beach and go dancing on the boardwalk at night. I wouldn’t mind doing a little fishing, too.”
“Before we do anything, we have to pay off the Cadillac.”
“Are you joking?”
“Do you have any idea of how embarrassing it is to get all those telephone calls and telegrams about falling behind on those payments? When we bought that big baby out there, we said we’d be paying by year’s end in cash. And now we have it, I want to march right into that dealership and tell ’em to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
“That won’t prove a thing, Kit.”
“You got that damn loan in the name of Boss and Ora! You said your name was Mr. Robert G. Shannon.”
“Would you shut up.”
“You shut up.”
George let out a long stream of smoke from the side of his mouth. He looked her over like he was appraising just how long she’d keep this gag running, and the decision didn’t take long as he rested his meaty fist on the table, cigarette burning down to his hairy knuckles, and nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay, Saint Paul to trade with the Jews and then down to Cleveland so you can play big-time with that two-bit car salesman. Say, I know why you want to do this. You didn’t like the way his wife treated you when we had dinner with them. When you told her about the kind of gowns you liked, and she laughed a little like she didn’t believe you.”
Kathryn nodded. “She was mean to Chingy.”
“That goddamn rat shit on her Oriental rug.”
“It was an ugly rug.”
A few truck drivers walked in through the glass door, a bell jingling above their heads. More bacon frying. More loose talk. Cigarettes and coffee. Hash and eggs. Kathryn picked up the
“Does it bother you that your name isn’t here?”
“Are you crazy? That’s pretty much the point, sweetheart.”
“It bothers me,” she said. “I read a story last week about Jean Harlow coming to Kansas City to visit her family. They had her picture on the front of the paper just because she came to town. Now, that’s something.”
“She’s a damn movie star with big tits.”
“I’m prettier.”
“Maybe,” George said. “But she’s known.”
“And now because of us that fat old man is the Federal Ace.”
“So what?”
“So, it must be nice.”
“What’s that?” George asked, grabbing his hat and tossing down some coin. “To get your picture in the paper?”
“For everyone to know you,” she said. “Look at ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd. He’s like some goddamn Robin Hood.”
“To hell with Floyd.” George stood, tipping the fedora’s brim down over his dark eyes as he frowned at her. “Let’s see him ever pull a job like this.”
“HOW ’BOUT YOU HANDLE KID CANN,” VERNE MILLER SAID. “THAT little Jew has problems with me.”
“About what?” Harvey asked.
“One night at the Cotton Club, we had a little talk.”
“A talk?”
Verne Miller shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. They were out of the Buick now-Harvey always preferring to buy or steal big, solid Buicks-and they walked in the falling sunlight of an abandoned farm close to the Iowa line. Harvey’s heel felt stiff and sore, and he had some trouble keeping pace with Miller’s strong, long-legged gait.
“The Kid made a pass at Vi,” Miller said, staring straight ahead. His blue eyes like ice. “He told her he’d like to place his pecker right between her titties and ride her like a mule.”
“The Kid said that?” Harvey asked, lighting up a Chesterfield and fanning out the match. “I don’t even know what that means. ‘Like a mule’?”
“He’d been drinking.”
“What’d you say?”
“I don’t know,” Miller said, shrugging again. “I didn’t say much. Just stuck a.45 inside his mouth and asked if he’d like to see how little brains he’s got.”
“He may hold a grudge.”
“You think?”
“I do, Verne,” Harvey said. “Things like that can stay with a person.”
The hot wind off the barren earth felt good on the men’s faces, and you could smell the hard earth and dust and dry land. The farm had a familiar old L-frame and a big red barn with a roof painted with the words MERAMEC CAVERNS U.S. 66 STANTON MISSOURI. The shadows were long and smooth across the rough-hewn boards, and the sunlight painted the side of the barn in a soft yellow glow.
“Vi’s got you wrapped tight, Verne,” Harvey said. “And don’t take no offense in this, but if you don’t watch your pecker, she’s gonna lead you right into a trap.”
“What’s a man to do?”
“Love.”
“Yeah,” Miller said with that cruel, twisted mouth. “It’s worse than the Spanish flu.”
“Now, take George,” Harvey said. “That’s another matter. He can’t even see the trap he’s in.”
“The pussy trap.”
“Snap.”
“You’re going to thieve their money, aren’t you?” Miller asked.
Harvey smiled and pinched the Chesterfield between his thumb and forefinger. He shrugged a bit and smiled again.
“You’re gonna get the Kid to switch out the cash on the bank job with Kelly’s dough, and we’re going to take it all.”
“You got a problem with that?”
“I don’t have any love for those people.”
The Buick sat in the slanting shadow of two big silos crawling with vines. A couple Ford tractors lay rusted and turned upside down in a gully. As the men stepped on the porch, they found a busted door held upright by an old padlock. A note from the bank ruffled in the wind.
“This country is turning to shit,” Harvey said, snatching the notice from the tacks and tossing it on the ground.
“Everything is turning to shit.”
“They took my gas stations,” he said. “They took goddamn everything.”
“Who?”
“Fat men.”
“Who?”
“Men who feed at the trough of our goddamn sweat.”
“You’re talking like a communist,” Miller said.
“Maybe I am.”
“Communism is for suckers, too.”
“What do you believe in, Verne?”
“Myself,” he said, his face not changing expression.
Harvey Bailey excused himself and walked along the beaten porch of the house, the wind making rattling noises through the broken windows. A door kept drumming with the shotgun wind, and every one of Harvey’s steps through the haunted guts of the home was counted until he reached the back stairs and walked out onto that wide expanse of cleared land, an old familiar path now grown up with weeds and destroyed and hidden. But he could
