“You unnerstand the twenty percent?” the Kid asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” George Kelly said, finding a soft, curved leather chair to park in and cross his legs and smoke, resting his hat over his big foot.
“And I don’t want no trouble,” the Kid said. “What you got goin’ with Harv and Verne don’t have a thing to do with me.”
“It’s decided.”
Harvey smiled over at George, letting George know the two of them were settled but that he also knew that George was trying to muscle him out.
“Can I see it?” the Kid asked.
George thought for a moment and ran a hand over his big jaw and nodded. Kathryn stood behind him by the door, and Harvey had to look real good to see if she’d gotten fat or if George hadn’t knocked her up.
“Yeah,” George said, snapping his fingers. “Give it to ’im, Kit.”
Kathryn waddled up to the desk, her long, painted fingers on her swaying stomach, and she dropped her big belly on the desk, turning her back to all the men in the room and hoisting her dress. Harvey thinking Oh, shit, here we go, what’s this broad about to pull, but then the dress reached high over her legs, showing her ass, and stretched over her stomach, and with a big thud on the desk out flopped the ninety g’s.
The door opened and in walked the other Jew, Barney Bernbaum, and he was all smiles, holding the door for Verne Miller, who followed, with a tight, twitchy mouth, and coldly looked to each one of ’em before resting his back against the far wall, scouting, and placing his hat back on his head, slow and delicate. All of ’ em knowing Miller packed two Army-boy.45s on each flank and could take each one of ’em out without dropping his cigarette.
Barney joined the Kid at the desk and thumbed through the big stacks of dough. Harvey knocked back the drink, poured some more. George was looking up at the ceiling like he was trying to count the tiles. The orchestra played louder now, and you could hear the muffled notes a bit more, the ceiling shaking, and from the minuscule cracks in it came a fine white powder, looking like dandruff or cocaine, splatting Harvey’s drink until he looked up to what George saw and knew it was just that natural sand shaking loose.
Barney nodded to the Kid. The Kid’s wide-set snake eyes took in the room, and he screwed up his Jew mouth, nodding back. The Kid picked up a big, ornate phone and spoke a handful of words into the receiver before hanging up. “Drink up. Money’ll be here in a jiff. Go play the wheel.”
“You think we’re soft?” George asked. “I prefer to leave this joint with all my money.”
The Kid shrugged. “Suit yourself, Georgie.” Miller uncrossed his arms, and left his lookout by the door. He joined Harvey at the bar, and Harvey filled a glass with ice and some tonic. Miller lit a cigarette to go with his ice water.
“So you boys gonna tell me the score?” the Kid asked. “You know I’m dying to know.”
“You don’t know?” Harvey Bailey asked, kind of laughing to himself and taking a last puff from a cigarette and squashing it in a glass ashtray. “You got the most wanted man in America right here in your establishment. Our little boy Georgie has grown up. Look at him-the mastermind, the criminal genius, the man with nerves of steel…”
“You don’t mean …?” the Kid asked. “Come on.”
“You betcha,” Harvey said. “Can you believe it? Remember how this mug used to stutter, ‘S-s-sir, c-c-can I tag along on a j-j-job?’ You know he puked in his hat before we robbed that bank in Sherman?”
George played with his hat and would not look at him.
Verne Miller laughed.
George played with his hat and wiped some imaginary dust from his shoe.
“Remember that one job where he double-parked that ole Packard and attracted every traffic cop in that podunk town?” Harvey asked.
Miller nodded and gave a sliver of a smile, knowing what Harv was doing, and took a sip of ice water, rattling the glass. You take a man like George, play with his head a bit, get him off his game, and he’ll start thinking sloppy and not worrying about things like counting or watching where fat satchels of cash were laid.
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.