“We was a gang in Lansing,” Clark said, more of a mumble than words. And Harvey watched him go over and over that dirt line like he had to convince himself that it was there.
“I need a bath,” Harvey said. “I need a cigar, a fresh change of clothes, and to get this bullet out of me. I need a woman. But what I don’t need is a bunch of monkey business and horseshit.”
Verne Miller drew a gun.
“Go ahead, you sideshow freak,” Underhill said.
“Come on,” Harvey said.
Miller kicked the cash and coin into the fire, and the money started to smolder and burn. He clenched his jaw and slid the gun back into his belt. Sparks flew up from the little campfire, and Clark and Underhill didn’t move, mouths open, until it all registered into their small brains, and Underhill reached his hand into the smoldering money and pulled out charred bills, yipping and blowing on his fingers, until he thought he’d felt the weight of four grand and backed away from the sparks and heat.
He clutched the money to his chest and called Verne Miller a crazy son of a bitch, and Miller just kind of smiled at him and shrugged. Clark and Underhill counted off the money and gathered their things.
“No hard feelings,” Harvey said.
“I don’t take issue with you, Harv,” Underhill said. “You broke us out and a man don’t forget somethin’ like that.”
Harvey shook both men’s hands, agreeing on a Joplin pool hall to make contact, and Underhill and Clark drove off quick into the darkness and far down the meandering open road.
“Did you have to go and do that?” Harvey asked. “I think you hurt Mad Dog’s feelings.”
“Yes.”
“Because they called you a liar?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a hard code, Verne.” Harvey got down to his knees and counted out the money that hadn’t been burned up.
“How’s that heel?”
“Bleeding like a bastard. I’m cashing out of this shit. I’m done.”
“How much you got squirreled away?”
Harvey didn’t answer, as he turned his back to Miller and kicked dirt over the fire until it was just smoke off the ashes.
“I’ll drive,” Verne Miller said, already headed to the Buick. “Where’s that farm you told me about? Kit Kelly’s folks’ place?”
“Town called Paradise.”
7
Berenice Urschel was gone. According to the maid, she’d been seen climbing out a second-story window and shimmying down a rose trellis before making a break for the garage. A couple newspapermen saw her get in a Hudson touring car that sure looked a hell of a lot like E. E. Kirkpatrick’s machine, although no one seemed to note the man behind the wheel. And so Jones stayed up waiting till damn-near eleven o’clock, like an old father worried that his daughter might lose her virginity in the heat of a summer evening. He was standing in the drive by the garage when they finally rolled back to the mansion, dimming their lights and crawling from the Hudson with long faces.
“Good evening,” Jones said.
“We couldn’t take the chance and tell you,” Kirkpatrick said.
“Tell me what?” Jones asked, Berenice Urschel not yet looking him in the eye.
“They asked for five thousand dollars and not to tell a soul,” she said, soft-like. “They said they’d bring his watch to prove it.”
“You get the watch?” Jones asked.
Kirkpatrick plucked his hands into his trousers and pulled out a wrist-watch, handing it to Jones.
“Ain’t even a watch,” Jones said. “The damn hands have been painted on.”
“We couldn’t take a chance,” Berenice said. “You’d have stopped us.”
“I wouldn’t have stopped you,” Jones said. The evening was alive with a radio’s music coming from a neighbor’s window, and crickets, and the continuous clicking from newspapermen on the dewy lawn, hammering out editorials on the kidnapping and updates on how Charles F. Urschel, Oklahoma City oilman, was still in the hands of the kidnappers, federal agents baffled.
“Makes you angry, don’t it?” Jones said.
Berenice walked past Jones and onto the worn path the kidnappers had taken and through the screen door of the back porch. The door slammed, and she sat in a chair with the lights off and just stared out into the empty darkness.
“The less said-” Kirkpatrick said.
“I don’t intend to punish the woman,” Jones said. “But five thousand is a lot of money.”
“They only got a thousand.”
“What did these chislers look like?”
“I don’t know,” Kirkpatrick said. “I drove her out to the corner of Broadway and Main. They told her to come alone, and so I let her out. She went into a chop suey joint called the New Bamboo right next to Branson’s cigar shop.”
“You see anyone leave the place?”
“They must’ve taken a back door,” he said. “When Berenice came out, she was crying. They’d taken her pocketbook and handed her that fake watch.”
“They rough her up?”
“Just scared her to death.”
The men heard the telephone ring from inside the Urschels’ house. A servant appeared on the back porch and called to Mrs. Urschel in the darkness. After a while she emerged through the porch doorway and walked to the men, the sadness replaced with the woman gritting her teeth. “The language. I can’t even repeat what I was just called.”
“Who?” Kirkpatrick asked.
“That filthy bastard who took my money,” she said. “He had the nerve to call here and complain that I shortchanged him after he didn’t produce Charles’s watch. I am just a fool. An absolute fool.”
“No, ma’am,” Jones said. “I’d say that filthy bastard’s the fool. We can find out right quick where he made that call and get your money back.”
“Vultures,” Kirkpatrick said. “Parasites.”
“Opportunists,” Jones said. “You mind if I take that watch, ma’am?”
THE PAIN HAD BECOME FAMILIAR AND AT LEAST BEARABLE. Charlie would sit in the same position for hours, back to the wall, left arm stretched up in chains to the high chair, listening to the sounds of the farm, for most surely it was a farm, with the rooster and goats, a pig or two, the squeak of an old well, and an old tin cup presented to him with water that tasted of minerals and rust. They did not talk to him, although he tried. He’d comment on the day and the time and how things were awful hot, but there was only the unlocking of the chain and movement to another section of the house, away from the sun, away from the west, and to another part of the old shack, with the creaky floorboards and the smell of dirty clothes and dirty dishes and pig shit.
That morning he’d been given a breakfast of canned tomatoes and canned beans with a tin of cold campfire
