“Mr. Urschel should be grateful,” Bates said. “A big oilman lives on nothing but sirloin steak and bourbon. Craps out silver dollars like a one-armed bandit.”

  “He’s due for some slop,” George said.

  “George,” Ora said.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, I don’t mean your cookin’ is slop, I’m talking the beans.”

  “I don’t think he’s cut out for ranch living,” Bates said. “He tried to fight signing that letter, but not real hard. He wants this mess gone.”

  “And what will you do then, Mr. Bates?” Boss asked. The old man sat at the head of the table in a boiled white shirt buttoned to the throat. He chewed his chicken as he spoke, with a lot of strength in those jaws, looking like a little bulldog gnawing on a bone, thin white hair combed back from his forehead and sticking up like a grizzled rooster’s.

  “Get back to my sweetie and have some fun,” Bates said. “This is it for me.”

  “What’s the next step for you, young man?” Boss asked.

  “If I knew, this wouldn’t be an ounce of fun,” George said with a wink. “You go where you find the action. But I’m figuring they’ll answer that ad and play it smart. We’ll all be out of your hair by Sunday, and me and Kit will be on the road and Albert will be back with his sweetie.”

  He smiled over at Kathryn, stopping her from laughing about Boss’s hair, and grabbed her knee with his free hand. She looked down at the red-and-white tablecloth and studied the uniform pattern. She hadn’t gotten any food, her stomach twisted up in knots. But George didn’t have a care in the world, reaching back across the table and grabbing a thigh this time and asking her mother for another helping of field peas. Old Ora lit up with smiles like that big mug had hung the goddamn moon.

  “George, when you finish stuffing your gullet, how ’bout you and me go check out the machine?” Kathryn asked.

  “Already checked on her,” George said. “Fueled up and ready to go. Got a tin of gas and cans of oil. Don’t you worry about nothin’.”

  “I’d like to see her anyway,” Kathryn said, moving his hand off her knee, pushing the skirt back down. She reached for the iced tea and poured a glass, wishing these Baptists would wake up to the world and keep some gin in the house.

  “Sheriff Faith come by today,” Boss said, just as plain as talking about crops and weather.

  George stopped chewing. He and Albert exchanged glances.

  “Oh, you boys don’t get nervous,” he said. “I been stashing folks here for years. The sheriff would tell me if the law was onto us.”

  “May I have some more biscuits?” George asked.

  “Haven’t you had enough?” Kathryn said.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business.”

  Ora hopped up like there was a fire poker in her ass and landed two buttermilk biscuits on his plate. Kathryn just shook her head and walked out the screen door and onto the porch, resting an arm on the column and looking across the pasture at all those goddamn cows mooing at one another, blind and directionless until someone cracked the whip. Suckers.

  George sure took his time to join her, door clattering shut. He lit a cigarette and patted his stomach, following her down a path and to the garage he’d constructed with Potatoes and Boss that spring. He found the key in his pocket and loosened the lock and chain, opening up the big, wide barn doors to show off that gorgeous midnight blue Cadillac. A full sixteen cylinders, with big, fat pontoon fenders, torpedo headlights, and a slant-back grille topped with that gorgeous silver woman with wings. The places she’d see.

  Kathryn ran her hand over the paint, which always felt liquid and alive to her, shining wet. She turned and leaned back against the door, crooking her finger at George. He didn’t need to be asked twice, but first shut the garage door and lit up a kerosene lantern.

  He wrapped his big arms around her and kissed her square on the mouth, not like the men in the movies but like he was kissing somebody to test his brute strength. The way a knucklehead slams his mallet in a carnival game. “Careful,” she said. “Don’t mess up my hair. I just had it done.”

  “I love you, Kit.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “That’s a big backseat back there, how ’bout we break her in.”

  She ran a finger down the loose part of his silk shirt and tipped the brow of his fedora back from those murky green eyes, the color of swamp water. “I thought we’d wait. You know. Just like people do before a wedding.”

  “Wait till what?”

  “When you get the money and we’re on the road.”

  “Come on, Kit. I’m hurtin’ here. And we’re married already, or had you forgot?”

  “No, I hadn’t forgot.”

