Infamous

19

Don’t feel bad about it, Harv,” said Kreepy Karpis, the yegg with the face of Frankenstein. “I mean, Jesus H. Coulda happened to anyone. The son of a bitch ambushed you. That ain’t fair.”

Alvin Karpis. Alvin Fucking Kreepy Karpis sat beside Harvey in an identical leather chair, smoking an identical two-dollar cigar, at Nina’s cathouse at one in the morning, trying to give Harvey Bailey advice on how to handle his business. The much younger yegg and that goddamn moron, Dock Barker, had pulled some pretty impressive jobs, but Harvey Bailey had been knocking over banks since Karpis was swiping gumdrops at the five-and-dime and tugging at his pecker in the school yard.

Both men wore Japanese robes provided to them by the management, a steady punch of Kid Cann’s who took over when Nina died. The place was class all the way-red velvet furniture, polished wood, brass fixtures, and burning gas lamps just like in the old days. Jesus, he hoped they laundered the robes.

“So George Kelly kicks in Kid Cann’s door,” Harvey said, pointing out the action with the cigar tip, “holding that Thompson, and tells the Kid to toss him the coin or he’d spray the whole place, colored orchestra and all. Verne had gone back into the joint to talk up that fan-dancin’ snatch, or things mighta been different. But it’s just me and the Kid sharing some fine whiskey and talking about the G coming down hard on all the rackets. I’m tellin’ you, there was a time when I woulda seen Kelly coming like the light on a fucking freight train.”

“What’d the Kid do?” Karpis asked, his hangdog face showing disappointment even when curious. You could stick a knife in the guy’s hand and he’d look the same. No pulse, no emotion. “George must have a big set of ’em to bust in like that.”

“Or he’s fucking stupid,” Harvey said. “The Kid tossed over the two grips. Hell, what’d he have to lose? He’d already made the cut and left one bag for me and one for George. I think the little Jew found some amusement in it.”

Harvey blew out some smoke, pondering the situation, watching it float up to the second-floor railing that looked down upon the salon and waiting customers, hungry and jazzed for it.

“And he walked out with the two bags?”

“You know the hell of it, Kreeps? You don’t mind if I call you that?”

“Not you, Harv. Always looked up to you. I know my face ain’t pleasing to some.”

“Well, the hell of it is, I don’t think George wanted the money,” Harvey said, ashing the cigar into a jade tray in the shape of a woman with spread legs. “He wanted to give me the big fuck-you because I laid his ears back in front of his woman. That’s just plain pussy-crazy.”

“What’d you say to him?”

“I told him he’d about pissed his pants before a job-and that’s God’s own, I’m telling you. I didn’t think he’d pull his shit together. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the same nervousness each and every time. I don’t know how he pulled this one off. This thing in Oklahoma blows the fucking mind.”

“The Urschel job?”

“Can you believe it?” Harvey asked. “I read in Time magazine that it was the biggest ransom ever paid. Since we broke out, I been running my tail off around three states on nickel-and-dime bullshit, and here goes big, dumb George Kelly, knocking on the door of the top oilman in the Midwest-Step this way, please-goddamnit.”

“How much?”

“Two hunnard grand.”

“I wish someone would’ve fingered him to me,” Karpis said, crossing his bare feet at the ankle, taking a sip of booze, a hit of the cigar. “Must’ve been cake.”

“You better believe it,” Harvey said. “But kidnapping? C’mon. That’s not an honest man’s work.”

“Really,” Karpis said, smiling big while biting down on the cigar. “Ain’t money respectable?”

“You know the G likes the goddamn Touhy brothers for kidnapping that brewer-what’s his name? They might get the goddamn chair for that mess.”

“Let me borrow a hankie. I might cry.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I’m just plain happy, Harvey. High on life.”

“Who’s your whore?”

Karpis readjusted in the big, fat chair and pointed up to the railing cut into the ceiling. A redheaded girl, with pink lips and wearing a pink slip, waved down to the men. The girl Harvey had been with joined her, and she stared down, wrung-out, at Harvey, smoking a cigarette and motioning him back up with the crook of her finger.

“I got her all night,” Harvey said. “I swear to you, Kreeps, that little girl’s pussy is electrified. Does an old man good to get some fresh young tail. Gives me some real pep.”

