The Hot Kid

by Elmore Leonard

  Carl said, “I can think of all kinds of people I don’t like, so that ain’t it.”

  “You’re both kind to animals,” Virgil said. “You’re modest in your way, or know how to put it on. Remember seeing him in the Ziegfeld Follies that time? You were just a kid then.”

  Only a few days after Carl had shot the cow thief out of his saddle. He nodded to his dad, remembering chorus girls with long white legs tap-dancing around the stage and Will Rogers coming out in black chaps and a hundred feet of rope coiled in his hand, his range hat cocked to one side, hair hanging on his forehead. Carl remembered the cow thief’s name was Wally Tarwater.

  Virgil was saying, “She keeps shoving this sauerkraut at me claiming it’s good for you.”

  “It is,” Narcissa said. “Ellen Rose Dickey in her radio talk says it’s the perfect health food. I sent away to Clyde, Ohio, for fifty recipes. I put ground-up pecans in it. I put onions in it and made a tomato sauce to put on it. He pushes it away.”

  “It smells,” Virgil said.

  “You smell and you don’t know it,” Narcissa said, “’cause you have B.O. I buy Lifebuoy soap at the store. He don’t wash under his arms with it every day like I tell him. No, once a week he takes his bath. I tell him to wash his mouth with Listerine. He don’t have time reading his papers. I tell him Listerine kills two hundred million germs in only fifteen seconds. He still don’t have time. I try to get him to eat Fleischmann’s yeast every day, three cakes, so he can be regular sitting on the toilet. I hear him groaning in there trying to make poo-poo. No, he says he don’t need Fleischmann’s yeast. You see how he’s losing his hair? I try to get him to use this tonic they call Hair-Medic. He won’t do it. I tell him the famous Harry Richman likes to use it. I tell him Ruth Etting the singer uses it. She says it does wonders for her scalp. Virgil says he don’t need it. Virgil reads about Ideal Manhood in my Physical Culture magazine, that old guy Bernarr Macfadden showing you how to exercise? Virgil don’t get out of his chair. I send for the free book of Charles Atlas, how Dynamic Tension gives you everlasting health and strength. He won’t read it. I get him Earle Liederman’s book that tells how to strengthen your inner organs. I send to Newark, New Jersey—maybe he’ll like Lionel Strongfort’s book, how to energize your body. Virgil don’t even open it. He says, ‘Strongfort, you kidding me? The guy made up that name.’”

  Virgil said, “Tell him how you bought a tube of Ipana on account of my pink toothbrush.”

  Narcissa was shaking her head, worn out, through with him.

  “I use Ipana now,” Virgil said. “I get a new toothbrush and she stays white.” He chewed on a piece of steak he’d dipped in his egg yolk and said to Carl, “Did you know thirty thousand people a year are killed in car wrecks? They must be out on the road trying to run into each other.” He said, “I just read that,” and looked at Narcissa. “What was it in, Liberty?”

  “I believe Liberty,” she said. “Or it was in Psychology, the one that’s called Life in the Modern World ?”

  10

  The first time Crystal saw Carl’s apartment she had come to Tulsa on a shopping trip. He showed her around the two-bedroom place, where he’d been living since joining the marshals, saying he paid thirty a month for it furnished, including heat and light, a new kitchen, the sleeping porch in back…Crystal said, “Not bad.” He told her he was due to repaint the walls and lay new carpeting, but hadn’t done anything but hang those pictures in the living room. He waited for Crystal to wander over to the wall of framed photographs, some of them enlarged.

  “That’s my dad in uniform, when he was a seagoing marine.” He waited until she was close enough to touch the photo before saying, “He was on the Maine.”

  By this time he’d said the same thing to all the different girls who’d been here during the past few years: “He was on the Maine.” And every one of them knew what happened in Havana Harbor in 1898 and listened to him describe how Virgil was blown off the ship when it exploded and into a Spanish prison.

  “You told me about your dad,” Crystal said. “One of those afternoons you stopped by.”

  “When you were still in the farmhouse?”

