George got back behind the wheel, and they followed a narrow, rutted path that jumped up and over some railroad tracks and crossed down into a wide, endless scrap-metal yard. Big, fat stacks of junked cars and oil barrels and wagon wheels sat in useless, rusted heaps. It had just started to rain, a few drops splatting the Cadillac’s windshield, but when he stopped the car and killed the engine the heavens sure opened up.
George just sat there like he was trying to figure out how to start necking. Kathryn crossed her arms over her chest and slid down in her seat. She stared straight ahead and bit into her cheek.
George reached for his hat with a sigh and crawled out of the big car. He opened the rear door and pulled Urschel out by his bound wrists and marched him down a narrow space between the walls of rusted cars, down an endless path, and out of sight of the windows.
Kathryn was damned if she wanted to see it anyway. Because if she was ever called to court about being there when Mr. Charles F. Urschel, president of the Tom Slick Oil Company, was killed, she could look that prosecutor right in the eye and say she didn’t see a goddamn thing.
The rain fell harder, the first bit of it she’d seen in months, sounding like impatient fingers drumming on the desk. And there was nothing but all that silver pinging on that big midnight blue hood of the Cadillac, Kathryn looking straight ahead past that old silver Indian and leaning forward, squinting to see just a motion or a bit of something. Son of a bitch.
Only rain and deep night. Rusted coils and spindles and gears. Old engines and parts of old machines. Stoves and toasters. Useless stuff from machines no one cared to recall.
What if someone was to come along? What if the owner of this goddamn graveyard was to come out of his hole and want to know who was driving this beautiful piece of machinery into his personal shithole? Goddamn, if it wasn’t raining, she’d go out and grab George, and, if he hadn’t done the deed, she’d take the damn gun and kill the bastard herself instead of sitting in the car like a dog and being left in Shit City… BLAM.
BLAM. BLAM.
Three sounds. Three strobe patterns.
The figure and shape of that big mug coming back through the wrecks, fedora down over his eyes, gun hanging loose and dirty by his side, and marching straight for the car and slamming the door hard.
“Did you do it?”
He didn’t answer.
“We shoulda buried him in a barrel of lime,” she said.
He cranked the sweet Cadillac and leaned forward to see through the whole goddamn mess till he bumped up and over the crest of the old rails and back onto the highway, fishtailing and sliding and heading north again.
“ Saint Paul?”
“I gave my word.”
“To a thief and a killer.”
“Verne Miller is a war hero, Kit.”
“How did it feel?”
“Why don’t you put a sock in it?”
“He was your first, wasn’t he?”
“Well.”
“Well, how did it feel?”
“Like something that had to be done.”
“Amen.”
“Turn on that lamp and read the map,” he said. “And why don’t you shut up till we get back to Saint Paul.”
JONES FINISHED WITH HIS REPORT, PECKING IT OUT ON AN L. C. Smith at the Federal Building and sliding it into the mail pouch to Washington. He grabbed his Stetson and returned to the mansion, only to receive a cable from Hoover chewing him out for not being in direct contact during the entire affair. Jones reread the cable, the words chapping his ass, and tossed it in the garbage, following Doc White to the front stoop under the portico, where the newsmen had turned the front lawn into a small tent city.
The pallor inside the house made it feel like a goddamn wake. Urschel should’ve been home hours ago.
The papers ran phone lines into a wild switchboard under an Army tent. Some of the newspapermen had now brought their desks and were sitting with their feet propped up and taking calls, all the while sweating through their shirts and ties, living through the long, hot night and all day with nothing to add to the Urschel story.
Tom Slick, Jr., and Charles Urschel, Jr., both about fifteen or sixteen, were back from a fishing trip in Mexico. And Betty Slick had decided to a bake a lemon pie for Agent Colvin, seeing to it that he ate at least two slices to make sure it was to his liking.
When there was nothing left to do, the family just sat in the salon and waited in silence. Every ring of the phone was like a jolt of electricity.
At nightfall, the wind blew in from the west and the rains came. The first rains in months, and Jones watched from the stoop as the newsmen scampered away, grabbing for their typewriters and copy, chasing stray notes and fallen hats. Tents tumbled down the road, and reporters and cops scrambled for their automobiles.
Colvin approached the men with a smile, watching the show.
“How was that pie?” Doc White asked.
Colvin’s face grew crimson. The rain streamed hard and violent across the road and atop the car hoods.
“She’s a fine young lady.”
“She sure has a crush,” Jones said.
“She’s just a girl.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven,” Colvin said.
“At twenty-seven?” Jones asked. “I was already married. That was back in aught-seven. I’d left the Rangers and joined up with Customs.”
Thunder and lightning, a full-out gully washer. Large tree branches shook and small freshly planted trees bent in the harsh wind. Jones took off his hat in fear of losing it.
“Y’all worked the border?” Colvin asked.
“Rode that river half my life.”
“You, too?” he asked White.
Doc White nodded.
“You ever see Pancho Villa?”
White and Jones smiled.
“Yeah, we knew Villa,” Jones said.
“You met him?”
“Sure thing,” Jones said.
“He was a real cutthroat.”
“Pancho?” Jones said. “One of the most pleasant sorts you’d ever meet. Would you say, Doc? He was an honorable man. Maybe what got him killed.”
They stood there and watched the rains for a while, Colvin and Doc White smoking cigarettes. It was black now, the sun probably not down but the dark clouds smudging out everything and keeping the neighborhood in a queer purple-black glow that usually preceded a tornado.
“The Kansas City office said the telephone call to the Muehlebach came from a local movie house,” Colvin said. “They sent an agent to the Newman Theater but came up with nothing.”
Jones rubbed his face with a handkerchief and cleaned thumbprints off his glasses.
“He should have been back hours ago,” Colvin said.
Jones nodded. He could see clearer without the smudges, the rain softening a bit, a heavy heat and humidity lifting from the ground.
“If they turn him loose,” Jones said, “it won’t be close to here. We’ll have to wait for Urschel.”
“When do we start to look?”
“Let’s give it till morning,” Jones said. “If he doesn’t show, we’ll understand the situation.”
A pack of newspapermen holding black umbrellas approached the front porch and shouted up a couple questions for the agents. Someone inside had tipped them off about the ransom drop, and, boy, they were angry it had taken them almost twenty-four hours to hear about it.
Was it really a million dollars?
Some people say the kidnappers may have taken the Lindbergh baby.
Agent Jones, they call you an Ace Investigator. Is it true you tracked down the last of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and forced Butch Cassidy down to Bolivia?
Jones ignored them, loaded his pipe, and strolled down the steps into the soft rain with Doc and climbed into the car supplied to them. They ate supper at the Skirvin, dropped by the local office for any new communiqués, and then headed back to Eighteenth Street and the now-familiar mansion. As the night wore on, the rains continued, and Mrs. Urschel turned on the radio just in case a report in some other state was to come over the wire. It took a few moments for the unit to heat up, and Jones found a comfortable place on the couch under that life-size portrait of Tom Slick, and smoked his cherry tobacco and listened to the Pabst Blue Ribbon Show on the radio, someway feeling odd that the nation was okay with alcohol again after spending so many years going after bootleggers.