out at night, lay low, till somethin’ knocks us off the front page and we go back to being Joes.”

 

“You don’t get it? Our pictures are in every paper in the country.”

 

“Oh, hell. Haven’t you ever been to a party and thought you’d seen some bastard who’s famous, but then you start thinking that you’re a little loony ’cause the fella is shorter or has different-colored hair or something. That’s all we need—a little change in style.”

 

“What can you do to your hair?”

 

“Go blond.”

 

“That mug doesn’t go blond.”

 

“Come on,” George said. “You want to go to the Fair. We’ll take enough of the loot to have some good times and lay low. Get drunk, lie around in our underwear, and read the funnies for a few months. I know this ole bootlegger up there who’s on the square. He owes me from Memphis. They call him

 

‘Silk Hat’ Harry.”

 

“Only if we get the dough to Sayres,” she said. “He’ll drop their case if he doesn’t get paid.”

 

“Shit, just give him that new Chevrolet,” he said. “That’ll keep ’im happy for a while.”

 

George finished off the rye and tossed the bottle far out in the weeds, before leaning back on the porch planks and staring up at the bugs gathering around the lantern. He reached out, pawing at them, trying to touch the light that was too far away. “You’re gonna get us killed with that ole hard head.”

 

She didn’t speak. She could think of nothing to say.

 

“Did I ever tell you what Jarrett wanted for fingering Urschel?” he asked.

 

“Figured the couple grand you took off the top from Albert.”

 

“That was for two cars we ditched,” George said. “And gas and the Coca-Cola we bought Urschel.”

 

“So what’d you pay ’im?”

 

“Not a cent.”

 

“You’re off your nut.”

 

“You don’t unnerstand, Kit. He said the pleasure was all his, to finger a rotten bastard like Mr. Charles F. Urschel.”

 

“How come?”

 

“I didn’t ask and I don’t want to know.”

 

 

 

 

 

CHARLIE HADN’T SLEPT MUCH IN THE THREE WEEKS SINCE he’d been turned loose. Each night he found himself returning to his sunporch, taking in a cold drink or a hot cup of coffee, always a cigar, and replaying every hand of that bridge game. He’d study on it until the sun would come up, and then he’d return to the kitchen, where he’d greet the federal agents, who sat in cars and walked the perimeter to babysit the Urschel house. But Charlie didn’t think much about those sonsabitches coming back. They got what they needed and were long gone by now. They were just a set of rusted parts: knobs and pins, gears and springs. He only wanted to know who wound them.

 

Agent Colvin walked into the dark porch. No moon tonight. You could hear the crickets and mosquitoes hitting the screens.

 

Charlie sat alone in a far chair, far enough that even if there had been moonlight he couldn’t be seen. He drew on the cigar and didn’t say anything, dressed in a bathrobe he’d worn all day, refusing to eat or bathe for the last week.

 

“We got the Shannons locked up tight.”

 

Colvin stood a fair distance away from Charlie’s dark corner, as if he’d catch some dread flu.

 

Charlie smoked and nodded. The boy wore a nice double-breasted blue suit, hat in hand, and, strangely enough, looked to be carrying a gun. Charlie’d never noticed a gun.

 

“Agent Jones figured they’d be safer in the city. There was some concern of an escape in Dallas.”

 

“Did I show you the latch?” Charlie asked.

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“And you thought no more of it?”

 

“We’ve made inquiries into Mr. Jarrett’s business dealings.”

 

“Any horse’s ass can get the key to the city.”

 

“We’re still checking, sir.”

 

“I want him arrested,” Charlie said, the idea sounding ridiculous and hollow coming from his own mouth. “Or questioned, or whatever the federal police do.”

 

“We don’t have anything.”

 

“How did those men know to find me on the back porch?”

 

“Perhaps the light was on.”

 

“They had no hesitation,” he said. “Jarrett unlocked the screen during our game. They had arrived from the front. I never leave the back door unlatched.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“You think I’ve gone off my rocker?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Timing.”

 

The men didn’t speak for a while. Colvin found a chair close to Charlie and asked if it was all right to take a seat.

 

“Sir, I’d like to take Miss Betty for a soda tomorrow evening after supper,” he said, face half shadowed, swatting away a bug that had flown through a crack. “But only if you and Miss Berenice approve.”

 

“Of course,” Charlie said, smashing his cigar in an empty coffee cup.

 

“Agent Jones is very good,” Colvin said. “He thinks the Kellys may have returned to Texas.”

 

“That would be foolish.”

 

“Kelly’s wife has people there.”

 

“I bet they’re halfway to South America, laughing at us all.”

 

“I don’t think they’re laughing.”

 

“You play cards, Agent Colvin?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Bridge?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Jarrett cheats.”

 

Colvin nodded.

 

“He hesitates before pulling a card.”

 

“I don’t follow.”

 

“Let’s say the player on your right leads with a queen of hearts. And then when it comes to your turn, you have a king, and you’re pretty damn sure your partner has the ace. You might hesitate, and toss out a three instead of a king. That way, your partner knows he can take the trick with the ace and lead a low heart back to your king. Does that make sense?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Jarrett hesitates like a son of a bitch,” he said. “He knew I’d spotted him, yet he continued.”

 

“He didn’t change his game?”

 

“No.”

 

“So what do you do?”

 

“Confront him.”

 

“So he won’t cheat again?”

 

“Exactly,” Charlie said. “A liar must be confronted or he’ll continue to rub your nose in his stink.”

 

“Sir?”

 

“I’ve invited the Jarretts over Saturday night to play a few rubbers,” Charlie said. “I’d like you to be my partner.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

28

 

Shackled at the hands and feet, Harvey wasn’t too pleased when Deputy Tom Manion punched the STOP button on the elevator somewhere between the third and fourth floors. He’d grown used to being left alone on the tenth floor, learning he’d been moved to the death cell on account of Special Agent Gus Jones witnessing that little buck-dancing party and complaining to Sheriff Smoot. Stopping partway up on the ride wasn’t a good sign. The manacles kept Harvey from even being able to adjust his balls, let alone defend himself. He looked over at Manion and asked, “You forget your blackjack?”

 

“If you’re lying to me, I won’t need no rubber hose, fella,” Manion said in that countrified, hoarse voice. “What you said the other night, about the money, is it true?”

 

“Sure, it’s true.”

 

“Ten thousand.”