“You goin’ after George?”

“He’s got my dough.”

“There’s more banks,” Karipis said. “More jobs. I could cut you in on a li’l somethin’ we’re workin’.”

“That’s mighty white of you, Kreeps, but Miller kinda got his heart set on acing George Kelly off the board.”

“Suit yourself.”

“He’s right, you know,” Harvey said, his cigar failing him, and he reached out to a whore that strolled by and told her to bring him more matches. He swatted her large, meaty ass and sent her on. “You don’t steal from another yegg. You cross that line and you’re like every egg-sucking bean counter. We lose that and we ain’t nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”

The whore tossed Harvey some kitchen matches, and he got the cigar going again and leaned his head back, his mouth breaking into a grin, seeing that young whore up there smiling back, a blond angel in the ceiling. If he wasn’t so goddamn wise, he’d think the punch loved him. That’s why you go to Nina’s: whores who could sell it all night long.

“The G won’t let him keep it,” Harvey said, wresting his hand loose off the chair, cigar burning warm in his fingers. “They’ll hunt that poor son of a bitch for the rest of his days.”

Over a cold brick fireplace hung an oval portrait of Miss Nina herself, a black-eyed beauty who smelled like sunshine and sweets and could do things to a man that he’d never forget. Harvey recalled her well. What was that, fifteen years ago? There were boundaries then, and rules, and the law knew ’em and the crooks knew ’em, and there wasn’t this jackrabbitin’ that was going on today. Today, a criminal was treated like some kind of social outcast. A bum with a tainted mind. A greedy leper.

“I’m done,” Harvey said, swilling the drink. “I want my coin, and I’m throwing in the towel.”

“There’s a guy who can cut your face to look like anyone you please. He can burn your fingerprints off, too. How’s the G going to find a man then? You’d be someone else, and no file will say you ain’t.”

“A man keeps his word,” Harvey said. “I just want what’s mine. What I earned. What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t like to do a whore more ’an once,” Karpis said. “You do them more ’an once and they start thinking that you like ’em and they’ll want some kind of tip.”

“You walk into the bank, put down the cash, and get your farm back,” Harvey said. “You take that foreclosure notice and tell them to stick it far and high up their ass.”

“Ain’t a girl a fine thing?” Karpis said, stumbling up onto his feet, drink sloshing in his hand. “I think I’ll have a second helping.”

“People today. Greed. Pussy-mad.”

THE NARROW RUTTED ROAD SWOOPED SOUTH SIXTEEN MILES from Decatur, the seat of Wise County, Texas, where Jones and Detective Ed Weatherford had just met with the vice president of the First National Bank. The men’s badges had opened up the file of Mr. Boss Shannon, a respected cotton farmer who always kept about five hundred dollars in his savings account and was known to pay his mortgage on time. But Jones had also asked where they might find the biggest know-it-all in Wise County, and the vice president laughed and gave the name of their former examiner. And that examiner was called, and, after some telephone back and forth, the vice president raised eyes over half-glasses and told the men the examiner never saw how Boss ever made a living on the few acres of cotton he raised.

Handshakes were made, and they were off in the Plymouth with official papers of the bank, Jones working for First National and Weatherford the new examiner. They’d tell Boss he needed to sign a new note, since that fella in Arkansas had barely paid off the interest.

“How’s them charts and graphs and such working out, Mr. Jones?”

“They’re coming.”

“But they all point to where we headed.”

“United Airlines has a twin-engine come out of Fort Worth that flies that route regular.”

“But didn’t fly during the storm.”

“No, sir.”

“You brung that map?”

“I brung it.”

“If we get into a nest of desperadoes,” Weatherford said. “Just want you to know, I’m a fair shot.”

Jones replied with a grunt, hot afternoon wind passing through the open car window, as a telephone pole painted white appeared just as the bank examiner said it would. Jones slowed and turned onto an even more rutted, narrow path, the kind built for horse and carriage but not a Plymouth. A dwelling came into view-a slatted-together, tin-roofed shotgun job. No paint, and a stone fireplace barely finding purchase on a back kitchen. As he braked the automobile, scattering a mess of guineas up onto the roof and into a dead mesquite, a smallish man-more like a boy-walked out onto the uneven porch wearing nothing but a pair of threadbare overalls and smoking a long cigar like Jones had seen in the mouths of city politicians.

