Infamous

11

A hand shook Charlie Urschel awake sometime in the middle of the night, him knowing it was night because he’d heard the second plane pass overhead and on account of asking the boy the time every time he’d heard it. He couldn’t see or feel his arm but heard the distinctive click of the chains and felt his dead arm coming to rest in his lap. Then there were hands upon him, rubbing him, giving him the Mr. Urschel, Mr. Urschel, wake up, and it was all so rushed and furious that he was pretty well convinced this was it, they’d messed up the deal and now were going to finish him off. But Charles F. Urschel would not give the bastards the pleasure of seeing one jigger of emotion, and he struggled to find his feet using only the good arm. He felt the rip of tape from his eyes, and the whole damn blackness was filled with a harsh morning light coming from the east windows. Mr. Urschel, here’s ten dollars. It’s all we got, now run. Jes’ remember me in your kindness and prayers ’cause these bastards don’t trifle none. Charlie knew the words were coming from the old man but still couldn’t see him, being as blind as a man in a snow-storm, as he allowed himself to be led out into the morning heat and told to Jes’ keep goin’, don’t look back, don’t look back for nothin’, till he hit the main highway. And Charlie didn’t ask questions but loped forward, sightless and fumbling and holding on to his left arm, massaging it with his fingers because it was about the only thing that kept him vigilant and sharp and knowing he was alive. Soon he was able to feel the rocks and stones on his bare feet, the hot wind blowing his pajamas like a loose tent.

He rubbed his raw eyes with his fists until he saw spots, and he tried to move forward, the sun being the first thing that actually had a shape to it, white-hot and burning. He looked down to the ground, the flatness of the hard earth, the thorny weeds and scrub brush cutting and ripping, and Urschel lost his shirt and tore at the cloth, binding the strips to cover his feet. And the shapes were hollow and glowing, and he didn’t know if he was headed toward the road the old man spoke of or was wandering aimlessly in whatever godforsaken land they’d taken him to. He was sweating now, and he figured the morning had crept on, maybe two hours since he’d been cut loose. On the horizon, all he saw were gassy mirages and more flat land, in some kind of dusty limbo where he’d walk and lope, growing so thirsty that he didn’t know a mirage from a water hole but kept moving ahead until he finally became entangled in a row of barbed wire. Hung in his own personal Calvary.

He took a breath, his legs quivering with the exertion. He unpricked the line from his skin and then touched the wire with his fingertips. The strips of it pierced his hands, but, goddamn, he knew this was a road, and if he could just keep moving ahead it would lead somewhere. The sun was high, and he could see almost regular now, watching a big-eared jackrabbit loping across the dusty plain.

The goddamn jackrabbit didn’t need water.

He could go on forever in the morning dew.

The cloth strips had fallen away from his feet, the earth so hot he couldn’t sense the gravity anymore. The fence line led to an empty pool of water and then another pool of nothing, and if he could just keeping going there was a road leading back to Oklahoma City and pitchers of iced tea with bridge games and light, leisurely walks for gentlemen after their evening meal, where they patted their stomachs and cleaned their teeth with pocketknives.

He smiled at the thought, bringing his shoulders back, shoeless and wearing only the pajama bottoms, trying to walk like Charles Urschel would. He walked as if people could see him and would know him and could recognize he was a man of great importance in the community.

He figured it to be early afternoon when he about gave up.

But there was a figure in the distance. And he called to it.

The figure called back and waved his hat.

It was Tom Slick himself, covered in top-grade oil up to his knees and elbows, with that rascal grin on his lips.

Charlie, you look like shit warmed over.

“Well, hello, Tom. I sure am in a pickle.”

A FEW HOURS FROM THE DROP AND KATHRYN DECIDED THE GANG should take in a movie. Not just any movie but Gold Diggers of 1933, with Joan Blondell, a picture that Photoplay and Shadoplay had called a hot-shit masterpiece. There was even a full-page advertisement in the Kansas City Star she’d bought at the Tulsa station for a special showing at the Newman Theater that promised some cool, refrigerated air. She wasn’t sure if she was more excited about seeing Blondell’s gowns or getting out of the damn heat. But after some nonsense from Popeye and Mickey Mouse-George laughing so hard he snorted-the movie finally started up, and there she was with a big mug on either side of her, George dozing off not even five minutes after the lights dimmed, and Albert, who’d kicked his two-tone lace-ups up on the empty seats in front of him, munching a bag of popcorn.

