Infamous (14 page)

“Nuts to those bandits,” Jones said. “They don’t know me. I’ll carry the ransom, and Kirkpatrick a dummy bag, in case there’s trouble . . .”

“That banker sure is sweating.”

“You keep an eye on Mrs. Urschel and the family,” Jones said. “I’ll call when we reach Kansas City.”

“Union Station.”

“That’s where the tracks lead.”

“Why don’t you let me take the lead, Buster?” White asked. “Wait it out here. We can’t do a thing till Urschel comes back.”

“Since when did you become my wife?”

“Since when did you become a touchy old bastard?”

“Hell with you.”

“I see.”

“Watch the family.”

“Watch your ass, Buster,” White said. “That station ain’t held the best luck. And I ain’t calling on Mary Ann for you stepping in a shit pile twice.”

“THEY DON’T MEAN NOTHIN’ BY IT, KIT,” ALBERT BATES SAID. “They’re just catching up on old times. George likes to reminisce.”

“Well, I hate it.”

“I know.”

“I was so damn glad when he got out from under those mugs and we got the hell out of Saint Paul,” Kathryn said. “I didn’t see the sun for four months up there. The ground was nothing but black slush and not a spot of green. All they did was sit around the Green Lantern and drink themselves stupid. George would lie around in pajamas, listening to
Buck Rogers
, for months, and then he’d be wheel on a job and come back with a cheap handout. Harv and Verne throwing him the dog scraps, and George never asking for anything better.”

“But you liked Tacoma?”

“I liked George in Tacoma,” she said. “He doesn’t act like this in front of you or Eddie. He acted normal. He’s always putting on for Verne and that bastard Harvey Bailey. I can’t stand that big-nosed son of a bitch. Everyone says he’s such a gentleman, the ‘Gentleman Bandit,’ the class yeggman, but he’s nothing but a two-bit Mis-sou-ra hick in a hundred-dollar suit with whitewall hair.”

“Slow down, Kit,” Bates said. “They can hear you.”

“Do I look like I care?”

She turned back to the farmhouse window and saw the men inside, the kitchen all bright with a yellow glow, the dumb yeggs laughing and knee-slapping around the makeshift table and plunking down cards, cigars screwed down in their teeth. Old Boss Shannon took up the fourth seat like he was just one of the boys and not some old farmer who ran a rooming house for criminals. Boss had been taking their dirty money since he and Ora met, yeggs from all over the damn country coming to Paradise. All shot up and bloody, suitcases full of cash and with itchy fingers, and offering a teenage girl a few bits for a quick throw, saying it might be their last . . .

“It’s okay,” Albert Bates said, his hawk-nosed profile crossed in the kerosene light. He fumbled for a fresh cigarette and smiled over at her. “George won’t mention it.”

“He better not,” she said. “He lets these boys in on Urschel and I’ll cut his nuts off.”

“They’re not wise to us,” Bates said, cupping a hand and flicking the lighter’s flint. “We’ll all be gone tomorrow. Your stepdaddy will watch Urschel till we come back and turn him loose.”

“That’s another screw I worry about.”

“Mr. Urschel?”

“Boss.”

“He’s gettin’ a cut,” Bates said. “No one wants to whittle this thing down any more.”

“You really gonna quit?”

“You bet,” he said. “A fella can get set up with this kind of dough.”

“Denver, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Albert?”

He turned to her, burning down the cigarette and fishing for a new one in his pocket. She pulled a cigarette from her purse, lit it, and passed it on to him. She found a place on the edge of the farmhouse porch to let her legs hang off free and loose, and Bates joined her after a while. The laughter and loud talk had become too much.

“How will I know if there’s trouble?” she asked.

“You studied the picture of Kirkpatrick?”

She nodded.

“You see anyone with him, anyone too friendly, you step off the train at any station and call us,” he said. “He’s supposed to come alone, and that’s the only way we’ll go ahead with the drop. You unnerstand?”

“You just look out for George.”

“Your man will come back in one piece,” Bates said, cigarette hanging loose. “I promise.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about.”

“You sure are hard-boiled sometimes, Kit,” Bates said. “We’re on Easy Street now.”

“That’s the kind of talk that will get us all killed. Or worse.”

“You love him, though?”

“Who?”

“George.”

“I married the dumb bastard, didn’t I?”

“But do you love him?” Bates asked. “When I think about seeing my sweetie, it makes me feel all funny in the gut.”

“Yep,” she said. “George makes me feel all funny.”

Bates laughed and smoked some more, watching the same herd of cows, following down a line of crooked posts connected with miles of barbed wire.

“The funny thing about you and George is that sometimes he’s talking but I hear you coming out of his mouth.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t mean nothing by it,” Bates said. “Just something I’ve noticed for some time. I’ve known George Barnes since he was running moonshine out of Memphis. And now I see this fella who folks ’round here call ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, with his slick hair and two-tone shoes. But I’m not really sure if that’s you or George . . . It’s all screwy.”

“You’re the screwy one, Albert,” she said. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek in a sisterly way. “You look out for both of you. And don’t worry, I’m pretty good at spotting a cop.”

“I know, sister.”

“No more hard times.”

“Welcome to Easy Street.”

“Keep the light on . . .”

10

Saturday, July 29, 1933

T
he men gathered in the shadow of the Urschel house with pistols and sawed-off shotguns and waited for the bank president to arrive with the cash. An Oldsmobile rolled into the drive and flashed its lights twice. Berenice Urschel answered back from the second floor with a flickering flashlight, and they were moving. Jones followed Kirkpatrick, and Kirkpatrick took the grip and got into the car with Jones driving. They headed to the train station, both men holding grips now—Kirkpatrick holding a leather bag filled with old newspapers and magazines and Jones carrying a lighter-colored bag filled with twenty pounds’ worth of ransom money. If they were jumped at the station or on the train, Kirk would give up his bag.

