Infamous

31

When Kathryn heard the story, she couldn’t tell which parts were true, which parts George invented, and how much of the small stuff he just threw in there to keep it sounding gospel, the details of it coming out of George’s mouth like a sinner come to witness about his road of trials. George started with when he’d jumped into a jalopy Chevrolet and headed off Ma Coleman’s land, heading right for Biloxi, knowing that Kathryn would understand his note and follow him to his favorite hotel, where they could lay low a bit, put their feet in the sand and drink some cold beer, out of the forsaken state of Texas, down to the Gulf, to vacation from being outlaws for a while. He’d made it as far as New Orleans, George knowing some people in that part of the country from when he’d run booze up to Memphis, and he’d taken a room in the Lafayette Hotel and only left once to get a pint of gin and an Italian sandwich. He said he sat in the room all night, not being able to sleep, reading five different newspapers, all of ’em carrying the same story about her momma’s family being taken by airplane to await a fair and speedy trial. And he said it made him so damn sad that he didn’t want more company than a bottle of gin, remembering that he’d left the hotel one more time, walking down Canal Street to find a liquor store and a Catholic church, where he wandered in and lit a candle for the Shannon family. That part of the story diverging a bit from the truth of that piney gin, but Kathryn took the lie as a solid gesture, and let him continue on about driving out of the city the next morning, figuring the one-eyed bellhop sure noticed he could be none other than “Machine Gun” Kelly, and him driving along Highway 90 into Mississippi, following that road through Waveland and into Bay Saint Louis, where he went to the Star movie house and watched a Barbara Stanwyck picture in the colored balcony. Again getting sad, because Barbara sure had a lot of Kit Kelly in her, wandering out of the black night like a crazy dream and staring out at the Bay under oaks older than time, moss in the cool breeze, getting good and buzzed till his heart stopped hurting. He drove on through Gulfport to Biloxi, a town that he knew just as well as he knew Memphis. He headed to the first pharmacy he saw to buy a bottle of peroxide and a shower cap, a toothbrush and some talcum powder, and five True Detective magazines, before checking into the Avon, that fine old hotel right off the Gulf.

For three days, he rubbed his body with baby oil and poured the peroxide into his hair, wearing purple-tinted sunglasses and drinking gin mixed with pitchers of lemonade that the negros sold to the tourists. No one talked to him, and everything seemed fine as moonshine, as he’d sit in a deck chair, dozing to the sound of the surf, letting his cramped car legs unknot, and waking only as the shadows ran long across the combed beach and the sun got ready to disappear to wherever it went at night. In the evenings, he’d order up steaks and hamburgers to his room, some more gin, and would drink all his sorrows away while reading “How the Sensational Boettcher Kidnapping Was Solved, the Baffling Mystery of the Dead Dancer, the Minister-the Love Lyrics-and the Murdered Woman,” and then coming across an advertisement in the back pages that promised to help you “Read Law at Home and Earn up to $15,000 Annually,” and George said that sure let the snakes loose in his head, thinking, hell, he was earning fifty thousand a year just for knocking over a few banks, and they had to get good and greedy and start in the kidnapping racket, letting the hounds loose on their trail. (This was usually when George would go into that long speech about how he had a different path in Memphis with his first wife-sweet Geneva-and what a good man his father-in-law had been, much better than his own father, that worthless, mean son of a bitch, and that if Mr. Ramsey hadn’t been snuffed out like that, a high beam falling from his own construction site and splitting open his head like a watermelon, old George Barnes-that being George’s real name-would be an upstanding member of Memphis society to this day.)

“And that’s how you came to Memphis, George?”

George shook his head, and said, “Gosh dang it. My own fault, we couldn’t find each other at the Avon.”

He had to pack and move over to the Hotel Avelez, on account of the bellhop studying his profile when he’d stumble down to the front desk to get some fresh towels. He said he’d burned through his Urschel stash in New Orleans and had to dip into those American Express checks he’d boosted in Tupelo.

“You didn’t, George.”

“Sure did.”

“And you didn’t think anyone would notice?”

