Infamous (5 page)

Berenice sat directly across him, Mrs. Jarrett flanked him to the right, and Mr. Jarrett to the left.

Berenice declared no trumps, and so the last game of the evening began with not much thought, the smoldering cigar burning down into Charlie’s fingers as he studied Mrs. Jarrett until she led with a ten of spades.

The radio played the orchestra from the Skirvin Hotel but soon signed off, and the weather and Ag reports began. Berenice walked to the cabinet and flicked off the RCA, and the couples were left with the soft evening sounds, a passing car or two, and there wasn’t a bit of notice when they heard a car pull into the drive by the garage behind their home, doors click closed, and soft, deliberate steps coming from the walk.

Charlie lifted his eyes from his cards to Berenice, and Berenice shifted in her chair as if the cushion had grown hot. Betty Slick hadn’t been home a half an hour and already suitors were driving by with a lot of teenage bravado, probably searching out pebbles to pelt her bedroom window.

Mrs. Jarrett played a jack, and her husband threw across a six.

Berenice met Charlie’s eyes with a smile, tossing across a king and winning the trick. He gathered the cards and made a notation on a pad beside him, taking a puff of his cigar, the tip glowing red, and smiling just as two shadows appeared before the screen door.

Men in dark suits and hats walked onto the porch. Both held guns.

The couples froze.

“Which one of you is Mr. Urschel?” the larger of the two asked. He had a square jaw and a thick neck, eyes obscured in shadow.

No one said a word.

“I said who’s Urschel?” the man said, with a calm force and without a bit of nervousness, casually holding a Thompson machine gun as if it were a Christmas ham. The shorter of the men, who wasn’t that much shorter, only slighter and leaner, held a revolver and kept a gun trained on Jarrett.

The last of the cigar smoke floated up from the glass ashtray, scattering into the ceiling fan as the big clock in the main house began to chime. Charlie could feel the blood rushing through his ears, thinking of that sorry bastard of a night watchman he’d fired only last week on account of him sleeping on the job and listening to
Amos ’n’ Andy
when he should have been out patrolling.

The chimes stopped.

“Okay,” said the large man. “We’ll take ’em both.”

Urschel stood.

Jarrett did the same.

The large man gripped Charlie’s arm with thick, meaty fingers, walking him to the door as if he were a common drunk being tossed from a party. But the man suddenly stopped as if reminded by his manners or by the interruption of a passing thought. He turned back to the women with a grin: “Ladies, don’t say a word or make a move toward the telephone, or I’m afraid we’ll have to blow your goddamn heads off.”

THE RIDE WAS FOREVER OR MAYBE TEN MINUTES, BUT FINALLY the damn car slowed and doors were thrown open. The driver—the large man—told Jarrett, without knowing his name, to get his ass out. The gunman who sat beside Charlie in the backseat nudged him in the ribs with the revolver and told him to be a good boy and stay put and shut the fuck up. The car had stopped at a dirt crossroads, and with the windows down Charlie could hear a baying hound and see flickering lights from a house a half mile from where the gunmen spoke to Jarrett.

The short one pulled a wallet from Jarrett’s pocket and thumbed through it. He lifted his head up to the other man and cocked it like a crow. Heavy headlights from the car seeped onto their heavy black shoes, and the big man with the big gun stepped forward.

“It’s not him.”

The other man picked out a wad of cash and tucked it into his own shirt pocket before handing Jarrett back his wallet.

“Now what?”

Charles F. Urschel counted the silence, feeling the ticking of his watch against his wrist. He could not breathe, not that he was a great friend to Jarrett, but he didn’t want to be a spectator to the man’s execution either. He reached for the door handle.

One of the men said: “Start walking, brother.”

Charlie let out a long breath.

And the gunmen turned and came for Charlie, but he wasn’t the least bit afraid, knowing they were going to hold him ransom just like that city manager’s son and that brewer from Minnesota and all the rest, so he let them go ahead and place cotton over his eyes and tape across the bridge of his nose and down between his eyebrows in the fashion of a cross.

He was led back to the car, someone pushing him down into the floorboard and telling him to be quiet and not move, and if they were stopped not to make a peep or he’d not only get himself killed but they’d go back for his family.

Charlie hadn’t opened his mouth since the sunporch.

The car fired up, and they rolled away, and Charlie bumped and jostled and closed his eyes, since there was no use keeping them open, but his mind racing all the same, the man resting his feet across his back like he was a stool, calling the driver Floyd. Soon he heard the pinging of rain across the hood and felt the car turn, thinking they were headed south but not knowing for sure as the men were silent. The whole thing made Charlie feel like a scolded child kept down and out of sight with close-lipped parents trying to teach him a lesson. The miles rolled and rolled, and he knew they were on a proper highway again.

As soon as the wheels had touched the smooth surface, the men began to laugh and laugh.

An hour later, they ran out of gas.

KATHRYN SAT AT A SMALL KITCHEN TABLE WITH A DETECTIVE from the Fort Worth Police Department named Ed Weatherford. She’d known Ed since she’d been married to Charlie Thorne, and Ed—a lean, rawboned boy with red hair and big teeth—had been such a good egg he’d made sure all of that mess went away real fast. The hell of it was that he’d only screwed her once, and that must have still resonated with him like some kind of tuning fork in his pecker because goddamn old Ed wore a rickety smile from the moment she’d opened her door after midnight and leaned into the frame just like she’d seen Jean Harlow do a thousand times.

