Infamous

23

George was no fun at all. Here he was in the stylish Hotel Fort Des Moines-a suite, no less-with a pile of dough, a new Chevrolet with fresh plates, and two of the hottest babes outside a Hollywood lot, and still he complained about being bored outta his skull. Kathryn had picked up her gal pal Louise at the train station that morning, her carrying a hatbox in one arm and Ching-A-Wee in the other, and they’d spent the day shopping and getting their hair and nails done before coming back to see old sad-sack George, lying on the big king-size bed in his boxer shorts, holding an unlit cigar in his teeth and reading the funny papers, probably Blondie, because George sure thought Dagwood was a real hoot, making those tall sandwiches and singing in the bathtub. But he’d been reading the damn thing since they came back and not once had he even cracked a smile.

So what did the good wife do? She and Louise put on a little fashion show for him. Kathryn changed into a very stylish red dress with a shoulder cape, gauntlet cuffs, and a straight-as-straight skirt. Ching-A-Wee sat like a prince at George’s feet, yapping and barking with approval and all, because that royal dog had class.

George just grumbled and asked how much dough they’d dropped.

Louise picked out this queer green number to model, with wide, puffy sleeves and a big fat bow at the neck. She didn’t bother with the hat, only fussed over her shoes-soft, velvety slippers-turning in time to Duke Ellington on the radio.

George turned back to the funnies, cigar loose and wet, and Ching-A-Wee got pushed off the bed for licking his bare toes.

With their red lips and red nails, Kathryn and Louise were quite a matching pair, just like they’d always been in Fort Worth, ready for a night out after working a double shift at the Bon-Ton barbershop, filing nails and telling grizzled oilmen they were handsome.

George didn’t bother to look up from the top fold of the paper when prodded for the next outfits, only grunted again, scratching himself and reaching to the nightstand by the big old bed to put down the cigar and take a pull of bourbon straight from the bottle, a loaded.38 nearby.

“You gonna light that thing or just play with it?” Kathryn asked.

“Yeah, Georgie,” Louise said. “Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy.”

George folded the paper and began to fool with that new lighter he’d bought in Saint Paul, flicking it on and off, and watching the flame with the bored interest of a drunk.

“What kinda luck,” Louise said. “Your grandmother dying and leaving you all this dough.”

“Yeah,” George said, staring over her shoulder and out the window. “Lucky me.”

“How’s the Bon-Ton?” George asked, not because he cared but because he felt like he had to say something.

And that was pretty damn foolish, because Louise was a hell of a looker. Big brown eyes and full lips, long muscular legs like a dancer. Some folks thought she had kind of a square jaw like a man and were taken aback by the way she talked rough and drank heavy. But that’s what made Louise Louise. She was a hell of a gal. If you wanted fun, you rang up Louise.

“Tips aren’t bad,” Louise said. “Meet some nice fellas.”

“Since when do you like men?”

“George!” Kathryn yelled from across the suite.

“And now it’s a secret?”

Louise caught George’s eye and smiled. George grinned at her.

And so it was like that, a little loosening of that tension that always existed between them. Ching-A-Wee wandered over to the piles of clothes and made a little nest in the silk and lace and turned around three times before lying down.

They’d only just checked into the hotel, getting in from Chicago the night before, and already the whole suite was a goddamn mess. Open champagne bottles and empty bottles of gin and bourbon. Two half-eaten plates of T-bones, fat and gristle congealing into purple and gray, making the poor doggie about go nuts, and untouched desserts they’d ordered at four in the morning, mainly just because you could order such a thing at four in the morning at the Hotel Fort Des Moines if you were staying in the presidential suite. There were newspapers from five different cities, movie-star magazines, and horse-racing tip sheets.

George didn’t move from the bed. He only belched and exchanged the funnies for a new copy of True Detective that Kathryn had picked up for him at the cigarette stand in the lobby. She knew he was hoping to see some pictures of the Urschel job inside, but instead the issue featured “How the Sensational Boettcher Kidnapping Was Solved.” She thought George was studying up on how the G nailed the bastards, but, after several minutes of her and Louise sorting through who had bought what, George looked up from the magazine, with its illustration of a startled man on the cover with a gun in his face, and said, “Do you really think you can learn to play the piano in an hour if I order this course?”

“Son of a bitch,” Kathryn said, and tossed her new, spiffy hat onto the carpet.

“Says right here it’s a money-back guarantee.”

