Chapter Thirteen

It was dusk when the big Plymouth jostled into the driveway of the rented house and braked to a bouncing halt. Hazel, who had been sitting on the couch, reading, put down her copy of Liberty and got up to flick on the porch light. She was wearing slippers and a long quilted dressing gown.

Alex Kern and Boyd Harriman piled out of the car and started for the porch. Boyd had his machine gun tucked securely beneath his arm. Alex carried the money bag. Behind them, the car rolled forward toward the garage, Virgil at the wheel.

“What happened?” Hazel asked anxiously when the two had entered.

The black sack thumped heavily onto the linen-covered dining room table, propelled by Alex’s long arm. “Only twenty-five thousand dollars, that’s all.” His face was split by a huge grin.

“Smoothest piece of work I ever saw,” piped Boyd. He began breaking down his machine gun and laying the parts on the tablecloth. “Like a clock. The boys in Detroit would of admired it.”

Hazel ignored the compliment to her new husband’s skill. “Did anybody get hurt?”

“Only the bankers’ pocketbooks.” Virgil, who had entered through the side door of the garage, came in from the kitchen. He grabbed Hazel, spun her into his arms, and kissed her, hard. She didn’t respond. He drew away and studied her in a puzzled way.

“Twenty-five grand, three ways.” Alex thought for a moment. “That’s over eight thousand apiece.”

“Four ways,” Virgil corrected him, turning away from Hazel. “We agreed, remember? One cut goes to Hazel because she’s in with us.”

“Yeah. I forgot.”

“That’s fair. She gives us respectability when we rent a place to stay.” Boyd busied himself with cleaning the machine gun. He blew down the barrel and looked through it at Virgil.

Virgil carried his machine gun, which he had been holding in one hand, over to the narrow closet door and swung it open. Shotguns and pistols and machine guns and open boxes of ammunition gleamed from the closet’s interior.

Boyd whistled. “Some arsenal.”

“Mostly rented,” said Alex, loosening his tie. “Virgil knows a guy in Oklahoma City.”

Virgil clapped his machine gun into the closet beside the others and pushed the door shut. “Renting guns is a pain. We got to get some of our own.”

Alex said, “How do you plan to do that?”

“Same way as last time.”

“Police station?”

Virgil nodded. “There’s a place here in Missouri that’s perfect. Guns till hell won’t have ’em.”

“Man!” exclaimed Boyd, impressed. “Rob a police station! You guys got nerve.”

Hazel went into the bedroom and slammed the door with a bang.

Alex stared after her. “What’s eating her?”

Virgil didn’t answer. He went to the bedroom door and gave the knob a yank. It didn’t budge. “Hey!” He rattled the knob. “Unlock it, Hazel. Or I’ll shoot it off.”

“Leave her alone, Virge,” said Alex. “You know women. Maybe she just wants to be alone.”

“Well, she’s not gonna be. Not on our goddamn honeymoon, she isn’t.” He banged on the door.

After a moment, there was a click. Virgil opened the door and went in, closing it behind him.

Boyd looked at Alex, mirth showing through his big glasses. Alex glared back and began snickering. Then they both laughed out loud.

After unlocking the door, Hazel had gone back to the bed, and now she lay on her back, staring at the bright yellow-papered ceiling. Virgil came in quietly and stood looking down at her. “All right,” he sighed. “What is it this time? Sore because I left you alone on our honeymoon.”

She didn’t answer, but intensified her study of the ceiling.

“Is it because two strange men are coming along on our wedding trip?”

Silence.

“You might as well tell me. I’m going to find out sooner or later.”

There was still no response.

Virgil sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you want me to rob banks?”

Hazel stirred. Her gaze swung to her husband for the first time since he had entered the room. “It’s not just the banks,” she said. “It’s everything. You’ve escaped from three prisons. You’re wanted for the murders of three men, one of them a policeman, to say nothing of all the places you’ve robbed. J. Edgar Hoover made you Public Enemy Number One. The order is out to shoot you on sight.” She turned over on her side and looked him full in the face. “Virgil, isn’t that enough?” Her pretty features were distorted with mixed anger and anguish.

“So now it comes out.” Virgil looked more saddened than annoyed.

