“I don’t care for jail, Harv.”
“Jail isn’t my biggest concern.”
“Potatoes, you see those fellas behind the barn?” Harvey asked. “I want you to keep firing at them till we get the car turned around. Can you do that?”
Potatoes nodded.
“Good boy.”
“You ain’t gonna leave us, are you?” Boss Shannon said. “You cowards.”
“They’re goin’ for help,” Potatoes said.
“My foot,” Boss said. “They’re hightailin’ it out. You boys just try, and them cops will shoot your insides out!”
“I’m not dying in this place,” Harvey said.
“That’s what a man does.”
“Do I look like Davy Crockett?”
Verne Miller clutched the Thompson and held the handle to the back door. He looked to Harvey Bailey and waited a beat before snatching it open and running for the shot-up Buick, the ground under them seeming to disappear.
THE BUICK DIDN’T MAKE IT A HUNDRED FEET BEFORE THAT sharpshooting kid from the Oklahoma field office blew out two tires and the rear windshield. The machine came to a crashing stop into a heap of old wagons and mule plows, and Jones watched as two men climbed out a side door and went running into the rows of dead corn. Jones looked to Doc White and Weatherford, and they followed, Agent Colvin and the rest of the men turning to the house, where an old man with white hair and in overalls emerged from the front door, hollering, “Don’t shoot,” while carrying a small child. “Don’t shoot, we ain’t part of them.”
Jones was swallowed into the rows of corn, sunlight bleeding through the brown stalks, seeing the shadow of Doc White moving by his side. Without a word, Joe Lackey had taken a couple detectives with him to run the perimeter, where the gangsters would be flushed out. But soon there was another shadow to Jones’s left, and the image startled him for a moment before he realized the silent, hulking shape was Mr. Urschel.
The man was talking to himself, in such a low voice that Jones could not hear-or understand-what he was saying. But Jones suddenly became aware that Mr. Urschel had gone crazier than a shithouse rat.
The rows had been irrigated at one time, but now the earth was hard as stone, gullies dug crooked and without care, the parched cornstalks brushing against each other lighter than paper and dwarfing the noise from the farmhouse and burning barn. The air smelled acrid and burnt, more so in the heat of the day, cicadas gone wild in the trees, Jones feeling the sweat soaking his shirt and his hatband. He had to stop to clean his glasses, and, when he would stop, so would Urschel, almost in shadow of the old agent, and then they would move on deeper into the corn.
There was gunfire. Close.
And then more gunfire, men yelling.
Jones ran, trying to find his way out of the corn, but only finding more and more, turning to see he was alone now, Urschel and White gone. And now more gunfire came within the cornfield, and he turned and listened, but the shots hadn’t come from one direction but from all around him. He heard feet, the breaking of stalks, and Jones ran in that direction, suddenly finding himself out of the field and running alongside of it, seeing a loose group of men running for the main road, yelling and pointing, and Jones knew that someone had gotten away.
Another shot from the field, and Jones was back inside now, back in the heat and stalks and loose, lazily planted rows, catching his breath and calling for Doc, finding his knees with his hands and mopping his face and glasses again.
He saw a form at his feet.
“Doc?”
When he looked through the lenses, he stared straight into the eyes of Detective Ed Weatherford, who lay on his back, staring crazy-eyed and wide-mouthed up at the sun, as if paralyzed by its power. In death, Weatherford still looked as if he was waiting for the perfect moment to speak.
Jones held the Thompson and listened. He spotted some broken stalks-broken down fresh, where the insides still showed a bit of green-and he followed the trail, a wild zigzagging, deep into the heart of the planting, to where he saw the broad, sweating back and freshly cut hair of Charles F. Urschel, leveling his 16-gauge on a man who had fallen to the ground but held himself upright on his elbows with a broad smile.
Jones walked up behind him.
“I have him, Mr. Urschel.”
The man didn’t answer, only breathed hard out his nose, sweat rolling down from his hair and down into his eyes, making him squint with the sting of the salt.
“I have him.”
“No. No, it’s not.”
“Sir?”
Urschel lowered the gun and rubbed out the salt with his fists. “That’s not one of ’em. Who are you?”
The man, now flat on his back, lifted his hands in a small truce, laughing a little bit. The nervous laugh of a man trying to get a hold of the situation.
“Why, Mr. Urschel, that there is Harvey Bailey,” Jones said. “The gentleman bank robber.”
“Jones,” Bailey said. “Been a while.”
Jones took off his Stetson and fanned his face. He reached down with a right hand and hoisted Harvey Bailey from the hard earth. “Harvey, if a head bobs up anywhere around here, or another shot is fired, I promise I’ll cut you in two with this machine gun.”
23
George was no fun at all. Here he was in the stylish Hotel Fort Des Moines-a suite, no less-with a pile of dough, a new Chevrolet with fresh plates, and two of the hottest babes outside a Hollywood lot, and still he complained about being bored outta his skull. Kathryn had picked up her gal pal Louise at the train station that morning, her carrying a hatbox in one arm and Ching-A-Wee in the other, and they’d spent the day shopping and getting their hair and nails done before coming back to see old sad-sack George, lying on the big king-size bed in his boxer shorts, holding an unlit cigar in his teeth and reading the funny papers, probably
So what did the good wife do? She and Louise put on a little fashion show for him. Kathryn changed into a very stylish red dress with a shoulder cape, gauntlet cuffs, and a straight-as-straight skirt. Ching-A-Wee sat like a prince at George’s feet, yapping and barking with approval and all, because that royal dog had class.
George just grumbled and asked how much dough they’d dropped.
Louise picked out this queer green number to model, with wide, puffy sleeves and a big fat bow at the neck. She didn’t bother with the hat, only fussed over her shoes-soft, velvety slippers-turning in time to Duke Ellington on
