Infamous (6 page)

“Whew, careful there, darlin’. That ain’t no gearshifter!”

CHARLIE THOUGHT THEY WERE DEAD FOR SURE WHEN THE CAR went veering off the road an hour later, scattering and swerving and then sliding deep down into some kind of gulley or ditch. He’d been rolled up and around, and then found himself in the backseat, hanging upside down. The gunmen screamed at each other, each calling the other stupid. The driver tried the engine, and it turned over, and then there was just the spinning of wheels on mud.

With the tape over his eyes, darkness around him, Charlie Urschel smiled.

“Well goddamn, get out and push, Floyd.”

“Quit callin’ me Floyd.”

“Well, that’s your name, ain’t it?”

“How ’bout you push?”

“Who’s got the machine gun, you dumb yegg? Use your head.”

4

G
us T. Jones barely had time to pack his leather grip with some fresh clothes and his thumb buster before he was on a flight Hoover had chartered out of San Antonio straight to Oklahoma City. He and Doc White stepped off the six-seater by themselves just before sundown and were met by a long black Ford, a couple agents, and the Special Agent in Charge, a fella by the name of Colvin. Bruce Colvin. He was a nice enough guy, and he even took Jones’s grip, which Jones took to be on account of respect and not ’cause he was an old man. Colvin was one of the new streamlined agents, not even thirty years old, with grease-parted hair and a tailored suit, and he kept on calling Jones “Sir” and saying “This way,” and even held the door open for him. Some kind of lawyer or accountant type.

Jones turned back to the Orion aircraft and watched a mechanic slide some wood blocks under the tires and the propeller sputter to a stop. He could hear the boy a little bit better and leaned in for him to repeat that last part as he held on to the doorframe. Old Doc White threw his bag into the trunk and lumbered back around, asking, “Where do we domicile?”

White still talking like he and Jones were both Rangers, riding the river together with rifles and rucksacks, nothing but hard, wide-open land and restless Mexicans trying to smuggle guns over the border. Back then they hadn’t even seen a damn airplane.

“We have rooms for you at the Skirvin,” Colvin said, still holding Jones’s grip. “We can take you there immediately, let you settle in and get something to eat before we meet with the Urschels.”

“Not necessary,” Jones said. “Doc?”

“Yep.”

And they were in the Ford, riding off the tarmac and hitting a state road into town, two agents in the front and Colvin sitting in back with Jones and White. The sun had just started to dip down, and the glare cut hard into Jones’s eyes, making him remove his wire glasses and tuck them into his jacket as he kept on talking.

“What do we know?”

“They let Jarrett go outside the city limits.”

Doc had taken off his Stetson—regulation, same as Jones—and balanced it across his knee. His suit wasn’t federal regulation like Colvin’s; Doc had chosen a Western style, with cowboy stitching at the seams, and a silver belt buckle the size of a dinner plate.

“We know where?”

“Eight miles east on Northeast Sixty-third, right at the river. You know Oklahoma City, sir?”

“I’ll take a map to it. Go on.”

“Sometime after midnight, Mr. Jarrett knocked on the door of a farmer named”—Colvin looked down at his notes, and, in the light, Jones wondered if the boy had started shaving yet—“Fred Wilson, but Wilson wouldn’t open the door. He thought Mr. Jarrett might be an escaped convict. A little while later, he—that being Wilson—saw a car start at the crossroads and head toward Luther.”

“What’s in Luther?”

“Access to U.S. 66,” Colvin said. “Straight to Tulsa.”

“Jarrett get a good look at our boys?”

“Said they look foreign.”

“Hell, that narrows it.”

Doc White rolled a cigarette and lit it, watching the hard country roll by and turning his head back to stare at a small shantytown that had been constructed next to a dry ditch. Burlap sacks flew on sticks like flags. A naked child watched the vehicle pass while banging two tin cans together.

“The wife?”

“Berenice Urschel,” Colvin said. “She doesn’t remember much.”

“And Jarrett’s wife?”

“Even less.”

“This may be an indelicate question, but just how much are these folks worth?”

“The last estimate of the Slick estate is valued at a little more than twenty million.”

Jones gave a low whistle. Doc looked up from his smoke.

“That’ll keep the lights on,” Doc said.

“I knew Tom Slick,” Jones said. “Don’t know his wife. Or I should say, Urschel’s wife now. Also remember a front man who worked for Slick in San Antonio, fella named Kirkpatrick. You heard his name?”

“No, sir,” Colvin said. “Urschel’s boys were fishing in Mexico and are headed back. Right now, it’s just Mrs. Urschel, her teenage daughter, and some neighbors and friends. We’re trying to keep the newsboys away.”

“Havin’ much luck?” Jones asked.

“You ever been to a circus, sir?”

THE GET AWAY CAR FINALLY STOPPED EARLY THAT MORNING, AND Charlie thought they’d arrived at wherever they were headed to chain him up or stick him in a cage or whatever these people do to decent taxpayers. He didn’t move from the floor of the backseat, the big feet of the man on his back. The driver got out, and Charlie felt some of the weight lifted from the shocks and then heard some outside banter with someone.

“Gettin’ much rain out here?” the gunman asked.

“Not a speck,” a woman said in a graveled hick voice.

“Corn gettin’ high?”

“Burned up.”

“All of it?”

“We still got broom corn. Mister, I get thirsty just walkin’ outside.”

“You sell Coca-Colas?”

“Sure thing. Cost you a nickel, though.”

“That’s fine. What flavor you got?”

“We got that grape Nehi, some Dr Pepper, and straight Coca-Colas in that cooler over yonder. Fill her up?”

Charlie thought now was the time to yell, and he filled his lungs, but it was as if the man sitting above him could read his thoughts, grinding the heel of his shoe between Charlie’s shoulders, the way you’d put out a cigarette butt. The man whispered, “Stay still. My finger gets jumpy.”

