Ace Atkins - Infamous

The death cell hadn’t seemed that much different from any other cell he’d ever seen. A bunk, a sink, and a commode. But the papers sure had a field day with the new home of notorious gangster Harvey Bailey, the mastermind behind the Urschel kidnapping and the Kansas City Massacre.

“So how’d you come into robbing banks, Mr. Bailey?”

“Well, Mr. Manion, I’m not going to mention any particular job.”

“Of course.”

“But I would say that robbing banks sure beats having a boss man.”

“You said it,” Tom Manion said, thumbing at a nostril and breathing in a big ole cloud of smoke. “If Sheriff Smoot knew you and I was in here chawin’ the fat, I’d be the one he’d be stringin’ up.”

“What kind of man is Sheriff Smoot?”

“He’s political. Fat-bellied and cowardly. To speak in a direct manner.”

“Is there any other way?” Harvey asked.

Manion put down the coffee cup and rested his arms across his fat stomach. He yelled down the hallway to the trusty to make sure he unplugged the commode that had made such a mess.

“You must’ve gotten on the man’s bad side,” Harvey said, taking a sip of coffee, checking out the row of keys over Manion’s head, already noticing the door to the stairwell had a thick lock. The only other ways down were by elevator or to jump six stories.

“No man likes to be recognized for what he is,” Manion said. “He knows I know, and that’s why he put me here on this shit detail.”

“You ever think of running against him?”

“For sheriff?” Manion asked, and cracked a smile. “Shoot…”

“Why not?” Harvey said. “Seems like a man with your record against the Spanish and all your service to Dallas would be quite an asset.”

“Mr. Bailey, please don’t take no offense,” Manion said, thumbing at his nostril again and flicking away what he’d found. “But you sure don’t know how these elections work. A man don’t get elected for being the most qualified. And I’ll hold you right there ’cause I’m not sayin’ I’m the best man for the job either. What separates any elected official is one thing you seem to know real well.”

“Money.”

“You are damn right, Mr. Bailey,” Manion said. “You know that’s what greases the ole wheels.”

Harvey stubbed out his cigarette. Manion leaned his fat ass forward and tossed him the whole pack. He got out from the chair with a big heave, pulled the coffeepot from the burner, and poured Harvey another cup.

“Want some sugar?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t need to be sir ing me yet,” Manion said. “Wait till you get convicted.”

“The papers already said I’m convicted. They say I killed all those men in Kansas City, too.”

Manion sat back down in his creaky old chair, flipped his old boots back on the edge of the desk, and found another cigarette. Harvey noted the edge of the desk had become smooth and worn with familiar heel marks. That wall clock’s second hand inched forward again in a herky-jerky jump of time.

The negro trusty walked back from the jail cells holding the wet mop, and even over the fresh scent of tobacco and coffee you could smell the toilet all over him and his wet hands and striped jail shirt and trousers. Manion looked at him and finally nodded in a haze of cigarette smoke, and watched as the negro wrung out the mop and pressed the button for the elevator.

Another sheriff ’s deputy rolled back the cage and let the trusty inside.

The cage door snapped shut, and the elevator headed down.

“How much do you figure?” Harvey asked, leaning back into his seat.

“For what?”

“To be sheriff?”

“More ’an I got,” Manion said, laughing, his belly shaking his resting hands.

“But let’s say a fella wanted to throw his hat in the ring. What would you need to get started?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know.”

“Your best guess.”

“I don’t know.”

“Ten grand?”

“Ten thousand dollars?”

“I’m not talking chickens.”

“And just how would a fella come into that kind of luck?” Manion asked, his lips curving into a smile. The dumb bastard not even able to fake surprise. Not in the least. He was licking his cracked lips as he spoke.

“But if he did?”

“For ten thousand dollars, I’d ’spec a man could become governor of Texas.”

“I might know how to arrange something like that.”

“And why would you do that for me, Mr. Bailey?”

“For the good of the community.”

“Might I ask how a fella like you’d be privy to those kind of funds?”

“No, sir.”

Manion nodded, standing and stretching. He put a fist to his mouth to stifle a yawn. He opened the glass face of the clock, studied the timepiece he took from his pocket, and fingered back things about five minutes. He paced and smoked. He walked down the hall, leaving Harvey for a good five minutes while inspecting the work of the trusty.

“All goddamn niggers are lazy,” Manion said. “Still a mess.”

He reached for the telephone on the desk and called down to have the trusty sent back up to the sixth floor.

“When’s Sheriff Smoot up for reelection?” Harvey asked.

Manion sat at the end of his desk and stared at Harvey’s face to the point that Harvey felt the seat had grown hot, and he shuffled a bit. He just watched the man until life and blood and thinking returned, and Manion just nodded with his thick, fat neck.

“A man could run some kind of fine campaign with that,” Manion said. “Would do this community a lot of good. A lot of good.”

Kathryn had been knocked up by a goofy, redheaded son of a preacher the summer she’d turned fourteen. A boy she hadn’t given two thoughts about, but she had agreed to go with him to a nearby creek only after he’d asked her about a hundred times following those two-hour sermons. He hadn’t been too bad looking ’cept for that goofy old red hair, and in Saltillo he sure had been somebody, already applying to Bible college and wearing mail-order suits on Sunday while he strolled the rows, passing the collection plate. Studying back on it, Kathryn had to admit it was the collection plate that maybe did it. The church had two of them, and they’d been gold-plated, with red velvet bottoms, and when that dumb boy would stand at the row, waiting for the change and crumpled bills-crumpled so no one knew who was being cheap or too boastful, because, if you boasted on it, the preacher told you there wasn’t no reward in heaven-the boy would grin at her like her Sunday dress was made of gauze and he could see right down to her cotton panties. So here comes this lazy Sunday, sometime in the heat of the summer, just like it was now. Maybe that’s why Kathryn thought of it now, sipping lemonade and smoking a cigarette on her blind grandma Coleman’s porch, remembering them sneaking around the corner of the white clapboard church, cotton fields as endless as the ocean ’round them, him handing her a Fatima cigarette, while his daddy stood on the front steps and clasped men’s hands with two of his and complimented women on their silly, ridiculous, cheap hats, and would tear up at word of someone coming down with diphtheria or the piles.

The boy, who was only a couple years older, held the match under the Fatima and mentioned that it was a “fine ole day for a swim” and asked why didn’t she quit being such an old scaredy-cat. Oh, hell, how that had done it . Nothing could get Cleo Brooks-thinking of herself as another person back then-all steamed up like someone telling her that she was chicken. And so she’d shrugged, and said she just hoped he didn’t drown because she wasn’t gonna take the time to save him.