Pretty boy, p.6
Pretty Boy, page 6
I’ve had enough of the bunch of them to last me a lifetime. I’d just as soon be alone.
I’m thinking about heading back to Sallisaw, see if I can locate Ruby’s whereabouts. I got three hundred dollars left of my share of the last job — the one where the farmers chased us in a fire truck.
Yeah, I think I’m going to go look for Ruby.
Bert Walker
We were all drinking that night. Never drink and drive, ain’t that what they tell you? Me and Nate are up front, Nel is in the back with this tart we’d picked up at a local club, the two of them making out like schoolgirls. The tart says it’s her birthday and she wants to celebrate. I see in the rearview mirror Nel has got her hand up the tart’s skirt and they’re kissing. I’m about to clue Nate in to check it out when suddenly a cop car flashes its red lights. A spotlight hits the rear window and lights us all up. Jesus, what’s this? I get blinded by the spotlight and end up crashing into a parked car.
“What the fuck!” Nate’s yelling. Nel’s got a cut on her forehead. Just a little one. The blood looks like red rain dropping over her eyelid. The tart’s not saying anything; I can see she’s too drunk to be scared.
“Get outta the fucking car!” Voices outside the windows shouting at us.
I look, see two big mugs pressed up against the glass. Cop mugs. Akron’s finest. Nate’s door gets jerked open and one of the cops has him by the lapels dragging him out. The cop on my side is trying to do the same thing — to pull me out, but I got a surprise for him. I don’t pull easy. And when he sees my gun, it’s too late. There’s a bang like the sound of a door slamming shut and the cop folds, sits down on the walk. He has this look on his face like they all get when you shoot ’em.
I’m yelling at Nate to get back in the car when I feel something hot go through my arm. I don’t have to look to know I’m shot. There are bullets flying everywhere. I can see I got just one chance — that’s to run like hell. Only I don’t get half a block when I get shot in the other arm. I’m like a goddamn chicken with two busted wings. But I keep running.
Nellie Maxwell
It all happened so quick. We were having a good time, me and Bert and Nate. We’d made a new friend at one of the clubs and she and I were in the backseat talking nice when all of a sudden Bert crashes the car and there are cops everywhere and Bert’s shooting and the cops are shooting. The whole world seems lit up by spotlights and red flashing lights and it’s madness. Beverly, the other girl, didn’t say a word the whole time. Me, I’m going crazy because I think, this is it, we’re finally caught and they’re going to kill us.
Then there is this loud bang and I see Bert standing there with his gun in his hand, smoke curling out the barrel and this cop is sitting on the sidewalk holding himself, saying, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus I been shot.” A bullet shatters the windshield and whizzes past my ear. I got glass in my hair. Something sharp cuts into my brow then there are these little drops of blood. Beverly says, “Hey, you’re bleeding” and tries to kiss the blood off my face. Her breath is warm and sweet and smells of gin.
Next thing I know there are more cops everywhere, everybody running around, shooting and shouting like crazy. Bert is running down the street, the cops shooting at him, even the one on the ground bleeding through his fingers is trying to shoot him, but Bert doesn’t even slow down. While all this commotion is going on, I say to the girl, “Maybe we ought to take a powder while we can.”
“Right,” she says, and in the confusion, we escape down an alley.
Nate’s not so lucky.
Pretty Boy Floyd
I hear people coming into the house, have my gun ready just in case. But it’s only Bert and Nellie and some woman I’ve never seen before. Bert’s bleeding from both arms and Nellie’s got some dried blood on her face.
“What happened?”
“The cops shot the hell out of us, Charley,” Nellie says, leading Bert to the bed in their room. She tells me the cops have Nate. My bad feeling is getting worse.
“You know what you did, don’t you?” I say.
Bert is moaning about his arms hurting him.
“You led them straight here,” I say.
The girl with them takes off her coat and gloves and Nellie brings some hot water and bandages. A couple inches either way and Bert would have been a dead man. I might have minded that a lot less than them leading the cops back to the house. I start packing my things.
