Infamous (7 page)

Hours later, Charlie heard clanging and a trunk slam. A man and a young-sounding woman talking. The woman promised to meet them at the ranch, and Charlie strained an ear. But then one of the men gripped him by the neck and pulled him from the car, heels dragging on the ground, and another car door opened, and he was pushed inside and onto a large leather backseat.

“Do you love me?” asked the young woman.

“You know it, baby. You just know it.”

“Oh, shit,” said the young woman. “Here she comes, sick with the religion, too.”

“Get them sonsabitches off my land,” said an old woman. “A hellfire abomination.”

“Just a minute,” said the man.

“They’re going,” said the young woman.

“Don’t think that I won’t shoot you,” the old woman screamed. “Don’t you doubt it, boys.”

Charlie twisted his head toward the noise.

“I prayed for you,” the old woman said. “I prayed for you both, and you bring this evil to my doorstep. Let us all pray.”

The old woman began to hum “Amazing Grace.”

“Why don’t you plug Urschel’s goddamn ears,” the man said. “This ain’t smart, listenin’ to this radio show.”

“Hush, you filthy evil man.”

They drove the new car faster and harder, and Charlie knew it was a bigger, steadier ride, with an engine as powerful as a truck. He was lulled to sleep for a moment and then awoke when he heard the men talking again, and figured the young woman hadn’t come along.

“Did that fella know which way?”

“Head back ten miles and then turn east.”

“I told you.”

“You didn’t say anything. You said you knew where you were. We’d still be traveling down that road if I hadn’t stopped.”

“What if he’s wrong?”

“Would you shut up and let me drive?”

“Go back and ask him again.”

“Hell I will.”

“Just turn around and let me ask him.”

“The son of a bitch will hear you.”

“Just let me out and I’ll ask.”

“I know where I’m going.”

“You don’t even know what state you’re in.”

“I’d tell you but then he’d hear me say.”

“Goddamn.”

“Just lean back and enjoy the ride.”

“That’s what they tell the bastards in the electric chair.”

AGENT COLVIN DROVE JONES AND DOC WHITE OUT TO THE CROSSROADS made famous in the afternoon papers, Jarrett riding with them and pointing them to the exact spot where the gunmen had stopped and the two villains pulled out his wallet and took his cash. Jarrett seemed a little theatrical about the whole ordeal, walking off the paces and acting out the parts as if Jones were interested in some kind of Passion play.

“If only I had a gun,” said the rich man.

“And then what?” Doc White asked.

Jarrett started to say something but thought better of it.

He was a well-dressed man with the beaten face and accent of a rough-neck. Jones figured he’d spent many a day in the heat with oil deep under his fingernails and sun burning his neck before people started calling him sir.

A full silver moon hung overhead. Big and fat, the way a moon can only look in the country, and Jones didn’t even need a flashlight as he found the tire tracks with ease and squatted down, studying the pattern. He found matches in his shirt pocket, filled his bowl with tobacco, and lit it.

He looked up at the long endless road when he got the pipe going, Doc studying the tracks over Jones’s shoulder.

“Firestone,” Doc said.

“New?”

“Last year’s make.”

“You boys can tell that just from the tracks?” Jarrett asked.

Jones stood and walked along the tracks, taking the exact direction the farmer had noted. He pulled a small leather notebook from his coat pocket and inked in a few passages.

“He’s headed south,” Jones said, pipe set hard in his teeth.

“But the tracks go to Tulsa,” Jarrett said.

“Yes, sir, they do,” Jones said.

“Dirty kidnappers,” White said. “Remember when we’d catch fellas like this and chain ’em to a mesquite tree like Christmas ornaments?”

“No, I don’t, Doc. You must’ve confused me with someone else.”

“Horseshit,” White said. “Those Mexes jumped us outside Harlington? Remember? They’d been running whores and cheating cards out of the Domingo Roach, and we got some of ’em and tracked the rest down a trail where’d they’d laid a fire. Those bastards ambushed us right there, and we shot three of ’em dead? That wasn’t that long ago.”

“Nineteen hundred and thirteen.”

“You said you don’t recall.”

“I just wanted to see if you remembered who shot who.”

“You boys were Rangers?” Jarrett asked.

“Did you know Jim Dunaway?”

“Sure,” White said. “He lasted two weeks before being mustered out for drunkenness and insubordination.”

The silence was broken by the grumble of a low-flying airplane, and the men craned their heads to watch it pass in the night.

They continued on, following the tracks, Colvin driving slow behind them, the engine ticking and their feet crunching on gravel, moonlight leading the way.

About a half mile down from the crossroads, Jarrett about jumped out of his britches at the sight of a coiled rattlesnake raising its head, ready to strike.

“Holy shit!”

Jones shined his light, and the snake slithered off into the ditch.

“Shoot it,” Jarrett yelled. “Shoot it!”

“I’m not gonna shoot it,” Jones said. “Has the same right bein’ out here as us.”

“You ever been bit?” Jarrett asked. “Nearly killed me one time.”

“They just actin’ according to their nature,” Jones said. “Can’t fault ’em for it.”

“Shoot it.”

“No, sir.”