 

“That’s what I said.”

 

“How can you get it to me?”

 

“I can get two grand to you by tomorrow,” Harvey said. “The rest will come once I’m freed.”

 

Manion licked his lips and hitched up his pants, using his fancy silver belt buckle.

 

“This ain’t gonna be no cakewalk.”

 

“Didn’t expect it to be.”

 

“And if you don’t pay up what you owe, so help me Jesus, I’ll track you to the corners of this here earth.”

 

“Wouldn’t expect anything less, Tom.”

 

“You’re gonna be in the death cell,” Manion said, biting a cheek, shaking his head. “That’s the durned part of all of it.”

 

“Can you move me back downstairs?”

 

“I’m the one who suggested it.”

 

“It’s like a tiger’s cage,” Bailey said. “Houdini couldn’t break out.”

 

“There’s a ledge.”

 

“With a barred window.”

 

“And if you get out of that there window, you can shimmy out to the ledge and get to the stairs on the roof.”

 

“You got a blowtorch?”

 

“I’ll get you a file,” Manion said, not looking at Harvey, keeping his eyes on the numbers, the stagnant dial marking the floors. “You worry about that money.”

 

“I’ll have to make some calls.”

 

Manion nodded. “Figured you wouldn’t pull it out your ass.”

 

“The rest of it when I’m free of this shithole.”

 

“This is a brand-new jail.”

 

“And soon it will be your kingdom.”

 

“You really think I could be sheriff?”

 

“Sheriff?” Harvey said, catching Manion’s eye and winking. “Thought you had your sights on the governor’s mansion.”

 

“I always ride just one horse at a time.”

 

“May take a couple days.”

 

“Them federal men want you up in Oklahoma City something fierce, already moved the Shannons. The sonsabitches complained about our ability to keep you locked up.”

 

“The nerve.”

 

“Couple days, huh?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“If I were you, I’d set my mind on Monday.”

 

“Why Monday?”

 

“It’s Labor Day, hadn’t you heard? Every deputy in the department asked for time off.”

 

“I’ll need a gun, too.”

 

Manion reached over and hit the ON button, the elevator jerking hard up out of the still space, knocking Harvey off balance, and heading up to the tenth floor and the death cell. Manion didn’t say anything till they stopped and the door slid open to a hollow and silent floor, wind whistling around the building. “I like a man who knows what he wants.”

 

“We got a deal?” Harvey asked.

 

“Long’s as you understand the terms.”

 

 

 

 

 

KATHRYN BANGED THE EARPIECE AGAINST THE PAY TELEPHONE a half dozen times before hanging up, snatching up some loose dimes into a fist, and walking back to the drugstore counter. She saddled up on a revolving stool and ordered a Dr Pepper float, raking dimes back into her purse, and looked at herself in the old-fashioned mirror, deciding the red wig didn’t look half bad, even if the frock was something she bought off the rack at the five-and-dime.

 

Coleman. She hadn’t been in this town for years and didn’t expect anyone to remember the gangly little teenager who moved there with Ora, the one with the baby on the tit at those church suppers and revival picnics. Ora’s little girl. Ma Coleman’s granddaughter, who’d gotten in so much trouble in Mississippi she had to move to Texas for a little reformation. If she recalled, which she didn’t care to do, there had been an old hotel not two blocks right from where she sat, where she’d first caught the eye of traveling salesmen, who would open up their wallets and buy her flowers, Kathryn having to explain to them that roses smelled real nice but only jewelry got the drawers on the lampshade.

 

But even her sweet voice hadn’t moved old Sam Sayres, attorney at law, on the telephone. She’d used her breathless voice, trying to play sexy with him a bit, the bastard acting coy, like he didn’t know who she was when she called herself “his best girlfriend.” “And which one is that?” Sam Sayres asked. “The one with the Pekingese dog,” she’d said.

 

He’d asked for her number and said he’d call her back.

 

A half hour later the pay phone in the drugstore had rung, and there was Sam chewing her ass out for being so almighty stupid as to call him at his practice, and Kathryn saying, “Where am I supposed to call, your barber?” And then regretting it because besides being a fat tub of shit, Sam Sayres was as bald as a cue ball.

 

“You got to get up to O.K. City, Sam,” she’d said. “Today.”

 

“A trial like this costs money, darling,” he said, not flirting but talking down to her like she was still that teenager combing the hotels for sugar daddies.

 

“I don’t care about Boss or Potatoes,” she said. “They can get cornholed in the showers, for all I care. But you said you’d take care of my momma.”

 

“You haven’t delivered what you promised,” Sam had said, finishing it off with “darling.” His voice scratchy and strained over the wire all the way from Fort Worth.

 

“I said you’ll get it.”

 

“I don’t travel without a full tank of gas.”

 

“I said you got it,” Kathryn said, trying not to scream over the phone, knowing the way she felt she could probably make him hear her without the benefit of Ma Bell.

 

“Sweet cakes, you’re as hot as a two-dollar pistol.”

 

“And you’re as stand-up as a nickel whore.”

 

“There’s plenty of lawyers in this state. I don’t know why you always got to call on me.”

 

“Sam? Sam? Don’t hang up.”

 

“Don’t call my office again.”

 

“How about a brand-new Chevrolet?”

 

“I won’t hold my breath,” he’d said, and there was a click, and the operator came on again and asked if she’d like to make another call. And that’s when she had started hammering the earpiece on the phone. Shit, shit, shit.

 

She turned around on the stool and drank her float.

 

When Kathryn looked back at the mirror, she noticed the red wig had gone a little crazy and cocked on her head. She dipped her head down to the straw, eyeing around the counter at the soda jerk refilling the bins of candy and bubble gum, and twisted it a little more to the left.

 

On the counter, she saw a single dime she’d dropped and decided to call her uncle in town, Uncle Cass, who was a decent old guy and could be trusted to take some of the loot to Fort Worth. He picked up right quick, but before she could get into the pitch of what she needed old Cass whispered into the phone, “I can’t talk right now, Preacher. I got some government man over here asking me some questions.”

 

She hung up and raced outside, the bell jingling behind her, out to the old Model A truck, cranking and cranking till it sputtered to a start, winding through downtown Coleman to the dirt highway that would take her back to her grandmamma and George, thinking that maybe she should head the opposite way, out of Texas and away from George, and then remembering those pickle jars and thermoses under the willow and thinking, Goddamn, this is what you call an ethical dilemma.

