Infamous (47 page)

“You better believe it,” George said. “You can get whatever you want.”

“What time does the Fair close?” Gerry asked.

“Too late today, kid,” Kathryn said.

“You promised.”

“I said we’d go,” Kathryn said. “I didn’t say when.”

Gerry wandered out from the little kitchen, saying the icebox and cupboards were completely empty save for a box of baking soda and two dead roaches. George had bought her a pack of chewing gum back in Missouri, and the girl hadn’t stopped chomping and blowing bubbles for the last two hundred miles. Kathryn wished she’d blow a bubble big enough to drown out her talking and then explode it all across her little face and mousy hair in those pink ribbons.

“Waffles,” George said, again. “I can almost make out something showing at the picture show. Something about a detective with William Powell.”

“Private Detective 62,”
Kathryn said, more to herself than anyone in the room.

“How’d you know that?”

“Saw it in the paper.”

“What’s that picture he did with the dogs?” George asked. “Wasn’t he a detective in it, too?”

“Kennel Murder Case.”

“Doesn’t sound like this one has dogs.”

“George, I know for a fact it doesn’t have dogs. That was another picture.”

“Let’s go get a waffle,” George said. “Kit, where’s my bottle?”

“In your luggage, dear.”

“Don’t need to take that kind of tone,” George said. “Just wanted a nip before the picture.”

“Are we on vacation?” Gerry asked.

“You bet, kiddo,” George said.

“Good Lord in heaven,” Kathryn said.

They ate waffles across State Street at Virginia’s Golden Brown, and from the booth by the plateglass window, Kathryn watched the traffic light changing colors under the El station, a bolted collection of steel beams and scrolled staircases. Above them, another train clanked and rattled past. The Chicago Theatre marquee lit up the wet brick streets with a cool, even whiteness.

George snuck a bottle of bourbon into his coat and kept refilling his mug under the table. “Who’s that?”

“Who?”

“You see him? That man under the El tracks?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Kathryn saw the shadow of a man in a suit and hat, smoking a cigarette. Nothing but shadow, the same as the beams of the El, the streetlamp posts, and the traffic light. George leaned into her and said, “It’s the G.”

“You need to put down the bottle.”

“Ha.”

She turned back to the glass, and the man—the shadow—was gone. A tired waitress, with tired marcelled hair, laid down the waffles without a smile, a check to follow. Gerry and George ordered the same—a goddamn waffle with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup.
Who’d ever heard of such a thing?

“What’d ya think?” George asked the kid.

The girl took a big forkful, making a real corny show of getting an even mixture of all the ingredients, and closed her eyes with the tasting.

“Wow,” she said.

“What’d I tell you?” George said.

“Would you two just shut up,” Kathryn said. “I’m trying to think here.”

She squashed out a cigarette and lit another. She thought for a while and waited for that shadow man to appear.
The G
. George had gone bugs.

The El tracks and girders and beams formed a long, dark, endless tunnel right through the heart of the city. The whole town seeming less like a city but more like a goddamn cage, and the thought of it made Kathryn itch a great deal. The night was slick with a mist that fell over the city, denting puddles and giving halos to streetlamps.

“Gerry?” Kathryn asked.

The girl finished another bit of her forkful, listening, half the goddamn waffle gone.

“What kind of man is your father?”

“He’s nice.”

“That’s not an answer. I mean, can I trust the SOB?”

Gerry finished off another couple bites of the waffle and then looked down at Kathryn’s cigarette case. Kathryn rolled her eyes and slid over the case. George worked on his waffle, eyes down, but fished into his jacket pocket for the lighter engraved with her stepfather’s initials. He clicked it open and lit the kid’s Lucky.

Gerry leaned back into her seat. She shrugged.

“You mean before or after he was in prison?” the kid asked.

Kathryn slammed down the flat of her hand on the table. “A farmer. He said he was a goddamn farmer.”

“He was,” Gerry said. “But we make most our dough hanging paper.”

“How you know words like that?” Kathryn asked. “Paperhanger and the like?”

“Isn’t that what you call ‘writing phony checks’?”

George mopped up the last bit of waffle, forked it, and stuck it into his mouth. He pushed the plate away and chewed. He gave a lopsided grin to Kathryn, her knowing the son of a bitch was aching to say it. “Salt of the earth? Good country people? Whatsa matter with you, Kit?”

“IT’S A BEAUT,” HARVEY SAID. “THAT’S FOR SURE.”

He stood next to Karpis across the street from the Federal Reserve Building on Jackson, fronted by six big Greek columns and two American flags as big as Cadillacs. Two tall iron streetlamps lit up the façade and an armored truck parked along the sidewalk. It was midnight, and the two men wore summer-weight suits and straw hats. They watched and walked, stopping to take it all in as they lit up cigarettes and watched the streets.

The vault was three floors beneath the street, Karpis said. The transfers from the post office were made at different times on different nights. Sunday nights were at midnight, same as Thursday night, when they planned to take the dough.

“Six guards?”

“Sometimes more,” Karpis said.

“How many more?”

“No more than two.”

They watched as four guards wheeled fat canvas bags on a dolly down Jackson Street and into the side door of the Reserve.

“How much is the haul?”

“Guess it would be two mil.”

“I don’t like to guess.”

“I like the odds,” Karpis said, smoking and continuing to walk down Jackson before they turned up Franklin to Adam.

“What’s the git?”

“We park the Hudson a block over,” Karpis said. “When the guards ’round the corner at Clark, I’ll hit the smoke screen to stop any traffic. You and the Barkers will take the dough. I’ll keep Miller with me to cover the street. We’ll follow the same route we’re walking . . . Now, turn here.”

