“Quiet, Sam,” he said gently. “We’re leaving now.”
He took out his pipe, filled it methodically from his worn tobacco pouch. Then he picked up the photo of his wife in the silver frame and slipped it into his pocket.
He struck a match on the side of his shoe and put it to the bowl of his pipe, then took the cowl off the oil lamp on the table and touched the match to the wick. The lamp flared up, and he reached forward and very gently turned it on its side. It rolled, coal oil spilling across the table and dripping to the floor, tongues of flame leaping up.
“Why, damn me, Sam,” Doc said to the hound. “We appear to have a fire on our hands. Time to leave, I’d say.”
He went out to the truck, holding open the door so that the old dog could climb up on the passenger seat. He walked round to the front, swung the crank, then got behind the wheel and moved into gear. As he drove away, he started to sing softly:
John Dillinger was the man for me,
He robbed the Glendale train,
Took from the banks, gave to the poor,
Shan’t see his like again.
Behind him, flames burst through the shingle roof, and black smoke billowed into the air. Doc hadn’t been happier in years. Then he remembered the man who’d come calling, Leach. The son-of-a-bitch had the whole of the Indiana State Police to catch one man. He hoped Johnny would be across the state line by now. Or real soon.
In his Washington office, J. Edgar Hoover had seven grown men standing around his desk as if they were page boys instead of high-ranking G-men. Hoover’s voice was calm, but the men who had worked with him knew that he was furious.
“He phoned me,” Hoover said.
Of course they knew already. It was the scuttlebutt of Headquarters.
“He phoned me collect. He said I should tell the President not to close any more banks.”
The men standing there kept straight faces because they knew what Hoover’s fury would be like if they so much as smiled.
“He’s made more headlines than movie stars. I don’t want the kids in this country growing up emulating that man. Understand?”
They all nodded.
“The local boobs can’t catch him, and when they do, they can’t hold onto him. I want John Dillinger taken by the Bureau. Dead or alive.”
It was the man standing next to Purvis from Chicago who said, “Any preference?”
Hoover laughed, so they all thought it was okay to laugh too.
Hoover stood up for the first time. “Here’s my plan.”
Three
In Texas he’d driven with the top of the white convertible down, hoping the breeze would help. Maybe not feeling safe yet was adding to his discomfort. But once he was across the border he felt safe, though the hot sun seemed to bear down on him even more, and he finally pulled over to the side of the dusty road and raised the top to keep the sun off his head. He put the turned down panama hat beside him on the seat to let the sweatband dry out a bit, damn glad he’d bought the panama and thrown the straw hat away. He didn’t want to look like an American from a mile away.
With his fingertips he felt the mustache he’d started to grow on the ride down. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. It was coming in black. All he needed was a better suntan.
Above the town the Sierras floated in a purple haze. He bet it was cooler up there, but he had to find a decent hotel, if there was such a place. Across the Plaza Civica that fronted the church, he saw it, the Hotel Balcon, a squat pink building with a crumbling facade. It had been used as a strong point during the Revolution, and the walls were pitted with bullet holes.
He pulled the white Chevrolet up in front of the hotel, aware of the eyes watching him from the park. Maybe from windows up there too. Should he have stuck to a black car like most other people drove, not a white convertible that called attention to himself? He loved the goddamn car and didn’t care about anything except that it was now covered in dust and grime. These people sure had lousy roads compared to the States.