“Didn’t have a choice.”

“Did you find that woman, that blond lifeguard?”

“Kit, hush up and pay attention to the tale at hand.”

“Coppers found you?”

The Hotel Avelez swimming pool shimmered like a glass gridiron the morning he’d decided to eat some break fast under the oaks and charge it to Mr. J. L. Baker, that being the name he decided sounded best with his tanned skin and yellowing hair. He said he’d grown a little thickheaded, and cocky with his new looks, and decided to drive into the downtown and pick up some shirts and pants he’d left to be laundered. George said he’d also been contemplating wearing a straw boater but sure wished Kit could’ve been with him because he wasn’t sure a dandy little hat like that looked good on a big fella. He said he’d just stepped foot out of his car, looking at some straw hats displayed in a department-store window, when he heard the voice of a corner newsboy yelling with all his might, “ ‘MACHINE GUN’ KELLY IN TOWN!”

George said he nearly shit his drawers.

“What did you do?”

“Left it all.”

“Your luggage?”

“Even my.45 and my True Detective magazines. Wore the same pair of underwear for three days.”

“And that was Memphis?”

“That was Memphis.”

George walked to the bus station and bought a ticket. He said his heart didn’t stop racing until he crossed the Tennessee state line, and then he worried about coppers waiting for him when he stepped foot off that bus. But he said the sight of the old river sure did his heart some good, as did getting out on Union and walking into the Peabody Hotel, where he used to deliver hip flasks and bottles of bootleg bourbon in a raincoat with a dozen pockets. He felt like no time at all had passed and then realized that it had been nearly ten years since he lighted out for Oklahoma, finding more opportunity in Tulsa, and knowing Geneva and his two sons could get on with their lives without the shame of a daddy who sold whiskey.

“You never told me you had sons, George.”

“You never asked for a résumé. Geneva’s remarried. They have a new daddy.”

George broke his last dollar into dimes and called on the one fella who he knew he could trust in Memphis, ole Lang. His brother-in-law, Langford Ramsey. He hadn’t seen Lang since Lang was just a skinny teenager starting out at Central. But George still telephoned him every anniversary of his daddy’s death, George usually drunk and telling Lang for the hundredth time how much he respected his father, even taking Ramsey as his middle name out of respect.

“George R. Kelly.”

“That’s right.”

Lang had two listings in the phone book, one his residence on Mignon and the other his law office. George found out that Lang had been the youngest man ever to pass the Tennessee bar, and had just married and had a son, with another child on the way. George had hugged him out of pride at the Memphis train station, and they shook hands over and over, Lang walking with him back over to the Peabody to have a big enough break fast for an army. George had two plates, since he hadn’t eaten since Biloxi, and washed it down with a pot of coffee.

“Did he know?”

“Never even suspected it. I’m just ole George Barnes in Memphis.”

“Big man on Central High School campus.”

“Why do you always have to say it like that, Kit? You don’t know a damn thing about Memphis.”

At the end of break fast, there was an awkward moment where Lang said he had to be getting back to his practice but it sure was great seeing George again. And that’s when George had to tell him he was in a spot of trouble and sure could use a loan. Lang said don’t mention it, taking care of the check and passing him a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m good for it,” George said. “I know,” Lang said.

I could use a place to sleep.

I know a fella who owes me a favor.

George slept for ten days on the ragged red velvet couch of a garage attendant Lang had represented in a property dispute over a family goat farm. Tich was a cripple with a clubfoot that dragged behind him when he walked, thudding through the guts of the house, while George would be trying to sleep, as the morning light shone into the house down off Speedway. For some reason, George couldn’t close his eyes at night and would just stay up drinking and listening to the radio, Tich having a decent RCA, where he found NBC and the adventures of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. George said it was all he could do to wait till that broadcast would come on, and he could shut his eyes, maybe a little drunk, and go to far-out lands, planets, and stars, all way away from this crummy earth.

“Did you miss me?”

“Hell, yes. Why do you think I came back?”

“For the money.”

