Ace Atkins - Infamous

“If I was that good,” Harvey said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

They finished off the bottle, and Manion tossed the trusty keys to his desk and told him to fetch up another bottle, and the boy returned a short time later. The guitar picker, who called himself R.L., launched into “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine” with a grin and a wink, singing that if he could only erase the lines from his face and bring back the gold in his hair.

“Goddamn, you make me feel old,” Harvey said. “Sing something else.”

“Been working on a little tune,” R.L. said, tuning his guitar a bit, “About a ‘Kind Hearted Woman.’ ”

“Damn, you can play, boy,” Harvey said.

“Didn’t come cheap.”

“How you figure?”

“I sold my soul to play.”

Harvey turned up the bottle and looked to Manion, yapping it up and slapping his knee, resting his hands on his fattened belly with his tin star pinned upside down on his old chest. Harvey nodded, “Every man’s got his price.”

The negro was halfway into the song, the trusty using his broom as a dancing partner, when Harvey heard the heavy boots on the jail floor moving closer. Manion was up, slapping his thighs and keeping time, the bottle hanging loose in his hands, and didn’t turn till he heard the metallic squeak of the cell door flying open.

In the doorframe stood Gus T. Jones and another old man, carrying a six-shooter.

Jones looked at the scene, his mouth downturned like it was the sorriest goddamn thing he’d ever witnessed. He shook his head with pity for all the weakness in the world, removed his hat, and said, “I sure hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

KATHRYN WOKE UP WITH A SPLITTING HEAD AND A DRY MOUTH and only vague memories of a county-line roadhouse where she and Louise had danced on the bar, with George working out a sloppy slugfest with two country goons. She remembered there had been a lot of laughter and fun and a queen’s share of gin, but after that most of the details were fuzzy. She thought she recalled losing Ching-A-Wee when taking him out for a squirt at the hotel, but she felt the dog breathing between her legs and knew all was well, and she kicked off the covers and stumbled to the bathroom, making a cup of her hand and lifting water to her mouth.

Her skin felt like paper, and then she looked in the mirror and saw her face was paper.

Sometime in the night she’d pulled on one of those Part-T masks that came free with one of those Hollywood magazines, and right now she was staring cold-eyed into the face of Jean Harlow. She peered out the bathroom, and there sleeping in the big, rough-and-tumble bed were George Raft and Joan Crawford.

Crawford had a big hairy leg and a bare chest. Raft was wearing a pink slip.

She drank the water, the slivers of morning piercing her eyes as she tore the elastic from her head, remembering patches of how it had all been such a hoot. The three movie stars out in Des Moines, the big bankroll in Joan Crawford’s thick fingers, laughing and drinking and all being fine till one of the country boys asked Miss Crawford if she’d like to suck his pecker.

George didn’t hesitate with the knuckle sandwich.

Prison makes a man a little edgy, Kathryn guessed.

She scooped up Ching-A-Wee and rustled at Louise’s shoulder until the eyes opened in Raft’s mug and she heard, “Hey, what gives?,” Louise tearing the mask from part of her face and then flipping over to face the wall. More gin and champagne bottles, the trays of food on the carpet this time, steak bones gnawed clean, and little piles of doo-doo by the front door.

George had thrown his dress pants over a lamp, his two-tone shoes kicked off by the bathroom.

Kathryn slinked into her feathered robe and feathered slippers and carried Chingy over to the elevator, where the nicest old man asked her, “What floor?,” and she said, “The lobby,” and then the old man asked her if she’d like to get dressed first. And Kathryn said she paid enough money to dress any way she pleased, and, if that didn’t please the staff, then so be it.

She bummed a smoke from the doorman and let Chingy take a squirt and sniff a bit. The doorman, growing nervous with the wind fluttering up her silk robe and Kathryn not bothering a bit to pull it down, offered to bring the dog back to the suite.

Kathryn shrugged, the morning sun a real son of a bitch, and elevatored up to the top floor. All along the hallway morning papers had been laid out, all clean and neat. Kathryn scooped up the first one she saw, tripping along to the presidential suite and scratching her behind a bit, yawning and stretching, the fat paper hanging loose in the palm of her hand, above the fold declaring U.S. WARSHIPS TO PROTECT CUBANS, and then flipping on over to see KIDNAPPERS’ NEST RAIDED.

And there she stopped and stood, mouth open, not even awake yet, to see a picture of her mother with Boss Shannon and dumb old Potatoes, who was fool enough to look right into the lens and smile. A smaller headline read, “Desperado ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly and Wife Still at Large.”

“Goddamn,” she said. “Goddamn.”

She threw open the door to the suite, flung open the curtains, nobody stirring in the big bed until she swatted George-still looking like a fool as Joan Crawford-who shot off his ass and reached for the gun, aiming at Kathryn’s heart.

“Cool it, Joan,” Kathryn said, throwing the paper in his lap. “The G’s got ’em. They raided the farm four days ago. They’re onto us.”

Louise stirred in the bed, complaining and tossing in the tangled sheets until she fell with a loud thud to the floor.

“Get dressed,” Kathryn said. “Both of you.”

“What gives?” Louise asked.

“We’re headed back to Texas to rescue my family,” Kathryn said, reaching for the pistol in George’s loose hand and then prying the mask from his face until the elastic broke from his thick neck.

“What’s that gonna do, Kit?” he asked, looking a lot uglier than Joan Crawford. “It’s too late.”

“The hell it is,” she said. “You brought my kin into this and now you’re gonna get ’em out.”

“Me and what army?”

“I don’t care how you do it,” she said. “Take your pecker out of your hand and make some calls to all those hoods that you brag about knowing. Call in some favors, make some bribes. I don’t give a good goddamn. Just get my momma.”

“Quit your crying,” George said.

“I’m not crying,” Kathryn said, knowing she’d started.

A toilet flushed, and Louise came startled from the bathroom, carrying her hatbox, already dressed with her hat all crooked. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.

Kathryn bit into her knuckles, still holding the gun. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. How’d they know?”

George didn’t say a word, keeping a fat finger running over the words in the news story and then turning the page.

“I said how’d they know?” she said.

George didn’t say anything for a few moments and then closed the newspaper in his lap. He looked up at Kathryn with the most confused of expressions as he asked, “Who in the hell is ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly?”

That was a hell of a thrilling conversation,” Doc White said. “You expected him to sing?” Jones asked.

“Well,” White said, turning to Jones on the steps of the Dallas County Jail, “if I were in that predicament, facing that long of a stretch, I’d be open to some straight talk.”

“But you’re not in that predicament.” Gus Jones affixed his Stetson on his head and squinted into the afternoon sun. A long shadow fell from the jail and sliced down the marble steps. “If it were you, you’d react a certain way. J. Harvey Bailey is a different breed.”