Infamous (43 page)

“Scoot over,” Kathryn said.

“Ma’am?”

“I need to do some thinking.”

He exchanged places with her on the commode and stood, looking awkward and loose, arms folded across his chest and trying to look smart, as she talked out a plan, more to herself than to Luther.

“I want you to take the bus back to Fort Worth tomorrow,” she said, holding up a hand, the silk material on her robe draping down her forearm like a butterfly wing. “Hold on . . . Hold on . . . I’ll pay. But I want you to go back and see that sorry fat bastard Sam Sayres and tell him that he no longer works for the Shannon family. Tell him we’re trading up, and that Kit Kelly wants her Chevrolet back.”

“He has your machine?”

“Used it as collateral, for him sitting on his ass while my dear ole momma is sent to the gallows.”

“You want me to drive the car back here?”

“I want you to go to Enid and hire that lawyer you told me about. I’ll take Gerry and Flossie Mae with me.”

“Where to?”

“San Antonio,” Kathryn said. “You can contact me there care of General Delivery. I’ll make sure they’re clothed and fed till you get back. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Luther nodded.

“He better be good,” she said.

“He’s the cheese on apple pie.”

Kathryn nodded, long legs spread in a solid stance on the commode, listening to herself and making the plan definite in her mind. “Tomorrow morning I’ll give you five hundred dollars to advance him.”

“Five hunnard,” Luther Arnold said, Kathryn noticing the shriveled flesh on his toes and long, curled nails turned yellow. “That’ll keep him busy for a while.”

“And tell him I want him to put the deal for George on the table,” she said. “If the G wants George R. Kelly, they can have ’im. All I want is my momma.”

Someone knocked on the door. “Daddy?”

“Yes, muffin.”

“I got to pee-pee. What’re y’all doin’ in there?”

“What if you can’t find Mr. Kelly?” Luther asked in a whisper.

“That rotten son of a bitch disappears when you need him most, but he’ll show up like a bad penny. I know my George.”

31

W
hen Kathryn heard the story, she couldn’t tell which parts were true, which parts George invented, and how much of the small stuff he just threw in there to keep it sounding gospel, the details of it coming out of George’s mouth like a sinner come to witness about his road of trials. George started with when he’d jumped into a jalopy Chevrolet and headed off Ma Coleman’s land, heading right for Biloxi, knowing that Kathryn would understand his note and follow him to his favorite hotel, where they could lay low a bit, put their feet in the sand and drink some cold beer, out of the forsaken state of Texas, down to the Gulf, to vacation from being outlaws for a while. He’d made it as far as New Orleans, George knowing some people in that part of the country from when he’d run booze up to Memphis, and he’d taken a room in the Lafayette Hotel and only left once to get a pint of gin and an Italian sandwich. He said he sat in the room all night, not being able to sleep, reading five different newspapers, all of ’em carrying the same story about her momma’s family being taken by airplane to await a fair and speedy trial. And he said it made him so damn sad that he didn’t want more company than a bottle of gin, remembering that he’d left the hotel one more time, walking down Canal Street to find a liquor store and a Catholic church, where he wandered in and lit a candle for the Shannon family. That part of the story diverging a bit from the truth of that piney gin, but Kathryn took the lie as a solid gesture, and let him continue on about driving out of the city the next morning, figuring the one-eyed bellhop sure noticed he could be none other than “Machine Gun” Kelly, and him driving along Highway 90 into Mississippi, following that road through Waveland and into Bay Saint Louis, where he went to the Star movie house and watched a Barbara Stanwyck picture in the colored balcony. Again getting sad, because Barbara sure had a lot of Kit Kelly in her, wandering out of the black night like a crazy dream and staring out at the Bay under oaks older than time, moss in the cool breeze, getting good and buzzed till his heart stopped hurting. He drove on through Gulfport to Biloxi, a town that he knew just as well as he knew Memphis. He headed to the first pharmacy he saw to buy a bottle of peroxide and a shower cap, a toothbrush and some talcum powder, and five
True Detective
magazines, before checking into the Avon, that fine old hotel right off the Gulf.