They kept walking, turning west on Adam toward the river. Harvey spent his cigarette and fished into his coat for another, feeling better now that he was clean and dressed decent.

“We’ll have two fresh cars waiting at the garage. New clothes, bandages, morphine.”

“You expect trouble?”

“Nothing ventured.”

“You trust the Barkers?” Harvey asked. “They ain’t the brightest.”

“Nobody’s better.”

“Except me,” Harvey said.

The men found the Plymouth parked by the river, and they drove across the bridge, catching Jackson again to the south, down by the train station. Lou Mitchell’s diner was half empty at midnight, and they found a small booth where they hung their hats on hooks and ordered coffee and pie.

“You got to lose Miller,” Karpis said. “He ain’t long for this world.”

“He’s got a plan.”

“How ’bout you?”

Harvey shrugged, stirring his coffee with a thick tablespoon of sugar, shuffling a fresh cigarette out of the pack and clicking open his lighter.

“This thing puts out and I’m headed to Australia,” Karpis said.

“No shit?”

“I’m done, Harvey,” Karpis said, his sad face drooping and serious. “We got a few more months, tops, before the whole damn government is on us. It ain’t like it used to be. And next year will be even worse. How much more time do you think we have hitting banks and making dashes across the state lines? The G’s taking over the banks.”

“Australia.”

“Yep.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“I read this story in
Collier’s
. Sounded like a nice place. Started by outlaws.”

Harvey nodded and then drank some coffee.

“You got to split with Miller,” Karpis said. “The Syndicate has money out.”

Harvey put down his coffee mug. He ashed his cigarette.

“When?”

“Few weeks now,” Karpis said. “He tell you why he killed those cops and Nash?”

A waitress walked over and left the check. The men turned their heads slightly until she had walked away.

Karpis smiled. “You know, I was a kid when I read about that job you pulled in ’22.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Everybody knows.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What happened to all that money? You must’ve gotten half a mil.”

“It’s never enough, Kreeps. You can lie to yourself all you want. You can sail to the other side of the world, but you’ll just find that gun in your hand and an itch in your heart. It’s a goddamn disease.”

“Come on,” Karpis said. “Happy days are here again . . .”

“Why aren’t you smiling?”

JONES SAT LUTHER AND FLOSSIE MAE ARNOLD IN THE BACKSEAT the next morning with Doc White between them. Jones checked his pocket watch, waiting for the post office in San Antonio to open its doors before following Flossie Mae inside. The first trip was worthless, but after lunch she’d received a telegram. Jones pulled it from her fingers when they climbed back into the stifling car, Luther asking them when they’d be fed.

The telegram was sent from Chicago. Jones sliced it open with a pocketknife and read, “GREETINGS FROM A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. NO TIME TO WRITE. AT FAIR DAY AND NIGHT. SHE’S NEVER OUT OF MY SIGHT, AND BE CAREFUL TO TAKE CARE OF MY CLOTHES FOR THEY ARE ALL I HAVE SO DON’T LOSE THEM. LEAVE FOR SHANGRI-LA APARTMENTS
,
O.K. CITY. MORE SOON
.”

“What’s it say?” Luther asked from the backseat. “That wasn’t meant for you.”

“It says you two are going to Oklahoma City.”

“That’s where you just brung me from,” Luther said. “We driving back now?”

“You’ll be locked up in the city jail. We’ll arrange for you to be shipped back.”

“And just where in the hell are y’all goin’?” Luther asked. “And just when are you gonna get us our little girl back? Are you two cowboys listening to me?”

34

E
very shadow had become the G to George, and now the bastard had her jumping out of her skin, too. Before they left the waffle joint, a couple joes had walked in and kept on giving sideways glances, and at first Kathryn was sure they were admiring her profile, but then George noticed them, paid the check, and wandered out under the El, Gerry splashing her new patent leather shoes in puddles until Kathryn told her to please act civil. But George just flat-out refused to go back to the apartment and drove them around the city, and for a while it was nice, being in a big, fat town like Chicago and driving past the Marshall Field’s windows and across the bridge to the Magnificent Mile, riding past the Tribune Tower and parking by Tiffany’s, window-shopping at night, keeping their backs turned to the street and checking out the new fall dresses, shoes, furs, and wraps, letting her mind already drift to the trial—if there was a trial—and how she’d look with that velvet hat cocked just so.

George stood flat-footed at the window of Hart Schaffner Marx, staring at a vacant bust of a dummy. The entire window display bare except for a pair of polished wingtips.

“Hey there,” Kathryn said, squeezing his hand. “It’s going to be fine. We’ll be fine.”

“I’m a dead man,” he said. “Hope you know that.”

“Quit being so dramatic.”

“No one gets out of this world alive.”

“Dime-novel stuff.”

“Another one,” he said. “They’re across the street. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.”

Kathryn looked over her shoulder and saw a man in a dark suit watching them from over Michigan Avenue. She walked ahead and grabbed Gerry, who was studying what looked to be a small town in a department-store window. Children played on seesaws, chased dogs, and curtsied in their fall prints. Some carried schoolbooks. Her nose was pressed against the glass.

“C’mon, kid.”

“Can I drive?”

“You can’t drive.”

“You bet I can.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?”

“On 66, I just wanted to sleep.”

Kathryn walked back, told the girl to jump in the backseat, and knocked the starter, driving slow on the Mile for George, who crawled in beside her and took his hat from his head, leaning back into the Ford’s seat. “We gotta ditch the car. I tried that rat bastard Joe Bergl ten times.”