Handsome Harry (20 page)

We hustled out to the office and I tossed the keys behind a filing cabinet. John’s face pinched up when he saw the sheriff on the floor, breathing hard and holding his side. He was a lot bloodier now and his eyes were shining with pain but not really focused on anything. The blood was bright red and we all knew what that meant.

Some car salesman, Russell said.

I went to the window and took a peek past the curtain. The coast looked clear except for an old couple talking to Shouse down the street. Whatever he told them did the trick, because they went strolling off around the corner.

Then we were in the cars and tearing past the city-limit sign and out onto the highway.

That’s
what happened in Lima.

John said he couldn’t wait to see Billie but he sure wouldn’t mind a cold beer first. So, after switching from the stolen jobs over to Red’s and Russell’s cars, we stopped at a roadhouse speak a few miles south of Dayton.

The parking lot was jammed with vehicles and hazy with raised dust. Inside, the place was dim and smoky and crowded, raucous with laughter and loud talk and a steady blare of jukebox music. We were better dressed than most of the patrons and thought our suits might attract too much attention, but nobody paid us much notice. Three young couples at a secluded table in a corner accepted my offer to pay their tab in exchange for the table. The girls were all lookers and they knew it, and they put a lot of nice sway into their walk as they headed for the bar with their fellas. Red watched them and said what he wouldn’t give to take a little bite out of any one of those sweet rumps.

Big
bite, John said.

Russell told our waitress it looked like everybody was jumping
the gun on the end of Prohibition. She said Honey, where’ve you been? That poor horse is dead every which way but official.

We yakked and laughed it up over bottles of beer and bowls of roasted peanuts, everybody butting in on everybody else to get a word in, to clarify a point or ask a question or crack wise. John wanted to hear everything about the M City break and about the heist in St. Marys. He told us about the jobs he’d pulled with Copeland and some other guys—we’d already heard about them from Knuckles, but John told the stories better—and about the girls he’d been sporting with. He got a lot of chuckles when he told about being at the Chicago World’s Fair with Jenkins’s sister and getting a policeman to take snapshots of them.

I knew it, Russell said. There we were in M City, sitting on our thumbs and waiting on this Hoosier to set things up, and there
he
was, dicking with the chippies.

It wasn’t easy having fun while you boys were still suffering the tortures of the damned, John said, but I did the best I could.

He’d heard about Okie Jack and Jenkins. He wasn’t surprised Jack gave up so easily, what with his bad stomach, but when he heard Jenkins had been killed he got a little worried that the rest of us might have to lay so low we couldn’t risk trying to break him out of Lima.

But hell, I knew you bums wouldn’t let me down, he said, and slapped me on the shoulder.

Red said the bad news about her brother must’ve hit Jenkins’s sister pretty hard. John supposed so but couldn’t say for sure since he hadn’t seen or heard from her ever since he got arrested in her parlor. They’d been looking at some Kodaks from their Chicago trip when the landlady announced herself at the door and next thing he knew he had shotguns in his face and his sweetie was down on the carpet in a swoon. He’d written her from the Lima lockup but his letter came back unopened with a note scrawled on it that she no longer lived at that address.

Fat Charley said those police shotguns had probably dimmed her enthusiasm for outlaw adventure.

I guess, John said. But let me tell you boys, she was really something.

Red said he knew that. He hadn’t forgotten the picture of her on John’s cell wall.

I said she was a tough one to forget, all right. John gave me a wink and we both snickered, remembering the Crow’s Nest coochie show.

Well, that Billie girl ain’t exactly a hag, Copeland said. He was drinking faster than everybody else. He’d twice had the waitress bring him another bottle while the rest of us were still on a round.

John wiggled his eyebrows at Knuckles and said She’s an eyeful, ain’t she?

Then that jackass Shouse had to pipe up and say
he
sure wouldn’t mind having a go at that squaw.

John gave him a smile that didn’t have any amusement in it at all and said not to call her a squaw or even dream of having a go at her.

Shouse said he didn’t mean anything except Billie was a good-looker, that’s all.

John said Okay then, Ed, if that’s all you meant.