“Just like the course you bought on how to hypnotize folks.”

“Worked on Potatoes.”

“That’s a true test.”

George started to laugh and thumped the page with his fingers. “This company also sells rings that say ‘Kiss Me, I’m Still Conscious.’ Maybe I should order a couple for you gals.”

“Yeah, George,” Kathryn said, studying some new lines across her face in the mirror. “That’d be a hoot.”

She saw Louise standing behind her, holding up the pair of black silk robes they’d bought in both fists, the ones they both adored with the white fur trim. Louise had the devil’s grin on her big lips, and Kathryn smiled back, knowing just what the girl planned. And they both scurried off like a couple schoolgirls needing a smoke into that huge tiled bathroom, big enough to park a Cadillac, and they kicked off their clothes down to their silk slips, cocking their legs and tugging on thigh-high stockings and high-heeled shoes with cute little bows. Louise was less curvy than Kathryn, with a flat chest and no hips of note, but she had an athletic look, reminding Kathryn a lot of Babe Didrikson only with a much better face.

Kathryn stood shoulder to shoulder with Louise, each of them in a black satin robe, sash untied, showing off their slips-Kathryn’s black and Louise’s white-and then the long, tight stretch of black stockings. Kathryn jutted out her hip bone and sank a hand right onto that handle.

Louise grinned at her in the reflection.

“What are you two gonna do?” she asked.

Kathryn dabbed on a little more lipstick and then leaned into the mirror and fingered down the makeup across her left eye. “Whatta you mean?”

“Just hop from hotel to hotel?” Louise asked. “Dance till the money runs out?”

“George doesn’t dance.”

“Come off it, sister.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Looks like Georgie boy needs some action.”

“Just like a kid,” she said. “C’mon, let’s get on with it.”

Kathryn went into the room first, George still studying True Detective-the back pages, mind you-as she whisked shut the long draperies to block out the hard afternoon light and crawled up onto his right flank, grasping the magazine and throwing it with a flutter to the floor. Lousie wasn’t far behind, hopping onto the bed with a giggle and crawling up close on George’s other side.

George’s mouth opened, and the wet cigar fell to his chest. “Dang it.”

Louise lay on her back, the robe opening up wide, and crooked her right leg so she could dangle the other off her knee, kicking the high heel back and forth. “Nice digs,” she said, looking up at the gilded fixture over the bed. “Real nice.”

“Whatta you think?” Kathryn asked, nuzzling close.

“It’s a little dark,” George said.

“You said you’re getting bored.”

“I am bored,” George said.

Kathryn leaned into him and kissed him full on the mouth. He didn’t resist, not like George Kelly ever resisted.

“Why don’t you tell your gal pal to take a walk?”

Kathryn gripped his throat with her strong, long fingers and pressed him down to his back, straddling his chest. Louise saddled up to her, walking on her knees, and looked down at George, shaking her head with disappointment.

“What are we gonna do with him?” Louise asked.

“Make him talk,” Kathryn said. “See if he’s a rat.”

“You two broads are crazy,” George said. “Damn, it’s dark.”

“Shut up, George,” Kathryn said, slapping him across the mug. “Do we need to draw you a diagram?”

FEDERAL AGENTS REPLACED THE WINDOWS AND FILLED THE bullet holes in the old Shannon place the best they could. And for three days they sat on the farmhouse, waiting for George and Kathryn Kelly to drive on back to the homestead and greet the old folks with their newfound loot. But going into late afternoon that Wednesday, Jones knew it wasn’t going to happen. Kelly was too smart for that-now thinking of him as just Kelly, trying to figure out the man’s mind-set and cunning. A sharp criminal who’d worked with Verne Miller and Bailey.

Jones walked back around the house and followed a rutted path to that big garage Kelly had constructed, his own personal rabbit hole. Inside they’d found all manner of weaponry and bullets, car parts, motor oil, and tins of gasoline. Buried deep in back, agents had also found boxes and boxes of Mrs. Kelly’s private things. Fox, mink, rabbit, and monkey coats. Perhaps fifty gowns, and an entire box bulging with the lady’s unmentionables-garters, slips, brassieres, and the like-smelling of the sweet lavender of the sachet packed within.

Jones knew that it was a solid plan to study on those you were hunting. From the garage constructed earlier that spring-learning details of the construction from old Boss-he knew that Kelly was an organized man, a man of detail and planning. He’d taken special care of this little rabbit hole, a place to patch up and reload if the heat had come down. But now the son of a bitch was out and on the open road to God knows where.

