Outside a great bank of windows, through long pressed curtains, photographic flashes went off over and over in a strobe fashion, bringing back memories of lightning pockets in west Texas. The lawn of the Urschel home had looked like a state fair when they’d pulled up, and the driver had had to honk the horn just to cut through the sea of men with notebooks and cameras.
“Oh, I’m so thankful that it wasn’t Betty,” she said. “She thinks these same two men have been following her for several weeks. She saw them in a blue sedan when she came back from Tulsa Tuesday.”
“You mind if we talk to her?”
“I believe the man from the local office is with her in the kitchen now.” Jones nodded. Doc White was at the front door, talking to three city cops in plain clothes and giving directions on where to stand post. The door had been opened and closed so many times that the big house filled with heavy heat, and White was perspiring through the front of his shirt.
“Did you or your husband have threats against your persons?”
“We have had letters and that mess. But that was some time ago, and they were all cranks.”
Mrs. Urschel leaned forward, resting her forehead in her left hand. A big clock on a very big mantel in the very big room read nearly ten.
“I would try and persuade you to get some shut-eye,” Jones said. “But don’t expect you to.”
“What do we do?”
“Give ’em what they ask.”
“And then what?”
“Then we go to work.”
“Did I do right calling that telephone extension?” she asked. “I think I woke Mr. Hoover.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mind.”
“It was printed right there in
Berenice Urschel was not a beautiful woman, but she had a nice warm smile and nice warm brown eyes that lit up when she smiled back at Gus Jones. She reminded him a bit of his wife, Mary Ann, only with better manners and no propensity for using bad language. Mary Ann was a true master in the art of profanity and could outcuss any shitheel cowboy or redneck twice her size.
Jones stood and grabbed his hat from the sofa. He followed a long hallway lined with paintings of open pastures and rolling green hills, almost like windows looking away from the city or back years ago when all this was Indian territory.
He found Special Agent Bruce Colvin in the kitchen, talking to Betty Slick while the negro woman refilled a big coffeepot. Another negro was sweeping by a back door where agents and police officers came in and out, tramping in dirt. The negro didn’t take notice, just sweeping that same dirty spot over and over, refilling the dustpan and emptying it.
The girl sat up on the countertop, rocking her long tan legs against a cabinet.
Colvin nodded to Jones, a notebook in a loose hand. The girl didn’t turn around, staring at Colvin. She continued to stroke long brown hair over her right ear.
“You think you could identify the men who followed you?” Colvin asked.
“Maybe.”
“If we showed you a photo?”
“Are you married?”
“Ma’am?”
Jones coughed, and the girl turned to him. She wore a pin-striped linen dress and tall-heeled shoes adorned with pink bows. She had sleepy green eyes, and acknowledged Jones with a soft “Hello” while managing to keep her attention full on that bright-eyed college boy.
Jones grinned a bit when he noted the perspiration pop on the young agent’s forehead.
“Miss Slick, we’ll do everything we can to protect you.”
“Do you all carry guns?”
“Do we?” Jones asked.
“I target-shoot out at a pumpkin farm sometime,” Colvin said.
“You don’t say,” Jones said. “Those pumpkins move much?”
Betty Slick shot him a hot look and then turned back to Colvin with a big smile.
“Mother said there was nothing amateurish about these men. She said, ‘They knew just what they were doing.’ ”
IT WAS ABOUT DAYBREAK NOW, URSCHEL KNOWING THIS BECAUSE the light changed through the gaps in the hospital tape. A gray, dull light, the rumbling and bumping down the road making him nauseated but never sleepy, tucked and rolled in the womb of the floorboard, and for a while feeling like part of the machine, the gears and the brakes, the cluttering, spurting jumble of cranks and belts digesting the black gold that to Charlie Urschel would always remain hot as the core of the earth and always a welcome sight dripping off the hands and faces of riggers and geologists, always with big, wide grins, from tapping that vein.
The steady, graveling swoosh turned to rolling, piano-key clatter of wood that went on for a good bit-up a bridge and over a river-and then the tires found solid ground again, gears shifting to a purr, and, with a slap of foot on pedal, they were headed somewhere damn fast.
Hours later, Charlie heard clanging and a trunk slam. A man and a young-sounding woman talking. The woman promised to meet them at the ranch, and Charlie strained an ear. But then one of the men gripped him by the neck and pulled him from the car, heels dragging on the ground, and another car door opened, and he was pushed inside and onto a large leather backseat.
“Do you love me?” asked the young woman.
“You know it, baby. You just know it.”
“Oh, shit,” said the young woman. “Here she comes, sick with the religion, too.”
“Get them sonsabitches off my land,” said an old woman. “A hellfire abomination.”
“Just a minute,” said the man.
“They’re going,” said the young woman.
“Don’t think that I won’t shoot you,” the old woman screamed. “Don’t you doubt it, boys.”
Charlie twisted his head toward the noise.
“I prayed for you,” the old woman said. “I prayed for you both, and you bring this evil to my doorstep. Let us all pray.”
The old woman began to hum “Amazing Grace.”
“Why don’t you plug Urschel’s goddamn ears,” the man said. “This ain’t smart, listenin’ to this radio show.”
“Hush, you filthy evil man.”
They drove the new car faster and harder, and Charlie knew it was a bigger, steadier ride, with an engine as powerful as a truck. He was lulled to sleep for a moment and then awoke when he heard the men talking again, and figured the young woman hadn’t come along.
“Did that fella know which way?”
“Head back ten miles and then turn east.”
“I told you.”
“You didn’t say anything. You said you knew where you were. We’d still be traveling down that road if I hadn’t stopped.”
“What if he’s wrong?”
“Would you shut up and let me drive?”
“Go back and ask him again.”
“Hell I will.”
“Just turn around and let me ask him.”
“The son of a bitch will hear you.”
“Just let me out and I’ll ask.”
