The Hot Kid

by Elmore Leonard

  “We arranged with the hotel, they’re giving her a deluxe room for two dollars.”

  “You bring the little girl to Tulsa and you make her pay?”

  “I’m gonna take care of it,” Tony said.

  “You work for a cheap outfit,” Carl said. “But don’t worry about paying her way, I’m fixing her up. Sit down, I’ll tell you about the one, ‘Gunfight at Close Quarters.’”

  He was doing it again, putting him on the spot, manipulating him. The same thing he did with Elodie, brought her up and then cut him off from finding anything about her. Or he liked to hear himself talk about himself.

  “No,” Tony said, “the one I’d like you to tell me is ‘Marshal Shoots Machine-Gun Killer from Four Hundred Yards.’”

  “That’s what happened,” Carl said. “That’s the whole story right there.”

  “The only time you used a rifle.”

  “The only time I’ve had to.”

  “I know it started with a bank robbery in Sallisaw. But why there? What was the guy’s name, Peyton Bragg? I’d like to hear the details.”

  “They’re hard to remember.”

  It was quiet in the room before Tony said, “Why don’t you want to tell me about it?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Carl said. “See how much I can remember.”

  You know that ugly one-eyed bouncer wears smoked glasses? They call Boo?”

  “He turned his head,” Tony said, “he was a good-looking guy.”

  “But his ugly side’s what you remember,” Carl said. “His given name’s Billy Bragg, the kid brother of Peyton Bragg, the machine-gun killer shot at some distance.”

  “Right,” Tony said, “Peyton Bragg,” and wrote it down.

  “Peyton worked stills. He’d set his mash, run it through the cooker to drip into jars his brother Billy would deliver to customers. Then Peyton’d go out and rob a bank. The time the law finally got on him he robbed the Sallisaw State Bank. You know why he chose it?”

  Tony said, “Sallisaw’s close to the Cookson Hills?”

  “See, you know why. But that’s only one reason. The main one, Pretty Boy Floyd had robbed the same bank—in his hometown, you understand—and only got twenty-five hundred thirty-one dollars and seventy-three cents. Peyton said watch, he’d rob it the same way Choc had, with a machine gun, and ride out of Sallisaw with a teller on the running board and way more cash than twenty-five hundred and thirty-one dollars.”

  “Where’d you get this, what Peyton said?”

  “From the kid he had driving for him.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t recall, but the one that went in the bank with Peyton was Hickey Grooms, armed and dangerous, Arkansas banks had five hundred dollars on him. See, Peyton was sore ’cause Charley Floyd was getting credit for banks Peyton had robbed. In fact at that time, witnesses were putting Choc at almost every bank robbery in Oklahoma. So Peyton’s intent was to show him up.”

  Tony said, “They say Pretty Boy was supposed to have robbed fifty-one banks in less than a year.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” Carl said. “Peyton and his partner are in the bank, Peyton waving his machine gun to get everybody’s cooperation. Now they’re in the vault loading sacks with cash…while the kid driver’s sitting in the car revving the engine, wants to make sure it won’t quit on him. He keeps watching the bank and doesn’t see the police car drive past.”

  “But they see him,” Tony said, “acting suspicious.”

  “So you know what’s gonna happen,” Carl said. “By the time the kid driver notices people looking toward him as they hurry past the bank, and finally turns his head to see police on the street he starts blowing his horn.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “An Oakland. Brand-new eight the kid swiped off a lot in Muskogee. Peyton comes running out of the bank, gets to the car, the police yelling at him to stop, put up his hands, and he rakes the Thompson at them, shooting up parked cars, storefronts…His partner comes out with the bank sacks as Peyton’s firing and the police shoot down Hickey Grooms he’s barely out of the bank. Peyton’s in the car now looking at his partner lying dead on the sidewalk, about ten thousand dollars of cotton money in the sacks.”

  “You learned this after, how much they took?”

  “That’s right, but the kid driver said in his statement Peyton knew about how much they had and looked like he was gonna try to get the sacks. The police and others were shooting at the car now, so the kid said he punched the gas pedal, ‘held her down’ and they got out of there.”