  He wrapped a meaty arm tighter and pulled her in. He reached up under her skirt and was feeling her between the legs and over the panties, and she wasn’t feeling in that kind of mood, but it took her, and she had to tilt her head back to catch her breath. “George?”

  “You are a peach.”

  “George.”

  “I love you, sweet baby.”

  The garage smelled of polished wood and kerosene and new oil just waiting to get burned up from here to Mexico. “George, I need you to do something.”

  “What’s that?”

  He pawed at her dress and pulled down a bra strap, pushing her up on the hood and getting himself good and settled between her legs. With a real gentleness that she could never believe a big man could achieve, he laid her flat on her back and put his mouth to her nipple.

  “I want you to murder that son of a bitch Ed Weatherford for me,” she said, looking at the tin roof. “He’s onto us, baby.”

  George stopped and stepped back a few paces, shaking his head. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  “George, be a gangster. Really.”

  He shook his head.

  Kathryn righted herself up onto her elbows and pushed herself off the Cadillac, fingering up her top and smoothing down the dress over her long legs. She reached into George’s shirt pocket and grabbed some Luckies, lighting the match off the mug’s chin.

  She blew some smoke and shook her head.

  His mouth hung open.

  “You’d rather I do it?”

  “I didn’t say that,” George said. “But that’s not in the plan.”

  “Plan’s changed.”

  “Just ignore him.”

  “Then he’ll really be gunnin’ for us.”

  They heard a car’s motor from down the road and then all of Boss’s guineas out there, raising hell and making that high, dumb guinea call. George cracked the barn door and told Kathryn to stay put. He peered out as she smoked and thought about different ways to kill that bastard Weatherford.

  “Whew,” George said, closing the garage. “Thought it might be the law.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Harvey and Verne,” he said. “Ain’t that somethin’? Hope they brought something to drink.”

  Kathryn shook her head and put out the cigarette with the toe of her high heel made of soft white leather. She made a fist with her right hand and rapped on George’s forehead as if it were a front door to an empty house.

  9

  Harvey Bailey eyed the golf ball, lined up the drive from the hogpen, and aimed for Boss Shannon’s old barn to the north. He still had a bad limp, the bullet out of him and wound stitched up crooked, but they’d lugged the set of clubs all the way from Kansas City and it would’ve been a shame not to play. This being the first time he’d a chance to use them, with all the shooting and bank robbing getting in the way of some solid sport. He took a breath and loosened his shoulders and smacked the ball right in the sweet spot, feeling it down to his toes as the ball went skyward and dropped damn near the mouth of the barn, sending some worried guineas up in a flurry of feathers. “Beat that, chump.”

  Miller plopped down a ball. He was shirtless, wearing the tailored pants he’d had on for days and the handmade wingtips. His upper body was corded with muscle like a fighter’s, with skin as white as blanched paper, turning pink in the morning sunshine. He took a few practice swings and sent the ball up and away, and it disappeared somewhere over the weathered barn.

  “I say the barn door is the hole,” Harvey said.

  “Fine by me.”

  “You want to get a posthole digger?” he said. “I could get a stick and a rag.”

  “Sure.”

  “The Shannons seem a bit jumpy, don’t they?” Harvey said, hoisting the bag up onto his shoulder and limping toward the barn. A bony coonhound loped after them like a spectator to the sport.

  “Boss especially.”

  “You think he wants us to leave?”

  “Could be,” Verne said. “How’s the leg?”

  “Walking helps,” Harvey said. “Wound’s healing clean, no thanks to that damn butcher who sewed it.”

  He dropped the bag and chose a number two iron, spying a cat sitting atop a mule plow. The big tom paid the men no mind as it hiked its leg skyward and started to lick its balls.

  “I knew a man in Lansing who could do that,” Harvey said. “Or claimed he could.”

  “A man can learn lots of things in prison,” Miller said. “I’d rather hang than go back.”

  “How’s Vi?”

  “Scared.”

  “She want you to come up there?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Brooklyn isn’t her kind of place.”

  “You trust those people?”

  “I did a job for them and, oh, well, they owe me.”

  “And she understands?”

  “Vi understands. Always has.”

  “You love that woman, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “You gonna marry her?”

  “When all this ends,” he said. “Get ahead a little.”

