Raymond re-counted the bills, lips and fingers moving steadily, and then, with an exaggerated sigh, divided them into six piles. Bonnie watched to be sure his count was accurate and his division fair.
As overbearing as he’d been that first morning back in Wichita Falls, Raymond seemed to need to ruffle those around him the way normal people needed to scratch an itch. On the way north, while the rest kept to themselves, mindful of the crowdedness of the car, he’d draped his arms over the back of Bonnie’s seat and even unzipped her makeup case. She’d sworn and grabbed it from him and then wished she’d been cool, because he’d reacted only with his sneering smile.
“Sorry,” he’d mocked.
Success, which soothed and reassured Clyde, only made Raymond more restless.
“Git your feet off me,” Joe Palmer complained from the floor in back.
“Git off the floor, then,” Raymond said. “Where am I supposed to put my feet?”
“You know I can’t sit up. I got the ulcers.”
“You got the ulcers. You got the TB. You got the azma. What ain’t you got?”
“I ain’t got a big mouth.”
Raymond quit talking but began to play with his pistol, swinging the chamber out and flicking it with his finger so that it spun.
“That ain’t good for the gun,” Clyde said.
Raymond continued to spin the chamber, so a steady click-click-click ran under his words. “You’re a decent driver—and we need a good driver—but I’m the one that’s good at robbing banks. I’d like to see you try acting as slick as me and Hilton here, Clyde. We got authority. There’s no call for shooting and screaming and having to face down the law. We don’t plan for no week and then open a safe to get us thirty dollars. We just ask for the money, and they hand it over. You see, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Why the fuck aren’t I in charge of this gang, seeing as how the point isn’t to drive all over Kingdom Come but to get us a piece of money?”
“Punk blabbermouth braggart,” Palmer muttered. He pulled the blanket over his head.
Raymond smacked the chamber into place, straightened his arm, and pointed the pistol at Palmer’s covered head. With one motion, Clyde swung away from the wheel and slapped Raymond across the face, and the car, going eighty miles an hour, flew off the road into the ditch and broke its axle.
CHAPTER 67
To Clyde’s disappointment, the gang deteriorated quickly, as Bybee lit off as soon as they got back to Texas, and Palmer, after they’d driven him to San Antonio to visit his sister and then to Houston to murder an Eastham trusty he’d hated, asked to be dropped in Joplin because he decided all the driving around was making him sicker. That left Raymond and Henry, who Bonnie referred to as “the kid,” because in his diffidence he reminded her of W.D. Self-conscious about his acne scars, he had a habit of covering his face with his fingers when he spoke, which gave the impression that he was half apologizing for his words. He had a dagger tattooed on his right forearm together with the word LOVE.
“Crib notes?” Bonnie teased.
Henry blushed. “What?”
She touched his arm. “Is that so you know what to do with it?”
“What to do with what?” His fingers rose to screen his chin and mouth.
“She means your prick,” Clyde said. “She thinks she’s funny.” But he smiled.
Henry’s story was that the guy who’d picked him up a year before on Highway 310, a little ways out of Henrietta, had pulled something he damn well shouldn’t have. “Sure I tried to kill him. What was I supposed to do?”
The laws hadn’t bought it because he’d kept the man’s car. But, he argued to Bonnie, Clyde, and Raymond, he needed that car. After what had happened, did the laws expect him to risk asking some other pervert for a ride?
Raymond announced he would stick with the gang only if they robbed more banks and if his new baby from Amarillo could ride along. He seemed almost like a girl when he talked about Mary O’Dare, bringing up every little thing Mary thought and said and liked and hated, and Bonnie had hopes that Mary would be a companion like Blanche had been until Raymond brought her to a family meeting on Chalk Hill.
Mary, who’d smeared her too-red lipstick beyond the limits of her lips in a crude attempt to fill out her narrow mouth and neglected to apply her thick coat of Pan-Cake beyond her chin, so that the makeup resembled the dirty border the tide left along the beach, was interested only in the men. She leaned into Clyde, brushing him with her breasts and drawing a finger along his thighbone. Bonnie was gratified when he got up and walked away, as if Mary were a cold draft.
