“Did he know?”

  “Never even suspected it. I’m just ole George Barnes in Memphis.”

  “Big man on Central High School campus.”

  “Why do you always have to say it like that, Kit? You don’t know a damn thing about Memphis.”

  At the end of break fast, there was an awkward moment where Lang said he had to be getting back to his practice but it sure was great seeing George again. And that’s when George had to tell him he was in a spot of trouble and sure could use a loan. Lang said don’t mention it, taking care of the check and passing him a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m good for it,” George said. “I know,” Lang said.

  I could use a place to sleep.

  I know a fella who owes me a favor.

  George slept for ten days on the ragged red velvet couch of a garage attendant Lang had represented in a property dispute over a family goat farm. Tich was a cripple with a clubfoot that dragged behind him when he walked, thudding through the guts of the house, while George would be trying to sleep, as the morning light shone into the house down off Speedway. For some reason, George couldn’t close his eyes at night and would just stay up drinking and listening to the radio, Tich having a decent RCA, where he found NBC and the adventures of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. George said it was all he could do to wait till that broadcast would come on, and he could shut his eyes, maybe a little drunk, and go to far-out lands, planets, and stars, all way away from this crummy earth.

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Hell, yes. Why do you think I came back?”

  “For the money.”

  “The money, hell. I could’ve dug up all of it, and your grandmother wouldn’t have known.”

  “She’d woulda known.”

  “I came back ’cause I love you, baby.”

  “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. Extermination.”

  “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 rumps. Jones laughed and shook his head, spotting Bruce Colvin walking in from the elevators and flicking his eyes around the Venetian Room. He leaned into Jones’s ear and told him that the Shannons’ go-between was here.

  Jones set down his fork and pushed himself away from the table.

  “Right here,” Colvin said, pointing to the weathered fella dancing with the two fat girls.

  Jones craned his head around to Colvin and would’ve thought it was a joke had it not been Bruce Colvin. The young man seemed unable to find humor in most situations.

  “What do we do?” Colvin whispered.

  “Keep an eye out,” Jones said. “He resides in this hotel?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Follow his every step. Tap his phone.”

  “Why don’t we just pull him in?” Colvin asked.

  “So he can clam up like Bailey?” Jones asked. “You got to be patient, son.”

  Jones finished his dessert. With coffee.

  The next morning, hearing nothing from the tapped telephone lines but a slow and dull buzz, Jones rode the elevator to the eighth floor and pounded on the door to have a little talk with the fella. Two minutes later, the hotel manager opened the suite to find a mess of empty booze bottles and a huge pair of pink panties tossed across the headboard. Des Moines all over again.

  Jones walked to the bed and reached for the big panties, pulling them wide enough to be hung from a flagpole. “Maybe your scientific detection can get us a lead off these?”

  Colvin looked down at his neatly shined shoes without a word.

  “Do we at least have a name?” Jones asked.

  “Registered under Luther Arnold family.”

  “Be too much to ask where he’s headed?” Jones said. “The director might like to be informed.”

  GEORGE SNATCHED A WIDE SOMBRERO FROM THE STUCCOED wall of the Mexican restaurant and told the waiter to bring him an entire bottle of tequila with cut limes and salt. They’d been in San Antonio now for two days, renting a little apartment, where Kathryn had shared a room with George, Flossie Mae and Geraline in the second bedroom. She’d about had it with Flossie Mae, the woman doing nothing but complaining, complaining more in a “That’s fine” or “If you think that’s best” kind of way, never really speaking up but never appreciating the hospitality either, somehow thinking she deserved the Kelly family dime on account of what Luther was doing.

  Luther’d driven back in her Chevy an hour earlier, and that’s when George decided on a big family meal at La Fonda, a short walk from the apartment. And it didn’t take but two shots of tequila before he called for that sombrero, throwing back another shot and tipping the mariachi band twenty dollars.

  “Why don’t you put an ad in the paper?” Kathryn asked.

  “Just having some fun, baby face,” he said. “Honey pie.”

  Luther sat across from Kathryn, where he could lean over the table and discuss details of his big trip to Oklahoma City yesterday. Flossie Mae sat across from George, and Geraline was at the head of the table. The table was under a big oak in the center of an old courtyard, with banana plants growing wild under leaking pipes and white Christmas lights crisscrossed overhead like in an old Mexico plaza.

  “The hat,” George said, touching the sombrero’s brim and throwing down another tequila. “Good disguise.”

  Kathryn noticed Luther had bought a new suit, pin-striped and rumpled and about two sizes too big. He’d also bought a tie and maybe even shaved a couple days back. She guessed for when he’d met with the new attorney.

  “Lawyer said the government mulled over your offer,” he said.