“I couldn’t hold it back any longer. Give it up, Virgil. There’s nothing in it for you anymore.”

“Would you rather I turned myself in to the law?” His face darkened. “It’ll be the chair, you know. No doubt about it.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. There are other countries. Mexico’s one. Canada’s another. Or South America.”

“I’m dead either way.”

Silence reigned. A late summer breeze wafted through the window screen and rustled the curtains. Then Virgil spoke again. “Money smells better when it’s stolen.” His voice was subdued. “It’s cleaner than honest money, and crisper and cooler. I like the feel of it. If you ask me why I rob banks, that’s the only reason I can give you. I don’t have no others.”

He stopped talking and glanced at his wife to see if she were going to say anything; she wasn’t. He continued. “It’s been that way with me since I was in the hills, when I was twenty. I couldn’t give that up for any place in South America. It isn’t worth it.” He tore his eyes from whatever they had been scrutinizing, and turned them back to Hazel. “You can’t understand that, can you?”

She studied his face in silence, and suddenly hers brightened. “No, I can’t,” she said, and threw her arms around him.

Alex was watching when the light coming beneath the bedroom door was snapped off. He smiled slyly at Boyd, who was busy putting his machine gun back together. “Well,” he said, stretching, “whatcha wanna do tonight, Boyd?”

“Kansas City?” Alex was befuddled.

Virgil nodded, scratching a faint circle with his fingernail around the black legend on the Missouri road map. “We’re gonna hit the First National smack in the middle of the afternoon, right off Main Street. They’ll never know what hit ’em.” He struck Kansas City with the heel of his hand. Petals came loose from Hazel’s marsh marigolds standing in the green cut-glass vase and floated to the table.

“Won’t that be breaking your own rule? About hitting the big cities?” Boyd’s voice was squeaky but steady.

“That rule’s out of style. I made it up when these hick burgs still had money in their banks. Nowadays, every third place we come to is boarded up. It’s the cities that pay off these days, and pay off big. Things went pretty smooth in Wichita. Right, Alex?”

Alex made a face. “If you don’t count the chief cashier.”

Virgil waved it away. “You can find twerps like that anywhere. The main thing is, these big city banks are loaded to the gills with ready cash. Kansas City grows millionaires like Stockton grows wheat.”

“How much you figure we’ll get?” asked Boyd.

“A hundred thousand easy. More.”

Boyd grinned, pushed his glasses up his nose. “Well, hell, what are we waiting for?”

“Planning,” said Virgil. “Good, clear planning. Especially the getaway. You never know when they’re gonna be tearing up streets.”

“You mean case it?” asked Alex.

“Case the bank, case the town. Everything.”

Hazel came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray loaded with sandwiches. Virgil stopped her from setting it down on top of the map. “Not now, huh?” She shrugged and laid it across the arms of a nearby overstuffed chair. Boyd snatched a chicken salad sandwich off the top of the pile as the tray went by. “Thanks, Hazel,” he said, and bit into it. Hazel left the room.

“All right,” said Virgil, removing his jacket. “First thing we’re gonna do is get guns. I’m sick of paying a bill and up on each damn cork pistol we get from that jerk in Oklahoma City.”

“The police station?” mumbled Boyd through a mouthful of chicken salad.

Virgil smiled. “The police station.”

On the way up to Kansas City, the Ballard Gang, as it was now being called by the sensation-hungry press from the border of Mexico to the tip of Maine, stopped off to rob the Walker Police Department. There were only three policemen on duty at the time, and they were so busy playing pinochle at the back of the tiny station house that they didn’t even notice the visitors until they had gotten the drop on the officers with their rented weapons. As a result, Virgil, Boyd, and Alex Kern walked out a few minutes later with three new machine guns, two sawed-off shotguns, a Browning automatic rifle, two Lugers equipped with special thirty-one-shot magazines, a case of .45-caliber ammunition—and one bulletproof vest. It was Boyd who insisted upon lugging it along, accompanied by a chorus of cursing on Virgil’s part. They abandoned the Plymouth, too identifiable, in the next county and stole a snappy new red-and-white DeSoto for the drive into Kansas City.