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“Not much,” Luther said, rubbing his unshaven jaw. He had the nose of a drinker, bulbous and veined. “Wouldn’t let me in his office, though. Told me to go ’round to this alley like I’s some kind of beggar, where he didn’t come back for a half hour.”
“You know any good lawyers?” Kathryn asked. “In Oklahoma? Sam Sayres wouldn’t know how to shit outside Texas.”
“I know’d a real good counselor over in Enid. You want me to call him up?”
Kathryn reached into her cosmetic kit for a jar of cold cream and began to rub down her face. Luther sat the opposite way, shaking his head and grunting with her complaints. “I don’t know where that SOB is, but when I find him he’s go
“Mighty white.”
“So you trust this fella?” she asked, slathering the cream up on her cheeks. “Really trust him?”
“Who?”
“The lawyer in Enid.”
“With my own life,” Luther said. “He’s gotten me out of a scrape or two. Misunderstandings with the law. You understand.”
“But of course.”
“Mrs. Machine Gun?”
“Call me Kit.”
“Kit, you want me to call ’im? I’d appreciate a ride back to town to use the telephone. The weather’s mighty nasty to walk the road again. I kept slipping outta my brogans.”
Kathryn shook her head and reached for a rag to wipe the cream from her face, staring into her own eyes, thinking about her next move to get out of this goddamn mess. The rain kicked up a little outside, pinging the windows, and Luther turned from the commode and said, “Whoo-whee.”
“Scoot over,” Kathryn said.
“Ma’am?”
“I need to do some thinking.”
He exchanged places with her on the commode and stood, looking awkward and loose, arms folded across his chest and trying to look smart, as she talked out a plan, more to herself than to Luther.
“I want you to take the bus back to Fort Worth tomorrow,” she said, holding up a hand, the silk material on her robe draping down her forearm like a butterfly wing. “Hold on… Hold on… I’ll pay. But I want you to go back and see that sorry fat bastard Sam Sayres and tell him that he no longer works for the Sha
“He has your machine?”
“Used it as collateral, for him sitting on his ass while my dear ole momma is sent to the gallows.”
“You want me to drive the car back here?”
“I want you to go to Enid and hire that lawyer you told me about. I’ll take Gerry and Flossie Mae with me.”
“Where to?”
“San Antonio,” Kathryn said. “You can contact me there care of General Delivery. I’ll make sure they’re clothed and fed till you get back. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Luther nodded.
“He better be good,” she said.
“He’s the cheese on apple pie.”
Kathryn nodded, long legs spread in a solid stance on the commode, listening to herself and making the plan definite in her mind. “Tomorrow morning I’ll give you five hundred dollars to advance him.”
“Five hu
“And tell him I want him to put the deal for George on the table,” she said. “If the G wants George R. Kelly, they can have ’im. All I want is my momma.”
Someone knocked on the door. “Daddy?”
“Yes, muffin.”
“I got to pee-pee. What’re y’all doin’ in there?”
“What if you can’t find Mr. Kelly?” Luther asked in a whisper.
“That rotten son of a bitch disappears when you need him most, but he’ll show up like a bad pe
31
When Kathryn heard the story, she couldn’t tell which parts were true, which parts George invented, and how much of the small stuff he just threw in there to keep it sounding gospel, the details of it coming out of George’s mouth like a si
For three days, he rubbed his body with baby oil and poured the peroxide into his hair, wearing purple-tinted sunglasses and drinking gin mixed with pitchers of lemonade that the negros sold to the tourists. No one talked to him, and everything seemed fine as moonshine, as he’d sit in a deck chair, dozing to the sound of the surf, letting his cramped car legs unknot, and waking only as the shadows ran long across the combed beach and the sun got ready to disappear to wherever it went at night. In the evenings, he’d order up steaks and hamburgers to his room, some more gin, and would drink all his sorrows away while reading “How the Sensational Boettcher Kidnapping Was Solved, the Baffling Mystery of the Dead Dancer, the Minister-the Love Lyrics-and the Murdered Woman,” and then coming across an advertisement in the back pages that promised to help you “Read Law at Home and Earn up to $15,000 A