Infamous

6

Kathryn didn’t see George again until twilight. He woke up from a whiskey slumber, scratching himself and coughing, and found his way out to the front porch of her stepdaddy Boss Shannon’s place. After taking a leak, he lit a cigarette and joined her on the stoop, watching that fire sun slipping down like a nickel into the slotted, flat land. She pulled the cigarette from his lips and offered him some of her gin. He took it because it was alcohol, but she knew he didn’t like it. George was the same as every boy she’d known back in Saltillo, Mississippi, who’d been weaned on whiskey.

“You want a quick poke?” he asked.

“Why don’t I poke you in the eye,” Kathryn said.

“Where’s Albert?”

“Boss wanted to show him his mule,” Kathryn said. “He claims it can count.”

“That mule can’t count,” George said. “Boss stands over your shoulder and nods his head to make the dang animal tap its hoof. That doesn’t take much sense.”

“I heard y’all had trouble.”

George shrugged.

“Albert said you ran out of gas.”

“Albert shoulda brought more gas.”

“Weren’t you watching the gauge?”

“You see many gas stations on those cat roads?”

“You shoulda thought ahead.”

“It worked out.”

“Can I see him?”

“No.”

She looked away and watched the sun a bit.

“Oh, hell,” George said. “Come on. Don’t go poutin’ on me. I’m too damn tired.”

They took the new Cadillac-the same one GMAC threatened to repossess if they didn’t make another payment-down a twisting dirt road, scattering up trails of thick Texas dust that coated the midnight blue paint with a fine powder, into the southeast corner of Boss’s place, where his son lived with his barefoot and pregnant teen bride. Armon came from the house when he heard the Buick and ran out to meet them, clopping along in unlaced brogans, big overalls covering his naked chest. He wore a big smile on his crooked face and opened the door for her, being more pleasant to her than when they first met, when his hick daddy and her stupid momma decided to make a go of it after meeting in the want ads. Back then, Armon used to try to peep at her through a crack in the bathroom wall. He was that kind of kid.

“Y’all did it,” Armon said. “You really pulled it off.”

George killed the engine and stood from the car, stretching and groaning, still feeling the long drive from the night before. He lit a cigarette and watched Armon from over the big hood of the Buick.

“What do you say, Potatoes.”

“Hey, George,” Armon said. “Whew. We got ’im all settled in and even brought him a can of beans. He won’t speak or nothin’. I guess he’s still kind of upset about y’all taking him. You think he might want a smoke or something? I read in the papers that fellas of his type like cigars. I could go to town and get him some smokes. He might like it. Or you think he’d like some of Boss’s ’shine? That might make him feel a little more rested and all.”

George looked to Kathryn.

“I think he’s fine with the beans,” Kathryn said. “Don’t make a fool of yourself in town. Just make sure he stays chained up, and you shut your goddamn mouth.”

She pushed Armon to the side, walking down the dirt path in her white kid T-straps, the stones making her walk a bit wobbly till she was on the porch and into the hot box. George was with her-she could feel his breathing on her neck-and she pushed through past a ratty sofa that had been her mother’s, a couple broken chairs, and an old organ stuffed in a corner. They didn’t have running water or electricity, but Armon had gone ahead and brought an organ home, sheet music and all, so he could buck-dance to hymns or whatever that boy liked.

George cocked his head to a door in the shack and creaked it open, and there he was-bigger than shit-eyes covered in cotton and tape, ears plugged and arms chained through a baby’s high chair. Kathryn looked at her big fat baby and smiled, not believing the lug had actually pulled it off. High-dollar oilman Charles Urschel bound and tied like a gift.

George put a finger to his lips and closed the creaky door, walking from the heat of the house and back onto the uneven, slatted porch. He lit a smoke and offered her one from his pack. He clicked open his silver lighter with a little snap of his fingers, and the ruby ring caught the last light of the day. He winked at her, smooth and cool as George R. Kelly could sometimes be.