 

“Where’s George?” she yelled to the old woman rocking on the front porch. “Where is he?”

 

“Sister, let’s pray.”

 

“Keep your prayers. Where is he?”

 

“He has befouled you, my love. Let me touch your face.”

 

Kathryn ran up the steps, looking behind her at the twisting road leading back to the empty highway and then over to that lonely willow by the muddy creek, waiting for a flock of cars to come speeding on down the road any minute, the G-men filing out with their guns at the ready. Son of a bitch. The goddamn G was making her bugs.

 

“Where did he go?”

 

All across the old porch were empty bottles of rye and bourbon and gin. The old woman completely unaware of the sin at her feet.

 

“There is a revival at the river on Sunday,” she said. “I want you to go. There is a boy, not even six, who has been blessed with the healing touch.”

 

“Goddamn you and your empty foolishness,” Kathryn screamed at the sightless, cataracted blue eyes. “Where is my husband?”

 

Ma Coleman stopped rocking. The wind crossed her porch and made whistling sounds in the empty bottles.

 

She spoke light and low, reaching into her cheap, nasty, moth-eaten housecoat—silly sunflowers across her sagging tits and rump—and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “This,” she said, her lip quivering. “This.”

 

George had written, in that stupid, childish scrawl, a single word: MISSISSIPPI.

 

“Damn fool,” Kathryn said.

 

She was packed within five minutes, George being smart enough to leave the new Chevrolet to pay off Sayres, instead borrowing some old car, maybe even worse than the Model A she’d have to drive. She kissed the old woman on the cheek and bounded down the crooked old stairs, yelling back, “Don’t take any plug nickels, Granny.”

 

 

 

 

 

THEY PLAYED POKER, FIGURING IT WAS MUCH BETTER SUITED to four men sitting around on a Saturday night, knowing that bridge was a couples’ sport. Charlie had invited Bruce Colvin, E. E. Kirkpatrick, and Walter Jarrett to the table. The servants had been given the night off, Betty making sure the men had ice in their whiskey and kitchen matches nearby for their cigars. Jarrett asked if they might sit inside because of the heat, but Charlie insisted on the sunporch, the sunporch being the place where he’d played out the game in his head a thousand times.

 

And yet Jarrett hadn’t cheated on a single hand. The gold teeth in the back of his mouth fascinated Charlie every time Jarrett smiled with his winnings, raking in the chips and laughing it up with that hick accent. Colvin not a damn bit of help, frequently excusing himself to go to the bathroom or fetch more ice or any damn thing to speak to Betty some more.

 

Only Kirk, who sat to his right, seemed to take a serious interest in Jarrett. And now that Jarrett was knee-walking drunk, they didn’t have to be so damn furtive about it. Kirkpatrick excused himself from the table as had been arranged, only the two men left in the haze of squashed cigars, eyes glazed with bourbon.

 

“I wish that SOB Kelly would try to come back on this porch now,” Charlie said, reaching behind him and placing a revolver on the table.

 

“Nice-looking gun.”

 

“I’d shoot him right between the eyes.”

 

Jarrett just sat there, short-sleeved white shirt all wrinkled on his shapeless form. He played with the cards, running them through his hands, laughing at tricks he’d seen cardsharps work but was unable to perform himself. He cut the deck of cards and tried a fancy shuffle that broke and scattered across his lap and onto the floor.

 

“You’re putting me on,” Charlie said. “All that time in the fields, and you can’t shuffle better than that?”

 

“I can’t help my winnings, Charlie. Don’t be a sore loser.”

 

Charlie smiled, just a little. He reached for his cigar that had burned down a three-inch ash. He tipped off the ash and smoked for a few moments while he watched Jarrett pour a fat helping of liquor and settle into the chair, watching bugs that had collected in a ceiling light.

 

“You think much about it?”

 

“ ’ Bout what?”

 

“Mickey Mouse,” Charlie said. “Hell, Kelly. What do you think? What else is there to think about?”

 

Jarrett turned away from the ceiling and tried to focus on Charlie’s face. He lost interest, and leaned into the table to count his money into a sloppy little pile. “I guess I better be goin’.”

 

“Funny how Kelly knew we were here,” Charlie said, feeling control for the first time since those bastards had stepped across his threshold. “Funny how they didn’t try to snatch me anywhere else.”

 

“I wouldn’t call it funny,” Jarrett said, pushing back his chair and standing.

 

“Sit back down.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Finish your drink.”

 

Charlie reached over and poured out two fingers into his own crystal glass and topped off Jarrett’s. “You didn’t think it was strange that the back door was unlocked?”

 

“I never gave it any thought, Charlie,” Jarrett said. “Say, what are you gettin’ at?”

 

“If you needed money so bad, why didn’t you come to me for a loan?”

 

“Good night, Charlie.”

 

“You set the game,” Charlie said. “You made sure Berenice and I sat here like ducks for that gangster.”

 

“You’re drunk.”

 

“You unlatched the back door when my back was turned.”

 

Jarrett reached for the deck of cards, shuffled them out smoothly, reaching for them and sifting through with expert, practiced fingers. He looked up only with his eyes and gave a drunken smile. “Prove it.”

 

Charlie opened his mouth but couldn’t find the words.

 

“You think I sold you out to a couple gangsters?” Jarrett asked. “Then go call Mr. Colvin away from sweet-talking Betty. Go on and lay out what you know—A back door unlocked? That we invited ourselves over? You and your fancy wife may find that bad etiquette, but that isn’t a criminal case.”

 

“I know it was you.”

 

“I bet.”

 

“I just can’t figure out why.”

 

“You got a lot of windows in this house,” Jarrett said. “Lots of glass.”

 

“Are you passing out a morality lesson?”

 

Jarrett reached for the loose bills and silver dollars. The table still littered with sandwich plates and ashtrays, empty beer bottles and fine whiskey glasses.

 

“How long have you known me?” Jarrett asked.

 

“You don’t recall?” Charlie asked, rubbing his temples with his hands.

 

“When?”

 

“Back to Seminole.”

 

“Biggest oil field ever discovered,” Jarrett said. “Made Tom Slick one of the richest men in this country.”

 

Charlie nodded, holding the plug of the cigar and waiting, knowing where this was headed, feeling the heat swell in his face.

 

“You tried to buy my land.”