  “When does this stuff ever end?” Harvey asked. “I got out before this country went in the toilet. That’s what happens. You try and go legit, get into some corny business like filling stations, and then the world shits on you. Take what you can get when you can get it.”

  “One more score,” Verne said. “Something big for us both.”

  “Verne?” Harvey said, setting the ball right for the big tom. “I don’t know how many different ways to say it. Next time I walk into a bank, it’ll be with a checkbook, not a gun.”

  Verne met his gaze with those cold blue eyes and smiled.

  Harvey tapped the ball with a flick and it sailed within a hair of the big cat, the animal toppling over on his back and scampering away.

  “Don’t look back,” Harvey said. “Don’t get greedy. Know your price. When it’s met, walk away.”

  Verne walked around the back of the barn, searching for his ball in some high grass and swatting away some goats set loose to clear it. He switched at the grass with his iron and looked for a good ten minutes before Harvey called time on the hunt.

  Behind him, maybe a half mile away, Harvey’s eye caught old man Shannon’s Model T kicking up dust, heading out to the house where his boy lived. This was the fourth trip he’d made that morning. Twice with George and now twice alone.

  “What’s going on at Armon’s place?”

  “That kid needs a swift kick in the ass,” Miller said. “Son of a bitch. You saw that ball land here, didn’t you?”

  “Did you see George’s face when we asked if he’d like to take on some work last week?”

  “What of it?”

  “When’s the last time ole George Kelly didn’t want to pick up some bucks behind the wheel? He wet himself coming around the Green Lantern, wanting to work a job, and far as I could tell he and Kit aren’t rolling in it. You think he got something else going?”

  “Maybe.”

  “With who?”

  “Kit’s got into something.”

  “You trust that rancid bitch?”

  Miller glanced at him and smiled. He stared out at the farm road and the Model T, growing close and then passing the men in a big old cloud of dust. He reached down and found the ball, tossing it out on some clear land, just a stroke away from a pile of goat shit.

  “How ’bout we play up the road a bit?” Miller said. “Might find something that interests us.”

  ALL THAT MONEY MADE THE BANKER NERVOUS, BUT MRS. Urschel had signed the forms, and there was nothing that the little bald fella could do about it. He watched at the far end of the Slick Company board-room, leaning into the desk with white knuckles that made Gus Jones smile, while his comptroller and staff worked overtime to log every serial number onto individual pieces of paper. The money was circulated—as requested in the letter that came to box number 807 that morning—all from the Federal Reserve in Kansas City. If Mr. Urschel came back safe, they’d pass these numbers to every lawman, post office, and bank in the country. The gang left little to chance with a letter that spelled out every dance step.

  In view of the fact that you have the Ad inserted as per our instructions, we gather that you are prepared to meet our ultimatum.

  You will pack TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS (($200,000) in USED GENUINE FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES OF TWENTY DOLLAR DENOMINATION in a suitable LIGHT COLORED LEATHER BAG and have someone purchase transportation for you, including berth, aboard train #28 (The Sooner) which departs at 10:10 p.m. via the M.K.&T Lines for Kansas City, Mo.

  You will ride on the OBSERVATION PLATFORM where you may be observed by someone at some Station along the Line between Okla. City and K.C., Mo. If indications are alright, somewhere along the Right-of-Way you will observe a Fire on the Right Side of Track (Facing direction train is bound). That fi rst Fire will be your Cue to be prepared to throw BAG to Track immediately after passing SECOND FIRE.

  Mr. Urschel will, upon instructions, attend to the fi res and secure the bag when you throw it off, he will open it and transfer the contents to a sack that he will be provided with, so, if you comply with our demand and do not attempt any subterfuge, as according to the News reports you have pledged, Mr. Urschel should be home in a very short while.

  REMEMBER THIS—IF ANY TRICKERY IS ATTEMPTED YOU WILL FIND THE REMAINS OF URSCHEL AND INSTEAD OF JOY THERE WILL BE DOUBLE GRIEF—FOR SOME-ONE VERY NEAR AND DEAR TO THE URSCHEL FAMILY IS UNDER CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE AND WILL LIKE-WISE SUFFER FOR YOUR ERROR.

