Ace Atkins - Infamous

“Why don’t you put a sock in it?”

“He was your first, wasn’t he?”

“Well.”

“Well, how did it feel?”

“Like something that had to be done.”

“Amen.”

“Turn on that lamp and read the map,” he said. “And why don’t you shut up till we get back to Saint Paul.”

JONES FINISHED WITH HIS REPORT, PECKING IT OUT ON AN L. C. Smith at the Federal Building and sliding it into the mail pouch to Washington. He grabbed his Stetson and returned to the mansion, only to receive a cable from Hoover chewing him out for not being in direct contact during the entire affair. Jones reread the cable, the words chapping his ass, and tossed it in the garbage, following Doc White to the front stoop under the portico, where the newsmen had turned the front lawn into a small tent city.

The pallor inside the house made it feel like a goddamn wake. Urschel should’ve been home hours ago.

The papers ran phone lines into a wild switchboard under an Army tent. Some of the newspapermen had now brought their desks and were sitting with their feet propped up and taking calls, all the while sweating through their shirts and ties, living through the long, hot night and all day with nothing to add to the Urschel story.

Tom Slick, Jr., and Charles Urschel, Jr., both about fifteen or sixteen, were back from a fishing trip in Mexico. And Betty Slick had decided to a bake a lemon pie for Agent Colvin, seeing to it that he ate at least two slices to make sure it was to his liking.

When there was nothing left to do, the family just sat in the salon and waited in silence. Every ring of the phone was like a jolt of electricity.

At nightfall, the wind blew in from the west and the rains came. The first rains in months, and Jones watched from the stoop as the newsmen scampered away, grabbing for their typewriters and copy, chasing stray notes and fallen hats. Tents tumbled down the road, and reporters and cops scrambled for their automobiles.

Colvin approached the men with a smile, watching the show.

“How was that pie?” Doc White asked.

Colvin’s face grew crimson. The rain streamed hard and violent across the road and atop the car hoods.

“She’s a fine young lady.”

“She sure has a crush,” Jones said.

“She’s just a girl.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven,” Colvin said.

“At twenty-seven?” Jones asked. “I was already married. That was back in aught-seven. I’d left the Rangers and joined up with Customs.”

Thunder and lightning, a full-out gully washer. Large tree branches shook and small freshly planted trees bent in the harsh wind. Jones took off his hat in fear of losing it.

“Y’all worked the border?” Colvin asked.

“Rode that river half my life.”

“You, too?” he asked White.

Doc White nodded.

“You ever see Pancho Villa?”

White and Jones smiled.

“Yeah, we knew Villa,” Jones said.

“You met him?”

“Sure thing,” Jones said.

“He was a real cutthroat.”

“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.”

What 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.