He wrapped his big arms around her and kissed her square on the mouth, not like the men in the movies but like he was kissing somebody to test his brute strength. The way a knucklehead slams his mallet in a carnival game. “Careful,” she said. “Don’t mess up my hair. I just had it done.”
“I love you, Kit.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“That’s a big backseat back there, how ’bout we break her in.”
She ran a finger down the loose part of his silk shirt and tipped the brow of his fedora back from those murky green eyes, the color of swamp water. “I thought we’d wait. You know. Just like people do before a wedding.”
“Wait till what?”
“When you get the money and we’re on the road.”
“Come on, Kit. I’m hurtin’ here. And we’re married already, or had you forgot?”
“No, I hadn’t forgot.”
He wrapped a meaty arm tighter and pulled her in. He reached up under her skirt and was feeling her between the legs and over the panties, and she wasn’t feeling in that kind of mood, but it took her, and she had to tilt her head back to catch her breath. “George?”
“You are a peach.”
“George.”
“I love you, sweet baby.”
The garage smelled of polished wood and kerosene and new oil just waiting to get burned up from here to Mexico. “George, I need you to do something.”
“What’s that?”
He pawed at her dress and pulled down a bra strap, pushing her up on the hood and getting himself good and settled between her legs. With a real gentleness that she could never believe a big man could achieve, he laid her flat on her back and put his mouth to her nipple.
“I want you to murder that son of a bitch Ed Weatherford for me,” she said, looking at the tin roof. “He’s onto us, baby.”
George stopped and stepped back a few paces, shaking his head. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“George, be a gangster. Really.”
He shook his head.
Kathryn righted herself up onto her elbows and pushed herself off the Cadillac, fingering up her top and smoothing down the dress over her long legs. She reached into George’s shirt pocket and grabbed some Luckies, lighting the match off the mug’s chin.
She blew some smoke and shook her head.
His mouth hung open.
“You’d rather I do it?”
“I didn’t say that,” George said. “But that’s not in the plan.”
“Plan’s changed.”
“Just ignore him.”
“Then he’ll really be gunnin’ for us.”
They heard a car’s motor from down the road and then all of Boss’s guineas out there, raising hell and making that high, dumb guinea call. George cracked the barn door and told Kathryn to stay put. He peered out as she smoked and thought about different ways to kill that bastard Weatherford.
“Whew,” George said, closing the garage. “Thought it might be the law.”
“Who is it?”
“Harvey and Verne,” he said. “Ain’t that somethin’? Hope they brought something to drink.”
Kathryn shook her head and put out the cigarette with the toe of her high heel made of soft white leather. She made a fist with her right hand and rapped on George’s forehead as if it were a front door to an empty house.
9
Harvey Bailey eyed the golf ball, lined up the drive from the hogpen, and aimed for Boss Shannon’s old barn to the north. He still had a bad limp, the bullet out of him and wound stitched up crooked, but they’d lugged the set of clubs all the way from Kansas City and it would’ve been a shame not to play. This being the first time he’d a chance to use them, with all the shooting and bank robbing getting in the way of some solid sport. He took a breath and loosened his shoulders and smacked the ball right in the sweet spot, feeling it down to his toes as the ball went skyward and dropped damn near the mouth of the barn, sending some worried guineas up in a flurry of feathers. “Beat that, chump.”
Miller plopped down a ball. He was shirtless, wearing the tailored pants he’d had on for days and the handmade wingtips. His upper body was corded with muscle like a fighter’s, with skin as white as blanched paper, turning pink in the morning sunshine. He took a few practice swings and sent the ball up and away, and it disappeared somewhere over the weathered barn.
“I say the barn door is the hole,” Harvey said.
“Fine by me.”
“You want to get a posthole digger?” he said. “I could get a stick and a rag.”
“Sure.”
“The Shannons seem a bit jumpy, don’t they?” Harvey said, hoisting the bag up onto his shoulder and limping toward the barn. A bony coonhound loped after them like a spectator to the sport.
“Boss especially.”
“You think he wants us to leave?”
“Could be,” Verne said. “How’s the leg?”
“Walking helps,” Harvey said. “Wound’s healing clean, no thanks to that damn butcher who sewed it.”
He dropped the bag and chose a number two iron, spying a cat sitting atop a mule plow. The big tom paid the men no mind as it hiked its leg skyward and started to lick its balls.
“I knew a man in Lansing who could do that,” Harvey said. “Or claimed he could.”
“A man can learn lots of things in prison,” Miller said. “I’d rather hang than go back.”
“How’s Vi?”
“Scared.”
“She want you to come up there?”
“Sure,” he said. “ Brooklyn isn’t her kind of place.”
“You trust those people?”
“I did a job for them and, oh, well, they owe me.”
“And she understands?”
“Vi understands. Always has.”
“You love that woman, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“You gonna marry her?”
“When all this ends,” he said. “Get ahead a little.”
“When does this stuff ever end?” Harvey asked. “I got out before this country went in the toilet. That’s what happens. You try and go legit, get into some corny business like filling stations, and then the world shits on you. Take what you can get when you can get it.”
“One more score,” Verne said. “Something big for us both.”
“Verne?” Harvey said, setting the ball right for the big tom. “I don’t know how many different ways to say it.
