Pretty boy, p.7
Pretty Boy, page 7
“Some guys are like that,” I say. “They don’t like guns. Me, I’m not like that.”
“So you shot some guys?”
“Yeah, my brother for one.”
Charley looks at me like he thinks I’m joking, a sloppy grin on his puss.
“What you shoot him over?”
“A dame, what else.”
“You ever shoot a dame?”
“No, not a dame, just some guys.”
He grins like he doesn’t believe me. But it’s the truth.
“I think me and you can do some business,” he says. “I like a guy with a sense of humor.”
Pretty Boy Floyd
Me and Billy Miller are out having a drink a few nights after we first meet. The girls are at home. We’re talking about doing a job together — a bank.
“You want to know what I hear?” Billy says.
“What do you hear?” I say.
“That those Ash brothers are ratting to the cops.”
“You think they’ll rat on us?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking maybe they will because of us being shacked up with their wives.”
“If they were going to rat us out, why wouldn’t they have done it before now?”
Billy is drinking sloe gin fizzes. He likes sucking the lime slices. He bunches his shoulders.
“Who knows why dope fiends do what they do? Any guy who would stick a needle in his arm, who knows about a guy like that?”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe those guys will rat us out. What do you suggest we do about it?”
“There’s only one thing you can do with rat pricks,” he says. I see him rub the pocket where he’s got his gun. “Shoot them in the fucking head. Guys shot in the head don’t do a lot of talking.”
“I don’t want to kill anybody if I don’t have to,” I tell him. “I’m not a killer. I’m a bank robber. That’s what I do: rob banks. I don’t kill people.”
“You know what they call me?” he says. “What?”
“Billy the Killer Miller.”
“You like that name?”
“Probably a lot more than you like being called Pretty Boy,” he says.
“Yeah, the newspapers all got names for guys like you and me,” I say.
“Fucking dope fiends,” Billy says. “You can’t trust ’em.”
We don’t talk about what to do about the Ash brothers because I already know what Billy wants to do about them. It’s something I’ve got to think about long and hard. We drink until the bar closes and drive home in the rain.
“I don’t see killing some guy over a woman,” I say as we pull up in front of the rooming house. I can see Rose and Beulah up in the second floor window dancing.
“You don’t, huh?” Billy says. “No.”
“What’s the diff why you kill a guy, dead is dead.”
Rose Ash
I’m gone on Billy. Completely gone. I’m probably even more crazy about Billy than Beulah is about Charley. Beulah never stayed all that faithful to Charley after they sent him to jail in Ohio. I mean she tried. I’m not passing judgment on my own sister, mind you. But Beulah likes good-looking guys with dough and there are plenty of good-looking guys with dough in K.C. who were more than happy to take an interest in my sister.
She saw a few guys while Charley was gone. She even saw her ex, Wallace, once or twice rather than be lonely even for a night. Of course when Charley came back, Beulah told him she’d been faithful. But Charley’s a smart guy and I’m sure he figured out what’s what with her. Like Charley’s always saying, ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. I think that’s the way they both looked at it when he came back.
Billy and Charley are a lot alike in some ways: fancy dressers, good-looking guys who aren’t afraid of anyone. A girl can feel safe with guys like Billy and Charley.
The only thing about Billy I’m not so crazy about is when we make love he likes to finish with me face down on the bed. I like to look into his eyes, to see how happy I’m making him. But for some reason that’s the way he prefers it, me face down. I asked Beulah about it, making her swear never to say anything to Charley because I don’t want it to get back to Billy I’m telling anyone about our love life. Beulah says maybe it’s because Billy was in jail.
“So what does that have to do with anything?” I say.
“Jeez Louise, you’re a real babe in the woods, Rose,” she says. “Don’t you know nothing?”
“What is it I’m supposed to know?”
Rose looks at me, snapping her gum as she’s ironing a dress for that evening because we’re all fixing to go out together. She’s standing in just her slip and hose.
“There’s no women in the joint,” she says. “Sometimes guys have to . . . you know, do it with other guys.”
“Oh jeez, Rose, that’s so sick,” I say.
“Maybe Billy got used to doing it that way, is all.”
I don’t even want to think about such things. But every time Billy makes love to me and finishes up that way I can’t help but thinking about what Beulah told me.
To try and keep from thinking about it, the next time Billy and I are doing it, I ask if we can please do it so I can look at his face.
“Why you want to see my face?” he asks. “I just do, you’re such a good-looking guy and I feel so lucky.”
“Okay,” he says and finishes up with him on top and me looking into his face, but I could tell he didn’t enjoy it as much. Whatever Billy wants, whatever way he wants it is fine by me. I’d do anything for him.
Pretty Boy Floyd
Billy wants to rub out the Ash brothers. He says it’s the only way to deal with a rat. I tell him I’m not interested in doing any killing, that I’m a bank robber, plain and simple, that they’ll never give you the chair for stealing somebody’s money but they will for stealing a life. I think about Bert, that note he sent me while he was on death row. I still got it in my wallet. I don’t want to end up like Bert, waiting for them to strap me into the chair knowing I’m going to get juiced and can’t do anything about it. Anybody can shoot someone, but it takes a real artist to rob a bank and get away with it without hurting somebody.
