Red Highway

by Loren D. Estleman

  Roscoe fumbled the knob to the “off” position with shaking fingers. There was nothing new in the message, only additional means for panic. He’d known about Virgil’s escape ever since late yesterday afternoon, after he’d gotten home and received the evening edition of the newspaper. That’s when he’d begun packing.

  He’d have been gone hours earlier if it had not been for the police. The streets near his apartment house had been alive with patrol cars all evening, their sirens piercing the night air, their side-mounted spotlights sweeping the darkened windows of every building on the block. Roscoe, not realizing that the motorcycle patrolman who had seen him speeding away from the bank was the one who’d been slain, was afraid that the police would have his licence number and that they’d converge upon him the moment he struck out with the DeSoto. This morning, however, after a sleepless night, he’d decided to chance it. There was no predicting what that crazy Ballard would do once he found out that his wheel man had panicked and left him in the lurch.

  Now, as he drew farther and farther from his apartment house and nothing of consequence occurred, he relaxed a little. With the remission of fear came logic. He began to make plans, to formulate a destination for what had started out as a headlong flight from danger. He’d head north to Illinois, or maybe farther, all the way to Michigan. There, he could set himself up in business as an auto mechanic or something of the sort, change his name, start a new life. Small chance of the “Tri-State Terror” venturing that far from the safety of his native region for purposes of mere vengeance. Yes, things were looking up.

  Then he heard the sirens.

  A police car came squealing around the corner just as Alex and Virgil were leaving the bank in Claremore, Oklahoma. Virgil socked the sack full of cash into the back seat and followed it in, while Alex, nearest the driver’s side, slid beneath the wheel, starting the engine, and tore off from a standing start.

  Close behind, the officer on the passenger’s side leaned out the window and snapped off a few shots that whistled past the Auburn, one of them clipping the left-hand mirror and knocking it crooked. Virgil crunched the butt of a submachine gun through the back window, jammed the barrel through the ragged hole, and began firing long sweeping bursts at windshield level. He shot high and took out a line of store windows along the right side of the street.

  The main street intersection was coming up. Alex accelerated and ran the red light. A car coming from the right squealed its brakes and skidded around, narrowly missing a double-parked bus parked near the corner. The shaken driver leaned angrily on his horn. Behind them, the police car, siren wailing, shot between two other cars going in opposite directions across the intersection and sent them slewing around sideways to a symphony of tortured tires. Virgil raked a withering blast with his machine gun across the pursuers’ radiator and missed. They zigzagged and fishtailed wildly across both lanes in an attempt to dodge bullets coming at them from the exposed policeman’s gun, at the same time throwing off Virgil’s aim so that he wasted ammunition on the empty air. “Quit screwing up and steer straight, damn you,” he commanded.

  “Not on your life!” Alex retorted, twisting the wheel so that the speeding car veered from one lane to the other, then twisting it back the other way.

  Virgil cursed and braced himself on both knees, took careful aim at the pursuing car, and squeezed the trigger. The bullets ripped across the police windshield in a kaleidoscope of disintegrating glass. Immediately, the front end of the black-and-white vehicle twisted around, brought the rear arcing around in front, and walloped into the trunk of a huge elm tree planted in a square box on the left curb. As the scene grew smaller through the Auburn’s back window, the police driver, unhurt, climbed out of the crippled vehicle and helped his shaken partner out onto the sidewalk. Virgil laughed and fired a final short burst in their direction, though by now they were well out of range.

  Hazel was standing in front of the house outside Stockton when they drove up. She looked anxious, nervously twisting the rolled-up newspaper in her hands. Virgil set the brake and got out. “I heard the car coming down the road,” she said when he joined her. “I hoped it was you.”

  “What is it?”

  She handed him the newspaper. He looked at her thoughtfully, then unrolled it.

  Alex hefted the suitcase in which they had put the money out of the car. “Bad news?”

  Virgil turned the paper so that Alex could read the headline:

  GANG MEMBER TELLS ALL

  Caught Driving Stolen Car

  Ballard Man Spills Beans

  Underneath was a picture of Roscoe Hunter.

