Infamous

10

The 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.”

“We don’t want money,” Miller said.

“What do you want?”

“For you to drop your drawers and crawl in the slop with ole Hoover there,” Miller said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“You boys lost your mind. I just finished telling you that hog has something wrong with its faculties. He could right kill me.”

Miller squeezed off a round at Boss’s feet, and the man jumped like an impromptu reel had started up. Harvey laughed and turned his head so Boss couldn’t see the smile and think they didn’t mean serious business.

“Socks and underwear, too.”

“I ain’t goin’ in the cage with a hungry hog with my pecker freed.”

Miller fired off another round. And Boss danced a jig till he wore nothing but his T-shirt, like it was a long flour-sack dress. Harvey slid back the lock on the cage and waved his hand, a doorman at the finest speak in the city. “Your party awaits.”

“You two crooked sonsabitches. Want to see me cornholed by a filthy swine. That’s a sickness. The plagues will come on you tenfold. You know it.”

Harvey slid back the bolt. He got the cigar going again to a glowing red tip. He checked the time.

“How long?” Miller asked.

“I’ll say ten minutes.”

“I’ll say five or less.”

“How much?”

“Hundred dollars.”

“This some kind of sport!” Boss said. “Goddamn you both to hell in your underbritches.”

There was a guttural snort, red eyes in the passing beam of the kerosene lantern. Light scattered from Boss Shannon’s hand down into the mud and muck and pig shit before a high squeal sounded that the men took for the animal but would later figure out was only Boss.

Miller only had to ask once, “Just what have George and Kit gotten themselves into, and how can we get a slice?”

KATHRYN BOARDED THE TRAIN IN MUSKOGEE AFTER TAKING another line from Denison, Texas, and waiting it out for the Sooner Limited. The observation car had filled with a half dozen drunk businessmen with loose neckties and five o’clock shadows and two sour-faced old women who shook their heads at each other as the men told one another off-color jokes and freely exchanged bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. “This fella has a trained dog he gives twenty cents that will go to the corner for a newspaper and a bucket of beer. Well, one day he doesn’t have change and sends the dog away with five whole dollars. Some time passes, and the dog doesn’t come back, so he goes lookin’. He finds the rascal in a back alley really sticking his business to a mongrel bitch. ‘I’m surprised at you,’ the man says. ‘You’ve never acted like this before.’ And the dog says, ‘I never had the money before.’ ” She stayed there through two stops, not spotting Kirkpatrick and thinking maybe he’d begged off on the plan, but then she decided to walk through the passenger cars trailing behind them, crowded with church and civic groups from Houston, Waco, and Dallas, headed to the big city of Chicago and the big Fair. One group had a little ragtag band with them, and for some reason they launched into “You’ve Got to Be a Football Hero,” and they thought their antics hilarious as a few of the boys tossed a ball in the center aisle, nearly sending Kathryn off her feet. But she recovered and scowled, readjusting her little black hat and veil, and finding the final vestibule where, through the glass, she could make out two figures sitting on stools and watching the night pass.

She opened the sliding door, and the older of the men stood, offering her a seat.

She said thank you, but she wanted to stretch her legs.

Kathryn reached into her purse, grabbed her little cigarette case and lighter, and had a bit of difficulty in the wind. The men didn’t talk, just watched the snaking tracks, wheels groaning and scraping under them until the path righted again and they headed due north, the hard earth and parched farms flickering past. The night was as clear as could be, and the stars looked like a million winking diamonds.

“Where you men headed?” she asked.

“ Kansas City,” said the younger man, who hadn’t offered his seat.

The older man wore a cowboy hat and smoked a pipe. He got off his seat again and removed his hat. “ Chicago,” he said.

“Not traveling together?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Just passing the time with a friendly drink.”

“Would you like some?” asked the other man, and he got to his feet, using the rail for support. He seemed a bit nervous and a little drunk. But she as hell recognized him as Mr. E. E. Kirkpatrick of Tom Slick Enterprises. Two Gladstone bags lay side by side.

She turned her head and said no thank you, stepping back from the platform into shadow. The sound and vibration of the train coming up into her feet made her knees a bit weak. There was something about the old man that she didn’t trust or like, and, when the train stopped in Arcadia, he got up to stretch, looking across to Kirkpatrick, who shook his head. The old man wore wire-framed cheaters and a gun on his hip. He was old but had the look of the law written across his wide face.

