Infamous (34 page)

Harvey heard the skinny boy walk down the hall, the door clanging shut and locking with a final snap, reminding him of a tight cord breaking.

25

T
he manager of the Hotel Fort Des Moines wore one of those pencil-thin mustaches—the thinnest mustache Jones had ever seen—and smelled like he’d dunked his boiled shirt in some sweet-smelling perfume. All these characters were the same, dirt under their nails and grits in their mouth, till they slide into a suit and get a fancy title, and then they’re Douglas Fairbanks. The man had protruding buckteeth, and black hair growing from his nostrils.

“We’d like to see the room,” Agent Colvin said, leaning into the reception counter, seeming to take some confidence in standing next to Jones even though Colvin was at least a head taller. Colvin folded his hands on the polished wood and waited.

“The guests never checked out,” the manager said. “It’s still occupied. You don’t have the authority—”

“Didn’t I show you my tin?” Jones asked.

“I can’t give you a key to a private suite,” the manager said. “The Colemans are fine people.”

“Give me the goddamn key,” Jones said.

“Excuse me?”

“Colvin, grab the key,” Jones said. “I’m tired of this horseshit.”

Jones nodded to Colvin, who turned the corner of the front desk and snatched the key from the hook, the little man trying to block his escape, holding up a single finger. “You try to stop us, and I’ll knock that smirk off your face,” Jones said.

The agents took the stairs to the room. The hotel manager trailed like a yippy little dog at their boot heels, telling them they better stop or he’d call the police chief himself.

“I want all telephone tolls from this room and from every pay phone in this hotel,” Jones said, taking off his hat and holding it at his side. “I want to interview every bellhop, doorman, and maid. Check taxicabs, restaurants, and down at the train station. Do we know what kind of car they were driving?”

“The two women left in a white Chevrolet sedan,” Colvin said. “This year’s model.”

“What about Kelly?”

“No one saw him leave.”

“Sure they did.”

Colvin tried the lock with the key and pushed open the heavy oak door into the suite. Lots of newish, streamlined furniture, Oriental rugs, and the like. The hotel manager wedged himself into the threshold and stretched his arms from frame to frame, red-faced and sweating, and the sight of his struggle brought a grin to Jones’s face.

“Just how much did he tip you?” Jones asked.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Kelly.”

“You mean, Mr. Coleman?”

“No, I mean Mr. Kelly, you dumb sack of nuts.”

Colvin stepped over a pile of clothes and wet towels, already pulling out his leather-bound fingerprint kit to pull prints from the telephone, glasses, lamps, and doorknobs, while Jones picked up a stack of reading material on a nightstand. The
Chicago Tribune
.
True Detective
.
Spicy Stories
. On the floor, he found yesterday’s
Des Moines Register
torn to pieces.

“Trouble will follow,” the manager said, mopping his face with a laced handkerchief. “Trouble.”

“You can’t get much more trouble than having ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly in your presidential suite,” Jones said. “Don’t you read the papers?”

“I think you’re confused,” the man said. “Mr. Coleman wasn’t a gangster. He was a gentleman farmer. They were fine people with beautiful clothes . . . Oh, my Lord.”

“You sure stepped in it.”

The hotel manger looked down at the carpet, all green and plush and dotted with land mines of dog shit. He lifted up a dandy heel and spun around on one leg, confused as to what to do next. He turned and twirled and about fell over, holding on to his ankle, not daring to set down the wingtip.

“Scrape it off,” Jones said. “Listen, partner, you know you’re lucky to be alive. You just gave domicile to the most cunning, cutthroat, evil son of a bitch in this United States of America. ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly gets an itchy finger and he just might shoot up your whole damn lobby and take you out in the process. Human life isn’t any more to him than a fly on a cow’s ass.”

“Oh, my Lord.”

“Now, get outta here and let us work,” Jones said. “Send up those two agents in the lobby.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And be quick about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And scrape off your damn shoe,” Jones said, stopping the man midtrack at the door’s threshold. “You’re dragging shit all over creation.”

Doc White and Lackey came rambling on inside the suite. White said, “The ladies lit out yesterday ’bout five. Kelly right behind, took a cab to the train station.”

“You get a taxi number?”

“Working on it,” Lackey said, chewing gum and looking around the suite. “Nice digs.”

“Those girls say where they were headed?”

“Nope,” White said.

“Mrs. Kelly seemed upset, according to the bellhop,” Lackey said. “He said she sure was in a hurry.”

“And Machine Gun?”

“Not so much,” White said. “Had a couple gin cocktails in the bar before calling the taxi. He tipped the doorman twenty bucks from a roll the size of his fist. While he was waiting, he seemed to be studying things, and told the doorman, ‘Don’t ever get between your wife and her momma.’ ”

“What’s that mean?” Colvin asked.

“Means she’s not too keen on having Mrs. Ora Shannon in federal custody,” Jones said. “Where are her people from?”

“Mississippi?” Lackey said.

“Can we send a man from the Birmingham office?”

Colvin nodded.

“Who the hell was this woman with her?” Jones asked. “I wonder if she has kin anywhere else? Doc, you take Bryce and go down to the train station. We got ’em flushed, and now—”

“Now what?” Lackey asked.

Jones walked across the suite to a large wooden dresser and stared into a large oval mirror. Across the mirror someone had written the words GO TO HELL G-MAN JONES.

In the reflection, he watched Lackey, Colvin, and White flank him, reading the words scrawled in red lipstick. Lackey popped his gum. “What the hell’s a ‘G-man’?”