 

“I made you a fair offer,” Charlie said. “Don’t turn this back on me.”

 

“I made a fair counter,” Jarrett said. “You remember.”

 

Charlie didn’t say anything.

 

“I can’t recollect, but I seem to remember I wanted two hundred thousand, an honest price for property that’d later produce nine hundred barrels a day.”

 

Charlie pulled on the cigar. He reached for the edge of the table.

 

“Thought you wanted me to stay awhile.”

 

“Good night, Walter.”

 

“But you didn’t pay me,” Jarrett said, getting to his feet. He walked to a sideboard, where his hat had become wet from melting ice. “You just bought up the property next to mine.”

 

“Perfectly legal.”

 

“And you siphoned every drop while I was hustling to buy equipment.”

 

“Do you know how many leases Tom Slick and I worked? How can I recall one deal?”

 

Jarrett headed for the back door of the sunporch and grinned, stopping to savor the moment, as he fingered the lock open. “Yep, I guess that would be awfully hard to prove in court. I guess that’s what you learned men would call ‘a conundrum.’ ”

 

Charlie Urschel sat back down and listened for Jarrett’s car pulling away on the same route Kelly took, sitting there in the midnight silence until the cigar started to singe his fingers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

29

 

 

Sunday, September 3, 1933

 

Kathryn drove straight to Biloxi and then right back around to Texas in that old Model A truck, her ass flying up and off the seat, shifting those crazy, rusted gears all the way across on Highway 80, west through New Orleans and Lafayette, Lake Charles, and over the state line into Beaumont, before cutting up Highway 6 to Navasota, College Station, and Marlin, where she nearly dozed off at the wheel, hitting the clutch, sputtering, and killing the engine, and then starting off again, limping that hunk of junk up to Waco, way past midnight, with a leaking radiator and a shot of gas. She had to drive a mile and then cool down, drive and cool down, that hose spitting and spewing, before finding the Waco Hilton, an oasis in the Texas night. She parked that flatbed truck, shuddering and creaking and steaming, at the front door, and snatched her leather grip, knowing she looked like a damn sight to the bellhop, in her damp red wig and sweat-ringed gingham. The boy stared at her openmouthed as she asked the manager to be right quick in getting her to the finest room they had.

 

She’d taken a bath and ordered up a steak, baked potato, and Jell-O salad with a couple bottles of ice-cold Shiner Bock. She didn’t wake up the next day till way past one o’clock, having pulled the shades tight, and would’ve slept later if that nigger maid hadn’t made all that fuss about wanting to bring her up some towels and fresh bleached sheets. Oh, Lawdy, miss. Oh, Lawdy. She paid for the room in cash, got the hose fixed at a Sinclair Oil station, and headed on up 171 through Hillsboro to Cleburne, where the goddamn hose—the new one—busted again, spewing up clouds of steam, the engine running hellfire hot, limping on—Another mile to go, another mile to go—till she saw the billboard for another filling station, this one a Texaco that promised to sell WESTERN GIFTS AND NOVELTIES while they checked your engine.

 

Goddamn George. Goddamn Sam Sayres.

 

Goddamn all men.

 

The three miles to that Texaco might’ve been a million. Kathryn was more sure than ever that George had found that pretty blond lifeguard—the one who he’d said resembled a mermaid—and run off to Miami or, worse yet, headed back to Coleman to harvest their loot and split the country like he always wanted. Either way, brother, she knew she was out of the picture. Her gingham dress hugged her long body and firm fanny like a second skin, the slow going of the old truck not giving up a bit of wind, her mouth parched and dry, aching for a Dr Pepper, the setting sun coming straight into her eyes. The red wig felt like a winter hat, but Kathryn knew nobody in Texas figured the infamous Kit Kelly for a daring redhead.

 

She didn’t know who she hated more at that very moment, George R. Kelly or Samuel Sayres, thinking that old Sam Sayres may have the edge for making her give up that Chevrolet for this old metal carcass, not having the decency to trust her word that she’d be wiring him the money. Kathryn kicked in the clutch like she was riding a stubborn mule down that twisty, two-lane highway, past dead-weed gullies and handmade signs for the Texaco perched on fence posts. Nothing but cotton around her forever, making her think that North Texas sure looked a hell of a lot like North Mississippi, waiting for the next stop to be purgatory.

 

George R. Kelly sat at a linen-covered table with his tanned whore, a cigar in the side of his mouth, a fist of cash in one hand and the girl’s fat Southern ass in the other. Sam Sayres sat at a wooden trough of ice cream, eating and slurping it up like a hog.

 

The filling station was on the edge of downtown Itasca, population 1,280. The station was a lean, skinny building made out of stone, with two garage doors and twin, globe-topped pumps. Behind the station were stacked junked cars from when they just started making cars, Kathryn wishing she could just add this son of a bitch to the heap because walking to Fort Worth might just be easier.

 

Two attendants came running out to meet the fuming, jittery truck, as she pulled in and hit the brake and jumped out to kick the tires, just aching to do that for the last forty miles, and then walked to the edge of the highway to light a cigarette. She hadn’t said a word to the men, the men being smart enough to figure it the hell out.

 

She wanted to rip the crazy wig off her head but instead just stared at all those junked cars and the big, endless acres of cotton getting ripe. She thought back about standing at the edge of the Gulf after she found out George was gone and throwing shells out into the water till her arm ached, salt water licking her toes as an insult.

 

She walked back to the shade of the filling-station roof to where a split log had been laid across some milk jugs. She sat and spread her legs, feeling just the hint of coolness and breeze between them. She leaned back against the stone wall, ran a sweaty forearm across her brow, and looked north at the endless road, crooking up and forgotten, ’round the bend.

 

She should’ve known George would’ve pulled something as boneheaded as this. Maybe Ma Coleman was right. Maybe he was Satan put upon this earth, maybe Kathryn was paying for sins going back to that creek in Saltillo when she let the preacher’s son stick his skinny willy in her. Maybe she had lured him there. Maybe she had the same kind of affliction as George and needed to get right in His eyes. Could she change? Could she walk deep into the river—any river—and have her sins and filth and road sweat washed off her and drain on down to Mexico?

 

Kathryn did something she hadn’t even thought about since she’d had a child’s mind. Kathryn Kelly, now thinking she could become Cleo Brooks again, began to pray. She started with something simple, about the only thing she could recall, about how great He was, how powerful He was, and how she wasn’t nothing but dirt. O heavenly Father, I’m so damn stupid and trusting . . .