L.C. had brought a newspaper article about a robbery in which the getaway car had been driven by a woman. She’d had a cigar stuck in her mouth, so, of course, the paper assumed that Bonnie and Clyde had committed the crime.
“You get credit for someone else’s job,” Bonnie complained to Clyde, “while I get slandered as a ‘cigar-smoking gun-moll.’ ”
“C’mon, baby. You looked cute smoking that cigar.”
“I was not smoking it! I was playacting. I don’t want people thinking that’s really me, all coarse and stinky, like a man.”
“Nobody thinks you’re a man, Blue.”
“They don’t think I’m really holding a gun on you. Why do they think I really smoke cigars?”
“You have held a gun on me.”
“Well, I’ve never smoked a cigar, and you know it.”
* * *
Mary O’Dare, Bonnie thought, was the kind of woman who would smoke cigars, and even she preferred cigarettes.
“Lucky you got Raymond with y’all now,” Mary said, snapping shut the compact with which she’d been examining her stained teeth.
The two women were sitting in a V-8 at the entrance to a farm road outside Dallas, waiting for Henry Methvin to deliver Clyde and Raymond along with whatever they’d managed to pry out of the R. P. Henry & Sons Bank.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Well, Ray ain’t afraid to heist a bank. You’ll get you a real piece of money now.”
“Clyde’s robbed plenty of banks and got plenty of money.”
Mary shrugged. “That’s not what Raymond says. He says they quit running around together because all your man wanted to do was nickel-and-dime stuff. Ray says if you don’t go for the big score, there’s no point to it.”
“The point might be to stay out of the Bloody ’Ham, which is where bank robberies got Raymond, if you recall. You seem to forget that the man you’re calling scared had to prize Ray out of there.”
“Raymond organized that.”
“All Raymond did was remember that Clyde had a plan. Ray never came up with a thing like that himself.”
Mary continued with her self-important ways when the boys drove up to exchange the getaway car for the Ford. She got in back with Raymond and lay down on the seat. When Henry tried to get in beside her, she shoved him with her foot. “You sit up front. I want to sleep.”
“It’s all right, Henry,” Bonnie said, patting the seat beside her. “You c’mon up here.”
“For shit’s sake, hurry up,” Clyde said, gunning the engine. “This ain’t no picnic.” But Bonnie could tell he was relaxed; he slipped his shoes off before they’d gone five miles and settled in to enjoy the drive across the panhandle to Oklahoma. “All we had to do was fucking ask for it,” he marveled, shaking his head.
“It wasn’t that simple,” Raymond hooted. “When we told everyone to get down on the floor, this old fogey kept holding his money out to the teller.” Ray was counting the take, and he held up a trembling handful to mock the old man’s palsy. “Clyde kept saying—‘Like this! Like this!’ He got right down on the ground to show him! You shoulda seen it!”
Clyde grinned. “He’s lucky that floor didn’t mess up my new suit.”
“And then Clyde decides to play Robbinghood and gives twenty-seven dollars to some grubby little loser,” Raymond went on.
“What did you go and do that for?�
� Mary demanded.
“He worked for that money,” Clyde said. “I guess you wouldn’t know what that’s like.”
“This is a helluva lot better than work!” Henry put in.
“The pipsqueak had just cashed his paycheck, and his money was on the counter, so we scooped it in with the rest,” Raymond said. “And then Clyde here has to say, ‘How much was it?’ And the little sniveler says, ‘How much was what?’ ”
“He thought I was asking him for a count on the whole haul,” Clyde explained.
“All I can say is this town’s got the slowest bunch I ever met,” Raymond said. “Finally, the penny drops and he says, ‘Oh, twenty-six dollars and sixty-three cents,’ and ol’ Robbinghood here says, ‘We don’t want your money, just the bank’s,’ and counts out twenty-seven dollars, like he’s got all the money and time in the world. You know, now that I think about it, I bet that fellow didn’t have no twenty-six dollars and sixty-three cents in the first place. He weren’t confused at all. I betcha he swindled us.” Raymond spit out the window to underscore his disgust.
