Ace Atkins - Infamous

The old shack’s door squeaked open, and he was unchained again.

Here we go .

Charlie found his feet, holding on to the posts of a metal bed. He was told to turn around and take the bandages from his eyes. He complied and was led to a crude wooden bench, where he sat down.

He heard a click, and before his blurry eyes appeared the long, sharp blade of a straight razor. He wanted to think of a prayer but just couldn’t think of one that fit the situation.

He took a breath and swallowed, knowing it would be his last.

But instead of feeling the blade across his neck, he saw a mug of hot lather slid onto the table, and he looked up into the mirrored image of a man he didn’t recognize. Sure, he knew the features and eyes, they’d been with him since birth. But the gauntness and salt-and-pepper beard were those of a much older man.

“Shave those whiskers,” the big man said. “You look like a goddamn tramp. Whoa . Don’t turn around. Don’t you dare turn around. You know how this dance is done. We’ll bring you a change of clothes and a hat. It’s a new straw hat, and I’m pretty sure I got the size right.”

Charlie nodded.

He was free. They were taking him back.

He looked into the rust-flecked image of himself and lathered his face in the hot light coming from the west window. The razor was dull and old, and his whiskers took a good bit of pulling and coaxing till they’d be shaved away. Cuts and all, he felt like a hundred-dollar bill.

There was a knock on the door, and Charlie was told to face the wall.

His eyes were retaped, and he took the procedure like a sick man takes the dressing of his wounds. He heard the weathered voice of the old man now tell him that he had a fresh shirt and pants. He’d brought back the shoes he’d worn here.

Charlie didn’t answer. What was he supposed to do? Thank him?

He just nodded and stood there, blind and dumb. The most well-read man of women’s literature in the country.

And then he felt a pair of bony arms wrap his body and pull him tight, and an onion breath in his face told him, “You be careful, Mr. Urschel. Everything’s all right. Yes, sir. God bless you.”

The door opened and closed again.

“They’s gettin’ the automobile ready,” said Potatoes. “Mr. Urschel, how ’bout a smoke for ole time’s sake? I brung you a real good one. I can fetch you some hot coffee, too. It was fresh this mornin’.”

“Son?”

“Yes, Mr. Urschel?”

“You can stick that cigar up your ass,” Urschel said. “Tell that son of a bitch I want to be taken back to my home right now.”

“I’M NOT KILLING CHARLIE URSCHEL AT YOUR FOLKS’ PLACE.”

“Can you think of somewhere better?” Kathryn asked.

“For five grand, the boys will take Urschel back to Oklahoma City like we promised,” George said. “That’s on the level.”

“Fuck no.”

“ Harvey said if we don’t agree to the deal, they’ll just let Urschel out close by where he can lead the law back to the farm,” George said. “They said your dumb stepdaddy lost ’im and they found ’im wandering the road to Damascus nuttier than a squirrel, so they’re claiming they’re owed something.”

“Bullshit.”

“I know,” George said. “But Miller ain’t gonna let him go without a fight. What are you gonna do?”

“You’re gonna tell Harvey we’ll pay out five grand for a finder’s fee. And I’ll tell him to go fuck himself.”

“Kit.”

The boys worked out some kind of screwy handshake deal about meeting up at the Green Lantern, where they’d get their cut and change out the rest. Turns out those damn Jews wanted twenty percent to turn the bills, but Bailey was convinced the ransom money serial numbers had been recorded. And, of course, that was something that never even crossed the minds of George and Albert. George only thought a lot about how to spend the dough, not a thing about marked bills.

“Are we still gonna kill ’im?” she asked.

“ We meaning me .”

“Either way.”

“Let me think,” George said.

“I’ll hold my breath.”

They left the next afternoon, and sometime past ten o’clock, it seeming like they’d been riding forever since Paradise, George slowed right outside the Norman city limits. He didn’t speak, neither of them being dumb enough to make a sound with Charlie Urschel all trussed up on the backseat floorboard.

George had finally gotten up the nerve. He stopped the big car, and they got out to whisper to each other.

“Why here?”

“You want to do it in your own backyard?”

“Over there,” she said. “Behind that billboard.”

A small light shone on a billboard of a little nigger boy eating a huge slice of watermelon and a white man with big clean choppers telling the boy to BRUSH WITH COLGATE, SAMBO!

George got back behind the wheel, and they followed a narrow, rutted path that jumped up and over some railroad tracks and crossed down into a wide, endless scrap-metal yard. Big, fat stacks of junked cars and oil barrels and wagon wheels sat in useless, rusted heaps. It had just started to rain, a few drops splatting the Cadillac’s windshield, but when he stopped the car and killed the engine the heavens sure opened up.

George just sat there like he was trying to figure out how to start necking. Kathryn crossed her arms over her chest and slid down in her seat. She stared straight ahead and bit into her cheek.

George reached for his hat with a sigh and crawled out of the big car. He opened the rear door and pulled Urschel out by his bound wrists and marched him down a narrow space between the walls of rusted cars, down an endless path, and out of sight of the windows.

Kathryn was damned if she wanted to see it anyway. Because if she was ever called to court about being there when Mr. Charles F. Urschel, president of the Tom Slick Oil Company, was killed, she could look that prosecutor right in the eye and say she didn’t see a goddamn thing.

The rain fell harder, the first bit of it she’d seen in months, sounding like impatient fingers drumming on the desk. And there was nothing but all that silver pinging on that big midnight blue hood of the Cadillac, Kathryn looking straight ahead past that old silver Indian and leaning forward, squinting to see just a motion or a bit of something. Son of a bitch.

Only rain and deep night. Rusted coils and spindles and gears. Old engines and parts of old machines. Stoves and toasters. Useless stuff from machines no one cared to recall.

What if someone was to come along? What if the owner of this goddamn graveyard was to come out of his hole and want to know who was driving this beautiful piece of machinery into his personal shithole? Goddamn, if it wasn’t raining, she’d go out and grab George, and, if he hadn’t done the deed, she’d take the damn gun and kill the bastard herself instead of sitting in the car like a dog and being left in Shit City… BLAM.

BLAM. BLAM.

Three sounds. Three strobe patterns.

The figure and shape of that big mug coming back through the wrecks, fedora down over his eyes, gun hanging loose and dirty by his side, and marching straight for the car and slamming the door hard.

“Did you do it?”

He didn’t answer.

“We shoulda buried him in a barrel of lime,” she said.

He cranked the sweet Cadillac and leaned forward to see through the whole goddamn mess till he bumped up and over the crest of the old rails and back onto the highway, fishtailing and sliding and heading north again.

“ Saint Paul?”

“I gave my word.”

“To a thief and a killer.”

“Verne Miller is a war hero, Kit.”

“How did it feel?”