Somebody mentioned Matt Leach, and John said Leach had come from Indiana to interrogate him at the Dayton jail. He described him as a tall skinny guy who was so full of himself that even other cops didn’t like him. According to the Dayton cops, Leach was a big believer in psychology as a crime-fighting tool.

I told John what Margo said about Leach’s stutter and he laughed and said she was right. When Leach grilled him, John shrugged at all his questions and said over and over that he had no idea what he was talking about. Leach got so mad he was stuttering like a rattletrap Model T and John could hear cops laughing in the other room. I’d pay money to hear him when he gets word I busted out, John said.

The waitress came over to collect empties and see if we wanted
another round. She smiled at our high spirits and asked if we were part of the policemen’s convention taking place in town.

For a second we all went mute and simply stared at her—and then everybody was grinning big and Charley said why
yes,
we certainly
were
policemen, how did she know?

She said You kidding? I can spot a cop a mile away.

I
t was late when we rolled into Cincy and all of us were ready to call it a night. We agreed to meet at my place for a late breakfast in the morning and put our heads together about our next move.

The girls had been dozing on the sofa but they woke up when John and I came in. Billie let out a little yip and ran to John and jumped into his arms, locking her legs around his waist and kissing him all over, her short nightie riding up and exposing a fine ass in pale green underpants. John spun her around and said How’s my favorite squaw? She said she better be his
only
squaw.

Mary planted a big welcome home smooch on me and I hummed a few bars of “Happy Days Are Here Again” and danced her around the room. John set Billie down and gave Mary a hug and said he was happy as hell to see her. She said there was coffee made and beer in the icebox, but it was obvious what John was in the mood for the most, and he and Billie said goodnight and hustled off to their room.

They weren’t as noisy about it as Russ and Opal—nobody was—but we could hear them as we undressed in the adjoining bedroom. Mary giggled and said Isn’t it nice? Then we were in bed and going at each other and all I heard was her breath in my ear. She didn’t ask about Lima and I didn’t bring it up.

I woke in the morning to her mouth on me. She teased and played and made the pleasure last a long time until I couldn’t hold back any longer. Then she kissed her way up my belly and chest and snuggled
close and said Happy birthday, baby—how’s it feel to be thirty-one? I said the way she celebrated it, it felt just grand.

We didn’t get out of bed till almost nine, but John and Billie were still asleep. I told Mary the other guys were coming for breakfast and she started some coffee brewing and began slicing bacon. I put on my hat and fake specs and headed out for the newsstand at the end of the street.

It was another beautiful day, the air sharp and cool, the sky cloudless and deeply blue. Bad news always seems extra bad when it comes on a pretty day. Our pictures were on the front page, John’s and mine—and the sheriff’s. John’s was a mug shot from Dayton, mine from M City.

I was steamed. I
hate
having my picture in the papers. People who wouldn’t dare look you in the eye in person can study your photograph to their heart’s content. It’s a kind of spying is what it is. I’ve detested cameras from the time I first had one pointed at me, back when I was a kid in Muncie and my mother took me to a studio for a portrait. The framed faces on the walls made me think of mounted animal heads. When the photographer bent behind the camera to focus the lens, I felt like he was sighting a weapon. Before he could snap the picture, I jumped up and ran out of the place. I thought Mom would scold me but she didn’t. A few years ago I read about some South American Indians who killed a photographer because they believed that in taking their picture he was stealing their soul. They burned his camera along with his corpse. A lot of people called them stupid savages. Not me.

The sheriff’s name was Sarber. He’d lasted about an hour before croaking in the hospital. His son was a policeman too and said he wouldn’t rest till his father’s killer was brought to justice.

Justice…Christ. The man would still be alive if he’d done what I told him. I wasn’t robbing him, I wasn’t about to harm his wife, I wasn’t being unreasonable. He had a cocked pistol pointed at him and the fool
still
went for his gun. The newspaper called him courageous.
My ass. He was a fool and his foolishness is what killed him. If there was any true justice in the courts or any real honesty in the press his death would be called a suicide.

