The newspaper boys had taken their pictures, asked their questions, and gone.
A few onlookers stood and watched at first light. But the streets had been cleared, the cars towed and the glass and metal swept up.
An hour earlier, he and Doc had been on Jackson Street, interviewing the bank messengers and the guards. They’d searched that Ford and found the smoke machine. In the Hudson, they’d found a first-aid kit and two boxes of.45 ammo.
The men had worn bandannas at the robbery, and no one at the wreck recalled much. The fella that owned the newsstand said he was pretty sure they weren’t colored.
“Kelly?” Doc White asked them as they walked back to their vehicle.
Jones nodded. “Fits. He’s here.”
“One of the women gave a description sounds a hell of a lot like Verne Miller.”
“What about Bailey?”
“Didn’t hear of anyone sounded like Bailey.”
Jones watched a city worker take a wrench to a fire hydrant and start hosing away the beat cop’s blood. “Lot of misery for a few sacks of mail.”
“Any other night could’ve been more ’an a million.”
“You want to stay here?”
“Only sure bet is the Arnolds.”
“What Colvin do with ’em?”
“Did like Kathryn Kelly asked,” Doc White said, striking a match and cupping his hand around a cigarette. The morning wind sure felt like fall. “Holed ’em up in the Shangri-La Apartments in O.K. City till she gets word.”
“Could they be tipped off?”
“Colvin was careful.”
As they walked to their car, a big truck with slatted wooden sides ambled up to the shredded newsstand, dropping off morning copies of the Tribune, local police blaming Kelly for the robbery and the cop killing. 10,000 LAWMEN HUNT “MACHINE GUN” KELLY.
37
Kathryn took a drink with George’s brother-in-law, Langford Ramsey-just calling him “Lang”-on the front porch of his bungalow in a fine Memphis neighborhood, right around the corner from Southwestern College. He had a fine car and a fine little wife and a fine job as a local attorney, George telling her twenty times that Lang was the youngest man in the state in practice. She liked Lang from the start after they’d rolled into Memphis that morning, dog-tired and muscle-cramped, and here this young boy and his wife had set their dining-room table with fried chicken and potato salad, iced tea, and lemonade spiked with gin. The lemonade just hitting the spot after they’d taken to the porch while George washed up and changed, expecting his sons at any minute.
“I’m so glad y’all are here,” Lang said.
He was a nice-looking boy, skinny and rich, a doughy face, but with nicely cut hair and beautiful manners. He called her ma’am, which annoyed her a bit. But he’d also blushed when she’d crossed her bare legs and lit a cigarette, and after their third lemonade he’d confided a bit about his wife, who was a restless girl from a good Memphis family who Lang said was under a doctor’s care for frigidity.
“Hell, just get her drunk, Lang,” Kathryn said. “Always works.”
“I like you,” he said.
“Back at you.”
“Your little girl is beautiful.”
“Yeah?”
“She was so helpful in the kitchen.”
Kathryn wanted to warn him to watch his valuables. But instead she just smoked and took in the smooth green lawns, blooming crepe myrtles still spotted from a morning shower, and the young oaks that had grown just tall enough to shade the street. Fallen leaves skittered down the streets in bright little whirls. You noticed those type things when you were a bit high.
“You have to realize we were all taken aback to hear from George.”
“How long has it been?” Kathryn asked.
“Until he came through Memphis a few weeks ago, I hadn’t laid eyes on him for seven years,” Lang said. “I didn’t know till then that he’d been remarried.”
“We’ll be married three years tomorrow.”
“He did well for himself,” Lang said. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like Joan Crawford?”
She smiled at him. “George says nice things about your sister.”
Lang nodded. “We miss him. His boys miss him.”
“He got so nervous when you said they were visiting.”
“I think it’s only right,” Lang said. “They should know their father. Don’t get me wrong, F.X. is a fine man and a good husband.”
“What’s he do?”
“He’s a big-time advertising executive. Have you seen those ads for Rinso soap?”
“That woman with the awful BO? You bet. The way her friends don’t want to take her to the movies and her husband stays late at the office. It’s a riot.”
“He came up with that.”
“On the level?”
“On the level,” Lang said. “Listen, I wish you all could stay here, but with Geneva and her new husband, I thought it best-”
“It’s sweet that you found a place for us.”
“George stayed with Tich last time,” Lang said. “His wife and kids are in Paducah visiting her mother. He said it’s no trouble at all. He’s a funny little guy, kinda ornery, but don’t let him fool you. He’d give the shirt off his back for my family. Did I tell you he was a cripple?”
“You want me to speak to your wife?” Kathryn asked.
Lang reached for the pitcher of lemonade and gin. “About what?”
“Being frigid,” Kathryn said. “A fine catch like you…”
Lang’s boyish face grew red.
“Buy her something nice,” Kathryn said. “Girls like that. A silk nightie.
Make it red, with lace trim. Some French perfume. That stuff just sets me off.”
Lang smiled. He had the jacket to his wool crepe suit hung over the back of his rocking chair. When he stood to light a cigarette, she could tell he’d grown a little drunk. The afternoon was breezy, a little warmer than up in Chicago, a restless wind with the changing seasons, the dead, skittering leaves and all that.
“Are you a good lawyer?” she asked.
“I try.”
“You work with many criminals?”
“Mainly property.”
“Oh.”
A shiny new blue Buick rolled down Malvern and turned into Lang’s driveway. A car door opened, and a short blond woman in a summer dress walked around and opened the back door. Two boys in Eton suits came bounding out; George Jr. was seven and Bruce was six. They were good-looking boys, with their dad’s jaw and blue eyes. The woman was a looker, too, fair, but maybe a bit mousy. She smiled up at Lang. Lang waved back at his sister and she got back into the Buick, her husband backing out and pulling away.
“She said they’d go over to Overton Park for an hour and then pick ’em up for dinner.”
“That’s F.X.?” Kathryn asked.
Lang nodded.
“He wasn’t smiling.”
George must’ve been watching from a window, because he opened the front door fast, not looking at Lang or Kathryn but walking slow down the front steps and hanging there in his best suit, charcoal gray, with a tailored shirt and tie. She noticed he wore the sterling silver tie clip she’d bought for him at the Fair.
The boys kept their heads down. But George dropped to a knee and opened his arms wide, and the whole thing made Kathryn seize a bit in her chest, turning her back to them, pouring out some more lemonade for her and Lang and asking if there was more.
The boys chattered up something fierce, there was baseball and trips to the zoo, and George walked back to the Chevrolet and gave them both souvenirs from the World’s Fair. Two toy zeppelins, two CENTURY OF PROGRESS coins, and two official World’s Fair badges.