“You’re a damn liar.”
“You’re a double-damn liar.”
“You were a fool to run off to Mississippi for some blonde.”
“Didn’t I just explain it all?”
The horn honked in a Chevrolet sedan, the same one he’d traded out for that little Cadillac coupe in Chicago. The car parked in the dusty driveway of old Ma Coleman’s farmhouse.
“Who’s that kid?”
“That’s a story,” Kathryn said. “I’ll tell you on the road.”
“Where we headed?”
“San Antonio.”
“Why San Antonio?”
“ ’ Cause it’s a mite better than Dallas or Fort Worth.”
The horn honked again.
“The kid’s driving?”
“She’s a pistol,” Kathryn said, not sure what to make of the blond George Kelly with the bloat that came with too much steak and gin. “Her daddy runs errands for me.”
“Like what?”
“George, we need to talk.”
George stood there in front of Ma Coleman’s place, where she knew she’d find him after he’d sent that telegram to the San Antonio General Delivery. It read MA’S BETTER. She knew the G could butt through the cattle gate any minute, but she was out of cash, and, damn, if she didn’t ache to see the lousy bastard.
“You want me to turn myself in?” he asked.
“We’re talking about my kin, George,” Kathryn said, grabbing his big hands and pulling him close. “Something has happened… I think God has shown me the light.”
JONES SPENT THE DAY WITH A GROUP OF YOUNG AGENTS AT THE police department shooting range outside Oklahoma City, a two-acre parcel of scrub brush, where they’d set up paper targets and kept score. A head shot was a real winner, but a belly shot earned you enough to stay in the game. In the end, it wasn’t much of a contest, with that kid Bryce edging out Doc and Jones, scoring a head shot damn-near every time with both his.38 and Jones’s Colt.45. They’d practiced a great deal with both the Thompsons and BARs shipped from Washington, and Jones decided to post the big guns near the courthouse steps and on the roof of the Federal Building, where he stood, smoking his pipe in the night and figuring out where and how Kelly and his gang of desperadoes would be making their attack.
“You think Kathryn’s sincere?” Jones asked Joe Lackey.
Lackey placed his hands on the edge of the rooftop and leaned over, looking down to the squat old houses, churches, and office building around the city. A truck backed up to the building and started to unload spotlights, as if they expected some kind of Hollywood extravaganza.
“The woman wrote ‘the entire Urschel family and friends and all of you will be exterminated soon by “Machine Gun” Kelly,’ ” Lackey said. “That isn’t exactly something you put on a Christmas card, Buster. Yeah, I’d say she’s pretty serious. She said she’s scared of the son of a bitch, too.”
“How many you figure for their gang?”
“You can bet Bailey is back with him,” Lackey said, nodding and still looking out at the city and clear out to the Canadian River. “Probably Verne Miller, too. Maybe Pretty Boy. Real glad you took out that bastard Mad Dog.”
Jones nodded and puffed on his pipe. “Hated shootin’ him down off that rope and all. But he made the play.”
The men watched a couple of agents adding sandbags around a machine-gun stand by the front steps, and Jones noticed a blind spot behind the bunker, knowing they’d have to add another gunner. After a few minutes of running electric cables, the spotlights were lit, the beams crisscrossing the high windows and up into the dark clouds.
“She says she might just turn herself in just so she won’t be associated with the coming slaughter,” Lackey said.
“She sure likes those words.”
“Which ones?”
“Slaughter.
“Got our attention.”
“Nobody’s coming in or getting out of this house,” Jones said. The wind tipped his hat, but Jones caught the brim, setting it back on his head, before he knocked out his pipe. “We’re well entrenched. Ready for those bastards.”
“Glad Hoover got us the guns.”
“You saw for yourself the kind of animal we’re dealing with. Hell, I hope Kelly runs up the steps with guns blazing, that’d save the taxpayers the cost of a trial.”
“That’s some rough talk.”
“You take exception?”
“People don’t lynch much anymore.”
“Maybe they should.”
“You don’t mean that,” Lackey said. “Rangers keep order.”
“Sometimes the Rangers looked the other way.”
Lackey reached into his coat pocket for a pack of gum. He chewed, resting his elbows on the ledge, searchlights crossing the sky and the front of the Federal Building. “The Shannons’ new counsel says he’s never been in touch with Kathryn Kelly,” Lackey said. “Said he was hired by a middleman, at his office in Enid.”
“Can we track the middleman?”
“Colvin’s on it,” Lackey said. “We got several men following the counselor.”
“Phone lines?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Never ends, does it?”
“What’s that?”
“Thievery. Murder. You’d think we’d have advanced past the Old Testament.”
“I’m not in the mood to get all philosophical, Buster,” Lackey said, chomping on his Doublemint. “Let’s go back to the Skirvin and get a whiskey and a porterhouse.”
“Now you’re talking.”
The Venetian Room was on the top floor of the Skirvin Hotel, a swank place that boasted polished, inlaid pecan floors, white linen and silver service, and Bernie Cummins and the New Yorkers on the bandstand. They broadcast a hit parade every night after supper on Oklahoma City’s own WKY. But Jones would just as soon hear them on the radio than be interrupted during supper by a man in a tuxedo extolling the qualities of fig syrup to get your pipes running smooth.
Doc White joined Jones and Lackey, and the three men all ordered steaks and bourbon. Doc White rolled a cigarette after getting the T-bone clean and tapped the finger of his free hand in time with the song “Stormy Weather,” a big hit earlier that year for some popular colored singer.
They all wore summer-weight coats to hide their holstered pistols.
About halfway into their desserts, peach pie with ice cream, Jones looked up to see a short fella in a big suit really hamming it up on the dance floor with two fat woman in evening gowns. He was one of those men who looked as out of place wearing a suit as would a circus monkey. But he’d slicked back his hair and shaved, proving it with bits of toilet paper stuck on the cuts, and the back of his hair was barbered up two inches higher than his sunburned ears and neck. The man couldn’t have been much older than thirty but had a large bulbous nose and the reddened cheeks of an experienced drunk.
Doc White ashed his cigarette on a china saucer. “Doesn’t that son of a bitch know there’s a Depression?”
“Must be family money,” Joe Lackey said, a small grin.
There was a split second when the little man couldn’t figure out which woman to dance with during the slow part, so he just opened his drunk arms wide and clutched them both close, hands squeezing each of their large