I could care less about the Ash brothers, I tell Billy.
Then two days later, I get rousted by the cops in a speakeasy while I’m entertaining a young woman: Gloria, the hatcheck girl. Three dicks in gray suits burst into the private room I’ve rented.
“Stand up,” one of the dicks orders. I just got my coat and hat off.
I stand and he pats me down. “Let’s go,” he says.
“Where?”
“Where do you think?”
“You mind I get my hat at least?”
“Go ahead.”
My hat is in the closet on a shelf next to my two .45s. The dicks are real surprised when I start shooting. I don’t want to shoot anybody, but it’s me or them at this point. I shoot out the lights. The hatcheck girl is screaming her head off.
Then I’m out the door running into the black Kansas City night with bullets whizzing past my skull. One bullet snatches my hat off and sends it flying. Another rips through my coat sleeve. I keep running until the bullets aren’t chasing me anymore. I keep running until there is just the sound of me running.
And when I stop to catch my breath with the sweet scent of garbage there in the alley behind a Chinese restaurant all I can think about is just one thing: Those Ash brothers set me up.
Billy the Killer Miller
Charley calls from a payphone, says he almost got nabbed, says he had to shoot it out with the cops. I ask how, where, when. He says he thinks it was the Ash brothers who set him up.
“We better blow Kansas City,” he says. “Those dope fiends are going to be the death of us.”
“Sure, sure,” I tell him. “We’ll blow this place, give me until tomorrow night to tie up some loose ends.”
“Loose ends?” he says. “You know what will happen if you do what I think you’re going to do and they catch you.”
“You stick to what you do best and I’ll stick to what I do best,” I tell him.
I arrange to meet him at a bar on Holmes Avenue the following night and tell him to lay low in the meantime.
“You bring Rose and Beulah,” I tell him. “I’ll meet you there just after midnight.”
“Okay,” he says, then adds: “Whatever it is, these loose ends you got to tie up, I don’t want to know about.”
“Don’t worry, Pretty Boy, there’s only going to be three guys who know about it and two of them won’t be doing any more ratting after tonight.”
Rose asks me where I’m going when I put on my jacket after talking to Charley on the phone.
“Meet with your ex old man.”
“What for?”
“Me and him has got some business to discuss.”
“Jesus, Billy, you’re just asking for trouble.”
“Nah, everything’s aces between us. I just want to talk to him is all.”
“Billeeeee,” she says.
Sometimes Rose acts like a kid, but you can’t beat her in the looks department.
Rose Ash
Billy tells me to call up my ex. “What for? I hate the guy.”
“Just do what I tell you,” he says.
He tells me to tell William that I’m at a joint outside of town, that Billy and me have gotten into a fight and he’s abandoned me and that if William really loves me, he should come and get me right away. “Make it sound real,” Billy says.
So that’s what I do: I cry and everything over the phone and my ex says, “Stay put, I’ll be right there.”
“Tell him he should bring his brother, too,” Billy whispers in my ear. “Tell him in case I change my mind and come back there might be trouble and he’ll want to make sure he’s got some backup.”
So I tell my ex that and he says, “Damn straight, Rose! I’m bringing Wallace and if that dirty prick Miller shows his face, I mash it in for him.”
I’m scared after I hang up the phone. “What you going to do, Billy?”
“Nothing, just talk to them is all, a business deal. Pack your bags, and tell Beulah to pack hers. We’re going to blow town — the four of us, you and Beulah and Charley and me.”
I got a bad feeling, but I love Billy so much I’ll do anything he wants and I won’t worry about anything else. I don’t care. Billy sticks his gun in his pocket — he calls it his heater.
J. A. Reid
I get up because I have to take a pee. Since I hit fifty, I pee a lot. I guess it’s after midnight sometime and as I’m going to the bathroom I hear a couple of gunshots off in the distance. Then a couple more. Who the hell hunts at midnight, I’m asking myself. It sounds like the gunshots are coming from out by the road. I go to the window and look out. Nothing. I go in and pee and come out again and look out the window again and I see a fire. A fire! I call the fire department, then get dressed and walk out to where the fire is.
Here’s what I see when I get out to the road: A car on fire and two guys lying half in the ditch, their feet sticking up toward the road. One of the guys has got a hole in the bottom of his shoe. I shine my lantern to get a closer look at them. Off in the distance I can hear the sirens. Too late, too late. Those boys were stone dead, both of ’em with their brains blown out. The cops arrive and say it looks like a gangland murder. Lord almighty, you think this stuff only happens in the city, not way out here in farmland.
Pretty Boy Floyd
I’m with the girls at the speakeasy Billy and me arranged to meet at. Half hour after midnight he pulls up in a nice sedan: a Hudson Hornet.
“Get in,” he says, without getting out.
We pile in and thirty minutes later we cross the state line.
Billy’s sweating even though it’s a cool night. He’s wearing his overcoat and a snappy fedora and he’s sweating and grinning and driving fast.
I want to ask him what he’s done, where he’s been, but I think I already know.
