Infamous

20

Charlie Urschel dressed at dawn, ate his breakfast in the house kitchen with a negro driver, with whom he discussed baseball and New Deal jobs, and found himself alone on the sunporch with a cold cup of coffee and a dying cigar. He relit the damn thing three times before he had the plug fired up again, and he sat there and smoked, paralyzed, as the early-morning heat seemed to radiate off Berenice’s rose garden, already buzzing with flitting bees. The insects tried to fly through the metal screen, bouncing off several times before understanding the constraints and moving on. Soon Betty joined him, pulling the newspaper from under his elbow and, without a word, thumbing violently through the pages until she found something of interest, and sat like an Indian on the porch floor, laughing to herself, until she turned and said, “You must have had a hell of a time, Uncle Charles.”

He turned to her and studied the young girl’s face.

“You showed those kidnappers a thing or two.”

He opened his mouth but closed it, thinking of nothing.

“Say, Uncle Charles? What happened to Bruce?”

“Special Agent Colvin.”

“Nuts. He’s Bruce to me. He’s just a silly boy in a tie.”

“What are you reading? The funny pages?”

“Society.”

“What’s so funny about society?”

“Hey, did you see this? Carole Lombard is getting a divorce from William Powell. Says right here ‘They just decided all of a sudden they couldn’t agree.’ Well, isn’t that sad?”

“How’s that sad, Betty? You don’t even know them.”

“Are you kidding? I just saw From Hell to Heaven four times.”

“Nonsense.”

“You think you’ll be in True Detective? I bet they’ll have a picture of the house, and a map to where they let out Mr. Jarrett. That would really be something.”

“It would be something.”

“Holy smokes! Hey, the newspaper says three men were arrested in Minnesota for passing notes from the Urschel kidnapping. They call ’em ‘known hoodlums,’ with ties to the Saint Paul underworld. Listen. ‘Detectives from both Minneapolis and Saint Paul police departments began an intensive search of gang hideouts and resorts in the Twin Cities.’ Say, they are going to catch those rat bastards.”

“Betty Slick.”

“Well, they are, aren’t they?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Why do you think gangsters from Saint Paul had to drive all this way to get you? I mean, no offense, but there’s plenty of sugar daddies up there, too.”

“Is that what I am?”

“Sure.”

“Hand me that paper.”

Charlie took it and scanned the headlines, reading the first two paragraphs and getting the idea.

“Do you still have plans to take Agent Colvin with you to the lake dance this weekend?”

“He said if I go, then he has to go as protection.”

“Ten years is quite an age difference.”

“If the situation was reversed. I mean, if I were the older boy, you wouldn’t find trouble with it? Besides, I’m not in love. I’m not ready for that.”

“I just don’t want you to become upset.”

“Mother of Mercy!” she said, clutching her chest. “Is this the end of Rico?”

Betty stood up from the comics she was reading and studied the colored newsprint ink that had bled all over her hands. She showed her palms and laughed, wiping them on her robe, and then turned to the table and plucked the cigar from Charlie’s finger and took a couple puffs, pacing the sunporch and blowing the smoke from the corner of her mouth.

She chewed the cigar into her molars, and said in a tough-guy voice: “You can dish it out, but you got so you can’t take it no more.”

“Excuse me?”

“Edward G. Robinson. The strange-looking fella in Little Caesar?”

“I see.”

Charlie looked at the girl over the top of the newspaper headline, but the sun’s reflection on the doorframe distracted him. He stared at the reflection for a good while, transfixed by that hook latched tight in its eye, holding the door firm like it always held it. A light summer wind rattled the door, but the frame held. Charlie stood and walked to it, unlatching the hook and then hooking it again, counting the paces back to his seat and rubbing his face as he crossed and recrossed his legs with nervousness.

“Uncle Charlie?”

“How did they know?”

“Are you okay?”

“How in the world did they know we were playing cards?”

“You always play cards.”

“Not always.”

“They saw the light.”

“They knew where to find us. The door was unlocked. They didn’t hesitate.”

“Calm down. You want me to get Mother?”

“Call your Agent Colvin back here. Right now.”

“BOSS, YOU GOT TO COME OUT OF THERE SOMETIME,” HARVEY Bailey said, tapping the end of his.38 through the moon cut in the outhouse door.

“Go away. Go away, both you sonsabitches.”

“I think he wants us to go away,” Verne Miller said.