A barefoot girl holding a child joined him, and they stared with vacant eyes as Jones got out on the running board and offered them a smile. “You Mr. Shannon?”

“I’m Armon. You lookin’ for Boss?”

“We are.”

“Back the way you come,” he said. “Down another mile. Boss is my daddy.”

The baby wore a sagging diaper and groped for the girl’s fattened bosom, crying for some tit, till the boy told them both to git on inside, the door slamming with a hard thwack behind them.

“This part of his property?” Jones asked. Weatherford crawled out of the car, grinning with his big teeth and removing his sweaty hat from his head and fanning his face. He recognized the layout of the shack, too.

“Yes, sir.”

“We come from First National,” Weatherford said. “Need a signature on a note he signed.”

The boy looked at the two men-in cowboy hats, suits, and boots-and studied their faces in the high afternoon sun, the cicadas going wild in the distant parched trees. Guineas, growing nervous, in a low cackle. His face was a puzzle of confusion, but he didn’t say anything, just dropped his left hand inside his overalls and found his pecker to scratch.

“Don’t suppose you could spare some water?” Jones asked.

“Yes, sir,” Armon Shannon said. “We gots some water. Out back. Supposin’ you need a cup?”

“That’d help,” Jones said, watching the boy hop from his perch barefoot, waking an old, sleeping hound-a Walker, with long, flea-bitten ears-that loped up and around and down under the shade of the porch.

“How’s the corn?” Weatherford asked, giving Jones a sly grin as they walked side by side. Weatherford’s shadow had absorbed into his.

“Shoot,” Armon said. “Dying or dead.”

“You had much rain?”

“A week back,” Armon said. “But ’tweren’t good enough. Didn’t do nothing but bring on the worms. Them worms are greedy as hell, eat down half an ear in a night. You think they’d leave a few kernels.”

The boy stopped suddenly and kicked at the dusty, well-worn ground that scratching chickens had made smooth. He pointed to a boarded well with a pulley and old tin bucket. “You can use that ole dipper there.”

“Just you and your wife?” Weatherford asked, stepping up as Jones dropped the bucket down deep into the well, hearing it hit bottom with a solid splash.

“Her people live a mile away. My people, too. When you got the kinfolk so close, a man don’t want for nothin’.”

“And you got ’nother in the oven?” Weatherford asked.

“Wore a goatskin, but the dang thing musta sprung a leak.”

“You know you can get ’em made of rubber these days.”

“I know,” Armon said. “I seen ’em at the drugstore.”

Jones pulled the bucket back to daylight and used that old dipper to find a drink just a mite cooler than the air and tasting so deeply of rust and minerals that it soured his face. The action wasn’t lost on Weatherford, who foxed those eyebrows and wandered over to a pen with a couple fat sows and piglets wallowing in caked mud and slop, chickens scrambling and clucking at his feet, waiting for them to drop a crumb. Too dumb to find some shade.

“Radio said it might break a hunnard today.”

“That so?” Jones said, placing the dipper back on a twisted nail and wiping the rust onto his pressed pant leg.

“Our water ain’t cold branch, but glad we got it,” Armon said. “Say, would you boys like to share a watermelon? She’s a mite puny but just sure would wet the whistle.”

The men sat along the open porch, Armon Shannon cutting into the small, round fruit with a pocketknife and handing over generous slices-for the size-to the two men. Jones pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket, careful not to expose the thumb buster, and gripped the rind.

“You got some salt?” Weatherford asked, before sinking his big teeth into a slice, the red juice running down his chin onto his silk tie. He took aim at the old hound, who’d come back out from under the porch, and spat seeds at the dog’s head.

Armon skedaddled on in, fetching some salt. Door thwacking closed behind him.

“How’s the comparison?” Weatherford asked.

“What do you think?” Jones said, tasting the watermelon, and making out the tin of a barn roof reflecting a mile or so to the southwest, thinking he wanted to meet Boss Shannon before the sun went down.

Armon came back with a saltshaker and passed it to Weatherford.