  Tony said, “You mentioned Peyton fired the Thompson.”

  “He killed one of the officers and a couple of people standing there. Once they’re out of town it was a chase through the hills, no paved roads up there, we’re following tire tracks and dust most of the time. The Sequoyah sheriff set up a roadblock near Brushy. Peyton busted through and killed a deputy. By the time they got up toward Bunch, the Adair County sheriff with us now—”

  “Wait,” Tony said. “What were you doing in Sallisaw?”

  “Inquiring after Charley Floyd. I went there to talk to his wife’s relatives. A cousin named Louise had written to him in prison.”

  “You mean Louly?”

  “I didn’t know her then. She wasn’t there anyway. Her stepdaddy, Mr. Hagenlocker, said she’d stolen his car. I drove back to Sallisaw, the bank’d been robbed.”

  “So you joined the chase.”

  “I believe I was telling you, we got up toward Bunch, there was the Oakland off the side of the road, its rear end sticking out of the growth, the kid driver waiting there, putting his hands up as we approached him. He said Peyton had him pull off the road to hide the car, but when he did it got hung up in the undergrowth, why the ass end was showing like that. The kid said a car happened to come out of a road almost across the way, where there was a filling station had gone out of business. Peyton ran out and stopped the car—the kid said a woman driving—and rode off in it.”

  Tony said, “What make of car?”

  “A 1930 Essex two-door, green, one the Adair County sheriff said belonged to Venicia Munson, an old-maid schoolteacher from Bunch.”

  “So you went to see her.”

  Carl wanted to say he’d get to it, all right? But kept his peace, wanting to tell this part the way he remembered it.

  How he spoke to the sheriff from Adair County about Venicia Munson, the sheriff, an old boy, reminding him of his dad, the chew in his jaw, direct when he spoke but in no hurry. He said, “I’ve known Venicia since she was a little girl, more’n thirty years, but have no idea what she thinks. They say she almost ran off with an oil patch roughneck one time when she was a kid, but her old man put a stop to it. I never heard of her seeing anybody else. She don’t talk ’less you talk to her first. She don’t fix her hair or doll up any.” The sheriff said, “No, I take that back. I saw rouge on her face the other day at the post office she was mailing a letter. She wouldn’t be too bad she fixed herself up. Except she’s I mean skinny, hardly any sign of breasts on her to speak of.”

  “Who you think she writes to?”

  “I been wondering about that.”

  “You think she knows Peyton?”

  “She could.”

  “They both like to hide out.”

  “I know what you’re saying. Your hunches any good?”

  “Sometimes.”

  They found the house at the end of a mile of ruts in a straight dirt road, through land swept bare by wind and drought, the house old, left over, Venicia Munson the last of her family to live here.

  The green Essex stood close to the house.

  Carl told how she came out on the porch as their four cars crept into the yard: two from sheriff departments, Sequoyah and Adair, one sedan holding the Sallisaw posse with their shotguns and rifles, and Carl’s Pontiac, the kid driver riding with him.

  “Look at her,” Carl said to the kid driver, “and tell me if she was in the Essex
.”

  “I never saw her good.”

  “It’s the same car, isn’t it?”

  “It sure looks like it.”

  “Tell me,” Carl said, “if Peyton stopped that car or the car stopped for him?”

  The kid said, “What’s the difference?”

  “Did he threaten her with the machine gun?”

  “He wasn’t holding it then.”

  “He left it in your car?”

  “I think he forgot it.”

  “He have a gun in his hand?”

  “I didn’t see one.”

  “Do you recognize her?”

  “I told you, I didn’t see her good.”

  Carl, with the Adair County sheriff, got out and approached the woman on the porch, touching their hat brims. Carl gave his name, told her he was a deputy U.S. marshal, and said, “How’re you today?”

  Venicia didn’t say, she stood waiting, hugging herself with skinny arms, red circles of rouge on her drawn cheeks.

  “Tell me,” Carl said, “if you stopped your car to pick up a man on the road, not more’n a couple hours ago?”

