The Urschel and Slick boys-dog-tired and sick from grief and worry-turned in some hours later. And in hushed whispers by the radio, Betty Slick told Agent Colvin that cotillion or joy of any type had to be canceled. And they soon left, too, and Jones didn’t study on it long. And then it was just Berenice Urschel, and the intimacy of them sitting so close with so few in the salon made Jones stand and walk into the kitchen.

She’d been crying a long time and seemed empty of tears and wasteful talk.

He poured a cup of coffee and noted the hour on a clock, growing close to midnight. He’d check in with the boys on the night guard and leave some orders. And then he’d head back to the Skirvin for a few hours of rest. He’d shave and be back here before sunrise.

That’s when he heard the commotion at the back door. One of the local agents was arguing with a man who wanted to come inside.

“Mister,” the agent said. “You better turn right back around and get back with the other newspapers.”

“But I’m not a reporter,” said the man wearing a straw hat and soaked short-sleeved shirt.

“No, he’s not,” said Jones with a smile, offering his hand. “Mr. Urschel, we’ve been waiting on you. My name’s Jones.”

14

What the hell, George?” Kathryn said. “Urschel’s alive? You lied. I can’t believe you lied to me, you rotten son of a bitch.” George mumbled something, his mouth full of eggs and ham, at a ham-and-eggs, no-name joint in some no-name town. Kathryn wasn’t even sure what state they were in. But they sure were hungry and had stopped off on the ride north when they’d seen the hand-painted signs for EATS, REST-ROOMS, GAS. When she’d come back from the can, she’d seen the front of a Kansas City Star someone left with a nickel tip. URSCHEL FREED.

Son of a bitch.

“What did you say?” she asked.

He finished chewing, and leaned in and said real low, “Excuse a fella for not wanting the Chair. What’s the point of stirring the pot? We got what we wanted. Why risk it? ’Sides, he almost shit his drawers running away.”

Kathryn read on about Charles F. Urschel, head of the Tom Slick Oil Company, bravely making his way from a scrapyard outside Norman to Classen Barbecue, where he calmly got a cup of coffee and telephoned for a cab. He paid the driver a small tip, the newspaperman drawing out that fact to show he was cheap, and was stopped at the back door of his house by a federal agent who didn’t recognize his face.

“Says here the kidnappers gave him ten dollars,” she said. “Is that true?”

“Why don’t you go ahead and broadcast it after Little Orphan Annie?”

“Ten whole dollars. You are a sucker.”

“Who’s that little chatter box?” George sang. “The one with pretty auburn locks?/ Whom do you see? / It’s Little Orphan Annie.”

Kathryn frowned and fished a pack of Luckies from her purse, lit one with shaking hands, and used the ruby red tip of her index finger to skip from story to story. Charles Urschel’s big, dumb hangdog face took up most of the space above the fold.

She smoked the cigarette down to a nub and squashed it out as the waitress in a little paper hat refilled her coffee. George asked for some more toast.

She lit another Lucky and leaned back into her seat. The diner was empty, far too early in the morning for normal folks, and she leaned into the paper and read on. “Says right here that ‘FEDERAL ACE GUS T. JONES LEADS MANHUNT.’ You ever heard of him? Says he tracked down the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and was a personal friend to Pancho Villa. Jesus H. How old is this guy?”

“Too old to catch us,” George said with a wink. “I bet he still rides a horse.”

“Says here he has a government airplane at his disposal.”

She turned the page and above an advertisement for Lux soap-Is Your B.O. Offending Your Husband?-was a picture of the Federal Ace. Wire-framed glasses, fat man with thinning hair. “Well, son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“It’s the bastard from the Sooner,” she said, laughing. “I knew he was the law. Damn, I knew it.”

“The one with Kirkpatrick?”

“No, George. The nigger porter.”

“They just put that stuff in the paper to rile us up,” he said. “Eddie Bentz says nervousness will trip you up every time. Keep your mind clear and everything is copacetic.”

“You can’t even spell copacetic.”

“Come on now, Kit.”

“I mean it,” she said. “Ed Weatherford is still out there, too. You know he’s gonna turn rat.”

“Ed Weatherford doesn’t know diddly-squat,” George said, scraping some egg onto his toast. He pointed the loaded toast at her. “You wanted me to drive all the way to Fort Worth just to kill a fella ’cause you don’t like his smile.”

“He’s a snake.”

“Oh, Ed’s all right,” he said, grinning. “I think he’s a little sweet on you, too.”

“You sure are a bright boy, George.”

The waitress walked back from the kitchen with more toast and jam and butter. George smiled and winked at her, and the woman blushed because, hell, she had to be at least forty and hard and weathered. But Kathryn Kelly was smart enough to know that There but by the grace of God, because if she didn’t have a plan, she damn well could be slinging hash in a few years.

“The beauty with these kidnap deals is that no one has to die,” George said, wiping his mug with a napkin. “You take the gravy from some rich mug who’s swimming in cash while average hardworking Joes out there can’t afford a cup of coffee. It’s a solid, respectable line of work.”

“Since when are you hardworking?”

“How long has it been since you wanted for anything?”

“You made me leave Chingy.”

“We don’t need a little yapping dog on this excursion,” he said.

“How long is this gonna take?”

“Couple days tops.”

“And you trust this Kid Cann?”

“He’s a businessman.”

“He’s a crook.”

“Harvey’s cashin’ in his chips with him, same as us.”

George nodded and straightened his short red tie. He looked off in the wide, empty space of the restaurant spreading out in a crazy chessboard of blue-and-white linoleum. The place smelled of cigarettes and frying bacon and coffee left on the burner too long. In the darkness outside the glass window, a long, sweeping arrow made of tiny lightbulbs beckoned in the weary traveler.

“Then what?” she asked. “When do we get the money back?”

George smiled. “We relax. Have some laughs.”

“I want to go back to Cleveland.”

“What the hell for? I want to take you down to Biloxi and put our feet in the sand. We can drink beer on the beach and go dancing on the boardwalk at night. I wouldn’t mind doing a little fishing, too.”

“Before we do anything, we have to pay off the Cadillac.”

“Are you joking?”

“Do you have any idea of how embarrassing it is to get all those telephone calls and telegrams about falling behind on those payments? When we bought that big baby out there, we said we’d be paying by year’s end in cash. And now we have it, I want to march right into that dealership and tell ’em to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

“That won’t prove a thing, Kit.”

“You got that damn loan in the name of Boss and Ora! You said your name was Mr. Robert G. Shannon.”

“Would you shut up.”

“You shut up.”

George let out a long stream of smoke from the side of his mouth. He looked her over like he was appraising just how long she’d keep this gag running, and the decision didn’t take long as he rested his meaty fist on the table, cigarette burning down to his hairy knuckles, and nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, Saint Paul to trade with the Jews and then down to Cleveland so you can play big-time with that two-bit car salesman. Say, I know why you want to do this. You didn’t like the way his wife treated you when we had dinner with them. When you told her about the kind of gowns you liked, and she laughed a little like she didn’t believe you.”