Ace Atkins: Infamous

“More pay for less hours does not make a lick of sense to me,” Jarrett said. “But they say we don’t have a choice.”

“I have warned Betty, but she won’t listen to me about boys and their animal ways,” Berenice said. “A new one comes calling almost every day, like tomcats.”

“ Roosevelt means well,” Charlie said. “But you won’t see me wearing that goddamn NRA eagle on my breast.”

“You can be like that dry cleaner I read about in Muskogee,” Jarrett said. “He said the eagle was mentioned in Revelations and that he wouldn’t sign a damn thing with the mark of the beast.”

“I heard from a woman at the club that one young man tried to hide his in a popcorn box during a matinee movie show,” Mrs. Jarrett said, eyes on her hand and then cutting them over at Berenice. “It wasn’t even a romance picture. It had Tom Mix in it.”

“I’m not one for handouts,” Charlie said. “They can have their time with all this NRA nonsense until sharper minds prevail. Have you seen that film Gabriel Over the White House ? I know the idea of a president dissolving Congress is kind of screwy, but I’ll be damned if Walter Huston didn’t make a fine leader at that.”

“You aren’t thinking of getting into politics?” Jarrett asked.

“What did that boy want?” Berenice asked, hand light on her breast. “For her to touch it? My Lord.”

“Berenice, would you hush and get us all some coffee?” Charlie asked. “I’d like mine with a kick. Anyone else? Hell, no, I don’t care one bit for politics or much for government. Why are you two talking about popcorn?”

The porch had been fashioned from the rear of the mansion, screened in, with comfortable rattan chairs and ceiling fans to scatter away the midnight humidity and cigar smoke. The evening was a pleasant one in Oklahoma City, and the women quickly returned with a serving tray, china cups, and saucers. Hot coffee was poured, a little whiskey added, and Charlie began to flick cards around the table.

Berenice sat directly across him, Mrs. Jarrett flanked him to the right, and Mr. Jarrett to the left.

Berenice declared no trumps, and so the last game of the evening began with not much thought, the smoldering cigar burning down into Charlie’s fingers as he studied Mrs. Jarrett until she led with a ten of spades.

The radio played the orchestra from the Skirvin Hotel but soon signed off, and the weather and Ag reports began. Berenice walked to the cabinet and flicked off the RCA, and the couples were left with the soft evening sounds, a passing car or two, and there wasn’t a bit of notice when they heard a car pull into the drive by the garage behind their home, doors click closed, and soft, deliberate steps coming from the walk.

Charlie lifted his eyes from his cards to Berenice, and Berenice shifted in her chair as if the cushion had grown hot. Betty Slick hadn’t been home a half an hour and already suitors were driving by with a lot of teenage bravado, probably searching out pebbles to pelt her bedroom window.

Mrs. Jarrett played a jack, and her husband threw across a six.

Berenice met Charlie’s eyes with a smile, tossing across a king and winning the trick. He gathered the cards and made a notation on a pad beside him, taking a puff of his cigar, the tip glowing red, and smiling just as two shadows appeared before the screen door.

Men in dark suits and hats walked onto the porch. Both held guns.

The couples froze.

“Which one of you is Mr. Urschel?” the larger of the two asked. He had a square jaw and a thick neck, eyes obscured in shadow.

No one said a word.

“I said who’s Urschel?” the man said, with a calm force and without a bit of nervousness, casually holding a Thompson machine gun as if it were a Christmas ham. The shorter of the men, who wasn’t that much shorter, only slighter and leaner, held a revolver and kept a gun trained on Jarrett.

The last of the cigar smoke floated up from the glass ashtray, scattering into the ceiling fan as the big clock in the main house began to chime. Charlie could feel the blood rushing through his ears, thinking of that sorry bastard of a night watchman he’d fired only last week on account of him sleeping on the job and listening to Amos ’n’ Andy when he should have been out patrolling.

The chimes stopped.

“Okay,” said the large man. “We’ll take ’em both.”

Urschel stood.

Jarrett did the same.

The large man gripped Charlie’s arm with thick, meaty fingers, walking him to the door as if he were a common drunk being tossed from a party. But the man suddenly stopped as if reminded by his manners or by the interruption of a passing thought. He turned back to the women with a grin: “Ladies, don’t say a word or make a move toward the telephone, or I’m afraid we’ll have to blow your goddamn heads off.”

THE RIDE WAS FOREVER OR MAYBE TEN MINUTES, BUT FINALLY the damn car slowed and doors were thrown open. The driver-the large man-told Jarrett, without knowing his name, to get his ass out. The gunman who sat beside Charlie in the backseat nudged him in the ribs with the revolver and told him to be a good boy and stay put and shut the fuck up. The car had stopped at a dirt crossroads, and with the windows down Charlie could hear a baying hound and see flickering lights from a house a half mile from where the gunmen spoke to Jarrett.

The short one pulled a wallet from Jarrett’s pocket and thumbed through it. He lifted his head up to the other man and cocked it like a crow. Heavy headlights from the car seeped onto their heavy black shoes, and the big man with the big gun stepped forward.

“It’s not him.”

The other man picked out a wad of cash and tucked it into his own shirt pocket before handing Jarrett back his wallet.

“Now what?”

Charles F. Urschel counted the silence, feeling the ticking of his watch against his wrist. He could not breathe, not that he was a great friend to Jarrett, but he didn’t want to be a spectator to the man’s execution either. He reached for the door handle.

One of the men said: “Start walking, brother.”

Charlie let out a long breath.

And the gunmen turned and came for Charlie, but he wasn’t the least bit afraid, knowing they were going to hold him ransom just like that city manager’s son and that brewer from Minnesota and all the rest, so he let them go ahead and place cotton over his eyes and tape across the bridge of his nose and down between his eyebrows in the fashion of a cross.

He was led back to the car, someone pushing him down into the floorboard and telling him to be quiet and not move, and if they were stopped not to make a peep or he’d not only get himself killed but they’d go back for his family.

Charlie hadn’t opened his mouth since the sunporch.

The car fired up, and they rolled away, and Charlie bumped and jostled and closed his eyes, since there was no use keeping them open, but his mind racing all the same, the man resting his feet across his back like he was a stool, calling the driver Floyd. Soon he heard the pinging of rain across the hood and felt the car turn, thinking they were headed south but not knowing for sure as the men were silent. The whole thing made Charlie feel like a scolded child kept down and out of sight with close-lipped parents trying to teach him a lesson. The miles rolled and rolled, and he knew they were on a proper highway again.

As soon as the wheels had touched the smooth surface, the men began to laugh and laugh.

An hour later, they ran out of gas.

KATHRYN SAT AT A SMALL KITCHEN TABLE WITH A DETECTIVE from the Fort Worth Police Department named Ed Weatherford. She’d known Ed since she’d been married to Charlie Thorne, and Ed-a lean, rawboned boy with red hair and big teeth-had been such a good egg he’d made sure all of that mess went away real fast. The hell of it was that he’d only screwed her once, and that must have still resonated with him like some kind of tuning fork in his pecker because goddamn old Ed wore a rickety smile from the moment she’d opened her door after midnight and leaned into the frame just like she’d seen Jean Harlow do a thousand times.