  She shook her head.

  The sheriff said, “Venicia, this is Peyton Bragg we’re talking about. A witness saw you pick him up in your car.”

  She said, “Whoever thinks he saw me’s mistaken.”

  The sheriff said, “There’s only a couple Essexes in this county I know of and this is the green one.”

  Carl saw the way she looked right at the man in his worn-out wool suit and tie, the plug in his jaw. Now she shrugged her shoulders.

  Carl said, “You mind if we go in your house and look around?”

  She said, “Why? You think Peyton Bragg’s in there?”

  “You know Peyton?”

  “What difference would it make?” Venicia said. “You aren’t going in my house.”

  The sheriff said he was sorry but they had to. “Peyton killed three people, one of ’em a police officer, robbing the Sallisaw bank, and shot a Sequoyah deputy at a roadblock.” He turned and motioned to the others to come on, they were going in.

  Now Carl told the True Detective writer how they searched the house, the upstairs, the storm cellar, poked through wardrobes full of family clothing…It was Carl who looked in the stand by the front door, wondering why there were so many umbrellas in it, and found the Winchester .30-30 among the black folds of cloth. It had a scope sight mounted on it and was loaded. Carl held it up to Venicia Munson.

  She said, “It’s mine. All right?”

  Carl put the rifle in his car and came back to see everybody outside now looking off at the land, all of it dead to treelines in the distance, the closest maybe a quarter mile away.

  Carl said to the woman, “Miss Munson, if you see Peyton before we do, tell him to give himself up while he’s still alive.”

  She didn’t say anything, but it got him strange looks from the others. The posse from Sallisaw walked back to their car talking about what he’d said to her. The Sequoyah deputies took their time, turning to look at the woman and comment among themselves.

  Carl said to the Adair sheriff, “She and Peyton know each other. Before he robbed the bank he made plans to hide out at Venicia’s.” The sheriff frowned at him, working the chew in his jaw, and Carl said, “Peyton didn’t stop her car on the road. She was there to pick him up.”

  “This is your hunch?”

  “I got it from the kid driver. Only nobody told him about it.”

  The sheriff looked out at the nearest treeline and tugged his hat brim down against the late sun.

  Carl said, “He’ll be back tonight.”

  All Bunch had was a filling station, a sawmill that cut rough lumber, a frame church and a general store with the post office one of the counters, mail slots behind it on the wall.

  Carl told this to Tony in the Mayo Hotel suite.

  “We sent the kid driver back to Sallisaw with the posse, five of ’em packed in the car. They had to promise to keep their hands off him since he was just a dumb kid. We had the two Sequoyah deputies, and two from Adair County the sheriff got hold of. He’s the one I was talking to, Wesley Sellers, if you want to write his name in your notebook. He’s coming over to Okmulgee sometime, talk to my dad about the Spanish war and we’ll shoot at crows eating pecans. Wesley brought us to his house and his wife fixed us egg and onion sandwiches and opened a can of deviled ham for whoever wanted to spread some on bread, while we decided how to lay for Peyton. One good thing, we knew he’d left his machine gun in the car.”

  “But he’d be armed,” Tony said.

  “We didn’t have any doubt of that. We decided I’d be the one to go in the house, the last resort if Peyton got past the others spread around outside.”

  “You’d talk to her?”

  “If I could think of something to say.”

  “How did you feel, face-to-face with the woman, knowing you or the sheriff’s people were gonna kill her sweetheart?”

  “Did I sympathize with her?”

  “Feel sorry for her—this old maid with a bank robber for a boyfriend.”

  “She wasn’t anybody to me,” Carl said. “Soon as it was dark I drove up to the house, as if I’m visiting. I see her car turned around, the Essex, its rear end toward the house, ready to shoot straight down the road. I thought if the key’s in it I’d yank it out. But I hear Venicia’s voice—she’s on the porch in the dark—ask me what I want. I have to get her in the house, so the others can walk up the road and take their positions without her seeing them.”

  “She’d know you weren’t alone,” Tony said.