For three days, he rubbed his body with baby oil and poured the peroxide into his hair, wearing purple-tinted sunglasses and drinking gin mixed with pitchers of lemonade that the negros sold to the tourists. No one talked to him, and everything seemed fine as moonshine, as he’d sit in a deck chair, dozing to the sound of the surf, letting his cramped car legs unknot, and waking only as the shadows ran long across the combed beach and the sun got ready to disappear to wherever it went at night. In the evenings, he’d order up steaks and hamburgers to his room, some more gin, and would drink all his sorrows away while reading “How the Sensational Boettcher Kidnapping Was Solved, the Baffling Mystery of the Dead Dancer, the Minister—the Love Lyrics—and the Murdered Woman,” and then coming across an advertisement in the back pages that promised to help you “Read Law at Home and Earn up to $15,000 Annually,” and George said that sure let the snakes loose in his head, thinking, hell, he was earning fifty thousand a year just for knocking over a few banks, and they had to get good and greedy and start in the kidnapping racket, letting the hounds loose on their trail. (This was usually when George would go into that long speech about how he had a different path in Memphis with his first wife—sweet Geneva—and what a good man his father-in-law had been, much better than his own father, that worthless, mean son of a bitch, and that if Mr. Ramsey hadn’t been snuffed out like that, a high beam falling from his own construction site and splitting open his head like a watermelon, old George Barnes—that being George’s real name—would be an upstanding member of Memphis society to this day.)

“And that’s how you came to Memphis, George?”

George shook his head, and said, “Gosh dang it. My own fault, we couldn’t find each other at the Avon.”

He had to pack and move over to the Hotel Avelez, on account of the bellhop studying his profile when he’d stumble down to the front desk to get some fresh towels. He said he’d burned through his Urschel stash in New Orleans and had to dip into those American Express checks he’d boosted in Tupelo.

“You didn’t, George.”

“Sure did.”

“And you didn’t think anyone would notice?”

“Didn’t have a choice.”

“Did you find that woman, that blond lifeguard?”

“Kit, hush up and pay attention to the tale at hand.”

“Coppers found you?”

The Hotel Avelez swimming pool shimmered like a glass gridiron the morning he’d decided to eat some break fast under the oaks and charge it to Mr. J. L. Baker, that being the name he decided sounded best with his tanned skin and yellowing hair. He said he’d grown a little thickheaded, and cocky with his new looks, and decided to drive into the downtown and pick up some shirts and pants he’d left to be laundered. George said he’d also been contemplating wearing a straw boater but sure wished Kit could’ve been with him because he wasn’t sure a dandy little hat like that looked good on a big fella. He said he’d just stepped foot out of his car, looking at some straw hats displayed in a department-store window, when he heard the voice of a corner newsboy yelling with all his might, “ ‘MACHINE GUN’ KELLY IN TOWN!”

George said he nearly shit his drawers.

“What did you do?”

“Left it all.”

“Your luggage?”

“Even my .45 and my
True Detective
magazines. Wore the same pair of underwear for three days.”

“And that was Memphis?”

“That was Memphis.”

George walked to the bus station and bought a ticket. He said his heart didn’t stop racing until he crossed the Tennessee state line, and then he worried about coppers waiting for him when he stepped foot off that bus. But he said the sight of the old river sure did his heart some good, as did getting out on Union and walking into the Peabody Hotel, where he used to deliver hip flasks and bottles of bootleg bourbon in a raincoat with a dozen pockets. He felt like no time at all had passed and then realized that it had been nearly ten years since he lighted out for Oklahoma, finding more opportunity in Tulsa, and knowing Geneva and his two sons could get on with their lives without the shame of a daddy who sold whiskey.

“You never told me you had sons, George.”

“You never asked for a résumé. Geneva’s remarried. They have a new daddy.”

George broke his last dollar into dimes and called on the one fella who he knew he could trust in Memphis, ole Lang. His brother-in-law, Langford Ramsey. He hadn’t seen Lang since Lang was just a skinny teenager starting out at Central. But George still telephoned him every anniversary of his daddy’s death, George usually drunk and telling Lang for the hundredth time how much he respected his father, even taking Ramsey as his middle name out of respect.

“George R. Kelly.”

“That’s right.”

Lang had two listings in the phone book, one his residence on Mignon and the other his law office. George found out that Lang had been the youngest man ever to pass the Tennessee bar, and had just married and had a son, with another child on the way. George had hugged him out of pride at the Memphis train station, and they shook hands over and over, Lang walking with him back over to the Peabody to have a big enough break fast for an army. George had two plates, since he hadn’t eaten since Biloxi, and washed it down with a pot of coffee.

“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.”