How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman (2003)

by Elmore Leonard

  He said to Faye, "What you want to do is pay close attention. Then later on you can tell what happened here as the star witness and get your name in the paper. I bet even your picture."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Faye said. "You really think so?"

  They heard the car beep twice as it passed the house. Ready?

  Carl was, in the chair facing the magazine table where the only lamp in the room was lit. Faye stood smoking a cigarette, smoking three or four since drinking the orange-juice glass of gin to settle her down. Light from the kitchen, behind her, showed her figure in the kimono she was wearing. Faye looked fine to Carl.

  But not to Frank Miller. Not the way he came in with magazines under his arm and barely paused before saying to her, "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," Faye said. "Frank, I want you to meet Carl, from home." Frank staring at him now as Faye said he was a busboy at Purity the same time she was working there. "And our moms are both Eastern Star."

  "You're Frank," Carl said, sounding like a salesman. "Glad to know you, Frank." Carl looking at a face from six years ago, the same dead-eyed stare beneath the hat brim. He watched Frank Miller carry his magazines to the table, drop them on top of the ones there and glance over at Faye; watched him plant both hands on the table now, hunched over, taking time to what, rest? Unh-unh, decide how to get rid of this busboy so he could take Faye to bed, Carl imagining Frank doing it to her with his hat still on ... and remembered his dad saying, "You know why I caught the Mauser round that time, the Spanish sniper picking me off? I was thinking instead of paying attention, doing my job."

  Carl asked himself what he was waiting for. He said, "Frank, bring out your pistol and lay it there on the table."

  Faye Harris knew how to tell it. She had recited her story enough times to marshals and various law enforcement people. This afternoon she was describing the scene to newspaper reporters--and the one from the Oklahoman, the Oklahoma City paper, kept interrupting, asking questions that were a lot different than ones the marshals asked.

  She referred to Deputy Marshal Webster as "Carl" and the one from the Oklahoman said, "Oh, you two are on intimate terms now? You don't mind he's just a kid? Has he visited you here at the hotel?" Faye was staying a few days at the Georgian in Henryetta. The other reporters in the room would tell the Oklahoman to keep quiet for Christ sake, anxious for Faye to get to the gunplay.

  "As I told you," Faye said, "I was in the doorway to the kitchen.

  Frank's over here to my left, and Carl's opposite him but sitting down, his legs stretched out in his cowboy boots. I couldn't believe how calm he was."

  "What'd you have on, Faye?"

  The Oklahoman interrupting again, some of the other reporters groaning.

  "I had on a pink and red kimono Frank got me at Kerr's in Oklahoma City. I had to wear it whenever he came."

  "You have anything on under it?"

  Faye said, "None of your beeswax."

  The Oklahoman said his readers had a right to know such details of how a gun moll dressed. This time the other reporters were quiet, like they wouldn't mind hearing such details themselves, until Faye said, "If this big mouth opens his trap one more time I'm through and y'all can leave." She said, "Now where was I?"

  "Frank was leaning on the table."

  "That was it. He looked over at me like he was gonna say something, and right then Carl said, 'Frank?' He said, 'Draw your pistol and lay it there on the table.'"

  The reporters wrote it down in their notebooks and then waited as Faye took a sip of iced tea.

  "I told you Frank had his back to Carl? Now I see him turn his face to his shoulder and say to him, 'Do I know you from someplace?' Maybe thinking of McAlester, Carl an ex-convict looking to earn the reward money. Frank asks him, 'Have we met or not?' And Carl says, 'If I told you, I doubt you'd remember.' Then--this is where Carl says, 'Frank, I'm a Deputy United States Marshal. I'll tell you one more time to lay your pistol on the table.'"

  A reporter said, "Faye, I know they did meet. I'm from the Okmulgee Daily Times and I wrote the story about it. Was six years ago to the month."

  "What you're doing," Faye said, "is holding up my getting to the good part." Messing up her train of thought, too.

  "But the circumstances of how they met," the reporter said, "could have something to do with this story."

  "Would you please," Faye said, "wait till I'm done?"