“I done tole the sheriff. Sheriff Faith knowed you’s coming back.”

“Sheriff,” Harvey said. “Faith.”

“You gonna strip me nekkid and put me in with ole Hoover.”

“Open up,” Miller said, holding the stock on the machine gun, “or I’ll spray the shitter with this Thompson.”

“Boss, where are George and Kathryn?” Harvey asked.

“Gone. Long gone, and they ain’t comin’ back.”

“They called you.”

“I ain’t answerin’ no more questions. If you boys want to unload your clip on the shitter, then I guess I’ll die with my britches on my knees.”

“Good Lord,” Harvey said.

He walked through the dust and gravel and sat on the hood of the Buick. The heat had to be hitting damn near ninety, and what he wouldn’t give to be back in the cool green of a Minnesota lake or down in that fifty-degree cavern where nude women danced with feathers barely covering their snatches. He lit a cigarette and inhaled, thinking, goddamn, he’d already sweated through two shirts that very day.

The old woman came out of the farmhouse just about that time, the screen door slamming hard behind her, and she walked to the men, yelling for them to leave Boss alone, didn’t they knowed he’d been having the constipation now for a third day and if they didn’t give him some peace they might just bring on the hemorrhoids.

Miller tucked the machine gun up onto his shoulder and shrugged. He walked around the shitter twice and then paused to look at the old woman, who had the same strong jaw and mean black eyes as her daughter.

“All we want to know is where they went,” Harvey said. “I know they rang you up or sent a Western Union.”

“They said you was coming,” Ora Shannon said, dressed in a fifty-cent housecoat and curlers. “They said you’d tried to rob ’em and would come and threaten us, and, by God, I’ll call Sheriff Faith.”

“Then go ahead and call ’im, woman,” Miller said, sneering. “What are you gonna tell him? That we’re the only two looking for the most-wanted gangsters in America?”

“Lord God in heaven.”

“What?” Miller asked. “You think your hands are clean?”

“You filthy hoodlums. Filthy, shit-ass men.”

“I been called many things in my time,” Harvey said, adjusting the brim of his hat over his eyes and checking the Bulova on his wrist. “But never ‘filthy, shit-ass.’ Has a nice ring.”

“Go make us some chicken,” Verne Miller said. “And slice up some tomatoes from your garden.”

“I wouldn’t open a can of dog food.”

“A cool pie for dessert,” Miller said.

“Don’t do it, Ora,” Boss said from inside the outhouse. “Don’t you do it.”

Verne Miller squeezed a short burst of bullets into the outhouse door. The old woman screamed. She shrieked so hard that she emptied the air from her lungs and dropped to the earth, pulling out the curlers from her hair. “God… God.”

“God don’t live in the shitter, old woman,” Miller said. He rapped on the outhouse door with his knuckles and said, “You still with us, Boss?”

“You sonsabitches.”

“Still with us,” Harvey said, flicking the cigarette nub end over end into the dust. “Praise the Lord.”

They all heard the motor before they saw the dust and were silent, studying the automobile making its way down the long, winding country road. The shithouse door squeaked open, and Boss Shannon peeked his balding white head out, sniffing the air like a scared animal, checking to see what all the calm was about.

Harvey tossed him a pack of cigarettes and then his lighter.

“Go make some chicken.”

“Is that the sheriff?” Boss Shannon asked.

“No,” Harvey said. “That’s ‘Mad Dog’ Underhill and Jim Clark. And those two crazy bastards are gonna watch you, just like you and Potatoes watched Mr. Urschel. Now, let’s talk about George and Kathryn again.”

“She left her furs,” Boss said.

“Boss!” the old woman said.

“And her jewelry,” Boss said.

“Boss!”

“Well, it’s true. I know she’s your kinfolk, but I ain’t dangling out my bits and pieces for the likes of them.”

The car, a big green Lincoln, rolled to a stop, and Wilbur Underhill stepped from the driver’s seat and onto the running board. The white suit and straw boater looked cartoonish on the skeletal man with the big eyes and farmer’s features.

“What’d they say?” Underhill asked. Jim Clark pulled himself from the passenger door and didn’t take two paces before he whipped it on out and started to relieve himself on some skittering chickens.

“Miss Ora is gonna make us a big fried-chicken dinner and then-” Harvey said.

“And then what?” Underhill said, squinting into the sun.

“Then we gonna have a little come-to-Jesus meeting.”