“The money, hell. I could’ve dug up all of it, and your grandmother wouldn’t have known.”

“She’d woulda known.”

“I came back ’cause I love you, baby.”

“You’re a damn liar.”

“You’re a double-damn liar.”

“You were a fool to run off to Mississippi for some blonde.”

“Didn’t I just explain it all?”

The horn honked in a Chevrolet sedan, the same one he’d traded out for that little Cadillac coupe in Chicago. The car parked in the dusty driveway of old Ma Coleman’s farmhouse.

“Who’s that kid?”

“That’s a story,” Kathryn said. “I’ll tell you on the road.”

“Where we headed?”

“San Antonio.”

“Why San Antonio?”

“ ’ Cause it’s a mite better than Dallas or Fort Worth.”

The horn honked again.

“The kid’s driving?”

“She’s a pistol,” Kathryn said, not sure what to make of the blond George Kelly with the bloat that came with too much steak and gin. “Her daddy runs errands for me.”

“Like what?”

“George, we need to talk.”

George stood there in front of Ma Coleman’s place, where she knew she’d find him after he’d sent that telegram to the San Antonio General Delivery. It read MA’S BETTER. She knew the G could butt through the cattle gate any minute, but she was out of cash, and, damn, if she didn’t ache to see the lousy bastard.

“You want me to turn myself in?” he asked.

“We’re talking about my kin, George,” Kathryn said, grabbing his big hands and pulling him close. “Something has happened… I think God has shown me the light.”

JONES SPENT THE DAY WITH A GROUP OF YOUNG AGENTS AT THE police department shooting range outside Oklahoma City, a two-acre parcel of scrub brush, where they’d set up paper targets and kept score. A head shot was a real winner, but a belly shot earned you enough to stay in the game. In the end, it wasn’t much of a contest, with that kid Bryce edging out Doc and Jones, scoring a head shot damn-near every time with both his.38 and Jones’s Colt.45. They’d practiced a great deal with both the Thompsons and BARs shipped from Washington, and Jones decided to post the big guns near the courthouse steps and on the roof of the Federal Building, where he stood, smoking his pipe in the night and figuring out where and how Kelly and his gang of desperadoes would be making their attack.

“You think Kathryn’s sincere?” Jones asked Joe Lackey.

Lackey placed his hands on the edge of the rooftop and leaned over, looking down to the squat old houses, churches, and office building around the city. A truck backed up to the building and started to unload spotlights, as if they expected some kind of Hollywood extravaganza.

“The woman wrote ‘the entire Urschel family and friends and all of you will be exterminated soon by “Machine Gun” Kelly,’ ” Lackey said. “That isn’t exactly something you put on a Christmas card, Buster. Yeah, I’d say she’s pretty serious. She said she’s scared of the son of a bitch, too.”

“How many you figure for their gang?”

“You can bet Bailey is back with him,” Lackey said, nodding and still looking out at the city and clear out to the Canadian River. “Probably Verne Miller, too. Maybe Pretty Boy. Real glad you took out that bastard Mad Dog.”

Jones nodded and puffed on his pipe. “Hated shootin’ him down off that rope and all. But he made the play.”

The men watched a couple of agents adding sandbags around a machine-gun stand by the front steps, and Jones noticed a blind spot behind the bunker, knowing they’d have to add another gunner. After a few minutes of running electric cables, the spotlights were lit, the beams crisscrossing the high windows and up into the dark clouds.

“She says she might just turn herself in just so she won’t be associated with the coming slaughter,” Lackey said.

“She sure likes those words.”

“Which ones?”

“Slaughter. Extermination.”

“Got our attention.”

“Nobody’s coming in or getting out of this house,” Jones said. The wind tipped his hat, but Jones caught the brim, setting it back on his head, before he knocked out his pipe. “We’re well entrenched. Ready for those bastards.”

“Glad Hoover got us the guns.”

“You saw for yourself the kind of animal we’re dealing with. Hell, I hope Kelly runs up the steps with guns blazing, that’d save the taxpayers the cost of a trial.”

“That’s some rough talk.”