If the Shannons knew, they sure weren’t telling. For two days Jones had sat with them in the county jail, asking questions till they’d fall out of their chairs from lack of sleep, praying to the Lord God for a sip of water. He hadn’t talked to that kid Armon, aka Potatoes, for five minutes before the kid pissed his overalls.

Doc White walked through the mouth of the old garage, which was growing hot and stale with the heat and buckets of dirty oil.

“I didn’t know any woman could own so many pairs of drawers,” White said. “She could pick out a fresh pair for the rest of her life without ever taking to scrubbing.”

He held in his hands a telegram he passed on to Jones. He read it.

“Hotel Cleveland?”

“They checked in under the name of the Shannons,” White said.

“This was five days back.”

“Still a trail, Buster.”

Jones closed up the box he’d been searching through and walked out into the fading daylight with White. “Let’s head back to Dallas. I’d like a little time with Bailey for Hoover’s goddamn paperwork, but we won’t get a word. Bailey’s a hard ole nut.”

“That son of a bitch got caught at Kelly’s hideout while taking shots at us,” White said. “I figure a little cooperation is in order.”

“Hell, I know Bailey. I’ve known the bastard for about as long as I’ve known you. He’ll say he stopped at the farm to buy some ears of corn.”

“I say we go to Cleveland.”

“They’re not in Cleveland,” Jones said.

“We can’t keep the news of the raid blacked out forever. The story’s gonna break.”

“Once the Kellys get word, they’ll go underground,” Jones said. “It could take months to flush ’em.”

Doc looked back at the barn and shook his head, “And all we got is a fistful of panties.”

“You reckon she’ll come back for ’em?”

“The drawers?”

“The Shannons.”

“Everybody loves their momma,” White said.

Jones mopped his face and eyes in the fading sunlight and nodded. “Keep the boys stationed here, let’s see what turns up. C’mon, let’s go talk to Harv.”

HARVEY BAILEY KNEW FROM THE START THAT HE WAS GONNA get along just fine with the head jailer, Deputy Tom Manion. A tall, gangly sort, with a contented fat belly and a pleasant weathered laugh. A gentleman, a genuine Spanish War hero, and, the way Harvey saw it, a fella with a price tag hanging from his nose. On Harvey’s third night in the Dallas County Jail, Manion had grown comfortable enough with him to share a cup of coffee and a couple of cheap cigars, talking on the rotten state of things in the world, and how Manion figured he could do a lot better than the current sheriff, who didn’t know one end of a gun from another, an elected politico with no heart.

Harvey Bailey leaned into the bunk and studied the end of his cigar. “That’s the way of the world. The men who do the real work are never in charge.”

“You said it, Mr. Bailey.”

“Mr. Manion?”

“You can call me Tom.”

“Tom, what have you heard about my affairs?”

“Well, I think that federal man from San Antonio is planning on shipping you to Oklahoma City. He said there’s gonna be a big trial for you and the Shannons. He sure is an arrogant little cuss.”

Harvey nodded, climbing off the bunk and walking to the narrow little barred window that looked out onto a back alley.

“I want you to know I didn’t have a thing to do with that kidnapping,” Harvey said, still dressed in a suit but without his tie or shoes. “They just made me the goat.”

“I believe you, Mr. Bailey,” Manion said. “I know of your reputation.”

“I make an honest living.”

Manion laughed. “Sure thing, Mr. Bailey. What’s it like robbing banks?”

Harvey shrugged. “Not much different from any other job, I guess. You put a lot of work into the planning and detail. A good yegg knows the risks and the payoff.”

“You get nervous?”

“Never have,” Harvey said, walking toward the bunk. “Just don’t have it in my nature.”

“You married?”

“Yes.”

“You want to talk to your wife?”

“I don’t bring her into my business.”

“She’s kinda in it now.”

“She’ll be fine.”

“I bet she’s worried sick.”

“She knows I’ll be home soon.”

“Doesn’t look that way,” Manion said. “Mr. Gus Jones has a solid case.”

“I know that,” Harvey said. “That’s why I intend to escape.”

Manion laughed. “You sure are a pistol, Mr. Bailey. I’d get worried if this wasn’t the safest jail in the whole state of Texas. In case you forgot, we have you on the sixth floor. You’d have to bust through me, the jailer working the desk, make your way downstairs, and then out the front door past a whole mess of deputies. And still find yourself an escapee in downtown Dallas.”