Jarrett walked off in the moonlight and returned with a fat river stone he had to hold in both hands. He got within six feet of that old rattler, shaking its tail for all it’s worth, and launched the stone at the snake, sending it writhing and turning with a broken back. He retrieved the rock and slammed it back down a half dozen times before the snake, bloody and broken, tried to coil and strike a final time, but only twitched on account of the nerves.

In the moonlight they watched Jarrett spit and try to catch his breath.

“Man can’t show anger toward nature,” Jones said in a whisper to White. “Any fool knows that. That’s what separates us.”

5

Monday, July 24, 1933

O
kay, so the song went like this: Harvey Bailey and Verne Miller had robbed three banks since Kansas City, none of them worth squat, but the little stash growing into something neat and tidy, a figure to work with, something respectable, and a number that would be well worth telling the dealer, “I’m okay with this. I’m out.” They slept in cars and ate by cook fires. They turned their heads from friendly folks in restaurants who wanted to chat about the weather; they wore common clothes and drove common cars. Their lives, their futures, were road maps purchased for pennies at Texaco, Sinclair Oil, and Standard Red Crown service stations. They pissed in drainage ditches and fell asleep with whiskey bottles in their hands, often reaching for guns when a deer would scamper across places where they laid their heads. All in all, Harvey had been having a hell of a time since breaking out of jail. Everything was just that much sweeter.

“So if it’s good, why do we bring in Underhill and Clark?”

“Because we need more men,” Harvey said.

“Those hicks are the types that find a sexual interest in the barnyard.”

“Didn’t say I wanted to take them to dinner with us.”

“If they fuck up, we leave ’em or kill ’em.”

“You run a hard code, Verne.”

“You got more patience?”

Harvey shrugged. They stood over the hood of his Buick, parked at the edge of a rolling hill at the foot of the Cooksons, and studied the git out from Muskogee, the People’s National Bank. “Big beautiful cage on the left wall,” Harvey said. “Safe will be open for business behind them.”

“How many?”

“Eight and the president.”

“When?”

“Right before closing.”

“And then what?”

“I head back to my family,” Harvey said. “Wisconsin and all that. And you can go back to Vi.”

“Vi’s in New York.”

“Then you go to New York.”

“I think she’s fooling around on me.”

“You’d have to be pretty stupid to step out with Verne Miller’s gal.”

“We had some trouble before she left.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“She complained that I got a temper.”

Dust kicked up on the horizon, and a black speck soon took the shape of a sedan not unlike the black Ford they’d stolen in Clinton. “Mad Dog” Underhill and Jim Clark crawled out, and Harvey and Miller spoke to them. Harvey hadn’t seen the boys since the Lansing breakout. Underhill was a bony fella with big mean eyes and dirty little hands. Clark had no neck, thinning hair, and dimples. He was a fat man who shifted from side to side when he walked.

Cigarettes were smoked. The git shown to everyone there just in case Harvey was hit and couldn’t drive. Underhill laid down a sharp fart as he studied the map and didn’t even say he was sorry.

“I got some aigs and a skillet,” Underhill said, scratching his crotch.

“Stole some bread at the Piggly Wiggly,” Clark said, and spat.

“Fire’s over there, boys,” Harvey Bailey said, pointing to the little grouping of stones he’d laid out last night. “Help yourself.”

Verne Miller had walked off to the edge of a little hill where the earth had been blasted away to make room for train tracks. He carried with him a little bucket of water, a straight razor, and a mirror. Sitting on an old tree stump, he began to shave as the new boys guffawed it up by the fire.

“Don’t think about it so much,” Harvey said.

“Mad Dog? You got to be pulling my leg.”

“Vi.”

“You know, I met her at a carnival,” Verne said. “She was working in a kissing booth, and some rube tried to reach under her skirt and touch her pussy.”

“And you didn’t like that.”

“I nearly choked the man to death.”

Miller had shaven half his face with nothing but muddy water. The mud slid down off his cheek and into the bucket as he turned to stare at Harvey. He shook his head and slid the razor down his other cheek, the blade sounding like the soft ripping of a paper bag.

“Those morons know about Kansas City?” Miller asked.

“Nope.”

“The G’s gonna hang us for that,” Miller said. “You were right. Jelly Nash wasn’t worth it.”

“We weren’t there,” Harvey said. “Don’t ever tell yourself anything different.”

“People blame me for killing Nash.”

“Wasn’t your fault.”

“Underhill said he heard I killed Nash because he looked at me wrong.”

“Underhill doesn’t have much sense,” Harvey said.

“Why do they call him ‘Mad Dog’?”

“You really want to know?”

“MOR E COFFEE?” MRS. URSCHEL ASKED.

“I’d appreciate it, ma’am,” Gus Jones said.

She sent a negro boy back to the kitchen to refill the silver pot.

“I want you to go,” Mrs. Urschel said. “I want all these lawmen gone.”

“May I ask why?”

“No one will call with every policeman in the state in this house.”

“I’d like our people to stay.”

“From your office.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jones said. “We don’t want to interfere.”

“Is Charlie dead?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Will they kill him?”

“I can’t rightly say.”