Ace Atkins - Infamous

“IF KELLY IS KILLED,” CHARLIE URSCHEL SAID, “YOU’D BE a hero.”

“I made my way for twenty years trying to stay out of the papers.”

“The country needs something like this,” Urschel said. “Strong leaders. People are restless as sheep.”

“Folks follow money,” Jones said. “Always have. Greed is the root of it all.” Charlie Urschel turned away.

JONES CROSSED THE SMALL, SLOPED LAWN AND MET DOC WHITE, circling the house from around back. He was slow up the walkway and front steps, recalling the Paradise raid, trying the front door and finding it unlocked, a clear view of a big open room through to the glass cabinets of the kitchen. A small fella lay on the sofa, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in hand, and Jones was careful to open the front door slow and easy, while Doc touched the shotgun to the man’s nose and the man opened his eyes wide, frozen.

Bottles of bourbon and gin lay all around the house. Ashtrays overflowed. Jones spotted a copy of Master Detective wide open to a story called “My Bloodcurdling Ride With Death.”

Jones’s boots beat heavy steps on the wooden floor, and he waited any minute to hear gunshots. He walked along the hallway to find a bedroom door wide open and a nude woman, who lay tangled in a pile of white sheets. The first light of the day crossed the room and over the back and shoulder of Kathryn Kelly. A piece of her hair had caught in her mouth during sleep, her mouth slightly parted, eyes closed.

When he turned, a shadow crossed the wall, and Jones turned and raised his Thompson.

“THOSE MEN HUMILIATED ME,” URSCHEL SAID.

“Yes, sir.”

“It hasn’t been settled in my mind.”

“And won’t for some time.”

“Did Agent Colvin discuss with you my suspicions?”

“He did.”

“I made a mistake.”

“As us all.”

“Those people took Mr. Jarrett at gunpoint,” Urschel said. “I don’t want his personal conversations placed on phonographic records.”

“Mr. Hoover cabled that Mr. Jarrett should be left alone. Is that to your liking, Mr. Urschel?”

IT WAS KELLY, LOOKING HEAVY AND TIRED, HIS THICK HAIR bleached bright yellow. He stood not five paces away in the bungalow’s hallway, aiming a.45 at Jones’s chest. He wore only a pair of boxer shorts with red hearts.

“Drop that gun,” Jones said.

“I’ve been waiting for y’all all night,” Kelly said with a smile, as if he found the whole situation to be funny.

“Well,” Jones said, “here we are.”

Kelly stepped forward but did not lower the gun.

“DO YOU HAVE CHILDREN?” URSCHEL ASKED.

“No, sir. We wasn’t blessed with them.”

“When I received that letter from Kelly, I purchased pistols for all my children. I even gave Betty one to carry in her purse.”

“I never found that letter sincere.”

“I don’t let my children out of my sight.”

“I suppose that faith is the toughest part. Being a family man.”

“I don’t even trust my own safety. A shadow startles me.”

JONES INCHED HIS FINGER ON THE TRIGGER; JUST A LITTLE pressure would scatter the entire drum of bullets. He wondered if Kelly thought the gun was his own and that Jones had stolen it from him. He thought back on Paradise and then on Kansas City, Sheriff Otto Reed and those two dead city detectives lying like twin boys in the blood along the brick road.

Kelly just smiled down at Jones. Jones knowing goddamn well that Kelly thought it was kind of humorous being drawn by the much shorter, much older man.

“Are you the Federal Ace?” George Kelly asked.

“I’m Gus T. Jones of the Department of Justice. Now, drop your weapon.”

Kelly smiled some more, Jones hearing a stir in the bedroom and Kathryn calling for her husband to come back to bed. George chuckled. He lowered the.45 and placed it with a light touch on a sewing machine that had been pushed against a wall, covered with discarded rags and a fine dust.

It would take fifteen minutes before Kathryn agreed to put on some clothes. She emerged from the bathroom wearing a black dress that hugged her fanny and fanned out at her feet like a mermaid. As she was pushed into the Black Mariah with handcuffs on her wrists, Jones heard her say, “Officer, an agent of mine is returning from Texas shortly with all my furs and jewels and my Pekingese dog. Please make sure these are returned to me.”

George was sullen and silent. Jones only saw him grin once more after the arrest. The desk sergeant asked his name, age, and where he lived. “My name is George Kelly. I’m thirty-seven years of age, and I live everywhere.”

Harvey Bailey cut through Memphis without trouble, the bluffs falling away behind him, and he drove over the Mississippi River at dawn with a wide smile on his face, that gorgeous light hitting the muddy water and shining like gold across the Arkansas Delta like something out of the Old Testament. He had the window down, the air bright and cool, a full tank of gas, and a full satchel of cash beside him.

He nearly missed the roadblock.

Slowing, trying to remain confident. He rolled down the window and smiled.

Four coppers pulled guns on him. Harvey shook his head, held up his hands, and told them they were welcome to help themselves to what’s in the bag if they’d just let him pass through.

One of the coppers grabbed the bag and plunked it on top of the Plymouth, tossing out the thick stack of bills, reaching deeper to pull out magazines and a phone book and what looked to be kids’ undershorts and socks.

“You trying to bribe us with fifty-two dollars and some dirty drawers?” the copper asked. “You got some set of balls, Mr. Bailey. Now, put your goddamn hands up where I can see ’em.”

KATHRYN KNEW THE SCORE FROM THE MOMENT THAT SNOT-NOSEDkid pranced into the courtroom in a hundred-dollar dress and patent leather shoes. She wore a full-grown woman’s slouch hat, and told Flossie Mae-who held her hand down the aisle-to go and sit down and be quiet. Flossie Mae lowered her head and did what she was told. Geraline took the stand with a little jeweled pocketbook that Kathryn knew was just bulging with that money she’d switched. She nudged George in the ribs at the defense table, but he didn’t take any interest, sitting there in a nice suit with a dull smile.

They tried them together after convicting Bailey and Bates, Ora and Boss. Potatoes and the hot-money Jews from Saint Paul. Kathryn had tried to explain that George would’ve killed her if she’d tried to leave him. But all the saps were turning a deaf ear, the judge and the prosecutor just over the moon with the dumb kid who’d taken the stand, a real flavor of the month, with headlines across the country reading GIRL, 12, NABS “MACHINE GUN” KELLY.

Kathryn didn’t see how telling the G that they were in Memphis amounted to anything. But the Arnolds sure had put in for the ten grand in reward money, and already there was talk of a Hollywood movie, with the girl from Dora’s Dunkin’ Donuts in the role of Geraline.

The little girl sure as shit gave Kathryn the high hat when she finished telling her little tale of meeting while her parents were hitching, all the way through to the Fair and then down to Memphis. It was a real sob-sister act, and, as much as Kathryn hated it, she grinned to herself a bit when the rat walked past.

George never seemed to mind Kathryn telling a story of George being the brains behind it all and how he said he’d kill her and her family if she didn’t go along. He seemed to know this was all part of the game and even patted her goddamn hand when she returned from breaking down on the stand, remembering, of all the horror from their time on the road, what the big gorilla had forced her to do.