We stop at an all-night diner around three in the morning.
“I’m hungry as a goddamn wolf,” Billy says, and orders two burgers and a cup of black coffee for himself and something for the girls while they visit the powder room. I just have coffee. Every now and then a truck goes down the highway, its headlights like yellow eyes peering into the long dark. The whole world right about then has the feel of a lot of loneliness to it.
“I’m not going to ask you what you did before you showed up tonight,” I say to Billy. I sip my coffee and smoke a cigarette and stare out into that deep darkness where a hidden world is.
“I did what needed doing. You want to hear?”
“No.”
He lights a cigarette, knuckles his fedora back away from over his eyes.
“You got to know something about me, Charley,” he says.
I wait for him to tell me.
“A guy does me wrong, I don’t give him a chance to do me wrong a second time. That’s the way I am. I hate a rat. I hate a rat worse than anything. You want to know the only thing I hate worse than a fucking rat?”
He leans across the table, his face in close to mine.
“What?” I say. “Two fucking rats!”
The corners of his soft boyish lips curl up like a piece of paper thrown in a fire.
Beulah and Rose make their reappearance, their noses freshly powdered.
“What are you two talking about?” Beulah says cheerfully.
“Rats,” Billy Miller says. “Oooh!” Rose says. “I hate rats.”
“Me too,” Billy says.
“Oh kiss me,” Rose says.
& Billy the Killer Miller winks his conspiracy and seals her red mouth with his
&
another truck rumbles along into the night leaving behind the silence of death, scattering tattered dreams in its wake of wind and my heart
&
eyes are stone.
8
Pretty Boy Floyd
We drive all night and half the next day with the girls asleep in the backseat, Billy and me taking turns at the wheel.
“Where we going?” I say. “Toledo.”
“The hell with that, I’m still a wanted man in Toledo.”
“Okay, so not Toledo,” Billy says out of the side of his mouth.
The black endless night eventually turns gray. I can see the shadows of trees off in the distance, fields still asleep under the early dawn. Then the sun rises above the trees and it looks like an egg cracked open in the bottom of a beer. By the time we stop for gas again it is close to noon and I see a sign that says:
TOLEDO, 25 MILES.
“Listen,” I say. “I’m not showing my face in Toledo.”
By now the girls have been awake and have begun complaining about how cramped it is in the backseat, how tired they are of driving, how hungry they are.
“Shut up!” Billy tells them, “or I’ll leave you along the side of the road.”
“Jesus, Billy,” Rose says. “You don’t have to be so mean.”
He looks at her in the rearview mirror, doesn’t say anything, just gives her a look.
The car smells of perfume and stale cigarettes and unwashed bodies.
Next thing I know, Billy is turning off the highway on to a little two-lane road.
“Now where?”
“You don’t want to go to Toledo, we won’t go to Toledo.”
I see a sign: BOWLING GREEN 2 MILES.
The name makes it sound like a nice place.
Billy the Killer Miller
By the time we hit Ohio, everybody’s getting on my nerves — the girls especially. They want to stop, they want to get something to eat, they want to know when we’re going to get there. Get where? I don’t know myself, except I know a little about Toledo, know my way around because I knocked down a couple of banks around there. Never got caught so I figure what the hell — it must be a good place for me, Toledo. But when Charley asks where we’re headed and I tell him, he about has a fit. “I ain’t going, I ain’t going,” he says over and over again. Then Rose and Beulah are barking at me and I’m already tired from driving all night and what I did to those Ash brothers. I keep seeing those two rats, how they looked just before I shot them.
Rose’s ex, kneeling and sobbing like a damn baby, snot running out of his nose. His goofball brother, Wallace, doped up as hell so he don’t even understand the consequences of what is about to happen to him for ratting Charley out.
“You fucking rat dopers,” I say to them, because I’m mad and I know I’m going to kill them both and it doesn’t matter what I say or don’t say by this time. It’s always easier when you’re mad at a guy before you shoot him.
“You fucking dope fiend rats!” And I point the gun at them.
“Oh shit, don’t kill me!” Rose’s old man is sniveling. “Oh don’t kill me. You can have that fucking cunt for all I care. Who gives a fuck about her!”
“I do,” I say, and I pull the trigger and it’s just this loud bang of a sound because I’m using my .45 with the grips wrapped in electrician’s tape so they can’t lift my prints. I could have used a smaller gun, a .22 or a .38, but a .45, you don’t have to worry about nothing. Bang! Bang!
“I care about her,” I tell him as I pump another round into him. The night seems big and empty with nothing in it but me and those dope fiends and maybe a couple of farmhouses. And when I shoot Rose’s ex, the sound soon gets swallowed up, until I shoot the other one and that sound gets swallowed up too.
Bang! Bang! Then it’s real quiet again.
The other one, Wallace, looks at his kid brother as he flops over and says to me, “Hey you just shot my fucking brother!” His eyes are rolling around in his head because he’s doped up. He doesn’t know if he’s in Kansas City or Timbuktu.
“Yeah, I shot him,” I say, “and now I’m going to shoot you, you rat prick.”