“How come you’re dressed like that?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You look like you came from a party.”

“I wasn’t at a party,” she said. “It’s just some frock.”

“One of the easiest jobs I ever pulled,” George said. “We get four more of these, Kit, and we’re on our way to South America.”

“Let’s get the money first.”

“Two hundred grand is nothing to people like this,” George said. “They’ll pay.”

“We’ll see.”

“They’ll pay.”

Armon stood by the Cadillac and ran his hands over the silver hood ornament, took out a rag from his overalls’ back pocket, and began to shine the winged lady. The wind blew grit into his greasy hair, and he didn’t even seem to take notice, just smiling up at the two of them like he sure couldn’t have been any prouder.

“Can we trust him?” George asked from the corner of his mouth.

“He’d eat pig shit for you.”

“Good to know.”

“And your momma?”

“She’d eat pig shit for a nickel.”

“We’ll have money, Kit. More money than we’ll know how to spend.”

“I doubt that,” she said.

Kathryn turned to George, wrapping her long arms around his neck. She leaned into him, letting herself go in a short fall, and he caught her and planted a big one on her. He reached his big hands around her waist and twirled her around, right there not ten paces from a pigsty and a shack, and kissed her on her ear and cheek and whispered to her that he’d really like to screw her on a big pile of money.

“I can’t think of anything I’d like better, doll.”

JONES SMOKED HIS PIPE FILLED WITH CHERRY TOBACCO, SITTING in the very wicker chair in which Charles Urschel had played bridge just two nights before. He thought it a pleasant summer night, wondering when the real contact would come and how it would come and how reasonable the bastards would be. The toughest thing about a kidnapping was sitting on your ass and waiting. Jones had never exhibited any talent for doing nothing.

“How will we know?” Mr. E. E. Kirkpatrick asked.

“It’ll be clear,” Jones said. “We’ll know.”

“Will it be a phone call?”

“Could be.”

“A telegram.”

“Could be written in tea leaves,” Jones said. “But you’ll know.”

Kirkpatrick was a thin man with a gaunt face and honest brown eyes; Jones thought he recalled something of the man being a newspaperman before joining up as a front man for Tom Slick. His seersucker suit rumpled, tie loosely knotted at the throat from travel, he had that rawboned look of a drinker, although Jones had never personally seen the man drunk. A straightforward fella, although a bit too much of a talker to Jones’s liking.

“This would’ve never happened in Europe,” Kirkpatrick said. “They are too civilized. Did you know that in England it’s a crime for a family to pay a ransom?”

“Is that what you think Mrs. Urschel should do? Not pay?”

Jones laid his Stetson crown down onto the table. He rolled his sleeves to the elbow and leaned in.

“We can’t let people like Charlie just be ripe for the picking. How’s an honest man supposed to live his life? Is a rich, successful man fair game for the masses? Does a man have to be surrounded by guards to take a nighttime stroll or go on an impromptu fishing trip?”

“I can’t tell the family what to do,” Jones said.

“But what would you do?”

“You mean if Mr. Urschel was my family?”

“Or if it were you?”

“If it were me, my wife wouldn’t give these people a plug nickel,” Jones said, smiling. “But that’s based on personal appraisal.”

“What if Charlie was your brother?”

“You think Mr. Urschel would pay?”

“I don’t think money is of concern to Mr. Urschel,” Kirkpatrick said. “Only the principle.”

“I believe a grown man being kidnapped is different than a child.”

“How do you figure?”

“The person who kidnapped Lindbergh’s child is a weakling suffering from some kind of illness. I’ve always believed that. That whole caper was sloppy. But the ones at work here are different animals; to them this is just a business transaction. Mr. Urschel is nothing more than a flesh-and-blood investment.”

“Like a prize steer?”

“Yep.”

“You helped out plenty when Mr. Slick had some trouble.”

“A man’s business should be a man’s business. Not ammunition.”

“Mr. Slick was much obliged.”

“How ’bout we read that letter again?”