 

When she opened her eyes, she saw three figures—shadows, really—in the big blot of the afternoon sun, coming down the road. Two tall and one short. Kathryn was worn-out from the prayer and lit another cigarette, wondering if one of those grease monkeys fussing over her truck might have a spot of liquor on him, knowing she’d give up her last hundred-dollar bill to be good and drunk right about now.

 

The figures grew closer, coming down the road. She could hear the men knocking around in the garage, but also the cicadas and crows. A nice, new Packard blew past the filling station, scattering up dirt and trash from the roadside. Some of the grit blowing across to her, into her eyes and onto her tongue.

 

She spat, spread out her legs farther, and used the front pages of the newspaper to fan her undercarriage. JUDGE ORDERS SHANNONS TO OKLAHOMA.

 

The shadows became people, and those people became a short man and a taller woman and a little girl in a dress made out of a flour sack. The sack hadn’t even been disguised, Kathryn clearly seeing WESTERN STAR MILL written across her middle. The girl trudged along, wearing a pair of oversize men’s brogans and kicking a tin can, a sharp stick in her hand. The man behind her looked to be about Kathryn’s age but with plenty of wrinkles and scars, wearing overalls and work boots. The woman was slope-shouldered and poor-mouthed, in her tattered flowered dress that had been washed threadbare. They stopped a good bit shy of the filling station, and the little girl plopped to her butt, the man rousting through a junk pile to find an old metal bucket where he sat down, not even offering the comfort to the woman or child, and Kathryn nearly laughed at the sight of it.

 

Another car passed, and the man stepped a long, skinny leg onto the road and put out his thumb.

 

Those people. They were everywhere.

 

The mechanic came out after a while and told Kathryn the damage, and it was only going to be twenty dollars, and she reached into her purse and handed him the money without looking at him or making the fuss he clearly expected.

 

She fanned her face and between her legs again with the newspaper, Boss and Ora’s hardscrabble faces staring back.

 

Advertisements on tin all around her. DRINK COCA-COLA. SMOKE CAMELS. BUY FIRESTONE. She lit her Lucky and waited for another car to pass and kick up a little wind.

 

“Sure love the smell of a cigarette,” a little voice said.

 

Leaning into the stone wall, legs spread, opening one eye, Kathryn Kelly looked at the little girl in the flour sack standing in front of her. She opened the other eye and muscled her sweaty forearms onto her knees and took in some more of the Lucky, blowing the smoke right into the girl’s face and pug, freckled nose.

 

The little girl winced a little, but then sniffed the air like a rabbit and said, “Yes, ma’am. That’s smells right stylish.”

 

“You’re an odd little duck.”

 

“Don’t take me on account of my clothing,” the girl said. “My father lost our suitcase in a card game.”

 

“You don’t say . . .”

 

“He almost won, too.”

 

“Where’s your car?”

 

“We don’t have a car,” the girl said. “We’re just tramping.”

 

“I see.”

 

“You have a car.”

 

“If you can call it that.”

 

“Must be nice.”

 

“What’s your angle, kid?” Kathryn asked, crushing the cigarette under the heel of her shoe. The sunset cut across the girl’s light eyes and blunt, bowl-cut hair. She wrinkled her nose. “Thought maybe we could hitch a ride, is all. Don’t want to be no trouble, ma’am. We just walked a fur piece.”

 

The mechanic pulled the truck around. He had black teeth, and black grease across his red neck, and he winked at Kathryn as he opened the door, at the ready.

 

“Some town,” the little girl said. “Even the people have fleas.”

 

The grease monkey spat.

 

The little girl turned to walk back to her old bucket daddy, Momma sitting like an Indian beside him. Kathryn wondered where in the hell were those Western gifts the billboards had promised.

 

She kicked in the clutch and clattered up slow to the girl, having to shout over the coughing motor and through the open passenger window. “What’s your name?” she asked.

 

“Gerry.”

 

“Y’all want a ride, Gerry?”

 

“Can my folks come?”

 

“Why not.”

 

A mile down the road, Gerry sitting up on an apple crate beside Kathryn and talking ninety miles an hour, her poor-faced folks in back on the Ford’s flatbed, Kathryn started to think about the miracle of prayer and how that family, cresting over the hill with holes in their shoes, just might be some kind of crazy redemption, like they had in the Bible and in the movies.

 

Cleo Brooks knew she could be good. She just goddamn well knew it.

 

 

 

 

 

“YOU SAY SHE’D JUST UP AND LEFT YOU, MA’AM?” JONES ASKED. “Did your granddaughter say where she was headed?”

 

“No, sir,” Ma Coleman said. “I can still smell him among us.”

 

“How does he smell?”

 

“Like sulfur and hellfire.”

 

“I think it smells right pleasant, ma’am,” Jones said. “Smells like you baked a pie.”

 

“Coconut,” she said. “Just starting to cool. Yes, sir, it is.”

 

Jones looked to the ledge, where dozens of flies had gathered over the pie, taking off and landing in a spotted black swarm. He sat across from the old woman, on the other side of a table cobbled together with barn wood, coffee-ringed and beat to hell. Behind her, he had a clear view of the agents walking the land, and he could see young Agent Colvin conversing with that sharpshooter Bryce by a willow growing in the bend of a narrow creek.

 

A black row of clouds inched toward them, about to blot out the sun.

 

“It’s nice to converse with a fine young man, for a change,” Ma Coleman said. “Picks up the spirit. May I offer you some more sweet tea? I brewed it in the sun this morning. My son brought me a block of ice just before you men arrived.”

 

“I don’t mind if I do,” Jones said, reaching across to grab the sweating pitcher. “I appreciate you inviting us in.”

 

“It’s a hot day,” she said.

 

“It’s supposed to rain.”

 

“You don’t say.”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Jones said, fanning his face with his Stetson. “Sure would cool things down.”

 

“Mmm-hmm,” Ma Coleman said, cold and vacant as a broken doll on a ladder-back chair, flies buzzing off from a half-eaten cheese sandwich. “You will find that man she’s with?”

 

“Kathryn’s husband?”

 

“If that’s what he claims.”