They hadn’t been able to find the cell keys so they’d had to use an acetylene torch to free the sheriff’s wife and the deputy. The two of them picked me and Charley and Russell out of a mug book. All the main roads in the region were blocked, and vigilante posses as well as an army of cops were conducting a manhunt all over the northern borderland of Ohio and Indiana.

When I got back to the apartment, John and Russell and Charley were at the kitchen table having coffee and laughing it up. Charley tapped his spoon against the rim of his cup to get everybody’s attention and said All right, boys and girl,
me-me-me.

They sang “Happy Birthday” as Charley waved his spoon like a conductor’s baton and I stood there smiling like a dope. Then they applauded and Russell said in a singsong voice And
ma-ny mooorrre.

Mary ratted you out, John said.

There was a platter of crisp bacon on the counter and Mary was now frying chopped potatoes. The smell was wonderful. I asked where Billie was and John said she was still snoozing. That Indian can sleep like nobody’s business, he said.

Mary said Red had phoned a few minutes ago to say he and Shouse were on their way over.

I dropped the newspaper on the table and they all stared at the photos and the headlines. Mary stepped over to have a look and her face went funny for a second, and then she went back to tending the potatoes. I poured a cup of coffee and stood sipping it at the counter.

John didn’t like the picture of himself. He said it made him look like a banker, the kind whose bank you’d go to rob only to find out the son of a bitch had already cleaned it out himself with a lot of crooked bookkeeping.

Russell said he’d been hoping the sheriff would pull through even though it had been obvious he wouldn’t.

Charley cleared his throat and glanced at Mary at the stove. She turned around and looked at us and asked if she should leave the room.

I said Let’s both leave the room for a minute.

She took the potatoes off the burner and turned off the gas. We went into the parlor and I shut the kitchen door.

So? she said.

I told her she had a right to know how things stood. We weren’t just prison escapees and bank robbers anymore, at least not me and Charley and Russ. They’d have murder warrants on us now, and the worst kind—for killing a cop. They’d never quit hunting us. We’d always be on the run, always be looking over our shoulder. I didn’t have plans beyond tomorrow and there was no telling if I’d ever have the chance to make any. And the thing she absolutely had to understand was that
I didn’t care.
I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to
not
have the cops after me. What it came down to, I said, was that she probably ought to get out while the getting was good. If the law put the arm on her when she went home, she could say we’d kidnapped her. Every man of us would back her story.

She hardly blinked the whole time I talked. When I finally shut up, she asked if I was telling her to go.

I told her I didn’t say that. I only wanted her to know how things stood so she could decide for herself.

Well, we’d already had this conversation, she said. When the Jenkins boy was killed. Had she done or said anything to make me think she’d changed her mind?

I said I’d seen how upset she was by the headlines.

Well of
course
she was upset, mostly by the thought that
I
might’ve been hurt, or even worse. Of
course
she wished I hadn’t killed that man, but she knew I’d only done what I had to do.

I jabbed a finger at her and said That’s right, that’s right, and no telling what I might have to do tomorrow or the day after that.

I was surprised to feel my hand trembling and I quick put both hands in my pockets and tried not to show how scared I was that she might choose to leave.

She said she knew the way I had to live and she didn’t care. She said she loved me and did I understand
that.

I said yeah, and did
she
understand that as long as she was with me she’d never have any kind of a normal life?

She made a face of mock horror and put her hands to her cheeks and said Oh
noooo.

I said Ha ha, you know what I mean.

She gave me a thin-eyed look and now it was her turn to point a finger. She said to listen good, Handsome Harry, she’d had about all of so-called
normal
life she could stand and she would thank me most kindly not to ever let her have any more of it. She said she wanted me to promise her she’d
never
have a normal life with me.

I had to laugh. I said it was like asking water to promise to run downhill.

Promise,
she said.

All right, girl, I said, I promise.

She went up on her tiptoes and pulled my face down to hers and kissed me hard.

Mary Northern, ladies and gentlemen…the one and only.

W
hen I told John that Sheetz wanted us for another job, he was hot to go for it. I didn’t like Sheetz, but unspecified dislike wasn’t much of an argument against the fact that he’d been on the square in his deals with both of us. The only hard objection I could make to doing further business with him was the one-third cut he’d taken from the St. Marys job.