The baby followed, naked as Eve, stumbling for her daddy’s leg and tugging for a slice of watermelon, pointing to her mouth like a jaybird. Shannon shook his head and cut off a miserly slice, placing it into the child’s tiny hands, the father opening the screen door for the child to wander back through. He finished off the watermelon and said he was headed ’round back to throw the rind to the hogs. As he turned the corner, Jones followed the child into the shack, hotter than the porch, catalog wallpaper of red flowers coming unglued from the walls. He heard the small feet scatter and then stop, and a rusted, tired squeak.

The two doors toward the front porch were shut, but Jones tried one, lightly letting it swing open with the natural lean of the house to find a baby’s high chair and a metal bed. The dead cornfield became the wavy lines in his drawing, the mineral well a well-defined X, and now the southeast room. The high chair. The shaving mirror on a travel trunk.

He walked farther into the shack and noted a kitchen to the northwest, and the northeast corner filled with a handmade bench and an old organ with sheet music to an old Fatty Arbuckle picture.

He turned back to the porch, walking soft in his boots, the screen door squaring up a big Texas sky, bright blue with heat, and not a cloud for shade. He saw Weatherford’s back and his hatless, balding crown. The detective continued to launch seeds into the dusty ground while Jones tried the other door to his right. As it opened, he found the teenage girl sitting atop a bare mattress, her gingham dress pulled astride of her fat, round bosom. Both mother and child turned to the old man, the child going back to the nourishment, but the mother had the look of a coyote, her eyes not leaving Jones until the old door, fashioned of square-headed nails and boards, closed with a final, hard click.

Jones returned to the porch as Armon rounded the corner, coming from the hogpen.

“Our thanks for the watermelon,” Jones said.

“I’ll tell Boss you come callin’,” Armon said, shaking the men’s hands before scratching his pecker and looking up high at the sun, as if either one could tell time, and giving an expression like he wished it would get on and set. “Gosh dang, it’s gettin’ hotter than nickel pussy.”

GEORGE STARTED ACTING STRANGE, STRANGER THAN NORMAL, the minute they got back to the Hotel Cleveland. He’d read off the front page of the Plain-Dealer, folded it crisply in half, and said, “Let’s get packin’, Kit.” Just like that. Didn’t explain a thing; just “get packin’ ” at four a.m., after three nightclubs, two cabarets, and one speakeasy. Both of them half in the bag, stumbling and fumbling, and George telling her to lay off when she pinched his ass in front of that sour-faced doorman as that little tan coupe was wheeled around from the garage. So she finally asked, “What gives?” and George told her about the goddamn wire story about a couple of Kid Cann’s Jews getting pinched by the G in Saint Paul.

“Did they say it was Urschel money?”

“What did I say?”

“Why didn’t you tell me back at the hotel?”

“Because that woulda started a discussion, and I ain’t in no mood for discussin’.”

“George, you are whiskey mean. You can drink beer all night, but the minute you touch the liquor-”

“Go suck an egg.”

They were on Highway 20, halfway to Toledo, before she spoke again, the bumpy road and headlights shooting into nothing but ribbons of road, making her sleepy.

“I got to use the can.”

“Piss in a bottle,” he said.

“It doesn’t function that way, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Ah.”

“Why are you sore?”

“Those Jews didn’t have the money two days before they got sloppy and started to show off.”

“How’d they get pinched?”

“How else? Turned in by some lousy bank manager.”

“You said the Kid was smart and that he knew people, and no one would be the wiser. You said-”

“I know what I said, ’cause I’m the one who said it.”

Hessville. Woodville. Lemoyne.

The bastard drove straight on into the town of Assumption, this being about the time he needed to take a leak, and wheeled on into a roadside gas station and told the grease monkey to fill her up. The monkey unlatched the hood and flipped her open to check the oil, whispering and whoo-wheeing, until Kit got out and found the can herself.

“She sure is cherry,” the monkey said. “Her engine ain’t even broke in yet.”

“And my husband wants to trade her already.”

“Come again?”

“He wants to trade her.”

“Whatsthematta with him?”

“You name it, brother.”

They were back on Highway 20. Fayette. Pioneer. Columbia.

And then it was WELCOME TO INDIANA.

“I’m hungry.”

“Well, you should’ve grabbed a pig’s foot at the filling station.”

“You should go into radio.”

“Come again?”

“You should go into radio.”