Footsteps. Lots of them. Voices. Fists pounding on the door.
I got no place to hide but under the bed.
Jesus, whoever said it was a glamorous life being a gangster?
Nellie Maxwell
The cops show Bert no mercy. They show Charley even less when they drag him from under the bed. Two cops hold him and one beats on him with his big fists. Charley doesn’t say a word as they beat his face to a bloody pulp saying, “So, you like shooting cops, eh?” I get sick and want to puke. The cops make me and Bev watch them do their work. I can’t help but think that just a few hours earlier we were all having such a good time. That’s the true ugliness of life, how fast things can go from being good to bad. I should have slit my wrists the other night, just let myself sit in a warm tub of water and ended it all. Too late now, too late.
Pretty Boy Floyd
I don’t tell the cops my real name, no matter how much they beat me. And they beat me pretty good. I tell them my name is Frankie Mitchell. That I’m only nineteen and that I’ve never been in trouble before, that I never shot anybody. But by the next day, the newspapers have me as the ringleader, report that we’re a gang out of New York and Chicago, that we’re responsible for all sorts of crimes. I am surprised they haven’t blamed us for the Lindbergh kidnapping. Reporters show up and want to take pictures of me and the cops together. The cops let me hold a tommy gun while the flashbulbs go off in my eyes. No bullets in the tommy gun of course.
The bad thing is, the cop Bert shot died. The good thing is, the cop fingered Bert for the shooting and not me before he died. I knew someday Bert’s quick temper and mean streak would catch up to him. Now it has. Daddy Walter used to always say, be kind to everybody, treat every man with respect. I guess Bert never learned that lesson.
They take us to Toledo and a few days later they bring down some of the employees from that bank, that sweet easy bank Bill Gannon was so high on where the farmers ended up chasing us in a fire truck. They finger Bert, but not me. One of the farmers looks at Bert and says, “That’s him, I know by that twitch in his neck.”
Not long after, the cops have it all figured out who we really are: James Bradley (Bert’s real name), me, and Nate.
They’ve got us cold.
The judge gives Bert the chair for killing the policeman. I get twelve to fifteen, hard time. Same thing for Nate.
Toledo looks like hell in the winter as I stare through the bars waiting for the train to come and take me to the big house in Columbus. I still have the note Bert sent me before they strapped him in the electric chair.
Dear Charley,
This is it. I’m gone. It’s going to be a shocking night for your old pal. Ordered steak, fried potatoes, shrimp and strawberry shortcake for my last meal. I asked for a bottle of Irish whiskey to wash it down. Guess what? They said no. I should have never done it — shot that cop. I would be a free man, or at least not a dead one. Now I got to go to my grave knowing I never accomplished anything in life. Nel’s probably already got herself a new fellow — but at least it ain’t Nate. True love never did run smooth. Take care pal. James Bradley.
The note is written in pencil.
Bert Walker (Alias James Bradley)
I got a few hours to go. It’s snowing outside the guard tells me. I can’t see nothing but gray walls. Me and the grim reaper have come to terms. You want me, I tell him, you can have me. I hear the hum of the dynamos as they shoot the juice to my cellmate. They took him down a half hour ago. Christ, it must give a guy a real headache, shooting all that electricity through his brain. He says to me as they are taking him away: “I’m scared, Bert.”
“Buck up, kid. It can’t last more than a minute or two. How bad can it be?”
He starts crying and the guards have to hold him up, drag him like he’s already dead. He’s just a young guy, no wonder he’s scared.
I hear him bawling all the way down the catwalk. Then nothing until I hear the dynamos humming and know they’re giving him the juice. Then nothing. Just silence and waiting on my last meal.