The house was as still and quiet as Jones had known it since his arrival, a vacuum devoid of sound that he couldn’t quite place. There were police on the premises and agents in the kitchen and stationed in the salon. But the work had subsided, many of the men just drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and keeping watch on the Urschel family while they all waited for some kind of legitimate contact from the kidnappers. Kirkpatrick coughed and picked up the typed sheets that had been telegrammed to the mansion.

“ ‘Mr. F. Urschel is fairing well but don’t sleep, a trifel nervose.’ Whoever this is could use a remedial course in spelling and grammar. They spelled ‘trifle’ wrong, and ‘nervous,’ too, and ‘location’ in the next sentence. Are all criminals this stupid?”

“Keep going,” Jones said, drawing on his pipe. Somehow sitting in Urschel’s seat gave him some kind of perspective and feel for how it would unfold, or at least some kind of feel for the man. He wanted to know if Charles F. Urschel was the kind of man to take it or fight it. Or somewhere in between.

“ ‘Locashun of myself will be revealed in the next notice after I see your deci-shun in the newspaper.’ ‘Decision’ spelled the same way,” Kirkpatrick said. “ ‘Mr. Urschel’s release can be secured at small cost and without BLOODSHED.’ They typed ‘bloodshed’ in capital letters. ‘If you follow my instructions, map I will enclose to you at once after I see your ad.’ ”

“Read the part about the ad again,” Jones said, taking another puff. “From the beginning.”

“ ‘Note you are the go between for the family of Chas. F. Urschel. If so, I can tell you where they are holding him. I will reveal the facts to you if you wish or either reveal them to the detective department.’ Good Lord, nobody can be this stupid on purpose.”

Jones listened and smoked some more, watching the smoke kind of hang there in the dull night heat. It had been more than a hundred that afternoon, and the heat didn’t seem to want to leave. This was the fourth letter they’d received that day. All of ’em just as phony, but you didn’t dismiss a single one. You take one ransom lightly and chances are that would be your number.

“ ‘But I would suggest you in as much as I thank you’-I believe they meant ‘think’-‘should know and then you could tell whom you wished. If you want this information, signify the same by run add in Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Teligram.’ ‘Telegram’ spelled, of course, as ‘I-G-R-A-M.’ ”

“Chislers,” Jones said. “Fakes.”

“Surely not scholars.”

“That doesn’t matter a lick,” Jones said. “The writer there hadn’t thought through any plan at all. The boys we’re dealing with here are pretty shrewd, businesswise, and will have a plan in place. Did you meet that four-flusher today? The one who called himself a ‘medium of the psychic arts’? He said he’d try and get in touch with Mr. Urschel’s spirit, and Mrs. Urschel asked what if he wasn’t dead, and the fella just kind of looked at her, holding his hand out for some kind of payment, not really having an idea what to do next.”

“Does it always work like this?”

“They come out of the woodwork, Kirk,” Jones said. “This world has no shortage of shitbrains.”

“You want another nip in your coffee?”

“Better be getting back to the Skirvin,” Jones said, tapping the burnt tobacco from his pipe and reaching for his Stetson. “It’s nearly midnight.”

He pulled his father’s gold watch from his vest and looked back into the mansion’s long hallway, studying the open space.

“The clocks have stopped,” Kirkpatrick said. “Is that what you were listening for? Charlie wound them every Sunday.”

“This house is quieter than a tomb.”

“Sometimes you miss the tick,” he said.

They were quiet for a moment in the silence, and Jones tapped some ash that had fallen onto his hat brim.

“I think the doctor finally got Berenice to take a shot,” Kirkpatrick said.

“She hadn’t slept since they took him. I believe she loves that man in a way that she never felt for Mr. Slick.”

“Maybe I’ll take that nip.”

“I’m sure glad they sent for you, Buster,” Kirkpatrick said.

“Glad to help.”

“Even with fakes and chislers?”

“’Specially with them.”

