Ace Atkins - Infamous

“Yep,” Jones said. “See if Agent Colvin might have the time and inclination to join us. That is, if his dance card ain’t punched.”

ORA HAD FIXED A BIG SOUTHERN MEAL JUST THE WAY GEORGE liked it, and they all sat together like a proper family at Boss’s place, a mile down the road from where they kept Mr. Urschel. Kathryn let Boss say grace, and George answered it with a big, corny “Amen” and reached for the fried chicken, that long, hairy arm coming clean across the table for a drumstick. Albert Bates complimented her mother on the meal and poured himself a glass of iced tea.

“You send over a plate, darlin’?” George asked.

“Taters brung it,” Ora said, her voice grating, filled with a lot of North Mississippi; Saltillo to her bones. “Gave him some sliced tomatoes and field peas, too. Reckon he’ll like that?”

“Mr. Urschel should be grateful,” Bates said. “A big oilman lives on nothing but sirloin steak and bourbon. Craps out silver dollars like a one-armed bandit.”

“He’s due for some slop,” George said.

“George,” Ora said.

“Oh, no, ma’am, I don’t mean your cookin’ is slop, I’m talking the beans.”

“I don’t think he’s cut out for ranch living,” Bates said. “He tried to fight signing that letter, but not real hard. He wants this mess gone.”

“And what will you do then, Mr. Bates?” Boss asked. The old man sat at the head of the table in a boiled white shirt buttoned to the throat. He chewed his chicken as he spoke, with a lot of strength in those jaws, looking like a little bulldog gnawing on a bone, thin white hair combed back from his forehead and sticking up like a grizzled rooster’s.

“Get back to my sweetie and have some fun,” Bates said. “This is it for me.”

“What’s the next step for you, young man?” Boss asked.

“If I knew, this wouldn’t be an ounce of fun,” George said with a wink. “You go where you find the action. But I’m figuring they’ll answer that ad and play it smart. We’ll all be out of your hair by Sunday, and me and Kit will be on the road and Albert will be back with his sweetie.”

He smiled over at Kathryn, stopping her from laughing about Boss’s hair, and grabbed her knee with his free hand. She looked down at the red-and-white tablecloth and studied the uniform pattern. She hadn’t gotten any food, her stomach twisted up in knots. But George didn’t have a care in the world, reaching back across the table and grabbing a thigh this time and asking her mother for another helping of field peas. Old Ora lit up with smiles like that big mug had hung the goddamn moon.

“George, when you finish stuffing your gullet, how ’bout you and me go check out the machine?” Kathryn asked.

“Already checked on her,” George said. “Fueled up and ready to go. Got a tin of gas and cans of oil. Don’t you worry about nothin’.”

“I’d like to see her anyway,” Kathryn said, moving his hand off her knee, pushing the skirt back down. She reached for the iced tea and poured a glass, wishing these Baptists would wake up to the world and keep some gin in the house.

“Sheriff Faith come by today,” Boss said, just as plain as talking about crops and weather.

George stopped chewing. He and Albert exchanged glances.

“Oh, you boys don’t get nervous,” he said. “I been stashing folks here for years. The sheriff would tell me if the law was onto us.”

“May I have some more biscuits?” George asked.

“Haven’t you had enough?” Kathryn said.

“Why don’t you mind your own business.”

Ora hopped up like there was a fire poker in her ass and landed two buttermilk biscuits on his plate. Kathryn just shook her head and walked out the screen door and onto the porch, resting an arm on the column and looking across the pasture at all those goddamn cows mooing at one another, blind and directionless until someone cracked the whip. Suckers.

George sure took his time to join her, door clattering shut. He lit a cigarette and patted his stomach, following her down a path and to the garage he’d constructed with Potatoes and Boss that spring. He found the key in his pocket and loosened the lock and chain, opening up the big, wide barn doors to show off that gorgeous midnight blue Cadillac. A full sixteen cylinders, with big, fat pontoon fenders, torpedo headlights, and a slant-back grille topped with that gorgeous silver woman with wings. The places she’d see.

Kathryn ran her hand over the paint, which always felt liquid and alive to her, shining wet. She turned and leaned back against the door, crooking her finger at George. He didn’t need to be asked twice, but first shut the garage door and lit up a kerosene lantern.

He wrapped his big arms around her and kissed her square on the mouth, not like the men in the movies but like he was kissing somebody to test his brute strength. The way a knucklehead slams his mallet in a carnival game. “Careful,” she said. “Don’t mess up my hair. I just had it done.”

“I love you, Kit.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“That’s a big backseat back there, how ’bout we break her in.”

She ran a finger down the loose part of his silk shirt and tipped the brow of his fedora back from those murky green eyes, the color of swamp water. “I thought we’d wait. You know. Just like people do before a wedding.”

“Wait till what?”

“When you get the money and we’re on the road.”

“Come on, Kit. I’m hurtin’ here. And we’re married already, or had you forgot?”

“No, I hadn’t forgot.”

He wrapped a meaty arm tighter and pulled her in. He reached up under her skirt and was feeling her between the legs and over the panties, and she wasn’t feeling in that kind of mood, but it took her, and she had to tilt her head back to catch her breath. “George?”

“You are a peach.”

“George.”

“I love you, sweet baby.”

The garage smelled of polished wood and kerosene and new oil just waiting to get burned up from here to Mexico. “George, I need you to do something.”

“What’s that?”

He pawed at her dress and pulled down a bra strap, pushing her up on the hood and getting himself good and settled between her legs. With a real gentleness that she could never believe a big man could achieve, he laid her flat on her back and put his mouth to her nipple.

“I want you to murder that son of a bitch Ed Weatherford for me,” she said, looking at the tin roof. “He’s onto us, baby.”

George stopped and stepped back a few paces, shaking his head. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“George, be a gangster. Really.”

He shook his head.

Kathryn righted herself up onto her elbows and pushed herself off the Cadillac, fingering up her top and smoothing down the dress over her long legs. She reached into George’s shirt pocket and grabbed some Luckies, lighting the match off the mug’s chin.

She blew some smoke and shook her head.

His mouth hung open.

“You’d rather I do it?”

“I didn’t say that,” George said. “But that’s not in the plan.”

“Plan’s changed.”

“Just ignore him.”

“Then he’ll really be gunnin’ for us.”

They heard a car’s motor from down the road and then all of Boss’s guineas out there, raising hell and making that high, dumb guinea call. George cracked the barn door and told Kathryn to stay put. He peered out as she smoked and thought about different ways to kill that bastard Weatherford.

“Whew,” George said, closing the garage. “Thought it might be the law.”

“Who is it?”

“Harvey and Verne,” he said. “Ain’t that somethin’? Hope they brought something to drink.”

Kathryn shook her head and put out the cigarette with the toe of her high heel made of soft white leather. She made a fist with her right hand and rapped on George’s forehead as if it were a front door to an empty house.