A cloudy head just plain neutered a fella.

HARVEY BAILEY WAS A TWO-BIT ASSHOLE. KATHRYN COULD RUN down her boy on occasion, but George R. Kelly was still her man, and this was school-yard bullshit that she didn’t care for a bit. She prayed to the Lord in heaven that George would just reach into that beautiful tailored jacket, pull out that.38, and plug that big-nosed bastard in the forehead.

“Whatta they call you now, George?” Verne Miller asked, his jaw muscle flexing like walnuts.

George wouldn’t look at them. Look at them, George, meet their gaze, and don’t back down an inch. George wouldn’t look at ’em.

Harvey smoked, all delicate and womanlike, and said, “ ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly. Rat-a-tat-tat.”

“You even know how to fire a chopper, George?” Miller asked. “I can teach you sometime.”

George would not look at them.

The big guy just picked a space on the wall behind those two hoodlums and watched it like a cultured man might sit in a museum, or some such fancy place, and contemplate the lines and dots in a painting and make some kind of gibberish remark about the lines and dots forming a whole image. Kathryn had read of such four-flushers in Collier’s.

“Most wanted man in America,” Harvey said. “Got to take off my hat. We didn’t think you had the nuts.”

“Why don’t you shut up, old man,” Kathryn said, walking the room and standing behind George and placing her long fingers on the back of his chair and then touching his shoulder. “You think ’cause you stole a bunch of loot in your day? Let me tell you something. Back in the old days, my granny could’ve busted a jug wide open. Look at you. You can’t even walk without a cane. Like an old woman.”

Bailey raised his eyebrows and straightened his tie, running the silk through his fingers and sliding the silver clip tight. That nut job Miller just stood beside Bailey, staring at Kathryn, like the staring was gonna do one bit of good and like she hadn’t seen that intimidation show a thousand Saturday nights with him and Vi when he’d slap her silly and send her to the powder room with paint running off her eyes.

“Whatta you lookin’ at?” she said. “You crazy hophead.”

George wouldn’t look at ’em.

Not one damn bit.

Wouldn’t meet the men’s eyes. He reminded her of a schoolkid taken to task.

“Miller, you wanna know why you can’t find Vi?” Kathryn asked, the veins running hot and feeling her heart beating double time. “It’s ’cause she don’t wanna be found. She’s prowling New York with some Hollywood producer with a fat wallet while you and Harvey play grab ass for the dregs of what we earned. You know what? She told me you never could please her. Said holding your prick in her mouth was like playing with a kid’s pencil.”

Miller lurched forward. Harvey Bailey caught his right arm.

Harvey laughed and checked his watch.

“C’mon, George,” said the Kid. “Harvey’s just having some fun. Drinks on me.”

George took a big breath, and put his hands to his knees and stood tall, holding his hat.

“We’ll wait outside,” George said, mumbling.

He followed her from Kid Cann’s fancy-ass office and down a long, long sandstone hall and back into the smoky air and nigger music and ladies who didn’t give a shit that midnight was long since over.

“Look at all them knucklehead Cinderellas.”

“You got a strange way of talkin’, Kit.”

She grabbed his arm, feeling his labored breathing against her ribs, as they headed back toward the big ape’s mouth, seeing the big ape teeth, and Kid Cann’s goons making a show of parting as they came on through, and stepped out of the cool and into the heat. Over the Mississippi, you could see Saint Paul and a couple of rusted-out drawbridges real clear, one of ’em holding a passing freight, with a lot of racket and strain, red lights flashing and flashing.

George sat on the hood of his midnight blue sixteen-cylinder and started a Camel. He motioned to her, seeing if she wanted one. She shook her head and walked near him, kicking away the river gravel with her fine slippers and holding the hem of her dress, catching in the summer wind. The action still playing out the ape’s mouth, and if you looked over at the Mystic Caverns you’d think the beast was alive, with those glowing eyes, and the heat and smoke coming from between those picket teeth.

“George honey?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What’re you sorry for?”

“They’re just some rotten crooks. You don’t have to look up to ’em no more. You outclass ’em all.”

George sat on the hood of the car, in the shadow and darkness, and smoked for a few minutes, looking a bit drunk, watching those flashing red lights with all his attention.

“But George? Meet their eyes next time. Let ’em know you’re the heavy in this picture.”

“I was looking for something.”

Kathryn saddled up and skedaddled up onto the hood, pinching his smoke, and watching the gears and whirlycues of the drawbridge lay it all flat and even. Her stomach felt oddly flat and empty.

“The Kid’s got a secret door,” he said. “Right behind the desk. Looks real good and hid in that fancy woodwork, but it sure as shit is there.”

“How do you know it’s not a secret safe or some nonsense?”

“ ’ Cause it ain’t.”

“George?”

They noticed two black Cadillacs, new ones but only eight-cylinder, pull in front of the Mystic Caverns. Some tough Jew boys holding fat grips in their hands crawled out, and the doormen moved the hell out of their way. The business had begun.

“Here we go.”

“George?”

“Open the trunk, sweetheart,” George said. “And give me your coat.”

“What for?”

“To hide the big gun.”

“Oh, God,” she said, smiling. Knees weak and face flushed. “Oh, George.”

“Keep the motor running, and don’t turn into a woman if I come out blazing.”

18

You remember ole Pedro Posado?” Doc White asked. He and Jones were about a thousand feet above North Texas, heading back to Oklahoma City, in a brand-new aircraft belonging to a buddy of Urschel’s, an executive with Sinclair Oil. White had to yell out the question on account of the single engine humming and shuddering the cabin. But, thank the Lord, it was blue skies today, making it easy work for Jones to check the rough terrain through a pair of binoculars.

“How could a man forget Pedro Posado?” Jones asked.

“What do you think drove him?”

“Meanness.”

“I don’t think so,” White said. “He was restless. All those Mexicans were restless back then, the government in collapse, everyone wantin’ a piece, thinking about putting beans on the table.”

“Nothing killed that woman but plain-out meanness,” Jones said, studying his hand-inked map and looking back out the oval window, following the natural borders-rivers and roads and fence lines-across the flat, dusty earth below them. It was a cloudless day, and everything from this altitude looked in good order.

“What was her name?” White asked.

“Conchita Ramirez.”

“That’s right. Conchita Ramirez. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear the screams.”

“I try and not study on the past.”

“Pedro ran into that drugstore when he saw us. Where was that?”

“Shafter.”

“He pulled a gun on you and-”

“Doc, can we pay attention to the matter at hand?”

“You recall the newspapers?”

“Called us ‘killers,’ ” Jones said.

“Hell, ole Pedro is the one who’d blowed her legs and hands off.”

“I was there. You don’t need to color a story when a person knows how it goes.”

“We find the boys who nabbed Mr. Urschel and we won’t have time to blink.”