Infamous (3 page)

“We take ’em after they got Nash,” Miller said.

“Frank Nash ain’t worth this, brother.”

“Lansing must’ve been a special place.”

Harvey leaned into the driver’s seat and lit another cigarette. He’d burn through three more before he’d see those boys leading Frank Nash out in handcuffs. “Verne, you are the most honorable bastard I ever met.”

THE TRAIN BACKED INTO PLATFORM 12 A LITTLE AFTER SEVEN.

Jones and Joe Lackey were on their feet. Sheriff Reed unlocked Nash’s handcuffs, let him affix the curly brown toupee back on his head, and then locked the cuffs back in front of him.

“How do I look?” Nash asked.

“Like some squirrel crawled onto your head and died,” Lackey said.

Nash ignored him and lifted his hands to use a little finger to smooth down a thin mustache while Lackey walked out first. From the window, Jones could make out a handshake with a clean-shaven young man in a blue suit and neat tie, the kind of style that mirrored all those endless memos from J. Edgar himself. Jones eased up a bit, still feeling good with the gun under his arm.

He reached for the broken-in Stetson on the rack, slid it onto his head. From down on the platform, Lackey gave a wave.

“C’mon, Jelly,” Jones said. “Let’s go.”

“Only my friends call me Jelly, and you’re no friend of mine.”

“Get goin’, shithead,” Jones said. “How’s that?”

Reed snatched Nash’s elbow. Jones led the way.

He walked down onto the steps. The black locomotive still hissing and spitting, worn out in the hot morning. He scanned the station, not finding much but that kind of simple action; the quiet rhythm you find at all train stations, coming and going, women in hats, men looking at the big board. The place was endless, as large a station as Jones had ever seen, fashioned of brick and marble, with tall windows that were downright religious. He’d always imagined purgatory would be a place like this, a big, sprawling train station with people filtering through, but so large that you could never find your way out.

Lackey introduced him to the young agent.

The kid pumped his hand and smiled and told Jones he’d read all about him in
True Detective
, about the trouble at that Indian reservation, all those dead women, and what an honor it was to work with him. He looked to be about twelve years old, hair parted neat across one side, eyes eager, and hands nervous as he accepted the key from Sheriff Reed and took custody of Frank Nash.

“Merry Christmas,” Jones said. “I sure will miss your company, Jelly.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Nash said.

“Is it just you?” Jones asked the young agent.

“No, sir.”

The young man nodded to the front entrance of Union Station and three men in suits walking toward them. He pushed Nash ahead, placing a .38 in the small of his back and nervously telling the old train robber that he’d blow out his spine if he tried any funny business. Frank Nash just laughed at that and said, “Oh, all right, kid. Nothin’ from me.”

More introductions.

Two beefy Kansas City detectives and the Special Agent in Charge.

“We got a car waiting outside,” the KC SAC said. “The detectives here will follow us to the prison just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“An ambush,” he said. “Their car is armor plated.”

They were a group now, and Jones could feel the nervousness around him, scanning the big openness of the station, looking for any quick movement, a face covered by a newspaper, the point of a barrel around a corner. The light bleeding through the high-walled windows yawned white-hot on the marble floors.

When they passed a little booth for the Travelers Aid Society, a woman gave a big smile, looking at old Frank Nash, the curly toupee on his head and chained wrists, and said, “Well, I’ll be. It’s ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd!”

Jones looked over at Lackey, and they had a laugh, before emerging from the big cavern and out on the street and to the waiting car.

The two detectives walked ahead, watching the street, guns at the ready.

They handed Joe Lackey a shotgun they’d brought in from the trunk of the armored car. Jones placed his big revolver in his coat pocket while the young agent and the two beefy detectives walked Frank Nash out of Union Station and crossed the big open platform to the parking lot. A long row of windows showed folks eating up breakfast at the Harvey House, and Jones promised himself he’d come back just as soon as the bastard was delivered and locked away.

The lot had filled with automobiles and people hustling through the big wide doors to the station. A metallic voice from a public-address system read off the morning trains set to leave. A gaggle of nuns emerged from a taxi, and a fat nun opened a coin purse to count out change into the driver’s hand.

“Put Jelly up front,” Jones said.

The young agent placed him in the passenger seat. Otto Reed and Joe Lackey piled in the back of the sedan. Jones followed, and the two cops stood smoking and watching the parking lot, listening to instructions on the route to Leavenworth. They were to take a few back roads just in case they were followed.

The young agent pumped the detectives’ hands and then crossed back toward the driver’s side of the car.

Jones took a breath and hoisted himself in the backseat beside Sheriff Reed and Lackey. Lackey had propped the shotgun up between his legs, and Jones made the remark he looked like he worked for Wells Fargo.

Cars passed. One of the detectives—he’d later know the name was Grooms—finished a cigarette and smashed it underfoot, making his way to the hot car.

“Hands up,” a voice yelled.

A black Chevrolet had stopped beside them, and as Jones turned he heard the words, “Let ’em have it.” As Jones bent forward, he saw the young agent chopped to his knees and heard Sheriff Reed’s shotgun blast by his ear, the top of Frank Nash’s head opening up like a red flower as windows shattered and glass rained down on his neck. As Jones reached for the .45, bullets zipped all over the goddamn place, pinging and piercing, and he heard garbling yells and cries and dull bloody thuds that sounded like a mallet hitting steak.

Lackey was down beside him. He was bleeding, too.

The car shuddered and shook for a solid twenty seconds.

“Stay down,” Jones whispered.

