down, the air bright and cool, a full tank of gas, and a full satchel of cash beside him.
He nearly missed the roadblock.
Slowing, trying to remain confident. He rolled down the window and smiled.
Four coppers pulled guns on him. Harvey shook his head, held up his hands, and told them they were welcome to help themselves to what’s in the bag if they’d just let him pass through.
One of the coppers grabbed the bag and plunked it on top of the Plymouth, tossing out the thick stack of bills, reaching deeper to pull out magazines and a phone book and what looked to be kids’ undershorts and socks.
“You trying to bribe us with fifty-two dollars and some dirty drawers?” the copper asked. “You got some set of balls, Mr. Bailey. Now, put your goddamn hands up where I can see ’em.”
KATHRYN KNEW THE SCORE FROM THE MOMENT THAT SNOT-NOSED kid pranced into the courtroom in a hundred-dollar dress and patent leather shoes. She wore a full-grown woman’s slouch hat, and told Flossie Mae-who held her hand down the aisle-to go and sit down and be quiet. Flossie Mae lowered her head and did what she was told. Geraline took the stand with a little jeweled pocketbook that Kathryn knew was just bulging with that money she’d switched. She nudged George in the ribs at the defense table, but he didn’t take any interest, sitting there in a nice suit with a dull smile.
They tried them together after convicting Bailey and Bates, Ora and Boss. Potatoes and the hot-money Jews from Saint Paul. Kathryn had tried to explain that George would’ve killed her if she’d tried to leave him. But all the saps were turning a deaf ear, the judge and the prosecutor just over the moon with the dumb kid who’d taken the stand, a real flavor of the month, with headlines across the country reading GIRL, 12, NABS “MACHINE GUN” KELLY.
Kathryn didn’t see how telling the G that they were in Memphis amounted to anything. But the Arnolds sure had put in for the ten grand in reward money, and already there was talk of a Hollywood movie, with the girl from
The little girl sure as shit gave Kathryn the high hat when she finished telling her little tale of meeting while her parents were hitching, all the way through to the Fair and then down to Memphis. It was a real sob-sister act, and, as much as Kathryn hated it, she grinned to herself a bit when the rat walked past.
George never seemed to mind Kathryn telling a story of George being the brains behind it all and how he said he’d kill her and her family if she didn’t go along. He seemed to know this was all part of the game and even patted her goddamn hand when she returned from breaking down on the stand, remembering, of all the horror from their time on the road, what the big gorilla had forced her to do.
But nothing could save them. Even Chingy would’ve been convicted in that lousy court. She knew it was all a sham when they rode the elevator up for sentencing. She turned to kiss George on the cheek, but that cowboy federal agent Doc White pushed her away. And like he deserved, she slapped that old bastard across his face.
He grabbed her hand and snatched her up at the elbow.
In manacles, George turned to try and break his grip. But all that old man did was pistol-whip George till the elevator doors opened, leaving him with a good-size egg and a handkerchief on his split lip as their verdict was read.
They were sentenced to life.
When Kathryn was released twenty-five years later, she remarked to a reporter, “I guess the thing that impressed me most on my first trip out was the fast traffic. I was honestly afraid to cross the street.”
George never did get out.
The train was a midnight special, taking the highball route from the federal prison in Atlanta, tracks cleared all the way to Leavenworth, and then steaming right for the California coast, where a hundred and three of the very worst in the system would be locked up tight on Alcatraz. Hoover had put Jones in charge of the move, and he hadn’t even been able to tell Mary Ann his assignment, only saying that he’d meet her in San Francisco at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. They’d have cocktails, and she’d try to talk him into retiring like Doc White.
The train’s windows had been covered with bars and a metal screen, and the doors could only be unlocked from outside, the openings covered in welded lattice, easy to slip the muzzle of a machine gun through and start shooting if there was trouble. By morning, they all felt the heat wave without even a small crack for a crossbreeze. Some of the men went on a hunger strike, most of them unshaven and stinking. Many he knew on sight-
“I don’t think it’ll change his mind.”
“It’s not supposed to,” George said. “I just want someone to hear me out.”
“Maybe try a more cordial tone this time.”
“You know I didn’t have a thing to do with that mess in Kansas City.”
Jones nodded. “We got Miller’s prints off the gun.”
“Guess he won’t be facing the chair.”
“Facedown and nekkid in a drainage ditch,” Jones said. “Why do you figure they had to make him be nekkid before they killed him?”
“Nitti wanted to shame him,” Kelly said. “He’d like you G-men to lay off the Syndicate. Never were fond of the freelancer.”
“I know Bailey was there, too,” Jones said. “Someone knows. We got him. And we got time.”
“Hell, he didn’t kidnap Charlie Urschel,” Kelly said. “He was framed for that.”
“Ain’t it a shame.”
“What are you going to do when you get us all locked up on that island?”
“Plenty,” Jones said.
“Won’t be long till you nab every yeggman in the country.”
“Worse headed this way.”
“The Depression?”
“Worse than the Depression,” Jones said. “The country has worse problems than a bunch of hoods with guns.”
“Like what?”
“The Germans, for one. Filthy Nazis. Did you know that son of a bitch Hitler won’t let churches use ‘Amen’ because it’s a Hebrew word. That ain’t right.”
“And you can’t wait to fight ’em.”
“Won’t be long till they’ll be coming for us.”
“That’s screwy.”
“Our borders are wide open,” he said. “They’ll look to Mexico.”
“And you’ll take up the gun.”