  If there is the slightest HITCH in these PLANS for any reason what-so-ever, not your fault, you will proceed on into Kansas City, Mo. And register at the Muehlebach Hotel under the name of E. E. Kincaid of Little Rock, Arkansas, and await further instructions there, however, there should not be, IF YOU COMPLY WITH THESE SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS.

  THE MAIN THING IS DO NOT DIVULGE THE CONTENTS OF THIS LETTER TO ANY LAW AUTHORITIES FOR WE HAVE NO INTENTION OF FUTHER COMMUNICATION.

  YOU ARE TO MAKE THIS TRIP SATURDAY, JULY 29th 1933. BE SURE YOU RIDE THE PLATFORM OF THE REAR CAR AND HAVE THE BAG WITH MONEY IN IT FROM THE TIME YOU LEAVE OKLAHOMA CITY.

  Jones watched as bundles of counted money were loaded in a light-colored Gladstone bag. The kidnappers being so goddamn specific about the type, everyone worried that the slightest error might lead poor old Charlie into the grave.

  “Little dramatic,” Doc White said, reading over Jones’s shoulder. “All that talk about ‘double grief.’ ”

  “Well, it ain’t a love letter.”

  “You think Kirkpatrick is up to it?”

  “I think he’s not only up to it,” Jones said, finding the gold watch at his vest. “He’s damn well excited about it.”

  “Give him a gun?”

  “You think that’s a good idea? I’ll be on that train, too.”

  “But the letter said—”

  “Nuts to those bandits,” Jones said. “They don’t know me. I’ll carry the ransom, and Kirkpatrick a dummy bag, in case there’s trouble . . .”

  “That banker sure is sweating.”

  “You keep an eye on Mrs. Urschel and the family,” Jones said. “I’ll call when we reach Kansas City.”

  “Union Station.”

  “That’s where the tracks lead.”

  “Why don’t you let me take the lead, Buster?” White asked. “Wait it out here. We can’t do a thing till Urschel comes back.”

  “Since when did you become my wife?”

  “Since when did you become a touchy old bastard?”

  “Hell with you.”

  “I see.”

  “Watch the family.”

  “Watch your ass, Buster,” White said. “That station ain’t held the best luck. And I ain’t calling on Mary Ann for you stepping in a shit pile twice.”

  “THEY DON’T MEAN NOTHIN’ BY IT, KIT,” ALBERT BATES SAID. “They’re just catching up on old times. George likes to reminisce.”

  “Well, I hate it.”

  “I know.”

  “I was so damn glad when he got out from under those mugs and we got the hell out of Saint Paul,” Kathryn said. “I didn’t see the sun for four months up there. The ground was nothing but black slush and not a spot of green. All they did was sit around the Green Lantern and drink themselves stupid. George would lie around in pajamas, listening to Buck Rogers, for months, and then he’d be wheel on a job and come back with a cheap handout. Harv and Verne throwing him the dog scraps, and George never asking for anything better.”

  “But you liked Tacoma?”

  “I liked George in Tacoma,” she said. “He doesn’t act like this in front of you or Eddie. He acted normal. He’s always putting on for Verne and that bastard Harvey Bailey. I can’t stand that big-nosed son of a bitch. Everyone says he’s such a gentleman, the ‘Gentleman Bandit,’ the class yeggman, but he’s nothing but a two-bit Mis-sou-ra hick in a hundred-dollar suit with whitewall hair.”

  “Slow down, Kit,” Bates said. “They can hear you.”

  “Do I look like I care?”

  She turned back to the farmhouse window and saw the men inside, the kitchen all bright with a yellow glow, the dumb yeggs laughing and knee-slapping around the makeshift table and plunking down cards, cigars screwed down in their teeth. Old Boss Shannon took up the fourth seat like he was just one of the boys and not some old farmer who ran a rooming house for criminals. Boss had been taking their dirty money since he and Ora met, yeggs from all over the damn country coming to Paradise. All shot up and bloody, suitcases full of cash and with itchy fingers, and offering a teenage girl a few bits for a quick throw, saying it might be their last . . .

  “It’s okay,” Albert Bates said, his hawk-nosed profile crossed in the kerosene light. He fumbled for a fresh cigarette and smiled over at her. “George won’t mention it.”