Harvey shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“A real pistol.”

“I’d just stopped off in Paradise to rest my leg. How was I to know I’d stepped into a federal raid? George Kelly and all that mess. It’s gotten to the point you don’t know who to trust.”

“I do appreciate the company,” Manion said, leaning into the ladder-back chair and studying the one barred window. “Usually all we get is cutthroats and niggers. Only good thing about them niggers is, they sure can make music. We just got this ole boy in the other day, came into town from Mississippi and got charged for shortchanging a whore. He plays some mighty fine guitar.”

“Well, bring ’im in here.”

“I don’t know.”

“Who’ll know?”

“I guess you’re right,” Manion said, a big smile on his face. He swatted his tired old hat against his leg as soon as he’d made up his mind and jangled the keys on his hip. “Maybe round up a nip for us, too?”

“I wouldn’t complain.”

“Be right back, Mr. Bailey,” Manion said. “Don’t go nowheres.”

Bailey pointed the end of his cigar at Manion and the cell door and winked. “Don’t worry. I’m six floors up, remember?”

A few minutes later, Manion returned with a rail-thin negro, wearing a thrift-store suit and carrying a battered guitar. The negro was just a kid, maybe a teenager, down in the mouth, and looked to be just rousted from his sleep.

“Play a song for us, boy,” Manion said.

“What do you want to hear?”

“What songs do you know?”

“I know ’em all.”

“You know ‘The Wreck of Old 97’?”

“Sure, everybody knowed that.”

“Play it.”

The boy began to pick the guitar and sing about a cloudless morning on a mountaintop, watching the smokestack below on that old Southern railroad, and the way he twanged his voice and made the words sound pretty, Harvey could close his eyes and think he was listening to a white man. “That ole 97, the fastest train / Ever ran the Southern line.”

“What else you know?”

“ ‘Birmingham Jail’?” the boy said.

Manion uncorked the bottle and took a sip of some bonded Tennessee whiskey and passed it on to Harvey. Pretty soon, a trusty pushing a broom was watching the men through the bars, and he smiled a big negro grin before breaking out into a jig and dancing around. Manion cracked open the door and let him in, and, man, that started it, the trusty walloping around on his brogans, slapping his knees and twirling, the negro guitarist wiping his brow and accepting a tin cup of whiskey from Manion, who was real careful not to let a negro drink from the bottle.

“You Mr. Bailey, ain’t you?” asked the guitar picker.

“I am.”

“I read about you in the paper,” he said. “They say you the best bank robber that ever was.”

“If I was that good,” Harvey said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

They finished off the bottle, and Manion tossed the trusty keys to his desk and told him to fetch up another bottle, and the boy returned a short time later. The guitar picker, who called himself R.L., launched into “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine” with a grin and a wink, singing that if he could only erase the lines from his face and bring back the gold in his hair.

“Goddamn, you make me feel old,” Harvey said. “Sing something else.”

“Been working on a little tune,” R.L. said, tuning his guitar a bit, “About a ‘Kind Hearted Woman.’ ”

“Damn, you can play, boy,” Harvey said.

“Didn’t come cheap.”

“How you figure?”

“I sold my soul to play.”

Harvey turned up the bottle and looked to Manion, yapping it up and slapping his knee, resting his hands on his fattened belly with his tin star pinned upside down on his old chest. Harvey nodded, “Every man’s got his price.”

The negro was halfway into the song, the trusty using his broom as a dancing partner, when Harvey heard the heavy boots on the jail floor moving closer. Manion was up, slapping his thighs and keeping time, the bottle hanging loose in his hands, and didn’t turn till he heard the metallic squeak of the cell door flying open.

In the doorframe stood Gus T. Jones and another old man, carrying a six-shooter.

Jones looked at the scene, his mouth downturned like it was the sorriest goddamn thing he’d ever witnessed. He shook his head with pity for all the weakness in the world, removed his hat, and said, “I sure hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

KATHRYN WOKE UP WITH A SPLITTING HEAD AND A DRY MOUTH and only vague memories of a county-line roadhouse where she and Louise had danced on the bar, with George working out a sloppy slugfest with two country goons. She remembered there had been a lot of laughter and fun and a queen’s share of gin, but after that most of the details were fuzzy. She thought she recalled losing Ching-A-Wee when taking him out for a squirt at the hotel, but she felt the dog breathing between her legs and knew all was well, and she kicked off the covers and stumbled to the bathroom, making a cup of her hand and lifting water to her mouth.

