Ace Atkins - Infamous

And another, until letters littered the oil-stained floor.

Harvey sat down in a rickety chair and rested his head in his hands. Miller stood across from him, white-faced and still holding the Thompson. Dock Barker started to open every goddamn letter as if it were a letter from Momma.

“We just stole the goddamn mail,” Karpis said, and started to laugh. “What a hoot.”

“I don’t get it,” Dock Barker said, ripping open a couple more envelopes. “What do ya mean?”

“We got the mail, you idiot,” Harvey said. He lit a cigarette and leaned back into the hard chair, shaking his head. Karpis started to laugh like a maniac, looking more and more like a fella you called “Kreeps.”

George Kelly rubbed his lantern jaw, shrugged, and reached for the rye on the table.

But Miller clenched his teeth, dropped his machine gun on the floor, and kicked it to the wall, sending it spinning across the smooth concrete floor and shooting off a short burst of bullets.

“Take it easy, Verne,” Karpis said. “This stuff happens. Have a drink. Get laid every once in a while. I hear Vi’s screwing half of New York.”

Miller turned and came for him, reaching for Karpis’s throat and choking the ever-living shit out of the ugly bastard before Harvey and Dock could pull him off. Harvey had to reach a forearm across his friend’s throat and pull him back like a dog.

When Harvey felt Miller relax, he followed him into the back room they’d shared for the past week. He watched him pack his suitcase: a pressed shirt, two pairs of trousers, a regulation.45, and some fresh drawers. A rusty faucet dripped, hanging crazy and crooked from a back wall.

“Where you headed?” Harvey asked.

Miller shrugged.

“You know Karpis was talking out his ass?”

“He was telling the truth.”

“You don’t know that.”

“She can do what she wants,” Miller said. “See you ’round, Harv.”

He offered his hand, and Harvey shook it.

Harvey, wrung-out, walked back to the card table and sat down. Miller walked out of the back room and reached for the latch on the bay door, rolling it open.

A large car sat idling outside, headlights shining bright into the big garage.

Four men crawled out of the car, and they stood in loose shadows with shotguns hanging from their hands. Harvey started to stand, and Karpis put his strong hand on his shoulder. Barker stopped tearing into the envelopes, mouth wide open.

In the bright light-so bright you had to squint-Miller looked back at Harvey. He offered him a weak smile, walking outside and moving to the car’s backseat. A shadowed hand went on his arm, but Miller tossed it aside, getting into the car himself. Harvey could now see the car was a Cadillac as it backed into the alley and sped away. Verne Miller’s battered suitcase stood alone by the door.

“You goddamn son of a bitch,” Harvey said. “You called Nitti.”

“You know better,” Karpis said.

“You’re a goddamn liar.”

“If I were a double-crosser, you’d be with ’im,” Karpis said.

“I’m going after those bastards.”

“You want to be dead?” Karpis said. “Go ahead.”

Harvey stood and walked to a brand-new Ford parked sideways near the bay doors. He looked around the big garage and then back to Karpis. “Where the hell’s George?”

JONES STOOD AT THE CORNER OF ADAM AND HALSTEAD A FEW hours later. They’d pulled a white sheet over the dead policeman-a long-faced cop by the name of Cunningham-and before the man was hauled away, Jones saw he’d been mauled up pretty good. He’d figured it for a machine gun even before the women in the Essex had confirmed it, along with the other beat cop who’d been hit in the shoulder. Doc White stood over at the newsstand and spoke to a little runt of a fella who sold newspapers and movie magazines. The man was pointing to the bullet holes and shredded magazines, saying God had protected him with big stacks of the evening editions.

The newspaper boys had taken their pictures, asked their questions, and gone.

A few onlookers stood and watched at first light. But the streets had been cleared, the cars towed and the glass and metal swept up.

An hour earlier, he and Doc had been on Jackson Street, interviewing the bank messengers and the guards. They’d searched that Ford and found the smoke machine. In the Hudson, they’d found a first-aid kit and two boxes of.45 ammo.

The men had worn bandannas at the robbery, and no one at the wreck recalled much. The fella that owned the newsstand said he was pretty sure they weren’t colored.

“Kelly?” Doc White asked them as they walked back to their vehicle.

Jones nodded. “Fits. He’s here.”

“One of the women gave a description sounds a hell of a lot like Verne Miller.”

“What about Bailey?”

“Didn’t hear of anyone sounded like Bailey.”

Jones watched a city worker take a wrench to a fire hydrant and start hosing away the beat cop’s blood. “Lot of misery for a few sacks of mail.”

“Any other night could’ve been more ’an a million.”

“You want to stay here?”

“Only sure bet is the Arnolds.”

“What Colvin do with ’em?”

“Did like Kathryn Kelly asked,” Doc White said, striking a match and cupping his hand around a cigarette. The morning wind sure felt like fall. “Holed ’em up in the Shangri-La Apartments in O.K. City till she gets word.”

“Could they be tipped off?”

“Colvin was careful.”

As they walked to their car, a big truck with slatted wooden sides ambled up to the shredded newsstand, dropping off morning copies of the Tribune , local police blaming Kelly for the robbery and the cop killing. 10,000 LAWMEN HUNT “MACHINE GUN” KELLY.

Kathryn took a drink with George’s brother-in-law, Langford Ramsey-just calling him “Lang”-on the front porch of his bungalow in a fine Memphis neighborhood, right around the corner from Southwestern College. He had a fine car and a fine little wife and a fine job as a local attorney, George telling her twenty times that Lang was the youngest man in the state in practice. She liked Lang from the start after they’d rolled into Memphis that morning, dog-tired and muscle-cramped, and here this young boy and his wife had set their dining-room table with fried chicken and potato salad, iced tea, and lemonade spiked with gin. The lemonade just hitting the spot after they’d taken to the porch while George washed up and changed, expecting his sons at any minute.

“I’m so glad y’all are here,” Lang said.

He was a nice-looking boy, skinny and rich, a doughy face, but with nicely cut hair and beautiful manners. He called her ma’am, which annoyed her a bit. But he’d also blushed when she’d crossed her bare legs and lit a cigarette, and after their third lemonade he’d confided a bit about his wife, who was a restless girl from a good Memphis family who Lang said was under a doctor’s care for frigidity.

“Hell, just get her drunk, Lang,” Kathryn said. “Always works.”

“I like you,” he said.

“Back at you.”

“Your little girl is beautiful.”

“Yeah?”

“She was so helpful in the kitchen.”

Kathryn wanted to warn him to watch his valuables. But instead she just smoked and took in the smooth green lawns, blooming crepe myrtles still spotted from a morning shower, and the young oaks that had grown just tall enough to shade the street. Fallen leaves skittered down the streets in bright little whirls. You noticed those type things when you were a bit high.

“You have to realize we were all taken aback to hear from George.”