  “Sonuvabitch,” said Alex, almost inaudibly.

  “Put the suitcase back in the car,” hissed Virgil solemnly.

  Part IV

  Mr. Henry

  The Shawnee water tower is visible now in the distance, a black form pasted against the charcoal gray sky. Tiny pinpoints of light begin to blink on in scattered parts of the city’s low profile. Darkness is beginning to lose its grip.

  The folded shop awning above Sheriff McCracken’s head bulges and releases a thin stream of rain water onto his Stetson. It rolls off the brim and runs onto his glistening leather jacket, mixing with the moisture left by the slowly receding December drizzle. He pays it no attention as he sweeps the beam of his flashlight around the inside of the shop through the plate glass window, then moves on.

  Up ahead, Jake, the lanky deputy, searches a high old automobile parked by the curb. His light flashes around the front and back seats, the door slams with a thunk, and he turns his back on the car in favor of the nearby alley. McCracken hears the garbage cans rattle as he lifts and replaces the lids. If Ballard’s hiding beneath a banana peel, he muses, Jake will find him.

  Circles of light dance and dart along the walls of the buildings, inside and out, as the uniformed men comb the street on both sides. Several streets to the west, the persistent whooping of the hounds informs the sheriff of the federal agents’ progress. Dogs, men, flashlights, guns. What do the papers call it? The Army of Justice.

  A deputy on the opposite side of the street calls out. Slinging his shotgun to a two-handed grip, McCracken trots across.

  The deputy hands him a gleaming brass cylinder about the size of a tie clip. “I found it on the sidewalk. It must of lodged in his pants cuff.”

  Sheriff McCracken examines the tiny casing in the light of his torch, turning it over between his fingers. “Nine millimeter,” he says, his voice surprisingly calm. “Luger.”

  The darkened shop windows stare blankly back at them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  October 12, 1933.

  She had light brown hair, cropped short so that it fell just below her ears, which were pierced but without earrings. She was, in fact, almost completely unadorned, her face plain, her yellow dress devoid of frills, shoes dusty and run down at the heels. The one concession she had made to ornament was a string of red beads the size of Ping-Pong balls she had hung around her neck. Tall, a bit gawky, shy to the point of being awkward, not pretty. Zazu Pitts in her younger days. Mrs. Alex Kern.

  Virgil grinned and took her hand. It felt warm and damp. “How d’you do, Mrs. Kern? Annabelle, is it? I never woulda knowed ol’ Alex had a wife if we didn’t stop here for you. No sir.” He winked at Alex.

  The plain woman smiled a hesitant greeting, but said nothing.

  “Annabelle and me, we got an understanding.” Alex’s smile was a bit strained. “She don’t bore anybody bragging about me, I don’t bore anybody bragging about her. Keeps friends friends.”

  Hazel and Virgil laughed politely. Annabelle smiled.

  “Well, I guess I’ll get my luggage.” Her voice was faint, almost a whine. She stood there a minute awkwardly, then turned and headed down the flat stone walk toward the frame house. Some of its windows were boarded up and the peeling front door sagged on its sprung hinges.

  “I’ll help,” said Hazel, and trotted off to join her.

 
; When the door had clapped shut behind the women, Virgil lit a cigarette. “Where in perdition’s flame did you find her?” The smoke curled from his parted lips.

  “Family,” answered Alex, leaning back on the fender of the gunmetal-colored Packard convertible Virgil had bought in Muskogee. His own vehicle, a new black Pontiac sedan he had stolen at the same time, was parked just behind it. “She’s my cousin. I married her when I was seventeen.”

  “Why for chrissake? If you don’t mind my saying so, Alex, she looks like a sparrow in moulting season.”

  Alex smiled. “Yeah, she does, don’t she? Her pa, my uncle Mike, made me marry her. Claimed she was in a family way.”

  “Was she?”

  Alex nodded. “What her pa didn’t know was, she seen a doc in Wisconsin when she was supposed to be visiting a relative. Got it fixed.”

  “She didn’t tell him?”

  “Nope.”

  Virgil reached out and snatched a curled brown leaf from the hood of the convertible. It crunched in his hand. “Well, if you don’t like her, why are we taking her with us?”

