18
You remember ole Pedro Posado?” Doc White asked. He and Jones were about a thousand feet above North Texas, heading back to Oklahoma City, in a brand-new aircraft belonging to a buddy of Urschel’s, an executive with Sinclair Oil. White had to yell out the question on account of the single engine humming and shuddering the cabin. But, thank the Lord, it was blue skies today, making it easy work for Jones to check the rough terrain through a pair of binoculars.
“How could a man forget Pedro Posado?” Jones asked.
“What do you think drove him?”
“Meanness.”
“I don’t think so,” White said. “He was restless. All those Mexicans were restless back then, the government in collapse, everyone wantin’ a piece, thinking about putting beans on the table.”
“Nothing killed that woman but plain-out meanness,” Jones said, studying his hand-inked map and looking back out the oval window, following the natural borders-rivers and roads and fence lines-across the flat, dusty earth below them. It was a cloudless day, and everything from this altitude looked in good order.
“What was her name?” White asked.
“Conchita Ramirez.”
“That’s right. Conchita Ramirez. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear the screams.”
“I try and not study on the past.”
“Pedro ran into that drugstore when he saw us. Where was that?”
“Shafter.”
“He pulled a gun on you and-”
“Doc, can we pay attention to the matter at hand?”
“You recall the newspapers?”
“Called us ‘killers,’ ” Jones said.
“Hell, ole Pedro is the one who’d blowed her legs and hands off.”
“I was there. You don’t need to color a story when a person knows how it goes.”
“We find the boys who nabbed Mr. Urschel and we won’t have time to blink.”
“You don’t think I know that, Doc? What am I gonna do, offer ’em flowers first?”
“Verne Miller ain’t no Pedro Posado.”
“How do you know? Maybe Verne Miller is Pedro Posado’s long-lost cousin.”
“You see anything?”
“Nope.”
“How are you supposed to tell one shack from another?” White asked. “You know how many shacks with pigs and goats there are in Texas?”
“I know the layout.”
“And you know absolute this is the route of that airline? The one that didn’t fly in that storm?”
“It’s down there somewhere. The science’ll prove it.”
“Science? They’ll be long gone.”
“Leaving a trail. Like they always do. How’s this any different?”
They landed back in Oklahoma City three hours later, ears ringing as they shook hands with the pilot and trudged back to the borrowed car. Jones noted a man at the edge of the tarmac talking with Colvin. The man was youngish but didn’t dress like an agent. He had more the look of a local cop, with a dandy’s boots and a dime-store suit. Jones greeted them both, and Colvin introduced the fella as a detective from Fort Worth.
“You fly over Wise County?” the detective asked. The man was tall and bony, with giant slabs of teeth and the smile of a tent-show preacher or a roadside huckster selling snake oil.
“We did.”
“You find what you’re looking for?”
Jones shook his head. “Was getting dark. More to see tomorrow.”
“I sent you some messages.”
“Give that name again?”
“Weatherford.”
“I’ve been busy, Mr. Weatherford.”
“You’ll find what you’re looking for in Paradise,” he said.
“You sound like a preacher.”
“Just outside the town is a known hole-up for some Fort Worth gangsters.”
“You think they took Urschel? Because from what we know so far, this is too big of a job for some local boys.”
“They ain’t ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, like the papers say.”
“I never believe what I read in the papers,” Jones said, opening the door and placing his satchel in the rear of the car.
“Can I buy you ole boys a cup of coffee?” Weatherford asked. “It’ll be worth your time.”
Doc White joined the men at the car, but no introductions were made. Doc just stood there and hitched up his pants while Jones adjusted his hat brim, the setting sun in his eyes, Weatherford an inky cutout before him. “Doc, this fella’s from Fort Worth and says he’s done cracked the case.”
Weatherford crawled in back of the Plymouth and smiled. Jones didn’t like the way the bastard smiled, him watching Jones’s eyes in the rearview until they found a small diner just off Eighteenth Street.
On the table between them, Weatherford threw down a mug shot of a fella named George Barnes from Memphis, Tennessee. A bootlegger sent to Leavenworth in ’28 for running hooch to some Indians.
“You got to be pulling my leg,” Jones said.
THE FAMILY GATHERING TURNED INTO A DINNER PARTY, AND the dinner party to chaos. Charles F. Urschel’s nerves were on edge even after taking two strong drinks, before brushing his teeth and returning back downstairs. The staff had cooked up a wonderful meal of roasted quail with red potatoes and summer corn. Big Louise made a particular show of bringing out the platters and talking about how careful you had to be with those little birds’ wings or they’d just dry right on up. Water was refilled. Tea and coffee were poured. Kirkpatrick said grace at the end of the table and then raised his glass to Charlie, thanking those present for a job well done. And those present included the nervous young man on his immediate right, taking a seat by his stepdaughter, Betty, Charlie just hearing moments ago that she planned to take the federal agent to cotillion with her that very weekend.
“Thank you, Kirk,” Urschel said. “Miss Louise can outcook a gangster anytime.”
“What on earth did they feed you?” some society woman Charlie didn’t know asked from down the table.
“Humble pie,” Charlie said.
And there was laughter and toasts and the clinking of glasses. Miss Louise patted Charlie’s back with her fat hand and returned to the kitchen until called again, the door swinging to and fro behind her. But just as Charlie smiled over at Berenice and cut into his quail, the lights faltered and sputtered out. The air-cooling machine went silent, replaced by the sound of nervous laughter and talk. Miss Louise and some of the servant boys brought in candlesticks under their black faces and set them down the long, long table that Tom Slick had purchased on one of his trips to Europe.