THEY DIVIDED THE LOOT BY THE CAMPFIRE. UNDERHILL, WITH that bony face and big eyes, watching Verne Miller peeling off every bill, stacking every coin on a rock, till they’d come to a shy more than eight grand. Not exactly the Denver Mint job, but not a bad haul, and Harvey was fine with the whole deal, itching to get into a nice hotel, slip that shot-up leg into a bath, and have people bring him things with the jingle of the phone.

“Count it again,” Underhill said.

“It’s there,” Miller said.

Oh, shit.

“We’re missing a bag.”

“What went into that trunk came out of the trunk, and it’s all right there,” Harvey said. “Get what you got and let’s all get gone.”

“We’re missing a bag.”

Miller stood from the pile of money and placed his hands on his hips, standing tall and looking a bit like that old war hero. He just stared down at the grease-parted hair of Underhill and the pudgy face of Jim Clark, chawing away on a wad of tobacco, the way a man studies an animal in a zoo, with kind of a detached curiosity, waiting to see what they’ll do next.

“Two per man,” Miller said. “Plus some change.”

Miller screwed a cigarette into the center of his mouth and set fire to it. He wore his pants very high and had tucked the cuffs into knee-high boots.

“Why’d you bring him in, Harvey?” Underhill asked. “You gone soft? Everybody knows this fella ain’t got no morals. He kills people for dough.”

Verne Miller smiled at that and rubbed his movie-star jaw. He glanced over at Harvey, and Harvey had to stifle a grin.

“When would we have stashed the money?” Harvey asked.

“I’m not calling you out, Harv,” Underhill said. “Me and Jim was the one did the heavy lifting while you was supervisin’. Your man didn’t lift a dang finger. And now we come up a few grand short, this just ain’t on the level.”

Jim Clark brought his eyes up to Miller and then over at Underhill. He had a stick he’d taken from the edge of the fire and was drawing patterns in the rough earth.

“Why don’t you apologize, you damn moron,” Harvey said. “You want to break up a gang before it starts?”

“We was a gang in Lansing,” Clark said, more of a mumble than words. And Harvey watched him go over and over that dirt line like he had to convince himself that it was there.

“I need a bath,” Harvey said. “I need a cigar, a fresh change of clothes, and to get this bullet out of me. I need a woman. But what I don’t need is a bunch of monkey business and horseshit.”

Verne Miller drew a gun.

“Go ahead, you sideshow freak,” Underhill said.

“Come on,” Harvey said.

Miller kicked the cash and coin into the fire, and the money started to smolder and burn. He clenched his jaw and slid the gun back into his belt. Sparks flew up from the little campfire, and Clark and Underhill didn’t move, mouths open, until it all registered into their small brains, and Underhill reached his hand into the smoldering money and pulled out charred bills, yipping and blowing on his fingers, until he thought he’d felt the weight of four grand and backed away from the sparks and heat.

He clutched the money to his chest and called Verne Miller a crazy son of a bitch, and Miller just kind of smiled at him and shrugged. Clark and Underhill counted off the money and gathered their things.

“No hard feelings,” Harvey said.

“I don’t take issue with you, Harv,” Underhill said. “You broke us out and a man don’t forget somethin’ like that.”

Harvey shook both men’s hands, agreeing on a Joplin pool hall to make contact, and Underhill and Clark drove off quick into the darkness and far down the meandering open road.

“Did you have to go and do that?” Harvey asked. “I think you hurt Mad Dog’s feelings.”

“Yes.”

“Because they called you a liar?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a hard code, Verne.” Harvey got down to his knees and counted out the money that hadn’t been burned up.

“How’s that heel?”

“Bleeding like a bastard. I’m cashing out of this shit. I’m done.”

“How much you got squirreled away?”

Harvey didn’t answer, as he turned his back to Miller and kicked dirt over the fire until it was just smoke off the ashes.

“I’ll drive,” Verne Miller said, already headed to the Buick. “Where’s that farm you told me about? Kit Kelly’s folks’ place?”

“Town called Paradise.”