“You take exception?”

“People don’t lynch much anymore.”

“Maybe they should.”

“You don’t mean that,” Lackey said. “Rangers keep order.”

“Sometimes the Rangers looked the other way.”

Lackey reached into his coat pocket for a pack of gum. He chewed, resting his elbows on the ledge, searchlights crossing the sky and the front of the Federal Building. “The Shannons’ new counsel says he’s never been in touch with Kathryn Kelly,” Lackey said. “Said he was hired by a middleman, at his office in Enid.”

“Can we track the middleman?”

“Colvin’s on it,” Lackey said. “We got several men following the counselor.”

“Phone lines?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Never ends, does it?”

“What’s that?”

“Thievery. Murder. You’d think we’d have advanced past the Old Testament.”

“I’m not in the mood to get all philosophical, Buster,” Lackey said, chomping on his Doublemint. “Let’s go back to the Skirvin and get a whiskey and a porterhouse.”

“Now you’re talking.”

The Venetian Room was on the top floor of the Skirvin Hotel, a swank place that boasted polished, inlaid pecan floors, white linen and silver service, and Bernie Cummins and the New Yorkers on the bandstand. They broadcast a hit parade every night after supper on Oklahoma City’s own WKY. But Jones would just as soon hear them on the radio than be interrupted during supper by a man in a tuxedo extolling the qualities of fig syrup to get your pipes running smooth.

Doc White joined Jones and Lackey, and the three men all ordered steaks and bourbon. Doc White rolled a cigarette after getting the T-bone clean and tapped the finger of his free hand in time with the song “Stormy Weather,” a big hit earlier that year for some popular colored singer.

They all wore summer-weight coats to hide their holstered pistols.

About halfway into their desserts, peach pie with ice cream, Jones looked up to see a short fella in a big suit really hamming it up on the dance floor with two fat woman in evening gowns. He was one of those men who looked as out of place wearing a suit as would a circus monkey. But he’d slicked back his hair and shaved, proving it with bits of toilet paper stuck on the cuts, and the back of his hair was barbered up two inches higher than his sunburned ears and neck. The man couldn’t have been much older than thirty but had a large bulbous nose and the reddened cheeks of an experienced drunk.

Doc White ashed his cigarette on a china saucer. “Doesn’t that son of a bitch know there’s a Depression?”

“Must be family money,” Joe Lackey said, a small grin.

There was a split second when the little man couldn’t figure out which woman to dance with during the slow part, so he just opened his drunk arms wide and clutched them both close, hands squeezing each of their large rumps. Jones laughed and shook his head, spotting Bruce Colvin walking in from the elevators and flicking his eyes around the Venetian Room. He leaned into Jones’s ear and told him that the Shannons’ go-between was here.

Jones set down his fork and pushed himself away from the table.

“Right here,” Colvin said, pointing to the weathered fella dancing with the two fat girls.

Jones craned his head around to Colvin and would’ve thought it was a joke had it not been Bruce Colvin. The young man seemed unable to find humor in most situations.

“What do we do?” Colvin whispered.

“Keep an eye out,” Jones said. “He resides in this hotel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Follow his every step. Tap his phone.”

“Why don’t we just pull him in?” Colvin asked.

“So he can clam up like Bailey?” Jones asked. “You got to be patient, son.”

Jones finished his dessert. With coffee.

The next morning, hearing nothing from the tapped telephone lines but a slow and dull buzz, Jones rode the elevator to the eighth floor and pounded on the door to have a little talk with the fella. Two minutes later, the hotel manager opened the suite to find a mess of empty booze bottles and a huge pair of pink panties tossed across the headboard. Des Moines all over again.

Jones walked to the bed and reached for the big panties, pulling them wide enough to be hung from a flagpole. “Maybe your scientific detection can get us a lead off these?”

Colvin looked down at his neatly shined shoes without a word.

“Do we at least have a name?” Jones asked.

“Registered under Luther Arnold family.”

“Be too much to ask where he’s headed?” Jones said. “The director might like to be informed.”

