Infamous by Ace Atkins Page B

it.”
     
    “We weren’t there,” Harvey said. “Don’t ever tell yourself anything different.”
     
    “People blame me for killing Nash.”
     
    “Wasn’t your fault.”
     
    “Underhill said he heard I killed Nash because he looked at me wrong.”
     
    “Underhill doesn’t have much sense,” Harvey said.
     
    “Why do they call him ‘Mad Dog’?”
     
    “You really want to know?”
     
     

     
    “MOR E COFFEE?” MRS. URSCHEL ASKED.
     
    “I’d appreciate it, ma’am,” Gus Jones said.
     
    She sent a negro boy back to the kitchen to refill the silver pot.
     
    “I want you to go,” Mrs. Urschel said. “I want all these lawmen gone.”
     
    “May I ask why?”
     
    “No one will call with every policeman in the state in this house.”
     
    “I’d like our people to stay.”
     
    “From your office.”
     
    “Yes, ma’am,” Jones said. “We don’t want to interfere.”
     
    “Is Charlie dead?”
     
    “No, ma’am.”
     
    “Will they kill him?”
     
    “I can’t rightly say.”
     
    “But they might.”
     
    “Yes, ma’am.”
     
    “Like the Lindbergh child.”
     
    “Yes, ma’am.”
     
    “Mr. Urschel is a tough, resourceful man. He’s cunning and shrewd and quite strong. He can take care of himself.”
     
    “I don’t doubt it, Mrs. Urschel.”
     
    “Do I call you ‘Agent Jones’?”
     
    “ ‘Buster’ is just fine.”
     
    “Why do they call you Buster?”
     
    “Just what I’ve always been called. My mother called me that.”
     
    “Did she approve of your line of work?”
     
    “She understood it,” Jones said. “My father was the same.”
     
    “Worked for the government.”
     
    “He was a lawman.”
     
    She nodded. The negro waited until there was a pause in the conversation to pour the coffee into the china cups. The furniture was stiff and hard, the kind you’d seen in a museum but never used. A large portrait of Charles Urschel hung on a far wall over a small wooden bookshelf filled with leather-bound editions. Jones would be damned if it didn’t seem like old Charlie was staring dead at him.
     
    “Agent Colvin said you knew my first husband.”
     
    “I helped him out in a small matter sometime back.”
     
    “Charles is much more reserved than Mr. Slick.”
     
    “I imagine so.”
     
    They drank more coffee. The house had an air-conditioning machine that groaned and hummed and let in refrigerated air while the press and police sat outside in a ninety-degree morning. They ran telephone lines to poles and hustled copy straight from desks fashioned from blocks and beams to downtown newsrooms. Earlier that day, Jones had chased off a grifter selling photographs of the Urschel family.
     
    “Mr. Kirkpatrick said I can trust you.”
     
    “You can.”
     
    “And you are acquainted with him, too.”
     
    “Through your first husband,” he said. “Kirk is a right fella.”
     
    “He’s placed a great many calls on the family’s behalf. Some top newspaper editors will be withdrawing their people.”
     
    “That’s good.”
     
    “You don’t like them either.”
     
    “Never cared for parasites of any kind.”
     
    Berenice Urschel smiled at him, and the smile dropped as she craned her head to look at the gilded portrait of her kidnapped husband. She took a sip of coffee and shrugged. “He’ll be just fine.”
     
    “Yes, ma’am.”
     
     
     
     
     
    THE BANK TELLER LAY FLAT ON HER BACK, SUMMER DRESS HIKED above the knee, showing a good bit of stocking and garter. She was a looker, too. Lean and lanky, with red lips and marcelled hair, smelling just like sunshine to Harvey Bailey.
     
    “Sweetie?” Harvey asked.
     
    “Yes, sir?”
     
    “Please, turn over,” he said.
     
    The woman—whom Harvey had noted yesterday as Miss Georgia Loving—flipped, face reddened, but no less excited about the show.
     
    “This is a robbery,” he said. “Not an audition.”
     
    Women were often like that during a job. You offered a little politeness, some little gentlemanly presentation, and they’d work with you. It made the whole thing very safe and enjoyable for