I think about Nellie, how the last time I seen her she had her hand up this tart’s skirt in the backseat. How we were all drunk, getting ready to have us a hell of a good time. I never minded that Nel liked the ladies as much as she did men. Some women are like that. Who can blame ’em? Hell, it even lent a little excitement to our love life. Nel loved everybody, maybe a little too much. At least Nate’s not going to get her for himself. He and Charley have landed a suite in the big house. Nate’s pecker will rot off before he ever sees the light of day again. I’ll think about those boys when I’m in hell. I’ll probably see them soon enough.
They bring my last meal.
I can’t believe I’m hungry, but I am and eat everything on my plate.
The guard says, “You want anything else, Bert?”
“Yeah, a swell piece of ass.”
He says, “You ought not to talk that way, Bert. You’re about to meet your maker.”
He has peaceful gray eyes, like the walls in this place. He tells me he’s a Christian. I say, “How can a Christian keep a man caged up like an animal, shoot him the juice? Tell me that?”
“It’s just a job to me,” he says. “Like digging ditches. I see it as a duty.”
“Some duty,” I say.
He looks at his watch, says, “You still got an hour, you want we could pray together.” Hell with that, I tell him. “You want to play some checkers, then?”
I listen down the hall at the silence where the chair is. I wonder will the afterlife be just this great big silence or will it be like they say: streets paved with gold? I sure could use an easy time of it.
Pretty Boy Floyd
I tell myself I’m never going to prison again. I tell myself that a thousand times. I’d just as soon be dead as to be locked up again. Bert was the lucky one — he got juiced. His troubles are over. Mine have just begun.
Nate and me are given haircuts in the jail barbershop before we go up for sentencing. I see my chance and take it by slipping out the side door. Christ, I can’t believe the guards aren’t paying better attention. Lucky for me, they’re not. I taste the outside air. The sky over Toledo is sooty, but it could just as well be blue. Freedom looks like blue sky. I start to run.
I hear the alarms going off behind me back at the jail. I keep running.
Deputy Packo
Charley was like a goddamn rabbit. One minute he’s there getting a haircut, the next he’s bolting down Michigan Street, running between cars, like a goddamn rabbit. I’m running like hell chasing after him. He doesn’t get far. Charley’s no track star. I snatch him up. The judge throws the book at him. These crooks are all the same, think they can beat the system, think they’re never going to get caught. They all get caught sooner or later or end up eating a lead sandwich, or in the electric chair. Me, I’m just a guy who likes to see them get what they deserve.
Pretty Boy Floyd
I took my chance and lost, but for a few minutes, I was a free man. I was like an Indian back in Oklahoma, running free and wild. I was a horse untamed. I was the wind. I saw Ruby behind my eyelids standing at the finish line. I saw my boy, Jackie. I saw heaven.
They catch me, throw me back in jail, but they still got to get me from Toledo to Columbus and that’s not going to be so easy.
I made a vow that I’ll never go to jail again. And I won’t.
I jump off the train an hour out of Toledo. It’s half an hour before the cops even know I’m gone. So long suckers.
Running through weeds and swamps. Running through backyards and ditches.
Running through the long darkness of night.
Running ahead of my shadow.
Charley Floyd is a running son of a bitch!
7
Pretty Boy Floyd
Kansas City looks better to me this time than it did the last time. I thought I’d never come back here, but beats hell out of a seven-by-nine room in the big house. I look up my old flame, Beulah. She’s living in a boardinghouse, maybe with her old man Wallace for all I know. I toss pebbles up at her window until her light comes on and I see her face. She opens the window and says, “Hey, that you Charley?”
“Who do you think? You got company?”
“Ah, jeez, Charley, what sort of girl you take me for?”
I sneak up the backstairs. Her room is warm.
“Get in the bed with me Charley,” she says.
“Let’s have a drink first.”
We do. Bourbon neat. We kiss. Touching her under the blankets makes me feel terrific.
“You’re on the lam?” she says.
“No, they let me off for good behavior.” She laughs. She sits on my lap. Jesus, that’s all it takes.