  “It wasn’t long after you shot Emmett. You told me about all these people, your family, your life when you were a little kid.” She turned enough to look at him. “I had the feeling you wanted me to see you as a regular guy, not a dumb cop or someone, all you do is shoot people.” Crystal turned to the wall of photos again saying, “I’ve never seen these, but I bet I can pick out your people from what you told me about them.” Crystal nodded to a photo. “This is your mother. I believe her name is Grace?”

  “Graciaplena,” Carl said, “Full of Grace. But that’s my grandmother, not my mother. She’s part Northern Cheyenne.”

  “My mistake,” Crystal said. “If she’s part Indian then you are, too.” She looked at him again with a faint smile. “I would never of suspected.”

  “The first time I met Emmett, at the drugstore, he said it made me a breed. That’s me in the cowboy outfit when I was four. My dad bought it for me. He wanted to be a cowboy when he was a kid. Fifteen years old he bought a horse for five dollars, thought he’d ride off and find work on a spread. But his stepdad, a preacher with the Church of the Most Holy Word, sold the horse from under him and kept the money. He joined the marines instead, still only fifteen, and his mom ran off to Lame Deer, Montana, to live with her people. She’s still there, but I’ve never met her. Or my mother, she died having me. That’s Grace in the white dress the day they got married in Havana. That’s her dad with her, Carlos, the one I was named for. I met him one time my dad took me to Cuba. Those are some of my dad’s oil wells. There’s the two of us on a derrick platform when I was a kid. He likes to pose.”

  “That’s where you get it,” Crystal said.

  “But he’s no oil man. Even with the checks coming in he keeps working his pecan trees.”

  “He must’ve spoiled you when you were a kid.”

  “Virgil always bought me good horses. I worked stock from the time I was about twelve and could ride like a man, right up till I joined the marshals. That enlarged shot of the house? That’s my dad and Narcissa and me on the front porch the day we moved in. We used to live down on the county road, where you turn into the property. Narcissa’s his housekeeper.”

  Crystal said, “I bet she’s more than that.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re close, been together twenty-six years now. Narcissa takes good care of him. He reads newspapers and she reads magazines and they tell each other things. I drive down to Okmulgee weekends I get the chance. My dad and I sit on the porch and talk.”

  “Couple of pards, huh?”

  “He likes to hear what I’m up to.”

  “When you could be living on the homestead?”

  “Yeah, picking nuts. But he’s always let me have my head.”

  “He must wonder though.”

  “What I like about being a marshal? He thinks I’m a show-off, out to make a name for myself.”

  She said, “You are, aren’t you?”

  Carl grinned at her and Crystal came over to take him by the arm toward his bedroom, Crystal saying, “Can we make it a quickie so I can get out of here, please, and go shopping? How about if I just pull up my skirt and take my panties off?”

  “You’re wearing panties?”

  “Honey, I told you, I’m going to Vandever’s, see what’s new. And try not to muss up my hair for a change, okay?”

  This morning he got home from his dad’s place and took a shower standing in the tub, shaved and combed his hair, wetting the comb to get a straight part and rubbed bay rum on his face. He’d wear the vest that was part of his dark suit. It was cold out, too cold for the panama. He’d wear his brown felt, get used to it over the next couple of winter months, the hat taking on a good shape and he liked the feel of it, pinching the front of the crown to drop it on his head and knowing it looked good, a slight curve to the brim. He didn’t ca
re for overcoats. When he was in the country he’d wear a cowboy coat, a fleece-lined over his suit. In towns, in and out of cars, a raincoat was enough. He picked out a burgundy necktie to go with his blue shirt and the dark blue suit and slipped on his shoulder holster. Wearing his revolver on his hip was a little more comfortable, but the big Colt on the .45 frame was easier to pull from under his left arm and he could pull it sitting down. He spun the cylinder to check the loads and slipped the revolver, its front sight filed down, into the holster he softened every couple of weeks with saddle soap. He put a fresh pack of Luckies in his coat pocket and a book of matches, but left the Beechnut scrap on the bureau—what he chewed sometimes when he was in the country or at his dad’s place; his dad loved that Beechnut scrap. He slipped a pair of handcuffs into a pocket of the raincoat—he didn’t like the hard metal feel of the cuffs on the back of his belt. Spare rounds were always in his suitcoat pocket. What else? His wallet, change, a pack of gum, the keys to the Pontiac Eight sedan they were letting him use. Nine minutes later he pulled up in front of the Mayo Hotel. In the lobby he glanced at himself in a mirror, lifted his hat and eased it down a bit closer on his eyes, the brown hat working, Deputy Marshal Carl Webster looking good.

