Infamous (41 page)

“Don’t mention it,” Kathryn said.

“’Preciate the dress,” Flossie Mae said, looking down at the floorboards and lifting her eyes just for a moment to give Kathryn a ragged smile.

“You gonna eat that?” Gerry asked her father.

“Get your grimy little hands off my chicken,” he said.

“You can have mine,” Kathryn said. “I’m not that hungry.”

She passed over the little greasy box to the girl, who snatched up another drumstick, rocking her feet to and fro on the little bed.

“Where y’all headed?” Kathryn asked.

“Where we can find work.”

“Where you been?” she asked.

“We was thrown off our land in April,” Luther said, closing his eyes and shaking his head with the memory.

“Where?”

“Ardmore.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Flossie Mae shot a surprised look at her husband, and he reached down and tweaked her kneecap.

“Daddy was a good farmer,” Gerry said, bright and wide-eyed. “I had me a little goat that would pull me in a wagon. He was a good little goat.”

“Hush now, doll,” Luther said, cleaning down a breast to the bone. “Quit talkin’ ’bout that gosh-dang goat.”

“What kind of work can you do?” Kathryn asked, crossing her legs at the knee and lighting a cigarette. She could see her reflection in the mirror over the cheap bureau. A sign read WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE LODGING FOR THOSE OF LOOSE MORALS
.

“I’ll do any work that can feed three hungry people.”

“I’m sorry,” Kathryn said.

“Don’t pity us, ma’am,” Luther said, putting a scraggly arm around Flossie Mae and hugging her close, the woman looking as uneasy as a caught barn cat. “We’re together and that’s a gift from the Lord Himself.”

“Amen,” Kathryn said. “Are you all right with God?”

“Gerry was baptized at two.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Where are you headed, Mrs. Montgomery?” he asked. A long pause. “Mrs. Montgomery?”

Kathryn turned from watching herself in the mirror and said, “I’m meeting my husband, who’s on a business trip.”

“And what does Mr. Montgomery do?”

“He’s in the liquor business.”

“You don’t say,” Luther said, leaning in, rubbing rough old hands together. Flossie Mae stood and asked to be excused, and Kathryn shrugged at her, waving her hand through the smoke. “What kind of liquor?”

Kathryn recrossed her legs, and said: “All kinds.”

“I bet you’ve been to the World’s Fair!” Gerry said. “I read Budweiser ran a team of horses with barrels of beer all the way from Saint Louis!”

“Not yet.”

“Sure wish we could go to the World’s Fair.”

“Don’t mind the girl, ma’am. Her head is filled with a lot of foolishness. We don’t have but three dollars left amongst us.”

Kathryn reached for her purse and Luther held up a hand, shaking his head. “We appreciate all you done, ma’am, but the Arnold family don’t take no handouts. I work to feed my family.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t think nothin’ of it,” Luther said, straightening his shoulders and running a hand over his thinning hair, dabbed down with grease. “We do appreciate the hospitality of a fellow Christian.”

“I knew you were good country people the moment I set eyes on you,” Kathryn said. “Why do such good people always have a road of sorrows?”

“Just the way it is, ma’am.”

“I’ll take some money,” Gerry said brightly, jumping to her feet and twirling before the mirror in her fifty-cent dress and quarter shoes.

“Gerry!” Luther said. “Apologize to Mrs. Montgomery.”

She did.

Kathryn winked at her. Over her father’s sloped shoulder, Gerry winked back.

The toilet flushed, and Flossie Mae tramped back into the room and sat at her husband’s side, head down, waiting for her chance to be asked a question, usually replying in a single word. The room was nothing but a bureau, two iron beds, and a single framed picture that looked to be cut out from a feedstore calendar, a nymph on a rock, looking at the moon, shielding her goodies with an open palm.

“Mrs. Arnold, may I speak to your husband in private for a moment?” Kathryn asked, standing, clicking open her cigarette case, and retrieving a fresh Lucky. “I have a business matter that may hold some interest for him.”

Luther hopped to his feet and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He followed her outside the tourist cabin into the coal-black night, not a sign of the moon; a family two cabins down the line cooked meat on a split oil drum. All the people in the camp had been discussing this big hurricane that had already hit Galveston and was headed their way.

“Yes, ma’am . . .”

“I saw you staring at me, Mr. Arnold.”

Luther rubbed his stubbled, weak jaw and nodded. “Sorry, ma’am. I just ain’t never seen somethin’ so purty.”

She nodded. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Please don’t tell Flossie Mae. A man just can’t help himself sometimes.”

“I know who you are.”

“Good Lord in heaven,” he said, stepping back to the door.

Kathryn snatched his hand from the handle and leaned in close enough to smell his tired, old onion-and-chicken breath. “You people are good folks, salt of the earth and all that. And you are exactly what I need.”

“Ma’am?”

She pointed a long, manicured finger at Luther Arnold’s skinny breastbone and said, “You are the answer to my prayers. A gift.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You know who I am?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Come on. Don’t read the papers?”

“Sure.”

“You ever heard of Kathryn Kelly?”

He shook his head. Kathryn stepped in closer and said, “Wife of the desperado and gangster ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly?”

“You know ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly? Shoot. If that don’t beat all.”

“I’m his wife,” she said. “Luther, are you a man I can trust?”

“With all my heart.”

“I need you to do something for me tomorrow,” she said. “I need you to go to Fort Worth and find an attorney named Sam Sayres. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I will pay you fifty dollars in cash for your trouble, and two nights here for your family.”

“Sam Sayres,” Arnold said, nodding. “Got it. What do I do?”

“I need to find out what’s going on with my family’s case. You tell him that you are my emissary.”

