“I just don’t want you to become upset.”
“Mother of Mercy!” she said, clutching her chest. “Is this the end of Rico?”
Betty stood up from the comics she was reading and studied the colored newsprint ink that had bled all over her hands. She showed her palms and laughed, wiping them on her robe, and then turned to the table and plucked the cigar from Charlie’s finger and took a couple puffs, pacing the sunporch and blowing the smoke from the corner of her mouth.
She chewed the cigar into her molars, and said in a tough-guy voice: “You can dish it out, but you got so you can’t take it no more.”
“Excuse me?”
“Edward G. Robinson. The strange-looking fella in Little Caesar?”
“I see.”
Charlie looked at the girl over the top of the newspaper headline, but the sun’s reflection on the doorframe distracted him. He stared at the reflection for a good while, transfixed by that hook latched tight in its eye, holding the door firm like it always held it. A light summer wind rattled the door, but the frame held. Charlie stood and walked to it, unlatching the hook and then hooking it again, counting the paces back to his seat and rubbing his face as he crossed and recrossed his legs with nervousness.
“Uncle Charlie?”
“How did they know?”
“Are you okay?”
“How in the world did they know we were playing cards?”
“You always play cards.”
“Not always.”
“They saw the light.”
“They knew where to find us. The door was unlocked. They didn’t hesitate.”
“Calm down. You want me to get Mother?”
“Call your Agent Colvin back here. Right now.”
“BOSS, YOU GOT TO COME OUT OF THERE SOMETIME,” HARVEY Bailey said, tapping the end of his.38 through the moon cut in the outhouse door.
“Go away. Go away, both you sonsabitches.”
“I think he wants us to go away,” Verne Miller said.
“I done tole the sheriff. Sheriff Faith knowed you’s coming back.”
“Sheriff,” Harvey said. “Faith.”
“You gonna strip me nekkid and put me in with ole Hoover.”
“Open up,” Miller said, holding the stock on the machine gun, “or I’ll spray the shitter with this Thompson.”
“Boss, where are George and Kathryn?” Harvey asked.
“Gone. Long gone, and they ain’t comin’ back.”
“They called you.”
“I ain’t answerin’ no more questions. If you boys want to unload your clip on the shitter, then I guess I’ll die with my britches on my knees.”
“Good Lord,” Harvey said.
He walked through the dust and gravel and sat on the hood of the Buick. The heat had to be hitting damn near ninety, and what he wouldn’t give to be back in the cool green of a Minnesota lake or down in that fifty-degree cavern where nude women danced with feathers barely covering their snatches. He lit a cigarette and inhaled, thinking, goddamn, he’d already sweated through two shirts that very day.
The old woman came out of the farmhouse just about that time, the screen door slamming hard behind her, and she walked to the men, yelling for them to leave Boss alone, didn’t they knowed he’d been having the constipation now for a third day and if they didn’t give him some peace they might just bring on the hemorrhoids.
Miller tucked the machine gun up onto his shoulder and shrugged. He walked around the shitter twice and then paused to look at the old woman, who had the same strong jaw and mean black eyes as her daughter.
“All we want to know is where they went,” Harvey said. “I know they rang you up or sent a Western Union.”
“They said you was coming,” Ora Shannon said, dressed in a fifty-cent housecoat and curlers. “They said you’d tried to rob ’em and would come and threaten us, and, by God, I’ll call Sheriff Faith.”
“Then go ahead and call ’im, woman,” Miller said, sneering. “What are you gonna tell him? That we’re the only two looking for the most-wanted gangsters in America?”
“Lord God in heaven.”
“What?” Miller asked. “You think your hands are clean?”
“You filthy hoodlums. Filthy, shit-ass men.”
“I been called many things in my time,” Harvey said, adjusting the brim of his hat over his eyes and checking the Bulova on his wrist. “But never ‘filthy, shit-ass.’ Has a nice ring.”
“Go make us some chicken,” Verne Miller said. “And slice up some tomatoes from your garden.”
“I wouldn’t open a can of dog food.”
“A cool pie for dessert,” Miller said.
“Don’t do it, Ora,” Boss said from inside the outhouse. “Don’t you do it.”
Verne Miller squeezed a short burst of bullets into the outhouse door. The old woman screamed. She shrieked so hard that she emptied the air from her lungs and dropped to the earth, pulling out the curlers from her hair. “God… God.”
“God don’t live in the shitter, old woman,” Miller said. He rapped on the outhouse door with his knuckles and said, “You still with us, Boss?”
“You sonsabitches.”
“Still with us,” Harvey said, flicking the cigarette nub end over end into the dust. “Praise the Lord.”
They all heard the motor before they saw the dust and were silent, studying the automobile making its way down the long, winding country road. The shithouse door squeaked open, and Boss Shannon peeked his balding white head out, sniffing the air like a scared animal, checking to see what all the calm was about.
Harvey tossed him a pack of cigarettes and then his lighter.
“Go make some chicken.”
“Is that the sheriff?” Boss Shannon asked.
“No,” Harvey said. “That’s ‘Mad Dog’ Underhill and Jim Clark. And those two crazy bastards are gonna watch you, just like you and Potatoes watched Mr. Urschel. Now, let’s talk about George and Kathryn again.”
“She left her furs,” Boss said.
“Boss!” the old woman said.
“And her jewelry,” Boss said.
“Boss!”
“Well, it’s true. I know she’s your kinfolk, but I ain’t dangling out my bits and pieces for the likes of them.”
The car, a big green Lincoln, rolled to a stop, and Wilbur Underhill stepped from the driver’s seat and onto the running board. The white suit and straw boater looked cartoonish on the skeletal man with the big eyes and farmer’s features.
“What’d they say?” Underhill asked. Jim Clark pulled himself from the passenger door and didn’t take two paces before he whipped it on out and started to relieve himself on some skittering chickens.
“Miss Ora is gonna make us a big fried-chicken dinner and then-” Harvey said.
“And then what?” Underhill said, squinting into the sun.
“Then we gonna have a little come-to-Jesus meeting.”
“Did he just come out the shitter?” Underhill asked.
“That he did,” Harvey Bailey said.
“Well, hell. Open the door and let it air out. I needed a commode since the state line.”
THE THREE-CAR CARAVAN MADE ITS WAY NORTH WITH DETECTIVES from Dallas and Fort Worth, three government agents besides Doc White, Joe Lackey, Colvin, and Jones. One of the boys-a kid named Bryce-was promised to be a real Oklahoma sharpshooter, and, when Jones had doubted him, he’d tossed a poker chip into the air and blasted the center from it. Jones had nodded, said he’ll do just fine, and they’d loaded up a little later-three hours later than Jones would’ve liked-and now, with the sun falling across the hills, he thought about the layout of the Shannon place and having to make their way through the gate and around the house without causing some newspapermen sympathy.
“You know they have dogs,” Jones said.
He and Doc White sat in the rear of the sedan. Detective Ed Weatherford drove.
“You told me.”
“Bulldogs,” Jones said.
“I never in my life saw a trick like that kid pulled today.”
“He shouldn’t shoot so near the hotel.”