  11

  Carl knocked on the door of 815. It opened and Tony Antonelli was standing there looking at him. Carl said, “I understand you want to talk to me.”

  “Yeah, but not now. I’m about to interview Louly Brown.”

  “You haven’t started yet?” Carl said. “Lemme just say hi to her.” He could tell the True Detective writer didn’t want him to come in, but had to step aside as Carl moved past him to look around at a sitting room. Now Tony motioned to a door.

  “She’s in the bedroom.”

  “You got her a whole suite of rooms?”

  “Two rooms and bath, fifteen dollars.”

  “There’s good money in writing, huh?”

  “It’s on an expense account.” Tony raised his hand and said, “Wait a minute, I’ll check on her.” He walked to the bedroom door, rapped with one knuckle twice and said, “Louly?”

  Carl could hear her voice but not the words, Tony saying, “Yeah?” Saying, “That’s a shame.” And finally, “Of course I’ll wait.” He turned to Carl. “She says she’s got a darn pimple and is trying to hide it.”

  “What is she,” Carl said, “a movie star? Tell her I’m here waiting to see her.”

  “She’s quite self-conscious,” Tony said, “bashful, all this attention more than she can handle.”

  Carl turned around and sat down in a big, comfortable chair at the end of the sofa. He looked up to see Tony coming over, Tony saying, “If we have a few minutes, I’d like to hear about the shootings you were in, ones I only read about in the paper. I had to dig back in the clip morgue at the Tulsa World to get the one called ‘Gunfight at Close Quarters’ and the other one, ‘Marshal Shoots Machine-Gun Killer from Four Hundred Yards.’”

  Carl said, “Those were the only two. The one was like most situations like that and the other wasn’t a gunfight.”

  “I was in Kansas City on and off last year trying to get the lowdown on Boss Pendergast and his cronies. Good luck to any journalist who wants to try.” Tony went on talking as he sat down at the end of the sofa, on the edge of the cushion and got out his notebook. “I’d like to hear about the one where you used a rifle.”

  “You mention Kansas City,” Carl said, “I’m thinking of going there.”

  Tony said, “Well…it’s the biggest city in area in the entire U.S., known as the Paris of the Plains. And it’s wide open. K.C. has all the betting, booze, and babes anyone could want. I mean people who go in for that kind of stuff.”

  Carl said, “Have you seen Elodie?”

  It straightened Tony. “Not since the other day.”

  “She’s over at the courthouse talking to marshals. I told her, ‘You go back to Seminole I’ll put you in jail.’”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Tony said. “She’s at the courthouse, uh?”

  Carl said, “You want to talk about Elodie or hear about a shoot-out?” See how professional this True Detective writer was.

  It took him only two seconds to get back on the job saying “Yes, absolutely. I want to hear about shooting the machine-gun killer. You were actually four hundred yards away?”

  Carl said, “The other one’s a better story.”

  He watched Tony get up from the sofa and smooth out the front of his pants saying, “Can you hold it a minute? I want to check on Louly, see how she’s doing.”

  Carl watched him go to the bedroom door and put his ear close as he knocked and said, “Louly? Are you gonna be long? I have to go to the bathroom.” Carl watched him fidget at the door, heard him say “What?” a couple of times, having trouble hearing her.

  “You’re paying for it,” Carl said. “Go on in.”

  “I can hear the water running,” Tony said, walking toward the door to the hall now, telling Carl, “I’ll be right back,” and left the suite.

  The door closed and Carl pulled himself out of the chair, crossed to the bedroom and walked in saying, “Louly, where you hiding?”

  She was in the bathroom. He saw her, the door open, stepping out of the tub full of foamy bubbles, the redhead naked and looking right at him as she reached for a bath towel, in a hurry to get it, but then more relaxed holding it in front of her.