They proceeded up into the observation car as instructed, and the strain of it reflected on Kirkpatrick, who let out a long breath, his face covered in sweat, hand reaching into his suit pocket for a silver flask. He took a healthy drink and nodded to Jones, who sat opposite him on a long communal bench and shook his head. So far, the men were alone. Just a negro porter, who asked them for their tickets and if they’d care for anything at all, and Jones had simply asked if they were running on schedule.

Jones checked his timepiece. He lit his pipe.

A half hour left till they were on their way.

The platform filled with dozens of men in straw hats and ladies in summer dresses. Little kids toting little bags and porters carrying steamer trunks on the strength of their backs. Jones looked to the rear of the train, where the glass formed a wide-sweeping window, and saw another Pullman heading toward them, pushed along slow and easy, until it joined to the observation car with a click. The coupling jarred the men, and then there was another hard click, and the porter noted the men’s confusion.

“Got to add two more,” he said. “Taking on extra passengers in Kansas City to go to the World’s Fair.”

Kirkpatrick was on his feet, telling the man they had to change cars, they must change cars, this was not acceptable at all. They had been promised an observation view, had paid for the view, and he damn well wanted a view.

They got seats on the last Pullman, Jones and Kirkpatrick taking a seat on two old camp stools pulled out into the vestibule. The air was hot, and it wasn’t until the train got going that a good crossbreeze collected over the railing and pushed across their faces, Jones and Kirkpatrick sitting in that last car, watching the brick warehouses and ramshackle houses fading from view until there were only wide rolling fields of dry grass and dead cornstalks.

“Right side,” Jones said. “I’ll watch the left just to make sure.”

They made it all the way to Tyson when the car door slid open and an attractive woman dressed in black with dark lipstick asked if she could join them.

Jones stood and said: “Please.”

She smelled just like the flowers Mary Ann cut fresh and kept in the house till they dried and turned. The turning seemed to make ’em even more sweet.

HARVEY AND VERNE WATCHED GEORGE, KATHRYN, AND ALBERT Bates pile into that big blue Cadillac and disappear down the country road. George said they were going to visit some old speaks, Kathryn wanted to see
Gold Diggers of 1933
, and Albert Bates said in a mutter he had some business needed tending. And Harvey didn’t ask any questions, just wished them well as they took off into the night, and he settled onto the porch with Verne and old Boss Shannon, who’d been plied with enough corn liquor to kill a goat. Old Boss talking about how two hundred thousand people had crammed into downtown Saint Louis to march on behalf of the NRA and celebrate all that Blue Eagle nonsense, and he recommended that they all get a solid gun and a piece of land because this country was about to become one filthy fascist nation with Roosevelt no better than Adolf Hitler himself. “You know Hitler treats his own people like animals. If he got one that don’t suit ’im, they’ll sterilize ’im. God’s own truth, I read it in the paper. I wonder what they’d do with an old man like me?”

“How’s the farm, Boss?”

“Fair to middlin’,” he said. “Don’t have enough water. Got me a hog that’s turned on me. He’s supposed to be ruttin’ but the other day damn near tried to kill me. I can’t figure it out.”

Miller looked to Harvey. Harvey flicked the long ash from his cigar and shrugged.

“Can we go take a look at that hog?” Miller asked.

“Sure thing, boys,” Boss Shannon said. “Let me get a lantern.”

“Say, Boss,” Harvey said, “where’s ole Potatoes these days?”

“You know he got that girl from down the road with child? Well, he married her, and now she’s knocked up again. I ’spec you could say he’s taken on responsibility. He don’t like it when I call him Potatoes no more. But I can’t seem to wrap my mind ’round it. That kid will always be Potatoes to me. Hold on there, fellas.”

Harvey worked on the cigar. The late-night light, not dark but almost purple, still burning deep to the west, almost making him feel like he could see clear over to California and the Pacific Ocean, all wide and endless like a filthy dream.

“Why don’t you just ask him, Verne?”

“Where’s the fun?” Miller said. “Besides, you think he would talk that easily?”

“He’s going to scream.”

“Let him scream.”

“What if he gets killed?”

“He won’t get killed,” Miller said. “Whoever heard of a hog killing a man?”

“I have,” Harvey said. “You know, I grew up on a farm.”

“You don’t say.”

“I still have a farm,” Harvey said. “Just what do you know about me, Verne?”

“I know enough.”

Boss Shannon was wearing his finest pair of Union overalls with high-laced boots and an almost clean undershirt. He’d taken a plug of tobacco from a tin in the kitchen and was sucking and spitting as they followed a hog path down along the barbed-wire fence. Pigs wallowed and grunted in a mud enclosure, and nearby the men found a rambling cage of wire and barn wood where a huge hog looked into the lantern light with tiny red eyes.

“What do you call him?”

“Hoover,” Boss Shannon said, spitting. “Armon named him. Ain’t that a hoot? Hoover. Don’t he look just like him?”

“You called him Armon there.”

“See?” Boss said. “I’m trying.”

“I wish he’d come down and see us,” Miller said. “We could have a drink. He might like some whiskey we brought from Kansas City. He could play organ for us. I wonder if he knows ‘We’re In the Money’ ?”

“I’ll tell him, but he can’t leave the house much on account of his wife’s condition. ’Sides, he only plays church music.”

“They have some company?”

“No, sir,” Boss said. “Alone, besides that ole hound. Yep, just Armon and his bride. And like I said, that dog.”

Miller drew a .45 automatic from his belt and said, “Take your clothes off, Boss.”

“You boys always joking,” the old man said with a smile.

“He ain’t joking,” Harvey said.

“Come on, now. Y’all lost your senses. I don’t have no money.”