Nuts to that.
She checked her watch.
It was time.
WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG AT A QUARTER TILL SIX, GUS JONES picked up the receiver while Kirkpatrick paced the hotel room.
“Who’s talking?” asked a man with a raspy voice.
“Kincaid,” Jones said.
“This is Moore,” the man said. “You get my wire?”
“I did.”
“Well,” the man said, pausing, “are you ready to close the deal?”
“Should be, if I knew that I were dealin’ with the right parties.”
“You ought to know by now,” the man said. “Listen now and follow these instructions. Take a Yellow Cab, drive to the Hotel La Salle, get out, take the suitcase in your right hand, and start walking west.”
“I figured on taking the suitcase.”
“Who is this?”
“I’ll be there at six-twenty,” Jones said. “I have a friend who came up here with me-I figured on bringing him along.”
“Hell, no,” the man said. “We know all about your friend, we saw that fat old man on the train last night. You come alone and unarmed. You got me? We get wind otherwise and Urschel’s dead.”
The phone rang off and the operator came on the line. Jones hung up.
“What did they say?” Kirkpatrick asked.
“They spotted me on the train.”
“Hot coffee,” Kirkpatrick said. “I knew it. I just knew it.”
“Cool your britches,” Jones said, reaching for his suit jacket and slipping into it. He placed some.45 bullets in his pants pocket and checked the load in the cylinder. “I’ll be right behind you. Grab the bag and take a Yellow Cab to the Hotel La Salle. That ’s south from here. Once you get there, start walking west.”
“Which way is west?”
“Ask the doorman.”
Kirkpatrick nodded and felt for the.38 he’d tucked into his trousers. Jones looked at him and reached out for the gun with his right hand. Kirkpatrick took a breath and then passed it over.
“Just walk,” Jones said. “And don’t look back. Just keep walking till they make contact. I’ll be behind you. Give ’em what they want. Don’t negotiate and don’t try to be a hero. Just hand over the money.”
“And then what?”
“We pray these moneygrubbing bastards are honest men.”
YOU COULDN’T MISS THE SON OF A BITCH. IT WAS THE SAME AS watching a drunk man trying to walk straight; they do everything cockamamy. And here was Mr. E. E. Kirkpatrick, executive of Tom Slick Enterprises, trying to act normal. He strolled along the boulevard on a hot Sunday evening with that goddamn beautiful Gladstone grip. Kathryn even loved the color, a light butternut brown. She thought she could even smell the leather from the open window in the big Cadillac, scrunched down in the backseat that would fit four fat men, the Thompson she hocked her life to buy clutched in her arms in case there was trouble. Across the street, in a stolen Chevrolet, Albert Bates had a rifle poked out a side window. And George was in an alley, waiting for Albert to bump the lights, and then he’d move down Linwood Street, down that tony row of dress designers and shoe shops and hatmakers and a dozen places Kathryn wanted to visit, to make contact with the sucker.
She knew this would work out from the first time she’d read the Urschels’ wedding announcement. They went to Saint Louis or somewhere for their honeymoon and they both shared some children and all that tra-la-la. But what she read was “Come and get me.” Kirkpatrick wasn’t twenty paces from the hotel when he set down the suitcase and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Head skyward and cigarette upturned, he struck a match and glanced around him, lighting it, inhaling and taking in the scene.
Kathryn took a breath, waiting for fat-faced detectives with bad shoes and G-men with bullhorns and billy clubs to come out from the sewers.
But nothing happened as she watched the big, broad back of George, in a two-tone summer shirt and tie, wearing two-tone shoes and a fashionable Panama tilted into his eyes, strolling along in the opposite direction, growing closer to Kirkpatrick, who was trying to remain cool and low-key. She could almost see the bastard shaking.
George passed by the Cadillac, and, with nothing to it, gave her a wink.
Five feet from Kirkpatrick, George R. Kelly said: “I’ll take that grip.”
Goddamn, she loved him. She loved that smooth, honeyed way he gave directions.
Kirkpatrick was frozen, staring at him. Kathryn leaned into the window and poked the barrel of the gun out of the car, finger on the trigger, teetering over the edge so that nobody could see it even if they were walking close.
“Hurry up,” her husband said.
“How do I know you’re the right party?”
“Hell, you know damn well I am.”
“Two hundred grand is a lot of money,” Kirkpatrick said. She could tell his mouth was dry when his voice cracked a bit. “We are carrying out our part of the agreement to the letter. What assurances have we that you’ll do what you promise?”
“Don’t argue with me,” George said, nodding to a row of cars across the street. “The boys are waiting.”
“When can we expect Mr. Urschel home?” he asked. “I’m going back to the hotel to telephone his wife. What shall I tell her?”
“You
Kirkpatrick set the bag at George’s two-tone shoes.
George bent down and grabbed the handle, and as he reached for it Kathryn shuddered, tongue moving across her upper lip and tasting her sweat.
“Wait,” Kirkpatrick said. “
“He’ll be home within twelve hours,” George said, the suitcase in his right hand. “Now, you turn and walk back to the La Salle and don’t look back. Whatever you do.”
George remained on the sidewalk for a good ten paces and then turned back to the Cadillac, Kathryn crawling over the front seat into the driver’s side and cranking the big sixteen cylinders, both of ’ em watching Kirkpatrick till he disappeared from view. She pulled out onto Linwood and then down to Harrison Street and kept on going south till they found the highway, and she drove for a good six hours, white-knuckled and laughing, with a big, fat moon-a “lucky moon,” is what she’d call it-overhead. They only stopped for gasoline and oil, and a couple of sandwiches and pickles wrapped in paper, ice-cold Coca-Colas in small green bottles.
She never left the money. She kept it on her lap after she and George traded places with the driving. George’s Panama slipped back far on his head, big, hairy arm hanging out the window. The brand-new radio picking up some signals and then going out, hearing some news about that one-eyed flier Wiley Post making it around the globe but nothing at all about Charles Urschel. There was no music in this dusty, godforsaken land, only preachers and blithering morons talking about the Bible and healing and the road to happiness.
“We’re on that road right now, aren’t we, Kit?”
“You’re goddamn right.”
She smoothed her long fingers over the Gladstone, peeking every once in a while at the stacks and stacks of money, the scent of it making her mouth water. She smoothed it some more and rocked that bag back and forth.
A little past midnight, in some no-name town south of Wichita, George pulled into a motor lodge and rang for the manager. The manager was an old woman with a pinched face who said she sure was glad to get a nice
