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I have found her since, and talked with her. There wasn’t much detective work involved. I’m sure Omaha seemed like a metropolis to Henry and Sha
“Take another couple for later,” he invited.
She laughed. “I’d have to be a ding-dong to do that! The sisters search our bags and pull our pockets inside-out when we come back. I’ll have to chew three sticks of Black Jack just to get the smell of this one fag off my breath.” She patted her bulging tummy with amusement and defiance. “I’m in trouble, as I guess you can see. Bad girl! And my sweetie ran off. Bad boy, but the world don’t care about that! So then the dapper stuck me in a jail with penguins for guards-”
“I don’t get you.”
“Jeez! The dapper’s my dad! And penguins is what we call the sisters!” She laughed. “You’re some country palooka, all right! And how! Anyway, the jail where I’m doing time’s called-”
“St. Eusebia’s.”
“Now you’re cooking with gas, Jackson.” She puffed her cig, narrowed her eyes. “Say, I bet I know who you are-Shan Cotterie’s boyfriend.”
“Give that girl a Kewpie doll,” Hank said.
“Well, I wouldn’t get within two blocks of our place, that’s my advice. The cops have got your description.” She laughed cheerily. “Yours and half a dozen other Lonesome Le
“Why do you think I’m here instead of there?”
“I’ll bite-why are you here?”
“I want to get in touch, but I don’t want to get caught doing it. I’ll give you 2 bucks to take a note to her.”
Victoria’s eyes went wide. “Buddy, for a 2-spot, I’d tuck a bugle under my arm and take a message to Garcia-that’s how tapped out I am. Hand it over!”
“And another 2 if you keep your mouth shut about it. Now and later.”
“For that you don’t have to pay extra,” she said. “I love pulling the business on those holier-than-thou bitches. Why, they smack your hand if you try to take an extra di
He gave her the note, and Victoria gave it to Sha
I’ll wait from midnight to dawn behind yr place every night for 2 weeks, the note said. If you don’t show up, I’ll know it’s over between us amp; go back to Hemingford amp; never bother you again even tho’ I will go on loving you forever. We are young but we could lie about our ages amp; start a good life in another place (California). I have some money amp; know how to get more. Victoria knows how to find me if you want to send me a note, but only once. More would not be safe.
I suppose Harlan and Sallie Cotterie might have that note. If so, they have seen that my son signed his name in a heart. I wonder if that was what convinced Sha
Henry returned to the mouth of the alley every day after that meeting. I’m sure he knew that the cops might arrive instead of Victoria, but felt he had no choice. On the third day of his vigil, she came. “Shan wrote back right away, but I couldn’t get out any sooner,” she said. “Some goofy-weed showed up in that hole they have the nerve to call a music room, and the penguins have been on the warpath ever since.”
Henry held out his hand for the note, which Victoria gave over in exchange for a Sweet Caporal. There were only four words: Tomorrow morning. 2 o’clock.
Henry threw his arms around Victoria and kissed her. She laughed with excitement, eyes sparkling. “Gosh! Some girls get all the luck.”
They undoubtedly do. But when you consider that Victoria ended up with a husband, three kids, and a nice home on Maple Street in the best part of Omaha, and Sha
I have some money amp; know how to get more, Henry had written, and he did. Only hours after kissing the saucy Victoria (who took the message He says he’ll be there with bells on back to Sha
“I’m lucky to be alive at all,” he said. “By the time they got a tourniquet on my leg, I was lying in a pool of blood damn near an inch deep. I bet it took a whole box of Dreft to get that mess up.”
When I tried to apologize for my son, he waved it away.
“I never should have approached him. The cap was pulled low and the banda
After that job, Henry had more than enough money to buy a car-a nice one, a tourer-but he knew better. (Writing that, I again feel that sense of pride: low but undeniable.) A kid who looked like he only started shaving a week or two before, waving around enough wampum to buy an almost-new Olds? That would have brought John Law down on him for sure.
So instead of buying a car, he stole one. Not a touring car, either; he plumped for a nice, nondescript Ford coupe. That was the car he parked behind St. Eusebia’s, and that was the one Sha
Their life as fugitives had begun.
Arlette whispered more about that life than I wished to know, and I don’t have the heart to put more than the bare details down here. If you want to know more, write to the Omaha Public Library. For a fee, they will send you hectograph copies of stories having to do with the Sweetheart Bandits, as they became known (and as they called themselves). You may even be able to find stories from your own paper, if you do not live in Omaha; the conclusion of the tale was deemed heartrending enough to warrant national coverage.
Handsome Hank and Sweet Sha