breakfast at the Harvey House, and Jones promised himself he’d come back just as soon as the bastard was delivered and locked away.
The lot had filled with automobiles and people hustling through the big wide doors to the station. A metallic voice from a public-address system read off the morning trains set to leave. A gaggle of nuns emerged from a taxi, and a fat nun opened a coin purse to count out change into the driver’s hand.
“Put Jelly up front,” Jones said.
The young agent placed him in the passenger seat. Otto Reed and Joe Lackey piled in the back of the sedan. Jones followed, and the two cops stood smoking and watching the parking lot, listening to instructions on the route to Leavenworth. They were to take a few back roads just in case they were followed.
The young agent pumped the detectives’ hands and then crossed back toward the driver’s side of the car.
Jones took a breath and hoisted himself in the backseat beside Sheriff Reed and Lackey. Lackey had propped the shotgun up between his legs, and Jones made the remark he looked like he worked for Wells Fargo.
Cars passed. One of the detectives-he’d later know the name was Grooms-finished a cigarette and smashed it underfoot, making his way to the hot car.
“Hands up,” a voice yelled.
A black Chevrolet had stopped beside them, and as Jones turned he heard the words, “Let ’em have it.” As Jones bent forward, he saw the young agent chopped to his knees and heard Sheriff Reed’s shotgun blast by his ear, the top of Frank Nash’s head opening up like a red flower as windows shattered and glass rained down on his neck. As Jones reached for the.45, bullets zipped all over the goddamn place, pinging and piercing, and he heard garbling yells and cries and dull bloody thuds that sounded like a mallet hitting steak.
Lackey was down beside him. He was bleeding, too.
The car shuddered and shook for a solid twenty seconds.
“Stay down,” Jones whispered.
The silence was electric and dull, and then buzzing filled Jones’s ears, and he heard the crunch of shoes upon the broken glass. A man breathed above him, words as close as if a filthy mouth had been placed to his ear, saying: “They’re dead. They’re all dead. Let’s go.”
2
Kathryn had met George Kelly in a Fort Worth speak just before he got nabbed selling some moonshine on a Cherokee reservation just outside Tulsa. She’d been with Little Steve Anderson back then, and George had been with the kind of girl that George tended to be with before he traded up. He’d looked at her and lit a cigarette, a fat ruby ring on his finger, and winked, saying, “Where have you been all my life?” And he said it right there, right in front of Little Steve and the woman he was with, and Kathryn felt like she couldn’t breathe. He was big and dark and looked rich. Very rich. And that night she’d snuck away from that sad-sack husband of hers and wrapped her long fine legs around big George in the back of his 1928 Buick, him taking it to her so hard that it about wore out the shocks on that poor machine.
As she’d slipped back into her unmentionables and scooted her silk dress past her knees, she lit a smoke. George had smiled at her and she smiled back, saying: “Just what in the world are we going to do about this?”
“That’s the most romantic story I’ve ever heard,” said the girl, a friend of Kathryn’s who worked the coat check at the Blackstone Hotel. “That’s something out of
The two sat at a corner table at a beer joint in downtown Fort Worth, the old basement of a hardware store that still smelled of fresh-cut wood and penny nails. The bar was mahogany and the floors black-and-white honeycomb tile. The place was class in spades. Waiters wore white, and the band, Cecil Gill and the Yodeling Cowboys, dressed in satin garb with clean ten-gallon hats.
“I loved him more when I saw how he handled himself,” she said. “You know, when he worked a job.”
Two more women joined them from the bar. A negro in a white jacket brought them all shots of whiskey and frosty Shiner Bocks in thick glass mugs. The booze not as much fun since drinking was getting to be legit.
“And when he got out of the Big House,” Kathryn said, “I was right there waiting for him. We drove straight through to Saint Paul and got married on the spot.”
“I like your ring,” said the girl.
Kathryn looked at her finger as if eyeing a speck of dust. “I’m getting a new one soon.”
“Do tell,” said the hatcheck girl.
“It’s big.”
“How big?”
“So big that I’m through with Texas.”
“A bank?”
“There’s no money in banks anymore,” Kathryn said. “This Depression ruined that. You can’t find a decent jug these days.”
The three girls leaned forward. They were pretty, all of them wearing stylish new hats cocked just so and expensive little silk scarves. Kathryn pulled out a cigarette, always a Lucky, from a silver case, and two of the girls greeted her with a match.
She smiled self-consciously and took the one nearest to her.
“Where’s George?” asked one of the girls.
“Working.”
“Did you bring ’em?” asked another.
Kathryn smiled and reached into her little purse, pulling out three spent brass bullet casings. She slapped them on the table and said, “You can probably still feel the heat in ’em. He shot up a barn this morning. You know, to practice.”
“Is it true he can write his name in bullets?” asked the hatcheck girl, maybe getting a little too breathless about George.
“Sister,
KATHRYN GOT BACK TO MULKEY STREET A FEW HOURS LATER SO plastered with whiskey and gin she nearly took out a fire hydrant turning in to the bungalow’s driveway. The bungalow had belonged to her second husband, Charlie Thorne, and she was glad he’d left her something before shooting himself in the head with a.38, leaving a typed sob-sister note blaming his problems on her.
The kitchen light was on.
She closed the door behind her and leaned against the window glass to steady her feet.
George R. Kelly, aka George Barnes, aka R. G. Shannon, aka “Machine Gun” Kelly, looked up from an iron frying pan where he was flipping pancakes. He wore nothing but boxer shorts and blue socks. A cigarette hung loose out of his mouth.
“Where the hell you been?”
“Working.”
“Working?”
The boxer shorts were white and decorated with red hearts. His blue socks were held up with garters.
“People are talking about you,” she said. “How do you think that gets done?”
“You’re drunk.”
“So are you,” she said, eyeing the empty bottle of Old Log Cabin bourbon on the table.
“Aw, hell,” George said. “Is that the way it’s gonna go?”