The silence was electric and dull, and then buzzing filled Jones’s ears, and he heard the crunch of shoes upon the broken glass. A man breathed above him, words as close as if a filthy mouth had been placed to his ear, saying: “They’re dead. They’re all dead. Let’s go.”

2

K
athryn had met George Kelly in a Fort Worth speak just before he got nabbed selling some moonshine on a Cherokee reservation just outside Tulsa. She’d been with Little Steve Anderson back then, and George had been with the kind of girl that George tended to be with before he traded up. He’d looked at her and lit a cigarette, a fat ruby ring on his finger, and winked, saying, “Where have you been all my life?” And he said it right there, right in front of Little Steve and the woman he was with, and Kathryn felt like she couldn’t breathe. He was big and dark and looked rich. Very rich. And that night she’d snuck away from that sad-sack husband of hers and wrapped her long fine legs around big George in the back of his 1928 Buick, him taking it to her so hard that it about wore out the shocks on that poor machine.

As she’d slipped back into her unmentionables and scooted her silk dress past her knees, she lit a smoke. George had smiled at her and she smiled back, saying: “Just what in the world are we going to do about this?”

“That’s the most romantic story I’ve ever heard,” said the girl, a friend of Kathryn’s who worked the coat check at the Blackstone Hotel. “That’s something out of
Daring Confessions
, or
Good Housekeeping
if you kept out the sex part.”

The two sat at a corner table at a beer joint in downtown Fort Worth, the old basement of a hardware store that still smelled of fresh-cut wood and penny nails. The bar was mahogany and the floors black-and-white honeycomb tile. The place was class in spades. Waiters wore white, and the band, Cecil Gill and the Yodeling Cowboys, dressed in satin garb with clean ten-gallon hats.

“I loved him more when I saw how he handled himself,” she said. “You know, when he worked a job.”

Two more women joined them from the bar. A negro in a white jacket brought them all shots of whiskey and frosty Shiner Bocks in thick glass mugs. The booze not as much fun since drinking was getting to be legit.

“And when he got out of the Big House,” Kathryn said, “I was right there waiting for him. We drove straight through to Saint Paul and got married on the spot.”

“I like your ring,” said the girl.

Kathryn looked at her finger as if eyeing a speck of dust. “I’m getting a new one soon.”

“Do tell,” said the hatcheck girl.

“It’s big.”

“How big?”

“So big that I’m through with Texas.”

“A bank?”

“There’s no money in banks anymore,” Kathryn said. “This Depression ruined that. You can’t find a decent jug these days.”

The three girls leaned forward. They were pretty, all of them wearing stylish new hats cocked just so and expensive little silk scarves. Kathryn pulled out a cigarette, always a Lucky, from a silver case, and two of the girls greeted her with a match.

She smiled self-consciously and took the one nearest to her.

“Where’s George?” asked one of the girls.

“Working.”

“Did you bring ’em?” asked another.

Kathryn smiled and reached into her little purse, pulling out three spent brass bullet casings. She slapped them on the table and said, “You can probably still feel the heat in ’em. He shot up a barn this morning. You know, to practice.”

“Is it true he can write his name in bullets?” asked the hatcheck girl, maybe getting a little too breathless about George.

“Sister,
‘Machine Gun’
Kelly can write his name in blood.”

KATHRYN GOT BACK TO MULKEY STREET A FEW HOURS LATER SO plastered with whiskey and gin she nearly took out a fire hydrant turning in to the bungalow’s driveway. The bungalow had belonged to her second husband, Charlie Thorne, and she was glad he’d left her something before shooting himself in the head with a .38, leaving a typed sob-sister note blaming his problems on her.
Can’t live with her, can’t live with out her
, the note read.

The kitchen light was on.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against the window glass to steady her feet.

George R. Kelly, aka George Barnes, aka R. G. Shannon, aka “Machine Gun” Kelly, looked up from an iron frying pan where he was flipping pancakes. He wore nothing but boxer shorts and blue socks. A cigarette hung loose out of his mouth.

“Where the hell you been?”

“Working.”

“Working?”

The boxer shorts were white and decorated with red hearts. His blue socks were held up with garters.

“People are talking about you,” she said. “How do you think that gets done?”

“You’re drunk.”

“So are you,” she said, eyeing the empty bottle of Old Log Cabin bourbon on the table.

“Aw, hell,” George said. “Is that the way it’s gonna go?”

“Why are you cooking so much?”

“We got company.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“I just got a call,” George said. “Verne and Harvey are in town. Don’t that beat all?”

“What?” Kathryn asked. “Are you screwy?”

“They needed a place to sleep.”

“What the hell are they doing in Texas? They hate Texas.”

“Hand me some bacon out of the icebox.”

Kathryn plopped down at the little kitchen table and massaged her temples. She breathed, just trying to wrap her drunk mind around what George had done.

“Don’t get sore,” he said. “Make coffee.”

“You make coffee, you rotten son of a bitch.”

“Hey.”

“Don’t you know that we got work to do? Have you even read any of those articles I cut out? Do you know how broke we are? GMAC calls every damn day about the Cadillac.”

“I got that covered.”

“What? You and Albert are going to go knock over a gas station for ten bucks? This is real money.”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” Kathryn stood, walked up to her large husband, and rapped on his forehead with her knuckles. “This isn’t some bank job in Tupelo. This is the score. And just as we’re getting ready, you want Harvey Bailey and that sadistic son of a bitch Verne Miller cutting in. You know they’ll want in.”

“Maybe we should cut ’em in. They’re good, Kit. They’re real good. I’ve worked with them, not you. It’s my ass.”

“And you want to cut the money another two ways?”

“Goddamnit.”