  Carl had the feeling she was deciding in these moments how to act with him, like a good little girl, mortified that he’d seen her naked. Or as Tony described her as being self-conscious, bashful. Oh, was that right? But not too bashful to shoot Joe Young that time at the tourist court, the day after Carl first laid eyes on her. He watched her turn around to dry her back.

  Louly saying, “Are you still watching me?”

  “I can’t help it.”

  She dropped the towel, giving him a clear shot of her pert little fanny, and reached to take her green bathrobe from a hook on the wall. She kept her back to him slipping into the robe, showing some modesty, since he’d already seen that patch of red fuzz against her pure white skin. It looked like Louly was going to be herself with him.

  She came out of the bathroom saying, “Where’s Tony?”

  “He had to pee.”

  “I never met a writer who was so polite and considerate.” She sat at the vanity and began brushing out her hair. “And I never had a bubble bath, so I bought some, see what it’s like. It’s okay, has a nice smell, but all you do is sit in it.”

  “You miss a lot,” Carl said, “living on a cotton farm.” He stepped closer to see her in the vanity mirror, head lowered, her fierce strokes brushing her hair pulling her robe open.

  She stopped brushing and looked up at him.

  “I’m getting tired of these interviews. I’ve had to make up stories so they stay interested. I told one guy, a reporter, well, I did happen to run into Charley Floyd by accident one time, when he was living in Fort Smith. The guy interviewing me says, ‘By accident, huh. Sure.’ I said, ‘If you don’t believe me why should I talk to you?’ he says, ‘What were you doing over in Arkansas if it wasn’t to see him?’ Then I had to think of something right then.”

  “That you don’t want him to believe either,” Carl said.

  “Yeah, and it gets confusing. I heard in Sallisaw Charley was there, in Fort Smith with Ruby and their little boy, Dempsey, and I did think of driving over to see Ruby. But they moved again and nobody knows where.” Louly brushed out a few more strokes, stopped and looked up at him again. “You know what I decided to do? Go to Kansas City. They say it’s some town, all kinds of jazzy places to see, and now I can afford to do it.”

  “There’s a lot to see in Tulsa,” Carl said.

  She caught him looking into her robe and pulled the front of it together saying, “You know I have that five hundred they gave me for shooting Joe Young. I want to spend it in Kansas City, not some oil town.”

  “You want to see Tulsa and save your
money,” Carl said, “you could stay at my place.”

  She held the brush above her head.

  “Stay with you?”

  Carl watched the robe come partway open, but this time, looking at him in the mirror, she didn’t touch it.

  “I’ve got a two-bedroom apartment with a new kitchen, a comfortable living room and a big Atwater Kent up next to the couch. A maid comes in once a week, cleans and does the laundry. Stay, I’ll show you around town.”

  “Don’t you work?”

  “I’m taking time off to relax.”

  She stroked her hair twice, stopped and said, “What would people say, I was to move in with you? Like my mother, she finds out?”

  “Don’t tell her.”

  “How about your neighbors?”

  “They don’t care.”

  Louly said, “I hardly even know you.”

  “I’m offering you a room,” Carl said. “You don’t want to see the town, the hot spots, go dancing, it’s up to you. You can sit on the couch and listen to the radio.”

  Louly said, “You’d take me dancing?”

  Tony pulled the key out of the lock, closed the door and turned to see Carl Webster coming out of the bedroom.

  “She’s getting dressed,” Carl said.

  Tony stood there. “You talked to her?”

  “She’s thinking of staying in Tulsa a few days.”

  “Well, she can’t stay here.”

  Tony said it right away.

  “She can tonight, can’t she, if she wants?”

  “We only have the suite till six.”

  “They gave you a rate,” Carl said. “You didn’t pay any fifteen dollars, did you, Tony? You lied to me.”

  He was sure the marshal was kidding. Though not absolutely sure. Tony walked to the couch saying, “If that’s what I told you, yeah, that’s the full rate. I had it on my mind, ’cause if we go past six we have to pay it.”

  Carl said, “Where’s Louly gonna sleep, in her car?”