 

Bruce Colvin walked through the front screen door and was careful not to let it bang closed. He’d sweated through his white dress shirt, perspiration ringing his neck in an effect that looked like a halo. He looked to Jones and shook his head.

 

There was dirt across the front of his pants.

 

“She left some things here?” Colvin asked.

 

“Her furs and trinkets,” the old woman said. “Vanity has no shame. He bought them for her. He made her wear them. They feel like dog skins to me.”

 

“I understand,” Jones said.

 

“You are a fine bunch of men,” she said, rocking a bit to herself and smiling. “You understand that he’s the one to blame?”

 

“Of course,” Jones said, shifting his eyes over to Colvin. Colvin rested a shoulder against the wall, flowered wallpaper peeling from the wood planks, listening. “We only want George Kelly.”

 

Jones reached out his hand and grabbed the frail old woman’s arm. “Tell us what you know, ma’am.”

 

Colvin shook his head and looked away from Jones, letting the screen door slam behind him. Jones watched the young man walk away down a rutted path but then turned back to the blind woman, who smiled and rocked. “You do know she has a friend named Louise in Fort Worth? You do realize she’s a demon, too?”

 

 

 

 

 

KATHRYN RENTED A CABIN IN A LITTLE MOTOR COURT NEAR Cleburne for herself and Gerry and her parents, the Arnolds. Flossie Mae and Luther. She’d left them there to get cleaned up and she’d gone to town to try to phone Sam Sayres again, getting the runaround from his secretary and finally giving up, bringing back some boxed dinners of fried chicken and some fresh clothes for the family. The family sat together on a short bed opposite an identical short bed where Kathryn sat and gnawed on a chicken bone. She was thinking of Sam Sayres being so almighty stupid as to let her momma get sent back to Oklahoma when Luther Arnold coughed in the silence of hungry people eating and said how much they appreciated meeting a real-life angel out on a Texas highway.

 

“Don’t mention it,” Kathryn said.

 

“’Preciate the dress,” Flossie Mae said, looking down at the floorboards and lifting her eyes just for a moment to give Kathryn a ragged smile.

 

“You gonna eat that?” Gerry asked her father.

 

“Get your grimy little hands off my chicken,” he said.

 

“You can have mine,” Kathryn said. “I’m not that hungry.”

 

She passed over the little greasy box to the girl, who snatched up another drumstick, rocking her feet to and fro on the little bed.

 

“Where y’all headed?” Kathryn asked.

 

“Where we can find work.”

 

“Where you been?” she asked.

 

“We was thrown off our land in April,” Luther said, closing his eyes and shaking his head with the memory.

 

“Where?”

 

“Ardmore.”

 

“Sorry to hear that.”

 

Flossie Mae shot a surprised look at her husband, and he reached down and tweaked her kneecap.

 

“Daddy was a good farmer,” Gerry said, bright and wide-eyed. “I had me a little goat that would pull me in a wagon. He was a good little goat.”

 

“Hush now, doll,” Luther said, cleaning down a breast to the bone. “Quit talkin’ ’bout that gosh-dang goat.”

 

“What kind of work can you do?” Kathryn asked, crossing her legs at the knee and lighting a cigarette. She could see her reflection in the mirror over the cheap bureau. A sign read WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE LODGING FOR THOSE OF LOOSE MORALS.

 

“I’ll do any work that can feed three hungry people.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Kathryn said.

 

“Don’t pity us, ma’am,” Luther said, putting a scraggly arm around Flossie Mae and hugging her close, the woman looking as uneasy as a caught barn cat. “We’re together and that’s a gift from the Lord Himself.”

 

“Amen,” Kathryn said. “Are you all right with God?”

 

“Gerry was baptized at two.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it.”

 

“Where are you headed, Mrs. Montgomery?” he asked. A long pause. “Mrs. Montgomery?”

 

Kathryn turned from watching herself in the mirror and said, “I’m meeting my husband, who’s on a business trip.”

 

“And what does Mr. Montgomery do?”

 

“He’s in the liquor business.”

 

“You don’t say,” Luther said, leaning in, rubbing rough old hands together. Flossie Mae stood and asked to be excused, and Kathryn shrugged at her, waving her hand through the smoke. “What kind of liquor?”

 

Kathryn recrossed her legs, and said: “All kinds.”

 

“I bet you’ve been to the World’s Fair!” Gerry said. “I read Budweiser ran a team of horses with barrels of beer all the way from Saint Louis!”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“Sure wish we could go to the World’s Fair.”

 

“Don’t mind the girl, ma’am. Her head is filled with a lot of foolishness. We don’t have but three dollars left amongst us.”

 

Kathryn reached for her purse and Luther held up a hand, shaking his head. “We appreciate all you done, ma’am, but the Arnold family don’t take no handouts. I work to feed my family.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t think nothin’ of it,” Luther said, straightening his shoulders and running a hand over his thinning hair, dabbed down with grease. “We do appreciate the hospitality of a fellow Christian.”

 

“I knew you were good country people the moment I set eyes on you,” Kathryn said. “Why do such good people always have a road of sorrows?”

 

“Just the way it is, ma’am.”

 

“I’ll take some money,” Gerry said brightly, jumping to her feet and twirling before the mirror in her fifty-cent dress and quarter shoes.

 

“Gerry!” Luther said. “Apologize to Mrs. Montgomery.”

 

She did.

 

Kathryn winked at her. Over her father’s sloped shoulder, Gerry winked back.

 

The toilet flushed, and Flossie Mae tramped back into the room and sat at her husband’s side, head down, waiting for her chance to be asked a question, usually replying in a single word. The room was nothing but a bureau, two iron beds, and a single framed picture that looked to be cut out from a feedstore calendar, a nymph on a rock, looking at the moon, shielding her goodies with an open palm.

 

“Mrs. Arnold, may I speak to your husband in private for a moment?” Kathryn asked, standing, clicking open her cigarette case, and retrieving a fresh Lucky. “I have a business matter that may hold some interest for him.”

 

Luther hopped to his feet and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He followed her outside the tourist cabin into the coal-black night, not a sign of the moon; a family two cabins down the line cooked meat on a split oil drum. All the people in the camp had been discussing this big hurricane that had already hit Galveston and was headed their way.

 

“Yes, ma’am . . .”

 

“I saw you staring at me, Mr. Arnold.”

 

Luther rubbed his stubbled, weak jaw and nodded. “Sorry, ma’am. I just ain’t never seen somethin’ so purty.”

