Infamous

“I’m not much for secretarial work.”

Lackey took his hat and jacket off and hung them by the door. He closed the door behind the two of them with a light click, but you could still hear the telephone bells ringing and the hard clack of the typewriters and the chatter of Teletype machines. The air was smoky and stale, and all the action of the days since Urschel returned home made the office air smell sour with nervous sweat.

Jones sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. He was in his shirtsleeves and wore a gun rig over his shoulder.

“I’d open a window, but they’re painted shut.”

“I’d shoot out the panes,” Lackey said. “How do you live like this?”

Jones shrugged.

“Listen,” Lackey said. “I haven’t put this in a report yet. But after you got reassigned, I picked up where you left off on the Union Station massacre.”

“Not much to follow,” Jones said.

“You remember requesting the phone records for Dick Galatas in Hot Springs? From the pool hall?” Lackey asked. “Well, the son of a bitch called Joplin twenty times after we picked up Jelly Nash.”

Jones nodded. “Let me guess.”

“That’s right, that old grifter Deafy Farmer. It’s taken me some time to run down the calls out of Farmer’s place, but the wires were burning up while me and you and Sheriff Reed were on that train. We didn’t stand a chance.”

“Who’d he call?”

Lackey leaned in and placed his elbows on his knees, his short red tie dipping from his neck. “A rental. False names. When we found the place, it was littered with cigarette butts and rotgut gin. They left plates of spaghetti on the counter half eaten.”

“You get a description?”

“Two neighbors saw a man ducking in and out. Never made a fuss. Never too social.”

“Floyd?”

Lackey shook his head. “Fella was described as pale-ski

“Son of a bitch,” Jones said. “Verne Miller.”

“The witnesses picked him straight out of a hundred photos. That rotten bastard killed Otto, those two detectives, and one of our own.”

“Who else?”

“No one saw him, but I’m hearing Harvey Bailey.”

“I figured that from the start.”

“Miller won’t go quietly,” Lackey said, working a cigarette from a pack and then finding a lighter in his sling. “Listen, Hoover’s been asking about how Nash was killed.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said there was a lot of confusion in that car.”

“He’ll have the bullet reports by now,” Jones said. “Hoover knows.”

“You think Sheriff Reed meant to kill him?”

“Gun went off while he was trying to set aim.”

Someone rapped on the pebbled-glass door, and a nameless young agent walked in and passed a typed note for Agent Gus T. Jones. “How ’bout we get you something to eat?” Jones said. “You like chop suey?”

“What’s that message?”

“This?” Jones said, adding the slip to the growing mound of paper on his desk. “Some detective in Fort Worth named Weatherford. I’ll call him when I get around to it.”

16

George drove Kathryn past all the old Saint Paul places, the Saint Paul haunts and whatnot, chattering on about The times they had, the nights they danced, and how all of it was coming around again, sister. The Boulevards of Paris nightclub. The Hollyhocks. Green Lantern Saloon, Plantation-George smiling like a bastard when they rode past the Plantation because he once screwed her there in a toilet stall-and then on to the big brick Hotel Saint Paul on St. Peter Street, where George said Leo Gleckman ran the show on the whole third floor, pointing out the floor like she couldn’t count from the bottom. Gleckman was Saint Paul, and the Kid ran Mi

“Whatta you think?” George asked, pulling into the Hotel Saint Paul portico. “We get a suite?”

“We got enough?”

“Couple hu

“I wa

“Fine by me,” George said. “Hell, I like steak.”

“I wa

“It’s a hell of a dress.”

“I like red.”

“Red was made for you, sweetheart.”

“And the rings. The necklace I showed you at Cohen and Samolson?”

“We’ll get ’em tomorrow.”

“George?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you love me?”

“You’re the Little Wife, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

A nigger in a military-looking suit opened the passenger door and about scared Kathryn to death with his big toothy grin, her thinking about the rings and bracelets that she’d buy and plain forgetting they were parked outside the Hotel Saint Paul. He held the door open and called her ma’am in a voice that sounded just like a white person’s.

“Checkin’ in,” George said, with that movie-star grin he practiced sometimes in the mirror. “Kit, we got it. Why not enjoy it?”

“And tonight?” she asked, one foot out the door.

“It’ll all go according to Hoyle. Do I look worried?”

They took a room on the tenth floor-a suite, just like George promised-and when she threw open the drapes and unlatched the window she felt a loosening of the nerves, not unlike the way a good martini can loosen your legs a bit. George fetched his cigarettes while she looked down on Saint Paul, at all the rooftops and all those poor bastards punching the clock for some ungrateful fat man. Secretaries. Housewives. Maids. All of ’em suckers.

George was behind her. She could feel his heavy cigar breath on her neck and smell the cigarette burning in his fingers. The city still seemed foreign as hell, with the summer and all. Whenever she thought about Saint Paul, it froze her to the bone.

“You wa

“Why don’t you wait, you goat.”

“I was just thinking-”

“Thinking what? That you’d get a poke because it’s Saturday? I’ve got to get my hair done. Put some paint on these nails. What do you say I call up the front desk?”

“That’s what you do in a joint like this,” George said, wrapping his big hairy arm around her small waist and pulling her into him, smelling her neck like a lion on a lamb. “You pick up the phone at the Hotel Saint Paul and it’s like rubbing up a genie. Whatever you want, it’ll be here.”

“Anything?”

“Go try it out.”

“George?”

The curtains ruffled in the hot wind and covered her face and eyes, and then there were rooftops much uglier than you’d think, splattered with tar and sprouting vents and hot steam and smoke. Never looked like this from the street. George kept on smelling her and burying his sharp whiskers into her ears. “Mmm?” he asked.

“Screw the Hollyhocks,” she said. “Let’s order di

“The day’s a waste without it.”

“I do love you,” she said, nodding to herself.

“ ’ Course you do. My little honey.”

“You call about the meet,” she said. “I hope it’s somewhere that I can wear that dress.”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

Kathryn moved from the curtains and across the open space of the suite, with the big brass bed all made up with big goose-down pillows and soft, cool silk sheets. She found a dressing mirror near the bath and studied her reflection for a bit. The way the long black dress hugged her hips and tits and made her shoulders seem strong and athletic. She unpi