“Y’all are preachers, ain’t you?” asked the attendant. “I figured y’all for the ministry.”

“How’d you guess?”

Charlie squirmed, and the heel inched up to his neck.

“FOREIGNERS,” BERENICE URSCHEL SAID. “PROFESSIONA LS, I’M sure of it.”

“What kind of foreigners?” Jones asked.

“People not born in this country.”

“Mex. Eye-talian?”

“They were very dark. Very swarthy. One of them had a neck as thick as a bull.”

“What were they wearin’?”

“Light shirts. Dress pants. Both of them wore hats.”

Jones made a note. They sat across from each other in the family salon among the velvet furniture, gilded mirrors, and large oil paintings of well-fed people Jones took to be family. A negro woman came in and set down two glasses and a crystal decanter filled with water.

“We heard a car drive up on the driveway but didn’t think anything about it, because the children use the drive all the time,” Mrs. Urschel said. “Both of them carried machine guns. I didn’t know what those long black things were, but Mr. Jarrett later told me. We just sat there and didn’t say a word while the larger of the two men walked toward the card table. The slender one stood by the door and covered us with the gun.”

“You get a decent look at the car?”

“We just heard the motor spurt as it drove away,” she said, starting to choke up a bit. “I didn’t get a very good look at the car.”

“How ’bout your daughter?” Jones asked. “You said she’d gone upstairs?”

Outside a great bank of windows, through long pressed curtains, photographic flashes went off over and over in a strobe fashion, bringing back memories of lightning pockets in west Texas. The lawn of the Urschel home had looked like a state fair when they’d pulled up, and the driver had had to honk the horn just to cut through the sea of men with notebooks and cameras.

“Oh, I’m so thankful that it wasn’t Betty,” she said. “She thinks these same two men have been following her for several weeks. She saw them in a blue sedan when she came back from Tulsa Tuesday.”

“You mind if we talk to her?”

“I believe the man from the local office is with her in the kitchen now.” Jones nodded. Doc White was at the front door, talking to three city cops in plain clothes and giving directions on where to stand post. The door had been opened and closed so many times that the big house filled with heavy heat, and White was perspiring through the front of his shirt.

“Did you or your husband have threats against your persons?”

“We have had letters and that mess. But that was some time ago, and they were all cranks.”

Mrs. Urschel leaned forward, resting her forehead in her left hand. A big clock on a very big mantel in the very big room read nearly ten.

“I would try and persuade you to get some shut-eye,” Jones said. “But don’t expect you to.”

“What do we do?”

“Give ’em what they ask.”

“And then what?”

“Then we go to work.”

“Did I do right calling that telephone extension?” she asked. “I think I woke Mr. Hoover.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mind.”

“It was printed right there in
Time
magazine,” she said. “I’d recalled the article about the kidnapping epidemic just as soon as I’d run upstairs. I’m so glad I kept that issue. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m as nervous as a house cat.”

Berenice Urschel was not a beautiful woman, but she had a nice warm smile and nice warm brown eyes that lit up when she smiled back at Gus Jones. She reminded him a bit of his wife, Mary Ann, only with better manners and no propensity for using bad language. Mary Ann was a true master in the art of profanity and could outcuss any shitheel cowboy or redneck twice her size.

Jones stood and grabbed his hat from the sofa. He followed a long hallway lined with paintings of open pastures and rolling green hills, almost like windows looking away from the city or back years ago when all this was Indian territory.

He found Special Agent Bruce Colvin in the kitchen, talking to Betty Slick while the negro woman refilled a big coffeepot. Another negro was sweeping by a back door where agents and police officers came in and out, tramping in dirt. The negro didn’t take notice, just sweeping that same dirty spot over and over, refilling the dustpan and emptying it.

The girl sat up on the countertop, rocking her long tan legs against a cabinet.

Colvin nodded to Jones, a notebook in a loose hand. The girl didn’t turn around, staring at Colvin. She continued to stroke long brown hair over her right ear.

“You think you could identify the men who followed you?” Colvin asked.

“Maybe.”

“If we showed you a photo?”

“Are you married?”

“Ma’am?”

Jones coughed, and the girl turned to him. She wore a pin-striped linen dress and tall-heeled shoes adorned with pink bows. She had sleepy green eyes, and acknowledged Jones with a soft “Hello” while managing to keep her attention full on that bright-eyed college boy.

Jones grinned a bit when he noted the perspiration pop on the young agent’s forehead.

“Miss Slick, we’ll do everything we can to protect you.”

“Do you all carry guns?”

“Do we?” Jones asked.

“I target-shoot out at a pumpkin farm sometime,” Colvin said.

“You don’t say,” Jones said. “Those pumpkins move much?”

Betty Slick shot him a hot look and then turned back to Colvin with a big smile.

“Mother said there was nothing amateurish about these men. She said, ‘They knew just what they were doing.’ ”

IT WAS ABOUT DAYBREAK NOW, URSCHEL KNOWING THIS BECAUSE the light changed through the gaps in the hospital tape. A gray, dull light, the rumbling and bumping down the road making him nauseated but never sleepy, tucked and rolled in the womb of the floorboard, and for a while feeling like part of the machine, the gears and the brakes, the cluttering, spurting jumble of cranks and belts digesting the black gold that to Charlie Urschel would always remain hot as the core of the earth and always a welcome sight dripping off the hands and faces of riggers and geologists, always with big, wide grins, from tapping that vein.

The steady, graveling swoosh turned to rolling, piano-key clatter of wood that went on for a good bit—up a bridge and over a river—and then the tires found solid ground again, gears shifting to a purr, and, with a slap of foot on pedal, they were headed somewhere damn fast.