“What’s that?”

“You work for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll give you bus fare that you can take to Cleburne, but you are not to tell a soul.”

“Not even Flossie Mae.”

“’Specially not Flossie Mae.”

“You got my word, ma’am. I swear to it on the Arnold family name.”

He put out a small, weathered paw, and Kathryn shook it in the weak light from a single bulb screwed in by the cabin door.

THE FILE DEPUTY MANION HAD PASSED TO HARVEY IN A SLOPPY handshake only nicked the thick iron bars of the cell wall. It wasn’t until he really got his muscles into a solid rhythm, working in the midnight heat, that he made some progress, thinking that goddamn son of a bitch wanted ten g’s in exchange for a rusted file and a lousy razor blade.

Harvey tried a downward stroke on the barred wall, the way you might play a fiddle, and he thought of a fiddle and dance music and devil deals with backstabbing bastards, until his mouth went dry again and his hands and arms had about locked in spasms.

He wished he had a watch, knowing he didn’t have much time till the trusty would come roaming down the hall to slide his breakfast under the cell door.

The first bar from the wall—Harvey figuring he needed at least three to squeeze through—didn’t fall until an hour later, Harvey’s arms quivering and undershirt soaked as he reached for the sink, where he scooped out mouthfuls of water. Hard winds shook the building and screamed around corners. That big hurricane blowing off the Gulf had started to tickle Dallas, and Harvey knew if he could time this thing just right the confusion of it just might be a hell of a gift.

Manion promised to meet him at his home out on old Eagle Ford Road, just outside Irving. He said he’d bring another car, a change of clothes, and a rifle, and Harvey would pay him the balance on his freedom, Manion knowing enough about Harvey to value an honest crook. But, goddamn, there was a long way between the cell, ten floors of armed guards, and the road.
A goddamn long way
. And all Manion had seeded him with was rusted junk, refusing to give him a gun but telling him that he’d hid a pistol in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk.

If he made it down to the sixth floor.

Harvey kept playing that fiddle. The wind pounded the jail, rain pinging the lone window. The light outside was a queer purple, and that made it all the harder to guess the time, as if time itself had stopped, caught in the blurred picture from an old-time camera.

The last bar fell as he heard the gears and pulleys of the elevator going to work, groaning and straining down the shaft. He reached for the razor blade he’d hid under a stained pillow and stuck his head through the gap, facing the open row, and then inched his body through, letting out every drop of air till he could snake out, cutting the hell out of his shoulder before tumbling to the floor and finding his feet.

He hit the ground with such a thud that he wondered if he hadn’t been heard ten floors down.

Harvey inched back, watching the barred window of the door. He hoped it would be only one man, like yesterday, unarmed, as was their procedure, and holding cold biscuits, colder coffee, and shithouse gravy.

He found the next cell’s door open, and Harvey slipped inside and slid under the bunk. It was very dark, blacker than night, and the storm—it must be a hurricane now—beat the hell out of the tall building, almost feeling like it just might decide to topple all the concrete and steel and make all this effort for naught.

Harvey held on to the rusted blade and just listened to that beautiful storm, the single bulbs hanging from the ceiling flickering off and on, the rain coming down on a parched country like some kind of unnatural act.

He smiled. He hoped that Manion at least had enough sense to pick out a stylish suit and shine his shoes.

30

T
he guard walked the row, whistling and jangling a set of keys, an old colored trusty at his heels holding a breakfast tray. The whistling stopped when the guard reached the death cell, Harvey inching out from the open cage behind him, the guard stooping to inspect the filed-off bars and yelling at the trusty to put down them eggs and go fetch the sheriff. But Harvey snuck behind them both and held the old razor to the guard’s neck, telling them nobody was going to die on Labor Day if they all were slow and steady and did everything he said. “You understand what I’m sayin’, boy?” Harvey asked.

The old black man nodded. Harvey snatched up a piece of burnt toast and pushed the two men into the cell, lifting the set of keys from the guard’s fingers and locking them inside.

“Sheriff Smoot’s gonna tan your hide,” the jailer said.

“You tell Sheriff Smoot to kiss my ass,” Harvey said, taking a bite of toast and casually walking to the first door and finding the key. Another key unlocked the cage, and he moved past the elevator to the stairwell, the door unlocked, and made his way down to the sixth floor, where he found another cage and a room empty except for Tom Manion’s old desk. On the wall hung a calendar that hadn’t been changed since Christmas of ’29. The Sun-Maid raisin girl held a basket of grapes.

Harvey reached into the bottom right drawer and found a gun, if you could call it a gun. It was a rusted old .44, something Manion had probably carried in the Spanish War. When Harvey spun the cylinder, it fell open into his hand. He noted only three bullets and snapped the cylinder back in place just as he heard steps approaching. Son of a bitch.

Another jailer, just as old and tired as the fella upstairs, walked alongside R.L., the colored guitar player, from a side door.

“Mornin’, boys,” Harvey said.

“Good Lord in heaven,” the deputy said, chaw dripping out of his mouth and onto his chin. He wore a nonregulation Panama hat, slipped far back on his head.

“If y’all would be so kind,” Harvey said, nodding back to the row of cells.

R.L. smiled. Harvey winked at him.

“I ain’t goin’ in there,” the deputy said.

Harvey pointed that rusted piece of shit at his chest.

“’Fraid this ain’t up for discussion, partner.”

“You can’t lock me in there,” he said.

“Maybe you boys should carry weapons.” Harvey reached for the man’s Panama and stuck it on his own head.

“That’s the row for colored folks, you idgit!”

“Will you be offended if I lock up this fella in the colored wing, R.L.? I don’t want to stink up the place.”