Infamous (26 page)

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

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

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

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

“People today. Greed. Pussy-mad.”

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

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

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

“They’re coming.”

“But they all point to where we headed.”

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

“But didn’t fly during the storm.”

“No, sir.”

“You brung that map?”

“I brung it.”

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

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

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

“I’m Armon. You lookin’ for Boss?”

“We are.”

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

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

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shoot,” Armon said. “Dying or dead.”

“You had much rain?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Radio said it might break a hunnard today.”

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s the comparison?” Weatherford asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Our thanks for the watermelon,” Jones said.

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

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

“Did they say it was Urschel money?”

“What did I say?”

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

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

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

“Go suck an egg.”

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

“I got to use the can.”

“Piss in a bottle,” he said.

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

“Ah.”

“Why are you sore?”

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

“How’d they get pinched?”

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

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

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

Hessville. Woodville. Lemoyne.

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

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

“And my husband wants to trade her already.”

“Come again?”

“He wants to trade her.”

“Whatsthematta with him?”

“You name it, brother.”

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

And then it was WELCOME TO INDIANA.

“I’m hungry.”

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

“You should go into radio.”

“Come again?”

“You should go into radio.”

“How’s that?”

“ ’ Cause you’re a goddamn comedian.”

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

“Waterloo?”

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

“I was big man on campus there.”

“Rah-rah.’ ”

“What’s eating you?”

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