  “Huh?” George asked, turning to Kathryn and winking again. He poured out a shot of tequila for Luther, but Luther shook him off, saying he just didn’t have the stomach for no alcohol. Luther looked wrung-out, sick, and exhausted from his journey back to San Antonio. At the head of the table, his daughter, wearing a crisp white dress, her hair in pink ribbons, clutched a huge menu in her tiny fists.

  George finished off his drink and lit a cigarette, singing along with the mariachi.

  “I hear it’s no dice,” Luther said.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Ole Mr. Mathers—that being the attorney I hired—says he’ll try again when they get before the judge.”

  “But the G won’t make the trade?”

  “He says they got you cornered.”

  “Horseshit.”

  “Huh?” George said, stopping singing for a moment.

  “I said horseshit,” Kathryn said, leaning into George’s ear. “The government won’t trade you out for Ma.”

  “Who says the G ain’t smart?” George laughed and laughed, slapping his knee. “You know, ’cause your ma isn’t worth the trade. Har.”

  He smiled over at Geraline, and the little girl grinned back, George popping a half-dollar off his thumb into her waiting hand. She passed it on to the guitar player, the band starting into another sappy song about touching a woman’s heart with love.

  “Did anyone see you?” Kathryn asked.

  “Who?”

  “The G, Luther. The G!”

  “No, ma’am. I traveled with great stealth.”

  “How much money you got left?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “The five hundred I staked you.”

  “Well, there was some traveling expenses, and I paid Mr. Mathers a bit.”

  “How much?”

  “A hunnard.”

  “You spent four hundred dollars?”

  “There was traveling expenses.”

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “How much will you need to go back?”

  “Least three hunnard, ma’am.”

  “Shit,” George said, turning the sombrero down across his eyes. He gripped his big gorilla fingers around Kathryn’s upper arm so tight her hand started to tingle. “That’s him.”

  “What?”

  “The god-dang Federal Ace. Jones.”

  Kathryn looked over to the opening in the wrought-iron fence and saw a short, squat man in a pearl-colored cowboy hat. She watched the man’s face as he spoke to an old woman at the crook of his arm, and Kathryn shook her head. “No, it’s not.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “That man doesn’t look a thing like Jones. He’s got a mustache.”

  “He’s got a pearl gray Stetson, too. Boots. He’s a tough little fireplug, just like I read in True Detective.”

  “Goddamn, George,” she said. “Did you forget you’re in Texas?” George frowned, removing the big sombrero and tossing it to the center of the table. “I’m hungry.”

  They ordered pretty much all the menu, the money petering out again, Kathryn knowing they’d have to head back to Coleman this week, not having dug up enough money when she and George were reunited. She also really missed Chingy, and thought maybe George wouldn’t get so sore this time if Chingy would be good and not drop any more doodles in his wingtips.

  “I sure like being y’all’s agent up in Oklahoma City,” Luther said, licking his lips, studying the menu, the first time Kathryn noticed This son of a bitch is faking, pretty sure he couldn’t read a word. “I can report to you any matters of the court.”

  “The G didn’t see you?”

  Luther placed the menu on the table and tucked a napkin into his soiled collar. “No, ma’am. I’m positive of it.”

  “Mr. Mathers think he can free my family?”

  “Mr. Mathers has been practicing law a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Nearly fifty-five years.”

  “How old is this son of a bitch?”

  Luther looked up at the open sky from the courtyard and thought for a moment. “Figure he’s got to be close to eighty.”

  “Could you at least have hired someone who won’t die on us?”

  “He shore is a tough ole dog,” Luther said. “He couldn’t believe when he read that your family was flown in a real airplane. He said, ‘Hot damn, that’s somethin’.’ I mean, he was real taken with it an’ all.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “What?” George asked. Three Mexican waiters brought out platters and platters of tacos, enchiladas, refried beans, and guacamole. Cold beer for Kathryn, who ran the iced Shiner Bock across her forehead.

  “Luther hired Methuselah to represent Ma.”

  “Good at cha,” George said.

  “Can you head back in the morning?” Kathryn asked.

  “I ’spec so,” Luther said.

  They all ate for a while, Flossie Mae for once showing a goddamn smile while she filled her gullet. George picked at his plate of tacos and finished off the entire bottle of tequila, Kathryn having to pin his arm to the chair so he didn’t get up and dance with the band. “That’s so beautiful,” George said, listening to them play under that old oak lit with Christmas lights. “It’s breaking my heart.”

  “It might if you knew Spanish,” Kathryn said. “George, we gotta get outta Texas.”

  “What have I been sayin’?”

  “The heat’s too much.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Where to?” she asked.