“I was big man on campus there.”
“Rah-rah.’ ”
“What’s eating you?”
George had a hard time getting settled into the new, smaller car, and about every other mile or so he’d have to tell her about it. Saying they should’ve never gotten rid of that big beauty and how they wouldn’t be having to go through all this mess in Chicago if she hadn’t been the one to go show up some salesman’s wife.
She crossed her arms across her chest.
“This is no fun at all.”
“I didn’t promise a rose-strewn path, sweetheart.”
“But if we got the money, you said we’d enjoy it. I ain’t had one enjoyable night since we left Saint Paul.”
“You were having fun last night.”
“Pull over.”
“What?”
“Pull over, you mug.”
And George slowed somewhere on Highway 20 in old Iowa, where the corn seemed to grow straighter and greener. And Kathryn held on to the Cadillac frame and stepped out on the running board, where she puked her goddamn guts out. George had a good guffaw at that, and she crossed her arms over her chest again and then leaned into the window frame, the sweet morning heat lifting the matted hair off her face, and she looked at all that goddamn corn, all those silos and cows. And, goddamn, she wanted to be back in the city again, at a proper hotel.
“I’m callin’ Louise.”
“Why don’t you just take out an ad? Or call up J. Edgar Hoover himself?”
“I’m callin’ Louise and have her meet us in Chicago.”
“You won’t call no one, not even your damn mother, till I say so.”
“Louise is fun. You can stay at the hotel and listen to
“She’s a rotten whore. She’s worse than a man.”
“No woman is worse than a man.”
“Bullshit.”
There was that rotten, goddamn silence in the Cadillac till they turned up north and could smell Lake Michigan from the open windows and finally caught a big break of solid, civilized road. George pulled off and let the top down, and they saw they were only fifty miles from the city.
“I’m calling her.”
“Do it, and I’ll break your hand.”
“You wouldn’t lay a finger.”
George rolled up his sleeves to the elbow and plucked a Camel into his mouth. He fished into the back for his matches, but Kathryn took a long breath and reached into her little jeweled purse for a lighter. “You always lose ’em, George. I don’t think, since I’ve known you, you have ever been able to keep a book of matches.”
“How we met.”
And there it was, a lousy smile on her face. She leaned back into the big, plush seat and stared at the wide, open blue sky. “Yes, George. How we met.”
There were people playing in the sand and sailboats way out in the lake. And she had George stop long before they ever reached the city. She pulled off her thigh-highs and tossed them away, running into the sand and touching her feet to the water. George followed, lace-up two-tone shoes in his right hand, smoking and sullen, and found a spot to park his ass. He watched some kids playing on a rickety boat and tossed the cigarette away.
When she’d had enough, feeling a bit more solid and straight, the car no longer up under her and purring and driving and bumping and jostling, she came back to George and parked her ass on over next to him. She laid her head on his shoulder, always knowing that would get to the bastard.
“Say, George?”
“Yeah.”
“You never told me who fingered Urschel?”
“You never asked.”
“Goddamn. Well, I’m asking now.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Well, why don’t you try me out?”
“What if I said it was Jarrett?”
“I’d say you’re a four-flusher,” she said. “Jarrett was Urschel’s buddy. If you used Jarrett, then how come you two dumb bastards took both of ’em?”
“Maybe, just maybe, it looked better that way.”
“Jarrett. Some laugh. Like I said, they should put you on the radio. If only you could sing.”
George picked up a handful of sand and let it drop loose and slow out of his fingers till there was nothing left but to brush his hands together and give the thumbs-up sign. “How do you think we knew when to grab Urschel? How come we knew they’d be on the back porch with the screen unlocked? You ever just figure that I might be pretty damn good?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“You wanna screw?”
“Is that all you want from me?”
“Pretty much.”
“Room service?”
“In spades.”
20
Charlie Urschel dressed at dawn, ate his breakfast in the house kitchen with a negro driver, with whom he discussed baseball and New Deal jobs, and found himself alone on the sunporch with a cold cup of coffee and a dying cigar. He relit the damn thing three times before he had the plug fired up again, and he sat there and smoked, paralyzed, as the early-morning heat seemed to radiate off Berenice’s rose garden, already buzzing with flitting bees. The insects tried to fly through the metal screen, bouncing off several times before understanding the constraints and moving on. Soon Betty joined him, pulling the newspaper from under his elbow and, without a word, thumbing violently through the pages until she found something of interest, and sat like an Indian on the porch floor, laughing to herself, until she turned and said, “You must have had a hell of a time, Uncle Charles.”
He turned to her and studied the young girl’s face.
“You showed those kidnappers a thing or two.”
He opened his mouth but closed it, thinking of nothing.
“Say, Uncle Charles? What happened to Bruce?”
“Special Agent Colvin.”
“Nuts. He’s Bruce to me. He’s just a silly boy in a tie.”
“What are you reading? The funny pages?”
“Society.”
“What’s so funny about society?”
“Hey, did you see this? Carole Lombard is getting a divorce from William Powell. Says right here ‘They just decided all of a sudden they couldn’t agree.’ Well, isn’t that sad?”