 

She nodded. “I don’t think that’s it.”

 

“Please don’t tell Flossie Mae. A man just can’t help himself sometimes.”

 

“I know who you are.”

 

“Good Lord in heaven,” he said, stepping back to the door.

 

Kathryn snatched his hand from the handle and leaned in close enough to smell his tired, old onion-and-chicken breath. “You people are good folks, salt of the earth and all that. And you are exactly what I need.”

 

“Ma’am?”

 

She pointed a long, manicured finger at Luther Arnold’s skinny breastbone and said, “You are the answer to my prayers. A gift.”

 

“I don’t follow.”

 

“You know who I am?”

 

“No, ma’am.”

 

“Come on. Don’t read the papers?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“You ever heard of Kathryn Kelly?”

 

He shook his head. Kathryn stepped in closer and said, “Wife of the desperado and gangster ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly?”

 

“You know ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly? Shoot. If that don’t beat all.”

 

“I’m his wife,” she said. “Luther, are you a man I can trust?”

 

“With all my heart.”

 

“I need you to do something for me tomorrow,” she said. “I need you to go to Fort Worth and find an attorney named Sam Sayres. Can you do that for me?”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

“I will pay you fifty dollars in cash for your trouble, and two nights here for your family.”

 

“Sam Sayres,” Arnold said, nodding. “Got it. What do I do?”

 

“I need to find out what’s going on with my family’s case. You tell him that you are my emissary.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“You work for me.”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

“I’ll give you bus fare that you can take to Cleburne, but you are not to tell a soul.”

 

“Not even Flossie Mae.”

 

“’Specially not Flossie Mae.”

 

“You got my word, ma’am. I swear to it on the Arnold family name.”

 

He put out a small, weathered paw, and Kathryn shook it in the weak light from a single bulb screwed in by the cabin door.

 

 

 

 

 

THE FILE DEPUTY MANION HAD PASSED TO HARVEY IN A SLOPPY handshake only nicked the thick iron bars of the cell wall. It wasn’t until he really got his muscles into a solid rhythm, working in the midnight heat, that he made some progress, thinking that goddamn son of a bitch wanted ten g’s in exchange for a rusted file and a lousy razor blade.

 

Harvey tried a downward stroke on the barred wall, the way you might play a fiddle, and he thought of a fiddle and dance music and devil deals with backstabbing bastards, until his mouth went dry again and his hands and arms had about locked in spasms.

 

He wished he had a watch, knowing he didn’t have much time till the trusty would come roaming down the hall to slide his breakfast under the cell door.

 

The first bar from the wall—Harvey figuring he needed at least three to squeeze through—didn’t fall until an hour later, Harvey’s arms quivering and undershirt soaked as he reached for the sink, where he scooped out mouthfuls of water. Hard winds shook the building and screamed around corners. That big hurricane blowing off the Gulf had started to tickle Dallas, and Harvey knew if he could time this thing just right the confusion of it just might be a hell of a gift.

 

Manion promised to meet him at his home out on old Eagle Ford Road, just outside Irving. He said he’d bring another car, a change of clothes, and a rifle, and Harvey would pay him the balance on his freedom, Manion knowing enough about Harvey to value an honest crook. But, goddamn, there was a long way between the cell, ten floors of armed guards, and the road. A goddamn long way. And all Manion had seeded him with was rusted junk, refusing to give him a gun but telling him that he’d hid a pistol in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk.

 

If he made it down to the sixth floor.

 

Harvey kept playing that fiddle. The wind pounded the jail, rain pinging the lone window. The light outside was a queer purple, and that made it all the harder to guess the time, as if time itself had stopped, caught in the blurred picture from an old-time camera.

 

The last bar fell as he heard the gears and pulleys of the elevator going to work, groaning and straining down the shaft. He reached for the razor blade he’d hid under a stained pillow and stuck his head through the gap, facing the open row, and then inched his body through, letting out every drop of air till he could snake out, cutting the hell out of his shoulder before tumbling to the floor and finding his feet.

 

He hit the ground with such a thud that he wondered if he hadn’t been heard ten floors down.

 

Harvey inched back, watching the barred window of the door. He hoped it would be only one man, like yesterday, unarmed, as was their procedure, and holding cold biscuits, colder coffee, and shithouse gravy.

 

He found the next cell’s door open, and Harvey slipped inside and slid under the bunk. It was very dark, blacker than night, and the storm—it must be a hurricane now—beat the hell out of the tall building, almost feeling like it just might decide to topple all the concrete and steel and make all this effort for naught.

 

Harvey held on to the rusted blade and just listened to that beautiful storm, the single bulbs hanging from the ceiling flickering off and on, the rain coming down on a parched country like some kind of unnatural act.

 

He smiled. He hoped that Manion at least had enough sense to pick out a stylish suit and shine his shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

30

 

The guard walked the row, whistling and jangling a set of keys, an old colored trusty at his heels holding a breakfast tray. The whistling stopped when the guard reached the death cell, Harvey inching out from the open cage behind him, the guard stooping to inspect the filed-off bars and yelling at the trusty to put down them eggs and go fetch the sheriff. But Harvey snuck behind them both and held the old razor to the guard’s neck, telling them nobody was going to die on Labor Day if they all were slow and steady and did everything he said. “You understand what I’m sayin’, boy?” Harvey asked.

 

The old black man nodded. Harvey snatched up a piece of burnt toast and pushed the two men into the cell, lifting the set of keys from the guard’s fingers and locking them inside.

 

“Sheriff Smoot’s gonna tan your hide,” the jailer said.

 

“You tell Sheriff Smoot to kiss my ass,” Harvey said, taking a bite of toast and casually walking to the first door and finding the key. Another key unlocked the cage, and he moved past the elevator to the stairwell, the door unlocked, and made his way down to the sixth floor, where he found another cage and a room empty except for Tom Manion’s old desk. On the wall hung a calendar that hadn’t been changed since Christmas of ’29. The Sun-Maid raisin girl held a basket of grapes.

 

Harvey reached into the bottom right drawer and found a gun, if you could call it a gun. It was a rusted old .44, something Manion had probably carried in the Spanish War. When Harvey spun the cylinder, it fell open into his hand. He noted only three bullets and snapped the cylinder back in place just as he heard steps approaching. Son of a bitch.