  “Oh, she’s all right. Anyway, you said we’d be laying up for a long spell out West, so I figured I oughtta have a woman around, seeing as you got one.”

  “Hazel’s different. I can pass the time with her.”

  Alex laughed shortly. “Don’t let Annie’s looks fool you. I don’t know where she learned them things she knows, but she sure knows ’em.”

  “How much she know about you?” Virgil nodded at the Pontiac. “I’m not about to go sneaking them rifles and machine guns in and out of the house after she goes to sleep.”

  “Don’t worry about her. Her brother’s doing five to ten in Jeff City for armed robbery and her pa was in bootlegging in the ’20s. She’s been around our kind all her life. She won’t give us a second thought.”

  “She better not.”

  Alex was about to ask him what he meant when Hazel and Annabelle, each carrying a suitcase, fumbled out the door of the shack and came toward them. Alex held out his hands to take their burdens, but Hazel shook her head. “Don’t stand on ceremony, boys. We can hold up our own.” She turned and headed for the sedan, Annabelle stumbling behind her beneath the weight of her own big suitcase.

  “Well, at least let me open the door for you,” said Alex, and hurried ahead of them, hand reaching for the doorhandle. Virgil followed, puffing on the butt of his cigarette.

  Hazel loaded her burden onto the back seat of the sedan, took Annabelle’s, and slid that in beside it. The barrels of two machine guns and an automatic rifle protruded plainly from beneath a thin flannel blanket on the floor behind the front seat. If she’d seen them, Annabelle didn’t show it. Virgil grinned and snapped away his cigarette butt.

  “All right,” he said, “Alex you and Annie’ll ride in the Pontiac. Me and Hazel get the coupe. Let’s go.” He put a hand on Hazel’s arm to lead her toward the Packard.

  “I sort of hate to leave the place.” Annabelle stared across at the house, at its roof sagging in the middle like a sway-backed horse, at the carpet of fallen leaves covering the parched yard.

  “Forget it,” said Alex, slamming shut the sedan’s back door. “It’s a dump. The bank’ll get it anyway.”

  “Pa gave it to me.”

  “I said forget it.”

  They stood a moment in silence, Virgil and Hazel and Alex watching Annabelle watch the house. “Well,” said Virgil, stirring, “I guess we better go while it’s still October.” He raised his right hand in parting. “See you in Shawnee.”

  The rental agent shuffled the papers with his nicotine-stained hands and turned them so Virgil could sign the bottom line. Virgil bent over the coffee table, scrawled “Warren Henry,” and sat back in the overstuffed couch.

  “Well, I guess that’s it, Mr. Henry.” The agent slipped the papers into his open briefcase, snapped it shut, and stood up. He was a big, soft-looking easterner, with a thick neck around which his too-small shirt collar was buttoned painfully. “I hope you and Mrs. Henry like the place.” He smiled at Hazel, who looked pretty and well scrubbed in her brick-colored suit and flowered hat. She smiled back.

  “I’m sure we will, Mr. Emmett,” said Virgil, getting up and shaking his hand. “And don’t you worry about us living here. We’re quiet folks, me and the missus, just looking for relaxation. My brother, too, and his wife.”

  “That’s my client’s lookout, not mine. But for my money, you’re all good folks.” The agent put on his hat, said goodbye and left.

  After his car had driven off, Virgil walked around the room, circling the leaf-patterned carpet, admiring the high ceiling, lifting the drapes on the tall front window. “It’s all ours, free and clear. Whaddaya think of it, babe?” He turned to face Hazel, who had joined him at the window, and took her hands in his.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said calmly. “How long will this one last?” Her voice was ironic.

  “Stop worrying. We got us a house right here in town, all legal, and thirty thousand dollars in our pockets. Well, twenty-eight. It’ll last as long as we want it.”

  “That’s what you said about Stockton.”

  Virgil slid his hat to the back of his head. “Stockton was no good from the start. In them small burgs, where everybody knows everybody else, strangers stick out like yeller cows. People notice things. Shawnee now, this is the place. Big enough to get lost in, little enough to get out of if you have to.”