“How’s that?”

“ ’ Cause you’re a goddamn comedian.”

Toast, eggs, and hash in Angola, staring out at signs south to Waterloo.

“Waterloo?”

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“It’s where Napoleon got his ass kicked.”

She shrugged, and took some more cream in her coffee.

“You wouldn’t know that, ’cause you never went past the eighth grade.”

“Are you gonna sing me the Central High fight song?”

“I was big man on campus there.”

“Rah-rah.’ ”

“What’s eating you?”

George had a hard time getting settled into the new, smaller car, and about every other mile or so he’d have to tell her about it. Saying they should’ve never gotten rid of that big beauty and how they wouldn’t be having to go through all this mess in Chicago if she hadn’t been the one to go show up some salesman’s wife.

She crossed her arms across her chest.

“This is no fun at all.”

“I didn’t promise a rose-strewn path, sweetheart.”

“But if we got the money, you said we’d enjoy it. I ain’t had one enjoyable night since we left Saint Paul.”

“You were having fun last night.”

“Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over, you mug.”

And George slowed somewhere on Highway 20 in old Iowa, where the corn seemed to grow straighter and greener. And Kathryn held on to the Cadillac frame and stepped out on the running board, where she puked her goddamn guts out. George had a good guffaw at that, and she crossed her arms over her chest again and then leaned into the window frame, the sweet morning heat lifting the matted hair off her face, and she looked at all that goddamn corn, all those silos and cows. And, goddamn, she wanted to be back in the city again, at a proper hotel.

“I’m callin’ Louise.”

“Why don’t you just take out an ad? Or call up J. Edgar Hoover himself?”

“I’m callin’ Louise and have her meet us in Chicago.”

“You won’t call no one, not even your damn mother, till I say so.”

“Louise is fun. You can stay at the hotel and listen to Buck Rogers on the can. Me and Lou. We know how to have fun.”

“She’s a rotten whore. She’s worse than a man.”

“No woman is worse than a man.”

“Bullshit.”

There was that rotten, goddamn silence in the Cadillac till they turned up north and could smell Lake Michigan from the open windows and finally caught a big break of solid, civilized road. George pulled off and let the top down, and they saw they were only fifty miles from the city.

“I’m calling her.”

“Do it, and I’ll break your hand.”

“You wouldn’t lay a finger.”

George rolled up his sleeves to the elbow and plucked a Camel into his mouth. He fished into the back for his matches, but Kathryn took a long breath and reached into her little jeweled purse for a lighter. “You always lose ’em, George. I don’t think, since I’ve known you, you have ever been able to keep a book of matches.”

“How we met.”

And there it was, a lousy smile on her face. She leaned back into the big, plush seat and stared at the wide, open blue sky. “Yes, George. How we met.”

There were people playing in the sand and sailboats way out in the lake. And she had George stop long before they ever reached the city. She pulled off her thigh-highs and tossed them away, running into the sand and touching her feet to the water. George followed, lace-up two-tone shoes in his right hand, smoking and sullen, and found a spot to park his ass. He watched some kids playing on a rickety boat and tossed the cigarette away.

When she’d had enough, feeling a bit more solid and straight, the car no longer up under her and purring and driving and bumping and jostling, she came back to George and parked her ass on over next to him. She laid her head on his shoulder, always knowing that would get to the bastard.

“Say, George?”

“Yeah.”

“You never told me who fingered Urschel?”

“You never asked.”

“Goddamn. Well, I’m asking now.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Well, why don’t you try me out?”

“What if I said it was Jarrett?”

“I’d say you’re a four-flusher,” she said. “Jarrett was Urschel’s buddy. If you used Jarrett, then how come you two dumb bastards took both of ’em?”

“Maybe, just maybe, it looked better that way.”

“Jarrett. Some laugh. Like I said, they should put you on the radio. If only you could sing.”

George picked up a handful of sand and let it drop loose and slow out of his fingers till there was nothing left but to brush his hands together and give the thumbs-up sign. “How do you think we knew when to grab Urschel? How come we knew they’d be on the back porch with the screen unlocked? You ever just figure that I might be pretty damn good?”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“You wanna screw?”

“Is that all you want from me?”

“Pretty much.”

“Room service?”

“In spades.”