“Did he just come out the shitter?” Underhill asked.

“That he did,” Harvey Bailey said.

“Well, hell. Open the door and let it air out. I needed a commode since the state line.”

THE THREE-CAR CARAVAN MADE ITS WAY NORTH WITH DETECTIVES from Dallas and Fort Worth, three government agents besides Doc White, Joe Lackey, Colvin, and Jones. One of the boys-a kid named Bryce-was promised to be a real Oklahoma sharpshooter, and, when Jones had doubted him, he’d tossed a poker chip into the air and blasted the center from it. Jones had nodded, said he’ll do just fine, and they’d loaded up a little later-three hours later than Jones would’ve liked-and now, with the sun falling across the hills, he thought about the layout of the Shannon place and having to make their way through the gate and around the house without causing some newspapermen sympathy.

“You know they have dogs,” Jones said.

He and Doc White sat in the rear of the sedan. Detective Ed Weatherford drove.

“You told me.”

“Bulldogs,” Jones said.

“I never in my life saw a trick like that kid pulled today.”

“He shouldn’t shoot so near the hotel.”

“You called ’im out, Buster.”

“Yeah. I guess I did. You see the way he pulled out the poker chip? He’d been saving it, just for this type of occasion.”

“They all aren’t college boys with neatly parted hair,” White said.

“You’re one to talk about hair.”

“Hell with you.”

Jones watched the hills smooth down to nubs and the miles pass by so low and flat you could spot a grasshopper at a hundred feet. And he didn’t like it a bit. He checked his watch, knowing the sun would be down long before they made Paradise. The sun looked like the end of a fire poker, melting across the plains. The scrub brush and mesquite flew past the window.

“Colvin tell you Urschel was flying down?” White asked.

“No.”

“He wants to go with us.”

“Hell.”

“He said he’d furnish his own weapon. A 16-gauge he uses to hunt ducks.”

“Why’d Colvin tell him?”

“He thought he’d put his mind at some ease,” Doc White said, rolling a cigarette on his trouser leg and sealing it with his mouth. “Said he’d been a mite nervous since he come back.”

“He can’t go.”

“That’s what I told him you’d say.”

“Last time I checked, Mr. Urschel didn’t sign my checks.”

“You don’t like the timing.”

“I don’t think we’ll fire a shot.”

“But if we do?”

Jones didn’t answer, just checked his timepiece and reached for the machine gun at his feet. “Let’s hope they throw poker chips at us.”

“You know how to shoot that thing?”

“I do.”

“Just seems you were against using such a device.”

“I was thinking on that. Thinking about the Indians who didn’t pick up an iron and tried to fight with the bow and arrow.”

“A.45 ain’t a bow and arrow.”

“Might as well be.”

Jones pulled the gold watch from his vest again and wound the stem.

“Would you quit checking that thing?” White said.

“Stop the machine,” Jones said.

Weatherford slowed the lead automobile, and Jones crawled out, stretching his legs and putting on his hat. He waited for the other men to join him on the long ribbon of highway. He took his time as they gathered, filling his pipe bowl with cherry tobacco and finding a stick along a gully. The sun was half down on the long plain and cast a long, hot wave of shimmering light on the hard-packed earth and through the dead tree branches.

Jones got down on one knee in front of the men and drew a box for the Shannon place, their barn, a pigpen, and a handful of outbuildings. He noted the direction of Armon Shannon’s place and where the trouble would come from if there was trouble.

“And they have dogs,” he said. “I don’t know how many. But if you got to shoot ’em, shoot ’em. But I’d prefer we keep quiet and not tip our hand.”

“How far?” Agent Colvin asked.

Jones looked up at the young man and then at the setting sun. He could feel the heat on his face as he smoked and studied their situation a bit, coming back to that long canyon so many years ago. The dead horses, and Rangers exposed, with only a few boulders for cover.

“Boys, we’ve got about twenty-six miles to go over slow roads,” Jones said. “We might reach the place before dark, but even if we did I doubt we’d be able to finish the job before it got black. There’s only one road into it, and that’s as plain as the devil. We can’t creep up on the place because it’s so flat you can see an ant a mile off. The only way to get in there is just head straight in, and for that we need daylight. I’ve done enough shooting in my time not to want to go barging into a strange place where the odds are all on the other side. My judgment is to back off, go down to Fort Worth, and get a little sleep, then hit this place at sunrise.”