  “Is that what makes a town good? Its escape possibilities?”

  Virgil sighed, a little puzzled. “Well, you got to think of them things. Look, don’t even give ’em a notion. Let me worry about that. And take off that hat. It makes you look like a prize horse.” He lifted the flowered hat off her head, fumbling with the pin, and tossed it onto the couch.

  “Thanks,” Hazel said drily, “for the compliment.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Virgil, and crushed her to his lips.

  “Break it up, you two.” Alex, loaded down with suitcases, scrabbled though the front doorway with Annabelle on his heels. He set them down with a thud and straightened to look around the living room. “No, sir,” he said, “not bad at all. I got to applaud your taste, Virge, if nothing else.”

  “You’re cute.” Virgil, his arm around Hazel, glared at him in mock anger.

  “Like it sugar?” Alex draped his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

  “It’s nice,” she said.

  “Nice? Beats the old shack all to hell.”

  Virgil said, “Put the Pontiac in the garage. We’ll bring them guns in through the kitchen.”

  “Yeah, right.” Alex went out the door, pausing to give Annabelle a smart smack on the rump. She gasped.

  There was a big floor-model radio in the corner with a shawl draped at an angle across its top. Virgil went over to it and turned it on. The tubes hummed. “I hope they get ‘Amos ’n’ Andy’out here.”

  “I hope they got country,” Annabelle ventured. “I like country.”

  “Hell with country. Always somebody dying. What’s the matter with this thing?” He slapped the side of the wooden cabinet. The tubes crackled and resumed humming.

  “Give it time to warm up,” suggested Hazel.

  Music came crackling out the big square speaker. Virgil twisted the selector knob, found the right frequency, and stood back triumphantly. “Frankie Trumbauer,” he said. “Used to listen to his orchestra all the time in McAlester.”

  Alex came in from the kitchen and laid his blanket-wrapped bundle on the couch. Barrels rattled. “All parked,” he informed Virgil. “You gonna leave your buggy out front?”

  “Why not? It’s legal. Not like yours.”

  “Even so, Packards ain’t that common around here. Attracts attention. There’s a Depression, you know.”

  “Really? I haven’t noticed.”

  “Anyway, I’d park her out back.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do it later.”

  Alex tapped his foot to the
music coming from the radio. “Hey, that’s a catchy tune. Anybody want to dance?” He held out his hands.

  Virgil grinned. “Go ahead, honey.” He gave Hazel a gentle push. She smiled and stepped into Alex’s arms. They began dancing around the room.

  “Hey, Virge, you got a great dancer here.”

  “That’s why I married her.” Virgil looked at Annabelle, standing quietly off to one side. “Shall we?” She shook her head. He stepped up, seized her hands, spun her into his embrace, and steered her across the rug. She danced stiffly, with small, uneven steps, her smile frozen.

  At the end of the walk in front of the neat white house, a small man in a tweed suit and narrow-brimmed hat stood watching the gay scene through the tall window. His creased face, flushed by the brisk autumn breeze was stern and disapproving. He was the owner of the house.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Virge, what’s the matter?” Alex, shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, looked up from the mass of tubes and wires with which he was fiddling on the inside of the big radio. The floor around him was littered with tools. The radio’s pasteboard back leaned against the wall where he had placed it.

  Virgil tossed him the folded newspaper. “Take a gander.”

  Alex ignored the scare headline, his eyes darting to the lead story on the right-hand side of the page.

  Haileyville, Oklahoma, November 17—A light snow was falling here today as five men, identified by witnesses as the infamous Ballard gang, charged into the Haileyville Savings & Loan Company, killing a guard and escaping with an estimated $27,000 in cash and negotiable bonds.

  According to Arthur Honeywell, the bank’s president, four men came into the bank at 1:30 P.M., one of them armed with a machine gun, and demanded all the money in the teller cash drawers. A fifth man, he said, remained just outside the door with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

  No sooner had the announcement been made than Franklin Peevey, 63, the guard, pulled his pistol from its holster and attempted to fire it at the bank robbers. The man with the machine gun shot him dead before he could pull the trigger.