The black satin kimono was just loose enough. And she smelled like fresh powder where’d she’d dabbed it under her arms and in the money patch. She poured rye into two coffee cups, and they sat and smiled at each other from across the table covered in red-and-white oilcloth.

“Aren’t you the funny one,” she said after they’d had a couple drinks. He played with her naked foot with his clumsy old boots.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, still smiling, Kathryn wondering if his lips didn’t hurt by now, squeezed tight over that big crooked smile.

“I appreciate you coming over like this.”

“Well, you said you were scared.”

“I am scared.”

“What about, sweet muffin?”

“You know George.”

His smiled dropped fast. “I know George.”

She dropped her head into her hands and shook her shoulders a bit, trying out what it must feel like to cry. She really tried to work on the breathing part of it like she was steadying herself or trying to hold herself together, but she knew she could never pull off a good cry like a good actress might.

Ed got out of his chair so fast he knocked his hat on the floor and put a lean hand on her shoulder. “Darlin’.”

“He’s gone and done it.”

“What’d he do? He hit you?”

She shook her head and sniveled. Hot damn, the sniveling felt just about perfect. She opened the hands from her face and wrapped them around the coffee mug full of hooch. “I can’t say.”

“Who says?”

“George says.”

“He threaten you?”

She looked up at him, making her black eyes grow big, and not answering at first. “He’s gone and done it. He’s gonna take me down with him.”

“Darlin’.”

She took a drink of rye. She’d had to take a drink the last time with Ed, too. She reached up and held his bony hand and said calmly. “I’m through with him, Ed. I’m really through.”

She squeezed his hand.

“Your daughter here?” he asked.

“She’s visiting my aunt.”

“And George?”

“He’s out of town.”

“Daddy’s here,” said Detective Ed Weatherford. He gripped her hand back.

Kathryn stood from the kitchen chair and let Ed work his lean fumbling hands on her sash until the robe dropped to the checkerboard floor.

“GODDAMN,” SAID THE BIG, LUMBERING GUNMAN. “GODDAMN.”

He’d been cussing over and over, ever since the other man had gone off for some gas. They were parked somewhere on the side of a ditch, and Charlie could hear the cows making confused sounds and smell their fetid shit through the open windows.

“Goddamn. Goddamn.”

Charlie wanted to ask the fella which genius was the one who was supposed to fill up the getaway vehicle, but instead kept his mouth shut.

He heard the snick of a lighter and smelled a cigarette.

“Don’t think you’ll get much,” Charlie said, filling the silence.

“Why don’t you just shut up.”

“The money’s all tied up in trusts. Nobody can touch it. Not even me.”

The man said nothing and then leaned forward to open the door, and Charlie heard him talking to the other fella and asking him if he had to walk clear back to Bumfuck, Egypt, to get them some gasoline, and the partner told him he’d had to wake up the attendant to take the locks off the pumps.

“He see you?”

“It’s dark.”

“You were gone for an hour.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“I’m not complainin’. I just said it took a while.”

“Well, goddamnit, you sure are a grateful bastard.”

“Fill it up and let’s get gone.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Charlie said again, but wasn’t sure if anyone was listening.

THEY SMOKED AFTERWARD, JUST LIKE A CUTE COUPLE IN THE movies. The sheets covered Kathryn to the stomach, but old Ed Weatherford lay nekkid, the flat of his back in the soft indention worn by George Kelly’s big ass, without a stitch on except for a pair of hand-tooled cowboy boots. He stared at the ceiling, hands under his head, and held that Lucky in his lips with a cocky, contented smile.

“Do you like to dance?”

“Sure,” Kathryn said. “Who doesn’t?”

“My ma,” Ed said. “She said dancing was evil. Led to fornication.”

“Well, we weren’t exactly dancing in the kitchen.”

“I wish you’d warned me about that fork.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have hopped on that table.”

“Why’d you call on me, Kathryn?”

She rolled over toward him, propping herself on an elbow, and played with a thin patch of black hair on his chest. She noticed he had a couple white scars across his stomach like he’d been raked by gunfire at some time, and that excited her more than when they were in the kitchen and he had his boots on and britches hitched down to his knees.

“You got shot?”

“Some crazy nigger got me. I kilt him, though.”

“You like me? Don’t you, Ed?”

“Sure I like you. Didn’t I just prove it to you?”

“What if George were to get me in trouble?”

“Like in a family way?”

“No, real trouble. If he got arrested.”

“He rob another bank?”

“Let’s say he did and then they arrested me, too. Couldn’t you have me called back to Fort Worth? Find something to charge me with here?”

“You call it extradite, darlin’.”

“Well, can you?”

“I s’pose.”

“You s’pose what?”

“Sure, I could get you extradited here. Make sure you get a fair shake with some friendly judge.”

“You swear?”

“Depends on my motivation.”

She nestled under his long, skinny arm and plucked the Lucky from his lips, taking a drag and staring up at the big, damp spot on the ceiling where the roof had leaked. She took a few puffs and then reached for him.