Infamous

“May take a couple days.”

“Them federal men want you up in Oklahoma City something fierce, already moved the Shannons. The sonsabitches complained about our ability to keep you locked up.”

“The nerve.”

“Couple days, huh?”

“Yep.”

“If I were you, I’d set my mind on Monday.”

“Why Monday?”

“It’s Labor Day, hadn’t you heard? Every deputy in the department asked for time off.”

“I’ll need a gun, too.”

Manion reached over and hit the ON button, the elevator jerking hard up out of the still space, knocking Harvey off balance, and heading up to the tenth floor and the death cell. Manion didn’t say anything till they stopped and the door slid open to a hollow and silent floor, wind whistling around the building. “I like a man who knows what he wants.”

“We got a deal?” Harvey asked.

“Long’s as you understand the terms.”

KATHRYN BANGED THE EARPIECE AGAINST THE PAY TELEPHONE a half dozen times before hanging up, snatching up some loose dimes into a fist, and walking back to the drugstore counter. She saddled up on a revolving stool and ordered a Dr Pepper float, raking dimes back into her purse, and looked at herself in the old-fashioned mirror, deciding the red wig didn’t look half bad, even if the frock was something she bought off the rack at the five-and-dime.

Coleman. She hadn’t been in this town for years and didn’t expect anyone to remember the gangly little teenager who moved there with Ora, the one with the baby on the tit at those church suppers and revival picnics. Ora’s little girl. Ma Coleman’s granddaughter, who’d gotten in so much trouble in Mississippi she had to move to Texas for a little reformation. If she recalled, which she didn’t care to do, there had been an old hotel not two blocks right from where she sat, where she’d first caught the eye of traveling salesmen, who would open up their wallets and buy her flowers, Kathryn having to explain to them that roses smelled real nice but only jewelry got the drawers on the lampshade.

But even her sweet voice hadn’t moved old Sam Sayres, attorney at law, on the telephone. She’d used her breathless voice, trying to play sexy with him a bit, the bastard acting coy, like he didn’t know who she was when she called herself “his best girlfriend.” “And which one is that?” Sam Sayres asked. “The one with the Pekingese dog,” she’d said.

He’d asked for her number and said he’d call her back.

A half hour later the pay phone in the drugstore had rung, and there was Sam chewing her ass out for being so almighty stupid as to call him at his practice, and Kathryn saying, “Where am I supposed to call, your barber?” And then regretting it because besides being a fat tub of shit, Sam Sayres was as bald as a cue ball.

“You got to get up to O.K. City, Sam,” she’d said. “Today.”

“A trial like this costs money, darling,” he said, not flirting but talking down to her like she was still that teenager combing the hotels for sugar daddies.

“I don’t care about Boss or Potatoes,” she said. “They can get cornholed in the showers, for all I care. But you said you’d take care of my momma.”

“You haven’t delivered what you promised,” Sam had said, finishing it off with “darling.” His voice scratchy and strained over the wire all the way from Fort Worth.

“I said you’ll get it.”

“I don’t travel without a full tank of gas.”

“I said you got it,” Kathryn said, trying not to scream over the phone, knowing the way she felt she could probably make him hear her without the benefit of Ma Bell.

“Sweet cakes, you’re as hot as a two-dollar pistol.”

“And you’re as stand-up as a nickel whore.”

“There’s plenty of lawyers in this state. I don’t know why you always got to call on me.”

“Sam? Sam? Don’t hang up.”

“Don’t call my office again.”

“How about a brand-new Chevrolet?”

“I won’t hold my breath,” he’d said, and there was a click, and the operator came on again and asked if she’d like to make another call. And that’s when she had started hammering the earpiece on the phone. Shit, shit, shit.

She turned around on the stool and drank her float.

When Kathryn looked back at the mirror, she noticed the red wig had gone a little crazy and cocked on her head. She dipped her head down to the straw, eyeing around the counter at the soda jerk refilling the bins of candy and bubble gum, and twisted it a little more to the left.

On the counter, she saw a single dime she’d dropped and decided to call her uncle in town, Uncle Cass, who was a decent old guy and could be trusted to take some of the loot to Fort Worth. He picked up right quick, but before she could get into the pitch of what she needed old Cass whispered into the phone, “I can’t talk right now, Preacher. I got some government man over here asking me some questions.”

She hung up and raced outside, the bell jingling behind her, out to the old Model A truck, cranking and cranking till it sputtered to a start, winding through downtown Coleman to the dirt highway that would take her back to her grandmamma and George, thinking that maybe she should head the opposite way, out of Texas and away from George, and then remembering those pickle jars and thermoses under the willow and thinking, Goddamn, this is what you call an ethical dilemma.

“Where’s George?” she yelled to the old woman rocking on the front porch. “Where is he?”

“Sister, let’s pray.”

“Keep your prayers. Where is he?”

“He has befouled you, my love. Let me touch your face.”

Kathryn ran up the steps, looking behind her at the twisting road leading back to the empty highway and then over to that lonely willow by the muddy creek, waiting for a flock of cars to come speeding on down the road any minute, the G-men filing out with their guns at the ready. Son of a bitch. The goddamn G was making her bugs.

“Where did he go?”

All across the old porch were empty bottles of rye and bourbon and gin. The old woman completely unaware of the sin at her feet.

“There is a revival at the river on Sunday,” she said. “I want you to go. There is a boy, not even six, who has been blessed with the healing touch.”

“Goddamn you and your empty foolishness,” Kathryn screamed at the sightless, cataracted blue eyes. “Where is my husband?”

Ma Coleman stopped rocking. The wind crossed her porch and made whistling sounds in the empty bottles.

She spoke light and low, reaching into her cheap, nasty, moth-eaten housecoat-silly sunflowers across her sagging tits and rump-and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “This,” she said, her lip quivering. “This.”

George had written, in that stupid, childish scrawl, a single word: MISSISSIPPI.

“Damn fool,” Kathryn said.

She was packed within five minutes, George being smart enough to leave the new Chevrolet to pay off Sayres, instead borrowing some old car, maybe even worse than the Model A she’d have to drive. She kissed the old woman on the cheek and bounded down the crooked old stairs, yelling back, “Don’t take any plug nickels, Granny.”

THEY PLAYED POKER, FIGURING IT WAS MUCH BETTER SUITED to four men sitting around on a Saturday night, knowing that bridge was a couples’ sport. Charlie had invited Bruce Colvin, E. E. Kirkpatrick, and Walter Jarrett to the table. The servants had been given the night off, Betty making sure the men had ice in their whiskey and kitchen matches nearby for their cigars. Jarrett asked if they might sit inside because of the heat, but Charlie