Infamous Read Online Free Page A

her feet.
     
    George R. Kelly, aka George Barnes, aka R. G. Shannon, aka “Machine Gun” Kelly, looked up from an iron frying pan where he was flipping pancakes. He wore nothing but boxer shorts and blue socks. A cigarette hung loose out of his mouth.
     
    “Where the hell you been?”
     
    “Working.”
     
    “Working?”
     
    The boxer shorts were white and decorated with red hearts. His blue socks were held up with garters.
     
    “People are talking about you,” she said. “How do you think that gets done?”
     
    “You’re drunk.”
     
    “So are you,” she said, eyeing the empty bottle of Old Log Cabin bourbon on the table.
     
    “Aw, hell,” George said. “Is that the way it’s gonna go?”
     
    “Why are you cooking so much?”
     
    “We got company.”
     
    “It’s two in the morning.”
     
    “I just got a call,” George said. “Verne and Harvey are in town. Don’t that beat all?”
     
    “What?” Kathryn asked. “Are you screwy?”
     
    “They needed a place to sleep.”
     
    “What the hell are they doing in Texas? They hate Texas.”
     
    “Hand me some bacon out of the icebox.”
     
    Kathryn plopped down at the little kitchen table and massaged her temples. She breathed, just trying to wrap her drunk mind around what George had done.
     
    “Don’t get sore,” he said. “Make coffee.”
     
    “You make coffee, you rotten son of a bitch.”
     
    “Hey.”
     
    “Don’t you know that we got work to do? Have you even read any of those articles I cut out? Do you know how broke we are? GMAC calls every damn day about the Cadillac.”
     
    “I got that covered.”
     
    “What? You and Albert are going to go knock over a gas station for ten bucks? This is real money.”
     
    “I guess.”
     
    “You guess?” Kathryn stood, walked up to her large husband, and rapped on his forehead with her knuckles. “This isn’t some bank job in Tupelo. This is the score. And just as we’re getting ready, you want Harvey Bailey and that sadistic son of a bitch Verne Miller cutting in. You know they’ll want in.”
     
    “Maybe we should cut ’em in. They’re good, Kit. They’re real good. I’ve worked with them, not you. It’s my ass.”
     
    “And you want to cut the money another two ways?”
     
    “Goddamnit.”
     
    “Listen to what I’m saying.”
     
    “That’s not it. Aw, hell. You made me burn the gosh-dang pancakes.”
     
    She took a breath, damn glad she was drunk right now. She half walked, half stumbled back to the bedroom, where she pulled her new dress up over her head, down to her pink slip, and looked at herself in the long oval mirror. She was still good-looking at thirty, still had the curves but not too fat, and the dark hair and eyes she got on account of her Cherokee grandmother. Nice cheekbones. Like the makeup ladies told her at Neiman Marcus, good bones accounted for it all.
     
    A black curl dropped over her eye as she studied herself, turning left to right, watching her profile and trying to remember that pout she’d caught from Claudette Colbert.
     
    She wiped the dark red lipstick off her mouth with a rag and had just plopped into an unmade bed when George stuck his head in the room. “Honey, you mind making up the bed and sofa for the boys? They’re gonna be real tired.”
     
    She didn’t answer, pretending she was asleep, but after he closed the door Kathryn turned over and clicked on a bedside lamp. From the middle of a thick family Bible, she pulled out a handful of neatly clipped newspaper articles from the Daily Oklahoman. One of them had been read so much it had grown soft and light in her hands, the folds like lines on an old-time treasure map.
     
    The headline read OIL MAN URSCHEL MARRIES SLICK WIDOW.
     
     
    The union of the two fortunes will make the Urschels the richest household in the state and one of the richest in the nation. Charles Urschel began his career as partner of the noted Tom Slick, King of the Wildcatters, back when Oklahoma . . .
     
     
    Kathryn read the story four times, each time with a pleasant