street. Charlie felt his heart hammering in his chest, his mouth dry, and felt the slickness of his hand on the door handle.
But he did not move. His muscles had frozen.
“Deceit,” Charlie said, smoking on the cigar, getting the burn to go real quick, and stopping for a moment to pick tobacco from his tongue. “You cannot come into a man’s house, eat his food, drink his liquor, and then stab him in the back.”
Betty grew quiet and they sat in the Packard for a long while, Charlie watching the streets and spotting men he knew-friends from the club, salesmen who dropped by his office peddling useless wares, Masons with their secret handshakes and antique codes-walk along the familiar route. Shadows slanted, long and soft, with a hazy summer weight.
He smoked down the cigar until he felt it burning into his flesh, feeling the ropes and chains, tasting that goddamn rusted water in his mouth.
“He did no such thing,” Betty said. “He was a gentleman. He does not touch liquor.”
The garish Buick rolled out of the garage and headed down Sheridan, out of sight for a moment, and Charlie reached over and mashed the starter and told Betty to just drive.
“He is a liar,” Charlie said, muttering to himself. “A goddamn thief of my time.”
Jarrett turned south on Gaylord, and Charlie motioned for them to follow. Jarrett doubled back on Reno, well out of the way for a man who should be returning to his family north of town, and then drove flat-out fast, heading east for miles.
The Buick dipped south on Pennsylvania into the Stockyards, and with the windows down in the summer heat you could get a good whiff of the stale hay and fetid cow shit, and Charlie figured Jarrett was about to have what they called “a meet” with some square-jawed hoodlum to divvy up money made as cowards with guns. They would play cards and drink homemade liquor and laugh about all the suckers in the world.
The Buick rolled on, and Betty mashed the brakes hard as a long trailer filled with cattle blocked the road, away from the holding pens, where you could hear the confused animals trying to communicate, shuffling and bumping into one another, their dumb heads sticking out of broken slats in the fence.
Charlie hit the dash and cursed, and then noticed Betty staring and apologized for his indecency.
“Drive me home.”
The Packard idled.
“Betty?”
He turned to see his niece with her head in her hands, her delicate sunburned shoulders shaking. He put his hand on her small arm.
“What?”
She didn’t answer, just tapped her patent leather shoe from the brake and gently touched the accelerator.
“I won’t hurt him,” Charlie said. “But he must know I’m not a fool. Don’t ever let a man treat you as a fool.”
“Bruce is a fine man. He’s such a fine man.”
She drove slowly for several blocks, under the shadow of a train trestle, until Exchange Street ended, and they were surrounded by a loop of railroad tracks, a turnaround for cattle cars. Charlie just stared, facing the dead end, tossing his spent cigar into some high weeds littered with the broken glass and burned oil drums of derelicts and bums, the losers of this world.
“Which one is Bruce?”
“I APPRECIATE YOU TAKING ME OUT OF THE CELL, MR. MANION.”
“Figured you’d like a change of view, Mr. Bailey.”
“Appreciate the coffee, too.”
“I do brew a fine pot,” Deputy Manion said. “Helps keep a man regular. Although I like to put away a bowl of cornflakes if I know I’m gonna drain a whole pot.”
They sat across from each other on either side of Manion’s old, battered wooden desk. Manion leaned back in a creaky old chair, scuffed-up old boots crossed at the ankle while he smoked a thin cigarette and slurped his coffee. Behind him, Harvey saw one of those old pendulum wall clocks, swinging back and forth, marking the hour past ten at night. A trusty was mopping down the long hallways and into Harvey’s old cell, the sheriff having decided to move Harvey up to the death cell on the tenth floor. The penthouse suite for the worst criminals, awaiting a hangman’s noose and trying to evade a lynching.
The death cell hadn’t seemed that much different from any other cell he’d ever seen. A bunk, a sink, and a commode. But the papers sure had a field day with the new home of notorious gangster Harvey Bailey, the mastermind behind the Urschel kidnapping and the Kansas City Massacre.
“So how’d you come into robbing banks, Mr. Bailey?”
“Well, Mr. Manion, I’m not going to mention any particular job.”
“Of course.”
“But I would say that robbing banks sure beats having a boss man.”
“You said it,” Tom Manion said, thumbing at a nostril and breathing in a big ole cloud of smoke. “If Sheriff Smoot knew you and I was in here chawin’ the fat, I’d be the one he’d be stringin’ up.”
“What kind of man is Sheriff Smoot?”
“He’s political. Fat-bellied and cowardly. To speak in a direct manner.”
“Is there any other way?” Harvey asked.
Manion put down the coffee cup and rested his arms across his fat stomach. He yelled down the hallway to the trusty to make sure he unplugged the commode that had made such a mess.
“You must’ve gotten on the man’s bad side,” Harvey said, taking a sip of coffee, checking out the row of keys over Manion’s head, already noticing the door to the stairwell had a thick lock. The only other ways down were by elevator or to jump six stories.
“No man likes to be recognized for what he is,” Manion said. “He knows I know, and that’s why he put me here on this shit detail.”
“You ever think of running against him?”
“For sheriff?” Manion asked, and cracked a smile. “Shoot…”
“Why not?” Harvey said. “Seems like a man with your record against the Spanish and all your service to Dallas would be quite an asset.”
“Mr. Bailey, please don’t take no offense,” Manion said, thumbing at his nostril again and flicking away what he’d found. “But you sure don’t know how these elections work. A man don’t get elected for being the most qualified. And I’ll hold you right there ’cause I’m not sayin’ I’m the best man for the job either. What separates any elected official is one thing you seem to know real well.”
“Money.”
“You are damn right, Mr. Bailey,” Manion said. “You know that’s what greases the ole wheels.”
Harvey stubbed out his cigarette. Manion leaned his fat ass forward and tossed him the whole pack. He got out from the chair with a big heave, pulled the coffeepot from the burner, and poured Harvey another cup.
“Want some sugar?”
“No, sir.”
“You don’t need to be
“The papers already said I’m convicted. They say I killed all those men in Kansas City, too.”
Manion sat back down in his creaky old chair, flipped his old boots back on the edge of the desk, and found another cigarette. Harvey noted the edge of the desk had become smooth and worn with familiar heel marks. That wall clock’s second hand inched forward again in a herky-jerky jump of time.
The negro trusty walked back from the jail cells holding the wet mop, and even over the fresh scent of tobacco and coffee you could smell the toilet all over him and his wet hands and striped jail shirt and trousers. Manion looked at him and finally nodded in a haze of cigarette smoke, and watched as the negro wrung out the mop and pressed the button for the elevator.
Another sheriff ’s deputy rolled back the cage and let the trusty inside.
The cage door snapped shut, and the elevator headed down.
