Infamous (27 page)

She crossed her arms across her chest.

“This is no fun at all.”

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

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

“You were having fun last night.”

“Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over, you mug.”

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

“I’m callin’ Louise.”

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

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

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

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

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

“No woman is worse than a man.”

“Bullshit.”

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

“I’m calling her.”

“Do it, and I’ll break your hand.”

“You wouldn’t lay a finger.”

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

“How we met.”

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

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

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

“Say, George?”

“Yeah.”

“You never told me who fingered Urschel?”

“You never asked.”

“Goddamn. Well, I’m asking now.”

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

“Well, why don’t you try me out?”

“What if I said it was Jarrett?”

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

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

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

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

“It had crossed my mind.”

“You wanna screw?”

“Is that all you want from me?”

“Pretty much.”

“Room service?”

“In spades.”

20

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

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

“You showed those kidnappers a thing or two.”

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

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

“Special Agent Colvin.”

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

“What are you reading? The funny pages?”

“Society.”

“What’s so funny about society?”

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

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

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

“Nonsense.”

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

“It would be something.”

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

“Betty Slick.”

“Well, they are, aren’t they?”

“I certainly hope so.”

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

“Is that what I am?”

“Sure.”

“Hand me that paper.”

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

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

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

“Ten years is quite an age difference.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Excuse me?”

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

“I see.”

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

“Uncle Charlie?”

“How did they know?”

“Are you okay?”

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

“You always play cards.”

“Not always.”

“They saw the light.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sheriff,” Harvey said. “Faith.”

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

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

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

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

“They called you.”

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

“Good Lord,” Harvey said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lord God in heaven.”

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

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

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

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

“I wouldn’t open a can of dog food.”

“A cool pie for dessert,” Miller said.

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

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

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

“You sonsabitches.”

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

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