“You know what your trouble is, Raymond Hamilton?” Bonnie said.
“Yeah. You won’t shut up and let me count.”
“You think everyone’s like you, always on the take, but your average person isn’t a bit like that. Your average person just wants what he’s entitled to, fair and square.”
Raymond didn’t answer. They could hear the whisper of his count and the rustle of the bills, as he separated and stacked them. It went on a long time, long enough for them all to become aware that they’d done even better than they’d anticipated.
“Maybe you’re right that I’m not like your average person who wants only what I’m entitled to,” Raymond said finally. “Because I can’t say I’m entitled to…” He paused dramatically. “Four thousand one hundred and seventy-six dollars. Dammit, I wish we had that twenty-seven, make it an even forty-two hundred.”
* * *
In a little while, Bonnie heard the money rustling again. She turned to look into the back seat. “What’re you doing?”
“Dividing it up.”
“We ain’t out of the state yet,” Clyde said. “You oughta be watching for the law, not playing with the money.”
“What’s forty-two hundred divided by three?”
“I told you the last time, we ain’t dividing by three,” Clyde said. “It’s me, you, Henry, and Bonnie who’re getting this money.”
“That’s right.” Raymond’s tone was almost gleeful. “Your girl gets a share. So Mary gets a share, too.”
The car swerved crazily, and Clyde had to work to bring it back under control.
“You want to split yours with her,” Bonnie said, “you go ahead. She doesn’t get her own.”
“That’s bullshit. How come you get a share and she don’t?”
“I’m in the Barrow Gang,” Bonnie said. “She’s just your girl. We let her ride with us as a favor to you, but she’s not one of us.”
“Why do you get to make the rules?”
“She don’t,” Clyde said. “I do.”
Bonnie was thrown hard against the dash and slipped onto the floor at Henry’s feet as Clyde suddenly braked and swung off the road.
“Gimme that,” he was yelling. “You think I can’t see what you’re doing?”
Through the rearview mirror, he’d seen Raymond stuffing a fistful of bills into Mary’s waistband. Clyde dragged Raymond from the car, ostensibly to search for other hidden money, but it was obvious that what he really wanted was a fight. Bonnie, although she had to lean against the car to keep herself upright, longed for a fight, too.
The idea that Raymond’s relationship with Mary could be compared to Clyde’s with Bonnie gave Bonnie the bitter, poison taste a toad leaves in the palm that has held it too long. She wanted to spit. But it was Clyde she truly wanted to pummel, for his dismissive words.
Raymond let Clyde poke at him. He stood still and laughed, raising his arms to give Clyde access to his body. When Clyde found a wad of folded bills under Raymond’s belt, he was incredulous. “You took it? You took the fucking money?”
Raymond shrugged. His lip curled in a smile of disdain that seemed to be meant for himself as much as for Clyde. “That’s what we do, ain’t it? Take money?”
“Not from each other. Don’t you got no sense of what it means to be in a gang? We got to be able to trust each other.”
Raymond narrowed his eyes. “You mean like I trusted you to say I weren’t nowhere near that Bucher house?”
“I woulda,” Clyde said. “Bonnie can tell you. If you woulda gone to the death house, I woulda.”
“You went to Eastham for plenty more than Bucher,” Bonnie said. “And Clyde got you out.”
“Finally,” Raymond pouted, like a neglected lover. “I had to send Mullen. Have to pay that hophead a thousand dollars.”
“He woulda done it for a hundred.” It was Clyde’s turn to be scornful.
“Let’s have Henry divide it,” Bonnie suggested.” He’ll be fair.”
Clyde looked at Henry. “Can we trust you, kid?”
“Sure,” Henry said. “I can count.”
* * *
By the time they stopped to camp near the Kansas border, they had reviewed the robbery and the remarkable total several times, which restored them all to good spirits, except for Mary who complained that people with over four thousand dollars shouldn’t have to eat franks and beans and sleep on the ground.
“You sleep like a king in a hotel, spending money so everyone can see it, you’re going to get caught,” Clyde said.