CHARLIE URSCHEL ASKED BETTY TO TAKE THE WHEEL OF THE Packard and just drive, him sitting in silence, as she wheeled around the manicured streets and wide avenues of the Heritage Hills neighborhood, until he made up his mind and told her to go ahead and turn onto North Broadway heading south, and then to cut over and down on Robinson toward the downtown and the Colcord Building, where the Slick Company had their offices. They found an open space not far from the botanical gardens on Sheridan, and from that spot he could see the Colcord entrance and the parking garage across the street, where the son of a bitch would emerge well before five o’clock in that garish Buick sedan, painted canary yellow, with wire-spoked wheels.

“You want me to wait?” Betty asked.

“I’m waiting, too.”

“What are we waiting for?”

“Mr. Jarrett.”

“Does Mr. Jarrett need a ride?”

“Of sorts.”

“Can I have fifty dollars?”

“What are you going to do with fifty dollars?”

“Buy a dress.”

“You have two closets full of the best dresses.”

“I need a new one. They’re having a sale on summer dresses at Katz’s. Lord, it’s hot. What’s for supper?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope Louise makes chicken. I love chicken.”

“Betty, we need to talk.”

“I knew it. I knew it.”

“No one else will listen,” Charlie said. “Your mother thinks I should see a doctor for my nerves.”

“I don’t think you’re nuts, Uncle Charlie.”

“Then you know why you just can’t trust a man of little acquaintance.”

“Uncle Charlie, I’m sixteen years old. I know about men.”

“No, you don’t. You can never know what’s in a man’s heart. He’ll deceive you. He’ll look right into your eyes and smile while he cuts you. We can’t let him win.”

“Uncle Charles.”

Charlie reached into the pockets of his suit and found them empty. He patted his pants and looked in the glove box. Betty sighed and reached into her little pocketbook and gave him her matches. He had a dead cigar in his mouth and got it going. In the side mirror of their machine—a Packard sedan of this year’s make—he stared into his bloodshot eyes and uncombed hair and then back at the glass doors to the office, knowing the bastard would be coming out soon, and that’s when he’d grab him, catching him off guard, and walk with him on his evening stroll back to his home, back to the house he shared with his family, and sit down with him, look him dead in the eye, and tell him he knew. Charlie looked at the little mirror and wiped his cheek, as if he’d felt the wetness of a rotten kiss.

“Not all men are bad.” Betty fanned herself with a loose hand, wiping the perspiration from her lip. “You haven’t even given him a chance. All the boys I know are just that: boys. I’m so very sick of boys, Uncle Charlie.”

“The nature of man is deceit.”

She turned to him, slinking back into the driver’s seat and staring at his face for a long while. She shook her head and told him that his heart had grown hard and that he had no right to stop her from her private matters. But he heard only a bit of it, seeing Jarrett appear from a side entrance and stroll down Robinson, walking across the street. Charlie felt his heart hammering in his chest, his mouth dry, and felt the slickness of his hand on the door handle.

But he did not move. His muscles had frozen.

“Deceit,” Charlie said, smoking on the cigar, getting the burn to go real quick, and stopping for a moment to pick tobacco from his tongue. “You cannot come into a man’s house, eat his food, drink his liquor, and then stab him in the back.”

Betty grew quiet and they sat in the Packard for a long while, Charlie watching the streets and spotting men he knew—friends from the club, salesmen who dropped by his office peddling useless wares, Masons with their secret handshakes and antique codes—walk along the familiar route. Shadows slanted, long and soft, with a hazy summer weight.

He smoked down the cigar until he felt it burning into his flesh, feeling the ropes and chains, tasting that goddamn rusted water in his mouth.

“He did no such thing,” Betty said. “He was a gentleman. He does not touch liquor.”

The garish Buick rolled out of the garage and headed down Sheridan, out of sight for a moment, and Charlie reached over and mashed the starter and told Betty to just drive.

“He is a liar,” Charlie said, muttering to himself. “A goddamn thief of my time.”

Jarrett turned south on Gaylord, and Charlie motioned for them to follow. Jarrett doubled back on Reno, well out of the way for a man who should be returning to his family north of town, and then drove flat-out fast, heading east for miles.

The Buick dipped south on Pennsylvania into the Stockyards, and with the windows down in the summer heat you could get a good whiff of the stale hay and fetid cow shit, and Charlie figured Jarrett was about to have what they called “a meet” with some square-jawed hoodlum to divvy up money made as cowards with guns. They would play cards and drink homemade liquor and laugh about all the suckers in the world.

They could not win.

The Buick rolled on, and Betty mashed the brakes hard as a long trailer filled with cattle blocked the road, away from the holding pens, where you could hear the confused animals trying to communicate, shuffling and bumping into one another, their dumb heads sticking out of broken slats in the fence.

Charlie hit the dash and cursed, and then noticed Betty staring and apologized for his indecency.

“Drive me home.”

The Packard idled.

“Betty?”

He turned to see his niece with her head in her hands, her delicate sunburned shoulders shaking. He put his hand on her small arm.

“What?”

She didn’t answer, just tapped her patent leather shoe from the brake and gently touched the accelerator.

“I won’t hurt him,” Charlie said. “But he must know I’m not a fool. Don’t ever let a man treat you as a fool.”

“Bruce is a fine man. He’s such a fine man.”

She drove slowly for several blocks, under the shadow of a train trestle, until Exchange Street ended, and they were surrounded by a loop of railroad tracks, a turnaround for cattle cars. Charlie just stared, facing the dead end, tossing his spent cigar into some high weeds littered with the broken glass and burned oil drums of derelicts and bums, the losers of this world.

“Which one is Bruce?”

“I APPRECIATE YOU TAKING ME OUT OF THE CELL, MR. MANION.”

“Figured you’d like a change of view, Mr. Bailey.”

“Appreciate the coffee, too.”

“I do brew a fine pot,” Deputy Manion said. “Helps keep a man regular. Although I like to put away a bowl of cornflakes if I know I’m gonna drain a whole pot.”