 

Another jailer, just as old and tired as the fella upstairs, walked alongside R.L., the colored guitar player, from a side door.

 

“Mornin’, boys,” Harvey said.

 

“Good Lord in heaven,” the deputy said, chaw dripping out of his mouth and onto his chin. He wore a nonregulation Panama hat, slipped far back on his head.

 

“If y’all would be so kind,” Harvey said, nodding back to the row of cells.

 

R.L. smiled. Harvey winked at him.

 

“I ain’t goin’ in there,” the deputy said.

 

Harvey pointed that rusted piece of shit at his chest.

 

“’Fraid this ain’t up for discussion, partner.”

 

“You can’t lock me in there,” he said.

 

“Maybe you boys should carry weapons.” Harvey reached for the man’s Panama and stuck it on his own head.

 

“That’s the row for colored folks, you idgit!”

 

“Will you be offended if I lock up this fella in the colored wing, R.L.? I don’t want to stink up the place.”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“See?” Harvey said. “Now, get your stinking white ass inside.”

 

Harvey locked the deputy in a cell with an enormous black man who sat on his bunk holding a half-eaten bowl of gray mush. The man looked up for a moment and then returned his eyes downward, continuing to work his spoon, not seeing a damn thing.

 

Harvey flushed the razor blade down the shitter, locked the cell and the outer door, searched for another gun but found nothing but a pair of handcuffs and a worn-out blackjack. R.L. stood over the desk and watched Harvey, before he turned to the window and the rain hitting the glass. The young black man seemed deep in thought.

 

“Fine day,” R.L. said.

 

“Come on,” Harvey said.

 

He grabbed the blackjack, opened the cage, and turned the elevator key. The elevator clanged to a stop as he held the old revolver in his hand, aiming into an empty box. Harvey motioned to R.L., dressed in prison gray, and they both walked inside, knowing the dumb sonsabitches would never expect Harvey Bailey to skip out the front door with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He pulled the Panama down in his eyes and turned the key. Harvey did all these things without a drop of sweat or a skip of his heart, something he’d been blessed with from birth. Nervousness had never been his trouble.

 

“Guess it’s too late to turn back now.”

 

“I do believe.”

 

“You want to come along?”

 

“Get out Friday.”

 

“So you’re stayin’?”

 

“You know this ain’t gonna turn out pretty, sir.”

 

“Who says?” Harvey grinned.

 

The guard on the first floor couldn’t have been more than eighteen, skinny and slack-jawed, standing at the bars and conversing with a little fat fella in a suit about getting a right fair deal on T-bone steaks. He had one hand in his pocket and the other rubbed his jaw, contemplating the deal.

 

Harvey pushed R.L. along first and nearly walked past the guard before the deputy did a double take and asked, “Just where in the hell do y’all think you’re going?”

 

Harvey turned and said in a calm, quiet voice to keep his mouth shut and do as he said. The gun hung loose and easy, hidden from the world, at his right thigh. But the boy sure felt it when it nudged against his ribs. His eyes grew big, and he nodded his understanding.

 

Harvey tipped the brim of his straw hat to R.L. The boy looked at Harvey and gave a loose smile before hitting a button, the elevator disappearing up the shaft.

 

“How ’bout you escort me out of this shithole?”

 

The deputy nodded again, hands in the air.

 

On a far wall, Harvey spotted a gorgeous rack of shotguns and rifles, the old relic feeling like a stage prop in his fingers. As he pushed the boy toward the arsenal, two deputies walked to the front gate, waiting for the deputy to unlock the door, jawing at each other, not even noticing Harvey Bailey, noted bank robber, out for a stroll.

 

Harvey admired a fine .45 and a 12-gauge with a blue finish from across the room. The deputies called for the boy, and Harvey just nudged him on, turning away from the rack, following the deputy down a short stairwell.

 

“You got a car?” he asked the boy in a whisper, and followed him to a back door, where the boy unlocked two dead bolts and led Harvey into a back alley, where the rain fell sideways and stung his face. The boy walked across the alley, open and naked, long black electric wires crisscrossing overhead. A river of trash and mud running down concrete gutters and into clogged sewers.

 

He followed the deputy into an old brick warehouse filled with machines parked in a haphazard fashion, most of them labeled with the official seal of the sheriff. The rain on the roof made it sound like they were inside a huge drum.

 

The boy pointed out a ’29 Chevy. Harvey told the deputy to unlock it and scoot on over.

 

“Are you gonna shoot me, sir?”

 

“Kid, I ain’t even had breakfast yet.”

 

Harvey placed the .44 under his right leg, started her up with a couple kicks, and then headed north on Houston and then east on Elm. While he drove, he read the handwritten notes pulled from his shoe, the paper wet, ink bleeding on his fingers.

 

He leaned into the windshield, not seeing shit, and used the flat of his hand to wipe the fogged glass. South on Jefferson. West on Main. Left on Houston again, and then finding Eagle Ford Road out of Dallas.

 

“You got a dime?”

 

“Yes, sir,” the deputy said, reaching into his hip pocket.

 

“I don’t want your whole gosh-dang wallet. Just a dime.”

 

Harvey made two stops.

 

One to kick the deputy out of his car.

 

The second to make a phone call.

 

Harvey drove down the narrow dirt road, passing slow-moving cars in the opposite direction, spraying up potholes of muddy water, windshield wipers flapping, headlights cutting through the storm. The road had turned to shit, and he just wanted to keep the wheels moving, as he was leaning in, looking for road markers to Irving, that old church where he was to turn off to Manion’s house. He overshot it by a mile and had to turn back, the wind almost ripping the top from the vehicle.

 

The lights were on in a white two-story house with a gabled entrance and crooked black shutters. Harvey killed the motor and sat for a moment in the rain, seeing only a Ford sedan parked outside. The light inside was orange and glowing, coming from kerosene lanterns.

 

An electric wire had broken free from a pole and skittered up and around, throwing sparks up into the wind.

 

Harvey lit a cigarette and smoked, the wind rocking the car, until he decided to pull it around back to an old shed and kill the motor. He entered the house by the back entrance to the kitchen.

 

Tom Manion was eating a piece of buttermilk pie and reading a crisply folded newspaper when Harvey entered, wringing wet and holding the .44 in his waistband.

 

“Real shit storm, ain’t it?” Manion said, training his eyes on the newspaper and reaching for a cup of coffee.