  “Most likely,” Carl said, “but you never know. I told her I wanted to talk to her. She asked if I’d brought her rifle back, said I had no right to take it—the Winchester with the scope. It was still in my car, but I didn’t tell her that. I said why didn’t we go in the house and sit down. She said all right, I suppose curious, wanting to hear what I had to say, and took me through the living room to the kitchen and turned on the light over the table.”

  “She knows you’re not gonna ask what you do around there for fun. I bet she broke down,” Tony said, “pleaded with you to spare his life, only the second boyfriend she’d had in her thirty-odd years.”

  “No, but she surprised me,” Carl said.

  She asked him if he wanted a drink.

  Carl said no thanks, and watched her open a cupboard to bring out a fruit jar of moonshine and two glasses and put them on the table. She said, “In case you change your mind,” and poured herself two inches of the whiskey that looked no more potent than creek water. She wore a wool housecoat, green, like her car, that came to the floor and looked too big for her, the sleeves too long. She wore rouge, circles of it on her cheeks, and lipstick tonight, bright red in the light hanging above them. Venicia sat down with her back to the sink and cupboards and Carl took the chair to her left, to be facing the back door. He didn’t like sitting in the light.

  “You’re a schoolteacher, uh?”

  “And I drink wildcat whiskey,” Venicia said. “What do you make of that?”

  “There’s no taste to it—it must give you what you’re looking for. Peyton brings it?”

  “When he remembers.”

  “What do you do, you run out and he’s not around?”

  “Honey, you’re in the Hills. I can go a mile in any direction and pick up what I need for social occasions. You understand, I only drink when I have company.” She raised her glass to him and took a sip, a good one, then touched the sleeve of her housecoat to her mouth. “What I’m always running out of are cigarets.”

  Carl took out his pack of Lucky Strike, popped a couple of cigarets to stand up and held the pack to her. Venicia took a cigaret and lit it from a book of matches she brought out of her housecoat. It said be mouth-happy on the cover, smoke spuds. Carl slid the pack across the table to her, its green wrapper close to matching her robe.

  “If you’re trying to get me to talk about Peyton, kee
p it up. But I doubt I can tell you anything you don’t know. I will say one thing. Peyton gets to the house and sees you through the window, he’ll shoot you dead.” She raised her face to blow smoke that swirled in the light.

  Carl said, “What grade do you teach?”

  “All of them.”

  Carl said, “Peyton’s already killed four people today.”

  “Yeah? You think I don’t know what he is?” Venicia got up and came back from the sink with a tin ashtray. “You’ll get him or you won’t. You do, I’ll have to go up the road for my whiskey.” She drew on the cigaret again and said, “How many people have you killed?”

  It was in his mind that he hadn’t killed any people and said, “They were wanted criminals, fugitives.”

  “Aren’t they people?”

  “You say ‘people,’ I think of innocent people, not mad-dog exconvicts and murderers.”

  “How many of those have you killed?”

  Carl hesitated. “Just three.”

  Only three by that time, he told Tony. Wally Tarwater, the one stealing his cows; Emmett Long, in the farmhouse near Checotah; and David Lee Swick coming out of the bank in Turley with a woman hostage, the one Carl had approached from across the street telling Swick to let the woman go and drop his gun, and when Swick fired, Carl pulled and shot him through the head at fifteen feet, the reason the Tulsa paper called it “Gunfight at Close Quarters.”

  Venicia was saying, “You shoot Peyton you’ll be even with him, won’t you? He did shoot a man in Tahlequah one time, fighting over some whore, but only winged him. The man survived Peyton’s wrath.”

  She sipped her drink and smoked her cigaret and asked Carl, “Are you nervous?”

  He said, “I’m all right. Are you?”

  She said, “To tell you the truth, I’m scared to death.”

  “It’s what happens,” Carl said, “you get mixed up with a man like Peyton.”

  “You’re the one scares me,” Venicia said, “not Peyton. You know why? ’Cause you’d rather shoot him than try to bring him in.”

  “It’s up to Peyton,” Carl said. “What’d I say to you a while ago? You see him, tell him to give himself up if he wants to stay alive.”