Kathryn couldn’t contain it. She saw the whole dream of her life coming together as those chippies danced and twirled onscreen with big silver dollars on their hands and stuck between their legs over their snatches. Hands waving. Feet skipping. Twirling, dancing, and jumping. We’re in the money, the skies are sunny… She wanted to jump up into the screen and join right in.

Here she was. Cleo Brooks. Born in Saltillo, Mississippi. Born on nothing. Born to nothing. She’d been stupid, getting knocked up at fifteen because some boy told her he just wanted to feel it for a second, and then getting involved with that moody bastard Charlie Thorne, who said he’d die for her-and did-and then Little Steve Anderson, who damn near killed her. She remembered being black-and-blue, mouth cut and bloody, his slim, bony hands knocking the stuffing from her every night he got loaded on bathtub gin, and then nearly being sent to prison for pinching a bottle of perfume and a velvet beret. It was George who bailed her out of the can, him being nothing more than a childish scrawl on a cocktail napkin, and the one who told Anderson -that big-dick bootlegger in Fort Worth -that if he so much as looked at her again, he’d rip his goddamn head off and shit down his neck. But somehow every step-from Mississippi to Tulsa and to Fort Worth -had brought her here to Kansas City, where she was finally going to be the woman that she’d imagined. All they needed was that fat Gladstone grip.

We’re in the money, we’re in the money.

She wanted to dance on the seat but instead squeezed Albert Bates’s meaty arm. He ate some more popcorn and gave her a solid ole wink like only a good mug could handle.

George started to snore, fedora over his eyes, and Kathryn glanced behind her in the big space of the movie theater, finding that there were only six people at the matinee. She moved her shoulder, and his head lolled to the side, splurting awake, then finding her shoulder and snoring again.

Albert finished the popcorn and wadded up the bag.

He checked his watch.

It had been a long night, and during a sappy love scene she found herself in the bathroom and washed her face and hands, reapplied her makeup and ran a comb through her black hair and used some dark wine tint on her lips.

She’d been on a train and in a car so long that her ass hurt. And she hung back from the boys for a bit, leaning into the wall of the darkened theater. She pulled some loose hair from her face and tucked a knuckle under her chin. She’d always felt rich in a movie house. She liked the way this place had long red drapes sashed open, red lamps, glowing like a Chinaman’s tearoom, running down the aisles. Lots of brass railings and comfortable velvet seats. You could be anyone in a movie house and dream as big as you wanted without feeling like a sap. She’d worn her best gown and some comfortable T-strap slippers. They’d go out tonight. They had to go out. She didn’t care a bit about George wanting them to lay low. What’s the use of being rich if no one saw you flaunt it?

She checked her watch. This drop was as slow as Christmas.

Blondell was on the street now in a fine French number, scarf knitted gaily at her throat, watching some poor bastard stoop to his knees to pick up a discarded cigarette. She grabbed the man’s shoulder as if in some ballet and lit her own fresh cigarette with his and gave the poor bastard the new one. I don’t know if he deserves a bit of sympathy, / Forget your sympathy. Now, that was class. That’s the kind of rich gal that Kathryn Kelly would be. She’d never forget hard times. Remember my forgotten man, she sang. You had him cultivate the land; / He walked behind a plow, / The sweat fell from his brow, / But look at him right now!… Blondell caressed the lamppost, holding on like the earth was unstable, and moved through the whole moody dream, thinking about those forgotten men, bastards who’d fought and bled in the war and now marched through soup kitchens and breadlines, as she let go of the post. She placed both hands on her left hip, that slight cock of the hip getting Kathryn thinking. She could do that, she could hold that power without the post. And once, he used to love me, / I was happy then; / He used to take care of me, / Won’t you bring him back again? / ’Cause ever since the world began, / A woman’s got to have a man; / Forgetting him, you see, / Means you’re forgetting me…

Nuts to that.

She checked her watch.

It was time.

WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG AT A QUARTER TILL SIX, GUS JONES picked up the receiver while Kirkpatrick paced the hotel room.

“Who’s talking?” asked a man with a raspy voice.

“Kincaid,” Jones said.

“This is Moore,” the man said. “You get my wire?”

“I did.”

“Well,” the man said, pausing, “are you ready to close the deal?”

“Should be, if I knew that I were dealin’ with the right parties.”

“You ought to know by now,” the man said. “Listen now and follow these instructions. Take a Yellow Cab, drive to the Hotel La Salle, get out, take the suitcase in your right hand, and start walking west.”

“I figured on taking the suitcase.”

“Who is this?”

“I’ll be there at six-twenty,” Jones said. “I have a friend who came up here with me-I figured on bringing him along.”

“Hell, no,” the man said. “We know all about your friend, we saw that fat old man on the train last night. You come alone and unarmed. You got me? We get wind otherwise and Urschel’s dead.”

The phone rang off and the operator came on the line. Jones hung up.

“What did they say?” Kirkpatrick asked.

“They spotted me on the train.”

“Hot coffee,” Kirkpatrick said. “I knew it. I just knew it.”

“Cool your britches,” Jones said, reaching for his suit jacket and slipping into it. He placed some.45 bullets in his pants pocket and checked the load in the cylinder. “I’ll be right behind you. Grab the bag and take a Yellow Cab to the Hotel La Salle. That ’s south from here. Once you get there, start walking west.”

“Which way is west?”

“Ask the doorman.”

Kirkpatrick nodded and felt for the.38 he’d tucked into his trousers. Jones looked at him and reached out for the gun with his right hand. Kirkpatrick took a breath and then passed it over.

“Just walk,” Jones said. “And don’t look back. Just keep walking till they make contact. I’ll be behind you. Give ’em what they want. Don’t negotiate and don’t try to be a hero. Just hand over the money.”

“And then what?”

“We pray these moneygrubbing bastards are honest men.”

YOU COULDN’T MISS THE SON OF A BITCH. IT WAS THE SAME AS watching a drunk man trying to walk straight; they do everything cockamamy. And here was Mr. E. E. Kirkpatrick, executive of Tom Slick Enterprises, trying to act normal. He strolled along the boulevard on a hot Sunday evening with that goddamn beautiful Gladstone grip. Kathryn even loved the color, a light butternut brown. She thought she could even smell the leather from the open window in the big Cadillac, scrunched down in the backseat that would fit four fat men, the Thompson she hocked her life to buy clutched in her arms in case there was trouble. Across the street, in a stolen Chevrolet, Albert Bates had a rifle poked out a side window. And George was in an alley, waiting for Albert to bump the lights, and then he’d move down Linwood Street, down that tony row of dress designers and shoe shops and hatmakers and a dozen places Kathryn wanted to visit, to make contact with the sucker.

She knew this would work out from the first time she’d read the Urschels’ wedding announcement. They went to Saint Louis or somewhere for their honeymoon and they both shared some children and all that tra-la-la. But what she read was “Come and get me.” Kirkpatrick wasn’t twenty paces from the hotel when he set down the suitcase and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Head skyward and cigarette upturned, he struck a match and glanced around him, lighting it, inhaling and taking in the scene.

Kathryn took a breath, waiting for fat-faced detectives with bad shoes and G-men with bullhorns and billy clubs to come out from the sewers.

But nothing happened as she watched the big, broad back of George, in a two-tone summer shirt and tie, wearing two-tone shoes and a fashionable Panama tilted into his eyes, strolling along in the opposite direction, growing closer to Kirkpatrick, who was trying to remain cool and low-key. She could almost see the bastard shaking.

George passed by the Cadillac, and, with nothing to it, gave her a wink.

Five feet from Kirkpatrick, George R. Kelly said: “I’ll take that grip.”

Goddamn, she loved him. She loved that smooth, honeyed way he gave directions. I’ll take that grip… She’d remember that forever.

Kirkpatrick was frozen, staring at him. Kathryn leaned into the window and poked the barrel of the gun out of the car, finger on the trigger, teetering over the edge so that nobody could see it even if they were walking close.

“Hurry up,” her husband said.

