Infamous (19 page)

“Pancho?” Jones said. “One of the most pleasant sorts you’d ever meet. Would you say, Doc? He was an honorable man. Maybe what got him killed.”

They stood there and watched the rains for a while, Colvin and Doc White smoking cigarettes. It was black now, the sun probably not down but the dark clouds smudging out everything and keeping the neighborhood in a queer purple-black glow that usually preceded a tornado.

“The Kansas City office said the telephone call to the Muehlebach came from a local movie house,” Colvin said. “They sent an agent to the Newman Theater but came up with nothing.”

Jones rubbed his face with a handkerchief and cleaned thumbprints off his glasses.

“He should have been back hours ago,” Colvin said.

Jones nodded. He could see clearer without the smudges, the rain softening a bit, a heavy heat and humidity lifting from the ground.

“If they turn him loose,” Jones said, “it won’t be close to here. We’ll have to wait for Urschel.”

“When do we start to look?”

“Let’s give it till morning,” Jones said. “If he doesn’t show, we’ll understand the situation.”

A pack of newspapermen holding black umbrellas approached the front porch and shouted up a couple questions for the agents. Someone inside had tipped them off about the ransom drop, and, boy, they were angry it had taken them almost twenty-four hours to hear about it.

Was it really a million dollars?

Some people say the kidnappers may have taken the Lindbergh baby.

Agent Jones, they call you an Ace Investigator. Is it true you tracked down the last of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and forced Butch Cassidy down to Bolivia?

Jones ignored them, loaded his pipe, and strolled down the steps into the soft rain with Doc and climbed into the car supplied to them. They ate supper at the Skirvin, dropped by the local office for any new communiqués, and then headed back to Eighteenth Street and the now-familiar mansion. As the night wore on, the rains continued, and Mrs. Urschel turned on the radio just in case a report in some other state was to come over the wire. It took a few moments for the unit to heat up, and Jones found a comfortable place on the couch under that life-size portrait of Tom Slick, and smoked his cherry tobacco and listened to the
Pabst Blue Ribbon Show
on the radio, someway feeling odd that the nation was okay with alcohol again after spending so many years going after bootleggers.

The Urschel and Slick boys—dog-tired and sick from grief and worry—turned in some hours later. And in hushed whispers by the radio, Betty Slick told Agent Colvin that cotillion or joy of any type had to be canceled. And they soon left, too, and Jones didn’t study on it long. And then it was just Berenice Urschel, and the intimacy of them sitting so close with so few in the salon made Jones stand and walk into the kitchen.

She’d been crying a long time and seemed empty of tears and wasteful talk.

He poured a cup of coffee and noted the hour on a clock, growing close to midnight. He’d check in with the boys on the night guard and leave some orders. And then he’d head back to the Skirvin for a few hours of rest. He’d shave and be back here before sunrise.

That’s when he heard the commotion at the back door. One of the local agents was arguing with a man who wanted to come inside.

“Mister,” the agent said. “You better turn right back around and get back with the other newspapers.”

“But I’m not a reporter,” said the man wearing a straw hat and soaked short-sleeved shirt.

“No, he’s not,” said Jones with a smile, offering his hand. “Mr. Urschel, we’ve been waiting on you. My name’s Jones.”

14

W
hat the hell, George?” Kathryn said. “Urschel’s alive? You lied. I can’t believe you lied to me, you rotten son of a bitch.” George mumbled something, his mouth full of eggs and ham, at a ham-and-eggs, no-name joint in some no-name town. Kathryn wasn’t even sure what state they were in. But they sure were hungry and had stopped off on the ride north when they’d seen the hand-painted signs for EATS, REST-ROOMS, GAS. When she’d come back from the can, she’d seen the front of a
Kansas City Star
someone left with a nickel tip. URSCHEL FREED.

Son of a bitch
.

“What did you say?” she asked.

He finished chewing, and leaned in and said real low, “Excuse a fella for not wanting the Chair. What’s the point of stirring the pot? We got what we wanted. Why risk it? ’Sides, he almost shit his drawers running away.”

Kathryn read on about Charles F. Urschel, head of the Tom Slick Oil Company, bravely making his way from a scrapyard outside Norman to Classen Barbecue, where he calmly got a cup of coffee and telephoned for a cab. He paid the driver a small tip, the newspaperman drawing out that fact to show he was cheap, and was stopped at the back door of his house by a federal agent who didn’t recognize his face.

“Says here the kidnappers gave him ten dollars,” she said. “Is that true?”

“Why don’t you go ahead and broadcast it after
Little Orphan Annie
?”

“Ten whole dollars. You are a sucker.”

“Who’s that little chatter box?”
George sang.
“The one with pretty auburn locks?/ Whom do you see? / It’s Little Orphan Annie.”

Kathryn frowned and fished a pack of Luckies from her purse, lit one with shaking hands, and used the ruby red tip of her index finger to skip from story to story. Charles Urschel’s big, dumb hangdog face took up most of the space above the fold.

She smoked the cigarette down to a nub and squashed it out as the waitress in a little paper hat refilled her coffee. George asked for some more toast.

She lit another Lucky and leaned back into her seat. The diner was empty, far too early in the morning for normal folks, and she leaned into the paper and read on. “Says right here that ‘FEDERAL ACE GUS T. JONES LEADS MANHUNT.’ You ever heard of him? Says he tracked down the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and was a personal friend to Pancho Villa. Jesus H. How old is this guy?”

“Too old to catch us,” George said with a wink. “I bet he still rides a horse.”

“Says here he has a government airplane at his disposal.”