“If we can’t eat nice in a restaurant and go dancing,” she argued, “what’s the point?”
“It’s hard to dine and dance,” Bonnie said, “with your head blown off.”
It sickened her to hear Mary, who hadn’t a thought in her head for anything but steak and whiskey and some fun with her daddy, say with scorn what Bonnie herself had often thought with despair. Obviously, they couldn’t eat in a restaurant or go dancing—they hardly even dared to stay in tourist courts anymore—because they were big news again. The raid on Eastham had warranted huge headlines and articles, including photos of Clyde, on the front page and above the fold. By now the whole country must know that Clyde had a limp and Bonnie smoked cigars, and the more prominent the gun moll with the cigar clamped between her teeth became, the farther the real Bonnie had to withdraw. Her social life consisted of swapping swigs from a flask with a kid who hardly had two words to say for himself and sneering with Clyde at a washerwoman.
Clyde promised that when they got as far as Michigan or Ohio, they could eat in a restaurant, and they spent an enjoyable few hours discussing roast beef and baked chicken and tiny onions in cream sauce, but Mary remained unsatisfied and querulous all the way across Kansas the following day. She hadn’t realized, she said sarcastically, that riding with the famous Clyde Barrow would mean spending days crammed in the back seat of a dirty car bouncing through dirty fields. Her back hurt. Her teeth hurt. She criticized Clyde for stopping in Peoria to buy new clothes, when they could have gotten much nicer things in Chicago. There were too many “dirty guns” in the back. Why couldn’t Raymond drive and she sit up front for a change? This car stank. Why couldn’t they get a new one?
CHAPTER 68
They did grab a new car outside Joplin, a dark green V-8, with two little dolls, connected by a string wrapped around their chests, dangling from the rearview mirror. While Clyde cared only about the condition and power of the machine, Bonnie was always excited to discover whatever treasures might be inside. Along with maps, they’d found cigarette cases, cigar holders, single gloves, pocketknives, and nail files, but also more personal items—shopping lists, baby rattles, letters to sweethearts, a Freemason’s ring, and, in a heart-shaped candy box, a set of false teeth. Fingering these items made Bonnie feel more like a caretaker than a thief; they were only borrowing the cars, after all, and generally abandoned them wi
th their contents intact. She liked to believe she was somehow included in the lives into which these effects fit.
“Look how sweet!” She cupped the dolls’ feet, at the tip of which little rubber toes were cunningly delineated. “What do you bet this car belongs to a family with twin girls?”
“More likely an old man who likes to look up little girls’ skirts,” Raymond said. “Look at the way he’s got ’em hanging up there.”
Bonnie, unknotting the string, frowned. “They aren’t wearing skirts.” Their outfits were painted-on bathing suits, the black-haired one in yellow and blue, the yellow-haired in pink and red. She nestled the dolls in her lap and concentrated on the view outside her window. Whenever they drove through Joplin, she hoped to spot a small, fluffy, white dog, happy in some front yard.
Outside a diner, where they next stopped for gas, two little girls in faded gingham dresses were amusing themselves by walking along a two-by-four. A dozen years ago, those girls with their scuffed shoes, windmilling arms, and raucous shrieks might have been Dutchie and Bonnie herself. Bonnie struggled out of the car, intent on playing Lady Bountiful.
“Hey, there,” she said, eyeing the board. Only a year ago, she would have walked it herself and shown them it could be done in heels.
The girls stopped their play and stood silently, staring at her. Bonnie held out the dolls with confidence; children always liked her. “These babies have been waiting for a couple of girls to take care of them. Would you be their mamas?”
The girls hung back, the younger glancing nervously at the older for guidance. Bonnie moved forward with one of her lurching steps. “Now who should have the brunette baby and who should have the blonde?”
The diner door opened, revealing a woman in a dress of pale, unbecoming pink and cheap shoes with deep cracks across the toes. “Bettina! Mildred Ann!” The girls quickly disappeared behind her.
The woman narrowed her eyes at Bonnie. “What do you want with my girls?”
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