“How do I know you’re the right party?”

“Hell, you know damn well I am.”

“Two hundred grand is a lot of money,” Kirkpatrick said. She could tell his mouth was dry when his voice cracked a bit. “We are carrying out our part of the agreement to the letter. What assurances have we that you’ll do what you promise?”

“Don’t argue with me,” George said, nodding to a row of cars across the street. “The boys are waiting.”

“When can we expect Mr. Urschel home?” he asked. “I’m going back to the hotel to telephone his wife. What shall I tell her?”

“You shall tell her that this is money well spent.”

Kirkpatrick set the bag at George’s two-tone shoes.

George bent down and grabbed the handle, and as he reached for it Kathryn shuddered, tongue moving across her upper lip and tasting her sweat.

“Wait,” Kirkpatrick said. “Wait one moment. You tell me definitely what I can say to Mrs. Urschel.”

“He’ll be home within twelve hours,” George said, the suitcase in his right hand. “Now, you turn and walk back to the La Salle and don’t look back. Whatever you do.”

George remained on the sidewalk for a good ten paces and then turned back to the Cadillac, Kathryn crawling over the front seat into the driver’s side and cranking the big sixteen cylinders, both of ’ em watching Kirkpatrick till he disappeared from view. She pulled out onto Linwood and then down to Harrison Street and kept on going south till they found the highway, and she drove for a good six hours, white-knuckled and laughing, with a big, fat moon-a “lucky moon,” is what she’d call it-overhead. They only stopped for gasoline and oil, and a couple of sandwiches and pickles wrapped in paper, ice-cold Coca-Colas in small green bottles.

She never left the money. She kept it on her lap after she and George traded places with the driving. George’s Panama slipped back far on his head, big, hairy arm hanging out the window. The brand-new radio picking up some signals and then going out, hearing some news about that one-eyed flier Wiley Post making it around the globe but nothing at all about Charles Urschel. There was no music in this dusty, godforsaken land, only preachers and blithering morons talking about the Bible and healing and the road to happiness.

“We’re on that road right now, aren’t we, Kit?”

“You’re goddamn right.”

She smoothed her long fingers over the Gladstone, peeking every once in a while at the stacks and stacks of money, the scent of it making her mouth water. She smoothed it some more and rocked that bag back and forth.

A little past midnight, in some no-name town south of Wichita, George pulled into a motor lodge and rang for the manager. The manager was an old woman with a pinched face who said she sure was glad to get a nice married couple and asked them three times if their children were in the machine. And Kathryn gave her an eye like “Beat it,” although the old woman didn’t quite get it and kept on puttering around till Kathryn had to slam the door in her face.

They were wrung-out, road-tired, nerve-frazzled, and finally alone.

George locked the door behind them. They hadn’t brought a change of clothes or even a toothbrush. She carried the grip, and George carried some Log Cabin bourbon.

They drank from some tiny glasses found in the bathroom. And they drank some more. Kathryn took a shower, and when she came out George was next to the bed counting the cash, splayed open from the spread to the sheets. Stacks of twenties had been laid out in row after row, and Kathryn walked to him, feeling lazy-eyed from the booze, and dropped her towel, seeing herself in the long mirror over George. George sat astride a ladder-back chair, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, and his eyes moved up from the money and to his naked wife.

He smiled.

She stretched and fell back into the cash, some of the twenties knocked up into the air with a woosh, and she thought George might’ve been sore. But she should’ve known better. He about tripped getting off his seat and wrestling for his belt, not even removing his socks, garters, and shoes as he turned off a lamp and mounted her. In the moonglow from the window, he took her hard from behind, making animal grunts and saying how much he loved her and how beautiful she was, and all that tripe, as she pushed back hard against him and stretched out her arms before her, her finely manicured hands breezing through a stack of bills and making sure not a single one of ’em was marked.

They did it once in the bed, and then she straddled him in the chair. He looked good in the moonlight, like a lantern-jawed hero, and she liked the way the glow made her skin soft and white and young. Her arms and legs reached around George R. Kelly. Her hands clutching stacks of twenties as she rode him.

“I love you, Kit. I sure love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said, soft and meaning it, “you dumb ape.”