Her skin felt like paper, and then she looked in the mirror and saw her face was paper.

Sometime in the night she’d pulled on one of those Part-T masks that came free with one of those Hollywood magazines, and right now she was staring cold-eyed into the face of Jean Harlow. She peered out the bathroom, and there sleeping in the big, rough-and-tumble bed were George Raft and Joan Crawford.

Crawford had a big hairy leg and a bare chest. Raft was wearing a pink slip.

She drank the water, the slivers of morning piercing her eyes as she tore the elastic from her head, remembering patches of how it had all been such a hoot. The three movie stars out in Des Moines, the big bankroll in Joan Crawford’s thick fingers, laughing and drinking and all being fine till one of the country boys asked Miss Crawford if she’d like to suck his pecker.

George didn’t hesitate with the knuckle sandwich.

Prison makes a man a little edgy, Kathryn guessed.

She scooped up Ching-A-Wee and rustled at Louise’s shoulder until the eyes opened in Raft’s mug and she heard, “Hey, what gives?,” Louise tearing the mask from part of her face and then flipping over to face the wall. More gin and champagne bottles, the trays of food on the carpet this time, steak bones gnawed clean, and little piles of doo-doo by the front door.

George had thrown his dress pants over a lamp, his two-tone shoes kicked off by the bathroom.

Kathryn slinked into her feathered robe and feathered slippers and carried Chingy over to the elevator, where the nicest old man asked her, “What floor?,” and she said, “The lobby,” and then the old man asked her if she’d like to get dressed first. And Kathryn said she paid enough money to dress any way she pleased, and, if that didn’t please the staff, then so be it.

She bummed a smoke from the doorman and let Chingy take a squirt and sniff a bit. The doorman, growing nervous with the wind fluttering up her silk robe and Kathryn not bothering a bit to pull it down, offered to bring the dog back to the suite.

Kathryn shrugged, the morning sun a real son of a bitch, and elevatored up to the top floor. All along the hallway morning papers had been laid out, all clean and neat. Kathryn scooped up the first one she saw, tripping along to the presidential suite and scratching her behind a bit, yawning and stretching, the fat paper hanging loose in the palm of her hand, above the fold declaring U.S. WARSHIPS TO PROTECT CUBANS, and then flipping on over to see KIDNAPPERS’ NEST RAIDED.

And there she stopped and stood, mouth open, not even awake yet, to see a picture of her mother with Boss Shannon and dumb old Potatoes, who was fool enough to look right into the lens and smile. A smaller headline read, “Desperado ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly and Wife Still at Large.”

“Goddamn,” she said. “Goddamn.”

She threw open the door to the suite, flung open the curtains, nobody stirring in the big bed until she swatted George-still looking like a fool as Joan Crawford-who shot off his ass and reached for the gun, aiming at Kathryn’s heart.

“Cool it, Joan,” Kathryn said, throwing the paper in his lap. “The G’s got ’em. They raided the farm four days ago. They’re onto us.”

Louise stirred in the bed, complaining and tossing in the tangled sheets until she fell with a loud thud to the floor.

“Get dressed,” Kathryn said. “Both of you.”

“What gives?” Louise asked.

“We’re headed back to Texas to rescue my family,” Kathryn said, reaching for the pistol in George’s loose hand and then prying the mask from his face until the elastic broke from his thick neck.

“What’s that gonna do, Kit?” he asked, looking a lot uglier than Joan Crawford. “It’s too late.”

“The hell it is,” she said. “You brought my kin into this and now you’re gonna get ’em out.”

“Me and what army?”

“I don’t care how you do it,” she said. “Take your pecker out of your hand and make some calls to all those hoods that you brag about knowing. Call in some favors, make some bribes. I don’t give a good goddamn. Just get my momma.”

“Quit your crying,” George said.

“I’m not crying,” Kathryn said, knowing she’d started.

A toilet flushed, and Louise came startled from the bathroom, carrying her hatbox, already dressed with her hat all crooked. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.

Kathryn bit into her knuckles, still holding the gun. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. How’d they know?”

George didn’t say a word, keeping a fat finger running over the words in the news story and then turning the page.

“I said how’d they know?” she said.

George didn’t say anything for a few moments and then closed the newspaper in his lap. He looked up at Kathryn with the most confused of expressions as he asked, “Who in the hell is ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly?”