She turned the page and above an advertisement for Lux soap—
Is Your B.O. Offending Your Husband?
—was a picture of the Federal Ace. Wire-framed glasses, fat man with thinning hair. “Well, son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“It’s the bastard from the
Sooner
,” she said, laughing. “I knew he was the law. Damn, I knew it.”

“The one with Kirkpatrick?”

“No, George. The nigger porter.”

“They just put that stuff in the paper to rile us up,” he said. “Eddie Bentz says nervousness will trip you up every time. Keep your mind clear and everything is copacetic.”

“You can’t even spell copacetic.”

“Come on now, Kit.”

“I mean it,” she said. “Ed Weatherford is still out there, too. You know he’s gonna turn rat.”

“Ed Weatherford doesn’t know diddly-squat,” George said, scraping some egg onto his toast. He pointed the loaded toast at her. “You wanted me to drive all the way to Fort Worth just to kill a fella ’cause you don’t like his smile.”

“He’s a snake.”

“Oh, Ed’s all right,” he said, grinning. “I think he’s a little sweet on you, too.”

“You sure are a bright boy, George.”

The waitress walked back from the kitchen with more toast and jam and butter. George smiled and winked at her, and the woman blushed because, hell, she had to be at least forty and hard and weathered. But Kathryn Kelly was smart enough to know that
There but by the grace of God
, because if she didn’t have a plan, she damn well could be slinging hash in a few years.

“The beauty with these kidnap deals is that no one has to die,” George said, wiping his mug with a napkin. “You take the gravy from some rich mug who’s swimming in cash while average hardworking Joes out there can’t afford a cup of coffee. It’s a solid, respectable line of work.”

“Since when are you hardworking?”

“How long has it been since you wanted for anything?”

“You made me leave Chingy.”

“We don’t need a little yapping dog on this excursion,” he said.

“How long is this gonna take?”

“Couple days tops.”

“And you trust this Kid Cann?”

“He’s a businessman.”

“He’s a crook.”

“Harvey’s cashin’ in his chips with him, same as us.”

George nodded and straightened his short red tie. He looked off in the wide, empty space of the restaurant spreading out in a crazy chessboard of blue-and-white linoleum. The place smelled of cigarettes and frying bacon and coffee left on the burner too long. In the darkness outside the glass window, a long, sweeping arrow made of tiny lightbulbs beckoned in the weary traveler.

“Then what?” she asked. “When do we get the money back?”

George smiled. “We relax. Have some laughs.”

“I want to go back to Cleveland.”

“What the hell for? I want to take you down to Biloxi and put our feet in the sand. We can drink beer on the beach and go dancing on the boardwalk at night. I wouldn’t mind doing a little fishing, too.”

“Before we do anything, we have to pay off the Cadillac.”

“Are you joking?”

“Do you have any idea of how embarrassing it is to get all those telephone calls and telegrams about falling behind on those payments? When we bought that big baby out there, we said we’d be paying by year’s end in cash. And now we have it, I want to march right into that dealership and tell ’em to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

“That won’t prove a thing, Kit.”

“You got that damn loan in the name of Boss and Ora! You said your name was Mr. Robert G. Shannon.”

“Would you shut up.”

“You shut up.”

George let out a long stream of smoke from the side of his mouth. He looked her over like he was appraising just how long she’d keep this gag running, and the decision didn’t take long as he rested his meaty fist on the table, cigarette burning down to his hairy knuckles, and nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, Saint Paul to trade with the Jews and then down to Cleveland so you can play big-time with that two-bit car salesman. Say, I know why you want to do this. You didn’t like the way his wife treated you when we had dinner with them. When you told her about the kind of gowns you liked, and she laughed a little like she didn’t believe you.”

Kathryn nodded. “She was mean to Chingy.”

“That goddamn rat shit on her Oriental rug.”

“It was an ugly rug.”

A few truck drivers walked in through the glass door, a bell jingling above their heads. More bacon frying. More loose talk. Cigarettes and coffee. Hash and eggs. Kathryn picked up the
Star
again and read back over the front page about the Urschel story.

“Does it bother you that your name isn’t here?”

“Are you crazy? That’s pretty much the point, sweetheart.”

“It bothers me,” she said. “I read a story last week about Jean Harlow coming to Kansas City to visit her family. They had her picture on the front of the paper just because she came to town. Now, that’s something.”

“She’s a damn movie star with big tits.”

“I’m prettier.”

“Maybe,” George said. “But she’s known.”

“And now because of us that fat old man is the Federal Ace.”

“So what?”

“So, it must be nice.”

“What’s that?” George asked, grabbing his hat and tossing down some coin. “To get your picture in the paper?”

“For everyone to know you,” she said. “Look at ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd. He’s like some goddamn Robin Hood.”

“To hell with Floyd.” George stood, tipping the fedora’s brim down over his dark eyes as he frowned at her. “Let’s see him ever pull a job like this.”

“HOW ’BOUT YOU HANDLE KID CANN,” VERNE MILLER SAID. “THAT little Jew has problems with me.”

“About what?” Harvey asked.

“One night at the Cotton Club, we had a little talk.”

“A talk?”

Verne Miller shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. They were out of the Buick now—Harvey always preferring to buy or steal big, solid Buicks—and they walked in the falling sunlight of an abandoned farm close to the Iowa line. Harvey’s heel felt stiff and sore, and he had some trouble keeping pace with Miller’s strong, long-legged gait.

“The Kid made a pass at Vi,” Miller said, staring straight ahead. His blue eyes like ice. “He told her he’d like to place his pecker right between her titties and ride her like a mule.”

“The Kid said that?” Harvey asked, lighting up a Chesterfield and fanning out the match. “I don’t even know what that means. ‘Like a mule’?”

“He’d been drinking.”

“What’d you say?”