Infamous

“You think Sheriff Reed meant to kill him?”

“Gun went off while he was trying to set aim.”

Someone rapped on the pebbled-glass door, and a nameless young agent walked in and passed a typed note for Agent Gus T. Jones. “How ’bout we get you something to eat?” Jones said. “You like chop suey?”

“What’s that message?”

“This?” Jones said, adding the slip to the growing mound of paper on his desk. “Some detective in Fort Worth named Weatherford. I’ll call him when I get around to it.”

16

George drove Kathryn past all the old Saint Paul places, the Saint Paul haunts and whatnot, chattering on about The times they had, the nights they danced, and how all of it was coming around again, sister. The Boulevards of Paris nightclub. The Hollyhocks. Green Lantern Saloon, Plantation- George smiling like a bastard when they rode past the Plantation because he once screwed her there in a toilet stall-and then on to the big brick Hotel Saint Paul on St. Peter Street, where George said Leo Gleckman ran the show on the whole third floor, pointing out the floor like she couldn’t count from the bottom. Gleckman was Saint Paul, and the Kid ran Minneapolis, but sometimes those two Jews did business on each other’s turf, and in their ancient traditions this all made sense to them. But Kathryn said she could never understand trust between a couple of hoods. She’d met Gleckman once at the Boulevards of Paris, and about the only thing that struck her about the fella was the beautiful camel hair coat he wore and the ruby stickpin-big as a nut-pinned to his tie.

“Whatta you think?” George asked, pulling into the Hotel Saint Paul portico. “We get a suite?”

“We got enough?”

“Couple hunnard,” George said, looking in the rearview, with the back window obscured by pretty packages, hatboxes, and bags. “You sure can drop some coin.”

“I wanna go to the Hollyhocks tonight,” Kathryn said, slumped in the big Cadillac’s passenger seat, arms crossed over her breasts. “I want that Hollyhocks steak, cut an inch thick. Blood rare.”

“Fine by me,” George said. “Hell, I like steak.”

“I wanna wear the new dress.”

“It’s a hell of a dress.”

“I like red.”

“Red was made for you, sweetheart.”

“And the rings. The necklace I showed you at Cohen and Samolson?”

“We’ll get ’em tomorrow.”

“George?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you love me?”

“You’re the Little Wife, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

A nigger in a military-looking suit opened the passenger door and about scared Kathryn to death with his big toothy grin, her thinking about the rings and bracelets that she’d buy and plain forgetting they were parked outside the Hotel Saint Paul. He held the door open and called her ma’am in a voice that sounded just like a white person’s.

“Checkin’ in,” George said, with that movie-star grin he practiced sometimes in the mirror. “Kit, we got it. Why not enjoy it?”

“And tonight?” she asked, one foot out the door.

“It’ll all go according to Hoyle. Do I look worried?”

They took a room on the tenth floor-a suite, just like George promised-and when she threw open the drapes and unlatched the window she felt a loosening of the nerves, not unlike the way a good martini can loosen your legs a bit. George fetched his cigarettes while she looked down on Saint Paul, at all the rooftops and all those poor bastards punching the clock for some ungrateful fat man. Secretaries. Housewives. Maids. All of ’em suckers.

George was behind her. She could feel his heavy cigar breath on her neck and smell the cigarette burning in his fingers. The city still seemed foreign as hell, with the summer and all. Whenever she thought about Saint Paul, it froze her to the bone.

“You wanna try on those stockings?”

“Why don’t you wait, you goat.”

“I was just thinking-”

“Thinking what? That you’d get a poke because it’s Saturday? I’ve got to get my hair done. Put some paint on these nails. What do you say I call up the front desk?”

“That’s what you do in a joint like this,” George said, wrapping his big hairy arm around her small waist and pulling her into him, smelling her neck like a lion on a lamb. “You pick up the phone at the Hotel Saint Paul and it’s like rubbing up a genie. Whatever you want, it’ll be here.”

“Anything?”

“Go try it out.”

“George?”

The curtains ruffled in the hot wind and covered her face and eyes, and then there were rooftops much uglier than you’d think, splattered with tar and sprouting vents and hot steam and smoke. Never looked like this from the street. George kept on smelling her and burying his sharp whiskers into her ears. “Mmm?” he asked.

“Screw the Hollyhocks,” she said. “Let’s order dinner here. And a bottle of gin.”

“The day’s a waste without it.”

“I do love you,” she said, nodding to herself.

“ ’ Course you do. My little honey.”

“You call about the meet,” she said. “I hope it’s somewhere that I can wear that dress.”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

Kathryn moved from the curtains and across the open space of the suite, with the big brass bed all made up with big goose-down pillows and soft, cool silk sheets. She found a dressing mirror near the bath and studied her reflection for a bit. The way the long black dress hugged her hips and tits and made her shoulders seem strong and athletic. She unpinned the beret and shook her hair loose, and then found George’s hands on her again, unbuttoning the dress from around her waist. She kept her eyes on herself in the mirror as the dress dropped to a heap on the floor and she stepped from it in nothing but her silks and stockings, the new pair of shoes keeping her tall and high up on her toes. Her eyes met George’s in reflection, and her first thought was Goddamn, that monkey needs a shave, but she passed over the thought and imagined him as Gable or William Powell and not a Memphis bootlegger. She stretched her arms up over her head and, reaching backward, held him close.

George placed his burning cigarette in her mouth. And it was all like that, slow and steady, with the hot wind and bleeping cars from the open window, until they were sweaty and tired and lazy-boned in the silk sheets.

The phone rang, and George said “Yep” a couple times before hanging up.

“You ever heard of the Mystic Caverns?” George asked.

“What is it?”

“A club.”

“In some caves?”

“Cann’s place,” George said. “You can wear the red dress. He said look for the entrance that’s an ape’s mouth. Now, does that make a lick of sense?”

Kit flipped over on her stomach, nude as Eve, and rocked her legs up to her butt and down again in thought.