GEORGE SNATCHED A WIDE SOMBRERO FROM THE STUCCOED wall of the Mexican restaurant and told the waiter to bring him an entire bottle of tequila with cut limes and salt. They’d been in San Antonio now for two days, renting a little apartment, where Kathryn had shared a room with George, Flossie Mae and Geraline in the second bedroom. She’d about had it with Flossie Mae, the woman doing nothing but complaining, complaining more in a “That’s fine” or “If you think that’s best” kind of way, never really speaking up but never appreciating the hospitality either, somehow thinking she deserved the Kelly family dime on account of what Luther was doing.

Luther’d driven back in her Chevy an hour earlier, and that’s when George decided on a big family meal at La Fonda, a short walk from the apartment. And it didn’t take but two shots of tequila before he called for that sombrero, throwing back another shot and tipping the mariachi band twenty dollars.

“Why don’t you put an ad in the paper?” Kathryn asked.

“Just having some fun, baby face,” he said. “Honey pie.”

Luther sat across from Kathryn, where he could lean over the table and discuss details of his big trip to Oklahoma City yesterday. Flossie Mae sat across from George, and Geraline was at the head of the table. The table was under a big oak in the center of an old courtyard, with banana plants growing wild under leaking pipes and white Christmas lights crisscrossed overhead like in an old Mexico plaza.

“The hat,” George said, touching the sombrero’s brim and throwing down another tequila. “Good disguise.”

Kathryn noticed Luther had bought a new suit, pin-striped and rumpled and about two sizes too big. He’d also bought a tie and maybe even shaved a couple days back. She guessed for when he’d met with the new attorney.

“Lawyer said the government mulled over your offer,” he said.

“Huh?” George asked, turning to Kathryn and winking again. He poured out a shot of tequila for Luther, but Luther shook him off, saying he just didn’t have the stomach for no alcohol. Luther looked wrung-out, sick, and exhausted from his journey back to San Antonio. At the head of the table, his daughter, wearing a crisp white dress, her hair in pink ribbons, clutched a huge menu in her tiny fists.

George finished off his drink and lit a cigarette, singing along with the mariachi.

“I hear it’s no dice,” Luther said.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Ole Mr. Mathers-that being the attorney I hired-says he’ll try again when they get before the judge.”

“But the G won’t make the trade?”

“He says they got you cornered.”

“Horseshit.”

“Huh?” George said, stopping singing for a moment.

“I said horseshit,” Kathryn said, leaning into George’s ear. “The government won’t trade you out for Ma.”

“Who says the G ain’t smart?” George laughed and laughed, slapping his knee. “You know, ’cause your ma isn’t worth the trade. Har.”

He smiled over at Geraline, and the little girl grinned back, George popping a half-dollar off his thumb into her waiting hand. She passed it on to the guitar player, the band starting into another sappy song about touching a woman’s heart with love.

“Did anyone see you?” Kathryn asked.

“Who?”

“The G, Luther. The G!”

“No, ma’am. I traveled with great stealth.”

“How much money you got left?”

“Ma’am?”

“The five hundred I staked you.”

“Well, there was some traveling expenses, and I paid Mr. Mathers a bit.”

“How much?”

“A hunnard.”

“You spent four hundred dollars?”

“There was traveling expenses.”

“Oh, hell,” she said. “How much will you need to go back?”

“Least three hunnard, ma’am.”

“Shit,” George said, turning the sombrero down across his eyes. He gripped his big gorilla fingers around Kathryn’s upper arm so tight her hand started to tingle. “That’s him.”

“What?”

“The god-dang Federal Ace. Jones.”

Kathryn looked over to the opening in the wrought-iron fence and saw a short, squat man in a pearl-colored cowboy hat. She watched the man’s face as he spoke to an old woman at the crook of his arm, and Kathryn shook her head. “No, it’s not.”

“The hell you say.”

“That man doesn’t look a thing like Jones. He’s got a mustache.”

“He’s got a pearl gray Stetson, too. Boots. He’s a tough little fireplug, just like I read in True Detective.”