We make love with the lights on. I insist. I want to see her eyes, her mouth, the curves of her body, everything. I want to see what I’ve been missing. That’s the worst part of being in jail — not having a woman to keep you company, nothing soft and warm except your thoughts. Sure, there are guys in the slam who are into doing anything for the substitution of a woman, but I’m not one of them. Never was, never will be.
Beulah’s soft flesh is warm like a lake in the summer and I sink into her.
Later we lay in bed and smoke in the dark and Beulah makes little circles of orange light with the tip of her cigarette. She giggles and sips bourbon and tries to tickle me, but I’m not the ticklish type. She’s like a playful child. I love that about her. Ruby is the more serious type. Maybe because she has to be, being my wife and the mother of my son and all I put her through. Jesus, I miss Ruby and my boy.
“Look it, Charley,” Beulah says, drawing the orange circles in the black air.
“Just tell me one thing,” I say. “What, baby?”
“How many other men have you had since I been away?”
“None!” she swears. I don’t believe her, not even for a minute. A woman like Beulah isn’t happy without a man. These are hard times and loneliness is a bullet that can kill you. I try not to think about the other men she’s been with.
“What about your old man, he ever come around looking you up, wanting something from you, wanting you to go back with him?”
“No.”
“Nothing, huh, not even a jingle?”
“No, Charley, I’ve been faithful to you.”
“Faithful, huh?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Sure you have, kiddo.”
I pour bourbon between her breasts and lick it up. We make love again, in the dark this time. I pretend it’s Ruby I’m making love with, that I’m back home in Sallisaw, and me and Ruby are together and happy again. It’s not all that hard to pretend when you’re in the dark. A woman still feels like a woman no matter what her name is.
I slip into dreams somewhere between Beulah’s last gasps of pleasure and my own and I dream of crazy things: that I’m locked in a cell with the devil, drowning in black water, being kissed by a corpse.
I wake up with the sun in my eyes. Beulah’s making breakfast on a hot plate — scrambled eggs.
“How’s Rose?” I ask, after I get dressed and sit down at the little table. The window looks out onto the alley. There’s a stray cat poking in the garbage. Fragments of the dreams still skitter around in my head.
“She’s got herself a new guy,” Beulah says. “Who?”
“Billy Miller.”
“He a solid guy?”
“Yeah, Charley, he’s a solid guy.”
“He do jobs?”
“Yeah, he does jobs, just like you Charley.” I’m thinking, among other things, I could use a new partner. We eat our eggs then do it again and fall asleep and I have those dreams again, about kissing a corpse.
Billy the Killer Miller
The girls introduce me to Charley. Rose and her sister Beulah. He’s a quiet guy. I like quiet guys. Loud guys make me nervous, always spouting off what they’re going to do, but they never do anything but talk. I hate loud guys.
“Beulah tells me you do jobs,” Charley says.
“You don’t beat around the bush do you?” I say.
“What’s the point? I do jobs and I need a partner. Beulah says you’re a solid guy.”
“Solid as the rock of Gibraltar,” I say. “Solid as they come.”
“You want to do a job?”
“Sure, you?”
“That’s what I do,” Charley says. “I do jobs.”
“Same here.”
Charley sees the gun in my waistband because I haven’t bothered to button my shirt all the way because I wasn’t expecting company. Me and Rose were just sitting around drinking coffee. Before that we were on the bed. I still got the taste of her in my mouth when Charley and Beulah knocked on the door. I was reading about John Dillinger in Startling Detective. I like to read when I have my coffee.
“You ever shoot anybody with that gun?” Charley says.
“With this gun?” I say, rubbing the handgrips. “No, not with this gun. This gun I just got from a pawnshop. I ain’t shot nobody with it yet, but I might if I get the chance.”
“I don’t like to have to use a gun if I don’t need to,” Charley says. “I never shot anybody and I don’t ever intend to. But if you listen to the cops and the newspapers, I’ve killed all sorts of guys.”
