“You wouldn’t happen to have another cigar on you?”
“I can git one,” he said. “Hit wouldn’t be trouble atall. Thought you said it wadn’t your brand.”
“It’s not. But I can enjoy it just the same.”
“Yes, sir. Hold on, Mr. Urschel. Hold on.”
“I don’t think I have a choice.”
Charlie was handcuffed to the bed frame in stiff pajamas he’d worn for days, and, considering it was midday, he felt downright ridiculous. His arm had fallen asleep shortly after he’d been chained and would take nearly an hour to come alive when they’d move him room to room away from the sun’s heat. He heard the front screen door thwack close and heavy feet in the main room and coming closer.
The door flew open and two men stepped inside.
“Keys.”
A jangle, and heavy shoes moved toward him. A snick, and his dead arm dropped to his side.
“Up, Urschel,” said the big gunman who’d brought him to this wretched hole. Charlie was pushed into the next room, and a heavy hand sat him down hard in a chair. “We’re gonna take off the tape, but don’t turn around and look at us. I really don’t feel like killing you today.”
They ripped the tape from his eyes, and the brightness of the room blinded him in a white glow. He closed his eyes and rubbed them, the skin feeling wet and soft and raw around the edges.
The big gunman plunked down a cheap paper tablet and a pen on the desk. “Write,” the other gunman said. “You can choose who gets the letter. But you tell them we mean business and we want two hundred grand.”
Charlie Urschel didn’t feel like it, but he laughed like a hiccup escaping his belly. He didn’t mean it, but the whole idea was just kind of funny to him, the number so absurd that he wondered how they came up with it. “I don’t have-”
“Shut up and write, Charlie,” said the big gunman, Charlie recalling his fat, bullish neck.
A thick hand shoved the pen into his fingers, and he caught a glance of a ruby pinky ring on a hairy finger.
Concentrating on the paper and into the glare, Charlie worked about ten minutes constructing the letter to his business associate, E. E. Kirkpatrick. Kirk had handled his affairs for some time and would understand his tone and message beyond these men’s obvious mental limits.
A man over his shoulder with hot breath read it and then ripped it up.
“Let’s try again,” the big man said. “I don’t give a tinker’s damn about the condition of the Slick Company or what assets you got tied up in stocks and bonds and whatnot. Just say you want the money paid, and we’ll handle the rest. Don’t think, Charlie. Just write, and smilin’ days are ahead.”
“The estate’s money is in a trust. You just can’t cash a check. There are lawyers and procedures-”
“Fuck ’em,” the other man said. “Write. Don’t think. Thinkin’ is our job.”
Charlie wrote what the man said, word for word. He heard the man’s heavy breathing and even the wet snap of a smile behind him when Charlie signed his name to all this nonsense. No words were said; the gunmen simply left the shack, screen door banging behind them, and a big motor started outside, automobile scratching off in the dust.
“Mr. Urschel, we sure are sorry,” said the old man. “Potatoes, get dinner started.”
“Sorry, Mr. Urschel,” the boy, Potatoes, said. “I got another cigar for you, a gen-u-ine Tampa Nugget. And we got somethin’ special for dinner tonight, too.”
“That’s right, Mr. Urschel. A real home-cooked meal. Don’t mind those men none. We just want you real comfortable. Remember, we’s the ones who treat you nice.”
“Then why don’t you let me go?” Charlie asked. “I’ll pay you both ten thousand dollars apiece.”
Potatoes and the old man didn’t say a thing for a long while. The hound trotted over and licked Charlie’s hands while the cotton and tape was laid back over his eyes from behind. The dog slopped on his fingers, and Charlie could feel the long, drooping ears.
“That ole boy sure does like you,” the old man said. “He don’t come ’round to people so quick. He senses you’re a gentleman. A just man.”
“You should see him take after a coon,” Potatoes said. “You want to hear more about the Fair?”
“No, thank you, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” Potatoes said.
“Mr. Urschel,” the old man said. “If them boys don’t make it through what they’re plannin’ on, you have my word I’ll let you loose. I know you don’t know me. But my word is fourteen carat.”
“I bet,” Charlie said. “I could tell you’re a pair of real gentlemen.”
“I’ll go fetch your dinner,” Potatoes said. “I think I seen a Photoplay, too. Jean Harlow’s on the cover and gives an interview, real personal, saying things she ain’t said to nobody else before. I get the goose pimples just thinkin’ on it.”
“DID YOU HAVE TO MAKE HIM SWALLOW THE DAMN WATCH?” DOC White asked.
“They put that woman through hell,” Jones said. “Then he tried to slice me with a busted bottle.”
“Why didn’t you have them arrested?”
“They learned their lesson,” Jones said. “I hope they choked on their steak.”
“Pretty stupid calling Mrs. Urschel to complain.”
“Greedy as hell,” Jones said. “Those men were bums before the Depression. It just makes ’em easier to hide.”
“No shame atall these days.”
“Why don’t you tell that to Mr. Colvin?”
“Come again?”
“That little girl is twistin’ him in knots,” Jones said.
On a stone patio behind the mansion, Betty Slick wore a satin number, something worth a month’s pay to Jones, low-cut and tied at the shoulders. Jones had seen such numbers in magazines but never on Mary Ann. Mary Ann was no prude but would’ve thought paying that kind of money for a dress was a sin on the order of buying a bonnet you only wear on Easter Sunday. Bruce Colvin sat on the ledge of a marble fountain, felt hat in hand, conversing with the girl, who’d hop up onto the ledge in her bare feet and then hop back down. The whole dance of it was making Jones dizzy, and he wished the girl had somewhere to go to keep Colvin’s mind on the matter at hand.
Jones took the pipe from the corner of his mouth and knocked the tobacco out with the heel of his boot. “He don’t stand a chance.”
“What’s his story?”
“Worked as a prosecutor in some small town in Mississippi,” Jones said. “Joined up a couple years ago. Can’t shoot. Can’t track worth a durn.”
“Dresses regulation.”
“Our days are numbered.”
“They still need us.”
“If you say,” Jones said.
Betty Slick laughed and twirled her dark hair and laughed some more, and brought her show closer to Special Agent in Charge Bruce Colvin. Jones noted she was a pretty girl, with a woman’s figure and pleasant face. She was the kind of girl that still had the dew on her, and Colvin might as well have had a ring in his nose.
“I think I’m gettin’ the piles,” Doc said. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Where to?”
“Out of this mausoleum.”
The Urschel place had been cleared of most newspapermen, who had only the day before been working from tents and makeshift offices on the front lawn, on account of not scaring off the kidnappers. They were cleared from the house but not from the story; those bloodsuckers still called every other minute. Four extra phone lines had been added to the house, with agents and police listening to every call, analyzing every telegram, and studying every letter delivered. Simple messages were broken down and straight-ahead words were decoded.
“You go to Sheriff Reed’s funeral?”
“No, sir,” Jones said. “Couldn’t make it.”
“He was an all right fella.”
“Reminded me of ole Rome Shields.”
“From San Angelo?”
“Yep,” Jones said. “Rome Shields taught me everything I know.”