“Goddamn, George,” she said. “Did you forget you’re in Texas?” George frowned, removing the big sombrero and tossing it to the center of the table. “I’m hungry.”

They ordered pretty much all the menu, the money petering out again, Kathryn knowing they’d have to head back to Coleman this week, not having dug up enough money when she and George were reunited. She also really missed Chingy, and thought maybe George wouldn’t get so sore this time if Chingy would be good and not drop any more doodles in his wingtips.

“I sure like being y’all’s agent up in Oklahoma City,” Luther said, licking his lips, studying the menu, the first time Kathryn noticed This son of a bitch is faking, pretty sure he couldn’t read a word. “I can report to you any matters of the court.”

“The G didn’t see you?”

Luther placed the menu on the table and tucked a napkin into his soiled collar. “No, ma’am. I’m positive of it.”

“Mr. Mathers think he can free my family?”

“Mr. Mathers has been practicing law a long time.”

“How long?”

“Nearly fifty-five years.”

“How old is this son of a bitch?”

Luther looked up at the open sky from the courtyard and thought for a moment. “Figure he’s got to be close to eighty.”

“Could you at least have hired someone who won’t die on us?”

“He shore is a tough ole dog,” Luther said. “He couldn’t believe when he read that your family was flown in a real airplane. He said, ‘Hot damn, that’s somethin’.’ I mean, he was real taken with it an’ all.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“What?” George asked. Three Mexican waiters brought out platters and platters of tacos, enchiladas, refried beans, and guacamole. Cold beer for Kathryn, who ran the iced Shiner Bock across her forehead.

“Luther hired Methuselah to represent Ma.”

“Good at cha,” George said.

“Can you head back in the morning?” Kathryn asked.

“I ’spec so,” Luther said.

They all ate for a while, Flossie Mae for once showing a goddamn smile while she filled her gullet. George picked at his plate of tacos and finished off the entire bottle of tequila, Kathryn having to pin his arm to the chair so he didn’t get up and dance with the band. “That’s so beautiful,” George said, listening to them play under that old oak lit with Christmas lights. “It’s breaking my heart.”

“It might if you knew Spanish,” Kathryn said. “George, we gotta get outta Texas.”

“What have I been sayin’?”

“The heat’s too much.”

“Like I said.”

“Where to?” she asked.

“The World’s Fair,” Geraline said, speaking up loud and strong from the head of the table, a fork pointed right at George and Kathryn. “The G’ll never find you.”

“Hell of an idea, kid,” George said. “Hell of an idea.”

Kathryn nodded.

“Goody,” Geraline said, going back to eating her enchiladas.

“Oh, no,” Kathryn said. “We split ways here.”

Geraline shrugged and dug into her beans. The child thought for a moment, as she chewed, and said, “Newspaper says they’re looking for a man and a woman traveling together. A ‘rough-and-tumble couple,’ is what it read. Woman with brown hair and a ‘wicked jaw.’ Man is an expert machine gunner.”

George grinned and nodded. “Damn right.”

“What’s it to you?” Kathryn asked.

“Nobody said anything about a family,” Geraline said, playing with a loose ribbon. “I bet I could pass as your daughter.”

Kathryn looked to George, red-eyed and shiftless. George shrugged.

“We could stay a couple nights with your dear grandma and then take 66 over to Chicago,” he said.

Luther looked to Flossie Mae and Flossie Mae back to Luther, before staring down at her plate of beans and not saying a word. Luther scraped all the food on his plate into one mess of tortilla, chicken, and beans, and stuffed in a big mouthful, saying, “I shore hate to break up the family.”

Kathryn blew cigarette smoke up high into the air. “You’ll be paid.”

“Well,” Luther said, chewing and then taking a tremendous swallow, “I s’pose if it’ll help out you good people, we could part company for a bit.”

Geraline winked at George. He smiled and shot her with his thumb and forefinger before asking the waiter for a cold beer. “You sure that wasn’t Gus Jones?” George whispered into Kathryn’s ear. “I’m seeing that short bastard everywhere. Or have I gone screwy?”