She told the men good night and crawled off onto the platform, looking for the number George had scrawled on a matchbook from the Blackstone Hotel… If there was any cause, any cause at all, call them at this telephone number. She checked her watch and prayed there was time for a meet in Tulsa.

“THIS IS WHERE MR. SLICK DRILLED HIS FIRST WELL,” E. E. Kirkpatrick said as the Sooner pulled into the town of Tryon The big locomotive hissed and shuttered in rest while folks got on and off in the early morning. The porter brought Jones a cup of coffee as Kirkpatrick drained the rest of the little flask and then reached into his hip pocket for a spare. “Yes, sir. That was back in ’05.”

“You don’t say.”

“I wasn’t with him then,” Kirkpatrick said, taking a sizable swallow, still trying to calm his nerves. “But I know Mr. Slick had some trouble getting leases. Bought space up in the local paper and even joined the Masonic lodge. But he said Tryon people were the most stubborn folks he’d ever met, and he’d had to pull up stakes before they knew he meant business.”

“You might want to slow down with the liquor, partner,” Jones said.

“My hand is steady,” Kirkpatrick said. “My reflexes agile. The drink just keeps the perception a bit more keen.”

Jones nodded and drank some coffee. The dawn focused to the east in a dull, gray light, and the old man stretched his legs and studied the porters hauling suitcases and trunks into the baggage car. The car door rolled to a heavy slam, and the steam engine started up again with the conductor’s whistle.

“Mr. Slick always got what he wanted,” Kirkpatrick said. “He did. Yes, sir. He said he wanted to be a millionaire and didn’t rest till he was the King.”

“And so Tryon made him a millionaire?” Jones said.

“They blasted every hole with nitroglycerin to shake her loose but ended up with nothing but dusters.”

Kirkpatrick grinned a bit to himself and chuckled and took another nip of whiskey, staring straight down the line of tracks from where they’d come, his mind settling on a place that was solid and familiar. He patted the Gladstone bag as he stood. But when he reached for the flask again, Jones pulled it from his hand and tucked it into his coat pocket.

“After the deal, Kirk,” Jones said. “C’mon, let’s get you some coffee.” The black locomotive steamed and chugged on through Tulsa and over the Cimarron River, taking a hard, clanging turn north. Tulsa’s factories bellowing with smoke and the refineries spewing fire soon faded into the lonely glow of old farmhouses and quiet little towns-Bartlesville, Dewey, Coffeyville, and Parsons. Storefronts all shut up with planks over windows and doors. FOR SALE signs across vacant lots and farms. But nothing of the signal. Not even the smell of a fire on the horizon. The old negro porter found the men drinking coffee and smoking in silence as the train jarred to its final stop-the fifty-first from Oklahoma City-and he stood next to them nodding as the Katy’s tracks converged with dozens in a wide, sprawling maze of steel and crushed granite. When Jones peered around toward the engine, he could just make out the big cathedral shape of Union Station coming into view.

“They said for me to come alone,” Kirkpatrick said.

“And we’ll comply.”

“I can handle this.”

“Don’t feel like taking chances on a Sunday.”

“You didn’t have to take away my liquor,” Kirkpatrick said. “Got cold back here.”

“Least eighty degrees.”

“Perhaps we should take two cabs to the Muehlebach?”

“I’ll stay close,” Jones said, holding on to the rail and looking east to a bright sunrise. “These folks are having some fun making us jump through hoops.”

Jones followed Kirkpatrick through the long beams of lights across the marble floors, train schedules being read over the public address, and right through the front doors he’d taken with Joe Lackey what seemed like years ago. In his mind, he still kept the picture of old Sheriff Reed and that young agent chewed up and bleeding to death on the street.

He arrived at the Muehlebach Hotel minutes later and found the house phone so he could be connected to “Mr. Kincaid.” There were potted palms and brass spittoons, sofas as large as beds. Gentlemen and ladies all spoke to one another like they were in a library, and near the registration desk a fella with greased hair played a grand piano. Kirkpatrick finally answered and gave Jones his room number. “Make sure no one sees you.”

“I didn’t figure on being announced.”

Two hours later, the men got a knock on the door. A postal telegram read UNAVOIDABLE INCIDENT KEPT ME FROM SEEING YOU LAST NIGHT. WILL COMMUNICATE ABOUT 6 O’CLOCK.-E. E. MOORE.