  It gave her time to tell the next part: how Frank had no choice but to draw his gun, this big pearl-handled automatic, from inside his coat and lay it on the edge of the table, right next to him. "Now as he turns around," Faye said, starting to grin, "this surprised look came over his face. He sees Carl sitting there, not with a gun in his hand but Photoplay magazine. Frank can't believe his eyes. He says, 'Jesus Christ, you don't have a gun?' Carl pats the side of his chest where his gun's hol-stered under his coat and says, 'Right here.' Then he says, 'Frank, I want to be clear about this so you understand. If I pull my weapon I'll shoot to kill.'" Faye said to the reporters, "In other words, the only time Carl Webster draws his gun it's to shoot somebody dead."

  It had the reporters scribbling in their notebooks and making remarks to each other, the one from the Daily Times saying now, "Listen, will you? Six years ago Frank Miller held up Deering's drugstore in Okmulgee and Carl Webster was there. Only he was known as Carlos then, he was still a kid. He stood by and watched Frank Miller shoot and kill an Indian from the tribal police happened to come in the store, a man Carl Webster must've known." The reporter looked at Faye and said, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think the drugstore shooting could've been on Carl Webster's mind."

  Faye said, "I can tell you something else about that."

  But now voices were chiming in, commenting and asking questions about the Okmulgee reporter's views:

  "Carl carried it with him all these years?"

  "Did he remind Frank Miller of it?"

  "You're saying the tribal cop was a friend of his?"

  "Both from Okmulgee, Carl thinking of becoming a lawman?"

  "Carl ever say he was out to get Frank Miller?"

  "This story's bigger'n it looks."

  Faye said, "You want to hear something else happened?

  "How Carl was eating an ice-cream cone that time and what Frank did?"

  They sat on the porch sipping tequila at the end of the day, insects out there singing in the dark. A lantern hung above Virgil's head so he could see to read the newspapers on his lap.

  "Most of it seems to be what this little girl told."

  "They made up some of it."

  "Jesus, I hope so. You haven't been going out with her, have you?"

  "I drove down, took her to Purity a couple times."

  "She's a pretty little thing. Has a saucy look about her in the pictures, wearing that kimona."

  "She smelled nice, too," Carl said.

  Virgil turned his head to him. "I wouldn't tell Bob Cardell that. One of his marshals sniffing around a gun moll." He waited, but Carl let that one go. Virgil looked at the newspaper he was holding. "I don't recall you were ever a buddy of Junior Harjo's."

  "I'd see him and say hi is all."

  "The Daily Times has you two practically blood brothers. What you did was avenge his death. They wonder if it might even be the reason you joined the marshals."

  "Yeah, I read that," Carl said.

  Virgil put the Daily Times down and slipped the Oklahoman out from under it. "But now the Oklahoma City paper says you shot Frank Miller 'cause he took your ice-cream cone that time in the drugstore. They trying to be funny?"

  "I guess," Carl said.

  "They could make up a name for you, as smart-aleck newspapers do, start calling you Carl Webster, the Ice Cream Kid?"

  "What if they do?"

  "I'm getting the idea you like this attention."

  Virgil saying it with some concern and Carl giving him a shrug. Virgil picked up another paper from the pile. "Here they quote the little girl sayin
g Frank Miller went for his gun and you shot him through the heart."

  "I thought they have her saying, 'straight through the heart,'" Carl said. He turned to see his old dad staring at him with a solemn expression. "I'm kidding with you. What Frank did, he tried to bluff me. He looked toward Faye and called her name thinking I'd look over. But I kept my eyes on him, knowing he'd pick up his Colt. He came around with it and I shot him."

  "As you told him you would," Virgil said. "Every one of the newspapers played it up, your saying, 'If I draw my weapon I shoot to kill.' You tell 'em that?"

  "The only one I told was Frank Miller," Carl said. "It had to've been Faye told the papers."

  "Well, that little girl sure tooted your horn for you."

  "She only told what happened."

  "All she had to. It's the telling that did it, made you a famous lawman overnight. You think you can carry a load like that?"

  "I was born to," Carl said, starting to show himself.

  It didn't surprise his old dad. Virgil picked up his glass of tequila and raised it to his boy, saying, "God help us showoffs."

  Table of Contents

  Start