Infamous

“We need a new machine,” George said, jabbing his finger into her chest. “I’ll give you a few hundred, and you go to town and buy something, anything. Nothing flashy, but reliable. We’ll leave the Chevrolet here. Going to Dallas is outright lamebrained.”

She nodded, pulling long on a Lucky, burning the cigarette down to nothing but ash and flicking it from her fingers.

“And we need to bury the loot.”

“Here?”

“Right here,” George said. “When it’s safe, we can come back for it. If we get caught, it’ll always be here. We take only what we’ll need for a couple months.”

“Ah, jeez, George,” Kathryn said. “This is crummy as hell.”

“You want to lose it all?”

George was gone for a few minutes and came back from Ma’s old barn carrying a shovel under his arm and a fat leather grip in each meaty fist. “Kit? Go get us those thermos jugs we bought. Some big pickle jars, too, if they got the tops.”

So this is how it goes, Kathryn thought, life goes back to ca

Kathryn touched her face without thinking, wondering what it must feel like to have a face like a road map.

“WHAT ABOUT COLEMAN?” DOC WHITE ASKED.

“I sent a couple agents,” Jones said. “They turn up somethin’, and we’ll fly back in the evening. Right now, just keep the motor ru

Jones mounted the steps of the courthouse in downtown Dallas. He removed his Stetson at the door and politely asked a bailiff where to find the Sha

“Mornin’, John.”

“Buster.”

“Full house today.”

“Don’t you know it.”

“What you got ahead of the Sha

“Two more on the docket,” the clerk said. “Shouldn’t take long.”

“They got counsel?”

“Fella named Sayres,” he said. “Came over from Fort Worth half hour ago.”

“I know him.”

Jones spotted the fat-bellied attorney with the bald head huddled up with Ora and Boss, Potatoes sitting off to the side, flipping and twirling the tie on his neck like a dog with a new collar.

“He’s go

“So I heard.”

“What’s it matter where they’s tried?”

“Let’s say I got reasons to distrust who’s minding the jail.”

The clerk nodded.

Jones leaned into the desk over the man’s shoulder and whispered, “Don’t burn your britches with the paperwork.”

The clerk heard him but didn’t say a word, and Jones walked away, back along the wooden walls, finely oiled and polished, and stood among the gaggle of newspapermen that nervously checked their watches and glanced down at the empty pages of their notebooks. He saw one of the men wore a watch with that cartoon mouse on it, and he thought these people sure were of a different ilk.

Didn’t take but five minutes before the Sha

The reporter with the Mickey Mouse watch snorted.

The judge looked down at the Sha

“Motion granted,” the judge said.

Jones parted the newspapermen, walked down the center aisle, and grabbed a bailiff by the elbow, showing him his piece of tin and telling him he’d be taking custody. Another bailiff joined them, and Ma, Boss, and Armon were marched out of the courtroom through a side door and down a long hallway.

Their attorney shouted for an appeal.

The judge told him to take it up with the clerk.

“Your Honor, those agents are rushing my clients out of the courtroom.”

“They’re within their rights,” the judge said. “I just ordered their removal. If I were you, I’d hurry up and file that appeal-I can’t make an order without it.”

Sayres’s fat ass ran to the clerk. Jones passed him before the bench.

“Hurry up, goddamnit.”

“Can’t do nothin’ till I read ’em to make sure all’s in proper form, Counselor,” the clerk said.

Jones slipped on his hat, tipping the brim at the red-faced attorney shouting at the clerk.

Jones followed the armed men pushing the Sha

“Go,” Jones said.

“You rotten son of a bitch,” Boss Sha

“Good to see you again, Boss,” Doc White said. “Sit back and get comfortable.”

“I got to pee-pee,” Ora Sha

“Don’t worry, darlin’,” Jones said. “It’s a short flight.”

“Good Lord in heaven,” Ora said. “I’m not getting on no flying machine.”

“Flying machine? Darlin’, this here is 1933. We call ’em ‘airplanes.’ ”

“You’ll have to shoot me dead first,” Ora Sha

“Natural as a crow’s wings.”

“Oh, pshaw.”

“What you did was illegal,” Boss Sha

“Was keeping Mr. Urschel tied up like a goat legal?”

“Don’t confuse a matter of the court,” Boss Sha

“Don’t confuse legal with what’s right.”

Doc White wheeled them past the front gate and onto the tarmac to the waiting airplane, a twin-engine DC-2 the director had chartered that morning. Four agents met the car and opened the doors, Jones noting two of the men carried Thompsons and the other two held shotguns.

The men pulled out Potatoes first, and he didn’t give them a bit of trouble as he mounted the aircraft steps, his father in tow behind. But old Ora Sha

“Suit yourself,” Jones said.

He motioned for the agents, and they pulled the fighting old woman from the car, her back arching as she tried to claw at the men with manacled wrists, until she was held under her arms and by her feet, lifted high off the ground, and taken up the ramp. She launched a final fight at the top, right at the airplane’s door, thrashing and hollering, her screams drowned out by the approaching siren.

A sheriff ’s car had followed them from the courthouse. From the top of the stairs, Jones could see Sam Sayres in the front seat.

“Start her up,” Jones said, hollering.