“Everybody knows.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What happened to all that money? You must’ve gotten half a mil.”
“It’s never enough, Kreeps. You can lie to yourself all you want. You can sail to the other side of the world, but you’ll just find that gun in your hand and an itch in your heart. It’s a goddamn disease.”
“Come on,” Karpis said. “Happy days are here again…”
“Why aren’t you smiling?”
JONES SAT LUTHER AND FLOSSIE MAE ARNOLD IN THE BACKSEAT the next morning with Doc White between them. Jones checked his pocket watch, waiting for the post office in San Antonio to open its doors before following Flossie Mae inside. The first trip was worthless, but after lunch she’d received a telegram. Jones pulled it from her fingers when they climbed back into the stifling car, Luther asking them when they’d be fed.
The telegram was sent from Chicago. Jones sliced it open with a pocketknife and read, “GREETINGS FROM A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. NO TIME TO WRITE. AT FAIR DAY AND NIGHT. SHE’S NEVER OUT OF MY SIGHT, AND BE CAREFUL TO TAKE CARE OF MY CLOTHES FOR THEY ARE ALL I HAVE SO DON’T LOSE THEM. LEAVE FOR SHANGRI-LA APARTMENTS
“What’s it say?” Luther asked from the backseat. “That wasn’t meant for you.”
“It says you two are going to Oklahoma City.”
“That’s where you just brung me from,” Luther said. “We driving back now?”
“You’ll be locked up in the city jail. We’ll arrange for you to be shipped back.”
“And just where in the hell are y’all goin’?” Luther asked. “And just when are you gonna get us our little girl back? Are you two cowboys listening to me?”
34
Every shadow had become the G to George, and now the bastard had her jumping out of her skin, too. Before they left the waffle joint, a couple joes had walked in and kept on giving sideways glances, and at first Kathryn was sure they were admiring her profile, but then George noticed them, paid the check, and wandered out under the El, Gerry splashing her new patent leather shoes in puddles until Kathryn told her to please act civil. But George just flat-out refused to go back to the apartment and drove them around the city, and for a while it was nice, being in a big, fat town like Chicago and driving past the Marshall Field’s windows and across the bridge to the Magnificent Mile, riding past the Tribune Tower and parking by Tiffany’s, window-shopping at night, keeping their backs turned to the street and checking out the new fall dresses, shoes, furs, and wraps, letting her mind already drift to the trial-if there was a trial-and how she’d look with that velvet hat cocked just so.
George stood flat-footed at the window of Hart Schaffner Marx, staring at a vacant bust of a dummy. The entire window display bare except for a pair of polished wingtips.
“Hey there,” Kathryn said, squeezing his hand. “It’s going to be fine. We’ll be fine.”
“I’m a dead man,” he said. “Hope you know that.”
“Quit being so dramatic.”
“No one gets out of this world alive.”
“Dime-novel stuff.”
“Another one,” he said. “They’re across the street. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.”
Kathryn looked over her shoulder and saw a man in a dark suit watching them from over Michigan Avenue. She walked ahead and grabbed Gerry, who was studying what looked to be a small town in a department-store window. Children played on seesaws, chased dogs, and curtsied in their fall prints. Some carried schoolbooks. Her nose was pressed against the glass.
“C’mon, kid.”
“Can I drive?”
“You can’t drive.”
“You bet I can.”
“Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“On 66, I just wanted to sleep.”
Kathryn walked back, told the girl to jump in the backseat, and knocked the starter, driving slow on the Mile for George, who crawled in beside her and took his hat from his head, leaning back into the Ford’s seat. “We gotta ditch the car. I tried that rat bastard Joe Bergl ten times.”
“Call ’em ten more.”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“Where?”
“The apartment,” he said. “They got us, Kit. They’re just making us into fools now. I hadn’t even been to the gosh-dang Fair.”
“How much of that shine did you drink?”
“Not enough.”
Kathryn raced the Ford under the State Street El and turned down toward the apartment, telling Gerry to hop out and get the bags they hadn’t unpacked. The kid leaned in and listened, nodding, and scooted on out the door, not needing to be told twice.
“That’s a good kid,” George said.
“I think you’ve lost your mind.”
“You wanna take a chance?”
“Goddamn you, George.”
Kathryn circled around the Loop until she spotted a late showing at the Piccadilly Theatre and let George out with a couple bucks. She said she’d send Gerry in to get him when it was safe. “Aw, hell,” he said, stumbling out and craning his neck up to the blinding marquee. “
“Grab some popcorn,” Kit said. “Kick your feet up and have a snooze.” She knocked the Ford into first and circled on back down around the street through tall concrete and metal, the guts of the city machine, and headed toward the apartment, the rain starting again, wipers going, leaning into the windshield to see Geraline sitting on their luggage under the El tracks.
Kathryn honked her horn, and the girl threw the bags in and crawled in after them. “Whew.”
“Anyone see you?”
“I think the mug is screwy,” Geraline said.
Kathryn caught Gerry’s eye in the rearview and narrowed her look at the girl.
“I took the service elevator and didn’t see a thing.”
“Good, kid.”
“You gonna let me drive?”
“When we get a new machine.”
“What kind are we gonna get?”
“Whatever George can find.”
“Hope it’s a Cadillac,” she said. “I sure like those Cadillacs.”
“Me, too, sister.”
They drove around the city for a while, Kathryn knowing Chicago better than anyone who ever headed this way from Mississippi and pointing out this and that, the Wrigley Building, City Hall-
